Chapter 5

After a long day of chores at home to prepare for the busy workweek ahead, my Sunday evening with Juan is over. I am past the odd incidents in the hallway with the strange woman and Mr. Rosso. As usual, I was probably overreacting and seeing things that weren’t really there.

Just when I think I’m getting better at reading cues, life has a way of teaching me otherwise. For most people, it’s easy to put two and two together, but not so in my case. I often get the sum wrong, adding the parts incorrectly or making more of the equation than it merits.

Juan and I went to bed hours ago. He’s sound asleep beside me, the day ending just as it began. His breath is gentle—waves lapping the shore. Meanwhile, I’m wide awake again, though I’m quite tired. My mind is racing, searching shadowy corners and long-forgotten memories. I’m picking them up like boulders to see what lurks underneath, what answers will scuttle into the light.

The Sunday scaries. That’s what Gran used to call this feeling. I have a serious case of them tonight, maybe because tomorrow is a big day—back to work at the Regency Grand during the busiest time of year, and our staff holiday party to follow the day after tomorrow. I really need to rest, and yet, here I am, staring at my beloved’s face as he sleeps soundly on his pillow.

It takes me back to my teenage years. I used to lie like this, awake on a Sunday night, though no one slept beside me in those days. I dreaded Monday morning, which brought with it an unwelcome return to the classroom. Once there, I was either mercilessly scorned or ritualistically shunned by my classmates. Looking back, I’m not sure which was worse.

I do recall one day when I was genuinely excited to go back to school. It was right after the break for the holidays, and I vowed to start the New Year right— New Year, New You, just as the headlines proclaimed. Everything was going to be different that year—I was certain of it. I’d be the belle of the ball court, the queen of the classroom, the crown on the head of the entire student body.

That Christmas, Gran had given me a patchwork vest she’d sewn herself. It was brightly colored and hand-stitched, containing items of clothing that no longer fit me—my favorite blue jeans, a flowery blouse, even one of my old baby bibs with the slogan “Dinner’s on me,” a hilarious pun. In my youth, I found it hard to relinquish cherished clothing, even when I outgrew it, and this handmade vest was Gran’s way of helping me let go of all the me’s I used to be while preserving the cherished memories.

I wore that vest every day over the holiday break, and when the first back-to-school day of the new year rolled around, I couldn’t wait to show it off to my classmates.

Elizabeth, the most popular girl in junior high, pointed me out the moment I walked through the school’s front door. “That is seriously lame,” she said, putting one hand on her hip and pointing the other at my vest.

Her gaggle of minions soon gathered by her side, doe-eyed and subservient. All of these girls whispered and laughed behind hands held tight to their mouths.

I decided to resolve things before they got worse. “I’ll have you know,” I said, “that the primary definition of the word ‘lame’ in most standard dictionaries is ‘injured’ or ‘suggestive of a limp or similar impairment of gait.’?” I stopped then, hoping for some engagement, but I was met by total silence. Naturally, I offered further explanation. “Perhaps you’re confused by the word ‘gait,’?” I said. “I don’t mean an opening in a fence or a passageway, I mean a way of walking—G-A-I-T, rhymes with ‘wait,’?” I said by way of clarification.

More silence. But when Elizabeth said, “Let’s bounce,” the girls by her side required no dictionary to grasp her meaning. They turned their backs on me in unison and bounded down the hallway in a cohesive clump.

Why does this memory come to mind now as I lie here listening to the ebb and flow of Juan’s breath? My school days are long gone, and tomorrow I return to my work as Head Maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, a job I do not dread at all but perform with great relish and panache.

But for some reason, tonight, I feel more unsettled than usual, afraid of losing the safety and security that adulthood has bequeathed unto me. It’s not fear of losing my work, which fills me with confidence and purpose, it’s fear of losing Juan, of losing his love.

You belong where you’re loved.

But what if I’m not loved, not really? What if I’ve read the cues all wrong, as I’ve done so many times before—mistaking frogs for princes, good eggs for bad? Much as I try to be affable and personable, I’m aware I can be irritating. I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, misunderstand what others grasp with relative ease. What if Juan loses patience with me? And what if what he really wants isn’t me at all but someone, anyone else—like the beautiful blonde down the hall?

Your affairs are none of my business. That’s what Mr. Rosso said to him. I’m sure I heard those words. They stick in my mind now like gristle between tight molars.

I turn, looking up at the white ceiling and counting the cracks in the dark. Is it my imagination, or is there a proliferation of new veins, conspiring to pull the plaster apart? How long before everything comes crashing down on my head?

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, willing myself to wring at least a little rest from this sleepless night. Eventually, feverish dreams descend. Juan sweeps me off my feet, whirling me around and around until I’m dizzy, repeating over and over again that he only has eyes for me.

“I don’t believe you!” I insist. “Please, let me off the ride.”

He puts me down then, and I hurry to our bathroom down the hall. In the mirror, I see myself, but I’m transformed, with three rows of bulbous, black eyes—pupil-less and dark. I’m still me, Molly, but the black widow version of myself, a spider so hideous, how could anyone ever love me? I scream at the top of my lungs, and when Juan opens the bathroom door, he screams, too, running out the front door of our apartment into the labyrinthine hallways of our building.

“It’ll all be okay in the end!” I call to him. “If it’s not okay, it’s not the end!”

But he runs and runs, never looking back, until he disappears from my sight forever.

I want to cry, to let my feelings spill out, but my monstrous arachnid eyes don’t allow for it.

“Molly? Molly? Wake up!”

My body jolts. Juan is lying beside me, his hair at right angles to his face.

“You were having a bad dream,” he says as he strokes my forehead. “You kept saying ‘eyes’ over and over again. Are you all right?”

I look at the clock behind him—almost 7:00 a.m . Time to get up. “I’m perfectly all right,” I say. “Just a silly nightmare.”

“It’s over now, Molly. You’re here with me. Safe.”

He takes me into his smooth, bare arms and pulls me so close to his chest that I can hear his heart beating like a metronome.

Usually this sound soothes me—the pulse of life within him. But this morning, I’m unsettled by it. What if this isn’t a life force at all but a countdown? What if my days with Juan are numbered and coming to an end?