VAL DAY-SANCHEZ

Copyright © 2016 Val Day-Sanchez

All rights reserved.

I feel her behind me, I don't have to look to know who it is. She's changed in seven years. I've been with her for all of it. Now she moves with confidence that is also sweet and delicate. This could break her. She is strong but this is devastating. I've seen her in perfect storms, where everything in life has converged on her, like some sort of mythical creature, all at once and she has handled it with grace. But this, right now, is like no other animal. Her hand comes to rest on my shoulder and immediately I think, she knows. I try to steady my already relaxed breathing which throws me into a violent coughing attack. She drops her hand and watches me. A small laugh emerges and is quickly replaced with a look of concern and I realize I have been coughing for too long and too loudly. I am reminded of my surroundings and force my body to relent.

Her arms are around me now and I feel her sadness. This hug is meant for me to comfort her. Or is that my own thinking? That is based upon my original premise that she knows everything. That she found out but maybe she hasn't.

This is how I live now. Every time I lose myself in thought I wonder if I've subconsciously given it away. That night slicing the onions I zoned out. My mind was replaced with recent memories and I was smiling. Chopping onions with a big dopey grin. I felt my stomach tighten, as my thoughts reverted back to my wife. She wasn’t in the kitchen when I came to, but she had been. Earlier. My mind had switched to panic infused inquiries.

How long had I been reminiscing? Replacing my current situation with something more thrilling? Had she been talking? Had I responded? The smell of her vanilla shampoo climbing through the air interrupting my racing mind. Had her scent just been introduced or was it part of her forever familiar omnipresence. The apartment was hers long before it was ours. It was never mine.

I had begun to chop faster, not noticing the edge of the blade growing closer to my exposed fingers. God had she done it? Had she read it on my face and given me an unanswered ultimatum? I stopped slicing, my anger replaced with my ever-occurring paranoia. Not wanting to call attention to myself, in case she returns, I elected to move the knife arbitrarily. I had begun to listen for her. A door closed, thehallway bathroom. I counted her steps. They weren’t fast enough to emote anger.

When you are focused on maintaining your innocence you become obsessed with your mark. I’d like to say that I was always this attentive. So concerned with my partner’s every step but this thing, it made me this way. Obsessed. The only thoughts that compete with her is my own behavior. That was why this slip-up had sent fire through my veins. She had stopped walking. Turning on the stereo maybe? Don’t do that, don’t allow your imagination to supply what you don’t actually know.

Then there was the heavy thud that exploded into silence. I dropped the knife and ran into the living room. She's collapsed.

"Move it Excelsior, you're no doctor." I shoved away the cat and pushed my onion stench hand on her wrist. Pushing my index and middle finger into her soft skin. I reminded myself that this is how she always feels. She is constantly cold. A lifetime of bad circulation is the only indication. There's a pulse. I pulled her up and carry her to the couch, lying her down with pillows behind her. She rose, not gently like she's waking up in old Hollywood but panicked, freaked out, unsure of where she was, she rambled on for hours about losing time but I didn’t tell anyone at first.

Days go by and she eats and walks and sleeps like always. It's when she awakes that she whispers to me about spies and bugs planted throughout the apartment. She calls them “The Listeners.” I assume she hit her head when she fell. She is still so present it’s just a bit more eccentric now.

After weeks I realize I've been finding excuses to stay in. I don't want to have to explain her change inher appearance. Gone are any semblance to her former self. She paces constantly, morning and night. Eating is a chore and ends with her storming into her room. I've been annexed to the couch, which I press up against the door. I worry she'll leave and not be able to find her way home. She has difficulty remembering things that happened years ago and moments prior.

It takes me too long to separate what is actually happening and what is a direct consequence for my deceptions. Is this my penance for what I did? And then one day, months after the fall, she's herself once more. She acts as though nothing has happened. I'm too afraid to broach the topic, having already accepted it was what I deserved. I was happy to keep this between us, our own little secret. I half expected her to reply with a nonchalant, "Oh that," if I mention her previous state. I didn't question it. And then we were back to whatever we were. Not happy, not miserable but content, enough. It was like we were staying together for the kids, even though we be vowed to never have any.

At Christmas I had become consumed with our life, I had forgotten "Oh that." I was so comfortable I started to slip back into my paranoia. It was nothing big, we were decorating the tree and I lost myself in a memory that I so longed for. A memory that took over me and before I knew it I was back on the step stool hanging an ornament absently and she was watching me. I was smiling. For a beat I wondered if this would trigger something, in the both of us.

Two days later she's locked away again. Her rage is how I see her now. This form of volatile anger that unleashes itself upon me. There isn't a gradual transition like before. Now the warning signs are gone, I live with a paranoia now but for a different reason. I don't know when Rage will reappear. I whisper my words so that I always have the option to retract them. I can label them as a coughing fit or a sneeze. My voice now resembles nothing but passing noise that barely warrants a response.

I am invisible until she finally sees me. As if noticing me for the first time even though neither of us have left the apartment in weeks. She will track me with her eyes and then start speaking in an extremely fast cadence. Each line an attack. I used to try and defend myself but her words are a constant stream of consciousness perfectly wrapped with deceit and certainty that there is no way to be the victor. I now only ignore it, send myself into the memories that seem to have occurred so long ago. I beg for them, I spend all of my time there. At first I felt guilty that the more I enjoyed my hidden past the longer she would remain as Rage but it didn't seem to matter if I was present or not.

After six months inside the apartment I sneak out. As much as one can call it sneaking out when you walk out the front door. Rage was deep into one of her fourteen hour rants. I needed air. I took off down Broadway. The streets are alive and there's music flowing into the he streets. It must be Saturday night. I recall memory after memory of summer nights spent downtown on a Saturday night. I watch them like their home movies of someone else. Someone happy. Someone without secrets.

I feel her behind me and I turn to see her and she is beautiful. She is the woman from the night we met and I curse my brain because this must be a manifestation of a memory but then she speaks.

I don't need to hear what she has to say. I'm transported from my memories of Saturday nights into the deconstruction of our relationship. I know she's saying that it's been three years, that she's so proud I made it out of what was our apartment. I will never tell her that she has never moved out, that I live with various versions of her in our apartment. Some days are better than others. I don't think it's a real secret because it's for myself so I can live with what I did.

Valerie Day-Sánchez enjoys reading and writing across genres, although young adult is her favorite at the moment. Threshold is her first attempt at Sci-Fi. Her other work consists of YA Fantasy Trilogy, Harlow Whittaker. She received both her B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University. Her love of the desert Southwest keeps her close to home although she loves to travel, especially when she gets a chance to try the local cuisine. Playing with her two sons and the family’s Boston Terrier, Winston, are how she occupies her time when she’ not writing.