* * *
THIS WASN’T THE first time something like this had happened to her. She was old. These things happened. The first time she was younger. In college. She’d fallen asleep at a party and woke up with some guy humping her. He came on her leg. For some reason it gave her night terrors and her roommate complained to their resident counselor and the resident counselor confronted her, and that was how she ended up in the school psychiatrist’s office. When they told her she was likely grappling with abandonment issues.
She had come home for a long weekend or maybe it was spring break, she couldn’t remember. Her grandmother had taken one look at her and said, “Necesitas una limpia,” then took her to some bruja she knew who lived on the other side of the park. The woman had wrapped her naked body in a white bedsheet and lit velas all around her. She prayed over Olga’s body and made her lie there until all the candles burned out, and then she cut Olga’s shroud open with scissors and bathed her in Agua de Florida and rose water while she swatted her back with eucalyptus leaves. When it was over, Olga had never felt cleaner or more loved or more at peace. The night terrors stopped.
That woman must be dead by now, she thought.
* * *
ONE DAY SHE was still in bed when she heard the key turn in the lock. For a second—a split second—she wondered if it were her mother coming to check in on her. Then she realized her mother didn’t have a key.
“Hello?” Olga called out from her bedroom. She felt scared, but also desperate to be rescued.
“Olga, honey?” It was her Tía Lola. “Olga, Matteo came by the house today; he’s worried about you. We, um, we’re worried, too. No one has heard from you and you missed Richie’s birthday dinner.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She could hear Mabel’s voice whispering to their aunt.
“Mabel?” she called out. “Mabel, come lay down with me?”
Mabel came and climbed onto the bed and started to comb Olga’s hair with her fingers. When they were girls, in junior high, they would fall asleep like this sometimes, lying in bed, listening to music, Mabel combing Olga’s hair with her hands. They lay there quiet for many minutes. Olga couldn’t remember another occasion when Mabel had gone so long without speaking.
She could hear her aunt cry out to Dios when she entered her kitchen. Olga could only imagine how it looked. She heard her cleaning up, bottles being taken to recycling, glasses into dishwasher. Laundry started. Water into pot. Chopping. Chopping. Her aunt began to hum to herself and broke the silence of the apartment.
“Olga,” Mabel said very gently, “whatever Matteo did, you should give him another chance. He’s a good guy.”
“I know,” Olga said, staring up at her ceiling. “He didn’t do anything.”
Mabel didn’t say anything.
“I fucked up.”
“Ay.” Mabel sucked her teeth. “You fucked somebody?”
Olga nodded, and felt the tears begin to flow again.
“Okay, okay,” Mabel said. “Pero, why so sad? He obviously doesn’t know yet. So, you fucked up. You either tell him and ask him to forgive you, or put it past you, keep the secret, and try again. Why throw the whole thing away?”
“You don’t understand,” Olga said.
“You’re right, I don’t,” Mabel said. “Why do you always have to make your life harder? I’ve watched you do this before, you know.”
Olga knew she was talking about Reggie.
“Mabel, this is different.”
“I know this is different. You’re happier this time. You’re a vieja now; you take twenty more years to find another dude, and no one will want your dried-up ass. I can’t let you fuck up again. I won’t be able to forgive you. Or myself. So, tell me what’s really fucking going on here so we can figure out how you fix this.”
Mabel had minored in psychology in college and Olga wished now that she had followed that pursuit. If there were more shrinks like Mabel maybe she would have tried going to one. Olga thought of the years she had been single after Reggie—not lonely, per se, but not exactly happy. She thought about the calm Matteo brought her, how joyful their time together was, how at ease with her own self he made her feel. She covered her face with her hands.
“Mabel, what if I don’t deserve to be happy?”
“Olga,” Mabel whispered in her ear, “unless you kicked a puppy or have a body buried someplace that I don’t know about, you deserve to be fucking happy. Okay?”