The Kitchen Spider

I drove Bennet to the airport as he left our six-week-old marriage for his nine month tour of duty in Vietnam. He was dressed in a clean starched Army uniform. I was dressed in dread. After waving to the plane until it was a tiny dot in the overcast sky, I walked back to my car feeling as if he had died. I sat in the car weeping for what seemed like hours. Finally, drained, I drove to the kiosk to pay my parking fee. The man in the booth looked at me with sympathy, told me, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.” How could he know that? How did he even know I had dropped a “he” off at the airport? I hadn’t parked close enough for him to see us arrive, or me crying. Already disoriented, his comment pushed me over the edge. I had no recollection of driving home when I found myself outside our tiny basement apartment. Feeling as if a slice of my heart had been cut out and replaced with a black knot of fear, I opened the apartment door and was stunned by the silent loneliness that had moved in while I was so briefly away. It coated my skin. Every inch of the apartment was saturated with it. Now that Bennet was missing, I realized I had never appreciated the enormity of his presence. I couldn’t imagine nine months without him.

And then the spider appeared.

I am terrified of spiders.

I got up one morning a few weeks after Bennet’s departure and there it was on my off-white kitchen floor next to the table where I sat to eat my lonely meals. It was an enormous creature: three inches across with long, black, hairy legs, large, bulbous body, and disturbing, eye-like appendages. I heard myself scream. Quickly covering my mouth, I inched away from the thing. My body lagged behind my rush to get away, frozen in place by terror. I had to suppress the primitive, urgent need to run out of the apartment and leave it to the spider. My fear of the arthropod was so deeply imbedded in my DNA that a search for its origin would have required an archeological dig.

What was I to do now? My apartment was so tiny, the wretched critter took up most of my miniature kitchen which was spliced between the shower on one side and the sink and toilet on the other. The bedroom was large enough to accommodate a twin bed and a dresser. That was all. The living room was a joke of a space which agreed under duress to contain a small sofa, sideboard, and a TV. A spider that size was like having an extra person in the place. I figured out how to maneuver around it so I was far enough away at all times that it could not suddenly run up my leg. Killing it was not an option. That would require entering its territory. Even if I were brave enough, I wasn’t sure I could win a fight with it. Bennet always disposed of spiders for me. I never wanted to know how. Being the one who ordered the execution was a role I didn’t like to admit to.

Rather than fix breakfast that morning in the same room with the thing and worry it would block my exit at any moment, I opted for a quick shower, watching out for members of its family at all times, and went out for breakfast.

When I returned from classes that evening, I entered the apartment very carefully, checking the carpet and doorknob as I entered, ready to dash out the door at the slightest hint of contact with the creature. I peered around the corner into the kitchen and found the spider where I had left it in the morning. I was almost relieved I didn’t have to go looking for it. I considered calling a friend or my landlord to get rid of it, but couldn't bring myself to appear that foolish. My options were limited by fear and pride.  

For the next week I tried to go about my life avoiding the spider's space, assuming it would leave soon. It didn't. Every morning I would slink to the end of my bed to see if it was still there before I stepped on the floor for fear of feeling a creepy crawly beneath my bare feet. And every morning, it was still there. Hairy, terrifying, perfectly still, watching me. Each night, when I came home, it was obstinately in the same position. After a few days, I thought it must be dead, but it wasn't shriveled, and there was a tense vivacity about it. Yet I never saw it move. I wondered why it didn't have to go somewhere to get food or spin itself a web. Was it hibernating on my kitchen floor, or did it scurry off for food when I was asleep and return to the exact same place when sated? I knew it was the same spot. I had counted the squares on the floor pattern from the edges of two walls, and it was always on the fourth square from the left, sixth square from the rear. No spider was smart enough to reclaim the same spot after every meal.

I learned to live with the spider in my kitchen. The fear that coated my body like a carefully applied lotion thinned gradually, but never wore off. The scent followed me wherever I went. I gave it the space it demanded and remained constantly aware I shared my apartment with it. My kitchen table was out of bounds for me, so I sat on the living room couch and ate my meals, plate on my lap, a visitor in my own home. My pattern of walking around the spider’s space became so habitual I sometimes forgot to check for its presence before I stepped out of bed.

Bennet called me from Saigon once a week. He was an officer in the Army Signal Corps and took care of General Abrams phones. He assured me he was far from the fighting and was safe. Yet every time I heard of a mortar attack on Saigon, I was sure it was aimed at him. It would only be a matter of hours before uniformed men came to my door to tell me I was no longer a wife, but a widow. I never told Bennet about the spider. I knew it would worry him because he had seen how crazed I became when an arachnid intruded on my life. And I never told my classmates in Med School. They would have made an enormous joke of it, branding me as Spider Woman for the rest of my life. So only the spider and I knew of our living arrangement.

Our relationship continued for almost eight months. The month before Bennet was to return from Viet Nam, I came home to find my phone ringing. I ran in without checking on my roommate. It was Bennet. He was in Oakland. He had been discharged a month early and would arrive in Boston at ten o'clock that night. I couldn't believe it. He was safe and almost home! I was ecstatic, the weight of constant worry lifted. My body felt twenty pounds lighter, the apartment was brighter, even the surly living room smiled at me.

As I walked into my bedroom, I realized the spider was gone. My first reaction was fear it would surprise me hanging from a web on the ceiling or lurking on my pillow. Yet my body relaxed; I felt the absence of it. I looked for it anyway under the bed, in the shower, behind the TV, in my closet. It was gone. I wondered if it had been real.

Relieved. Excited. A faint ground fog of abandonment circled my feet as I sat at my kitchen table that night before picking Bennet up at the airport, and for the first time in nearly eight months had dinner alone.

-Judith petry

Judith Petry is a retired Plastic Surgeon who has been writing her whole life. In the last twenty years she has focused mainly on commentary for newspapers and journals, but most recently has been writing memoir, a form that allows for insights into her past that have not previously been accessible to her. The attached offering was born during a time of deep fear and uncertainty when her new husband was a soldier in Vietnam during the 1960's. It has only now matured into a story.