Mind over Madeleine: Companion Novel to The Garden Key

frantically find my way back to the elevators and leap in just before the doors start to close. I push the button for the lobby, and let my tears flow.

Oh Lord God, please, please, please forgive me. I’m so sorry. I’ve always thought if ever there was going to be adultery in my marriage, it was going to be on Peter’s part, only because he’s so gorgeous and sweet, and women are always coming on to him. I was wrong. So wrong. I’ve been so foolish, so very foolish, and blind. Being consumed by my fears has left me unguarded against this sort of thing. Please forgive me. Please give me wisdom. I need it so much. I love Peter. And I love You. So much.

nsomnia again?" Peter mumbles in a groggy voice.

Yeah. Sorry to wake you, I say, wishing I could lie still in our bed while trying to get back to sleep, instead of tossing and turning so much.

Come here, he whispers.

Like an obedient and willing wife, I snuggle my back closer to my classically-handsome meets rugged-rock star husband, as he slides his arm across my waist, and kisses my shoulder. Tension disintegrates from my body like smoke from a blown-out candle. After two deep breaths, I feel his breathing grow slow and steady as he falls back to sleep.

I love lying here in the arms of my beloved, leaving all my thoughts and fear on the nightstand, so to speak. But sleep still doesn’t come for me. My body may be relaxed, but my mind is spinning like the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at a carnival that is on hyper drive. I carefully try to roll over so I can get out of bed without waking Peter.

Still can’t sleep? he asks in a raspy voice.

Sorry to wake you again, I say. I should have waited until you were in a deeper sleep before I tried to get up. I’m gonna go and try to write for a while, until I get sleepy.

Okay…happy writing, he says softly, and then his breathing grows slow and deep again.

I’m glad Peter has grown accustomed to my nocturnal rousing, and that he doesn’t get upset with me for getting out of bed. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s not the three Diet Cokes I drank at the after-party that are rousing my brain. It’s fear. Deep and thick. Consuming my mind and gripping my heart like a merciless vice.

I haven’t always been so full of fear. When Peter proposed to me, less than two years ago now, I was beyond elated. I wanted to be his wife right there on the spot. The night we got engaged (at our favorite coffee house in front of all our friends, it was so cool), Peter and I joked about sneaking off from the coffee house to head to Las Vegas, where we could elope and start our new life together. I guess excitement made me fearless. But, cooler heads (and hearts) prevailed, and we waited until Peter got back from the band’s tour of North America, and I graduated from college, since I was a senior at Biola University at the time.

Peter and I hadn’t slept together yet when we got engaged. And we wanted to keep it that way until we were married. Both of us had a history of bad relationships where we gave all of ourselves over to people who didn’t really care about us. I always got used and cheated on. Peter treated women like they were disposable (his words, not mine), and he told me he always felt so empty afterwards.

But this time, we vowed to do it right. To do it God’s way. To wait to have sex until we belonged to each other in holy matrimony. It was the best decision I have made in all of my twenty-five years on this earth. That, and marrying Peter, of course, which was really a no-brainer. He’s the most awesome man I have ever met. My beloved. My gift from God.

I slowly slide my legs off the bed and onto the floor, trying not to wake Peter a third time. I gaze at my husband of less than one year, at his serene countenance, and my love for this man swells in my heart and kicks my fears aside. But then the little irritating voice in my mind starts in with thoughts of doubt. Yes, take in the sight of him now, because it’s only a matter of time before he’s gone…until he finds someone else…someone better… than you.

I shake off these thoughts, since they are so irrational, and silently slip on my robe and sneak out to the living room area of the hotel suite, soundlessly closing the bedroom door behind me.

I click on one of the low table lamps and wake my sleeping laptop that is resting on the coffee table. I stare out the balcony window at the dark quiet of very early morning Nashville as it sleeps. I pray for stillness in my mind and heart, and productivity on the page.

It was a dark and stormy night…I type and giggle to myself at the notorious writing cliché. It’s also an unlikely description of a Southern Californian evening where I live. Maybe it’s a fitting description of a Nashville night where Peter and I, the band and its crew, are staying at the moment. But I would probably choose my hometown for the setting for my yet to be imagined and/or inspired novel, about what I still haven’t discovered. I hold down the delete key on my old laptop to erase my sardonic prose.

Once upon a time, I type…there was a newlywed, unpublished writer who couldn’t sleep so she decided the best thing to do in the situation was to climb out of bed carefully, so as not to wake her sleeping handsome prince, and quietly sneak off to the living room area of her hotel suite to write the next great American novel. But the anxiety that permeated her heart and mind prevented her from composing anything worth clicking the save icon on her trusty laptop…

I roll my eyes to no one, but decide to save this little nugget of composition. Maybe I’ll start a short story with it someday.

The evil gray glaring clock at the bottom right of my computer screen reads 4:13 A.M., and I feel nowhere near sleepy. Ah, insomnia. My ever-present nemesis.

I had only been asleep for an hour before my racing heart woke me. Even in my deepest sleep I can’t escape it. Apprehension, anxiety, angst, dread and doubt, all rolled up into one big ball and chain, and shackled to my soul. Okay, I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but I am a writer and a newlywed. A new wife to a very attractive loving man, and I know nothing about being a wife, much less being a good wife, and I’m shaking in my black fuzzy Dearfoams about it all. I feel like running out onto the balcony of our room that overlooks the hotel pool deck and courtyard, and proclaiming loudly with my out-stretched arms up in the air like some kind of confessional Eva Peron, Don’t cry for me Music City! The truth is I’m a big fat chicken. Or something like that.

Oh precious heavenly Father, please help me get this unreasonable feeling of fear out of my head and heart, and please don’t let it control me. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

I don’t know exactly when this unreasonable fear was born. Part of me thinks it stems from when my father left when I was eight years old. Or technically, from the last time I saw him, since there wasn’t a big dramatic goodbye scene. He left for one of his jobs on an off-shore oil rig, and never came back. I received a few Christmas Day phone calls from him as I was growing up, but by the time I reached high school, he had completed his disappearing act.

But I’ve had Dr. Bill in my life since a few months after my father left. A girl couldn’t ask for a better step-father. He is so loving, and treats me like his own flesh and blood. And I know he’s in it for the long haul. If he’s been able to live with my mother and her theatrical tirades for all these years and still loves her so endearingly like he does, I know he’s here to stay.

None of this fully explains this crazy nagging fear, though. I guess it boils down to being afraid I’m going to lose Peter. Not that he would walk out the door and never come back like my biological father did. That’s totally not his style. But that he might find someone better. Someone beautiful. Someone with the looks of Cindy Crawford and the domestic super powers of Martha Stewart. Someone more deserving of him, a little voice in my mind tells me.

I didn’t always have this fear. Less than a year ago, in fact, I was filled with anticipation instead of trepidation. To say I was excited to marry the love of my life who I’d had a crush on for over a year, is a major understatement. I ogled him from a far every time he came in to the music store where I worked. From across the sanctuary at church, I watched him pray and take in the sermons, every Sunday. When I finally met him, he was even more incredible than I would have ever imagined. So sweet, smart, funny, considerate, I could gush about him for hours. He is the kindest person I have ever met. And he loves me. And I love him. Sigh.

Peter and I have been married for nine months, most of which we have spent on tour with his band, Faith No Fear. He is the lead guitar player for this popular high-grossing Christian hard-rock band. It’s been so fun being on the road with him, traveling all over the country. I love watching the shows, especially watching my beloved husband play guitar so passionately. He’s a genuine rock star in this music genre, but he doesn’t act any differently than he did when he was in a garage band that practiced in a grungy old rehearsal room. Reflecting on my gorgeous and wonderful husband makes me want to sneak back into bed with him, insomnia or not.

The tightness in my chest has subsided, and I’m starting to feel sleepy, so I close my laptop and tip-toe back into the bedroom. I untie my robe and drape it over the end of the bed and carefully slip into bed next to my sleeping prince.

few hours after I finally fell back to sleep, morning comes with a sliver of light that cuts through the wide slat vertical blinds and burns through my eyelids like a big mean kid with a magnifying glass. We forgot to pull the heavy hotel curtains closed over the blinds when Peter and I staggered in at around 2:30 A.M., exhausted from all the end of the tour celebrating. We barely brushed our teeth before we fell into bed. Of course, I woke up an hour or so later and was awake for awhile. I will be depending on mass quantities of caffeinated beverages to help me make it through today.

I slowly turn on my side to face Peter, and partake in one of my favorite pastimes, staring at my husband. I love to watch him sleep, I love to watch him work, I love to watch him shave. I love to watch him tie his boot laces. I love how his dark shoulder-length wavy hair splays across the pillow when he sleeps, like a jet black halo around his lovely head. And I especially love how light reflects off the olive tone, taut skin of his muscular shoulders and chest.

At first I tried to be stealthy about my staring. I felt kind of foolish. But now, sometimes I just watch him and he looks up at me, and smiles. And I swoon like a lovesick pre-teen.

But my swooning usually gets interrupted with those ugly little thoughts. Dark, nagging, smothering thoughts. Like right now, I’m watching my beloved husband sleep. I’m thinking how blessed I am to have a husband who is as gorgeous on the inside as he is on the outside. And who doesn’t snore. But that warm thought is being rudely interrupted. Not with the same fears as last night (or should I say, earlier this morning). No. A whole other set of uncertainties invades my brain. It’s the big old ugly what if’s.

Now that the tour is over, what now? What if we have trouble living an everyday life together? What if I can’t cook? What if he gets bored with me? So many unknowns close in on me, and take a firm grip on my mind and make my whole body tense up. The strongest python-like squeeze of all my fears, the one that nearly paralyzes me: What if I’m not a good enough wife?

I guess some new brides might go into marriage with more confidence, or maybe with only a fleeting thought about how they will be as a wife. But it’s my biggest concern, at least it is right now, more like a fear, truthfully. My husband Peter is an awesome man of God. I don’t mean he is a preacher or a pastor, since he is a professional musician. Yeah, my rock star husband is an extraordinary man who truly seeks after God’s heart with his whole being. So he deserves the most awesome wife, a true divinely-inspired helpmate. Not a fear-filled incompetent mouse of a spouse.

Sometimes I feel convicted that he spends way more time reading his Bible or other spiritually-themed books than I do. I guess that’s good, isn’t it? He inspires me to become a stronger, more focused believer in Christ. And also, he walks the walk. All the guys in the band look up to him for his unwavering walk of faith. Especially when temptation comes skulking around his door.

At last night’s end-of-the-tour after party, a genuine Skankasaurus slithered up to my man with a suggestive swagger. She was garbed in the obligatory anti-modesty skin tight attire with pounds of make-up on her face. Since I was way across the room getting Peter and myself glasses of soda from the party bartender, all I could do was witness this horrific scene, wishing I could do a slow motion run toward Peter, flailing my arms and yelling, "Noooooo…!"

But I watched as my gorgeous Godly husband took a slight step back from her, brushing Skanky’s hand off his arm while politely smiling. I’m not much of a lip reader, but I thought it looked like he said thanks, but no thanks as he held up his left hand revealing a shining band of white gold, and then placed that hand over his heart.

Skankasauruses are commonly undeterred by a human male’s profession of his marital status, and are known to counter with the combination hair flip/chest thrust maneuver. So Skanky, in keeping with her sub-species, flipped a crispy chunk of heavily sprayed, bleach-blonde hair and thrust forth her Wonderbra-inflated chest, as if to entice my man. Poor Skanky didn’t know Peter’s wife (yes, little ol’ me) is more than averagely endowed in the bosom region, so her tactics were in vain.

As I tried to plow through the thick crowd of party-goers to reach my husband’s side, my mind devised a number of evil plans that ranged from me throwing my drink in Skanky’s face (if it was a glass of water then maybe, but never a Diet Coke--that would be a waste, and a shame), to a scenario that involved a freshly sharpened machete and a lawn-size Hefty trash bag to neatly dispose of the hacked-up parts.

But instead, I took the high road and pasted on a pleasant smile as I approached my husband and Skankasaurus. I noticed a glance of relief on Peter’s face as I handed him his drink. He expressed his gratitude by slipping his free hand around my waist and pulling me tight against his side. He kissed the side of my neck and he whispered thank you into my ear. A surge of heat rushed through my body, almost making me forget about Skanky, who was standing right in front of me.

This is my beautiful wife, Madeleine, he said.

Hey, she said, as she gave me a sneer.

She looked me up and down in my slinky and clingy black Dolce & Gabbana bustier dress, which, thanks to the triple strength tummy-taming spandex undergarment, makes me look smooth and curvy. As Peter ran his hand down my professionally straightened thick, shiny, waist-length cherry black hair, she looked dejected, as if she decided she’d lost this one.

I was glad my mother insisted I keep the D&G dress after she was adamant that I borrow it from her to wear to my wedding rehearsal dinner. I guess she figured it was sort of an apparel peace offering after she catered my rehearsal dinner with the smelliest seafood ever served in the history of catered cuisine. The smell of fish makes me want to vomit on the spot and she knows that about me. So the evening was a bit challenging for me. But Peter was so incredible in how he took care of me all night. He even consulted with the catering manager on how they could get rid of most of the fishy smell.

But I digress.

Ah, I love Peter. I feel a small smile spread across my lips as I roll onto my back and stretch before I can even think about getting out of bed. But my list of fears and doubts is always waiting in the wings of my mental cinema. Like, how many times have other Skankasauruses crawled out of the primordial slime to carnally proposition my husband when my D&G dress and I were not by his side to fend them off? I feel my small smile fade to a frown.

What’re you thinking about? Peter asks as he moves his strong warm hand up my side and across my stomach and then covers my fingers which are laced together and resting there. I intertwine his fingers in mine.

Um, oh, nothing much, I lie. Normally I would share with him exactly what was on my mind at that moment, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to reveal to him my long list of fears and doubts. Usually I can talk about anything and everything with Peter, but, for some reason, not this.

He looks at me for a long moment. A slight furrow parks itself between his brows as a faint shadow darkens his brilliant jade-green eyes that I lose myself in on a regular basis. A pang of guilt twists deep in my gut.

Did you sleep well? Peter asks.

Yeah, after my little bout with insomnia. And you?

Yeah. Man, I was wasted tired. I’m still tired. The tour schedule was pretty grueling.

You’ll probably need a few days of rest, I’m guessing, I say, massaging his fingers.

Mmm, that would be nice, he says, into the side of my neck as he kisses me softly and gently pulls me closer to him. But right now…

The familiarity of his hands and his lips on me makes me feel cherished and secure, and reminds me of the vital reality that we are one. Made one by God.

As Peter caresses my skin, my fears fade into oblivion. For the time being.

rs. McManus? I hear a squeaky young woman’s voice call behind me. Mrs. McManus?" she calls again. Oh duh! She is calling to me. I turn to face the hotel desk clerk on duty.

I’m sorry! I’m still not used to my new last name, I say to the tiny and very young big-haired strawberry blonde girl behind the hotel desk, who incidentally makes me feel old at my not-so advanced age of twenty-five.

Oh, are ya’ll a newlywed? she asks me with overly large doe-like blue eyes. By her lilting Southern drawl, I’m guessing she’s a native to Nashville or at least to the South.

Yes, I answer trying to sound sweet. I silently add, Well aren’t you astute, little Miss Einstein? I muse, then mentally chastise myself for being so mean. I’m still trying to put the sarcastic me to death.

Ya’ll are married to that gorgeous guitar player in that band that has been staying here, right?

Yes… Really? Her too? Here we go again. I decide to take the high road. Um, yes. Peter and I were married about nine months ago. He is a wonderful man. I’m very blessed.

"Yeah, I’d say you’re pretty lucky. He’s really hot. And so sexy," she says, dropping her voice and twirling a piece of hair. Wait--is she actually blushing? Oh, good grief. So, how do ya’ll, you know, deal with it?

Deal with what? I ask, as I feel my patience getting thinner than a runway fashion model. I want to rip into this little tartlet for talking about my husband this way. But I think better of it. Breathe.

Oh, you know, with being married to a man who has all those beautiful women around him all the time.

What women? She must be talking about the groupies. And the Euro-trash looking stick figures that are growing in number with each show the band plays. I think I need to get my stamps, end this conversation and move far away from this mini-hussy before I ring her Southern-belle and say something that is totally not exemplary of the wife of a musician in a top Christian rock band.

I trust my husband. Very much. Do I? YES. It’s those skanky trollops-- I mean women, hanging around the band who stir up the fear in me. Like I said, he’s a wonderful God-fearing man, I say, forcing a sincere smile.

Uh huh, of course, she says, looking past me to scan all the people walking around the lobby of the hotel. But I mean, doesn’t it make you feel sorta, I don’t know, inadequate, compared to all those other tall, thin, gorgeous women hanging around the band?

Grrr…okay breathe Maddy, you can get through this. Who is this little annoying chick anyway? And why is she talking about my husband like this? Wouldn’t she get fired if her manager knew she was speaking to hotel guests in this manner? I hope my face is not as red hot as it feels, as the anger and frustration rises in me, approaching explosive levels. I feel the snapping point of my patience growing very close to the edge where I will release a verbal lashing upon this girl most unfitting for the wife of a predominant Christian musician. Oh Lord, I need your help. Please.

Lorelei, is there a problem here? a smartly dressed dark-haired woman about my age asks, as she quickly emerges from a backroom door assessing the situation. Her name tag reads Deanna Fleischer, Front Desk Manager. She is obviously this puny assailant’s superior. Deanna tries to hide her Oh-crap-she-did-it-again face and turns to me as if she is about to deliver the apology of a lifetime.

Uh, you have postage stamps here, right? I mean, at this desk. I called down about a half hour ago, I quickly ask to deliberately defuse the situation, as well as my escalated emotions.

Oh yes, ma’am. A single stamp, or a book? She turns quickly to a drawer to her right.

A whole book, please.

Here you go. Can I get you anything else Mrs. McManus?

No thanks. Just needed stamps. Would you charge them to our room, please?

Yes ma’am, of course. You can bring your mail here, if you like. We would be happy to make sure it is posted.

Oh, okay. Thanks. I slip the stamps into the