Drunken Love, Que Son [jenna bush book club TXT] 📗

now. Then he wished her luck and happiness, then said goodbye. That night Adam got drunk.

 

Days later Jane found Eve's letter and pictures in Adam's drawers and she confronted him and they had a big fight. Jane demanded that Adam wrote to Eve to ask her not to interfere in their "happiness." Adam refused. Jane then called up Eve and they had an angry exchange. Jane destroyed the letters, the picture, and Eve’s telephone number was lost. Adam never contacted Eve again. What for, he said.

 

Nine years after knowing Jane, Adam decided to marry her. 1996. He thought if he did not, what the hell was he going to do with her? Jane, however, was fearful of the prospect of having him as a husband despite the commitment she felt toward him. She thought he was an irresponsible person, not caring about her and did not want to make a lot of money, and that her life with him would be insecure. So she consulted one fortune teller after another, and she always got the same answer, that if the marriage was going to be hell, it would be because of her mouth, and it would not last for more than three years. Still, she went with him back to Viet Nam because they planned to get married there in the presence of both families. Back in the country and before the wedding day, she continued to seek the fortune tellers' advises. The ceremony, however, eventually took place at Jane’s family house in Vinh Long, a small town by the Mekong River. In the evening there was a reception with a lot of guests. But that night Jane refused to sleep in the same bed with him.

 

Returning to New York, Adam moved into Jane's apartment to begin their life together as husband and wife. "Husband and wife" only in the eyes of their own families because they had kowtowed in front of their ancestors' altars and put rings on each other’s fingers in the presence of witnesses on their wedding day, as tradition required. But legally, they were just domestic partners. They did not register with the city. Adam did not feel that they need to because both were working and having their own benefits. And Jane did not insist on legalizing their union. After the wedding ceremony and back in the US, Adam took off the wedding ring and put it away. He just did not like jewelry.

 

Now seeing each other everyday and getting in each other's ways more, they fought more often. And Adam became more violent. He destroyed things in the apartment and slapped her around. She plunged at him with a knife, and he fought her off. One night during a fight he walked out of the apartment in a fury and kicked the door and broke his foot and had to stay home for two months. And they rarely slept in the same bed. Sex together usually happened on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Other times, each pursued private wet dreams. Adam remembered Kevin Spacy in the movie "American Beauty:" the guy stands in the shower in the morning and said to himself, "Look at me, forty years old, married, jerking off in the shower every morning, and in one year I will be dead." Adam thought I could identify with the guy.

 

Jane was unable to become pregnant because she had a chronic illness--Endometriosis--that made her infertile. His semen always dripped out of her vagina after right after intercourses as if there was a wall inside her that prevented his sperms from entering her uterus. She had had one ovary removed many years before because of the illness. She made him take a sperm test, just to make sure it wasn't all because of her. He agreed. The nurse gave Adam a magazine and asked him to go jerk off in the bathroom and get a sample for her. But Adam did not see childlessness as a big deal, he thought if he and Jane had had a child, the child was going to suffer because of her because she was such a possessive woman--and he would be trapped in the relationship. Thoughts about leaving her were always on his mind.

 

Two years after moving in with Jane, Adam returned to Viet Nam for another visit. 1998. He needed sometimes off from the turbulent life with Jane. Jane did not go with him; but with communication improved between the country and the US, she had no problems monitoring him despite the ten thousand mile distance between them. Adam often wondered why with all the miseries they inflicted on one another, and despite all the repeated threats of separation, they still hung on to each other. He did not understand himself, he did not know what in his psych that made him so attached to this woman--and she to him. On the wall in the bedroom, he hung a picture of Tolstoy the Russian writer that showed the old man walking with a bag on a pole on his shoulders: the man was running away from home, or rather, from his wife. Tolstoy and his wife despised each other, but they could not separate and daily inventorized in their own journals each other's faults. Adam thought what depicted in the picture applied to him, his situation, and his state of mind. He believed that one of these days he would do the same thing as Tolstoy. But unlike the old man, he would be gone for good.

 

Back in Da Nang on this visit, his third, Adam did the usual things: visiting relatives and old friends, and sight-seeing in other cities. Jane called every two or three days and said she believed he must be cheating on her: there were too many available single women where he was right now. Those were not happy conversations. Often times, he put the phone down in mid conversation, feeling very upset.

 

Two weeks into the vacation and while at one of his sisters' house in a nearby town his fathered called and asked to see him as soon as possible. The father said he had something urgent to discuss with him. When Adam saw his father the next day, his father said Eve was on her way back to the country with the intention of seeing him, and added that Adam had better not see her because that would be a disaster for him, Eve, and Jane. His father knew Jane was a very jealous woman, but a good woman, and he wanted her to be happy with him. The father said he thought his sister-in-law had informed Eve of his presence alone in Viet Nam and also said if Jane found out he met with Eve, she would go out of her mind, and god knew what would happen. A taste of that kind of thing had happened in 1992 when Eve contacted him and Jane found out, and that was even before they became husband and wife. Adam thought the matter over and decided that his father was right, he would not try to see Eve. The pain and trouble that might result would not worth it. Besides, they both now led separate and different lives, one or two meetings with an old lover would only disturb the water, doing no one any good, no matter the love he still had for her and she for him.

 

So Adam called up the airline to reschedule the return flight, two weeks earlier than he had planned. The last night in the hamlet Adam had a farewell party with his friends. There was a lot of eating, drinking and doing drugs. Everyone was drunk, not just drunk, but very drunk. Vodka and beer flowed like river and people popped tranquilizers like popcorns. There was music and dancing. At the end of the party, most people passed out. And Adam, intoxicated and not knowing what he was doing, left the devastation of the party with one of his friends’ wife and they went together on her motorbike for a joy ride around the city when it was almost midnight. They parked the bike by the river. All prohibition was dropped. They grabbed one another, saying they had special feelings for one another. Then they French kissed and Adam felt the woman’s body with his hands under her loose fitting dress. She did not resisted and when he said they must find a hotel room, she said it was late and they should not do that now but in the next few days when they met again in Sai Gon where Adam would stay to prepare for his flight out. They agreed on a date and a location. Then they parted. It was almost two in the morning.

 

The next day waking up and remembering what had happened the night before, Adam was wrecked with guilt and remorse. It was terribly wrong what he had done with that woman, because she was his friend's wife. He felt he was the most disgusting person in the world. He had betrayed a friend. He hoped the woman too realize what she did with him was wrong, and dropped the idea of a secret meeting with him in Sai Gon. What if the guy found out what his wife and Adam did together? He had asked the woman the question the night before and she said she would tell her husband that she was late coming home because she was picked up by the police for DWI and kept for hours in the station. That morning Adam was having one of the worst hangover of his drinking life. He gathered all courage and called the friend to say goodbye because that was the day Adam had to leave the town for Sai Gon from which he would fly back to New York. The friend sounded like he knew nothing unusual had happen the night before, and wished Adam a good trip. He felt somewhat relieved. But what if the woman was crazy enough to go look for him in Sai Gon? He hoped she had recovered her sanity and would not attempt such a stupid thing.

 

In Sai Gon, Adam stayed at his uncle's house. He left his luggage there and took a bus to Vinh Long to visit Jane’s family. He stayed there for two days, sleeping at her family’s house at night and having his meals there but most of the time he sat in a café by the Mekong River looking at the dark water and feeling depressed. There was nothing to do in this town except sit and watch time go by.

 

The morning he came back to Sai Gon his uncle told him that Eve had been at the house the day before looking for him, and she was now in Da Nang. The uncle said Eve was a beautiful woman and she had told him briefly about their story; and the uncle seemed to empathize with the sadness and conflict he saw in Adam's silent reaction to the news. Adam knew that was what was supposed to happened: Eve looking for him. But this time what she had written in her letters years ago did not materialize; he remembered she wrote that "The earth is round, we will meet again." But for now at least, he realized that the earth was a square block, and they had both fell off in opposite directions. That was one missed opportunity for them to see each other again. But Adam still thought he did the right thing not to let Eve find him--even though it was a hard decision.

 

The next day he flew back to the US. The evening he arrived in New York, he had a terrible fight with Jane. She called 911 and ran out of the apartment. Adam then took four Valiums--pills that he had bought while in the Viet Nam--and drank a beer then lied in the darkened bedroom. A while later a two cops