Exhausted in America, Hong-My Basrai [grave mercy TXT] 📗

face. Go show your best face to the world,” were the words they said before sending her off.
It was a shame for Merry wanted so much to preserve her best face. She would, if given the chance, if hard work was all that was required of her to achieve a good marriage. Her parents never thought to teach Merry how to go on with a broken heart. That, Merry had to find out on her own, her best face to the world.
Not once Merry regretted her decision to marry, not even in her unhappiest moment. “At least I have a guy like any normal girl,” she confessed this repeatedly, as if to reinforce her conviction, like Catholics reciting their credo.
At least she would not be condemned a spinster. That would be a total disaster to a person like Merry, a person who valued status—even marital status, achievement record, wealth, education, pedigree. The only regret was the poor image she had of herself in her single years.

5.

Countless times Merry tried to retrace to the exact cause that had unraveled her couple’s life. A traditional girl, she had willingly taken on her husband’s name, surrendered to him the control of all her assets, counted on him to take care of their finance, even yielded to him the complicated tasks of managing their home economy.
From day one Vince was the family’s treasurer and accountant. He made all large and small purchases for the house. Merry became happily oblivious to their bank account balance. She did not want to be bothered. If there was one passion in Vince, it would be book keeping, and Merry was glad he was meticulous in an area where she was proven mediocre, even disastrous.
She re-adapted her lifestyle, habits, preferences, even personality, matching them to which of her partner, so that she would be to the eyes of her family and friends no longer Merry Ta but Mrs. Vince Tran. She was determined to be a good wife.
Like a sea that have found its shore and swept into it full force, claiming sand, shells, castles as well as the names of lovers, their footprints and the relics of a day thought to be unforgettable, Vince’s abrasive way conquered and transformed Merry in the name of family and love. His usual phrase when addressing her, “Will you be more careful next time?” slowly eroded her confidence in her ability to take charge of their affairs, from grocery shopping to driving places.
How many time had she lost her bundle of keys, forgot her credit card at the stores or purchased a pair of slack for him a size too small? When would she learn to back up her car into the street without his assistance at the curb? For heaven’s sake could she not fill up the tank before driving it home or rely on him to check the tire pressure? How hard was it to change a tube light?
Made aware of her weaknesses, mortified by self-recrimination and ashamed by her husband’s distrust, Merry gradually participated less in the household activities, leaving the various tasks to her husband’s discreet. Once she told him, “I may do thing imperfectly but they get done, but you ought to stop criticizing.” Vince shrugged his shoulders and said, “I wouldn’t call the mess you create an accomplished job. I’d rather you not dirty your princess hands at all.”
After that, she was no longer involved. She let him do as he wished. She spent all her energy at the pharmacy where clueless Vince left her alone.
Stealthily, Vince misery habits invaded Merry’s already conservative lifestyle, tightening her purse, skimming the fat layer, his scrutiny like a fine sieve carefully sifting through each and every disbursement, day and night tabulating and computing for excess as if one franc more would make him richer.
The arithmetic exercise taxed his mental peace, robbed him of all the joy of life, rendering the man grouchy and guarded. Naturally terse, he grew into a snappish brute when cranky. Naturally pessimistic, Merry became a nervous wreck around her husband. Between the two of them one could easily believe the world would surely fall off its axis on the morrow. Was it the weakening of the facial nerves that caused uncontrollable laughter in one of their kids? How could they find happiness in this morbid household?
After a while, Merry was so transformed that she could no longer differentiate which was the cause of what. Was Vince’s rudeness the reason for her retaliations or her little cruel remarks about his financial peculiarities a factor for his foul temper. Whom to blame for their impoverished and joyless life?
Then he managed to lose his job of twenty years. “They do not like my accent,” he said, “and with my declining health, it’s an incentive for them to let me go before my pension hits the ceiling.”
It would help if he didn’t call in sick so often. Her thought ranted savagely. It would be better if he was more sociable with his colleagues and perhaps, had he offered Christmas gifts to his boss once in a while, his employment would last a little longer. It was not his lack of ability or intelligence that caused his downfall. It was his execrable personality, his calculating way to extract the most out of everything and everybody, his selfishness that alienated even me, his wife. She restrained hard to keep her thought silent.
One by one, all the little extravagances that made life tolerable after the working hours were crossed off the budget: the monthly operas, the Paris Match subscription, occasional visits to Paris, the summer vacations. Vince kept the receipts of all household purchases in a notebook carefully sorted by date and demonstrated to her each wasteful expense.
“Why do we need to buy bottled water? We can drink off the tap.”
“But the taste is awful,” Merry said.
“You’ll get used to it.” Merry kept her tongue. Her husband continued, “With the saved money we can buy more tangible thing, object of real value…a better car, per example. What do you say?”
She approved of his idea. After all it was her wish for them to drive a better vehicle...a Mercedes like her friend’s, the object of envy in her circle. It didn’t matter that Kim and her husband were both MDs and making good money while Merry’s husband was out of the job market. Merry had gotten used to the idea of a stay-at-home spouse. She even thought how lucky that he was available to manage her store account. He had a much better economic sense, the kind of shrewdness she lacked—perhaps ashamed to acquire.
But the Mercedes never materialized. After a while, Vince told her, “It would be a total waste to buy another car when we already have one in good condition. Wait until it breaks down.”
A wise move, she thought, a little reluctantly this time.
Gradually, she gave up designer names and shop solely for clearance sale or end-of-season discards. Vince told her, “You wear a lab coat all day. What’s the point of decking up underneath?” To Merry who was hundreds kilometers away from Paris of her close friends and family, the need to impress was seldom provoked. She knew, too, it did not matter to Vince whether she wore rags or riches: in his eyes her beauty was invisible. When he went looking for her, it was in the dark to fumble at hooks and buttons, to tear off her body’s covering gratuitously. He appreciated her most when she was naked.
She absorbed into herself the little shocks of daily experience as formerly she coped with academic stresses, making up consolations and covering the failure of her marriage with blatant lies. The business of keeping “her best face to the world” occupied her wholly. She took care to hide her unkempt house, the kids’ lack of material comfort, and the fact that the thermostat was regulated according to a budgetary limit and not to the temperature of the house.
“Merry, it is a small sacrifice. We need money for our business expense. Not everyone owns a pharmacy. It is not child-play. We have to be careful.”
But after a while, the duel inside her head became unbearable. She needed to talk to a person. She needed to listen to people talking, to stories other than bankruptcy and poverty. She missed her magazine articles and books. The “commères” of the village filled her in with the special insider’s knowledge and entertained her with everyone’s private, juicy details.
Even then, it was not satisfactory. The longing for conversations haunted the unquenchable Merry. She could easily pick up the telephone and yak on endlessly but the single line was reserved during the day for customers’ calls. When she proposed the installation of a second line for their private use, Vince showed her the long list of numbers he had computed, saying, “This is your monthly business expense.” She was told that they barely broke even. No extra money for extraneous expenses.
Merry resolved to call her few friends at night.
“Call after nine when they charge the lowest rate,” her savvy accountant advised immediately when he caught her at her new hobby. After a few months, he exhibited the expensive phone bill to his talkative wife. The money would be better used to hire a babysitter during the business hours. Merry agreed.
“I should have been more careful in my expense,” she reprimanded herself, looking at the large bill with guilt.
But she barked at his suggestion to buy a generic-brand diaper for Laurence from Carrefour or Leclerc supermarkets. He yielded for a few days. Then quietly he substituted Pampers with a cheaper brand. Well, since he did not work and took care of the baby, she thought it was his domain after all. Perhaps, like he said, she had been throwing money out the window for diapers which only purpose was to catch baby’s bodily waste.
“You’re being brain-washed by the T.V. commercials to enrich the big corporations,” Vince scorned when she tried to explain her choice of toilet tissue or soap.
Only when looking back to her old lifestyle did Merry realize how her current one paled by comparison with it. They have been living like paupers.
Yes, during the dating months she was not blind to the little indications that offered her the insight of her future with Vince. But the magic of courtship and the happiness of a new family painted over the raw image a forgiving gloss.
While the toxic combination of a time-worn, loveless marriage and children acted as a sharp blade to rub off the glossy wax layer from the possible prize, revealing only a disappointing message. Now Vince emerged as who he was without the shimmery layer. The thrifty Vince of the dating months—to Merry a valuable trait in a husband— turned out to be a modern Harpagon as Agathe had warned.
Merry thought about the image of that scratched-off prize and wished she could “Try again next time,” like in the old time. However, this was life, not a luring