A squeaky sound of the women's sigh and a heavy breathing of men followed the sudden revelation of Tim. No one could say anything. What would they say to ease the pain of a father, who felt that he had failed raising his son, and then had learned his son's capture for a crime he did not commit; and now this?!
Emotion is always created in tranquillity and is aggrandized in sorrow. However, that serenity would not come consciously and no one, any way, can recognize it. Therefore, when ardor comes, it appears as all sadness.
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Everything In Ed now irritated Thui, his fat stomach, the way he dressed, ate, even his entire existence. She had not married him for love; she had done it for green card and then the path to Citizenship, which she had achieved both. Meanwhile she had a good deal going on being married to a man, lawyer, becoming a judge. She had thought at the beginning of her marriage: "I am not going to let what happened to me with that other old man, happen to me again. If I give him couple of children, my security for the rest of my life is sealed. It would not be like the other old man who died in six months and didn't give me anything." But now she thought about what her husband had done. Wasn't that a crime, too? It definitely was not a virtuous act! And the trace that was left of it, crushed away beneath the frenzied blast of her self happiness.
On the other hand, who was she to judge her husband wrong doing should anyone knew what she had done in her past life herself in order to come to America? But all human being would find a good reason for the same or equal immoral act! She was the same... She only wished in this dreadful night no one would ever discover who she really was, and what she had done. But she had a good reason. She had no choice. She was young, very young, wanted a dreamy future.
Now she only yearned to rely on something more solid than love, for love was an unmeaning feeling for her. She had not learned it from her parents, nor from her first man, neither the second or third... To her love was only an object for men to use women. she had allowed that to happen. Love was an affluence of imagination! Now nothing was left of something that never existed; nothing was left of home, nostalgia, parents, or... She was not even homesick anymore. she wanted to get rid of all things that reminded her from home in her mind, all consequential circumstances of her life, her teenage years, her affairs, her marriages, and her love, the first love, the first vicious love, and subsequently losing everything all the time, all her life.
Even in her highest happiness, she had lived lost in the foreseeable misery of her future happiness. Desire, rage, and hatred dominated all her life. She even did not know herself why she was that way! Was it for despondent childhood or the extreme poverty of her parents, or was it for wanting to change her life and did not know how? She had no clue how to do it!
The lust, the craving for money, and the pensiveness of her resentment for the kind of life she had had all were mixed together into one great torment. She did think about them constantly instead of running away from them. She clung to all those desires, forcing herself to the pain and suffering that were produced for not having them, and searched for them everywhere.
Now, she had no way out, marriage, children, being the wife of someone, being called Mrs. so and so, all intermingled in her soul's mind as a chain that its link was not breakable. All her life she wanted to change her life, and now that it was changed, she was still unhappy. As the intimacy and the special closeness between her and Ed had become deeper and more meaningful mostly for Ed, the abyss that separated her from him had also grown deeper and greater.
Now everything in her life seemed used up and her hopelessness seemed older and larger than a mountain. Her face showed frustration, and she was crying inside blindly for all her anguish and ruination. Nonetheless, her devastating expression could not be hidden from the people around her especially Ed, her husband, and Tim, their enemy. She was certain that Tim would try to get some secret out of her. She was not sure how strong she could be not to reveal her secrets to others in this inauspicious night. She was not troubled by her conscience in that matter. Her trouble was Ed, her husband, who could learn something about her that he had never known. She thought for a minute: "So what? I didn't know what he had done either; even though I was suspicious." But then she looked intensely withing herself and admitted in her speaking mind that even though Ed had never told her directly, she had known about it all along, and Ed knew that she knew.
To her, people with good conscience were mainly afraid of the society or themselves. That was why they had good moral sense. She was not afraid of herself; but she cared what other people thought of her.
She looked at Ed. He looked so old to her specially now. It seemed to her that his oldness had begun a long time ago, and would never end. She felt for him a little looking at his lonesome, childish, old face. Life now and always had been a dream for her, and now it was only a blow, layers and layers of madness.
Contemplating, she was certain that everyone was expecting her reaction of hearing her husband's greediness to the extent of ruining a life. If she would say that she knew about it, she be as doomed as he; if she would say she did not know about it, they all would laugh at her. She had no way out. She felt her existence would be melted in despondency at the thought of talking.
Things turned out to be devastating. The innocent man, Tim's son, who had become a thing for her husband's greediness, had killed himself. There was no return, no forgiveness. Inwardly she wanted everything to go away, but reality there, in that home was more bitter than poison.
She gazed at he empty space with her cloudy eyes. In fact, she was rejoicing in the hate that was filling her. Where had she learned this depravity, a vice which was without spirit in its existence? The more she recognized her wickedness, the more she tried to crush it down; but it was there!
To Be Continued
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