The Professor’s Wife (Flash Fiction Part 4)

This is the 4th part of the story. The first three parts are here 1, 2, 3.

Many women find solace in their children, but she is not able to do that. Both her children have had more interaction with relatives than with her. Now her daughter is 11 and her son 6 years old. And her daughter’s growing traits as a teenager, sulkiness and insolence and voice of protest, make her realize that there has been a terrifying gap between her and her children that she has not paid attention to. Other parents will only treat such youthful manifestations as a normal stage of development in an 11-year-old, but she feels the rift and schism acutely.

Her own parents were silent and strict, but she had no problem. She knew they loved her no matter what. Their silence was just an old fashioned custom she had to accept. And she did accept and never had any problem with it. However when she used the same attitude with her own children, she met with alienation and estrangement. Probably it is due to the “curse” every immigrant has to go through with his or her children–parents living in one culture while children living in another. Probably it is due to the fact that she didn’t have an everyday presence in her children’s life when they were little. She could have done something to make up for her absence; she could have told them about her sacrifice of leaving them behind and going to work in Pennsylvania; she could have told them how much she missed them and loved them. However she didn’t do any of these. In those days, she was tired during the weekend, after driving 3 hours to come back to New Jersey. She had a huge amount of things to do during the weekend, like cleaning, shopping, driving her relative–who had been the nanny for the whole week–to doctors. Often she was more tired during the weekend. When her children came to her for attention, she was too tired to be patient. As time went by, her children considered her cold and strange–she would mysteriously disappear for a week and then come back during the weekend to scold them.

She has no real passion for her job. She is not like her husband who enjoys math, who likes to talk about math whenever you let him, who does research and goes to conferences. His life is all about math and he loves it. But she is not her husband. Her job is just something she has to do to make money. She has no obsessive attention for it.

She feels all alone in her own family. Since she has never cultivated friendship with anybody, she feels that she has no real friend.

Her husband has done all the family budgeting and made all the financial decisions. She has trusted him all these years. They have a joint account, into which both of their wages get directly deposited. Since her kids are growing up, she is forced to pay attention to money issues–college is a big expense they have to pay. Several times she has to talk with her husband about paying for after-school trainings of their kids. Her husband is not like her own father, who loved the daughter more than the son. Her husband is only willing to pay for the son’s training, but not willing to pay for the daughter’s training.

And her husband bought a house for his parents in his hometown, which she will never see or live in. Her husband lent his brother money to buy a piece of land, which made profit when sold several years later, but his brother never returned the money.

She realizes that he has never consulted her on money issues. He just lent the money to his relatives as if he was in total control of the family finances. So what is she? Isn’t she a partner? Sometimes she wonders what he thinks of her. Probably she is just a junior partner not worthy of being consulted on important financial issues. Whenever she asked him, “when is your brother going to return the money? I want the principal back and a share in the profits. Our kids are going to college soon.” However he dodged her question. If she raised her voice, he would fall silent. He knew he could get away with what he had done. He never argues with her since he doesn’t need to.

She has to do something about this. And what can she do?

(To Be Continued Here)

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