The Professor’s Wife (Flash Fiction Part 7)

This is the 7th part of the story. The previous parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Alotus refuses to let her family ignore her. She demands their love and respect and attention.

If something in the house needs to be fixed, she would ask her husband to do it first before calling a plumber or a handyman. Not that she has any confidence in her husband’s skills in fixing things. He knows math. Other than that, he is inept and unskilled. Other husbands may learn some repair tricks here and there, or paint a room when being nagged. But her husband Daneu is so unwilling that he tries his best to avoid dealing with it. Alotus has accepted this fact silently for years and hired people to do it when it was no longer possible to ignore the problem, but now she refuses to be silent. She prods him to fix things even if she knows it is useless to do that. He is annoyed and she takes a little pleasure in his annoyance.

“Can’t you fix the door? It is making a weird sound whenever you open or shut it.”

“There’s a YouTube video on that. Can’t you watch it and fix the toilet?”

“Majee’s husband fixed their water heater. That saved them hundreds of dollars.”

She would complain and he would dodge; she would insist, and he would sulk and fall silent. At first she is a little guilty of saying things like that to cause knots on his brows and fury in his heart. But she can’t stop herself. She needs such a release. Why should she shoulder the burden of taking care of the family alone? Sometimes she feels that her husband and her mother-in-law, who lives with them, are just two extra children she has. Her mother-in-law is a helpful child who can cook and clean, while her husband is a child who is lazy around the house but can bring back a monthly paycheck. The real problem is that she can’t communicate with them. Whenever something happens in the family, be it a repair issue or a child’s school issue, she has to handle it without getting any help from her husband or her mother-in-law. She can’t even discuss problems with them since they are either ignorant or inattentive.

And her birthday is coming up. She hasn’t celebrated her own birthdays ever since she hit 30 for fear that people would consider her an old woman. However recently she changed her opinion. Why should everybody else celebrate his or her birthday, but not her? Even her mother-in-law got a vegetarian cake for her birthday each year. It is all her own doing. Not only everybody is ignoring her, but she is ignoring herself. She sacrifices so much for her family and now she feels depleted, ignored, unappreciated.

Everybody has forgotten her birthday since she hasn’t celebrated it for years. Although she thinks about celebrating it this year, she is caught up by other issues and other concerns that fill up her busy life. Two days before her birthday, she receives a “Happy Birthday” card from their insurance agent, who sold several life insurance policies to them. Holding the letter, she can’t help realizing that this is the only person who pays attention to her birthday. Her family is more inattentive to her than this agent, who she only met several times in her life. Of course she knows that she is being unfair in thinking this way, but she just can’t help herself.

“She remembers my birthday.” She announces at the dinner table, holding the birthday card in her hand.

“Who is she?” Her husband Daneu asks.

“Our insurance agent Alu.” She replies. Her husband falls silent. He is only animated when he talks about math, stock market, or some other things that are irrelevant to her. The whole table becomes silent as if to wait for this moment to pass in order to go on to another topic.

“Do you have anything to say?” She asks her husband.

“What? What do you want me to say?” He asks, bewildered.

“Happy Birthday for example.” She demands.

He gives a polite grimace as if to say, “she is at it again. This annoying woman.” Then he quickly controls himself and says very politely, “Happy Birthday To You.”

Her son follows very quickly with a “Happy Birthday”, but her daughter, the sulky teenager, rolls her eyes. Alotus doesn’t allow cell phones on the dinner table and her daughter has always been unhappy about that. She would always try to eat quickly and leave the table early to get back to her phone. Now she grumbles that the birthday is still two days away, and then repeats the birthday greeting as indifferently as possible and runs upstairs to her room for a night of a social media marathon with her friends.

The next day, Alotus calls the insurance agent Alu. She has never called Alu before. Their interaction is usually initiated and solicited from Alu’s end, but somehow Alotus just tries to talk with somebody who has a little bit of attention for her, even as a consumer or a client. She can talk about her birthday, her insurance policy. And it can lead to something else.

Alu is a little surprised at receiving the call since Alotus has never initiated a call before. Alu immediately thinks that this has something to do with their insurance policies. Alotus and her husband Daneu have altogether four insurance policies with Alu, two term and two permanent life insurance policies. The two permanent ones are 250k each, one for Alotus and one for Danue.

“Are you thinking of changing the beneficiaries to your insurance policy too?” Alu asks.

“Change beneficiaries? What do you mean ‘too’? Who else?” Alotus says and immediately realizes what this means. “Are you saying my husband Danue has changed the beneficiaries?”

“Yes, a month ago. We sent you mails. Haven’t you received it?”

“Who read those things? I usually throw the mail from your company away as junk.” Alotus says.

At night, when Danue comes back, Alotus starts to scold him, not knowing that it will have some terrifying consequences.

(To Be Continued)

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