Chapter 3

I flung Tom's hand off and said, "Tom, I move out because this house disgusts me."

Tom explained as the light in his eyes dimmed, "Michelle, this is our home. I swear that I have never done any bad things under this roof. Go back to your room, okay?"

He embraced me and rubbed his chin against my neck. "What about Babe? I don't know how to look after it. You know that."

Annoyed, I pushed him away. Instantly, he pinned me to the wall. It seemed he was angry. His breathing was heavy, so I turned my face away to dodge it. "Honey, I won't let you go," he said.

Enraged, I raised my palm and gave him a slap.

Suddenly, I fainted.

I found myself in my bedroom when I woke up.

Babe was sleeping by my wrist, so I habitually stroked its hair.

It meowed and then rubbed my fingers with its face.

All of a sudden, I wanted to cry. I didn't know why. I felt empty, as if I had lost something important that I couldn't remember.

There came a soft knock from the doorway.

The maid, Bettie Page, walked into the room with my meal. She looked at me with complicated emotions and said, "Mrs. Jefferson, these are your favorite dishes. Mr. Jefferson said that he would dock my pay if you didn't eat up all the food."

Tom was good at manipulation.

His threat didn't work on me, so he used it on other people to tame me.

I rang Tom. I wanted to tell him not to get the innocent involved in our mess. To my surprise, my call was answered by a woman.

Jenny's voice sounded, "Tom is in a shower. You may leave your message to me."

Jenny sounded so complacent that she must be defying me.

Perhaps because I had put up with her because of Tom, she saw me as a pushover.

Now that I had decided to divorce Tom, I became unscrupulous and fearless.

I went to the hotel owned by Tom. I learned from the staff there that there was a room not open to the public.

When I angrily pushed the door open, Tom, in a white bathrobe, was standing before a gignant French window. He looked at me with astonishment in his eyes.

It seemed I was an unexpected visitor.

Without a word, I ran over and gave Tom a slap on the face.

My slap dumbfounded Tom, and it took him quite a while to come back to his senses.

The tip of his tongue ran past his teeth as blood rolled down from the corner of his mouth.

In fact, Tom could have gripped my hand to avoid that slap as before.

However, he didn't this time.

He just let me slap him.

He stared at me with endless sadness in his eyes. I had been bewitched by his face, but I now found it boring.

His non-resistance made me feel that I were the wrongdoer and that he were the victim.

I collected my thoughts and began to observe the room.

I knew what Tom had been up to all the time, but I couldn't catch him red-handed. I was fed up with this sad helplessness.

I asked, "Tom, how can you clear her name if you don't divorce me? What if you two have children? Do you want them to become illegitimate children?"

Perhaps because of my questions or my previous slap, Tom flared up.

He violently hauled me into the bedroom and ripped my clothes off.

I didn't know how long had passed. I became dizzy, and his smell made me sick.

Tom pinched my chin and said with condescension, "Michelle, we will have children. With a child, you will stop this."

That was him.

With just a sentence or two, he attributed our conflict to my irrationality.

I hated his smell more than ever.

I bolted into the bathroom and took a bath. I froze on the spot when I picked up a pink towel to wrap myself up.

I didn't like pink, and it was Jenny's favorite.

In the bathroom, there were pink towels, pink slippers, and a drawer of feminine stuff.

None of these things was new.

In other words, they had been used.

It turned out my husband had built a home with another woman right under my nose.

In a daze, I let the towel in my hand slip down. Then, my heart ached as if it were shattered by a hammer.

I didn't know why it ached. The pain was so acute that I became breathless.

When I printed the divorce agreement in the office, the managers of the hotel peeked at me from time to time.