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Later that month I finally told Huang Lei what happened

She and Shane had been living in Cork almost three years when I finally visited them that August.  Shane had been transferred from Portland, and soon his company would be moving him again, this time to Los Angeles.

They had thought Joe would be joining me, and when they learned he wasn’t, kept mentioning him.  “Joe’s going to have a high credit card bill,” Shane commented when we shopped in Galway.  “Joe would have liked the whiskey tour,” he said on our drive home.  “It would have been better if Joe were here too,” Huang Lei said.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.  That second morning, I told her.

Her hands rinsing the press pot stilled.  “Oh, Little Gem,” she said.  As she hugged me, I saw that her eyes were wet.  “I’m so sorry.”

Then I told her why, and she hardened.  “Forget him,” she said, and began vigorously rinsing the press pot again.

She didn’t ask me why I never told her. Instead, she said, “You know, Guochen did the same thing.”

My mouth fell open.  “Guochen?” I said now, as though there must be some mistake.  “Guochen?”

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Even after I told my parents what happened, it was far from over

What my parents were most afraid of was that I’d get back together with Joe.  Although we’d separated, we hadn’t yet spoken of divorce.  We could only deal with one thing at a time.  I had told my parents the plan was to wait a year because then the divorce would be easier. 

I don’t know why I thought this.  Maybe I misread it somewhere, or maybe, in the back of my mind, I hoped for reconciliation, or at least the possibility of it.  Instead of getting rid of the dining room set that wouldn’t fit in my tiny place, I put it in storage.  I imagined a possible future in which Joe and I had reconciled, and would need that dining room set again.  But after I moved into the city, and as the hot summer weeks went by, this possibility seemed less and less likely.  It was less and less what I wanted.

In the meantime my parents panicked.  Why did I want to wait a year?  I didn’t want to get back together with Joe, did I?  Was he preventing the divorce?  My father emailed me at my job.  Joe’s had us all fooled, he wrote.  He’s probably been with this woman for some time.  I should begin divorce proceedings immediately.

I started shaking and couldn’t stop.  I wrote back a cold reply: “Please don’t send me such messages at work.  I’m busy enough as it is and receiving emails like this makes it impossible for me to concentrate on everything I have to do.”  My father didn’t answer.

My mother called to scream at me.  Why hadn’t I seen any signs?  What hadn’t I left sooner?  Why hadn’t I told them?

(Continued)

Part 13: April 2005-January 2007

Joe and I separated in April 2005, a year after his affair, four months after his child was born. He moved out bit by bit. One day he found in a drawer an envelope I had marked “Single Asian Female,” and that was filled with personals ads I had clipped out, all from white men in search of Asian women.

Grinning, he held it up. “What’s this?” he asked.

The clippings were so old they were yellowing. “It was for a book idea,” I said.

He kept smiling. “Sure.”

“It was.” I didn’t know why he didn’t believe me, or why he was amused rather than upset.

The next thing I knew he was grabbing me around the waist, pressing against me from behind. Horrified I shoved him away.

“You can’t do that anymore,” I told him. “It’s not like that anymore.”

He looked stricken, but I was tired of trying to make him feel better.

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When I came back from Prague, I knew what I wanted to do, but I was scared to do it

It was nearing mid-April, a year since Joe’s affair.  He was even getting ready to take the same business trip to Boston.  As I washed the dishes, my mind whirled, remembering and reliving everything, as I couldn’t seem to stop doing.   I felt myself getting angrier and angrier till finally I thought I might explode.  Hands still soapy, I marched into the study.

“It’s almost your first year aniversary,” I announced from the doorway of the study, where Joe always was, at the computer, playing fantasy football or browsing through eBay.  “How will you and the Whore celebrate?”

In the past he’d have hung his head.  Now he seemed annoyed.

“Do you want me to move out?” he asked.

For a moment I was taken aback.  My power seemed to be waning.  Trying to recover, I returned to the kitchen sink.

“No,” I said, turning on the water.  “Because I’m going to.” 

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That March I’d be going to Prague with Sarah

Regina was there teaching English to corporate executives, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to visit.

I assumed Joe wouldn’t go with me.  He didn’t like the trips that I did, full of aimless walking, hours in museums, and eating strange food.  He liked to play golf and to gamble.  But what had he done in Japan?  What else was there to do but walk and eat and drink?  It wasn’t about the trip but being alone, and being with, I realized then, with Kimiko.

Right before I left, I found out Joe had brought the baby to his parents’ house.

“Your parents haven’t seen Aiden, have they?” I asked out of nowhere.  The thought had occurred to me suddenly, as when you suddenly remember where you’ve left your keys.

He looked at me guiltily.  “They just wanted to make sure he was okay,” he said.  Then, seeing my despair: “They didn’t hold him.  They just looked at him.  My mother didn’t even smile.”

That didn’t make me feel better.  I was picturing it: Joe pulling up in our car and opening the back door, emerging with a tiny bundle in his arms, cradling him against his chest.  Then the thing in his parents’ house, my house too, I was told over and over.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.  “You have to tell me everything.”

“You were really mad at me that weekend,” he said.  “I mean really mad.”

I remembered: calling from my parents’ house, hissing on the phone, “I’m the only one who’s suffering in this.  You and Kimiko did this bad thing and you have a kid.  I did nothing and I have nothing.”  But it didn’t matter, it was an excuse, and would always be.  And suddenly it occurred to me that he had waited till I went to my parents’ house, for that specific opportunity, and something in me broke then, which turned out to be the last thing, the last withered bone holding together a damaged leg.

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The next weekend I visited my parents to celebrate my promotion

I was still shaky, but I needed to get away.  I couldn’t be alone in the apartment while Joe went off to tend to his newborn son.

At first everything seemed okay.  I arrived Friday night and had a late dinner.  Together we watched Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.  Then I went to bed early, taking two Unisom (Joe didn’t know I still had the Unisom).  The next morning things seemed even better, as they always did.  After lunch we went shopping.  I still had a Nordstrom’s gift card from Greg for Christmas, but I didn’t know what to buy.  I stood at the makeup counter staring at the jars and tubes and bottles.  Nothing I’d buy would make me feel better.

That evening my parents had a mah-jongg party to go to.  They always seemed to be going out, whether to the mall, or mah-jongg, or karaoke.  After they left, the phone rang.  I shouldn’t have answered it.  It wouldn’t have been for me.

(Continued)

Shortly after the New Year, I also got a promotion

It was Monday when my boss sat me down to tell me the good news.  For a long time, Joe had been pushing me to move up from my secretarial position.  We needed the money, and I knew he was embarrassed when I told people what I did.  I was reluctant at first to take on more projects, but when I found that I liked the independence and that it didn’t interfere with my writing, I was enthusiastic about moving up.  I just didn’t expect it so soon.

For a few days I was so happy I didn’t think about Kimiko or the baby.  I’d be getting my own office and making $20,000 more a year.  But soon those same miserable thoughts came creeping back.

Then on Thursday Joe said, “I have to tell you something.”  The next day Kimiko would be going in to have the baby.

I turned away.  I knew it was coming but didn’t know when.  The longer I didn’t know when, the longer I could pretend it would never happen.

(Continued)

Part 12: November 2004-April 2005

The three years I lived in Boston, my parents didn’t think I was seeing anyone. When my mother asked about my weekend plans, I mentioned only my girlfriends. “Always with the girls,” she liked to say.

I don’t know what she told people when they asked, or what her friends thought. “Oh, that Ai Li’s daughter. She’s so shy, like her father.” My parents worried that I’d become like my father’s eldest neice, 35 years old and never married.

Because my parents didn’t know I was dating Joe, they also didn’t know when we broke up and that I got pregnant afterwards. For those six weeks I had cried easily. When I rode the T in Boston, I wept, thinking this was my grandmother’s first great-grandchild, my parents’ first grandchild, that I’d be getting rid of. After the abortion I’d be relieved, but before, and now, 10 years later at 35, I grieved.

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I never hated anyone as much as I hated Kimiko

I imagined gutting her like a fish, shooting her in the stomach before turning the gun on myself. I prayed for her to get cancer, to get in a car accident and be instantly killed. Joe and I had begun watching The Sopranos, and I wished I knew someone who could bump her off.

I was angry at Joe but I was even angrier at Kimiko, which I knew wasn’t fair. They were both guilty, she less so, one could argue, because she wasn’t married, and as far as she knew, Joe and I could have been on our way out. But while clearly Joe was sorry, I didn’t think she was, no matter what he said. She never called to apologize nor did she send me a note. I was of no consequence to her. Who cared if Joe had a wife? She liked him and he must have liked her to have gone all the way to Japan to help her. There must be something wrong if his wife allowed that. Why would he have come over that day, why would he have made that first move?

Till our conversation that September, my calls to her disappeared into oblivion. I was a fly she ignored, and in her refusal to acknowledge me, she had power.

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I stayed away from my in-laws’ house for just three weeks

In those three weeks, I had kicked Joe out, and taken him back; he had asked Kimiko to have an abortion, and afterwards we wondered if she actually did. The first day I returned to Joe’s parents, they smiled brightly and with relief.

Zeta had given her notice a week before, and my first day back was her last. She said she had taken another job for tax reasons, but we knew it was because Joe’s parents couldn’t pay her enough. When it was time for her to leave, she hugged me and cried. Before Joe’s affair, I’d have cried too, but now I felt numb.

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