Tom and I haven’t spoken in over two days and if you asked me why, I’m not sure I could give a coherent explanation. It’s probably more accurate to say that I’ve been ignoring Tom’s attempts to talk to me for over two days. At this point I know I should just cut it out but I still can’t bring myself to talk to him. I’m not even mad at him anymore. I’m just frustrated and can’t figure out a way to stop being frustrated. To fully explain what happened, I’d have to explain a bunch of seemingly irrelevant contributing factors, and in the process of doing so, I’m afraid of revealing how neurotic I am. Which, of course, I am. So at the risk of sounding like a completely mental nutjob, I’ve boiled my gripes down to two fundamental gripes: #1: Tom is getting more out of my sabbatical than I am; and #2: Tom is adapting a little too well to the role of the prototypical VN man.
An apt metaphor might be that a collection of kindling and tinder, bits of firewood and fuel, have been accumulating for some time, awaiting any spark, small or large, to ignite the heap into a blazing inferno. The catalytic spark happened the day I returned from my spa day in Saigon. I don’t think any bit of kindling or firewood on its own would have been enough to inflame my rage. The aggravations that were weighing on my mind that day, in isolation, would not have aggravated me ordinarily.
First piece of firewood: everyone in VN likes Tom more than me. That’s a plain fact, one that I readily acknowledge and accept. Not just strangers and random people we meet, but my own blood relatives. As I was riding the bus back to Long Khanh, I was contemplating how much more lovable Tom is than me, which was something I had known for a long time but which had never bothered me until now. The reason I was thinking about it on this particular morning was because of a comment my aunt’s husband made while he was driving me to the bus stop at 3:45 A.M. When I had first arrived to Saigon, a couple of people teased me for traveling so far just to redeem a spa voucher. My aunt’s husband asked why I went through so much trouble to spend less than a day in Saigon. That made me a little self-conscious and anxious. Did he think I was a pain in the ass? After all, he had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning because I needed a ride to the bus stop. I hadn’t been concerned about inconveniencing him because, I thought to myself, he’s retired, normally wakes up at 5 every morning, and doesn’t do much other than take naps throughout the day. Suddenly I felt terribly guilty about inconveniencing him, especially considering his reputation for having a difficult personality. He never made us feel unwelcome during the many weeks that we stayed with him and my aunt at their apartment, but we were always nervous and worried about how our rowdy kids were imposing on his otherwise tranquil lifestyle. On our way to the bus stop, he told me that he and my aunt had gotten used to having our kids around and missed them now that they were gone. He also remarked that Tom had a sweet disposition. It was gratifying to hear him confirm what I had always known: that my husband and kids are irresistibly lovable. It’s no small feat to win the affection of my aunt’s husband; he’s a bit of a crotchety old man who doesn’t always enjoy being around his own kids or grandkids. Despite his reticence, he and Tom bonded during our stay in Saigon. That’s something that would never happen between my aunt’s husband and me. Our relationship will never progress beyond polite detachment. I don’t think my aunt’s husband actively dislikes me; I’m guessing his feelings toward me are somewhere between tolerance and indifference. He’s certainly not impressed by me. I wake up hours after him, don’t seem particularly productive throughout the day, can’t figure out my way around if my life depended on it, am terrible at making conversation or being remotely interesting. Tom, on the other hand, charms everyone he meets. People think he’s so clever, capable, funny, helpful, genial, the perfect husband and father. What they don’t realize is that he’s corny, fobby, ingratiating, and tells really boring stories. He’s a huge dork. And that’s what makes him so lovable. VN people eat that stuff up. Who would you like more: someone who makes an effort to put you at ease, who will always try to make conversation or get a laugh, even if it’s at his own expense, who cares deeply about the opinion of others and wants to be entertaining and well-liked, or someone who silently sits by, surly and sarcastic? It’s no wonder that all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my mother, prefer Tom’s company over mine. I don’t resent it; I take pride in it. I’ve always been happy to sit back and let Tom win people over, and grateful to be able to ride on the coattails of his likeability. I just don’t have it in me to win people over (it looks exhausting). My kids are lovable without even trying. So my uncle’s comment on the way to the bus stop, intimating how much he liked Tom and my kids, my awareness of how he (and everyone else in VN) feels about me, and my anxiety about being an inconvenience, really hit home my status in my family: I’m the dispensable one. No one minds my presence, but Tom and the kids are the ones they’ll remember fondly and tell stories about after we leave. This was further confirmed at lunchtime on the day I got back to Long Khanh.
As family members were sitting down to lunch that day, my cousin’s wife told her daughter to sit next to me, referring to me as her daughter’s aunt. There are a bunch of different ways to refer to an aunt in Vietnamese, to indicate whether the relationship is on the mother’s or father’s side and whether it’s through blood or by marriage. The word she chose indicated that Tom was the blood relation and I was the in-law, when it’s actually the reverse. I hardly would have noticed such a trivial detail if I hadn’t been contemplating, that very morning, Tom’s popularity relative to my own. I was feeling insecure and being addressed that way rankled. For the first time I started to resent Tom’s popularity and how easily he ingratiated himself with my relatives. Just a few stupid jokes and a few stupid stories and he had them fawning all over him. Which brings me to my next point.
Second piece of firewood: Tom’s Vietnamese is noticeably improving while mine is mired in stagnant hopelessness. I always thought our fluency was roughly equal, even though Tom told people mine was better because he’s always overestimating and over-praising me. I knew some words he didn’t and he knew some words I didn’t but on the whole I think his vocabulary was slightly better and my pronunciation was slightly better. At least a few people now consider Tom more fluent, which kills me because he sounds like an idiot when he talks. And that’s the difference between Tom and me. He’s willing to talk even if he sounds like an idiot. He’s always trying to engage someone in conversation or participate in the larger conversation. He tells jokes and doesn’t mind being the butt of them. He makes observations and narrates anecdotes that I would never attempt. If I don’t know enough words to describe something, I give up or won’t try. Tom will find a way to describe what he’s trying to say; he’ll simplify and get his point across. As often as not he ends up saying something that sounds really simplistic and dumb, like “When we were driving around town, I saw many banks. A lot and a lot of banks” or “My son gets mad when he can’t put on his shirt. He tries very hard and he gets so mad. Then I help him put on his shirt.” Someone meeting Tom for the first time might think, What’s wrong with this guy? But after a while I think people appreciate that he’s making an effort to communicate in their native language and eventually find him and his stories endearing. Tom’s stories are boring in any language but that doesn’t stop him from telling them. I used to roll my eyes when he did, but now I see that his approach is far more successful than mine. He gets a lot of practice speaking and if he makes a mistake, he gets corrected or learns a new vocabulary word. And he sounds funny and cute, like a little kid, which enhances his lovability. In case you haven’t noticed, I way overthink things, which only serves to make me self-conscious and nervous. When I’m nervous I tend to rush (I do this when speaking English too) and inevitably stop short when I hit on a concept I don’t know the word for. Sometimes in my nervousness I’ll mispronounce an accent and the word comes out wrong, even though it’s a word I know well and use all the time. Because Vietnamese is a tonal language with six different accents for each sound and a ton of synonyms, it’s easy to mess up if you’re nervous and rushing. I hear myself sounding like an idiot and it only makes me more flustered. My speech is very halting; rushing and stopping, stumbling over words. And unlike Tom, I’m not comfortable using a new word until I see how it’s spelled and practice its pronunciation over and over. In the beginning I told myself that my self-consciousness was making me sound worse than I was, and that Tom wasn’t any more fluent than me, but now I have to concede that he’s made a lot more progress than I have. He speaks slowly but with an easy confidence that I envy. And that’s an entirely new sensation for me: feeling jealous of my husband. Which brings me to my next point.
Third piece of firewood: men are treated like gods in VN. It’s just not fair. I get no brownie points for washing dishes or sweeping the floor. Doing those things are as natural and expected of me as brushing my teeth. If I didn’t, no one would force me to, but it would be unbecoming and people would look down on me. When Tom washes dishes or sweeps the floor he practically gets a standing ovation. People find it shocking, like the sky is falling or something. He inspires so much awe and admiration that I bet people wonder how I landed such a gem. I bet people think I’m the lucky one. Which does not please me in the least. It’s okay for me to feel lucky to have Tom, but I generally expect other people to think he’s the lucky one. Maybe in the U.S. he is, but analyzed under VN’s double standards, Tom is the perfect husband of a rather mediocre wife.
If you had a long-term guest staying in your home, it would be pretty rude if the guest didn’t at least try to help out with household chores, right? In VN that’s only true for women. It’s perfectly acceptable, even expected, for male guests to do absolutely nothing but eat and drink and sit around bullshitting with each other. Tom could live in my uncle’s mansion for a year and never lift a finger and no one would think any less of him. I do enough to be polite, but I could certainly do more. If I did any less, people would definitely think less of me. I think they already do. I cringe when I think about how much Uyen, the wife of the baby boy, is criticized for not doing more, because I think she does plenty and I do even less than her. I’m probably doing the bare minimum of what’s considered socially acceptable. It’s not like I’m the laziest person of all time, I’m just fairly lazy most of the time. Cleaning isn’t my favorite activity but I’ll do it when it needs to be done. The problem is, women are expected to toil like slaves, so even if I busted my ass, I wouldn’t get any credit for it because I’d simply be fulfilling my womanly duties. In order to get brownie points for domestic chores a woman would have to go way above and beyond the call of duty, like by cleaning the mansion from top to bottom. Anything short of that wouldn’t be considered “above and beyond”; it’d be merely “normal.” I could try to emulate Chi Ca and start polishing furniture, dusting towers of shelves, mopping each of the four floors, scrubbing bathrooms, etc. But this mansion is fucking huge which means I’d be working from dawn to dusk the way Chi Ca does, and I did not take a year off from work to fucking reenact Cinderella. I feel like the only way a woman gets any respect around here is by martyring herself. Everyone admires and respects Chi Ca because she works and suffers more than most people. I want to be respected for being a smart, independent-minded woman. I don’t want to be respected because I’m willing to wring a filthy mop with my bare hands as I’m scrubbing the floors everyday (apparently mops that come with wringers are really shoddy and can’t withstand mopping a 20,000 square foot mansion more than a few times, so the mops used at my uncle’s mansion have to be manually hand-wrung, which is disgusting).
I’m not willing to do that; I don’t need that kind of respect. Accruing brownie points is not the purpose of my sabbatical. Tom, on the other hand, scores brownie points each time he washes a dish or feeds his child, because he’s doing more than what’s expected of him, which is nothing. I know I have an awesome husband, I’ll be the first person to say it, but here his godliness is approaching legendary status. He’s put on such an impossibly high pedestal that I can’t compete, especially handicapped as I am by these double standards. I guess what I’m trying to say is that he’s making me look bad. It’s a problem without a solution. I want him to do chores because I don’t want to do that shit. But when he does chores, I look bad for not doing them. It’s also a problem to which I contribute, because I praise Tom all the time, sometimes to my own detriment. I’ll say things like, “Tom takes care of everything at home. I don’t do anything.” I’m his biggest fan, so of course I want him to look good. He deserves to look good. Except now he looks too good. And talking him up has backfired because I look really bad.
A revealing illustration would be to contrast Uyen with Anh Nghiep, my uncle’s second oldest son who’s a bit of a ne’er-do-well. Anh Nghiep lives with his parents in the mansion and is the only cousin who’s never been married and probably will never get married or have kids, the reason being he’s worried that having a wife would get in the way of hanging out with his friends all the time, which is what he currently does. Anh Nghiep has no occupation to speak of other than eating and drinking with his buddies on a daily basis (he also invests a substantial part of each day figuring out what to eat and drink). That’s all he does. His parents bankroll his leisurely lifestyle and expect nothing in return. And yet Uyen is the black sheep of the family because she isn’t doing enough of the communal cooking and cleaning, in addition to being responsible for all chores for her nuclear family, working in the pharmacy, and caring for her two young children. If those aren’t double standards I don’t know what are. It’s starting to get to me how much these double standards work in Tom’s favor and against me, and how he’s so highly regarded and I’m not.
I’ve honestly never felt jealous of Tom before. Our interests and occupations and pursuits are so different that there’s no opportunity to be competitive with each other. We inhabit very distinct spheres of competency. He has strengths that make him impressive, as do I. Except in VN I’m not impressive at all. I wake up late (getting up at 7 or 8 might as well be the same as getting up at noon) and hang out with my kids all day (I might as well be an indolent trophy wife). Taking care of children is so time-consuming and yet there’s absolutely zero respect for stay-at-home moms. If anything, I’m probably viewed as a moocher. Tom works full-time to support our family and does housework. He doesn’t have to do very much, only what he chooses to do. If he doesn’t feel like sticking around after meals to help feed the kids, no problem. I’ve got it covered. If he’s not in the mood to sweep or wash dishes, he can just run back up to his office. If he doesn’t want to vacuum or mop, someone else will take care of it. Domestic duties, including childcare, are completely optional for him. It’s not unusual for him to stay away all day, only showing up at bedtime after the kids have been freshly bathed, their teeth brushed, to kiss them goodnight. Fortunately for me he’s a neat freak and a helpful husband, but he’s in a win-win situation. If and when he chooses to do chores, he’s a saint. For me, there’s no real upside, only downside if I don’t do what I’m supposed to. When I compare our current lives to our former lives, I feel like Tom is the real winner. He works as much as he wants to and does fewer chores. My current life is also a net improvement over my former life, but I’m a lot more conflicted about it. I’m more rested and spend all day with my kids. That’s what I wanted, right? Yet somehow I feel like I exchanged one time-consuming job for another. I enjoy my kids but caring for them involves a lot of drudgery, and I’m doing more chores. I don’t have as much free time as I thought I would. Maybe that’s a pipe dream at this stage in my life. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. In any event, Tom has an enviable knack for finding happiness and fulfillment wherever he goes, while I always find something to complain about. Is this what it all boils down to? That I’m jealous of Tom?
The spark: Tom comes home drunk.
To backtrack, that fateful day unravels as follows: I wake up at 3 A.M. to catch a 4 A.M. bus from Saigon to Long Khanh. I ponder Tom’s popularity during the bus ride. I get back to my uncle’s mansion by 6:30 A.M., and am surprised to find Tom and the kids already up. The boy has a fever and Tom says he gave him some Children’s Tylenol last night after taking his temperature. He also tells me how his day went, since he had to take care of the kids by himself while my mom and I were in Saigon. (By his own account, it was a breeze because he got so much help from the female cousins. He drank beer with the male cousins during lunch while the women prepared food and fed his children. After lunch he passed out for over three hours in a drunken stupor and woke to find that the girl had already been fed her dinner. The boy developed a fever later that night so Tom gave him medicine. After both kids were fed and bathed, he put them to bed and started working, from about 9 P.M. to 2 A.M. The kids woke up unusually early at 5:30 A.M., maybe due to the boy’s fever. I came home an hour after that.)
I decide to feed the kids breakfast on the fourth floor because there are fewer mosquitoes up there. Unfortunately, it’s rained and my uncle’s doors and windows aren’t secure, so rainwater has partially flooded the fourth floor, leaving a residue of dirt and dead bugs. While the kids are eating I decide to sweep and mop so they can have a clean play space. Because VN’s short straw brooms require you to hunch over as you sweep, and sweeping a floor of my uncle’s mansion is like sweeping a museum, I break into a sweat almost immediately. I’m tired and hot and crave iced coffee in an air-conditioned café. No sooner than I get the idea to tell Tom that we should go to a café after breakfast, Tom yells from the lower floor that he’s running out to grab coffee with Anh Nghiep. I give a growl of displeasure and yell back, “But I want to go too!” Tom responds, ok, but we have leave now. I look over at the kids, who are still eating their breakfast, have second thoughts about the boy’s fever, and realize I’m not even halfway done sweeping. “Forget it!” I yell down, “Just go by yourself.” Tom offers to bring back a cup of coffee for me but I refuse. It takes me over an hour to sweep and do a cursory mop and the entire time I’m thinking to myself, This is bullshit. I don’t even do this in my own home. I also remember thinking it was a pointless waste of time because it looks like it might rain again so the fourth floor is just going to get flooded again and no one would even know I had cleaned up.
After breakfast the boy’s acting especially clingy because he’s not feeling well. He sits placidly on my lap so I don’t mind cuddling with him all morning. I get a little nervous by lunchtime because I find him asleep on our bed with the girl playing quietly next to him. Definitely not normal behavior. I decide to feed the kids in our bedroom after I have lunch with the family downstairs. As I’m setting the table and sitting down, my cousin’s wife refers to me as the wrong kind of aunt. I take offense at being considered an in-law, an outcast. Family members inquire after Tom when he doesn’t show up, and I tell them that he went out to get coffee with Anh Nghiep before eight this morning and hasn’t returned yet. Predictably, Anh Nghiep has taken him out somewhere and I don’t expect him back for awhile. I wash the lunch dishes and then bring bowls of food up to our bedroom but I’m unable to feed the boy more than a couple of bites because he’s crying that his mouth hurts and he wants to go to sleep. I give him more Children’s Tylenol and let him sleep. I rummage through our cabinets and drawers for the thermometer but can’t find it anywhere. After their naps the boy’s fever has gone down but the girl is now feverish and sluggish, so I give her Children’s Tylenol too. The medicine works to reduce their temperatures, and they act normal for a short time, but then their fevers keep returning a few hours after each dose. Family members start to worry and advise me to take the kids to the doctor if their temperatures exceed 38 degrees Celsius (which I later figure out is 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit). There’s some concern about mosquito-related diseases and I become slightly panicked at the thought of malaria. I’m also wondering when Tom is going to come home and tell myself he’s entitled to a day of fun since he had to watch the kids while I had a spa day. But then I think, wait, I actually had only 4.5 hours of fun and he’s been gone much longer than that. Then I feel petty for making these calculations and comparisons and for begrudging him a good time. He’s in the midst of his busiest season and he sacrificed a day of work so I could go to the spa. But then I think, am I supposed to be grateful? Did he do me a favor that I need to repay? Aren’t I just as entitled to have fun as he is? Was it really so much of a sacrifice on his part when he’s sacrificing a second consecutive workday to go drinking with Anh Nghiep? And how much credit should he get for taking care of the kids when he got so much help and spent a substantial portion of the day getting drunk and then sleeping off his drunkenness? I don’t get the same kind of help when I take care of my kids because I do it everyday, and I’m expected to. These are the thoughts that keep swirling in my head, and by dinnertime I’m not sure how I’ll react to Tom when I see him. I don’t have any luck feeding the boy his dinner and realize he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He complains of a pain from his mouth down to his right leg. Part of me is trying to remain calm and part of me is slightly frantic because I still can’t find the thermometer after looking for it again. Where the hell did Tom hide it after he took the boy’s temperature last night? I give the kids their medicine and send them to bed while I eat dinner. Tom doesn’t make an appearance but as I finish eating I think I see from the corner of my eye someone entering our bedroom upstairs. It’s hard to describe exactly how I feel — a mixture of relief and resentment, but something else too. I carry up the kids’ bowls of food and enter the bedroom to find the three of them asleep on the bed. At that moment something comes over me and I slam the door shut, startling the kids awake. Tom doesn’t stir. The feeling that overcomes me gets stronger and I slam the bowls down on the nightstand. Tom remains lifeless. I walk over and grab a pillow and smash it as hard as I can over his head. “Are you drunk?” I hiss at him. One eye cracks open a slit and he mumbles, “A little.” He falls unconscious again and the kids are sitting up looking at me curiously, thinking I’m playing a game with daddy and a pillow. “Where is the thermometer?” I demand. No answer. “Where is the thermometer?” I want to curse at him but I can’t because my kids are watching me. “WHERE IS THE THERMOMETER?!?!?!?!!!” Finally he makes a slight wiggling motion with his index finger and without opening his eyes he mumbles, “Over there.”
“Where? Where?? WHERE?!?!?!?!” I’m screaming at him but all he does is continue to point feebly in the direction of the wardrobe. I pull a chair to the wardrobe, climb up and start searching through all of the shelves I had already searched earlier in the day. I finally understand what I’m feeling: blind, furious rage. It’s burning hotter and hotter with each passing second.
The top two shelves of the wardrobe house our toiletries and supplies that we brought from the U.S.: soap, medicine, vitamins, packages of floss, lotion, creams, etc. It’s hard to see through clutter and rage so I grab some supplies and toss them on the floor. They land with a satisfying thud. So I grab some more stuff and throw it down. At this point a ferocious madness consumes me and I start grabbing anything I can get my hands on and viciously hurl it to the ground. Assorted containers and bottles and packages explode across the floor.
I’m not a thrower. My dad was; he would destroy dishes, furniture, anything in his vicinity when he was fighting with my mom. As I kid I hated his uncontrollable, violent temper, and my siblings and I would plug our ears as we cried and waited for our parents to stop fighting. I think throwing things is a pretty immature and melodramatic way to express anger. But as I’m doing it, I feel such a thrilling sense of gratification, it’s almost cathartic. Almost but not quite. I feel myself becoming more infuriated, not less. In the back of my mind I’m also thinking, with spiteful satisfaction, that Tom is going to clean up this mess. I’m causing so much commotion that my kids pipe up in their childish voices, “Momma! Why are you making a mess? Momma! Why are you throwing things? Momma! You’re making a mess, you’re being bad! Momma! Why are you doing that?”
Why am I doing this? Why am I acting like a crazy person? It’s not like it’s the first time Tom’s come home drunk. But the sight of him laying there completely shit-faced enrages me to the point that sanity and reason are obliterated from my mind. I want to kill him. I want to bludgeon him to death. I want to scream, “Because your father is a FUCKING ASSHOLE!!! He thinks he’s God’s gift to women but he is a USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!!!!! He thinks I should worship the ground he walks on because he’s SUCH a WONDERFUL husband compared to other men and it was SO GENEROUS of him to let me have a day to myself. He thinks he’s entitled to get drunk whenever he wants and I should be GRATEFUL because he has a job AND takes care of his children once in awhile AND cleans up after himself. He thinks I need him! Well I DON’T! I DON’T NEED A FUCKING USELESS VIETNAMESE ASSHOLE WHO CAN’T EVEN ROUSE HIMSELF TO GET A FUCKING THERMOMETER!!!!!!!!!!!” Of course, I don’t say these things because I don’t swear in front of my kids. Instead I say, “I’m mad at your father because he’s being selfish.” Which elicits from them, “Dadda, stop being selfish!”
Tom might as well be a corpse, and I have half a mind to make him one. I turn on all the lights and the television and blast the volume. I let the kids run around and play as I try to feed them. They’re acting more like themselves after their last dose of medicine and soon they’re yelling and laughing boisterously. I’m not about to let Tom sleep in peace and comfort. It makes no difference, he’s out cold for the next 12 hours.
The next day I won’t look at him and don’t respond when he talks to me. He thinks it’s because he came home drunk but that was just the spark, the catalyst. I’m focused on the kids, who have been steadily deteriorating. Their fevers are hotter than ever and the boy freaks out when he has his first nosebleed. My rage has subsided and morphed into frustration and resentment; a little bit of shame, too, when I see the mass of products and supplies scattered on the floor. I tell myself I’ll pick it up by the end of the day if Tom refuses to, but thankfully he puts everything away before lunchtime. I keep thinking about the events of the prior day and wonder if I’m justified for feeling the way I do. It’s so many things, so many bits of firewood, and none of them are Tom’s fault. The spark, coming home piss drunk, that was his fault, yes. But on another day it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal. If he had come home earlier it might not have been as big of a deal. I’m not one of those wives who can’t stand the idea of her husband having a good time without her. At least I like to think so. All the other stuff that was making me feel bitter and insecure that day — the fact that everyone likes Tom more than me, his improving fluency, how he benefits from VN double standards, how I feel pressured to do more housework, how Tom seems to be getting more out of this sabbatical than I am — those are not his issues, those are mine. And each individually really does not bother me. It was all of it together, and the circumstances surrounding his drinking spree, including his absence, which gave my negative feelings plenty of time to stew and incubate, that unhinged me. I was doing chores that I didn’t want to be doing. I was jealous that he got invited out to coffee and I didn’t. I was keenly aware of my outsider status. I was paranoid that all of the adulation was getting to his head, that maybe he was starting to believe in his own hype and think that he was too cool for school. In essence, I was worried that he was starting to think like a typical VN man. Maybe I was more on edge than usual because I had gotten up so early. A small part of me resented that even during his busiest season, Tom wasn’t working as hard as I did when my job was busy, which is a petty resentment. I shouldn’t want him to suffer more just because I did; I hate it when people tout their suffering like it’s a badge of honor. Smart people try to avoid suffering if they can help it. And even though it wasn’t Tom’s fault that the kids got sick, another small part of me thought, I left you with two healthy children who you barely took care of, and when I returned, you left me to care for two sick children by myself while you went off drinking.
My spa day was the first time in the entire three months that we’ve been here that I’ve been away from both Tom and my kids, and the only time I’ve done anything recreational without Tom. In contrast, at least a couple of times a month Tom gets to go out without me and the kids. Part of the reason is that he’s a man and the other part is that he’s better liked. It’s perfectly natural for him to leave us at home but it would be really weird for me to leave the kids with him to go have fun on my own. Which is why the spa day was a big deal. I don’t like the idea of me going out being considered a special treat for which I should be grateful and appreciative. Tom doesn’t feel the need to be grateful and appreciative each time he goes out. No doubt he feels entitled. I’m entitled too, goddammit!
Tom has hung out with Anh Nghiep before and has come home drunk before, and it was never a big deal. I just happened to be an emotional landmine this time. I don’t have anything against Anh Nghiep; he was my favorite cousin in Long Khanh the first time I visited VN over 13 years ago. But he’s not exactly the model of VN maleness that I want Tom to emulate. Drinking for 10 hours and then sleeping for 12 hours immediately afterwards is not my idea of a productive day. Thinking highly of yourself for doing things that you should be doing anyway is not my idea of the perfect man.
My silent treatment towards Tom continues not out of anger, but out of confusion. I don’t know what to say to him. What can I say that doesn’t sound completely ridiculous? Stop being so lovable? Stop upstaging me at every turn? Stop enjoying yourself so much? Stop co-opting my sabbatical and hijacking it for your own? One lingering notion continues to plague my thoughts, one that I’m not sure I want to give voice to: do I want to go home? For some reason I feel like admitting it would be admitting defeat, would be tantamount to failure. Failure at what, I’m not sure. Maybe failure at fulfilling the purpose of my sabbatical. Or finding a purpose for my sabbatical.
Until I figure out what I want and how to articulate it, it’s hard to figure out what to say to Tom. I don’t think I’m prepared to tell him I want to go home, partially because I know he doesn’t want to. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the limited advantages of not being on speaking terms with my husband. He’s scared of me when I won’t talk to him, which motivates him to be on his best behavior. He’s been vacuuming and mopping and feeding the kids like his life depends on it. Funny how that’s an unintended side effect of the silent treatment. Makes me think I should do it more often.
Life's Too Short 