Chapter 2

When she finished eating, she pushed her bowl aside and went off to do her makeup and change clothes. Leaving me alone in the kitchen to wash the dishes and clean up the mess.

At night I'd come home from work, push the door open, and what always greeted me was a pitch-dark living room and a cold, empty apartment.

She got off work earlier than me, but the place was always exactly the way I'd left it. Her clothes were piled on the couch where she'd shed them, and the coffee table was covered in snack bags and takeout boxes.

"Addie, what do you want for dinner?" I tied on my apron and walked into the kitchen.

"Whatever. Just order takeout, I don't feel like cooking." She didn't even look up, curled into the couch watching her show.

Once or twice, I could still tell myself she was worn out from work. But a month went by, and she never set foot in the kitchen once, never mopped the floor once, never so much as offered to do a load of laundry.

Our clothes were always something I stuffed into the machine on the weekend, then hung out to dry, then folded piece by piece and put away in the closet.

One time I couldn't hold it in anymore. I said to her, "Addie, a home belongs to two people. Shouldn't you take on some of the housework too?"

She lifted her eyes from her phone screen and looked at me, all innocence. "But I don't know how. And you do it just fine, don't you?"

Her answer left me with nothing to say.

"If you don't know how, I can teach you."

"Ugh, that's such a hassle." She waved a hand at me, impatient. "You're a grown man, why do you nitpick over these little things every single day? All my coworkers' husbands fight each other to do the housework."

Watching her sit there so sure she was in the right, I felt a chill go through me.

The trouble between us went far beyond the housework.

By the second month of the marriage, she quit her job. Her reason: "Work is too stressful, I want to take a break."

I didn't object. I figured a stretch of rest, a chance to reset, wouldn't hurt.

"Then I'll give you five thousand a month for living expenses. Buy yourself some things you like." My salary wasn't especially high, and after the mortgage and daily costs, five thousand was the most I could squeeze out.

She didn't say anything at the time.

But less than two weeks later, she started complaining.

"My best friend bought a new bag. Over ten grand."

"The skincare I used to use is almost gone. One set runs more than three thousand."

"Shouldn't we be trading up for a better car? My friends all drive BMWs and Mercedes."

The implication being that what I gave her was too little.

I tried to reason with her. "Addie, we just bought the place, there's still the mortgage to pay, so many things need money. Let's save where we can."

Her face fell in an instant. "Carl, what's that supposed to mean? I married you, not to live some hard life with you! Do I have to watch your expression just to buy one set of skincare?"

"That's not what I meant—"

"Then what did you mean?" She slammed her phone down on the couch. "You think just because I quit my job and stay home spending your money, I'm eating for free? Let me tell you, if it weren't for having your baby, would I even need to stay home?"

Those three words, "having your baby," were like a needle, driven straight into my heart.

We'd been married nearly three months and had barely held hands more than a few times, and here she was using a baby as her excuse.

It was the sheerest kind of irony.

I looked at her and, for the first time, felt she was a complete stranger. That gentle, sensible girl who'd once stood in front of me might as well have never existed.

"Adeline," I said, forcing the anger down, spacing each word out, "we're husband and wife, not landlord and tenant, not boss and employee. This home needs both of us to build it, not just me pouring everything in alone."

She let out a cold laugh. "Pouring in? What have you poured in? A few thousand a month, that's all. What's that even good for? Do you have any idea how much my mom put into raising me?"

That night, we had a huge fight.

Or rather, it was her hurling accusations at me and me saying nothing.

In the end she slammed the bedroom door and locked it from the inside.

I sat alone in the living room for a long, long time, until the sky went pale.

I started to doubt whether this woman I'd been so set on marrying loved me at all. Or rather, whether what she loved was me, or everything I could provide her.

I started to lose sleep, lying awake whole nights at a time.

I tried to sit her down and talk it through, to figure out what had actually gone wrong between us.

But every time, she brushed me off with "I'm tired," "leave me alone," "we'll talk about it next time."

That "next time" I'd once looked forward to so much now carried nothing but endless mockery and cold.

The escalation started when Adeline's family began making frequent "visits" to our home.

After she quit, with nothing to fill her days, she was always having her mother and her brother Bertram Swanson come over.

The first time my mother-in-law came, I took a half day off specially, went to the grocery store, and bought a whole load of food. I remembered she liked fish, so I picked out a fresh sea bass just for her.

I worked in the kitchen for two hours and made four dishes and a soup.

At dinner I warmly served her a piece. "Mom, try this baked sea bass, see if it's to your taste."

She lifted a bit of the fish with the tip of her chopsticks, put it in her mouth, chewed twice, and her brow furrowed.

"Carl, is this fish a little overdone? You didn't get the heat right."

The smile froze on my face. "Is it? Maybe I steamed it a bit too long today."

Adeline jumped in at once. "Mom, just make do and eat. He's a grown man, doing it this well is already something."

It sat heavy in my chest. The words sounded like she was smoothing things over for me, but the tone was like she was talking about some servant who didn't know any better.

Bertram, my brother-in-law who'd just started college, was even less polite. He played his game with his legs propped up on the coffee table and picked apart every dish I'd made.

"Carl, why are these barbecue chicken wings salty?"

"These ribs are way too tough, I can't even chew them."

I quietly slid the dishes over to my side and couldn't get a single word out.

The whole meal, I couldn't get anything down.

After, the three of them sat on the couch watching TV and cracking sunflower seeds, dropping shells and scraps all over the floor. And I washed the dishes in the kitchen without a word.

By the time I'd cleaned up the kitchen and swept the living room spotless with a broom and dustpan, they hadn't offered so much as a "thanks for the work." My mother-in-law even pointed at a corner of the TV stand and said, "Oh, there's still some dust there, wipe it down."

In that moment, I felt like I wasn't the man of the house, but a nanny they'd paid to be there.

This kind of thing happened more and more.

My mother-in-law and Bertram came almost every weekend. They'd show up and do nothing but eat and sleep, sleep and eat, treating me like a free cook and cleaner.

One time, because my project at work was against a deadline, I put in two extra days over the weekend and was worn down to the bone. All I wanted was to lie in bed and not move.