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Iris had a habit of sticking around.
It started when she was young, and her father had started drinking beer like it was water, and she would go to school covered in bruises and hope to hide them with a smile. It sometimes became too unbearable, but every day, she would take her feet back to the place they hated the most.
Because she would rather stay than abandon her mother. Because her mother would smile at her and say, gently as if Iris was foolish for desperately pleading with her in harsh whispers and choked-back cries, “It’s easy to run away, darling, but the hard part is staying when things get tough. I love your father, and I believe one day he’ll change.”
That one day never came. What did come was a funeral, and a man behind bars for killing his wife in a drunken fit. An orphaned girl brought to live with her grandparents. And her grandparents were hard of hearing and often forgetful, and they required more care and attention than her. She was 13, and felt that the world was unfair. She would try to run away, but her feet would always take her back to the place she hated the most.
Because her mother had told her, “It’s easy to run away, darling, but the hard part is staying when things get tough.”
Iris repeated the words in her head as she set the bowl of adobo down on the table. She had cooked his favorite tonight. She wondered if it would make him smile. Doubtful , she thinks to herself with a rueful smile.
She took a step back and admired her work. Adobo, rice, aglio olio, moist lemon cake, and iced tea all set out on the table like a carefully planned exhibit. All his favorites that she had learned to make by heart in the four years that they had been together. She nodded in satisfaction, feeling a sense of pride wriggling into her chest, forcing itself between spaces in her lungs and pushing out the heaviness that held her breath down. Her fingers brushed lightly against her ring finger, pulling her deep into thought.
The front door opened sooner than she expected. She jumped a little, but regained her composure as Jeonghan appeared in the doorway, his eyes roaming from her expectant figure to the feast that lay readily at the table.
She kept smiling even as she saw him look away as he shrugged off his suit jacket. “I already ate with my co-workers. I thought I texted you.”
Co-workers. Iris resisted the urge to laugh.
“Yeah, you did,” she reassured him. It was harder than she expected, pretending that everything was fine and that she still had it in her to smile. She didn’t remember when they had stopped smiling genuinely at each other. “I just thought that maybe you could eat with me tonight. We haven’t eaten together in a while.”
His eyes began to shake as he tried not to look at her. He stood in front of the table, hands on his hips as he sighed defeatedly. He had known her long enough to know that she was not going to back down, and he felt like he owed her this one dinner.
Iris tried not to think about how angry she was that he thought he owed her dinner before he owed her his loyalty, that he thought he could absolve himself by sitting in front of her and eating the food that she made as they played happy family. Instead, she smiled as she sat down in front of him, filling her plate with rice and adobo .
“What made you cook so much anyway?” Jeonghan asked, not lifting his eyes from his own plate. Iris watched him for a moment, waiting for him to look at her. He didn’t.
“Do you remember when we first met?” Iris finally spoke, smiling as she recalled the memory. It was the holiday season, All I Want For Christmas Is You was playing on the radio, and she was working as a service crew at some fast food restaurant. She remembered him walking in, all snarky remarks and charming smiles, and he snatched the air right out of her lungs.
“Yeah,” he answered with a sigh and a hint of confusion, and she wondered just how he remembered her. Did he remember her as the clumsy waitress who spilled drinks on his sleeve? Did she make his heart beat fast every time their eyes met as she snuck glances at him from behind the counter, trying to be discreet but failing? Did he think she was cute when she let out a small squeak after he slid her a napkin with his number on it, saying that if she wanted to make it up to him for soiling his favorite shirt then she should give him a call and take him out on a date?
She laughed softly as another memory filled her head with images of a starless night and brightly-lit cityscapes. “What about… What about our honeymoon? Do you remember that? We were supposed to go to Paris but the clerk thought you said Bali , so we ended up in Indonesia.”
A chuckle escaped his lips before he stopped abruptly, checking himself. Clearing his throat, he said with only a hint of laughter in his voice and the ghost of a smile on his face, “Not my fault she misheard me. The right pronunciation is without s .”
“No, it was your fault because you were swallowing your words,” Iris laughed.
“And whose fault was that? You were the one kissing my neck while I was booking the flight on the phone…” His voice began to trail off. His head, which he had lifted for the first time since he sat down at the table with her, lowered and he stared down at his plate again, mindlessly twirling the pasta around.
Iris felt a lump in her throat. She felt silly. Out of all the things that happened to her, this is what makes her cry? She had prepared for this, prepared to see the look on his face that told her she was his biggest regret, told her that every memory they shared were only mirages of the happiness they once shared. It was her fault, she supposed, for mixing in a little bit of hope — hope that he would look at her once again with that softness that made her feel safe, alive, loved .
She smiled again, sadly. She tried not to brush her fingers against ring finger, tried not to notice how light and empty it felt. She asked, “What about the day you proposed to me? Do you remember that?”
Jeonghan began to squirm in his seat. There was a part of her that hated herself for making him uncomfortable; the other part, however, reveled in it with a bit of resentment. He dropped his fork with a loud clang, obviously turning his discomfort into irritation, and Iris took that as a sign to continue.
“You brought me to the park and I thought it was just going to be a normal date,” she started. “But then, we reached the spot where you had set up the living room from Up . You had all those balloons, too, and I thought it was just some kind of… decorational thing that the park had going on. So, I ran to Ellie’s chair and sat down and then you—”
A scraping sound pierced her ears as Jeonghan’s chair slid back. He stood there for a moment, looking utterly miserable, and she stared at him, waiting.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Iris scoffed. He couldn’t do this anymore? His footsteps leading away from added insult to injury. Every step he took away from her, she felt his heel digging into her wounds, trampling on the heart she had chosen to give away. The heart that he, as much as it pained her, had every right to break. Because she had given it to him.
“What can’t you do, Jeonghan?” she asked, her own chair scraping against the floor. She felt like her entire body heating up as if she were caught in the middle of a fire and the smoke was closing in on her, black and wretched as sin as it seeped into her body through her nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe.
Her scathing words made Jeonghan stop. Four years they had been together, two of which had been a lie. Two years he had started coming home with someone else’s scent on his body and the succulent taste of another woman’s lips lingering on his own. Two years he had started calling her by the wrong names when he got too drunk to keep up the lies, always a different name each time. Two years he had watched her with a sense of loathing, disgusted at the love and kindness that he saw in her eyes every time she looked at him.
Still, not once had she stopped calling him Hannie . Not until now.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked weakly, still not turning around to face her. Her smile was bitter as she shook her head, saying, “Why are you asking all the questions you should be the one answering?”
There was silence again before she asked, “Are you tired of coming home to me?”
Jeonghan closed his eyes, regret and anger and guilt swirling inside his chest. It was all too much, too burdensome and too heavy for him to bear, and he felt everything pouring out before he could think twice about it. His words fell from his lips, unfiltered and brutal, “I’m tired of putting up with this.”
“Tired of putting up with me ?”
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, tighter, tighter . “Don’t make me say it.”
“Is saying it really so much harder than showing it?” she asked, feeling tears prickle her eyes. “It’s been two years, Jeonghan. I think I can handle a few words.”
“Fine!” he exclaimed angrily, finally turning around to face her and throwing his hands up and gesturing in wild motions. “I’m tired of putting up with this. I’m tired of putting up with you . I’m tired of putting up with everything ! Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“No,” she said, her voice low and heavy. “It’s what I needed to hear.”
Jeonghan’s eyes were bloodshot as if he were holding back tears and his shoulders were slumped as he breathed raggedly, trying to think about what to say. Iris wondered if she looked as miserable as him. She certainly felt miserable, and she couldn’t help feeling that gravity was pushing her to the ground, crushing her body, rather than pulling her.
“Why did you do it?” she asked again. Jeonghan rolled his eyes and looked away. But after a moment of silence, he figured she wasn’t going to back down.
“It just happened,” he answered softly, hanging his head in shame.
“How did it just happen ?”
“Why are you asking this?” His frustration was starting to explode, his voice rising as the tension that had subsided started building up again. “There’s no reason that’s going to make it right, Iris, so why bother?”
He was right. There was no point in asking. No matter what he said or how tonight would turn out, things wouldn’t change. They were already beyond fixing. No matter what, he would still rather sleep in cheap motels beside drunk strangers than at home with his own wife. And no matter what, she would be the loyal wife who waited for him every day to come home and turned a blind eye to his recurrent lapses.
She took a deep breath, but all the air in the world was not enough to fill her lungs to give her enough breath and enough strength to ask her final question.
“When did you stop loving me?”
Jeonghan looked at her in surprise. Her eyes met his and suddenly, she was back at that fast food restaurant. Her hands wouldn’t stay still as she carried the tray over to the table where the cute guy was sitting with his friends. She smiled as she neared them, but it felt more like a wince. The moment he turned to look at her, she tripped on her shoelaces, the glass of soda toppling over and spilling on his sleeve.
She muttered a rapidfire apology, grabbing the towel from her belt and dabbing it on his sleeve. He kept telling her it’s okay, calm down, it’s fine, but she could feel her face start to heat up in embarrassment. Suddenly, his hand was on hers and she lifted her face only to meet his eyes inches away from hers.
His eyes sparkled in the light back then, too, though now they were sparkling with tears. She knew this wasn’t the time to feel giddy, but it made her happy that he finally looked at her, though she assumed she looked far from pretty with tears dripping from her eyes and her bottom lip quivering as she held back sobs. She didn’t even remember the last time he looked at her, really looked at her.
“That’s the first time you’ve looked me in the eye.”
Jeonghan didn’t know how to respond. She walked towards him, making his body freeze up. And then, she placed her hands on his shoulders, stood up on her tiptoes, and planted a peck on his lips. He couldn’t move; he only stood there, eyes wide in confusion and surprise. She walked past him, making for the bedroom that they no longer shared as he started sleeping in the guest room a few months back.
“Why did you do this?” he asked, turning around to look at her. She stopped briefly, looking at him. He gestured towards the table, the food still barely touched, and asked, “What was all this for?”
She smiled. “I just wanted to have dinner with you.”
Iris had a habit of sticking around. She was painfully, so painfully, aware of that.
She stuck around each day her father drowned himself in alcohol, each night she shook in fear as he broke plates and vases and glasses in drunken fits. She stuck around each day after her grandparents started accidentally soiling themselves, each night she had to bathe them before going to bed. She stuck around each day Jeonghan didn’t echo back her I love you ’s as he stepped out the door, each night he whispered unfamiliar names into her ear with whiskey-scented breaths.
Because her mother had told her, “It’s easy to run away, darling, but the hard part is staying when things get tough.”
Softly shutting the door behind her, her eyes drifted towards the nightstand, where her wedding ring sat on top a pile of papers. He didn’t even notice she wasn’t wearing it anymore. She leaned her head against the door, and she thought she could feel him, still nailed to the place she had left him, standing just outside the dining room, staring at plates of half-eaten food and wasted love.
And here, inside their bedroom that had become hers, she stared at the scraps of her that remained — neatly folded and tucked into leather bags, printed in large bold letters on a plane ticket that would take her back home, placed atop paper-thin freedom signed by a shaking hand that she would leave for him to find in the morning long after she had gone.
Because her mother hadn’t told her that sometimes, staying is the wrong thing, and walking away is the hardest thing to do.