Chapter 257: It makes you look uglier

Martin set his beer bottle on the table. The glass clinked against the wood. He stood from the couch, and the laziness fell off his body like a coat dropping to the floor. His jaw squared. His shoulders straightened. His expression shifted from the bored, half-lidded indifference of a man watching television to something harder.

"I asked you a question." His voice dropped into a low warning. He had decided in the last few seconds that her questions were irrelevant. "Where. Is. The five hundred. Cash."

Seeing Martin disregard her feelings hardened Marion’s heart. "I do not have extra money for your boss’s gift," Marion replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

She held his stare, and he held hers. Neither of them blinked nor moved from where they were. The living room shrank around them until there was nothing in it but the television murmuring in the background.

The three empty beer bottles sat on the table between them, silent witnesses to a marriage that had run out of everything.

Martin finally broke the silence first. "Look at you." He tilted his head, letting his gaze sweep over her—from the creased uniform to the loose strands of hair escaping her clip. "Standing there with your arms crossed, pretending to be one of those fucking feminists. I knew I shouldn’t have let you hang out with Cixi and that other girl from the party. I gave you a single night of freedom, and this is how you repay me? Instead of feeling grateful, you dare ask me questions, and you deny me the money like I am a street beggar? You truly have crossed the line, Marion.... Do you think I don’t notice you stashing away extra cash every month, aside from our joint account?"

Marion jaw flexed. She dropped her hands to her sides, clenching her fist. "Yes, I am saving extra money for my future, so what? Atleast I am not throwing away the money the way you do! And tell me, Martin, since when are you out of money? You don’t have many expenses. You even take lunch with you; I prepare it in the morning. Your company gives you the money for the petrol. The grocery items I pay. You pay half of the school fees. I pay for the other items for the kids. Despite spending more than half of the expenses, I am still able to save money. Then where are you spending your money?" Marion started to fear that Binge’s words were true about her husband.

Martin scoffed. "This is what happens when women start thinking they are independent," he muttered, shaking his head slowly. He jabbed his finger in her direction. "Why should I tell you where I spend my money. Remember the early days of our marriage? I was the one footing the bill for everything until you decided to contribute. I let you take part, and look where it’s led us. Rather than fulfilling your role as a wife, you dare to meet my gaze defiantly. Do you really think we are equals? A good woman knows her place—she nurtures her home, children and especially tends to her husband’s needs.

Your head is filled with trash from social media, preaching about ’women’s rights’ while you females did nothing but, with freedom, sell your body everywhere in the name of independence and wear slutty clothes that barely cover anything to allure men, fooling others and yourself, screaming, ’I am wearing it for myself while constantly wanting every man’s eyes on you to prove you are sexy, beautiful, and desirable ’...."

He stood up, his jaw clenched tight, fury radiating from him. "You should be grateful that I kept you shielded from that world. But it seems with the wrong friends influencing you, you have started to think you can challenge me."

"You look down on me," Marion whispered, and the whisper carried more weight than any shout she could have produced. "Did you look down on me since the beginning of our marriage? Is it because I haven’t completed my studies, or is it because I earn money from cleaning people’s houses? Why are you insulting me, Martin?"

"It’s you who insulted me first." Replied Martin.

"What is so wrong with me asking for affection from you? What is wrong with me asking where I stand in your life?" Marion couldn’t understand where she went wrong in her relationship.

"Your mistake was that you demanded an answer rather than politely requesting it."

A long silence filled the room before Marion finally broke it. Her voice trembled despite everything she did to keep it steady. "If I had known that one day you would look down on me like this, I would never have married you."

Martin scoffed instantly, and a second later it turned into a chuckle, as though she had said something genuinely amusing. "What is this supposed to be now? Are you planning to divorce me?..." He looked her over slowly, from her feet to her hair, and the amusement on his face made Marion’s stomach tighten. "And then what, Marion? Stay single for the rest of your life? Do you really think you can survive alone with three children and the way expenses keep rising?" He walked closer to Marion, trying to intimidate her. "And don’t start imagining you will walk away from me with everything I earned. If you try to separate from me, I won’t give you a single penny." Marion looked at Martin in disbelief. "Let me remind you— You signed a prenuptial agreement before we married which means you have no right to come demanding my money afterwards."

The words struck somewhere Marion had not expected. For a moment, it felt as though he had punched directly into her chest and left something bleeding there. She had never stood before him calculating what she could take from him if their marriage ended. She never thought of ending the marriage... She had spent years trying to hold that marriage together, and yet Martin was already talking as though it was her who couldn’t wait to be separate from him.

"It was a good thing my parents insisted on that agreement," Martin continued. "Maybe they understood what kind of woman you were before I did. I was the idiot who went against them and married you anyway." His expression hardened as he closed the distance between them. "And look where that got me. I work all day, come home exhausted, and apparently I still cannot have one peaceful evening in my own house. I feel you have chained me in this relationship. It’s getting harder for me to breathe when I come home. You ruined me, Marion.... "

Marion did not move when he came closer. Normally, that tone alone would have made her lower her voice, apologise or find some way to end the argument before his anger grew worse. This time she remained where she was. And Martin seemed to notice.

His gaze passed over her again, deliberately slower this time. "Have you looked at yourself lately?"

Marion’s fingers tightened at her sides.

"Even if you divorced me, what exactly do you think is waiting for you outside?" he asked. "A better fantasy life which is growing in your head? Or is it another man you fancy?" He gave a short laugh. "Marion, even an eighty-year-old man wouldn’t take you....I think I should show you the reality. Somebody needs to tell you the truth because apparently your friends have filled your head with daydreams.

You are not beautiful anymore. You are not some young woman who can walk out of a marriage and have men waiting around the corner... Spending time with younger friends does not make you look younger, Marion. It makes you look uglier."

His comments about her appearance were hardly new to Marion. For years, Martin had found something to criticise about her. Her weight, her clothes, the way she looked after giving birth, how tired she appeared, how little effort he believed she made with herself. She had pretended his words did not matter because admitting that they hurt somehow felt more humiliating than hearing them in the first place.

But they had mattered.

Without realising exactly when it had happened, Marion had stopped looking at herself and seeing a woman who could be beautiful. When she stood before a mirror, Martin’s remarks were often there before her own thoughts could form.

She had never even thought about finding another man. If she ever left Martin, another marriage was probably the last thing she would want. What hurt was that he needed to convince her no one else could possibly want her. And it was he who endured all the humiliation of being married to her.

Marion swallowed the ache in her throat and looked directly at him.

"I am not giving you any money for your boss."

The abrupt return to the original argument wiped some of the satisfaction from Martin’s face. He had spent the last few minutes tearing into every insecurity she possessed, perhaps expecting her to surrender as she always had, but Marion no longer wanted to defend whether she was beautiful enough for herself or another man. That had never been the point.

Her eyes burned with unshed tears, yet the more Martin tried to push her down, the more determined she became not to bow her head.

"And there is something else I want to know.... Where do you go every weekend?" she finally asked. Her voice was lower now, no longer shaking as badly as before. "You are hardly ever home on weekends, Martin. So where are you spending all that time?"