The Truth Behind Three Hundred Dollars in Living Expenses

Dominic choked on that for a second, and then something worse rose up in him. "Three hundred? Who do you think you're fooling?" He jabbed a finger toward her face. "Is my mother that kind of person? She scrimped and saved her whole life, and for who? For us! No, this is you again, buying all that useless makeup, propping up that broke family of yours, and when the money runs out you dump the blame on an old woman!" He pulled out his phone and, right in front of her, dialed his mother Bernice Lawrence, deliberately putting it on speaker, as if he meant to expose her lie on the spot. It rang twice before it connected. Bernice's booming voice came through, mahjong tiles clacking in the background. "Aiyo, son, why are you calling now? You haven't eaten yet, have you?" "Mom," Dominic said, shooting Joan a glare, his tone easing a little, "Joan says you only give her three hundred a month for the household, so we can't even cook dinner here. Talk to her. Tell me what's actually going on." There was a one-second pause on the line, then the hard smack of a tile against the table, and Bernice's pitch shot up an octave. "What? Three hundred? Aiyo, that ungrateful thing! Son, don't you listen to her run her mouth! I'm putting that money into an investment for the two of you! She comes to me every month asking, and when have I ever not given it to her? Last week she said she needed to buy rice, didn't I just transfer her two hundred? How does that turn into three hundred a month? She's trying to drive these old bones of mine into the grave!" Molly Fox's voice cut in from the side, snide as ever. "Bro, I told you a long time ago, she's a scheming one. Who knows where she's stashed the money, and now she's the one pointing fingers. Mom won't even let herself eat meat just to save you money, and there she sits, taking it easy at home all day and filing complaints." Dominic hung up with a look of triumph on his face, a look that said I knew it, and turned to Joan. "You hear that? She gave you two hundred just last week for rice! Joan, what have you got to say now? You'd throw away every last shred of dignity over a little money?" Joan looked at that self-righteous face of his, and her stomach twisted. She didn't argue. She only gave a small nod. "Fine, Dominic. Go on believing your mother." With that, she turned and went into the bedroom, and locked the door behind her. Dominic stood in the living room, staring at the shut door, and kicked hard at the broken glass on the floor. "Spoiled rotten! Eat or don't, I don't care. I'm going out to eat!"

The next day was the weekend. Dominic slept until the sun was high before he got up. The living room was still a wreck—the table he'd knocked over the night before was where he'd left it, the broken glass still on the floor where no one had swept it. Furious, he was about to storm into the bedroom and drag Joan out of bed when he found the door open, the blanket folded neatly, and no one there. "Ran off, did she?" Dominic sneered, and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. The fridge was empty except for half a bottle of expired hot sauce and a few bundles of dry noodles. What he didn't know was that Joan was sitting in the infusion hall of a hospital right then. Her face was pale. An IV drip was hooked into her left hand, and with her right she held her phone, laboring through a reply to a client. The screen was packed with revision notes—for a graphic design draft she'd pulled three all-nighters in a row to finish. Ever since she'd married Dominic, her mother-in-law, Bernice, had taken hold of the family's finances. Dominic's paycheck went into Bernice's hands, and every month Joan received only a few hundred dollars in "grocery money." She'd protested about it at first, but every time Dominic would say, "My mom's doing this for our own good. Look how loose you are with money—when we have a kid, you don't think that's going to cost something?" To keep the household running, and to buy medicine for her mother, who had a neck condition, Joan had gone back to her old trade. She didn't dare let Dominic know, because there was nothing he hated more than her "showing herself in public"—the way he saw it, it made him lose face. So she could only work while he was at the office or asleep, hunched over that old laptop in the study, drawing. The long stretch of late nights and poor nutrition had left her with severe low blood pressure and chronic gastritis. "Ms. Swanson, there's one more bag after this one. No family with you? This medication's a little hard on the stomach—better to have someone keeping an eye on you." A nurse came over to change the bag, looking at Joan sitting there alone. Joan shook her head and forced out a thin smile. "It's fine. I can manage on my own." As she said it, her phone buzzed. It was a message from Dominic. Not concern—a picture. The messy living room at home. A voice message came right after. "Joan, where the hell did you die off to? The house is a disaster and you don't clean it up? My mom's bringing Molly over for dinner soon. Get back here and buy groceries and cook, now! Don't embarrass me!" When it finished, Joan's finger hovered over the screen. After a long moment, she pulled out the needle before the bag had finished, pressed down on the bleeding puncture, and typed back two words: "On my way."

When Joan got home, Bernice and Molly were already there. Dominic had made a quick pass at tidying the living room, but the air still sat heavy. Bernice lounged on the couch cracking sunflower seeds, spitting the shells all over the floor. Molly was playing a game on the new phone Dominic had just bought her. "Well, look who's back. Her ladyship," Molly said, not even lifting her eyes. "My brother's been starving for hours. What kind of wife are you?" Bernice shot Joan a sideways look and gave a snort. "Wives these days, so precious. Dom, I'm not saying this to hurt you, but a man has to have a backbone. You keep the money in your own hands, or one day some woman runs off with all of it." Dominic sat nearby peeling an orange, chiming right in. "Mom's right. Joan, go make dinner already. It's not often she comes over." Joan carried in the wilted, leftover greens she'd picked out at the market, bought with the last dozen or so dollars in her pocket. She said nothing and walked into the kitchen. In the kitchen, she washed the vegetables on autopilot while the laughing and talking outside kept drifting in, needling at her. "Dom, why's your study locked? I want to grab a book to read." That was Molly. "Oh, Joan probably locked it. The key's in the drawer, help yourself." Dominic, not caring in the least. Joan's hands froze. The study held every secret she had: the ledger, the design drafts, and that thing she'd just printed out. She didn't stop to dry her hands, just rushed out of the kitchen. "Don't go in the study!" Too late. There was a click, and Molly had already twisted the lock open. A few minutes later Molly came running out with a thick stack of drafts and a handful of bank withdrawal slips, shrieking like she'd discovered a whole new world. "Dom! Mom! Come look at this! I told you she was hiding private savings! Look what this is!" Dominic snatched the drafts and slips out of her hands. The drafts were polished commercial poster designs, signed "Ran" in the bottom right corner. The withdrawal slips showed the same few deposits coming in every month; not large amounts, but they added up, tens of thousands over time. The worst part was the ledger. Every single expense recorded in cramped rows: March 5, groceries, $20 (Mother-in-law didn't give money, paid it myself). April 12, Dominic's cold medicine, $35 (Mother-in-law refused to give money, paid it myself). May 1, mother-in-law's birthday gift, $1,000 (from freelance work). Dominic looked at all of it, his face shifting from shock to anger and finally to the ugly fury of a man caught out. It felt like a direct assault on his authority. So this woman had been doing all this behind his back the whole time? She had money and still cried poor to him? "Well, well, Joan." Dominic hurled the design drafts hard into her face, the sharp edge of the paper slicing across her cheek and leaving a red mark. "Aren't you something. Crying poor to my mom and begging for money, while you're out taking freelance jobs building your own little slush fund? All these years you've eaten my food and lived under my roof, and every dollar you saved went to prop up your own family, didn't it? Huh?" The instant Bernice heard "private savings," she sprang up off the couch, jabbing a finger at Joan. "I knew it, an ungrateful stray you can never raise right! Dom, you can't keep a woman like this! Get all the money back!" Joan stood there, looking at the design drafts scattered across the floor, the work of countless days and nights, now trampled like garbage. All at once she didn't want to explain. Three years. What good had explaining ever done? She looked at Dominic's twisted face and felt, for the first time, how much of a stranger this man was, how ugly. "Dominic," Joan said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was strangely clear. "That money, I earned it myself. The fifty thousand you handed over is all in your mother's hands. I haven't spent a single cent of yours in this house." "Bullshit!" Dominic roared. "Without me supporting you, you think you'd have the time to draw this stuff? Without the place I provide, you think you'd have anywhere to live? Everything you have, I gave you! Now transfer every last dollar in your account to me, or don't blame me for what comes next!"

After that day, Joan didn't go back to that house. A week later, Dominic was in a meeting at the office when the front desk called up to say someone was there for him. He went down and saw Joan sitting on the lobby couch beside a man in a suit. She had on light makeup and a neat business outfit—clothes from before the marriage, a little worn, but on her they made her look sharp and capable, none of the meek, cringing woman she'd been at home. "What are you doing here? And who's this—some man off the street?" Dominic walked over, frowning, and dropped his voice to a hiss. "Have you got no shame? Come home with me, now." The man in the suit stood and handed him a business card. "Mr. Fox, good to meet you. I'm Ms. Swanson's attorney. My name is Chavez." "An attorney?" Dominic blinked, then turned to Joan. "What is this? You want a divorce?" "Yes. A divorce." Joan looked him straight in the eyes, not a ripple in her expression. "The agreement's already drawn up. You sign it, and we part on good terms." Dominic went off like a cat with its tail stepped on. In front of everyone, his voice shot up. "Divorce? In your dreams. Joan, let me tell you—you want a divorce, fine, but you cough up every cent you skimmed off me first. And that money from your little side jobs? That's marital property too. All of it, hand it over." Nearby colleagues and passersby turned to look, whispering and pointing. Seeing that, Dominic got louder still—as if the louder he was, the more the truth was on his side. He blocked Joan's way and shouted her down, past all reason. "You be the judge, everybody! I turn over my whole fifty-thousand paycheck, and this woman won't work, won't cook, and secretly stashes away her own private savings to send back to her family. Now that I've caught her, she wants a divorce and half the assets. A viper like this—who'd want her?" The filth poured out of him like dirty water flung at her. The angrier he got, the worse it came, until he reached out to grab her bag. "Hand over your card! That's my money!" Faced with his tantrum, Joan finally stopped staying quiet. She didn't shrink back the way she used to, and she didn't scream back at him either. She just took one step back, out of reach of his hand, then turned her head and gave a small nod to Lawyer Chavez beside her. "Go ahead." Lawyer Chavez drew a document from his briefcase and, with no wasted words, held it straight out to Dominic. "Mr. Fox, I'd suggest reading this before you say anything more." Dominic snorted and snatched it away. "What garbage is this? Who're you trying to scare?" He flipped carelessly to the first page, still muttering curses. But when his eyes landed on the few lines of text, and on the long string of bank statements and property search results attached behind them, his pupils blew wide and the cursing cut off dead. His hands began to shake, his face draining from flushed red to bloodless white. His head snapped up toward Joan, his lips trembling, and not a single word came out.