:: Sojourn ::

She has such a potential for beauty. You can't help but to notice it―the pert, nubile body, the sun-bronzed skin, the soft curve of her lips. But her smile―it doesn't quite reach her eyes. It's trained and exacting, functional and purposeful, and it's operated by a switch. She throws it on, and it hits you with the fluorescent dazzle of insincerity.

She's a well-packaged social product―the big brands, the fancy dinners, the expensive watches, the Moët & Chandon, the haute coutre, the chi-chi gossip. Her secret god is materialism. She's the Madonna of modern money, and she drips gleaming and golden in the promise of her image.

I'm blasé towards her; not cold, not unwelcoming, not disdainful, just indifferent. She can be amusing and fun, although her actions are almost always rehearsed. I see no spontaneity in her. She's generous, but not because of absolute kindness; you sense an instinctive need for her to show. She's moneyed but not mannered; intelligent, but not engaging; friendly, but not intimate―a careful, equated social formula.

For most parts she's got a good heart―she's not malicious. But she's disloyal to true compassion, and I'm not drawn to her, so she remains a named stranger that I work together with. We tread around each other, her girlish giggle sultry with promise, and my laughter cagey with vigilance.

But I am drawn to pain. And today she is a story of pain, carrying an air of quiet torment along with her Hermes bag as she quietly snaked into her cubicle. I sensed it almost immediately―it's almost as though her pain had dissipated into the air particles around her, and she cackles with the effort not to break.

'Are you okay?' I asked, after dropping off a bunch of papers at her desk. The photographs of her kids―two beautiful, vibrant girls―grinned cheerfully back at me.

Her eyes were smeared with sleeplessness. I felt a searing shock of recognition―her pupils were dead. They were dilated with empty pain―and they were―are?―mine.

'Remember what I told you―that marriage is a business plan.' She said, her smile a ghost of lip-glossed perfection. 'Well sometimes you realise―too late―that you've made a wrong business decision. That's all,'

'Wrong decisions can be turned around,' I said gently.

She looked down at her hands―her nails are all chewed-down, and her wedding solitaire was missing from her finger―and then at me again. 'What if it was a bad decision?'

I nodded towards the photographs of her girls and their childish crayon drawings―I love u Mummy―and said, 'But you must think of the investment. And the results,'

She shook her head. 'Remember, Jean. It's all a business plan.'

***

But then this morning I woke up to my mother gently asking my father about his pain. I see the patience in her eyes, and I marvel at the limpid faith of love. I don't have her beauty or her wisdom. But I have her―and for her, marriage is not a business plan. It's a poem inscribed with the infinite aeon of love.