Just looking at her one could tell that she held an air of superiority. She was one of those elitists who thought so highly of herself, but when looked at closely was just a little child crying for help. She was a sorrowful sight indeed for she could never please her husband like his mistress could please him. To put it in the simplest terms, she was a masquerader who put on façade for society.

Every morning she would wake up and put on the mask that she created for the world. She would pretend that her husband wasn’t cheating on her and that her so called perfect little family had the greenest lawn in the neighborhood and the white picket fence. Sometimes she wished that she could take off the mask every once in awhile, but that was not possible because she had to uphold the image that her so called upper family had created for her.

She often sat in her white picket fenced house and thought about running away and leaving her husband and children behind, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave her family behind, even though they so often overlooked her. Even if she did work up enough guts and courage to run away, where would she run to? She had no place to go. If she ran away to her parents’ house, they would just tell her to go back to her husband because she had a responsibility to her husband and children.

She headed out to the shopping district of town. While biding her time outside of a jewelry store, she saw a couple bickering. The woman, suddenly slapped the man and shouted, “I’m tired of all your lies and your good for nothing promises. I’m through, find yourself a new wife,” and stormed off. She envied the woman, would she ever have enough audacity to yell at her husband like that or enough nerve to slap him for making her endure this humiliation of his mistress? She went into the jewelry store and in a short time, came out and headed home to her family.

Later that day in the evening, she was sitting in the living room with her husband. He was reading a newspaper. She went over to him and handed him a box that held a present for him inside. She explained that she went shopping and bought him a present to show him how much she loved him. He opened the box to find very expensive gold cuff links. He would never know how much she spent on them. Even though she was from a wealthy family, she spent a great deal of her own personal money on them.

He sat them down and she asked, “Do you like them?”

He replied with an annoyed tone, “They are fine. Now go. Leave me be; I am trying to read the newspaper.” She got so angered and frustrated, her face got red and she opened her mouth to say something but he said, “Do you have something to say, my dear?”

She just sat down on a chair near him and replied, “No, sorry for interrupting you while you were reading, dear.” Her daughter stared at her poor mother through a crack in the door. She thought her mother was a weak and puny woman who couldn’t even talk to her papa.

As a little time passed by, the woman’s husband got up and went to get his jacket. He told her not to wait up for him tonight because he had business plans to attend to that evening. Her husband left and she just watched him leave, knowing that he wasn’t going out for business but was going to see his mistress. She picked up his new cuff links and took them up to their bedroom where she would spend another lonely night by herself.