Tales of a Vagabond Soul by peter d. capen

Author:peter d. capen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

The Affair

Even passion is not enough to nurture a relationship, as you can be familiar with the body but fail to know the person .

P.D. Capen

I t had been raining off and on since yesterday from the line of storms that rolled in off the Pacific. His wife Janice was in the library alcove curled up in the easy chair surrounded by bookcases crammed to overflowing with her husband’s books. A throw blanket covered her legs, as she sat skimming down through the recent ‘postings’ on her smart phone. Jonathon was still in bed, reluctant to leave the soothing warmth of the down comforter under which he nestled. After a while, though, he could procrastinate no longer and threw the comforter aside and eased out of bed. Stopping briefly at the bathroom to relieve himself and splash water on his face, he felt more or less ready to face the day. Ahead of him was the dreaded stack of student essays to read and grade and lessons to prepare before his weekly classes resumed tomorrow at the college. It was another lazy Sunday morning. Jonathon paused at the bathroom door, gazing at his wife of twelve years, who was so absorbed by the messages on Facebook that she was oblivious to her husband looking at her. After a few moments had passed of being ignored, Jonathon let out a deep sigh and shuffled off to his office to read and grade several papers before sitting down to breakfast with his wife.

Despite being together and sleeping in the same bed, the husband and wife had over the years become all but strangers to one another, keeping secrets from each other and following their separate routines. Moreover, unlike in the past, the husband and wife’s conversations had become increasingly short and shallow at best, mostly consisting of polite platitudes to one another. Jonathon had his teaching duties at the college and Janice her demanding job at the stock brokerage where she worked, earning far more than her husband did teaching. So they had little of mutual interest to talk about. Perhaps it might have been different had the two of them produced progeny, but they didn’t, even though Janice had desired to have a child, at least one, in their first years of marriage. But with the passage of time and the arrival of a child becoming ever more a remote possibility, the couple’s physical intimacy decreased and eventually fizzled out altogether. It was not so much that Jonathon wanted not to be a father, but he didn’t want that to be his defining contribution to the marriage. It had often seemed to him that Janice was more interested in what her husband afforded below the waist than what he offered above the neck. And while Jonathan still loved his wife and longed for renewed physical intimacy with her, Janice no longer had any interest or need of a passionate embrace with him. Moreover, since Jonathon abhorred the idea of seeming to ask his wife for a ‘favor,’ the two had become familiar strangers for each other over time.

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