Katie Kitamura - A Separation

And it was now no different with Maria. It was only her desire for more—of him, I think—that had led her to seek me out, she wanted to know everything about him, no detail could be too mundane, even if the source from which she acquired this information was inherently troubling. She was willing to pay the price for that information. But at the same time, her desire was fragile, too specific, she did not want to know anything that might disrupt the fantasy she had created in her head. She began asking questions, very basic ones, where had Christopher grown up, did he have siblings, did he like animals, dogs, for example, did he like dogs, he was always carrying books, did he really enjoy reading so much?

Her questions were careful to exclude the life we had together—she never asked, for example, how we had met, where we lived, or if we had children, that was a dead zone as far as she was concerned—the entire exercise had been devised in order to allow her to elaborate on the image she already had of Christopher. Toward whom she appeared to feel no anger, despite the fact that he had upset her, reduced her to tears. I became more and more convinced that nothing concrete had taken place between them, she seemed to me more like a love-struck teenager than a scorned lover, a teenager was very nearly what she was.

But of course, it is possible to be both. We finished our dishes—although she did much of the talking, often talking over my responses to the very questions she was so keen to ask, she had eaten her steak with impressive rapidity, I was much slower to eat my plate of pasta. My answers were not especially illuminating, I was reluctant to say anything that might hurt her, she was a child after all. And although what she wanted was information about Christopher, the more I assented to her demand, the greater the reality of our marriage, the more painful the evidence of its history.

At one point she stayed her barrage of questions in order to say, with a nod at my plate, The pasta is not good here, you should have ordered something simple, they try to cook in the Italian way but it is not their strength, they don’t do it well. I nodded, she spoke in an admonishing tone of voice, doing so appeared to give her some small pleasure, I didn’t think it worth saying that I would have thought a salad and a plate of pasta were simple enough, as she was obviously correct and had managed to eat much better than I had, although, I couldn’t help but notice, at far greater expense.

I stood up without asking if she would like coffee or a dessert. It was childish but I had taken umbrage, it was something about the peremptory manner in which she had criticized my order—advice that came too late, her words would have been more useful at the outset, when we had been ordering our food for example. Of course, I knew even then that it wasn’t her order or the meal that I was going to pay for. This was all just a cipher for another infraction, whether she had intended to or not she had flaunted what was, at the very least, a flirtation between her and my husband, and she had done it as though I had no right to feel in any way nonplussed.

Perhaps from her perspective I did not, if I couldn’t keep my husband, that was my own fault, or some such logic. Or, more likely, the notion of my discomfort simply hadn’t occurred to her, she did not strike me as the most empathetic of women and she was still young, she lacked a certain kind of imagination. That would eventually be forced upon her. She sat and stared at me a moment, as if surprised that I hadn’t suggested coffee or a dessert. However, I was stubborn, I did not intend to feed this woman any longer, there was a brief standoff and then she relented and stood up.

As she accompanied me through the lobby, I asked, and I don’t know now where I found the nerve to pose such a direct and essentially ill-mannered question, So did you sleep with him or not?

I suppose I asked because I was certain that she would say no, not out of any instinct for denial, because for all her insensitivities she struck me as an honest woman, honest to a fault, but because it now seemed clear to me that, after all, nothing of substance had taken place between them. Once she denied the charge, I would simply apologize for the question, anyway I was a foreigner, capable of speaking all forms of rude madness.

But she did not deny it. Instead she blushed, her entire face changing shade. At first I thought it was her modesty, the question was abrupt and none too subtle, perhaps she was affronted, it was more evidence of my erratic personality, Christopher might have complained of it, it was not surprising that he was running away from his hysterical and irrational wife—but then, why would Christopher have mentioned me at all? She was still flushed when she spoke, but her voice and manner were very calm, her high color was the only giveaway, the only indication that something was wrong.

Yes. Of course, I knew he was married, she said, her color deepening further as she said the words, which she must have known were damning. I saw the ring, as he was checking in.

For a moment, I was too stunned to reply. I felt a wave of unexpected anger that was without clear object—I could hardly blame this girl, or even Christopher, they were perfectly within their rights to do as they wished. Still, I found it difficult to look at the girl, I swallowed and averted my gaze.

You saw his ring?

Of course Christopher would have slept with this girl, I should have known this all along. The fact that he was wearing his wedding ring was more surprising, I thought, the idea that Christopher would have dug out his ring and taken to wearing it, just as the marriage itself was irrevocably collapsing, was almost unbelievable. But Maria interpreted the inflection in my voice to be accusatory, she blushed again, even deeper, but continued in her calm, measured voice, I saw his ring, yes, I saw it.

The questions that should have followed, that she might reasonably have expected—questions as to the how and the when, the how many times, not to mention either anger or jealousy or most probably both, a coherent response to the news of your husband’s adultery—did not come. Instead, as we stood in the lobby, I continued to ask her about the ring, as if in order to not ask about the sex she’d had with Christopher, my husband, what kind of a ring had he been wearing, did she notice?

She shrugged and looked uncomfortable.

Silver, very plain.

Was it thin? Or thick?

Not too thick. Perhaps—

She indicated a width of about half a centimeter. It was hardly decisive but it sounded like Christopher’s wedding ring, or at least it didn’t not sound like it. There might have been a perfectly logical, practical reason for which Christopher had put on the simple platinum ring. He might have put it on in the way that single women sometimes wore a ring in order to give the impression of unavailability, so that they might avoid unwanted attention and harassment, the flash of metal on the finger was often enough to dissuade even an arduous admirer.

Of course, unavailability served a different purpose for a man, or at least a man like Christopher. For him, perhaps, the ring served to give him a longer leash, it was more difficult to make demands of a married man, however far things went, he could always say, You knew from the start that I was married, you knew what you were getting into, it was plain as the ring on my finger. Perhaps each time he set out to roam—and I knew there had been plenty such times, over the course of our short marriage—he had dug out his wedding ring, in order to feel more free. From the drawer in his desk, or from the leather case in which he kept his watches and billfold clips, I realized then that I didn’t even know where he kept his ring.