A Separation

by Katie Kitamura

It was only on the shores of infidelity that they achieved a little privacy, a little inner life, it was only in the domain of their faithlessness that they became, once again, strangers to their wives, capable of anything.

I remembered being surprised by the power of the ritual, the ceremonial act of speaking these words, which took on a deep and almost maniac significance. It suddenly made sense that these words—I do—would be paired with the archaic and unreasonable phrase until death do us part, which was morbid and apparently out of place in what was meant to be a joyful occasion, but which nonetheless served a clear purpose: to remind the participants of the crazed wager they were making in this act, this act being marriage.

As I continued observing her, I could see that although she was not pretty—her features were too heavy to be described in such conventional terms, they were very expressive, which was generally not considered appealing in a woman’s face (hence the mania for treatments like Botox, for face creams that promised to freeze the features into youthful immobility; it was more than the mere pursuit of youth, it arose out of a universal aversion to a woman’s propensity to be excessive, to be too much)—she was alluring, undoubtedly so.

People were capable of living their lives in a state of permanent disappointment, there were plenty of people who did not marry the person they hoped to marry, much less live the life they hoped to live, other people invented new dreams to replace the old ones, finding fresh reasons for discontent.

Charm is not universal, desire is too often unreciprocated, it gathers and pools in the wrong places, slowly becoming toxic.

Imagination, after all, costs nothing, it’s the living that is the harder part.

But the love of a wife has to be earned, to be won in the first place and then kept.

The emulation became the thing itself, in the end there was not that much difference between the grief of a wife and the grief of an ex-wife—perhaps wife and husband and marriage itself are only words that conceal much more unstable realities, more turbulent than can be contained in a handful of syllables, or any amount of writing.