Celestamine and Infidelity

No rest for the wicked, as they say. Breathing or not, I have to work on an article that needs to be sent by 5 p.m. today, do or die. It's been over due for a month, so I've no excuse to dawdle any longer. Here's an excerpt.

For 45 years, they had been living in an marble-laden house, decorated with ivory elephants from India, Murano vases from Italy and brightly plumed spears from Africa. Bougainvilla trailed down their garden walls, where the wife grew sunflowers and the husband kept pots of meticulously trimmed bonsai. They didn’t like to show off their wealth, but it was obvious that their thriving printing press business had allowed them many luxuries – three Mercedes Benzes, several Pajeros and yearly trips around the world for the wife. Though their children had long since grown up and flown the coop, this old couple had wowed their friends with their seeming adoration for each other. Whenever they were out in public, they'd held hands, called each other such cutesy nicknames as “papa bear” and “mommy girl”. Whenever younger couples would see them, they’d sigh and think, I hope we’ll be like that someday.

But inside that beautiful house, separated by thick walls and individual beds, it was a completely different story.

The wife, Patricia*, tells us that they had stopped sleeping in the same room 15 years ago. “After Larry’s* back surgery in 1995,” she says, “we stopped sleeping together. I thought that was what he wanted, since he seemed to have lost interest in sex, and he could barely walk anymore.”

Little did she know that he had been conducting affairs with some of his employees behind her back. “I had been hearing rumors,” she continued, “about how he was going out with this secretary, or meeting in posh hotels with that assistant, but I didn’t listen to them. He said he’d changed. I wanted to believe him.”

In their 50+ years together as husband and wife, Larry cheated on her, frequently, but she always forgave him. “It wasn’t always like this,” she says, “when we were newly married, he worshipped the ground I walked on. I was sure then that he really loved me.”

It is not difficult to believe Patricia when she says that she was much sought-after in her day. Even at 75, she is still very beautiful – a chinese mestiza with porcelain skin, eyes the color of almonds, and lithe, graceful limbs. When they met, Larry was a struggling news reporter for their local broadsheet. He had led a rather hard life: at 17, he watched Japanese soldiers shoot and bayonet his parents, then he fled to the mountains with his brother and sister, where they’d had to survive on kamote, tree bark and wild deer. This early abandonment and succeeding hardship, Patricia believes, is what shaped her husband’s character, for better and for worse.

“Even though I had many other suitors – doctors, lawyers, businessmen – I chose him. I invested in him when he was nothing, because I believed he had the drive and ambition to succeed in life. I was right about that, yes, but if I had known that he would disrespect me like this in our old age, I would have never agreed to marry him.”

It’s really quite simple: most men cheat because they seek attention. In our macho culture, men are commended for having as many mistresses as possible, while women who do the same are labeled as sluts or whores. Larry’s behavior is classic, or at least unsurprising: having been denied love during the formative years of his youth, he continues to seek it with other women, even at the cost of ruining his relationship with Patricia.

“I’ve begged him to seek counselling, that we talk to a marriage counsellor, but he’s too bull-headed, he has too much pride. He’s afraid of looking weak to his employees and his friends.”

Patricia admits that she’s been turning a blind eye all these years, mostly because of her husband’s generosity. She gets everything she asks for – cars, trips abroad, diamonds, pearls – but at what cost? It has been a long 50 years, she says, and the happy façade they try so desperately to maintain is collapsing. It had become impossible for them to talk without getting into an argument, and she could barely look at her husband without feeling utter contempt for him, and for herself. Finally, two years ago, after catching Larry red-handed with one of their maids, she put her foot down.

“I put all his things outside – his golf clubs, his clothes, his Rolexes – and told him in no uncertain terms that he had to leave, because we could no longer live together as husband and wife.”

As can be expected, he pleaded for her forgiveness, promised that he would change, that he would never do it again. Yet after half a decade of enduring such abuse, Patricia knew better.

“I may be old, but that doesn’t mean I’m dead,” she says, “God knows what is right and what is wrong, and in the final analysis, he will punish those who deserve to be punished, and reward the just in His good time.”

*Names and some details have been changed to protect these people's identities.