'The Honourable Husband’ by Dean O. Arutoghor

Every little thing her husband did these days irritated the heck out of Maria. From the way he chomped on his food like some starved feral whilst talking loudly at the dining table to the way he picked his nose when he thought she wasn’t looking…also at the dining table…Oh, that wasn’t even the half of it. There was the sneezing without bothering to catch it, the incessant bored yawns, picking fights over petty issues, farting in bed and not apologising, skid marks in the toilet bowl and leaving toenail clippings littered around the sitting room floor.

It pained her that someone she had pledged her life to and bore three beautiful sprogs for would have such disregard for her feelings. He had known from the very day they met that she abhorred those kinds of boorish behaviours in a man and yet here he was almost as if he was revelling in them. Her dad, may God rest his soul, was a pig at the dining table and Maria, who he seemed to go out of his way to make cringe in front of her friends, had sworn that when she grew up she would marry the complete opposite of her father…if she ever got married.

The only good thing was that Maria’s husband of twenty years was not showing her up in public...yet. Andy was still somehow able to comport himself like a gentleman whenever they were out at church, a party or some other function. In fact, not only was he well-mannered on those occasions, he was overly attentive and caring to the extent that she would have to whisper to him to take it down a notch or two. She loved the attention and all that, which by way the other ladies bemoaned that they were not getting from their better halves, it was just that when it was that full-on, she could tell it was making the other guests feel uneasy.

Without fail though, the second they got back home and shut the door to the world, Andy would blank her like some stranger on the street and go Neanderthal again. Almost like clockwork, and even though lately she knew to anticipate it, his switch in behaviour still unsettled her every single time it happened. Baffling. It was so unlike him.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ Maria had asked him one time, thinking perhaps he was starting to slip into depression because of the mounting pressure he was facing at work.

‘I am fine, darling,’ he had reassured her and shown such little interest in continuing with the conversation that Maria, against her better judgement, decided to drop the matter for the time being. She chose to keep an eye on him instead. You hear of men of Andy’s age committing suicide out of the blue but then when their partners reflect on what went wrong, they say there were signs that things weren’t quite right and they wished they had intervened earlier. Maria didn’t want to have those regrets. Despite his behaviour, she somehow still loved her husband dearly.

‘Is this some kind of twisted midlife crisis, Andy,’ Maria half-jokingly asked one evening at the dining table about a month later. Even though that question had been twirling in her mind for a while, her query that night was more to stop herself from screaming at her husband for belching for the fifth time in under four minutes. Yes, she kept count.

‘No,’ he smiled and then returned to chewing with his mouth open. Maria waited for him to expatiate but nothing.

‘You know, I didn’t think I would ever hear myself saying this but if this is some kind of midlife crisis you are having, I would rather you go chase some skirt than keep behaving like this…’

‘Like how?’ Andy suddenly stopped eating and looked at her. He sounded genuinely offended.

‘You know…’ She gestured at the mess around his mouth, beard and plate.

‘No, I don’t.’ He sounded unusually combative so Maria decided to drop the matter. Again, against her better judgement.

One morning the following week, Maria was brushing her teeth when she suddenly spat out a mouthful of slimy water mixed with toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror.

‘Oh my God. Andy is having an affair! She immediately covered her mouth and hoped no one had overheard her say that out loud.

That would explain a lot. Her husband had stopped caring about her feelings. Check. Bought some new and smarter clothes lately. Check. Started going to the gym. Check. Doing everything to make himself look unattractive to her probably so he wouldn’t have sex with her and instead save his stamina for the whore he was screwing. Check.

Maria slapped herself for not seeing it earlier. Of course he was having an affair. All the signs are/were there. How could she have been so blinded to them? After some reflection though, she gave herself some slack. Come on now, how could you have suspected that earlier, Maria. This is a God-fearing man who never misses church, has been by your side through thick and thin and had given you zero reason prior to that to doubt his loyalty to you.

So, she went searching for any evidence she could lay her hands or eyes on. Text messages from or to his lover, missed calls from unknown numbers, receipts for expensive jewellery, mentioning any of his female colleagues too often in conversations, staying late for work, email confirmation for hotel bookings out of town, condoms in his wallet or at the bottom of his work rucksack. To her abject disappointment, nothing turned up. Not one shred of evidence. He was as clean as a whistle. Not a whiff of wrongdoing. ‘Doesn’t make sense,’ she mumbled to herself again and again.

Then the guilt set in. To have suspected her poor husband of cheating was low. He didn’t deserve that. Even though she had not accused him to his face or even hinted to him that she was suspicious, it didn’t stop her from feeling rotten nonetheless. At church the next Sunday, she held onto his hand tightly as she quietly prayed for forgiveness.

Six months later and with no improvement in Andy’s behaviour, in fact, it got worse, Maria eventually decided to throw in the towel. She patted herself on the back for enduring his ways for another year. Mere mortals would have walked out on such a man ages ago. That didn’t lessen the feeling of shame and failure she carried with her though for joining the ranks of her friends with failed marriages. Something that would have sounded ludicrous to her a year ago. But hey, there she was, begrudgingly single but with time to work on her mental wellbeing.

Andy, on the other hand, wept and prayed fervently for forgiveness for screwing up his marriage. Then two months later when he had managed to convince himself that he heard God’s faint voice granting him absolution and also giving him permission, he made his long-awaited move on big-bosomed Bridgette from church. Of course he was going to do the decent thing and marry her first before having all the sex he had been dreaming of having with her for over a year now. Anything else would be very unchristian, wouldn’t it?

END