The Husband's Secret(30)

            Father Joe was only thirty and not an unattractive man. What made a man in this day and age choose the priesthood? Choose celibacy?

            So back to sex. Sorry, Sister Ursula.

            She first remembered noticing that there was a problem with their sex life last Christmas. She and John-Paul didn’t seem to be going to bed at the same time. Either he’d be up late, working or surfing the net, and she’d be asleep before he came to bed, or else he’d suddenly announce he was exhausted and go to bed at nine o’clock. The weeks slipped on by, and every now and then she’d think, Gosh, it’s been a while, and then forget about it.

            Then there was that night back in February when she went out to dinner with some of the Year 4 mums and she’d drunk more than usual because Penny Maroni was driving. Cecilia had felt amorous when she got into bed, but John-Paul had brushed her hand away and mumbled, “Too tired. Leave me alone, you drunken woman.” She’d laughed and fallen asleep, not at all offended. The next time he initiated sex she was going to make a jokey remark, like, “Oh, so now you want it.” But she never got the opportunity. That’s when she started to register the days ticking on by. What was going on?

            She thought it had probably been about six months now, and the more time that passed, the more confused she got. Yet whenever the words started to form in her mouth—Hey, what’s going on, honey?—something stopped her. Sex had never been an issue of contention between them, the way she knew it was between many couples. She didn’t use it as a weapon or a bargaining tool. It was something unspoken and natural and beautiful. She didn’t want to ruin that.

            Maybe she just didn’t want to hear his answer.

            Or, worse, his lack of an answer. Last year John-Paul had taken up rowing. He loved it and came home each Sunday raving about how much he enjoyed it. But then he’d unexpectedly, inexplicably quit the team. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he’d said when she kept asking, desperate for a reason. “Give it a rest.”

            John-Paul could be so odd at times.

            She hurried over the thought. Besides, she was pretty sure all men were odd at times.

            Also, six months wasn’t actually that long, was it? Not for a married middle-aged couple. Penny Maroni said they did it once a year if they were lucky.

            Recently, though, Cecilia had felt like a teenage boy, thinking constantly about sex, mildly pornographic images flitting across her mind as she stood at the checkout, standing with the other parents watching the kids play sports and thinking of a hotel in Canberra where John-Paul had tied her wrists together with the blue plastic band the physical therapist had given her for her ankle exercises.

            They left the blue band in the hotel room.

            Cecilia’s ankle still clicked when she turned it a certain way.

            How did Father Joe cope? She was a forty-two-year-old woman, an exhausted mother of three daughters, with menopause right there on the horizon, and she was desperate for sex, so surely Father Joe Mackenzie, a fit young man who got plenty of sleep, found it difficult.

            Did he masturbate? Were Catholic priests allowed, or was that considered not within the spirit of the whole celibacy thing?

            Wait, wasn’t masturbation a sin for everyone? This was something her non-Catholic friends would expect her to know. They seemed to think she was a walking Bible.

            When truth be told, if she ever had time to think about it, she wasn’t sure if she was even that enthusiastic a fan of God anymore. He seemed to have dropped the ball a long time ago. Appalling things happened to children, across the world, every single day. It was inexcusable.

            Little Spider-Man.

            She closed her eyes, blinked the image away.