Free Face/Mask by Gabriel Boutros Page A

intimacy, after the initial excitement of starting a new job his days had settled into the same drudgery as his previous position. Except that now he was responsible for the mistakes of others as well as his own.
    At the same time, as much as he loved his three boys, he was never entirely comfortable around children. He’d wanted so much to be a part of their early years; it was part of the image he had of what a father should be. However his awkwardness and impatience around them soon convinced him that he should do as little hands-on parenting as possible. The result was that he spent little time with his family, and was either grumpy or taciturn on those occasions when he had no choice.
    Yet Terry was certain that his greatest source of displeasure came from being married to her.    When she looked at herself in the mirror she tried to see herself through his eyes. At age forty-five she worried that her beauty had started to fade, even if her large, blue-grey eyes still sparkled like a teenager’s. Maybe Allen had grown bored with her; maybe the weight she’d kept on her petite frame after the birth of Francis turned him off; maybe it was because she wasn’t as exciting in bed as he would have liked. The reasons were never made clear to her, but she had no doubt of their existence.
    Whenever she’d tried to broach the subject with him, asking if there was something she could do to make him happier, he told her everything was fine. Once she’d vented her own feelings of helplessness, tearfully accusing him of not loving her anymore. He told her she was crazy, that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course he’d continued flicking through news reports on his P-screen while he said this, making no attempt to take her in his arms and console her the way he used to.
    Despite the obvious thaw in his ardour for her, Terry continued to love her husband as she had when they’d first begun dating. She knew he considered her a romantic school-girl for her frequent displays of affection, although that too had not bothered him in the early years.
    So she lived in a perpetual state of hopeful uncertainty. She looked forward to his coming home from work, so that he could tell her how his day went, and she could give him the details about her time with their children. Yet, when he went up to bed early and alone each night she felt a sense of relief that she would no longer have to bear the look of disappointment which had taken up permanent residence in his eyes.
    She didn’t know if he cheated on her, although if truth be told he was a barely competent lover, so the idea of his having an affair was totally out of character. As far as she could tell, he hardly drank and she had no idea where he could go to gamble if he ever had a mind to.
    There were times when she wished he would take up some of these vices, if only to have something in his life which truly made him happy. Maybe if he found some release from a life which so obviously bored him he would share a bit of his happiness with her.
    And if not with her, then with his sons. When she sat with them at meal-times she was often overwhelmed with her love for them. While the world around them slipped closer to disaster, the one thing she wished for them was a father who was happy just to be with them, as she was. But her husband showed little more joy being in their company than he did being in hers and that knowledge broke her heart.
    She wondered how long they could continue in their silent misery.
     
    June 9, 2039:
     
    Thursday night. For an hour or two each week, Janus would leave his life behind and slip into Sahar’s arms.    
    She sat on the old armchair to the left of her bed. A small table next to the chair held an ornate metal tray with two small coffee cups and a stainless steel kettle. She was using one of the cups, empty except for the thick dregs at its bottom, as an ashtray. Her ankles were crossed and her hands placed in her lap in a pose that