Read Online My Only Wife by Jac Jemc - Free Book Online Page A

had asked her, a simple question that likely could have been answered with a word or a sentence, and I’d also recall how I had never received a response. In the beginning I thought it was possible that I had a terrible memory, but I would tend to ask a similar question again, only to find myself seated at my desk the next day, not remembering the answer.
    It was like some conversational sleight of hand. I excused the disappearance of the quarter I thought I was supposed to be following with my eyes in favor of the bunny rabbit she produced from her hat. Only when the bunny was no longer visible did I sit back and wonder where that quarter had gone.
    That night I arrived home overwhelmed by this feeling of isolation, of obsession, of a certain sort of deception I couldn’t identify. I decided I would tell her how I felt. I would tell her I didn’t think I could do what we promised to, that I was wrong and I wouldn’t be able to live the rest of my life with her. I loved her, but I was too constantly disoriented.
    When I turned the key in that lock, I saw her seated at the dining room table, beaming at me. There was a pizza, plates and eight little pots of paint and a half dozen plain clear wine glasses. There were two cups of water, some mixing trays, fine-tipped brushes. I paused at the door. I must have looked pale. “I thought we could paint ourselves wineglasses.” She stared at me expectantly.
    I was going to accuse her of not loving me and trusting me, and there she sat with pizza and paint, ready to feed me and make something that could last for all of our life together.
    This woman was nowhere near ending our relationship. She believed this was only the beginning. And so, looking at her flip open that pizza box at the table as I shrugged off my jacket and set down my bag, I didn’t say a single thing I’d planned to say. My usual cowardly self decided I was too tired that night to try and convince a woman that we didn’t belong together, that what she thought was the beginning was actually a well-disguised end.
    Instead I smiled back at her and sat down at the table as she put the largest slice of pizza on my plate and then helped herself to the smallest.
    I thought I still needed to stand up to something; adrenaline hadn’t stopped pumping through my system. I said to her, “I don’t feel like painting tonight.”
    She looked at me as if I were crazy. She challenged me to turn her down again. She said, “Oh, you’re painting these wine glasses with me. And we’re going to enjoy it.” She said this with a straight face, and then broke into a fit of giggles. I could tell she was serious though, that she had been looking forward to painting these wine glasses and she wasn’t about to let her hopes be dashed.
    “I’m exhausted though. I mean, it’s a lovely thought. You should paint them yourself. We know I’m a terrible artist,” I said, not looking at her, focusing on the last bites of my first crust of pizza.
    I saw her hand reach into the pizza box and pull another piece free. She set it on my plate. Not since I was a child had anyone done this. “That’s precisely the point,” my wife responded. “We can have guests over and let them guess who made which ones and then we can laugh at my pretentious copies of artists, and praise your, at the very least original stick figures and wishy-washes of color. It’s the perfect expression of what art is truly valuable. You’re not derivative, darling. You’re too untalented to even be derivative and that’s all that matters to me and to anyone.” She chuckled to herself as she bit into a slice.
    I was breathing heavily now. I still couldn’t look at her. “Perhaps we could do it another time then. I don’t want to right now.”
    Her response was curt and assured. “Nope. It’ll take all of a half hour and I will do all the clean-up. I’ve been looking forward to this all day. We’re going to paint wine glasses even if you have a terrible