Free My Only Wife by Jac Jemc

functioning.
    My wife wept in the attic that afternoon, in love and overwhelmed.
    I played old scratchy big band and jazz records on the phonograph.
    I clicked the typewriter keys.
    I found a garden of old music boxes beneath one of the eaves and wound them all to play in a little cacophonous symphony of intricate cylinders.
    My wife choked out love letters filtered through her bleary eyes, tripping over words with anxious speed:
    A Very Valentine for my Gertrude ,
    Thanks for the freedoms that hide beneath our limits. Thanks to mighty age that lets us feel secure in our knowledge. May our parents open their eyes one morning to new knowledge, and tell us to love with all our hearts despite the silly dreams they hold in their heads. May they find new language to say what separates them from us: the first hand from the presumptuous hindsight of practicality .
    You have placed your finger on my pulse. My heart is beating for the pressure of your touch alone now .
    Can you imagine a day when our words no longer are a sign of our separation, but more so our reunion? A compensation for all that has been lost in this time when we live under roofs that bear down, rather than lift high?
    Almost everything is yet to be said,
Mason
    My wife looked rapidly between the letter and me, in disbelief, waved the letter around as if it were proof of some argument she was making. “This entire box is like this. There are no letters from Gertrude, but there are boxes of letters from other people, too.”
    My wife opened another box, began to rifle through them. “But all of them are addressed to this house. This is incredible.”
    I unfolded ancient easels, set old pastoral oil paintings on them, probably once rotated from their spaces on the walls.
    I found hope chests of yellowing old table and bed linens and constructed togas and gowns by folding and draping them on old dress-forms.
    My wife, new tears streaming down her face, walked over to me, held a new letter tightly in her hands:
    Henry! Oh! Henry!
    I snorted. My wife shot me a look.
    In this world, I choose you. I choose red wine stained teeth on an ordinary, unknowing face. Oh! How I laughed the other evening as we drank and your mouth grew a heavy purple lining. (Don’t think me unladylike!) I wanted to kiss it from your plump, wet inner lips. I wanted to absorb your color .
    I am eager to drunken you myself .
    (Am I being obscene? I am frightened to record these feelings for myself, let alone share them with you. Ignore this! No! I regret none of it!)
    With the modesty of my signature ,
J
    My wife and I were both laughing now, with the glee of the innocence of the letter. I wrapped her in my arms. One music box was playing on. The clock chimed midnight. We tucked antiques back into their places and headed downstairs.
    My wife was giddy, “What if we left behind an attic like that? What if we became such artifacts? Something for people to find and fall all over themselves with? To hold high in the air and wave around like it was proof of their eternal arguments? What if our desire was chronicled for someone to fall in love with someday?”
    “Do we love like that?” I asked. It was a gut reaction. “Does anyone love like that anymore?”
    She looked hurt. “Of course! We do especially.”
    I looked at my wife, changed the subject. “Well, your tapes are that, aren’t they? Not the story of our love, but a massive amount of other people’s stories that you’ve taken in, that you’ve preserved. Don’t you think someone will delight in finding all of those someday?”
    My wife had noticed how I avoided the topic of our love. She graciously galloped ahead, “Those aren’t for the future, though. Those are for the past.” She was thoughtful for a moment. She was always denying me my theories. “We’ll figure something out. Now, I’m going to use up an absurd amount of water to take a bath in that massive tub off the bedroom.”
    She refused to make the connection,