Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 27: The Notebook's End

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 27: The Notebook's End · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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What's the first entry of the fourth notebook?
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She said. I thought. Tuesday evening, I said.
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May. She finished something in the workroom.
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I finished something at the kitchen table. We
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stood in a doorway. The city did what the city
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does. She almost smiled. My Playful Wife. Episode
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27. The notebook's end. Written by Mia. The third
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notebook ended on a Tuesday evening in May. I
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wrote the last entry and held the pen over the
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page for a moment afterward, aware that something
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was completing. Not the story. The story was
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ongoing, would go on being ongoing, had no natural
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ending of the kind that stories are supposed
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to have, the kind where a door closes and music
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plays. But this particular telling of it, this
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record, this object, was full. The pages had
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thinned toward the back the way they do, announcing
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the end before I was ready, and now there was
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one line left of room, and I had used it, and
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the third notebook was a finished thing. I sat
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with it a while at the kitchen table. Three notebooks.
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I lined them up in my mind, the way you do with
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a thing you have made across a long stretch of
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your life. The first had been the year itself,
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written hot, written from inside the fire, in
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the worst of it and the slow climb out, the handwriting
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changing across its pages from the cramped tight
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scrawl of a man barely holding on to something
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looser and steadier as the months went. It was
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the hardest to reread, and I rarely did. It had
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the plastic stool nights in it, the things I
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was ashamed of, the whole raw and censored record
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of a man being broken and learning, by hand,
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in ink, who he was going to be about it. The
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second had been the aftermath, written warmer,
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the wetting, the letters, the settling, the long
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exhale of a year that had stopped actively trying
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to kill us. You could feel the temperature drop
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across it, the prose unclenching. A man writing
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from safety about danger that had passed. The
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third had been the one where I finally named
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the subject. Attention. Everything else is just
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the places I practiced. It was the calmest of
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the three, the most deliberate. The writing of
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a man who had stopped bleeding onto the page
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and started thinking on it. A training log. I
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had called it the daily exercise of the one muscle
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that mattered. And now it was full, and I understood
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that I had been, across these three books and
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these nearly two years, doing for myself exactly
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what Saloni did with cloth, and what she taught
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her eight women to do on Saturday mornings, taking
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the unbearable and unholdable stuff of a life,
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and making it into something with edges, something
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you could hold in your two hands and look at,
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and, by looking, survive. The notebooks were
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my collection. Three volumes of the same single
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garment, taken apart and remade three times,
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each time fitting a little better, each time
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truer to the body underneath. Before I went to
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find her, I did a thing I had not planned to
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do. I took the three notebooks into the bedroom
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and opened the drawer of the bedside table on
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my side, where they lived now. All three, the
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archive of the years, and before I set the third
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one down with its brothers, I opened the first
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one. To its first page. I had not read the first
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page in a long time. I avoided it, the way you
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avoid a particular photograph. The first entry
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was dated almost two years before. The handwriting
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was barely mine. cramped, pressed so hard into
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the paper the pen had nearly torn it, the writing
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of a hand that was shaking. I read it. I made
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myself read it. It was the night of the kitchen,
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or near it, the very beginning, and the man who
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had written it was in a place so dark that reading
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his words now, from here, was like hearing a
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voice come up out of a well I had long since
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climbed out of. He did not know, that man, whether
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he would survive. He wrote like someone leaving
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a record in case he didn't. He used words about
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himself and about Saloni that I would not use
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now, that I had not felt in over a year, that
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belonged entirely to the bottom of the well.
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I don't know who I am anymore, he had written.
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I don't know if there's a version of this where
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I'm still a person at the end. I'm writing it
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down so that if I'm not, someone will know I
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tried to be. I sat on the edge of the bed and
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read the words of the drowning man I had been,
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and I did not flinch from them, because flinching
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would have been a way of disowning him, and I
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would not disown him. He had done the hard part.
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He had survived the well, so that I could stand
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at the top of it. Everything I had now, the doorway,
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The hand on the face, the woman singing her mother's
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songs into the next phase of her life, the brother
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and his wife, and the whole improbable durable
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family. All of it had been bought by that shaking
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-handed man at the bottom of the first notebook,
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who wrote so that someone would know he had tried.
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I owed him everything. The least I could do was
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read his words without looking away. I kept going,
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I told him, the way you tell a thing to a younger
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self who cannot hear you. You wanted to know
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if there was a version where you're still a person
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at the end. There is. I'm it. We made it. You
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can put the pen down now. It's all right. We
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made it. I closed the first notebook. I set the
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third one down beside it in the drawer, the two
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of them and the one between. The whole distance
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from the well to here laid out in three books
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and closed the drawer. I found, going back to
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find her, that I was thinking about endings and
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how few real ones there are. Saloni's collections
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did not end either. Distance had concluded nothing.
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It had opened onto the second collection, which
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had opened onto this third, the December one
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taking shape on the rail right now. Each was
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called finished and shown and sold, and then
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immediately became the soil the next one grew
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from. There are no endings in the work that matters.
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There are only the places you decide to stop
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and show what you've made so far before going
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on making. The third notebook was not an ending.
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It was a place I had chosen to stop and look
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at what I had made, and then I would go on. This
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was I had come to think. the deepest thing the
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two of us had in common, deeper than the love
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or rather underneath the love, holding it up,
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that we were both makers of the kind of thing
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that never finishes. Some people make objects
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that complete, a bridge, a meal, a sold house.
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We made the other kind, the kind that is really
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just a practice wearing the temporary costume
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of a product. Her collections were the costume
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her practice wore. My notebooks were the costume
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mine wore. But the actual thing, in both cases,
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was the daily, endless, unfinishable act of paying
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attention and making something out of what you
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saw. You don't finish that. You keep doing it
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until you die, and then, if you are lucky, you
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have left enough of it in the people you loved
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that it goes on coming up in them. The way Celony's
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mother's songs went on coming up in Celony. The
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way, I hoped, something of me would go on surfacing
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in whoever I had managed to pay enough attention
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to. And the fourth notebook, the one I hadn't
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yet bought, would be the costume my practice
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wore next, but worn differently. The first three
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had been about understanding the year backward.
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The fourth would be about living the days forward,
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recording them while they happened instead of
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after, which is a harder and humbler thing. Not
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what does this mean, the old safe backward question,
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but simply this is happening and I am here and
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I am seeing it. To stop converting the present
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into past so that I could understand it and instead
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let the present stay present, unconverted, alive,
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slipping by uncomprehended and beautiful. To
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be there for my own life in real time, which
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was the one thing I had never managed in all
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the comfortable years before the fire, when I
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had been present for almost none of it and had
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understood even less. It is the hardest discipline
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I have ever set myself, and the one I will be
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failing at and attempting again every day until
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I die. But I had three notebooks of practice
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behind me now. I had learned to see the year
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once it was safely over. The fourth notebook
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was where I would try at last to see the day
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while it was still dangerously happening, and
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where I would have to learn the settler thing
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too, which moments to write down and which to
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merely stand inside, too alive to be kept on
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a page. I did not yet know how to tell them apart.
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I would learn it the way I had learned everything
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else this year. Late, by hand, by getting it
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wrong a few times first. The cheap lessons you
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can be told. The real ones you have to be ruined
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by and remade by, and only then do they stay.
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I had been ruined and remade exactly once, comprehensively,
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and it had taught me the only things I actually
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know. I was not eager to be ruined again. But
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I was no longer afraid of it. Either, which is
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its own kind of freedom, perhaps the only kind
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worth having. Not the absence of the catastrophe,
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but the absence of the fear of it. Saloni was
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in the workroom. I could hear her in there, the
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particular sounds of a person mid -process, the
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scissors, the long silences, the occasional muttered
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assessment aimed at herself. She was working
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on the third collection, the one that would show
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in December, its direction still not entirely
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clear to me, though I had seen pieces of its
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surface and submerge. We were each that May evening.
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finishing something at our own end of the flat.
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She in cloth, I in ink. The same work, the same
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two -in -the -morning despair, and the small
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breaking open words, conducted in our separate
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alphabets in our separate rooms, the marriage
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running on two parallel acts of the same making.
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I got up and went to the workroom doorway. I
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had learned by now how to stand in a doorway.
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When to speak and when to simply be a presence
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when a silence was working and when it wanted
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breaking. I read the room. She was at a pause,
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not a depth. I could come in. She looked up.
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Done, she said. She could read it off me. The
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completion, the particular weather a finished
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thing leaves on a face. Third one, I said. She
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nodded. She set down what she was holding, the
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way she does when she's decided a conversation
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deserves both hands. Three notebooks, she said.
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Almost two years. Almost two years. What happens
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now, she said. And it was a real question, asked
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the way she asks the real ones, with her whole
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attention. Not what will you do tonight, but
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what happens now? What does a man do when he
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has finished writing down the thing that nearly
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ended him and has discovered there is no end
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to write toward? I thought about it. I had, in
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fact, been thinking about it for days, feeling
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the third notebook fill, knowing the question
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was coming. I think I write a fourth, I said,
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but differently. How differently? The first three
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were all about understanding it. I said, trying
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to make sense of the year after the fact, looking
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backward and turning it over and trying to get
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it to mean something I could live with. And I
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think, I think I've done that as much as it can
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be done. I understand it about as well as I'm
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going to, which is to say not completely, but
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enough. So the fourth one can't be that. There's
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nothing left to understand backward. I leaned
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against the doorframe. I think the fourth one
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is about living in it. Not understanding it afterward.
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Recording it while it's happening. Just writing
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down what it actually is in the present as it
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goes by. The grain of the ordinary days. Not
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making sense of life. Just attending to it while
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I have it. She looked at me with the expression
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that means she is seeing a thing clearly. That's
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harder, she said. I know. It's much harder. Understanding
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after is safe. The thing's already happened.
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You're just arranging it. Recording while living
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means you have to actually be there for it, every
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day, paying attention in real time, with no,
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no editing, no hindsight, no knowing how it comes
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out. She turned a spool in her fingers. You're
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describing the difference between a memoir and
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a life. The memoir's easier. The life is the
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hard one. I know, I said again. I think that's
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the point. I think Understanding After was training
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for this. You spend three notebooks learning
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to see the year once it's safely over, so that
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eventually you can learn to see the day while
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it's still dangerously happening. The first three
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were practice. The fourth is the actual thing.
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She was quiet a moment, taking the measure of
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it. What's the first entry of the fourth notebook?
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She said. I thought. Tuesday evening, I said.
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May. She finished something in the workroom.
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I finished something at the kitchen table. We
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stood in a doorway. The city did what the city
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does. She almost smiled. That's it? That's the
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whole entry. That's the whole entry, I said.
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That's the new kind. No meaning extracted. Just
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what happened. A woman finished something. A
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man finished something. They stood in a doorway.
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The city did what the city does. The meaning's
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in the noticing, not in the explaining. You just
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write down that you were there and that you saw
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it, and that's the entire entry, and it's enough.
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And then, she said. She meant the next line.
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She meant, after the doorway, what does the entry
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say happened next? I crossed the small distance
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between us. I put my hand on her face, palm against
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her cheek, my thumb at the corner of her eye,
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the hold I had learned over two years. the hold
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of a man who knows that what he has is the direct
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result of the year he chose to live through rather
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than away from, that the hand on the face is
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a thing he earned by paying. And then we had
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dinner, I said. She leaned into my hand, the
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whole weight of her head given to my palm, the
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way you give your weight only to a thing you
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have decided to trust completely. Yes, she said,
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that sounds right. That's exactly how the entry
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should go. She closed her eyes, her cheek warm
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against my hand. She finished something. He finished
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something. They stood in a doorway. And then
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they had dinner. World without end. We stood
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like that for a while in the workroom doorway.
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the finished third notebook on the kitchen table
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behind me and the unfinished third collection
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on the rail behind her, the two makers meeting
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in the doorway between their two rooms, and I
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understood that this, this exact moment, a hand
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on a face in a doorway on an ordinary Tuesday,
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was already the first entry of the fourth notebook,
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was happening even as I stood inside it, and
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that the trick now, the whole trick of the rest
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of my life, was to be present enough to notice
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the entries while I was living them, rather than
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only afterward, in ink, when they were safely
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gone. I should write it down, I said, before
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we have dinner, the doorway, while it's still
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happening. No, she said, not opening her eyes,
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her cheeks still in my hand. Don't write this
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one down. Just be in it. You can write the ones
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after. This one, just stand here and be in it.
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That's the fourth notebook too. Knowing which
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ones to live instead of record. She opened her
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eyes and looked at me. Very close. Some entries
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you write. Some you just stand inside. The wisdom's
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in telling which is which. So I didn't write
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it down. I stood inside it instead. The doorway.
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The hand, the warm weight of her, the May evening
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going blue in the windows, the two finished and
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unfinished things in the two rooms, and I let
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it be an entry I lived rather than an entry I
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kept, the first of the fourth notebook's particular
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kind, the unwritten ones, the ones that are too
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much alive to be set down and have to simply
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be stood inside while they happen. Then we had
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dinner. We ate at the table where so much had
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happened, the table we had toasted in April,
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the table where, two years before, a shaking
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-handed man had sat in the dark deciding which
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road to take. She told me about the piece she'd
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been fighting on the rail. I told her how it
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feels to finish a thing. It was an ordinary dinner,
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indistinguishable from 10 ,000 others, and that
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was its entire glory. I did not write it down.
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I sat inside it, as instructed, practicing the
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impossible discipline of letting a good thing
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simply happen without converting it to a record.
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Afterwards she washed and I dried or I washed
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and she dried. I genuinely don't remember which
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because I wasn't keeping track because for once
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I was only there. World without end. Amen. To
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be continued in episode 28. The fourth notebook.
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Playful Wife. If this story is staying with you,
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Thank you for listening.