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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 55: The Sleeping Houses · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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Of course she had. She always has. On the drive
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home, in the dark of the car, she said, You were
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very quiet tonight, and I told her what I had
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been doing all evening, the three men and the
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sleeping houses and the old. My Playful Wife.
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Episode 55. The Sleeping Houses. Written by Mia.
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We went. That Saturday, to a dinner at the home
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of friends, six or seven couples we have known
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for the better part of a decade, the long -married
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middle of our lives gathered around one long
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candlelit table, and I went for the first time,
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with my eyes still raw from the week before,
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and I found that I could see the whole room in
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a way I had never quite let myself see it. I
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have been coming to evenings like this one my
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whole adult life, and I have come to them, I
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realize, that night. as three different men.
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For years I came as a sleeper myself, and a sleeper
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sees nothing in a room of sleepers. The way one
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closed I cannot notice another. I sat at those
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tables for a decade and registered only the food
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and the talk, and went home having seen no one,
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least of all the women I had come in with. Then,
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after I woke for a year or two, I came as something
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worse than a sleeper, I am ashamed to say. I
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came as a man freshly, smugly awake, looking
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around at the dim marriages with a quiet private
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superiority, pleased with myself, sure I had
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crossed over to some better country and could
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pity the ones still on the near shore. And now,
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after last week, after a single blank page had
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shown me how thin the ice I stood on actually
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was, I came as the third man, and the third man
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is the only one of the three I am not ashamed
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of. A man who can see the sleeping houses clearly
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at last, and who has lost, entirely and forever,
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the smallest urge to feel superior to a single
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one of them. It is a strange thing to lose, that
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superiority, and I did not lose it nobly. I lost
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it the way you lose any illusion, by being shown
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its cost. The second man, the smug one, had believed
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that waking was an achievement, a thing he had
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done. A summit he had earned and could now gaze
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down from. The third man knows that the waking
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was mostly luck. The luck of a catastrophe that
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happened to break him open rather than simply
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break him. The luck of a wife who waited. The
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luck of a blank page that caught him in time.
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You cannot feel superior about luck. You can
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only feel grateful for it, and quietly afraid
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of the day it runs out. Because I could see them.
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That night, I could see the sleep on the room
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the way you can see frost on a field. I do not
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mean anything dramatic. There was no misery at
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that table, no cruelty, no cold war that an outsider
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would have flinched at. That is exactly the point,
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and exactly what I had finally learned to see.
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I mean the small gray signatures of it, the ones
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I now knew from the inside, because I had worn
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every one of them myself the week before. I saw
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the couple who finish each other's sentences
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and have not actually listened to the end of
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one of them in years, the finishing a kind of
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efficiency that has quietly replaced the listening.
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I saw the man performing fondness for his wife
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from a foot behind his own eyes, the warm hand
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on the shoulder, the easy joke at her expense
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that the table laughed at, all of it flawless,
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all of it automatic, no one home behind it. the
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exact forgery I had been caught running seven
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days before. I saw the wife who came alight all
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evening, funny and quick and luminous, for every
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single person at the table except the husband
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she had arrived beside, to whom she turned a
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face gone smooth and shut, not unkind, just unlit,
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the pilot light of her attention to him long
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ago turned down to save fuel. I saw the pair
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who had not. I would have wagered my life on
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it. Asked each other a single genuinely curious
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question in a decade. Who knew each other now
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the way you know a poem you stopped hearing the
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moment you had it memorized. And I want to be
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very careful here because it would be so easy
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and so false to make these people sound like
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fools. And they were not fools. They were tired.
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That is all the sleep ever really is. In the
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end, tiredness given permission. Every one of
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them had carried jobs and children and grief
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and the sheer grinding logistics of a shared
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life for years, and somewhere in the carrying
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they had set down the one thing that felt safe
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to set down because it never complained because
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it was always still there in the morning. They
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had not stopped loving each other. They had only
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stopped looking, which feels, from the inside,
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like precisely the same thing as love, right
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up until the day you discover that it is not.
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And the old me, the second man, the smug one,
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would have cataloged all that with a quiet satisfaction.
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But I sat there last week's man instead, and
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what rose in me was not satisfaction. It was
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tenderness, and under the tenderness, cold and
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clarifying, was fear. Because I knew, now, The
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one thing that the second man had never understood,
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the thing that had made his superiority not just
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unkind but stupid, that those sleeping couples
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had not been issued less love than Saloni and
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I had. They had not started with the smaller
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portion. They had not failed at feeling. Every
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one of them had stood, once, lit and trembling
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and certain, exactly where the radiant young
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ones stand, and meant every word of it as fully
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as anyone ever has. They had simply, somewhere
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down the long gray middle of it, both lain down
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to rest on the same good untroubled evening,
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and found no one left awake to reach over and
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wake the other. The precise thing that had nearly
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happened at my own table seven days before. The
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thing that will go on nearly happening at my
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table for the rest of my life. There but, for
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the daily grace of looking sad eye. I was not
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a different species from the man performing fondness
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a foot behind his eyes. I was that man last Tuesday.
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I was perhaps a fortnight from being him again.
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The only thing between his table and mine was
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not virtue and not the size of our hearts. It
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was a single daily accident of attention that
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I could lose. silently. Any week I let myself
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believe I had earned a rest. I sat with that
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for a long while, my wine untouched, the laughter
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going on around me, and I felt something I can
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only call vertigo, the specific dizziness of
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a man who has understood that the ground beneath
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him is not ground at all, but a thing he has
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to actively hold up, every day, with his own
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attention, and that the instant he stops holding
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it up it simply ceases to be there. Most people
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think a good marriage is a place you arrive at
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and then stand on. It is not a place. It is a
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thing you are carrying and the carrying never
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ends and everyone at that table who looked as
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though they were resting was in truth just a
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person who had quietly set the thing down. There
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was a moment, halfway through the evening, when
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I felt an almost unbearable urge to do something
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about it. One of the men there is an old friend,
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a good one, and I could see his particular sleep
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with a clarity that ached. Could see his wife
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three seats down glowing for the whole table
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and going dim for him. Could see him not even
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register it. So far under was he, and I wanted,
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with a sudden and physical force, to take him
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out onto the balcony and grip him by the shoulders
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and tell him, Wake up. Look at her. She is right
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there, and she is extraordinary, and you are
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sleeping through the one irreplaceable thing.
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And it is not too late yet, but it is getting
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late, and I know, I know, because I did exactly
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this, I nearly lost exactly this. Please, go
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and look at your wife before there is nothing
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left awake in either of you to look with. And
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I said nothing, of course, because I understood,
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sitting there with the urge burning in my chest,
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that it cannot be done. You cannot hand another
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person the waking. It is the one gift that cannot
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be given. I did not wake because someone told
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me to. No one could have told me hard enough.
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I woke because a catastrophe broke my life open,
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and then years later I woke a second time because
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a blank page caught me, and both times the alarm
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had to go off inside my own house, in my own
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life, in the dark, with no one else's hand on
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it. The news that you are asleep is unbearable
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until the exact moment it becomes survivable
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and that moment arrives only from inside, never
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from a friend on a balcony, however much he loves
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you. That is the loneliness of the awake. You
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can see every sleeper in the room with perfect
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clarity and you cannot wake one of them. You
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can only stay awake yourself and keep your own
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house lit and pray each of them is caught in
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time by something. a page, a shock, a near loss,
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some private mercy, before the gray closes over
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for good. There is a particular helplessness
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in this that I had never felt before that evening,
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the helplessness of the one awake passenger on
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a train of sleepers who can see the curve coming
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and cannot make a single other person open their
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eyes. You learn awake to hold your tongue. You
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learn that the truest things are precisely the
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ones that cannot be told, only undergone, that
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wisdom is very nearly non -transferable, that
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every generation and every marriage and every
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single person has to be broken open by their
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own particular morning, in their own time, or
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not at all. All your hard -won knowledge buys
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you exactly one house to keep lit, which is your
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own. It does not come with the keys to anyone
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else's. And then, because the world is kind in
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small symmetrical ways, I saw the counter image
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at the far end of the table, and it undid me
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as much as the sleepers had. There was an older
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couple there, the host's parents, up from somewhere
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south, married, someone said, 41 years, and they
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were awake. You could see it from across the
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room, the way you can see a lit window from a
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dark street. It was nothing showy. It was that
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when she told a long story the whole table had
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clearly heard a hundred times, the old man watched
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her tell it as though he had never heard it once,
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his eyes actually on her, actually finding her
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funny, 41 years in. It was that at one point
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she reached over without looking and straightened
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his collar, and he let her, and something passed
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between them in that half second that I recognized
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because I have it now too. The small live current
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of two people still genuinely attending to each
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other after a span of years that should, by every
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law of habit, have put them to sleep decades
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ago. 41 years, and still awake. I could not stop
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looking at them. They were the proof I did not
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know I had come there needing. That it can be
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done, that the hill can be climbed every single
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morning for 40 years and more, that the practice
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does not have an upper limit. that an awake old
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age is an actual place real people get to, and
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not just a thing I tell myself in a notebook.
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They were what I want to become. They were the
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long view, sitting at the end of the table eating
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dal, holding hands under it where they thought
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no one could see. I have thought since that we
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are shown such couples rarely, and always, I
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suspect, on purpose. by whatever it is that arranges
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these things, that they are set at the ends of
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our tables like lighthouses, not to shame us
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but to orient us, to tell the still young marriages
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which direction the open water actually lies
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in. Most of what the world holds up as a long
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marriage is only a long sleep, two people who
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stayed in the same house out of habit and inertia
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and the sheer cost of leaving. This was the other
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thing, the rare thing, the thing the long sleep
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is so constantly mistaken for. Not two people
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who had merely stayed, but two people who had
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stayed awake. 41 years of choosing, every morning,
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to look. I wanted to kneel at the end of the
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table and ask them how they had done it. Saloni
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had seen all of it before I had. Of course she
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had. She always has. On the drive home, in the
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dark of the car, she said, You were very quiet
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tonight. And I told her what I had been doing
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all evening, the three men and the sleeping houses
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and the old couple at the end, and she was silent
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a moment, and then she said the thing that put
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the whole night into its true and humbling proportion.
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I used to sit in rooms like that, she said, and
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be the only awake person at my own table. For
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years. Before you woke up. I'd watched the other
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sleeping couples, and I wasn't superior to them.
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I was just lonelier because at least both of
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them were asleep together. And I was awake next
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to a sleeping husband, which is the loneliest
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seat in any of those rooms. So tonight, I wasn't
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seeing strangers. I was seeing the years I spent
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married to a man who wasn't there yet. You think
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the sleeping houses are sad. Try being the one
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lit window in your own. I drove for a while without
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speaking, because there was nothing to say to
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that except to feel the full weight of it, that
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the room of sleepers I had pitted so tenderly
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all evening was a room I had personally kept
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her sitting in, alone and awake, for years, and
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that her compassion for them was not a thing
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she had reached for that night, but a thing she
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had earned the hard way, from the inside. being
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the awake one in a sleeping marriage long before
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I ever opened my eyes. I reached over, at a red
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light, and took her hand the way the old man
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had taken his wife's, and she let me, and we
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drove the rest of the way home in the particular
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silence of two people who are both, for tonight
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at least, awake at the same time, which I understand
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now to be the rarest and most fragile arrangement
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in the world, and the only one worth giving a
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life to. I understood. Driving, that she had
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handed me a gift that night without quite meaning
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to, which was the cure for the very last trace
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of my pride. As long as I thought of the awake
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as the deserving and the asleep as the failing,
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I was still, somewhere underneath, congratulating
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myself. But she had been the awake one alone,
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for years, married to me. To me, the chief sleeper.
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the man who had kept the loneliest seat in the
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room occupied by his own wife, and she had never
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once been superior about it, only patient, only
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lonely, only waiting. If she could sit awake
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beside a sleeping husband for all those years
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and feel no contempt for him, then I, who had
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been that very husband, had no standing on earth
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to feel any toward a few strangers at a dinner.
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She had earned the compassion the hard way. I
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had only borrowed it from her tonight. I wrote
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it that night, late, the dinner still in me,
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the fifth notebook open. That I had gone out
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among the sleeping houses and come home cured,
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finally and for good, of the disease of feeling
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better than them. The sleeping couples are not
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lesser. They are not loving less. They are us,
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on the weeks we lose the thread. They are me.
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Last Tuesday. They are every marriage on the
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untroubled evening it lies down to rest and forgets
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to leave one of them awake. And you cannot wake
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them, however much it aches to watch, because
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the waking is the one thing that cannot be handed
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across a table. It has to go off inside each
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dark house on its own. All you can do is keep
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your own house lit and stay tender toward the
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dark ones. And remember, that the only thing
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between your lit window and their dark one is
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a daily accident of attention and the enormous
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good luck of having been caught in time. And
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at the far end of the room, if you are fortunate,
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there sits an old couple 40 years awake, holding
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hands under the table, telling you without a
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word that it can be done, that you can keep the
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light burning the whole way down, if you simply
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never let yourself believe you have earned the
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right to stop. Then the working line, below it,
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Saloni already asleep, the good ordinary sleep,
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the house quiet and lit from within. Be gentle
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with the sleeping houses. You were one. You will
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be one again, on some good week, for a little
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while, before something mercifully wakes you.
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The sleepers were not given less love than you.
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They were only given the same fatal permission
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you are given every single day, to believe, on
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an evening when nothing is wrong, that they had
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done enough looking and could safely close their
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eyes. You cannot wake them. You can only keep
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your own house lit and stay kind and aim yourself
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across all the years you are given at the old
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couple at the end of the table. who are not asleep,
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who have never once been allowed to think they
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had arrived, and who are, for that reason and
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that reason alone, still holding hands at 41
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years in the dark under the cloth. I kept the
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pen. and went to bed and lay down beside my wife,
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who had been the one lit window in our marriage
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for longer than I will ever fully forgive myself
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for, and who was awake beside me again, now only,
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because I had finally learned to keep my own
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lamp burning, and I looked at her in the dark,
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on purpose, the way I would have to forever,
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and was grateful past speaking that there were,
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tonight, two lit windows in this house. and that
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for one more night neither of us was sitting
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alone. To be continued in episode 56, The Apprentice's
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55 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
19:31
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
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Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete
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chapters are on my Patreon. Links are in the
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description. I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.