Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 39: The Colour

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 39: The Colour · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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It went quiet, I said. The only thing worth saying.
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All the good ones kept talking. This one went
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quiet. She looked at me then, the dripping cloth
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still in her hands, and something moved across
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her face that was not about the color at. My
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Playful Wife. Episode 39. The Color. Written
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by Mia. For the better part of three weeks, my
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wife hunted a color, and I learned, watching
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her, the single most important thing I know about
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how you tell the true from the nearly true, in
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cloth and in everything else. It had started,
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the new collection, as a pressure and a mood
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wall and a thread pulled from nowhere, but a
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collection cannot be a mood forever. At some
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point the half -seen thing has to commit to a
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center, an organizing note. the one color from
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which the whole body of work will hang and against
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which every other decision will be measured.
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Solony calls it simply the color, though she
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means something larger than a color. She means
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the essential key of the thing, the tonic note,
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the single true frequency that, once found, makes
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everything else either belong or not belong.
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Until she has it, she cannot really begin the
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work proper. She is only circling. And for three
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weeks she circled, and could not find it, and
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the not finding made her quietly wild. I had
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learned, by then, not to mistake that wildness
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for unhappiness, though it wears unhappiness
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as clothes. it is closer to the agitation of
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a tuning fork held near its note but not yet
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struck true a vibration hunting its own frequency
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a person who can hear faintly the thing she is
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after and cannot yet locate the source of it
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and is half maddened by the nearness the worst
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part of any search is never the early part when
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you have no idea at all but the late part when
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you can feel the answer somewhere in the room
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with you and keep closing her hand on air. She
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spent three weeks closing her hand on air, and
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I made the chai and stayed out of the draft of
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it, and waited. I want to describe how she hunts
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a color because it is the opposite of how I would
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have assumed before I learned to watch her, that
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such a thing is done. I would have assumed she
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looked for the right one. She does not. She spends
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almost all of the three weeks finding the wrong
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ones, and more precisely and more agonizingly,
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finding the almost right ones, the ones that
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are good, that are competent, that would absolutely
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do, that any sensible person would happily accept
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and build a perfectly successful collection around.
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She dyed test lengths and pinned them to the
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wall and stood in front of them, and some of
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them were lovely, genuinely lovely, and she took
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every one of them down. A deep matter red that
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I thought was beautiful. Down. A particular dusty
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rose, very close to the famous rose dark of the
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last collection. Down, and down fast, almost
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angry, because it was not only nearly right but
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nearly repeat, the almost wearing the mask of
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the familiar. An indigo so deep it was nearly
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black, which she lived with for two whole days.
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which she very nearly committed to, which she
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stood in front of one evening for a long time
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with her arms crossed, and then, with a small
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exhale that was almost grief, took down. It's
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good, she said, of the indigo, the night she
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let it go. That's the problem. It's good. It
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isn't true. I can build the whole thing on it,
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and it will be good, and it will not be true,
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and I will know, every day, for the rest of the
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time the collection exists. that I settled. That
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sentence stayed with me. I wrote it down before
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I had even understood why it had hooked me so
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deeply. It will be good, and it will not be true,
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and I will know that I settled. Because here,
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I realized, was the entire problem of a life
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stated in the vocabulary of die. The hardest
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thing to refuse is never the bad option. The
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bad option refuses itself. The hardest thing
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to refuse is the good one, the competent, sensible,
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perfectly defensible, nearly right thing that
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any reasonable person would take and that you
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can give no logical account of declining. The
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indigo was good. Everyone would have approved
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of the indigo. She could have explained the indigo
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to a buyer, justified it, sold it. The only thing
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wrong with the indigo was that it was not the
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true thing, and the only evidence she had of
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that was a feeling in her body that the color
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had not made Goh quiet, and she took it down
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anyway, surrendered weeks of progress, went back
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to the agony of the blankish wall. On the strength
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of nothing but an unprovable interior knowledge
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that good was not the same as true, and that
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she would rather have the true late than the
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good on time. I think about that trade more than
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almost anything else she has taught me sideways
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over cloth. The true late or the good on time.
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Nearly every institution we are raised inside
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pushes us, relentlessly, toward the good on time,
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the deadline met, the deliverable shipped, the
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acceptable version produced on schedule and praised
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for its punctuality. Almost nothing in the ordinary
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machinery of a life rewards the other choice,
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the holding out, the willingness to miss the
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date rather than meet it with the merely good.
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Saloni has built a whole working life on the
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unfashionable conviction that the date is negotiable
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and the truth is not, and it has cost her, in
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deadlines and in sleep, and she has never once,
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that I have seen, regretted the price. Most people
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cannot do this. Most people, myself emphatically
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included for most of my life, take the indigo.
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We take the good enough job, the good enough
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answer, the good enough version of the thing
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because the good enough is right there and is
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genuinely good and refusing it feels insane,
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feels like ingratitude, feels like holding out
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for a perfection that may not exist. And the
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good enough is the great enemy of the true, far
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more than the bad ever is, precisely because
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it is good enough to silence the part of you
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that knows the difference. You do not settle
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for the things you can see are wrong. You settle
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for the things that are merely not quite right,
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and then you live in them. In the merely good
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marriage and the merely right life for years,
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for decades, the small daily static of the not
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-quite -true running under everything, until
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you have forgotten there was ever a truer frequency
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you were tuned, once, to hear. That is the quiet
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horror of settling, the part that makes it so
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much worse than simple failure. that it works.
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It does not announce itself as a mistake. You
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take the good enough, and the good enough is,
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in fact, good. It delivers real and genuine goods,
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and you are not punished, and no alarm sounds,
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and the life you have built on the nearly right
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hums along perfectly functionally for years,
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which is precisely how it gets you, because there
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is no crisis to wake you. only the slow forgetting,
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the gradual atrophy of the ear that could once
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tell the merely good from the true. Settling
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does not feel like settling. It feels like being
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sensible. That is its camouflage, and its whole
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danger. I know this because I lived in the Indigo
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for years. The Indigo was my marriage before
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the balcony. I have to be careful saying this
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because it is easy to misread, and Saloni would
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be the first to correct the misreading. It is
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not that the old marriage was bad. That is exactly
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the point. It was good. By every external measure,
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it was good. We were kind to each other. We did
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not fight. We were comfortable. We were, a stranger
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would have said, happy. It was a good marriage
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the way the indigo was a good color. competent,
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defensible, the kind any sensible person would
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happily accept and build a life around. And it
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was not true. It was the nearly right thing wearing
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the mask of the familiar, a marriage to a tenth
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of a woman that I had mistaken for years for
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the whole, because the tenth was pleasant, and
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the surface was smooth, and nothing in it actively
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hurt enough to make me question it. I had taken
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the indigo. I had pinned my good enough marriage
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to the wall of my life and stood in front of
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it and thought, this will do, this is good, and
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I had been right that it was good and catastrophically
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wrong that good was enough. And then the balcony,
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and then the true note sounded, and this is the
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thing I understood, finally, watching her take
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down the indigo, that once you have heard the
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true frequency, you cannot unhear it, and you
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can never again mistake the good for it. The
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morning everything broke open was the morning
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the real color of my marriage finally showed,
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and it made the previous decade's comfortable
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indigo retroactively unbearable, not because
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the indigo had been bad, but because I now had
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the true thing to compare it to, and the comparison
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was merciless. You do not know you settled until
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the true thing arrives and shows you, in an instant
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and forever, the exact distance between what
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you had and what was possible. Saloni was sparing
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herself that future grief, three rooms away,
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by refusing the indigo now. She would rather
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suffer the search than wake up two years into
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a good collection and feel the true color arrive
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too late and know, the way I had known on the
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balcony, exactly what she had settled for. I
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have wanted, sometimes, to find the version of
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myself who walked out onto that balcony two years
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ago, the comfortable sleeping man with the watering
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can, and warn him, not that disaster was coming,
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because what was coming was not disaster, but
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that he was about to lose, irreversibly, the
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great soft gift of not knowing what he had settled
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for. There is a terrible mercy in never hearing
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the true note. You get to keep believing the
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good one was the best there was. The balcony
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took that mercy from me forever, and I would
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not give it back for anything. But I understand.
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watching Celonie spare her future self the same
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merciless comparison that the truest things we
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are ever shown are never, only gifts. She found
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it on an ordinary Tuesday, and I happened, by
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luck, to be in the room. I had brought her chai,
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the standing excuse. the small liturgy that lets
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me into the workroom without quite intruding
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on it, and she was at the dye table, not even
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looking for it anymore, doing something else
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entirely, rinsing a test length of the plain
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undyed base in a bath she had mixed almost absently,
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her mind elsewhere, defeated for the day. And
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the cloth came up out of the water a color I
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do not have the word for, and she does not either,
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which is how I knew. A sort of gray that was
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not gray, a green that was not green, the color
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of the underside of an olive leaf in certain
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light, the color of a city's oldest stone at
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dusk, a color with no name and no fashion and
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no obvious beauty, nothing you would pick off
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a chart, nothing anyone would have approved in
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advance, and Saloni went absolutely still. I
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have watched my wife find things for years now,
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and I have learned to recognize the stillness.
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It is not excitement. Excitement is what the
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wrong but exciting colors produced, the flares
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of enthusiasm that always, a day later, collapsed.
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This was the opposite of excitement. This was
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a great settling, a quiet, the visible sound
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of something arriving and the search going off.
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She held the dripping cloth up to the window
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light and she did not say anything for a long
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time and her face did the thing. Not the lit
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up thing, the other one, the inward click, the
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recognition that needs no words because it is
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happening below words, in the body, in the place
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where you know a thing is true before you can
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say why. The cloth had gone quiet in her hands.
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The color had stopped asking to be questioned.
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It had arrived and she knew it, and I knew it
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from across the room because I had finally learned,
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after all these years, to read the difference
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between the color that excites a maker and the
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color that silences her. The wrong ones are loud.
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That is the tell I had at last learned to read.
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The wrong but tempting color comes with a little
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fanfare, a rush, a thank God. a let's tell someone
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it performs its own rightness insists on it the
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way a thing not quite sure of itself over compensates
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the true one does not perform at all it does
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not need to convince you because it is not asking
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your permission it simply is completely and the
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completeness is the proof and the proof arrives
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as silence rather than as noise I have come to
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think this holds for nearly every important thing
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there is. The false is loud and the true is quiet,
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and we are trained, disastrously, from the cradle,
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to trust the loud. That's it, she said, at last,
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very quietly, almost unwilling to say it loud
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in case it spooked. That's the color. That's
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the whole thing. It's been in the plain cloth
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all along. I kept dying things, and it was sitting
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in the base the whole time, waiting for me to
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stop looking for something more impressive. There
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was a small lesson folded into that, and she
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heard it as she said it, I watched her hear it,
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that the true thing is so often the plain one,
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the one already in your hands, the base material
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you overlooked precisely because it made no show
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of itself, while you went hunting through the
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dye baths for something more obviously remarkable.
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The grand collections, the grand colors, the
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grand lives, are almost never built out of grand
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materials. They are built, when they are true,
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out of the plain thing finally seen for what
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it always quietly was. She had dyed a dozen impressive
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colors, and the true one had been sitting undyed
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on the shelf the entire time, asking nothing,
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being itself, waiting only to be noticed. I did
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not gush. I have learned that too. The true thing,
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found, does not want applause any more than the
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beginning wanted enthusiasm. Applause would put
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it on a stage, would make her defend it, would
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crowd the quiet arrival with my noise. So I did
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not say it's gorgeous or you've got it or any
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of the bright useless things. I just looked at
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the color she was holding to the light. the no
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-name gray -green of old stone and olive underside,
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the true note, the tonic, and I let her see that
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I saw it, that I understood the difference between
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the stillness and the earlier excitements, that
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the witness in the corner knew a true color had
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just sounded in the room. It went quiet, I said,
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the only thing worth saying. All the good ones
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kept talking. This one went quiet. She looked
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at me then, the dripping cloth still in her hands,
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and something moved across her face that was
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not about the color at all. Yes, she said. That's
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exactly it. That's exactly how you know. A pause.
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The workroom light. The found color between us.
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You learned that. Watching. You actually learned
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how it works. She said it the way you'd note
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a small, astonishing miracle, a thing you'd given
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up expecting. 20 years you saw nice clothes.
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And now you stand in my workroom and tell me
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the true one is the one that goes quiet and you're
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right. And I don't think I ever told you that.
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I don't think I ever could have told you that.
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You just learned it by paying attention long
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enough. I had a good color for 20 years, I said.
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And then the true one. I know the difference
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now. I know it in my whole body. I'm never going
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to be able to unknow it again. And we both understood
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that I had stopped talking about cloth, and neither
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of us said so, because the found color was hanging
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dripping in the light between us, saying it perfectly
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well on our behalf. I wrote it in the fifth notebook
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that night, the color still drying on a line
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in the next room. The true note finally sounded
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in our house. The color. Three weeks of hunting,
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and the agony wasn't the bad ones. It was the
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good ones, the almost right, the indigo she lived
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with for two days and took down. It's good. That's
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the problem. It's good and it isn't true, and
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I'll know every day that I settled. The good
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enough is the great enemy of the true, far more
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than the bad, because it's good enough to silence
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the part of you that knows the difference. I
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lived in the indigo for years. It was my marriage
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before the balcony. Not bad. Good. A good marriage
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to a tenth of a woman I mistook for the whole.
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Once the true note sounds, you can't unhear it
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and can never again mistake the good for it.
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She found the color on a Tuesday. It was in the
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plane base all along, waiting for her to stop
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looking for something more impressive, the no
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-name gray -green of old stone and olive underside,
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nothing off a chart. And I knew it from across
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the room. Not the excitement the wrong ones gave,
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but the stillness, the search going quiet. All
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the good ones kept talking. This one went quiet.
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She said I'd actually learned how it works. And
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we both knew I'd stop talking about cloth. And
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below it, the working line. Learn the difference
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between the good and the true, and then have
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the nerve to refuse the good. The bad option
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refuses itself. The good one is the trap, because
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it is genuinely good, and refusing it feels insane.
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But the good enough is where lives go quietly
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to die. The merely right marriage. The merely
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right color. The static of the not quite true
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running under everything for decades. The true
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thing goes quiet when it arrives. The good thing
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keeps talking, keeps asking to be justified,
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keeps needing you to defend it. Listen for the
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silence. Refuse the indigo. Hold out for the
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color that stops the noise. It costs you the
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search, and the search is long and lonely and
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unprovable, and it is the only thing that has
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ever been worth not settling for. To be continued
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That was episode 39 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, The next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
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episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
20:25
Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank
20:29
you for listening.