Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 6: The Third Visit

Transcript

My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 6: The Third Visit · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

0:00
My Playful Wife, Episode 6, The Third Visit,
0:04
written by Mia. He arrived on a Friday. By now
0:11
I had developed a vocabulary for the days before
0:14
Piyusha's visits, a private language of signs
0:17
and signals that I read the way you read weather.
0:20
I could tell, a week out, by the particular quality
0:24
of Saloni's attention in the mornings. The slight
0:27
forward lean of her. The way she occupied the
0:30
flat differently, more of it, more completely,
0:34
as though the space itself needed preparation.
0:38
She cleaned. Not the ordinary cleaning that happened
0:41
on Sundays, but a deeper version, the kind that
0:44
reaches into corners, that notices things you've
0:46
stopped seeing. The flat would emerge from these
0:49
sessions looking the same to most eyes, but subtly
0:52
renewed, the surfaces carrying the evidence of
0:55
being attended to. She bought flowers for the
0:59
kitchen window. Pink, this time. Not roses, something
1:04
wilder, something from a vendor on the street
1:07
who didn't know the names of what he sold. She
1:10
put them in the blue ceramic vase we'd received
1:12
as a wedding gift, and she arranged them with
1:15
the same precision she brought to fabric, looking
1:18
at them with her head tilted, adjusting. She
1:22
restocked the fridge with things she knew he
1:24
liked, the specific yogurt, the green tea, not
1:28
the chai he was supposed to drink, but the green
1:30
tea she teased him about preferring, a certain
1:33
brand of biscuit. Small purchases, unremarkable,
1:37
the kind of care that expresses itself through
1:40
knowing someone well enough to buy what they
1:43
want before they ask. I watched all of this and
1:47
did not comment on it. I want to be honest about
1:51
what watching costs me. I have described the
1:54
framework, the rules, the logic, the deliberate
1:57
choosing, and I don't want that to suggest the
1:59
choosing was without weight. It costs something
2:03
daily, sometimes something large. The specific
2:08
form, I would be in the middle of an ordinary
2:11
moment. Washing dishes, reading, sitting with
2:14
my tea, and a thought would surface with the
2:17
clarity of something that had been waiting. Not
2:20
an image, more a knowledge, the simple fact,
2:24
she is preparing for him. She has bought his
2:27
tea and washed the sheets, and she has thought
2:30
about him more today than she has thought about
2:33
me. That thought had a texture, sharp, specific,
2:38
the particular sting of asymmetry. I would hold
2:43
it, not suppress it, not fight it, not perform
2:47
the equanimity that is only repression in better
2:50
clothes. I would hold it and feel it and let
2:53
it move through, which it did always because
2:55
feelings do move through if you don't try to
2:58
resolve them before they're ready. On the other
3:01
side of the feeling, my wife, at the stove or
3:04
in the workroom or asleep beside me, choosing
3:08
this flat, choosing me. The evidence visible
3:11
in every daily detail. I held both. The grief
3:17
and the evidence. The cost and the gift. This
3:22
was part of the framework I had built. Part of
3:25
the second rule. Look. Look and receive what
3:28
you see as information. Do not turn every observation
3:32
into a verdict. She was preparing for someone
3:36
she was glad was coming. This was true. It was
3:40
also true that she cooked for me when I'd had
3:42
bad days, refilled my water without being asked,
3:46
kept a mental inventory of what I was running
3:49
low on. The care was not divided, it was multiplied.
3:53
She was not giving from a fixed supply. I had
3:57
been raised, as most people are, on a zero -sum
4:00
theory of love. What is given to one person cannot
4:03
be given to another. The total remains constant.
4:07
Attention is a resource with limits. I was discovering,
4:11
slowly and with some resistance, that this theory
4:15
did not apply to Saloni. She operated on different
4:19
principles. Her capacity for care did not have
4:23
an apparent ceiling. Whether this was a gift
4:26
or a burden was something I was still working
4:29
out. I made a point of being home when he arrived.
4:35
This was new. The previous visits I had been
4:39
present but peripheral, drifting through the
4:41
flat, working in the study, occupying myself
4:44
with the performance of having other things to
4:47
attend to, a way of not quite participating that
4:50
had felt like dignity and probably looked like
4:53
cowardice. This time I was in the kitchen when
4:58
the buzzer went. I had spent the afternoon making
5:01
dal for my mother's recipe. the long version,
5:04
the one that takes three hours and cannot be
5:07
rushed. The kitchen smelled of it, warm and complex,
5:12
the smell of effort. Saloni let him in, and I
5:17
heard the hallway sounds, his voice, her voice,
5:20
the brief warm exchange of two people who have
5:24
been looking forward to seeing each other and
5:26
are calibrating how much of that they're allowed
5:29
to show. He came to the kitchen. He stopped in
5:34
the doorway and looked at me, at me in the kitchen,
5:37
at the pot on the stove, at the scene as a whole,
5:41
and something recalibrated in his face. A small
5:45
adjustment, an expectation revised. Bia, he said,
5:50
you cooked. Sit down, I said. It's ready. I said
5:59
it easily, naturally, not performing ease. Arriving
6:03
at it through the weeks of framework building,
6:05
the rule about staying, the thing I had understood
6:08
in the dark on the night before this visit, that
6:11
the discomfort of these moments was survivable
6:14
and that surviving them deliberately was different
6:17
from surviving them by accident. He sat. Saloni
6:21
appeared from wherever she'd been and she looked
6:24
at the two of us, at Piyush sitting at the table
6:27
and me at the stove, and something passed through
6:31
her expression. Something I hadn't seen before.
6:34
Relief, maybe, or the beginning of something
6:38
that would become relief later when she did time
6:41
to understand it. Smells like Nagpur, Piyush
6:46
said. Your mother's recipe, I said. He looked
6:52
at me. You called her? For the recipe, I said.
6:58
He looked at the table. He was quiet for a moment.
7:02
Thank you, he said. I like cooking dal, I said.
7:08
Seek. Dinner was different from the previous
7:14
visits. I was in a room, not simply present in.
7:19
The conversation moved through all three of us,
7:23
included all three of us. And I participated
7:26
not because I was performing a role, but because
7:29
I was genuinely here. The visit had a different
7:32
texture because I was different in it, had brought
7:35
a different version of myself, one that had spent
7:38
several months practicing presence and was beginning
7:41
to be actually present. We talked about Piyush's
7:45
project. A firm in Bengaluru had made overtures
7:49
about a position, a real one, senior enough to
7:53
mean something. He was ambivalent. The Delhi
7:56
connection, the family proximity, the life he
7:59
had built here. Bengaluru was abstract, a possibility,
8:04
a version of his future he hadn't decided whether
8:07
to enter. Saloni listened with the quality I
8:12
had come to identify as her most powerful, total,
8:16
physical attention, the kind that makes a person
8:19
feel heard at a cellular level. She asked questions
8:22
that opened things rather than closed them. I
8:27
asked questions too. Real ones. Piyush looked
8:30
at me the third time with an expression I recognized
8:34
as surprised, then adjusted. After dinner, he
8:39
washed up without being asked. Saloni made chai
8:42
and brought three cups. We moved to the living
8:45
room. The lamp was on. Outside, the December
8:49
city. Cool. and going dark early. Saloni sat
8:55
on the couch. Piyush sat on the floor in front
8:58
of it, back against the couch, legs stretched,
9:01
the unselfconscious posture of someone very comfortable.
9:05
I sat in the chair to the side. And we talked
9:10
for two hours. Not carefully. Not performing.
9:14
Just talked. about the Bengaluru offer, about
9:18
Piyusha's exams, about a film Saloni had watched
9:21
without me that she wanted to tell us about,
9:23
about a trip I had been meaning to take to see
9:25
my parents. The conversation moved the way conversations
9:29
move when no one is managing them, finding its
9:32
own level, backing up and starting again. At
9:37
some point, Saloni's hand moved to Piyusha's
9:40
shoulder. Not with announcement. Not with the
9:44
weight of statement. Just resting there. The
9:48
gesture of a woman at ease with where she was
9:51
and who was near. He didn't shift. He kept talking.
9:56
I looked at them both in the lamplight. My wife's
9:59
hand on my brother's shoulder. The ordinary intimacy
10:03
of it. The way it had settled into the room without
10:06
asking permission. And I felt, I want to say
10:10
this accurately, and without romance, I felt
10:14
something move through me that was not entirely
10:16
grief. It was complicated and large and had several
10:20
chambers to it, the way large feelings do. There
10:24
was the grief, yes, always. There was the sharp
10:27
edge of it, the specific loneliness of a man
10:31
watching someone else receive what he wants for
10:34
himself. But there was also something else, a
10:38
kind of seeing. A clarity about what I was actually
10:41
looking at, which was two people who cared for
10:44
each other, whose caring had been allowed to
10:46
exist, whose existence had not destroyed the
10:49
room it was in. The room was intact. The lamp
10:53
was on. The chai was going cold in our cups because
10:57
we were too absorbed to drink it. The three days
11:03
had their own rhythm. They always did now, the
11:06
visits, the way things develop their own rhythms
11:09
when they repeat. Saturday was the park. Saloni
11:13
had suggested it. The practical solution to three
11:16
people in a flat on a Saturday. The need for
11:19
air and movement. The city's one gift of green
11:23
in December. We walked a long circuit. and then
11:26
sat on the grass, and Piyush fell asleep in the
11:30
winter sun with his arm across his face, and
11:32
Saloni and I sat beside him and talked without
11:36
filling every silence. At one point she asked,
11:41
Are you okay? Not the surface version of the
11:46
question, the other one. I'm learning something,
11:50
I said. I'm not sure I'd call it okay. But I'm
11:55
not not okay. That's honest, she said. I'm trying
12:01
to be, I said. She absorbed this. She looked
12:06
at the park, the cyclists, the families, a group
12:10
of old men playing chess on a stone table in
12:12
the distance. The blouse is almost done, she
12:16
said. The rose silk one? Yes. I thought about
12:25
the sketch, the low back, the straps. When will
12:30
you wear it? I asked. She didn't answer immediately.
12:35
The pause held something, not calculation exactly,
12:39
but consideration. The weight of the question.
12:43
Soon, she said. Okay, I said. She looked at me,
12:50
at my face, at whatever was in it. You can ask,
12:55
she said, if you want to. I don't think I want
13:00
to, I said. Not yet. She nodded slowly, accepting
13:07
this. We sat in the winter sun. Piyush slept
13:12
beside us. The city went about it Saturday. I
13:17
thought about soon, and what it contained, the
13:20
specific charge of a word that signals something
13:23
coming without naming it. I thought about the
13:26
sketch, the architectural precision of what she
13:29
was making, the deliberateness of a woman who
13:32
had started with fabric and followed it to its
13:34
necessary form. She had made that thing for herself.
13:39
She had also, without saying so, Made it for
13:43
this, for a moment that was coming, that she
13:45
could see already, that she was building toward
13:48
the way she built everything, with patience and
13:51
certainty and the complete conviction that the
13:53
form she was working toward was the right one.
13:57
I held my wife's hand in the winter park and
14:00
felt the aliveness of it, the complexity, the
14:03
ongoing strangeness, the daily cost of being
14:06
in this specific life with this specific person.
14:12
I can only say it plainly grateful. Not grateful
14:16
that the situation was what it was. Not grateful
14:20
for the grief or the anger or the 4 a .m. wakefulness.
14:24
Grateful for the realness of it. Grateful to
14:28
be a person who had been handed something that
14:30
required him to find out what he actually was
14:32
and had found out that he was, at his core, someone
14:36
who chose to stay. Sunday afternoon. The last
14:42
hours of the visit. Piyush packed his bag with
14:46
the efficiency he always packed, decisions already
14:50
made, nothing left until the last minute. He
14:54
had accepted, I understood now, that this was
14:56
the shape of the visits and was choosing to accept
14:58
it the way I was choosing, the way Saloni was
15:01
choosing. We were all, in our different ways,
15:05
choosing. He came to the kitchen at six. I should
15:10
go, he said. Trains at nine. Eat something first,
15:15
Saloni said. I'll eat on the train. She looked
15:21
at him with the expression she used when she
15:24
was overriding someone for their own good. She
15:27
made him eat. He let her. I watched this small
15:31
exchange, this ordinary domestic authority, and
15:35
felt the familiar complexity settle through me.
15:38
All the feelings occupying their respective spaces.
15:42
At the door he hugged her. The embrace I recognized
15:46
now. Complete, economical, the full weight of
15:51
what it was without ceremony. He turned to me.
15:55
Next month, he said. Next month, I said. The
16:01
lift. The closed doors. Saloni and I in the quiet
16:07
flat. She went to the kitchen. I heard her at
16:11
the stove. Something small, something for us,
16:15
the sound of her putting the day to rest through
16:18
action. I stood in the living room for a moment
16:21
and looked at the chair where she had sat, the
16:24
floor where Piyush had sat, the lamplight still
16:27
on. The room was intact. I turned the lamp off
16:33
and went to the kitchen. Chai, she said. Yes,
16:39
I said. Please. She made it without looking up.
16:44
Two cups, exactly right, both placed on the counter
16:48
between us. We stood and drank. That evening
16:55
after the chai, after the conversation had moved
16:58
through everything it needed to move through,
17:00
Saloni brought out the blouse. Not wearing it,
17:05
the blouse was not yet finished. But she brought
17:08
the pieces of it from the workroom. The front
17:11
panel, the back panels with their straps already
17:14
attached, the silk laid out on the dining table
17:17
in the lamplight. She laid them out and stood
17:20
back and looked at them, the way she looked at
17:23
work in progress, assessing, still considering.
17:27
Piyush looked at the pieces. He looked at them
17:30
the way someone looks at something they understand
17:32
to be for them, without having been told. He
17:36
looked at me. I was at the other end of the table,
17:41
watching both of them. The rose won, he said,
17:45
to Saloni. Yes, she said, nearly done. He looked
17:53
at the silk again. He reached out and touched
17:56
the edge of the back panel, one finger, light,
17:59
and felt the drape of it. It's extraordinary,
18:03
he said. She received this the way she received
18:07
his regard, openly, without deflecting. I watched
18:12
this exchange and felt the familiar complicated
18:15
thing, the grief, the edge of it, the ache of
18:19
watching something I had not been the one to
18:22
create, and underneath it, something that had
18:25
been growing since October, a strange, specific
18:28
pride. She was extraordinary. The things she
18:31
made were extraordinary. And whatever the cost
18:34
of knowing her fully, the fullness was real.
18:37
I would rather have the full complicated real
18:40
thing than the simple partial version. When it's
18:44
done, I said, she wears it for me first. They
18:50
both looked at me. Saloni's expression was, I
18:54
searched for the word, confirmed. As though something
18:58
she'd been uncertain about had just been confirmed.
19:02
I know, Piyush said, simple accepting. Good,
19:08
I said. We stood around the dining table with
19:12
the unfinished silk between us, the three of
19:16
us, in a lamplight, in the flat that had become
19:19
the container of this arrangement, and it was,
19:23
in its strange way, a kind of peace. Not the
19:27
absence of difficulty, the presence of something
19:30
understood. Saloni gathered the pieces carefully
19:35
back into her arms. Chai, she said. I'll make
19:40
more chai. She went to the kitchen. Piyush looked
19:45
at me. You're something else, Bia, he said quietly.
19:52
I'm just paying attention, I said. Finally. He
19:58
nodded slowly. He understood what I meant. Trains
20:03
at nine tomorrow, he said. I know, I said. I'll
20:09
drive you. He nodded again. We stood in the empty
20:13
dining room and listened to Celony move in the
20:16
kitchen, the sounds of water and warmth, and
20:19
did not need to say anything else. I drove him
20:28
to the station the next morning. He sat in the
20:32
passenger seat with his bag on his lap, and we
20:35
didn't say much. The city at 7 a .m., still waking,
20:40
the roads clear, the vendors setting up their
20:43
stalls, the particular thin light of a December
20:46
morning. At the station, he got out. He put his
20:51
bag over his shoulder. He looked at me. The Dow,
20:56
he said, last night. What about it? You made
21:02
it, he said. You were there in the kitchen. You
21:06
made the dal. He paused. I know what that cost.
21:11
I looked at him. It costs less than you think,
21:15
I said, which was true. Less than it would have
21:19
cost before. Less than it would have cost in
21:22
October. He held out his hand. I took it. Diwali,
21:28
he said. Diwali, I said. I watched him walk into
21:34
the station, the morning light making him just
21:37
a silhouette, then gone. I drove home. Saloni
21:42
was at the kitchen table with her chai and her
21:45
sketchbook, the morning just starting. She looked
21:48
up when I came in. He made his train, she said.
21:53
He made his train, I said. I sat across from
21:59
her. She pushed the chai pot toward me. The flat
22:03
around us. Our life around us. What we were,
22:07
the specific shape of it, the one that had no
22:10
name, continuing. To be continued in Episode
22:27
episode six of My Playful Wife. If this story
22:31
is staying with you, the next episode is already
22:34
waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
22:38
complete book is on Amazon and early episodes
22:41
plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
22:44
are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank you for
22:47
listening.