Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 34: The Empty Room

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 34: The Empty Room · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 34, The Empty Room,
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written by Mia. The collection sold, the cloth
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went out into the world on other people's bodies,
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and three days after the December room my wife
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sat down in the middle of her empty workroom
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on the floor, with her back against the cutting
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table, and did not get up for a long time. I
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want to describe the room because the room was
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the thing. For two years, that room had been
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a body straining toward a deadline. Bolts of
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cloth stacked to the ceiling, the rose dark and
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the gold and the difficult ones, pattern pieces
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pinned to every surface, the dress forms wearing
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their half -made ghosts, chalk dust in the light,
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the whole space dense and breathing and full.
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And now it was fair. The collection had shipped.
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The buyers had taken the pieces. The rose -dark
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centerpiece was in a wardrobe in a medibod, I
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imagine, or wherever the weeping woman lived,
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waiting to be worn to the wedding or the anniversary,
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or whatever occasion a person buys a slow flame
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of a dress for. The dress form stood naked. The
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tables were clear. The cloth was gone. The room
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that had been so full it could barely contain
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her was, suddenly, just a room, with good light
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and nothing in it, and she sat on the floor in
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the middle of all that emptiness like a woman
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in a house the day after the funeral. I had walked
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past that room a thousand times in two years,
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and it had always been a place of furious becoming,
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and now I stood in its doorway with two cups
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of chai I had carried in without thinking and
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did not know where to set them down, because
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every surface that had ever held a making was
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bare. An empty workroom, I discovered, is not
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a quiet thing. It hums. It hums with the absence
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of the thing that was so recently roaring in
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it, the way a hall hums after the music stops,
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the silence in it shaped exactly like the sound
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that has just left. I knew the shape of it a
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little from my own smaller version. There is
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a particular flatness that comes the morning
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after you finish a thing you have poured yourself
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into for a long time, and the bigger the thing
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the flatter the morning. I had felt it in miniature
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when I closed each notebook, that strange deflation,
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the anticlimax of completion, the way the achieved
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thing turns instantly from a mountain you are
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climbing into a small object behind you on the
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road. There should be a word for that specific
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grief, the grief of the finished thing. Not the
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grief of failure, which we at least understand
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and have rituals for, but the stranger grief
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of completion, the small bereavement that arrives
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precisely because the thing went well and is
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now, irreversibly, over. We are taught how to
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mourn the things that break. Nobody teaches us
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how to mourn the things that finish. And so we
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feel the completion grief and assume something
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is wrong with us, that we are ungrateful or broken,
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when in truth we are only standing in the ordinary
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emptiness that every finished thing leaves behind
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it, like a footprint pressed into wet ground.
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But I had never poured two years into anything.
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I had never made a thing that hundreds of strangers
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came to a room to witness. Whatever I had felt
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closing a notebook, she was feeling at a scale
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I could only guess at, and the guessing was most
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of what I had to go on because she was not in
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those first days saying much. I should feel wonderful,
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she said on the second evening, flatly, to the
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ceiling from the floor. It went perfectly. It
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went better than perfectly. I have nothing to
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complain about. I have everything I worked for.
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and I feel like someone scooped me out with a
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spoon. And here was the test, the precise, specific
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test the whole fifth notebook had been training
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me for, and I almost failed it because the old
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reflex came up so fast and so dressed up as love
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that I nearly didn't catch it. The reflex was,
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cheer her up. It came up my throat as a whole
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arsenal of bright, useful things. You should
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be so proud. Look at what you did. The weeper.
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Remember the weeper. Let's celebrate. Let's go
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out. Let's call your mother and tell her. Every
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one of them true, every one of them kind, and
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every one of them, I understood just in time,
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a way of telling her that the way she actually
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felt was wrong and needed to be corrected. Cheering
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someone up, I have slowly learned, is fixing
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in a brighter code. It looks like support and
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it is underneath a request. Please stop feeling
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the uncomfortable thing because your uncomfortable
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thing is uncomfortable for me. The cheerful husband
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bustling in with reasons to be happy is not actually
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meeting his wife in the empty room. He is standing
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in the doorway of it, holding it open, asking
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her to please come out and be alright so that
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he can stop having to look at her not being alright.
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I had been that husband for years before the
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balcony. the doorway husband, the one who arrives
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with reasons to be cheerful and mistakes his
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own discomfort for generosity. It is the most
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respectable way there is to abandon someone,
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to abandon them while appearing to help, to leave
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the room without leaving the room, smiling, full
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of useful suggestions. Nobody ever calls it abandonment
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because it looks so much like care. But the person
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on the floor knows. The person on the floor Always
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knows the difference between someone who has
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come to sit with them and someone who has come
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to talk them into letting the rest of us off
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the hook. I did not do it. I am proud of almost
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nothing the way I am proud of not doing it. I
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swallowed the entire bright arsenal. Every last
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useful correcting word of it, and instead I came
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into the empty room, and I sat down on the floor
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next to her, with my own back against the cutting
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table, and I did not say she should feel wonderful,
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and I did not remind her of the weeper, and I
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did not suggest we celebrate. I just sat down
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in the emptiness with her, and let it be as empty
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as it was. Scooped out with a spoon, I said,
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Yes. That sounds about right. That sounds like
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exactly what finishing a two -year thing should
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feel like, honestly. She turned her head and
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looked at me. You're not going to tell me to
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be grateful, she said. You are grateful. Grateful
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and scooped out are not opposites. You can be
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both. You are both. I'm not going to make you
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pick the more convenient one, so... I feel better.
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It is a small sentence, and it had cost me a
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great deal to learn to say it. For most of my
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life, I had believed that love meant adjusting
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the other person until they were comfortable,
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and therefore until I was comfortable, the two
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adjustments being, I assumed, a single act. They
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are not a single act. Half the time the most
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loving thing available to you is to refuse to
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adjust the person at all, to let them be exactly
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as unhappy as they honestly are in front of you,
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without rushing to sand it down into something
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easier for the room to hold. She let her head
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fall back against the table. But something in
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her shoulders came down half an inch, the particular
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half inch that means a person has stopped having
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to defend their own sadness against someone trying
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to talk them out of it. Everyone wants me to
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be happy about it, she said. My mother, the buyers,
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the girls who assisted. They all keep telling
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me how I should feel, and they're all right,
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and it's exhausting being told the correct emotion
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by people who love you. You're the only one who
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hasn't done it. I sat on the stool while it broke
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your heart, I said. I'm not going to skip the
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part where it's allowed to feel like an ending
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just because the ending went well. We sat in
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the empty room a long time. That evening, and
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somewhere in the sitting I understood the thing,
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or she said it, I genuinely cannot now remember
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which of us arrived at it, which is how I know
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it was real and ours and not a thing I performed
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at her. The emptiness was not a malfunction.
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That was the whole understanding. The hollow
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after the making was not a flaw in her, not a
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failure of gratitude, not a problem to be solved
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or cheered away. It was part of the cycle. It
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was the fallow. A field cannot bear every year.
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The old farmers knew this before the science
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explained it, that you have to let the ground
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lie fallow, leave it empty and unworked for a
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season, or it gives you less, and less until
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it gives you nothing. The emptiness is not the
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opposite of the harvest. The emptiness is what
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makes the next harvest possible. A field that
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is never allowed to be empty is a field being
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slowly killed by its own productivity. I had
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this, I think, from a great uncle of mine who
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kept land and talked about it the way other men
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talk about their children, and who left a third
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of his fields empty every year on purpose while
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his neighbors planted every inch and quietly
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laughed at him, and who outlasted all of them,
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his soil still black and giving when theirs had
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gone to gray dust. He used to say that the empty
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field was the one doing the most important work,
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and that you could not see the work, and that
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this was exactly why most people could not bring
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themselves to leave a field fallow, because we
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mistrust any labor we are not able to watch.
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And Saloni, who had borne three collections in
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a handful of years. who went from the exhaustion
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of one straight into the deadline of the next,
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was a field that had forgotten it was allowed
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to lie fallow, that the scooped -out feeling
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was not a verdict on her, but a season she was
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owed, the necessary empty time without which
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there would be no cloth left in her to cut. You're
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between makings, I said. That's not nothing.
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That's a real place. Most of the good things
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grow in it, actually in the empty part. In the
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dark, before there's anything to show. You don't
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owe anyone a harvest right now. The room is supposed
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to be empty. You're supposed to be empty. It's
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the fallow. Let it be fallow. She was quiet for
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a while. Then she said, Nobody has ever once
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told me I was allowed to be empty. They've told
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me to rest. Rest is just productivity catching
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its breath so it can produce again. You're saying
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something different. I'm saying the empty isn't
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the gap between the real things. The empty is
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one of the real things. The in -breath is as
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much breathing as the out -breath. You've been
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exhaling for two years. Breathe in. I'll sit
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here while you do it. I'm not in a hurry, and
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I'm not going to check whether you've started
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making again. There was a moment, then, I will
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keep most of it, the way I keep the ones that
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are ours, when she moved across the small distance
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of the empty floor, and put her head on my shoulder,
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in the bare workroom, in the good December light
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falling on nothing, and we sat there, two people
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on the floor of an empty room, the dress form
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standing naked around us like patient witnesses,
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and she let herself be held in the hollow, without
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either of us trying to fill it, the collar of
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it, The wordless sentence. She did not cry and
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she did not brighten. She just rested in the
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emptiness against me and let the fallow be fallow
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with her husband sitting in it too. And I thought,
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this is the thing. This is the whole of what
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I have to offer that no one else does. Not to
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fix it, not to fill it, not to cheer it away.
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Just to be a person who will sit on the floor
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of the empty room and not need her to be. anywhere
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other than exactly where she is. There is a loneliness
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particular to being managed by the people who
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love you, to being met in every low moment by
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someone whose first instinct is to change how
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you feel rather than to simply know it. You learn,
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slowly, to perform okayness for them, to hurry
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your own dark seasons along so as not to worry
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anyone until you are never quite alone with your
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own actual experience, because there is always
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someone there trying to improve it. The opposite
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of that loneliness is not being cheered up. The
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opposite is one person who will come and sit
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on the floor and let your empty room stay empty
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and not leave. After a while, she said, into
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my shoulder, the first lightness in days, dry
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and small. You've gotten unreasonably good at
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this. The sitting. It's almost annoying. I liked
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you better when you tried to fix everything and
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got it charmingly wrong. No, you didn't. No,
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she admitted. I didn't. That night I wrote it
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in the fifth notebook, in the dark, by the bed.
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The empty room. The collection's gone, the workroom's
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bare, and she sat on the floor scooped out with
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a spoon. I have everything I worked for, and
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I feel like someone scooped me out. The reflex
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came up instant. Cheer her up. Caught it just
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in time. Cheering up is fixing in a brighter
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coat. A request to please stop feeling the uncomfortable
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thing because it's uncomfortable for me. Didn't
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do it. Sat on the floor in the emptiness with
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her instead. The thing we found she found, or
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we did the hollow isn't a malfunction, it's the
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fallow. A field can't bear every year. The empty
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isn't the gap between real things. The empty
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is one of the real things. The in -breath is
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as much breathing as the out. She said nobody
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ever told her she was allowed to be empty, only
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to rest, which is just productivity catching
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its breath. Stayed awake for the hollow. That's
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the new rule's hardest application yet, because
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the hollow gives you nothing back, no triumph
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to witness, no problem to solve, just a person
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on the floor of an empty room needing only not
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to be left there alone. And below it, the working
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line, the one for the front of the notebook.
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Don't fix the empty. Don't fill the empty. Don't
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shear the empty away. Sit down in the empty.
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The fallow is not the absence of the work. The
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fallow is the work's secret other half, the in
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-breath, the dark where the next thing is already,
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invisibly beginning. Stay awake for the fallow.
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It is the hardest watch of all because nothing
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happens in it and nothing happening is exactly
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the thing you have to learn to witness without
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flinching. It was Saloni, in the end, who found
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the way out of the room. Not by my prompting,
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because I had stopped prompting, which is, I
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am coming to believe, the only condition under
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which people actually move. I have come to think
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this is the great paradox of helping anyone you
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love, that the harder you push them toward the
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thing you are certain would be good for them,
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the more firmly they plant their feet, not out
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of stubbornness, but out of a deep and correct
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instinct that a self moved by someone else's
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force has not really moved at all. People do
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not change in the direction they are pushed.
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They change in the space that opens when the
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pushing finally stops, when someone stands close
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and wants nothing and merely waits, and the waiting,
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which looks from the outside like doing nothing
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at all, turns out to be the one thing that has
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ever actually worked. She came to the kitchen
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table a few mornings later into the same light.
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and wrapped her hands around the chai I had made
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and not commented on, and said, I think I want
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to go somewhere. Not to do anything. Not a working
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trip. I just want to be empty somewhere that
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isn't this room, where the empty isn't sitting
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on top of two years of cloth dust reminding me
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what I'm not currently making. She looked at
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me over the steam. Your brother keeps asking.
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Bengaluru. The four of us at his table, like
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we said. Mira's been threatening to book the
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tickets for a year. A small, returning version
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of her wry mouth. Let's let her. Let's go be
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fallow in the South for a while, where nobody
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knows I'm supposed to be a maker. I want to see
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your brother's new life. I want to sit at a table
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with the four of us in it and not be anybody's
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deadline. And I felt the particular gladness
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of a fallow field that has, on its own schedule
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and by no one's forcing, begun very quietly to
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think about the spring. I'll tell him, I said.
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He'll be unbearable about it. He'll plan an itinerary.
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He'll make a spreadsheet. Good, she said. Let
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him. I'm tired of being the one who makes the
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thing. Let your brother make the spreadsheet
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and let Mira book the tickets and let me just
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be carried somewhere for once, empty and useless
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and not in charge of a single thing. That, I
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said, I can absolutely arrange. I wrote one more
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line in the notebook that night, small, at the
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bottom of the fallow page. The field decided,
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by itself, that it was ready to think about going
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somewhere. I didn't push. I just stopped standing
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in the doorway holding it open, and sat down
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inside instead, and waited, and the waiting turned
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out to be the thing that let her move. We're
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going south. To the brother. To the four of us
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table. To be fallow somewhere new. The awake
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years take a train, apparently. To be continued
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in episode 35, The Brother's City. All rights
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reserved. That was episode 34 of My Playful Wife.
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