Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 11: New Geometry

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 11: New Geometry · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 11, New Geometry, written
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by Mia. There is a particular freedom in the
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aftermath of an ending, and it does not feel
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the way you expect it to feel. I had expected,
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for months, that when Piyush finally went, when
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the visit stopped being a thing we organized
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our lives around, and became instead a thing
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that happened occasionally, at a distance with
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notice. I would feel something clean. Relief,
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I had thought. The simple subtraction of a weight.
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I had imagined the flat returning to its proper
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proportions the way a room returns to itself
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when you take down the scaffolding, and I had
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imagined standing in the middle of that restored
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room and breathing out. That is not what happened.
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Piyush had been in Bengaluru for three weeks
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when I first understood that the ending had left
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something behind, and that the something was
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not relief, but a kind of vacancy I did not have
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language for yet. It was not the ending itself
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that did it. The ending had been soft and deliberate,
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and entirely unlike the thing I had feared through
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all those months of bracing. No scene, no rupture.
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Just a man packing a life into boxes and a lift
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door closing and a flat going quiet. It was the
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space the ending left. A specific quality of
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air. The way the second bathroom had returned
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to pure utility. No longer the staging ground
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for someone else's mornings. The guest bed unmade
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for the first time since the spring. The sheets
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stripped and folded and put away. the room reverting
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to the neutral thing it had been before all of
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this, a room for storing what we didn't use.
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Celonie felt it too. I could see it in the way
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she moved through the flat in those first days,
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slightly more in each room than she used to be,
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as though she were re -expanding to fill a space
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that had quietly been holding its breath. She
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would pause in doorways. She would stand at the
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kitchen window longer than the task required.
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I recognized it because I was doing the same
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thing, the two of us moving through the recovered
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square footage of our life, like people testing
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ice. We were, for the first time in the seven
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months since the kitchen, simply two. I want
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to be precise about the kitchen because it is
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the thing everything else is measured from, and
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I have been trying all year to be precise about
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it. There was a morning in October when I learned
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what I learned, and there was a version of me
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that walked onto the balcony before that morning,
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and a different version that walked back inside
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after it, and the second version is the one writing
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this. Everything since, the visits, the framework
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I built when no one would give me instructions,
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the gym, the notebook, the slow relearning of
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my own wife, everything since has been the second
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version finding out what he is made of. The visits
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had been the pressure that revealed it. Heat
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and force. A thing takes its shape under heat
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and force. And now the heat was off, and I was
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finding out whether the shape would hold. I was
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quieter than usual that first week. I noticed
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it in myself the way you notice a low -grade
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fever. Not a single symptom you can point to,
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but a general dimming, a sense of operating at
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reduced wattage. The vigilance I had been carrying
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for seven months, the constant low hum of awareness
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I had grown so used to that I'd stopped registering
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its weight, had nowhere to go. There was nothing
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to be vigilant about. No visit to prepare for,
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no arrival to absorb, no careful reading of the
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air in a room to see how three people were arranging
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themselves inside it. The apparatus I had built
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to survive a thing was still running, and the
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thing was gone, and the apparatus did not know
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what to do with itself. Saloni noticed. Of course
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she noticed. She had been watching me for three
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years. She had been watching me with new attention
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for seven months. Watching me was, by now, one
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of the things she did without effort. You miss
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him, she said. She said it plainly on the fourth
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evening, the two of us on the balcony with the
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city doing its usual indifferent thing below.
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No accusation in it, no irony, no test. Just
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a thing she had observed and decided to say out
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loud. That's a strange thing for me to feel,
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I said. Is it? I thought about it. I had got
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better, this year, at actually thinking about
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a question before I answered it, rather than
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producing the answer that would end the conversation
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fastest. It was one of the gym's gifts, oddly.
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Samir had taught me that the last repetition,
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the one you don't think you have, is where the
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work actually happens, and something about that
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had migrated into the rest of my life. Stay in
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the difficult thing one beat longer than is comfortable.
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That is where it changes you. So I stayed in
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it. What was Piyush, actually, in the architecture
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of my life these months? Not only the obvious
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thing. Not only the wound. The disruption. The
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younger brother who had become the axis my marriage
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turned on. He had been a catalyst. The force
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that had broken open a marriage sealed too tight.
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Sealed so tight, I could admit now, that nothing
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could get in or out of it, including me. Before
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the kitchen, I had been married to Seloni the
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way you are married to a fact. Settled, unexamined,
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assumed. After the kitchen, I had been forced
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to look at her, to actually look, and what I
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had found when I looked had been so much larger
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and stranger and more alive than the fact I'd
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been living next to that I sometimes felt I'd
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been robbed of all the years I hadn't seen it.
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Piyush had done that, not kindly, not on purpose.
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But he had done it. Maybe not, I said. She came
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and sat beside me. The plastic chairs, the railing,
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the neem trees' top branches just reaching the
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level of our floor. She didn't say anything for
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a while, and the not saying was companionable
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rather than empty, which was itself a thing that
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had changed. He calls, she said eventually. I
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know. You could call him, too. She said it lightly,
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the way you set something down on a table for
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someone to pick up or not. He'd like it. I looked
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at her, the ease of her, the complete ease with
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which she could say a thing like that, as though
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it were the most natural arrangement in the world,
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the wife suggesting the husband call the brother.
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as though the grammar of us were a settled language
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and not something we were inventing as we went.
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Okay, I said. I called him that Friday. I had
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to work up to it in a way I didn't admit to her.
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I sat with the phone in my hand for a while,
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first on the kitchen stool, the same stool I
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had once sat on in the dark trying to decide
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which road I was going to take. though I didn't
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think about that consciously while I sat there.
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I thought instead about what I would say, and
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then I understood that the having something to
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say was the problem, that you don't plan a call
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to your brother, and I dialed before the planning
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could metastasize. We talked for 20 minutes about
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nothing important. His new flat, fourth floor,
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good light, a building so new the lift still
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smelled of its own newness. The traffic, which
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he described with the wounded astonishment of
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a deli man discovering that another city had
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found a way to be worse. A restaurant he'd found,
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a small place that did a fish thing he wanted
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me to try. The conversation had no weight in
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it at all, and the weightlessness was the point.
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We were two men finding out whether we could
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simply talk the way we hadn't simply talked since
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we were boys, before any of it. At the end he
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said, Come visit, Bia. Both of you. His voice
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changed when he said it. There was warmth in
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it, and under the warmth something else, an ask
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real and slightly exposed, a thing he wanted
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and was risking by wanting out loud. Maybe, I
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said. We'll see. It was not a no. He heard that
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it was not a no. After I hung up, I sat with
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the dead phone for a moment. Saloni was at the
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counter, doing something to vegetables, and she
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did not turn around, but I could feel her listening,
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the particular attention of a person who is pretending
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to be busy. Well, she said to the vegetables.
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He says come visit. She went back to her cooking,
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but she was smiling. I could see it in three
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-quarter profile, the small private upward thing
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at the corner of her mouth, and I thought. I
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made that. Not the relationship. The relationship
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was hers and his, and theirs in ways I would
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never fully map. But this small smile, in this
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kitchen on this Friday, this was a thing my phone
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call had made, and I held it the way I had learned
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to hold the small evidence of being part of a
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life rather than adjacent to it. That night I
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wrote in the notebook, called Piyush. 20 minutes,
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nothing in it, everything in it. He asked us
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to come. The voltage is low this week, but I
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think it is supposed to be. You don't run a generator
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after the power comes back. S smiled at the vegetables
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and thought I didn't see. The new geometry of
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us was quieter than before and, in a way I had
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not anticipated, more intimate. Without the visit
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structuring our time, The preparation, the bracing,
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the arrival, the four days of three -person calibration,
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the departure, the recovery, Saloni and I were
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simply together, and being simply together turned
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out to ask more of me than the complicated version
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had. I had spent seven months so focused on the
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third dimension of our life, the visiting dimension,
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the dimension full of charge, that I had not
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noticed what was happening in the plain two -dimensional
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version. that we had been, quietly and without
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announcement, growing closer. The charge had
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been so loud it had drowned out the signal. Now
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the charge was gone and the signal was all there
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was and the signal turned out to be, we like
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each other. We had perhaps always liked each
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other. We had simply been too settled and then
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too frightened to notice the liking underneath
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the marriage. We started cooking together on
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weekends. This had been her domain. She was the
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better cook, and we both knew it, and had arranged
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our lives accordingly, the way couples arrange
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themselves around confidence. She cooked, I cleaned,
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the division clean, and unexamined like everything
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else had once been unexamined. But one Saturday
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morning I was at the stove making chai, and she
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was beside me starting something elaborate, a
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dish with stages, and I just stayed. I didn't
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leave when the chai was done. I leaned against
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the counter with my cup and watched her hands,
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and she started explaining what she was doing.
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Not the way you explain to a child or to someone
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in the way, but the way you explain to a person
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who wants to understand. This is why you bloom
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the spices first. This is what you're listening
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for when the onions go. This is the moment it
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turns, you can smell it, that there. I asked
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questions. Real ones. Two hours disappeared.
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You should have been doing this years ago, she
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said near the end, wiping her hands. I didn't
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know I wanted to, I said, which was the truest
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sentence I'd produced in a while. There was a
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whole category of things I hadn't known I wanted,
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and I was finding them one at a time, late, like
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a man cleaning out a house he'd lived in for
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years and discovering rooms. She handed me the
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wooden spoon. Try, she said. I tried. It was
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not good. She laughed at it and tasted it again
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to be sure and laughed again. And I laughed too.
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And the laughing was the thing. The laughing
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was the whole point. Two people ruining a dish
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together on a Saturday morning in a flat that
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was finally the right size. Piyush called every
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Sunday. I came to know the shape of those calls
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the way you come to know the shape of a recurring
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weather. I knew when Celonie's voice would shift
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into the register she used for him. Lighter,
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younger, a register I had once found unbearable
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to overhear and now found I could be in the room
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for. I knew when she would carry the phone to
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the other room because the call had turned private
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and when she would stay at the kitchen table
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because the call was practical. Dates and logistics
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and Mira's mother something. And I stopped leaving
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the room when the calls were private. Not to
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listen. I want to be clear about that because
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it would be easy to misread and because there
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was a version of me a year ago who would have
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stayed in order to listen who would have stood
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on a bathroom drum in the dark to listen. That
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man was gone. I had no wish to overhear. I stopped
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leaving, because leaving had become its own statement,
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the husband withdrawing, granting privacy with
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a visible flourish that made the privacy into
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a thing, a performance of magnanimity that was
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really a way of keeping score. I had decided
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to stop making that statement. So I stayed where
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I was, reading or writing or doing nothing, present
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and uninterested, and the privacy of her calls
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became ordinary instead of theatrical. She noticed.
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She didn't say anything. But she noticed, and
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one Sunday she came back from a call and sat
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across from me at the table and didn't pick the
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conversation back up where strangers would, but
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somewhere deeper in, the way you do with someone
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you trust to follow. He's happy there, she said.
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The job is good. That's good. He met someone.
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Her voice was careful. Carrying something across
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a distance, not wanting to spill it. I looked
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at her. A girl from his office, she said. He
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mentioned her, casually. A pause and then the
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smallest of smiles, because we both knew him.
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But you know how he mentions things casually
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when they're not casual. I thought about my brother.
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About the way he loved things, fully. Fast, with
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the whole of himself thrown in before he'd checked
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the depth of the water. He had always been like
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that. It was the quality that had caused all
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of this, and it was also, I could see now, one
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of the better things about him, the thing Mir
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from the office was presumably falling for, the
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openness, the lack of a guard. Good, I said.
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She looked at me, the full look, the one that
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checked for the lie. You mean it? Yes, I said.
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And I did. I sat with the fact of meaning it,
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and found it solid. My brother had met a girl
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from his office, and I was glad, plainly glad,
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and the gladness was not a performance I was
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putting on for my wife's benefit. It was just
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true. Somewhere in the last seven months meaning
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it had stopped being an effort and started being
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a fact, and I hadn't noticed the moment it happened.
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The way you never notice the moment a wound stops
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hurting, only the later moment when you realize
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it has. Something moved through her expression.
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Relief, I thought, or something more complicated
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than relief. The look of a person who has been
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carrying a thing carefully and is allowed, briefly,
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to set it down. He might bring her at Diwali,
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she said. I'll make sure the guest room is ready.
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She looked at me for a long moment across the
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table, the Sunday afternoon going amber in the
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window, the city outside doing the slow exhale
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it does on Sundays. Then she reached across the
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table and covered my hand with hers. I don't
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deserve you, she said. It was not a small thing
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for her to say. She did not deal in that currency
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lightly. She was not a woman who reached for
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the large statement to fill a silence. She meant
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it, which meant it cost her something, which
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meant I should not let it sit there too heavily.
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You probably don't, I said. It landed exactly
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right. She laughed. The real one. The one from
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the stomach, the one that surprised its way out
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of her before she could compose it, and she squeezed
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my hand hard, once, and shook her head at me.
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Insufferable, she said. You keep saying that.
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You keep being it. The chai had gone cold in
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both our cups. Outside, the light continued its
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slow fall toward evening. Somewhere in Bengaluru,
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my brother was being happy with the girl from
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his office, and here, in this kitchen, my wife's
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hand was over mine, and the new geometry was
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holding, quieter than the old shape, with less
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charge in the air, but more of the thing that
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charged had been hiding all along. I turned my
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hand over under hers, so that we were palm to
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palm. Make the chai again, I said. This one's
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dead. You make it, she said. You've been practicing.
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So, I made the chai. And it was, finally, nearly
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as good as hers, and she told me so, grudgingly,
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which from Celoni was the highest grade available.
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To be continued in episode 12, The Diwali Visit.
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Playful Wife. If this story is staying with you,
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the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe
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so you don't miss it. The complete book is on
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Amazon and early episodes plus bonus chapters
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are on my Patreon. Links are in the description.
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I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.