Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 18: The Summer

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 18: The Summer · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 18, The Summer, written
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by Mia. Summer arrived with its usual lack of
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apology. In Delhi, summer is not a season so
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much as a state of siege. The heat does not come.
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It occupies. It presses in from every direction
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at once. Off the walls and up from the pavement
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and down out of a white exhausted sky until the
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city reorganizes itself entirely around the single
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priority of not dying of it. The shifted hours,
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the drawn curtains, the whole rhythm of life
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bent around the few bearable margins of the day,
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the early morning and the late night with the
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long murderous middle given up for lost. People
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who have not lived through it do not believe
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the descriptions. people who have do not need
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them. The flat, which had always been adequate
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to our purposes, became in May a small and improvised
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climate system unto itself. The AC laboring in
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the bedroom, the one room we could make habitable
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so that the bedroom became the country we lived
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in and the rest of the flat its harsh surrounding
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territory. The fan in the kitchen pushing the
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hot air around without much conviction. The particular
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intimacy that the heat enforces on two people,
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the way it drives you into the same cooled room,
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onto the same side of the flat, into a closeness
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that is first practical and then somehow more
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than practical. We were thrown together by the
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weather. We did not mind being thrown. We cooked
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simpler things. The two -day spreads were impossible.
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The kitchen in May was no place to spend two
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days. We ate cooling foods, curd and cucumber
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and cold leftover things, and drank more water
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than seemed possible, and slept earlier because
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the days exhausted you simply for being endured.
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And on the evenings when the power held, it did
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not always hold. The grid in a deli summer is
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a thing you pray to. We went out onto the balcony
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after eight, when the temperature finally dropped
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from impossible to merely unpleasant, and sat
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in the dark with cold things sweating in our
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hands, and talked, or didn't, and watched the
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city try to cool itself one degree at a time.
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I had started writing. Not stories. Nothing with
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ambition behind it. Nothing meant for any eye.
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Just notes, a habit that had grown over the months,
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out of the same root that had once sent me to
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the gym in the worst of the year. The need to
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put a thing outside myself, so I could look at
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it. The need to make the internal tangible, to
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get the weather of my own head out into the air
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where it could be examined and, sometimes, survived.
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I kept a notebook on the kitchen table, the same
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kind Celonie used for her designs, the plain
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ruled ones she bought in bulk. which felt right,
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the two of us scratching at the same kind of
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paper in our different alphabets, and I wrote
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in it when a feeling got large enough to require
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the relief of language. It had become, by that
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summer, a real practice. I did not always know
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what I thought about a thing until I had written
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it down. The writing was not the record of the
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thinking, but the thinking itself. The way Saloni's
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hands did not execute a design she'd already
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finished to her head, but found the design in
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the act of making. I wrote about the year, mostly
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still it was a deep well, and I was nowhere near
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the bottom of it. But I had begun lately to write
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about the present too. The ordinary present.
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The summer. The cold thing in my hand on the
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balcony. The specific way the woman beside me
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had of going quiet that was not absence. She
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saw the notebook one morning and looked at me
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with an expression of frank surprise. Since when,
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she said. A few months, I said. She looked at
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the notebook on the table. She did not reach
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for it. This is a thing I want to record about
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my wife because it is one of the truest things
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about her. She respected the privacy of notebooks
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absolutely, having one of her own, knowing what
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it is to keep a place where you say the things
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you cannot otherwise say. She would no more have
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opened my notebook than I would have opened hers,
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and we had each, that year, had things in our
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notebooks that would have changed the other's
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whether to read. There is a kind of trust that
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is built out of the doors you choose not to open.
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We had a great deal of it. Good, she said. Only
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that, but she said it the way she said the things
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she meant. The worst of the summer brought the
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power cuts, and the power cuts brought us, of
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all places, to the roof. There was a night in
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the last week of May when the grid gave out around
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11, the AC dying with a long descending groan,
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the fans stopping, the dark going instantly thick
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and close, and the bedroom. Our one habitable
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country became within minutes uninhabitable.
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We lay in the heat, oh well, pretending it would
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come back. It did not come back. And then Saloni
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sat up in the dark and said, Roof, in the tone
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of a woman who has solved a problem, and took
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my hand, and we climbed the two flights with
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a bed sheet and two pillows and a bottle of water,
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the way half the building was doing the same.
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You could hear them, doors opening, feet on the
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stairs, the whole vertical village migrating
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upward to find what air there was. The roof was
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already half full when we got there. This is
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a thing about Delhi that no one tells you and
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everyone who lives there knows, that the worst
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nights make the best communities, that a failed
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grid puts a whole building on its roof under
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one sky. Families on sharp ice and bedsheets.
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The old uncle from the second floor who never
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speaks nodding at you in the dark. Children who
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should have been asleep hours ago running between
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the water tanks. We found a corner. We spread
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the sheet. We lay on our backs on the warm concrete
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and looked up. There were stars, faintly, with
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the city's glow aloud of them. The heat sat on
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us, but the air at least moved a little up there.
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The small mercy of a height. My mother used to
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do this, Saloni said, beside me, her voice low
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so as not to travel. In the village before Delhi.
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The whole family on the roof in summer. She said
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the city had stolen the sky from people, that
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we used to sleep under it every night, and now
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we only see it when the power fails. A pause.
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She'd have liked that the failing gives it back.
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She liked things that came back. She did not
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often speak of her mother. I had learned not
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to reach for it too eagerly when she did, because
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the eagerness could close the door. I lay still
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and received it. Tell me about her, I said, carefully.
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An open door, not a pull. And perhaps it was
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the dark, perhaps the roof, perhaps the mother
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already summoned by the sky. She did. She told
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me things I had not heard in three years of marriage.
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The way her mother sang while she cooked, a different
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song for each dish, so that you could tell what
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was for dinner from the next room by the tune.
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The way she had died, slowly, when Celonie was
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19, the long, unfair erosion of it, the daughter
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learning to cook from a woman teaching with less
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breath each week, racing to hand down what she
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could before the handing down ran out. The recipes
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that were really her mother. The order of the
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dias that was really her mother. The way half
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of what Saloni did with her hands was a dead
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woman still speaking through them. I listened
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in the dark on the warm roof and did not say
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much because there was not much to say that would
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not have been smaller than the thing she was
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giving me. I found her hand on the sheet between
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us and held it. You've never told me most of
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that. I said eventually. I know, she said. You
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never used to be a person I'd tell it to. You'd
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have listened. You always listened. But you wouldn't
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have held it. You'd have heard it and set it
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down. Now you hold it. She turned her head toward
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me in the dark. That's the difference. It's the
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whole difference between then and now. I can
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hand you the things that matter and trust you'll
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still be holding them in the morning. The power
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came back at two, the building sighing electrically
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awake below us, lights blinking on across the
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colony. Nobody on the roof moved for a while.
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We had found, in the failure, something better
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than the comfort the grid provided, and we were
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all of us reluctant to climb back down into the
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cool dark and give it up. We went eventually,
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when the heat below had broken enough to allow
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it. But I lay awake after, in the restored cool,
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listening to her breathe, and understood that
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the summer, which I had been nearly enduring,
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a siege to be survived, had been giving me something
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all along, the way the whole year had been giving
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me things while I thought it was only taking.
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The heat had driven us onto a roof, and the roof
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had given me her mother. You do not get to choose
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the form the gifts arrive in. Sometimes the gift
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is a failed grid and a warm slab of concrete
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and a woman finally telling you, at 34, about
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the songs her mother sang for each dish. Piyush
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called one Sunday in May with news. I knew it
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was news from the first syllable. There is a
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frequency a voice acquires when it is carrying
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something it has been waiting to set down, and
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Saloni knew it too. I watched her stand up straighter
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at the kitchen counter, the phone to her ear,
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the way you stand when something is arriving.
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He and Mira were engaged. Formal, done, complete
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in all its parts, the ring, the meeting of families,
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the date already set for December. He told it
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in a rush. the words tumbling, my brother who
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still loved things the way he had always loved
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them, fully and fast, and with the whole of himself
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thrown in. Solonese said the right things. She
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said them warmly, and she meant them. There was
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nothing false in her gladness. But I was watching
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her face, because watching her face is what I
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do now, and I saw it doing three things at once.
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The gladness on the top of it, real and bright,
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and underneath the gladness something more complicated,
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and underneath that something more complicated
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still, the layers of a woman receiving news that
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was wholly good and not, for her, wholly simple.
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When she hung up, she stood very still for a
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moment, the dead phone in her hand, looking at
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nothing. Then she turned to me, and she did not
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arrange her face first. That was the gift of
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where we had arrived, that she did not feel she
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had to compose herself before she let me see
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her. She turned with the full complicated truth
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of it still showing, unsimplified, trusting me
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to be able to look at the whole of it without
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needing it to be smaller. Congratulations are
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the right response, she said, carefully, as though
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laying out the facts of a thing for them both
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to look at. Yes, I said. I'm happy for them.
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I know you are. I'm also, she stopped. She looked
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for the word and didn't find a single one because
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there wasn't a single one. Several other things,
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she said, all at once. I don't have a clean name
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for any of them. I know that too, I said. And
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I did. I did not need it spelled out. And I would
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not have asked her to spell it out, because some
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of what she was feeling was hers alone, belonged
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to a chamber of her that was not mine to enter,
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and the kindest and most loving thing I could
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do was to let her feel it without requiring her
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to translate it into something I could fully
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share. My brother, whom she had once... There
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is still no clean word, even now, for what they
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had been to each other, was marrying a woman
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in December, was closing, with that marriage,
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a door that had been, for a time, open, was choosing
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a whole future that did not, could not, contain
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whatever the two of them had briefly been. That
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this was right did not make it weightless. A
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thing can be entirely right, and still cost something
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to the person it is right for. I had learned
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that this year more thoroughly, then I had learned
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anything. I had been the one it cost for so long.
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I knew the exact texture of a grief that has
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no grievance in it, a sadness that does not contradict
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your gladness, but rides alongside it, the two
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of them traveling together. The summer light
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lay heavy in the kitchen. The fan turned, pushing
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the warm air from one part of the room to another.
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Does it get easier? She said. She was not asking
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about this, specifically. She was asking about
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all of it, the ongoing labor of being the particular
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person she was, of holding the complicated shape
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of her own heart without letting it spill or
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harden, of feeling several things at once, and
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being honest about all of them. She was asking
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the question I had been living inside for a year,
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and she was asking it of the one person who had
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no reason to lie to her about the answer. I don't
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think it gets easier, I said. I had thought about
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this. I gave her the true thing rather than the
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comforting one, because she had not married me
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for the comforting things, not the new version
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of me she had married. I think it gets more familiar,
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which isn't the same. Easier would mean it stops
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costing something, and I don't think it ever
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stops costing something, the feeling everything,
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the not looking away. But familiar means you
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stop being afraid of it. You learn the shape
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of your own difficult feelings and they stop
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frightening you, even when they still hurt. And
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I think familiar might actually be better than
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easier. Easier, you have to give something up.
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Familiar, you get to keep all of it and just
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carry it better. She nodded slowly, absorbing
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it, turning it over. Come here, she said. I came.
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She put her arms around me, properly, fully,
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both arms, all the way around, the kind of embrace
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that is not comfort exactly and not desire exactly,
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but something larger that contains the elements
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of both and exceeds them. The kind you give someone
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when the feeling is too big and various to be
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expressed any other way, and the body has to
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do what the words can't. I held her back, the
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same way, in the hot kitchen with the fan turning,
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and we stood there holding each other for a long
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time, longer than comfort would have required,
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two people in the middle of a marriage they had
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broken, and rebuilt into something that could
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hold this, could hold a December wedding and
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all the several unnamed things at once, and not
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break. Outside, the summer, occupying the city.
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Inside, the two of us in our kitchen in the life
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we had built and broken and built again into
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something truer than the first version had ever
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been. We should go to Bengaluru for the engagement,
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she said into my shoulder. Properly. Be there
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for it. Yes, I said. We should. That night I
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wrote in the notebook, by the laboring breath
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of the AC, while she slept. Piyush engaged. December.
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She felt several things at once and let me see
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all of them, unsorted. She asked, does it get
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easier? I said, it gets familiar, which is better.
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I believe that. A year ago, the difficult feelings
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could end me. Now, they're just whether I know
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how to dress for. We're going to Bengaluru. We're
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going to stand in a room and be glad for them.
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all the way glad, and carry the other things
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quietly the way you carry the parts that are
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only yours. I closed the notebook and lay listening
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to the laboring AC and to her breathing and thought
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about December. The wedding out there ahead of
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us the way the monsoon was out ahead of the summer,
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a thing that would arrive whether we were ready
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or not and would, when it came, change the weather
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entirely. We would go to Bengaluru and stand
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in the bright noise of it and be glad, all the
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way glad for my brother and the woman with the
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noticing eyes. And we would carry the several
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other things quietly, folded small, the way you
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fold the clothes you are not wearing this season,
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but are not ready to give away. I was not afraid
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of the wedding. That was the true measure of
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how far we had come. A year before, the thought
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of standing in a room watching my brother marry
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would have been past bearing. Now it was only
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another room I would walk into beside my wife
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and walk out of beside her, the two of us intact,
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carrying what was ours. To be continued in episode
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was episode 18 of My Playful Wife. If this story
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is staying with you, the next episode is already
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waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
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complete book is on Amazon and early episodes
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plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
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are in the description. Thank you for listening.