Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 15: The Collection

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 15: The Collection · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 15, The Collection,
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written by Mia. The collection took shape through
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February and into March, a slow emergence, like
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something growing underground that you can only
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see by its effects on the surface. You did not,
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watching day to day, see a collection. You saw
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a woman going into a room, and coming out of
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it, going in again. You saw fabric move from
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the leaning row against the wall to the table
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to the form to the rail, and sometimes back again
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to the leaning row, demoted, reconsidered. You
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saw the sketchbook fill, and the floor accumulate
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its constellation of pins and off guts. But you
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did not see the thing itself, the coherent body
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of work, until one day you did, until enough
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surface evidence had accumulated that the shape
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underneath became suddenly, undeniably visible.
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The way a developing photograph is nothing and
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nothing and nothing and then all at once an image.
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Saloni worked with a total absorption I found
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fascinating to watch. She had always been competent.
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I had known this about her the way I knew the
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color of her eyes, as a settled fact requiring
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no further thought. But competence and passion
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are different things, as different as a calm
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sea and a deep one, and what I was watching now
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is not competence. It was passion, the specific,
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almost frightening focus of a person doing the
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precise thing they were built to do, the thing
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that uses all of them. There were hours when
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she forgot I was in the flat. There were hours
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when she forgot I think. that she had a body
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until it reminded her with a cramped hand or
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a stiff neck and she'd surface blinking like
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someone coming up from underwater. I had been
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married to her for three years and had never
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seen this. It had been happening presumably in
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fragments in the individual commissions, but
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never sustained, never at this pressure. The
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commission had given her permission to go all
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the way in, and watching her go was like discovering
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a room in a house I thought I'd mapped. I found
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myself coming home earlier. Not because anything
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required it. The office did not need less of
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me. I simply gave it less, left at the hour I
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was entitled to leave rather than the hour habit
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had taught me, and discovered the world did not
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end. I came home earlier because I wanted to
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be in the flat while she worked. Not to talk
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to her. She didn't want talk, and I had learned
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not to offer it. I wanted to exist in proximity
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to whatever was happening in that spare room.
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The sounds of it. The scissors. The machine.
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The long silences. The occasional muttered assessment
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she directed at herself. Half a sentence of self
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-criticism that told me more about the state
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of the work than any progress report could. I
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would sit in the next room with a notebook or
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a book I wasn't reading and simply be near it,
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the way you sit near a fire, not for any function
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but for the warmth of proximity to something
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alive. I became a kind of witness to the collection's
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creation. She started showing me things as they
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developed, not asking for my opinion. My opinion
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on textile design was worth precisely nothing
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and we both knew it, but sharing, which is a
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different act. The way you show things to someone
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you decided to include. Here is what I am doing.
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Here is what I'm making. Here is a part of me
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you have not seen before and that I am choosing
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now to let you see. I understood the size of
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what was being offered and I received it the
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way it deserved. I asked real questions. I refused
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to make the appreciative noise that means nothing.
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She'd have heard the hollowness in it instantly,
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and it would have closed the door she was opening.
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Instead, I asked her to teach me, and she did,
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and I learned the vocabulary slowly over those
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weeks, drape and wait and fall and grain, and
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what it meant when a fabric moved the way it
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was supposed to move, when it had the particular
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life in it that she was always either chasing
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or, occasionally, with a sharp, pleased breath,
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catching. You're becoming dangerous, she said
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one evening. She was holding a sketch up to the
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light, assessing it, and she said it without
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looking at me, the way she said the truest things.
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Why dangerous? I said. Because you actually understand
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now, she said. At the start I could say anything
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to you. This one's not working, the line is wrong,
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and you nod, and it meant nothing, it cost me
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nothing, you were just a wall I could say things
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at. Now you understand enough that I can't be
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vague. You'll ask me why the line is wrong, and
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I'll have to know. Was vague better? I said.
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She lowered the sketch and actually thought about
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it, genuinely, the way she thought about everything
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that deserved it. No, she said after a moment.
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No. Specific is better. It's harder, but it's
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better. Almost everything that's better is harder.
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I keep relearning that. There was one night in
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early March I keep returning to. The May deadline
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was not yet the crisis it would become, but it
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had begun to make itself felt. Twelve pieces
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is a great many pieces, and the collection had
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reached the stage where the easy decisions were
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all made, and only the hard ones remained. The
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ones that do not yield to effort. That requires
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something more like surrender. I woke at two
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and found the bed beside me empty, and the thin
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line of light under the spare room door. I went
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and stood in the doorway. I had learned by then
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how to stand in a doorway. when to speak and
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when to be a presence and nothing more. She was
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on the floor in the middle of the productive
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disorder, a half -made garment on the form above
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her. The rose -dark silk pooled in her lap, and
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she was not working. She was sitting with it.
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Her hands were still. I read the stillness the
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way she had taught me to read my own, not concentration,
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which is taut and forward -leaning. This was
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the other thing. Stuck. The slack, defeated stillness
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of a person who has been pushing against a closed
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door for hours and has finally run out of push.
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I came in. I sat down on the floor near her,
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not touching, within reach. It won't go, she
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said after a while. She didn't look up. The fall
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is wrong and I can't find why. I've taken it
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apart twice. It comes out the same wrong both
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times. I'm beginning to think the wrong is in
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me. I did not tell her it was good. I had learned
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that much, that the appreciative noise was poison
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here, that she would hear the hollowness in it,
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and it would close the door further. So I asked
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her a real question instead, the only thing I
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had to give. What does it want to do? I said,
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if you stop telling it what to do. She was quiet.
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Then she looked at me, slowly, the way you look
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at someone who has said a more useful thing than
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you expected of them. That's the question, isn't
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it? She said, not quite to me, to the silk. She
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got up. She put the piece back on the form and
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she stopped fighting it. I watched her stop,
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watched her hands change from insisting to listening,
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and she let the fabric fall the way it had apparently
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been wanting to fall all night, which was not
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the way her sketch had decreed, and she stepped
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back and looked at it falling, and went very
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still in the other way, the taut way, the caught
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it way. Oh, she said softly. Oh, you idiot. This
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to herself, fond and furious at once. It wanted
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to be simpler. The whole time, I was adding,
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and it wanted me to take away. I made chai. It
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was two in the morning, and we were both wide
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awake now, and there was no question of sleep.
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And I sat on the floor of the spare room and
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watched my wife take a thing apart for the third
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time and put it back together right, faster now,
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certain now, talking half to me and half to the
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silk. The cold March dark went by the window.
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And I understood that I was being given something
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most husbands never get. Not the finished thing,
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hung and lit and admired in a room, but the making
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of it, the two -in -the -morning despair and
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the small grammatical word, simpler, that broke
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it open. At first she finally stopped, not because
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it was done, but because her hands were. She
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came and sat against a cabinet beside me on the
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floor, smelling of fabric and the long night,
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and put her head on my shoulder, and we drank
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the cold dregs of the chai. You asked the right
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thing, she said. How did you know to ask that?
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I didn't, I said. I just didn't want to lie to
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you. The question was what was left when I took
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the lie away. She laughed. Tiredly into my shoulder.
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Take away, she said. Even you. Even your sentences.
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The whole year keeps telling me the same thing.
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The boutique owner came to see the first samples
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in the middle of March. Her name was Kaveri.
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She was somewhere in her 50s, direct in a way
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that made most people sit up straighter. With
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the specific precision of a woman who has run
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a business alone for 20 years and been ground
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by it into something hard and clean and entirely
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without patience for anything that isn't real.
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She had a way of entering a room that announced
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she had already begun assessing it before she
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was fully through the door. She walked through
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the spare room slowly. She looked at the pieces
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on the rail. She touched them. And this was the
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thing I watched from the kitchen, where I was
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making a pot of tea nobody had asked for, so
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that I would have a reason to be within earshot.
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She touched the fabric the way someone who knows
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fabric touches fabric, which is nothing like
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the way the rest of us touch it. There was no
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idleness in it. Her fingers were reading, weight,
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grain, fall. All the words I had just learned,
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I could see her hands testing for them, and I
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felt a small, ridiculous pride at being able
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to follow what her hands were doing. Celonie
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stood to one side and let her look. She did not
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narrate or sell. She had the confidence to let
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the work speak first. Kaveri stopped at the rose
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-dark piece. I should explain the rose -dark
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piece, because it is the center of everything
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that follows. It had begun, almost a year before,
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as a length of silk Saloni had bought in Lajpat
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Nagar. The three of us in the market that day,
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Piyush and Saloni and me, pressed together in
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the crowd of one of those impossible lanes, and
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she had stopped at a stall and reached for a
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bolt of silk in a color I didn't have a name
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for, a rose so deep it was nearly the color of
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dried blood, of old wine, of something that had
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been beautiful for a long time. It had become,
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first, a blouse concept. Then it had grown, through
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the autumn, Through the winter, through all the
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hours in the spare room, into something architectural
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and whole, a lenga, a full garment that needed
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space around it to be understood, the silk that
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had started as an impulse in a crowded lane now
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grown into the keystone of a body of work. Kaveri
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held it up. This, she said, tell me about this.
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Saloni told her. I listened from the kitchen.
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Her voice in the professional register, clear
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and exact, describing the process with the unhesitating
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confidence of someone explaining a thing she
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fully believes in. The construction. The choices.
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Where the fabric had wanted to go, and where
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she'd insisted it go instead, and where, in the
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end, they'd compromised. She and the silk. The
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way you compromise with a strong material. Kaveri
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set the piece down. She looked at Saloni for
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a moment. You made this from one length of fabric
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from Lajpatnagar, she said. Yes, Saloni said.
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You're telling me you started with the fabric,
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not a sketch, not a concept, the fabric. I always
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start with the fabric, Saloni said. The design
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follows. The fabric knows what it wants to be.
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My job is mostly to not get in its way. Kaveri
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looked at her with an expression I had learned
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this year to recognize the expression of a person
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discovering that a thing is better than they
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expected and recalibrating in real time around
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the discovery. It is a rare expression. Most
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people have decided what a thing is before they
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look at it and spend the looking confirming the
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decision. Kaveri had clearly come prepared to
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be disappointed, as a defense, the way people
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who have been let down by talent before come
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prepared, and she was, visibly, not being disappointed,
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and was visibly unsettled by it. The collection
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is called what? she said. I haven't named it,
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Saloni said. I was waiting to see what it became.
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Kaveri picked the rose -dark piece up again.
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held it to the window, to the hard march light,
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turning it so the light moved through the silk
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and showed its depth. Call a distance, she said.
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That's what it is. Look at it. It looks like
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something closing. That color, that's a color
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at the end of something. Dusk, the last of the
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wine. But it isn't closing. Look how it opens
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when it moves. It's a thing that looks like it's
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closing and is actually opening. Call it that.
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Saloni went very still. In the kitchen, I set
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the teacup down very carefully so that it would
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make no sound, because I did not want to be a
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sound in the room in that moment. The spare room
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was quiet. I could see them both through the
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doorway, the older woman holding the silk to
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the light, my wife standing very still in the
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center of the productive disorder of months.
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Yes, Saloni said finally, quietly. That's right.
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That's what it is. That evening, after Caveri
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had gone, and the flat had contracted back to
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its usual two -person size, I found Saloni on
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the kitchen floor. Not the chair. The actual
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floor. Her back against the cabinet. Knees drawn
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up. eyes half closed, in a specific posture of
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a person who has spent everything and is letting
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the empty tank simply be empty for a while. The
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tea things from Kaveri's visit were still out.
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The light was going. I sat down on the floor
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beside her, my back against the same cabinet,
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our shoulders nearly touching. Well, I said.
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She wants all twelve pieces, Saloni said, not
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opening her eyes. By May. Is that possible? Probably
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not. A pause. I'll do it anyway. I lean my head
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back against the cabinet. The cool of it. The
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kitchen going blue with evening around us. Distance,
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I said. She turned her head. and looked at me.
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In the failing light, her face was completely
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open, scrubbed of all its confidence, just tired
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and lit from somewhere inside. She's right, isn't
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she? I said, about the name. That's what this
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year has been. The whole thing. Something that
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looked like it was closing, and was actually
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opening. She was quiet for a long moment. Long
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enough that I thought she might not answer, that
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I'd said the too large thing, and she'd let it
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pass the way she let large things pass when she
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wasn't ready for them. Yes, she said. For both
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of us, I said. Yes, she said again. Softer. And
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then, softer still, almost to herself. I didn't
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have the word for it either. A whole year, and
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I didn't have the word. And a woman walks in
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off the street and holds it up to the light,
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and there it is. Distance. The thing that opens.
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She let out a breath. How does she do that? How
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do people just see things? You see things, I
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said. You see them in fabric. She sees them in
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people. Same gift, different cloth. She turned
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her head and looked at me again, and something
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moved across her face, surprise, maybe at being
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understood at the exact angle she needed understanding.
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I reached over and took her hand off her knee
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and held it, there on the kitchen floor, in the
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blue light, with the tea going cold and the twelve
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impossible pieces waiting and the collection,
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finally, named. She let me hold it. She closed
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her eyes again and rested her head back against
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the cabinet and let the empty tank be empty,
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her hand in mine, and we sat on the kitchen floor
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in the dark for a long time, neither of us moving
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to turn on the light, and I thought, distance,
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the year that opened, and me on the floor of
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it, holding her hand, having finally learned
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enough of the language to understand the name
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of the thing we'd made. Later I wrote it down.
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She named the collection tonight, except she
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didn't. Caveri did. Off the fabric, in one look.
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Distance. A thing that looks like it's closing
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and is actually opening. I have been living inside
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that sentence for a year, without being able
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to say it. Some people see in cloth. Some in
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people. S. On the kitchen floor, emptied out.
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More beautiful than I have words for. Twelve
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Pieces by May. She'll do it. She does the impossible
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ones. It's why the fabric trusts her. To be continued
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That was episode 15 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, The next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
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episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
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Links are in the description. I've Mia. Thank
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you for listening.