Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 5: The Rules Change

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 5: The Rules Change · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 5, The Rules Change,
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written by Mia. There is no manual for this.
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I want to be clear about that, because when I
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look back at those weeks, I can see that I was
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inventing everything as I went. Every response,
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every silence, every gesture of acceptance or
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withdrawal, with nothing to work from. No model.
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No precedent in my own life or anyone else's
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that I could observe. My parents had a conventional
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marriage. Forty years, a house in Nagpur, a rhythm
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so established that they moved through their
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days like two instruments playing a piece they'd
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memorized long ago. As far as I knew, they had
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been faithful to it. As far as I knew, that qualifier
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had taken on new weight since October. My friends'
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marriages were either visibly happy or quietly
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not, in ways nobody discussed across dinner tables.
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My colleagues' marriages were efficiently invisible,
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the kind that exists in the background of a life
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rather than at the center of it. None of them
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gave me what I needed. None of the films I had
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seen. None of the books I had read. None of the
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conversations I had overheard in offices and
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dabas and family gatherings where people talked
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about marriage the way they talked about weather,
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as something that happened to you, that you endured
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or enjoyed, that was essentially outside your
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control. I was living in an arrangement that
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had no name. I was building its rules in real
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time, under conditions that made careful building
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difficult, with materials I had not ordered and
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did not entirely understand. So, I started with
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what I had, myself. The specific person I was,
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the capacities and limits of that person which
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I was discovering through use, the way you discover
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the load -bearing properties of a wall by pressing
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on it. The first rule I arrived at was, do not
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ask directly. Not because I was afraid of the
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answers. Though some part of me that still needed
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protecting was afraid, but because I understood
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with growing clarity that the direct question
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would rupture something that was functioning.
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The arrangement we had achieved, the shared agreement
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to operate without defining, to hold the thing
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without naming it, was working. It was fragile
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and strange and cost me something daily, but
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it was working. And the direct question would
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force it into a shape it was not yet ready to
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hold. So I did not ask. I held it without handles.
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This required more of me than I expected. The
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impulse to ask is its own kind of pressure. It
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builds in the chest. It comes up at odd moments,
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at breakfast, in lifts, while I was driving home
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and had 40 minutes to think. What is this? How
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long has it been? Does she love him? I put those
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questions aside with the careful deliberateness
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of a person organizing a room they can't yet
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deal with. The second rule was, look. I had always
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been, by nature, a man who moved through life
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at slightly less than full attention, present
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enough to function, engaged enough to be considered
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a good person to know, but not really looking
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in the sense that I mean here. looking at the
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specific texture of things, at what was actually
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there rather than what I expected to find. The
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kitchen had changed this. I had started in the
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weeks after October to see my wife differently.
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Not as a new person, she had always been who
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she was, but with new eyes. As though someone
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had cleaned a window I had known was dirty. I
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watched her porch high and noticed the way she
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held the pan, one -handed, without thinking,
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the grip of someone completely confident in the
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action. I watched her speak on the phone with
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her mother and heard the voice she used, warm,
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dutiful, love administered in careful doses,
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the voice of a woman who loves her mother and
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also knows exactly where that love ends. I watched
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her in the workroom. The door not quite closed,
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and heard the sounds she made when she was working,
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the occasional murmur, the huff of frustration,
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the quiet sound of satisfaction, when something
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went right. I watched her sleep. She slept on
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her side with one hand tucked under her chin,
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like a child, and her face in sleep lost the
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confidence that structured it during the day
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and revealed something else. Something unresolved.
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Something still in process. I lay beside her
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at night and watched her face and thought, I
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have been sleeping next to this person for three
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years and I am only now learning her. This is
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what watching does to you. It makes you a student.
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It makes you humble in ways that anger is too
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loud to allow. The third rule surprised me most,
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stay. I had expected, in those first bewildering
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days after October, to want to leave. I had expected
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the ground to shift so completely that I would
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find myself standing in a different life. The
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one where I packed a bag and said what needed
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to be said and remade myself as someone who had
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not tolerated this. That life existed in my imagination.
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It was clean and had a certain dignity to it.
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But the leaving impulse never came. What came
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instead was, I want to use the right word, depth.
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The marriage had been before a pleasant surface.
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We had been good together in the ways that good
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marriages are good. Companionable, warm, functional.
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We had not had the kind of problems that required
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intervention. We had been, by external measure,
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fine. Now, we were not fine. We were complicated,
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and the complication had added layers, uncomfortable
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ones, painful ones, ones that woke me at four
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in the morning with the cold clarity of someone
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who has been handed more reality than they ordered,
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but also real ones, true ones. I was angry sometimes.
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I want to say this plainly because I am not interested
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in presenting a version of this story in which
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I was nobler than I was. I was not an enlightened
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being who had transcended ordinary human feeling.
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Some mornings I woke up, and the anger was right
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there, clean and cold, and for a few minutes
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it was the realest thing in the room. Rage at
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her, at Piyush, at the easy way she moved through
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a world she had apparently decided to arrange
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for her own satisfaction, at my own inexplicable
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tolerance of all of it, at the fact that I was
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lying here choosing to stay rather than choosing
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the clean exit. The rage always passed. It took
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varying amounts of time, sometimes 20 minutes,
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sometimes three days of careful management. But
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it always passed. And on the other side of it,
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the same thing. My wife, making tea, choosing
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me. Because she was choosing me. Every morning,
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in the practical architecture of our shared life,
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she chose me. She made the chai and put it at
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my right hand before I asked. She kept track
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of things I had told her once months ago and
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acted on them when the moment came. She was there,
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in this flat, with me, not because she had nowhere
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else to be, but because she had decided that
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this was where she was. I held onto this not
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as consolation, but as fact. The month between
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visits, November into December, was ordinary
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by external measure. Work, home, dinner, weekends.
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The city going about its business around us.
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Saloni had started what would eventually become
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the first collection. She didn't call it that
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yet, didn't have the frame for it, but I could
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see it beginning. The dark rose silk appeared
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and disappeared from the workroom. She had started
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two other pieces alongside it, the beginnings
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of a conversation between fabrics, a visual argument
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she was having with herself about what she wanted
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to say. She showed me a sketch one evening without
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preamble. She was sitting cross -legged on the
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bed with her sketchbook, still in the clothes
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she'd worn to a meeting, and she simply held
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it up. No explanation. No tell me what you think
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or do you like it. Just here. I took the sketchbook.
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It was a blouse or the top half of something,
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architectural, structured, the kind of thing
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that required the silk to do something precise
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rather than simply exist. She had drawn it in
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clean lines with notes in the margins, the neckline
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lower than she usually wore. The back, I looked
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at the back more carefully, almost bare. Two
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straps crossing between the shoulder blades,
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nothing else. For whom? I asked. For me, she
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said. I looked at the sketch for a moment longer.
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The back, the straps, the expanse of skin that
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would be there when this thing was made and worn.
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You'll freeze, I said. Probably, she agreed.
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She took the sketchbook back. She didn't look
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at me. She looked at the sketch. When will it
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be done? I asked. When it's ready, she said.
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I looked at the side of her face, the specific
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quality of her attention when she was in the
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middle of something, total, given without remainder.
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She gave that attention to fabric and to the
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people she cared for with the same completeness,
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and I had spent three years on the receiving
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end of it and had perhaps taken its completeness
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for granted. Okay, I said. She made a small note
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in the margin, her handwriting small and precise.
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One evening in the third week of November, I
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came home to find Saloni on the phone in the
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bedroom, door not quite closed. I set my bag
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down. I went to the kitchen. I filled a glass
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of water and stood at the counter and held it
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and did not drink it. I could hear, not words,
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not content, just the temperature of it. Her
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voice through the not quite closed door. The
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private register. The warm one, the unguarded
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one, the one that lived below her public voice
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like something that only surfaces in particular
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conditions. I drank the water. The call ended.
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She came to the kitchen a few minutes later with
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the ease of someone who has just had a good conversation.
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Shoulders dropped, something released, her face
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with the softness it gets when she has been somewhere
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she wanted to be. Good day? I asked. Getting
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better, she said. She kissed my cheek. Her lips
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were warm. Better now. This was the thing about
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Celonie. She did not hide what she felt. She
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was incapable of the complete concealment that
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might have made things simpler, that might have
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allowed both of us to maintain the fiction of
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a marriage that existed in only one dimension.
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She came to me warmed by other people, and she
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did not pretend she hadn't been, and she came
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to me with her care for me fully and genuinely
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intact, and she held both of these things simultaneously
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without apology or explanation. I was beginning
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to understand that this was not selfishness.
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I was beginning to understand, slowly, through
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the daily process of choosing the second road
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over and over. that it was, in its way, a form
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of respect. She was not hiding from me. She was
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trusting me with the full complexity of who she
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was. That trust was its own kind of gift, even
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when it cost. What's for dinner? I asked. Whatever
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you want, she said. I was waiting for you. The
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night before Piyusha's third visit, I couldn't
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sleep. This was not unusual. I had become, since
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October, a man who woke at odd hours and lay
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awake thinking the thoughts that daylight made
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it easier to avoid. But this night was different.
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The thoughts were different. Less pain and more
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something. I lay in the dark and listened to
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Saloni breathe beside me. Slow and deep, the
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breathing of someone completely at rest. I had
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learned to read the sleep sounds of this woman.
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I knew the particular depth of her breathing
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that meant she was dreaming versus the shallower
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rhythm of lighter sleep. This was deep. She was
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far away. I looked at the ceiling. I thought
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about the fact that tomorrow Piyush would arrive.
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I examined this thought carefully, turning it
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over, looking for the thing I expected to find.
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The dread, the contraction, the specific tightening
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that had been there before his previous visits.
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It wasn't there, or rather, it was there but
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it was not the largest thing. Underneath it and
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around it, and in the strange spaces between
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the grief and the anger and the complicated arousal
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that I still hadn't found a clean way to think
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about, underneath all of that was something I
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had to look at directly because I owed myself
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honesty. I was looking forward to it. Not to
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the injury. Not to the specific ache of watching
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them together. But to what the visits did to
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Saloni. The weeks before. The sharpening of her.
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The energy that entered her in the days of preparation.
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The specific alive quality that filled the flat.
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And the quality of her attention to me in the
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wake of the visits. The depth of it. The presence
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in it. As though she returned from somewhere
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full. and wanted to give. I had always been given
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her best self. I was receiving it still. The
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fact that her best self was more complicated
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than I had known did not change that it was being
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given. I rolled onto my side. Celonie, in her
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deep sleep, shifted slightly. The automatic adjustment
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of a body that knows another body is near, moving
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toward it the way plants turn toward light. without
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decision. Her back was warm against my chest.
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I put my hand on her waist, lightly, barely touching.
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Tomorrow Piyush arrives, I thought. And good.
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The word arrived without irony, without qualification.
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I held it in the dark for a long time. It did
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not change. It remained what it was real, true,
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mine. I was beginning to understand something
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that I would not fully understand for many more
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months, that the line between suffering and love
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is not where most people draw it. That the things
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we choose to carry and the people we choose to
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carry them for tell us more about who we are
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than all the easier choices combined. I was carrying
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something difficult. I had been carrying it since
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October. And I was still here, in this bed, in
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this marriage. with my hand on this woman's waist,
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choosing. Not because I was a saint. Not because
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I had no other options. Because I had looked
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at the options and found that this, this complicated,
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painful, alive, real thing was the one I wanted.
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Outside, the city settling into the deep part
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of the night. A dog somewhere distant. The sound
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of a train. I closed my eyes. I had a conversation
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with my mother that month that I did not expect
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to have. She called on a Sunday the way she always
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called, at noon, when she knew I'd be home, the
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call and institution as much as a contact. We
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talked about the usual things, my father's health,
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a cousin's upcoming wedding, the price of vegetables,
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the small inflation of ordinary life. She asked
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about Celonie, and I said she was well, which
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was true. Then she said, you sound different.
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Different how? I said. Older, she said, more
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settled, like something has resolved. I thought
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about what had resolved, about the second road
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and the framework and the months of building,
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about the version of myself that had stood on
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that balcony in October. bewildered and broken
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open, and the version that was standing here
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now in March talking to his mother on the phone.
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Some things have, I said, which was honest without
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being specific. Good, she said. That's good.
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A pause. Marriage does that sometimes. Settles
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people into themselves. Your father was a different
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man at 33 than he was at 30. How? I said. Less
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afraid, she said. More willing to be what he
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was. Marriage showed him who he was, I think.
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The having to live with someone, really live,
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not perform, it strips things down. I thought
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about this. About what my marriage had stripped
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down. The assumptions, the comfortable distance,
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the idea that I already knew. Yes, I said. That's
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right. She's good for you, my mother said. Saloni.
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Whatever else, she's good for you. Yes, I said.
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She is. My mother said something about the cousin's
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wedding, and the conversation moved on. But I
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held what she had said, the having to live with
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someone really live, not perform. It strips things
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down. What was left after the stripping was what
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was actually there. What was actually there,
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I was finding, was better than what I'd had before.
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The Bengaluru news had come through properly
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that month. Not a rumor, not an overture, but
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a formal offer with a number attached. I had
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heard Celonie's voice on the phone when Piyush
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called to tell her, heard the specific quality
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of her silence when she received the information,
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heard the things she said that were not about
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what she was feeling. That evening I asked her,
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Do you want him to stay? She looked at me from
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across the kitchen table. We were having the
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late dinner we often had on the nights she worked
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long hours, simple food, both of us tired. That's
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not the right question, she said. What's the
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right question? Whether I want what's right for
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him. She was looking at her food. Those are different
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questions. I thought about this, about the difference
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between what we want and what we want for someone.
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This specific generosity required to hold both.
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Do you, I said, want what's right for him? She
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looked up, met my eyes. Yes, she said, more than
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I want what's easy for me. I looked at her, at
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the particular quality of what she was carrying,
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not martyrdom, not performance, but the genuine
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cost of loving someone enough to want their good
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thing over your preferred thing. That's love,
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I said. She looked at me for a moment. Something
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moved in her expression. Yes, she said, quietly.
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I suppose it is. We ate the rest of the meal
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in a quiet that was not uncomfortable but full,
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the specific fullness of a silence that has something
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real in it. Later, washing up together at the
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sink, she said without turning, He'll come back.
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At Diwali, probably. He'll always come back.
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I know, I said. And things don't have to, she
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was searching for the word. The important things
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don't have to change. I thought about what the
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important things were, what I would protect if
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I were asked to name it. No, I said. They don't.
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She passed me a bowl to dry. Our hands didn't
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quite touch, but they were close enough that
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I felt the warmth of her. The blouse is almost
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done, she said. I know, I said. I can hear you
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in the workroom. Does it bother you? No, I said
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honestly. It's the opposite of bother. She looked
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at me sideways, the small private smile. Good,
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she said. To be continued in episode six, the
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five of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
23:12
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
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Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete
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book is on Amazon and early episodes plus bonus
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chapters are on my Patreon. Links are in the
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description. I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.