Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 76: The Court Date

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 76: The Court Date · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. I'm not less scared than you,
0:05
she said. I just don't believe the fear is information.
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You think, because you can imagine the disaster
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so vividly that it's telling you something true
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about what's going to happen. It isn't. The letter
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came on an ordinary morning, as the large things
0:25
do, and it had a date in it. After all the months
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of process, the assessments and the forms and
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the open -ended waiting, the adoption had at
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last been given a day, a hearing, in a courtroom,
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some weeks off, on which a judge would consider
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the matter and, if all was in order, make Kabir
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ours in the eyes of the law forever. I read it
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twice, standing in the doorway, and then I had
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to sit down, because a thing that had lived for
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so long as a hope, a direction, a long, uncertain
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corridor, had suddenly become a Tuesday. There
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is now a specific square on the calendar on which
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our whole future would be decided, and the having
1:08
of a date did something to the waiting that I
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had not expected. It made it somehow worse. I
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would not have predicted that. You spend the
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whole indefinite stretch of a process, like this
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longing for a date, for an end to the open -endedness.
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for something solid to hold against the formless
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waiting, and then the date arrives and you discover
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that the formlessness had been a mercy. An open
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question cannot be answered now. A someday cannot,
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on any particular morning, go wrong. The very
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vagueness I had chafed against for months turned
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out to have been protecting me, holding the catastrophe
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at a safe, indefinite distance. And the date
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stripped that protection away in a single line
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of official type. I had asked for solid ground.
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I had been given a cliff edge with a time on
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it. Because a date is a strange and powerful
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object, and I had not reckoned with what it would
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do to us. For all the long months, the adoption
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had been an indefinite thing. A someday, and
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you can live with a someday almost indefinitely,
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because it makes no demands on a particular hour.
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It floats, unfixed, and your hope floats with
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it, untethered to any moment that could disappoint
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you. But a date nails the someday to the calendar.
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It converts an abstract forever into a concrete
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Tuesday. And in doing so, it creates, for the
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first time, a specific thing that could specifically
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go wrong, a single identifiable hour on which
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everything is staked. I thought, holding the
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letter, of the other dates a life accumulates,
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the dates that turn out to be the load -bearing
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ones, a wedding has a date, a birth has a date.
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And now this, the third of the great joinings,
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the making of a child into a son, had a date
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too, a civic appointment at which a private love
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would be made public and permanent. We were to
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be joined to Kabir by appointment, in a building,
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before a stranger in a robe. It was absurd and
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it was enormous, both at once, the way the real
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ceremonies always are. There is something almost
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comic and at the same time profound about the
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way the largest human transformations are conducted
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through the smallest civic machinery. A man and
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a woman become a marriage by signing a register,
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a person becomes a citizen by an oath in a hall,
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and a child becomes a son by a judge consulting
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a file and saying a sentence. The state cannot
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see the love. It can only see the paperwork,
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and so it processes the most enormous things
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in the same flat bureaucratic key it uses for
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licenses and permits. I used to find this diminishing
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the reduction of the sacred to the administrative.
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I have come to find it moving instead, that society
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has built these plain civic doors through which
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private love can pass to become public fact,
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and that you can walk a thing as huge as a sun
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through a door, as ordinary as a form. And the
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last stretch of waiting, the weeks between the
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letter and the date, turned out to be the hardest
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waiting of the whole long process, which I would
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not have predicted. You would think the end of
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a wait would be its easiest part, the home stretch,
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the downhill run. It is the opposite. The early
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waiting had been bearable precisely because the
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end was invisible, indefinite, safely far. You
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cannot count down to a someday, and so you do
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not lie awake doing the arithmetic of it. But
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a day you can count down to, and we did helplessly,
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the weeks becoming days, and every day that brought
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the Tuesday closer also brought closer the single
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hour on which it could all still be lost. The
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nearer the thing you want, the more unbearable
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the small remaining distance, because you have
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so much more to lose now and so little time in
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which the losing could happen. There's a cruel
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mathematics in it, that the value of a thing
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and the terror of losing it rise together, in
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exact step, all the way to the end. When Kabir
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was an abstraction in an empty room, the possible
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loss was bearable, because there was not yet
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so much to lose. Each month since had made him
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more ours, more precious. more woven into the
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daily fabric of us, and each month had therefore
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also raised the stakes of the gamble we were
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still, technically, running. We had the most
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to lose now that we had ever had, precisely because
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we had succeeded so completely at loving him,
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and the success was the exposure. You cannot
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have one without the other. The fuller the having,
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the more annihilating the imagined losing. I
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had been calm mostly for months. In the last
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weeks, with the date on the calendar, I was not
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calm at all. The notebooks, which had taught
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me to live in the present, were almost no help
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because the present in those last weeks was constituted
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entirely by its pointing at a future. Every ordinary
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moment had the date inside it. I could not drink
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a cup of tea without some part of me counting
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the teas remaining until Tuesday. This is the
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specific torment of the scheduled hope. It colonizes
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the present, drains the now of its own content,
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and fills it with anticipation so that you are
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no longer living your days but merely spending
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them, getting through them, mining each one only
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for its nearness to the day that matters. I knew
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it was a failure of the discipline. I knew I
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was sleeping through real days in my hunger for
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the one ahead. And I could not that once stop.
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The fear, in those weeks, was irrational and
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total, and I could do nothing to argue myself
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out of it. There was no real reason to think
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anything would go wrong. The process had gone
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well. The professionals were confident. The hearing
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was, everyone assured us, a formality, the legal
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ratification of a thing already effectively decided.
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And none of that reassurance touched the fear
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at all, because the fear was not reasoning. It
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was the old foster carer's terror, the dread
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of the thing snatched away at the last instant,
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raised now to its highest possible pitch by proximity.
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I lay awake inventing disasters, a lost document.
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A last -minute objection, some buried complication
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in his distant history surfacing on the worst
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possible day, the judge inexplicably refusing.
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None of them were likely. All of them were, in
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the small hours, vividly, unbearably real. Saloni
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slept better than I did, but not entirely, and
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there were nights we lay awake together in the
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dark not saying much. Two people holding the
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same fear between them, and I found that even
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that was a kind of help. The fear was not smaller
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for being shared, but it was less lonely, and
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loneliness, I have come to think, is most of
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what makes fear unbearable. A terror held alone
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in the dark metastasizes. The same terror held
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by two, side by side, stays roughly the size
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it actually is. We could not reassure each other.
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because neither of us believed the reassurances.
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But we could be awake together in the same dread
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and refuse to pretend it away, and that turned
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out to be worth more than any comfort either
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of us could have manufactured. Because when you
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have everything to lose and a fixed date on which
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to lose it, the mind does not do probability.
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It does catastrophe on a loop until the day comes.
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I tried, being who I am, to reason with it, to
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lay the probabilities out in rows and show the
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fear how unlikely each disaster was, and it did
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not work even slightly because fear of this kind
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does not live in the part of the mind that reasons.
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It lives lower down in the old animal basement
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where the only categories are safe and not safe,
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and that part of me had learned, across a lifetime
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and across Kabir's, that good things get taken,
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and no amount of statistical reassurance from
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the upstairs floors could persuade the basement
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otherwise. The fear was not a belief I could
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argue with. It was a scar doing what scars do
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near the site of a fresh wound, which is ache,
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regardless of whether the new injury will actually
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come. The hardest question was what to tell Kabir,
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because a date is a double -edged thing to give
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a child who has learned not to trust the future.
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We could not keep it from him. It was his life,
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his hearing, and we had promised, since the beginning,
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that he would be a person in his own story and
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not its object. But to hand a child who distrusts
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tomorrow a specific future date and say everything
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depends on this day is to hand him weeks of a
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particular dread, a thing to count down to with
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the fear that it will be snatched, which is its
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own cruelty. So we told him the way we tell him
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everything, sideways, through the rails. I said
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the train had been running toward the terminus
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for a long time now, and that we had finally
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been told the arrival time. That on such a day,
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at such an hour, it would pull in and the line
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would end officially with us, and he would be
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home in the eyes of everyone, even the law, even
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the people with the papers. And because a scheduled
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arrival is, in the logic of the metro, The most
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reliable thing there is, a time you can trust,
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a train that comes when the board says it will.
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The date reached him not as a dread, but as a
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timetable, which is the one form in which a fixed
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future has never frightened him. I marveled,
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telling it to him that way, at how completely
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the Metro had become our shared tongue, the dialect
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in which the most freighted things between us
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could finally be said without detonating. A year
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before, I could not have told him anything this
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large. He would have heard, in any direction
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I approached from, the threat his whole life
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had taught him to expect. Now there was a channel,
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the rails, worn smooth by a hundred ordinary
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conversations, down which even this, even the
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date of his own permanence, could travel safely
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into him. That is what you build with a wounded
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child over time if you are patient and lucky.
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Not trust exactly, not all at once, but a single
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reliable wire between you, one frequency that
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works, along which the truth can eventually be
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sent. Saloni did the waiting better than I did,
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as she does, and when I asked her how, near the
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end, she told me. I'm not less scared than you,
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she said. I just don't believe the fear is information.
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You think because you can imagine the disaster
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so vividly that it's telling you something true
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about what's going to happen. It isn't. It's
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just your love, frightened, making noise. The
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vividness is an evidence. I feel all of it too.
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The lost document. The judge saying no. All of
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it. And I've decided to treat it as weather,
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not prophecy. It'll rain in here until Tuesday.
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That doesn't mean the day will go badly. It just
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means I love him enough to be terrified of losing
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him, which I already knew. And she took the clothes
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she had been quietly preparing. She had made
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Kabir something to wear to the hearing. Of course
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she had. Her hands again. Something simple and
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good for the boy to stand up and on the day he
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became ours. and folded them, and set them ready,
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weeks early, an act of faith against all the
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catastrophes I was rehearsing, the way she had
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once bought the bed before there was a child
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to fill it. I have come to think that this is
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what faith actually looks like, stripped of its
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grander costumes, not a feeling of certainty,
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which she did not have, but an action taken in
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the teeth of uncertainty, a small concrete bet
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placed on the good outcome before the good outcome
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is assured. She did not feel sure the day would
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go well. She folded the clothes anyway, and the
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folding was the faith, the faith located not
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in her chest but in her hands, in the doing of
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a hopeful thing while frightened. I, the writer,
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kept my fear company with words, turning it over,
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naming it, analyzing it in the notebook. She
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kept hers company with an act, and I knew...
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Watching the small clothes settle onto the chair,
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that hers was the wiser practice, because a fear
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you act against shrinks, and a fear you only
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describe grows fat on the attention. I wrote
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it that night in the sixth notebook, a date circled
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on the calendar, a small good set of clothes
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folded and waiting. That a date is the moment
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a hope stops being a direction and becomes an
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appointment, and that this is at once a gift
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and a torture. A gift because it means the thing
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is real enough, close enough, to be scheduled.
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A torture because a scheduled thing can be specifically
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lost in a way a floating someday cannot. We had
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lived, for months, in the safe indefiniteness
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of a forever with no date. Now forever had a
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Tuesday, and the having of it had taught me how
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the human heart actually works near the finish
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of a longed -for thing, not with mounting calm
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as the goal approaches, but with mounting terror,
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because hope and fear are the same size, always,
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and the closer the hope, the larger the fear
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it casts. I could do nothing about the fear except
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what Saloni did, which was to refuse to mistake
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it for prophecy, to call it weather and not news,
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to let it rain in the chest until Tuesday without
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believing the rain knew anything about the verdict.
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The clothes were folded. The date was set. The
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train had an arrival time at last. All that was
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left was to survive the small, unbearable distance
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between here and the terminus. And I understood,
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writing it, that this final stretch was its own
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last test of everything the years had taught
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me, that the discipline was not only to stay
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awake to the good present, but to survive the
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straining toward a good future without letting
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the strain consume the days between. I could
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not make the Tuesday come faster. I could not
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guarantee its verdict. The only thing within
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my power in the weeks remaining was the same
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thing it has always been. To keep my eyes open
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on the actual days I was being given, the boy
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actually hear the ordinary actual evenings, rather
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than spending them all as mere currency toward
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the day ahead. Even the last stretch of a longed
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-for thing is life, and it was asking me, one
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more time, not to sleep through it in my hunger
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for the thing it was leading to. Then the working
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line, the sixth notebook open. a Tuesday circled,
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and a child's good clothes waiting on a chair.
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Near the end of a longed -for thing, expect the
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fear to be at its worst, not its best, and do
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not mistake it for prophecy. You would think
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the home stretch would be the easy part. It is
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the hardest, because a someday you cannot count
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down to becomes a date you can, and a floating
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hope becomes a specific hour on which everything
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can be lost. The nearer the thing you want, the
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more terrible the small remaining distance. For
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now you have everything to lose and almost no
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time in which to lose it. The fear that comes
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then is not information. It is only your love,
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frightened, making noise. The vividness of the
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imagined disaster is not evidence that it will
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happen. Call it weather, not prophecy. Let it
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reign in you until the day, and fold the good
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clothes anyway, and set them ready, weeks early,
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against every catastrophe your mind rehearses,
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because the folding of the clothes is faith,
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and faith is not the absence of the fear, but
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the act you perform in spite of it. I kept the
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pen, and went and looked, as I have the habit
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of doing now, at the small folded clothes on
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the chair. ready weeks ahead for a day that could
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not come fast enough, and that I was also, in
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the cowardly part of me, afraid to let arrive.
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And then I went, and stood in the doorway of
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the boy's room, where he slept beneath his cloth
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map with the door, these nights, unchecked. And
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I thought, in a few weeks a stranger in a robe
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will say some words in a room, and a thing that
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has been true in, this house for a long time
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will become true in the world. The train is nearly
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at the terminus. I can see the last station from
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here, and there is nothing left to do but ride
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the final stretch with my eyes open and my heart
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in my mouth, refusing to believe the fear, folding
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the clothes, counting the days down to the Tuesday
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on which a judge will at last make legal the
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simple fact that this is, and is going to stay,
19:06
our boy. To be continued in Episode 77, The Last
19:23
76 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
19:27
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
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description. I've Mia. Thank you for listening.