Challenge: Secrets
Timeline: Set in late season 1, but with spoilers for the season 4 episode "In Dreams".
"Marriage"
Every married couple has their secrets. Some of them are harmless, jokes that no one else understands because they are based on moments in time no one else shared, expressions that are part of a language established over decades and do not make sense to anyone else. Some are darker in nature. Emily had three miscarriages before Jacquelyn, none of them surviving past the eighth or ninth week, and only she and Arvin know the day, the month, the year these faceless children died. Jacquelyn is the most painful secret of all. Ever since Emily made him promise, Arvin has not said her name. Neither has she. They do not visit her grave together when they are in Italy; neither do they visit any of the towns whose names Arvin had presented to her like pearls on a necklace, teasing and laughing. But when he brings Sydney Bristow home for dinner that first evening, all young and vibrant and grown up, Emily and Arvin look at each other. The unspoken name lingers between them while Sydney who is apparently somewhat nervous about being invited to her bosses’ house dives into oblivious, eager chatter about her college classes.
Some secrets are physical in nature. Emily knows the very week Arvin started to have an affair, and she knows when it ended, though he never told her the name of the woman, and, professional that he is, was always careful enough to remove every trace of her perfume from his body. Still, she could sense it in the tenseness of his shoulders when he held her, she could feel it in the way he buried his face in her neck. Arvin knows just when she got told she had cancer by her doctor, even though she can’t bring herself to say it out loud at first, as if repeating it herself would make it as real as Jacquelyn’s death. Her skin contracts under Arvin’s fingertips when he comes home from work, and he says: “It is cancer.”
Some secrets depend on your trust. Emily has concluded Arvin does not truly work for a bank a good long while ago. When he comes one day with one of his fingers entirely wrapped in white and red marks on his neck and shoulders, everything in her goes very still. But the words “oh my god, what happened to you?” do not get spoken. Because he’s looking at her, begging her not to ask, and she knows he would tell her if he could. So instead, she embraces him, and feels his unharmed hand stroking her face, thanking her for her silence and her faith.
One day, he will tell her. With his voice or with his body, but he will, she has no doubt about that, and she doesn’t know whether to look forward to this day, or to fear it. But it will come. It is just one more secret, Emily says to herself, and that is what married couples share.
"Marriage"
Every married couple has their secrets. Some of them are harmless, jokes that no one else understands because they are based on moments in time no one else shared, expressions that are part of a language established over decades and do not make sense to anyone else. Some are darker in nature. Emily had three miscarriages before Jacquelyn, none of them surviving past the eighth or ninth week, and only she and Arvin know the day, the month, the year these faceless children died. Jacquelyn is the most painful secret of all. Ever since Emily made him promise, Arvin has not said her name. Neither has she. They do not visit her grave together when they are in Italy; neither do they visit any of the towns whose names Arvin had presented to her like pearls on a necklace, teasing and laughing. But when he brings Sydney Bristow home for dinner that first evening, all young and vibrant and grown up, Emily and Arvin look at each other. The unspoken name lingers between them while Sydney who is apparently somewhat nervous about being invited to her bosses’ house dives into oblivious, eager chatter about her college classes.
Some secrets are physical in nature. Emily knows the very week Arvin started to have an affair, and she knows when it ended, though he never told her the name of the woman, and, professional that he is, was always careful enough to remove every trace of her perfume from his body. Still, she could sense it in the tenseness of his shoulders when he held her, she could feel it in the way he buried his face in her neck. Arvin knows just when she got told she had cancer by her doctor, even though she can’t bring herself to say it out loud at first, as if repeating it herself would make it as real as Jacquelyn’s death. Her skin contracts under Arvin’s fingertips when he comes home from work, and he says: “It is cancer.”
Some secrets depend on your trust. Emily has concluded Arvin does not truly work for a bank a good long while ago. When he comes one day with one of his fingers entirely wrapped in white and red marks on his neck and shoulders, everything in her goes very still. But the words “oh my god, what happened to you?” do not get spoken. Because he’s looking at her, begging her not to ask, and she knows he would tell her if he could. So instead, she embraces him, and feels his unharmed hand stroking her face, thanking her for her silence and her faith.
One day, he will tell her. With his voice or with his body, but he will, she has no doubt about that, and she doesn’t know whether to look forward to this day, or to fear it. But it will come. It is just one more secret, Emily says to herself, and that is what married couples share.