The narrator and Emily’s romantic relationship and marriage

The narrator and Emily’s romantic relationship and marriage grows from an uncertain high-school attraction into a secret marriage made before his deployment to Iraq. Its defining movement is between closeness and enforced distance: they quarrel fiercely, find a private tenderness in one another, and try to secure that bond through a marriage they regard as practically useful even as they anticipate its end.

First Attraction and Unequal Circumstances

They meet at high school when both are eighteen. Emily wears a white ribbon around her neck and speaks softly; the narrator is drawn to her but is shy, and at first holds back because he already has a girlfriend. Her appearance leaves him uncertain how to read her: she seems gentle, but not simply innocent. The uncertainty is part of the attraction rather than a barrier to it.

Emily first notices the narrator’s gray, three-button Gap cardigan, which she calls the sweater of a sad old bastard. Their early connection takes shape through such teasing, but also through what she shares with him. She likes Modest Mouse and introduces him to Night on the Sun; she gives him two plays by Edward Albee, whose work he finds perversely unsettling. He listens as she describes the abandoned factories, cemetery, and other places where she grew up, and her voice wins him over. Their exchanges establish a relationship built as much on curiosity and argument as on ease.

Their economic circumstances sharply differ. Emily has little money and works nights in a science building, cleaning cages and killing laboratory mice with a small guillotine. She dislikes the task but reasons that the mice are already condemned and she needs the income. Her father gives her no money, while his earnings mean she cannot expect financial aid; her mother does not help her either. She economizes even on small purchases, walking eight hundred meters in the rain to buy popcorn and diet soda a few cents cheaper. The narrator, by contrast, has parents who provide what he needs and makes extra money selling drugs to high-school students. Emily thinks he is a selfish jerk, though she is also attracted to him, and makes clear that she does not trust him. When he tries to be kind, she tends to laugh at him. Her toughness and his relative privilege remain part of the tension between them.

Confession, Separation, and Return

At the end of the first semester, Emily is about to return to Elba for winter break. She lies on his bed while they wait to say goodbye. The narrator watches her and understands that, although she could hurt him, what he most wants is for nothing bad to happen to her. He tells her he loves her. When she worries that he might call her stupid, he reassures her; she says she loves him too, and their confession becomes physical intimacy. The scene turns an attraction previously hedged by shyness and distrust into a stated mutual attachment.

Their time together is repeatedly shaped by money and distance. Emily saves through the summer to attend college in Montreal, working six nights a week at Walgreens and living with a religious aunt. The narrator visits once she has settled there, taking a twenty-hour Greyhound trip each way. In her small kitchenette and by the fire escape, they smoke Player’s cigarettes, drink, cook, and argue about God, Oasis, and his arrogance. Their quarrels give way to sex and sleep; the narrator remembers the visit as dreamlike, but neither can stay. Financial pressure leads Emily to leave college, move back to Elba, rent an apartment, and work at Giant Eagle while waiting to resume classes at a local college. The separation is not presented as a lack of feeling: it follows the cost of sustaining the life she had begun in Montreal.

Military Distance and Secret Marriage

After the narrator joins the Army, the relationship has to fit around its rules. Five weeks into a posting, Emily is expected to fly in for his first weekend leave. Instead, the company’s senior warrant officer limits the soldiers to Saturday evening, making the promised visit uncertain and far shorter than the couple had anticipated. The restriction gives their reunion a military timetable before it can even begin.

Later, without official leave, the narrator cannot risk using Killeen airport because Army personnel might check his papers. Yuri drives him to the regional airport in Temple, from which he flies to Houston and then north. In Elba, he and Emily spend the rainy weekend lying down and sleeping, then driving in the evenings. The autumn landscape—the bare trees, dark sky, and streetlights—makes the visit feel beautiful and painful at once. They have known each other for two years, have saved money and found jobs, and believe they have become more mature. Emily proposes marriage before he leaves for Iraq, citing the increased pay and the health insurance she could receive as his wife. The narrator agrees, and she also says they will divorce. Their decision therefore holds practical calculation and affection together without pretending that marriage will resolve their future.

They marry in Elba on the Tuesday after Veterans Day, with no one told in advance because Emily does not want the marriage known. Joe and Roy have driven from Cleveland to visit that Friday; Joe headbutts the narrator without knowing that the wedding is planned. The narrator’s nose is broken and blood marks his windbreaker, but the wedding itself has no rings. Emily wears a blue mechanic’s jacket bearing the name MARIO on its pocket. For a few minutes, they feel like the most beautiful people in the world. The narrator does not know how long the feeling lasts; he knows only that it is real in that moment. Afterward, Emily drives him to the airport, and they sit in her car crying until it is time for him to leave.

Contact Across Deployment

The marriage does not remove the distance of deployment. On New Year’s Day, after telephone lines have been out of service since Christmas because of deaths in the unit, the narrator goes to the phone tent when service is restored. He waits in line, then sits for half an hour with his calling card before a line opens. Hearing Emily’s voice brings immediate relief: he tells her he feels much better and that he misses her. The call makes the relationship’s wartime reality concrete. Marriage has given them a formal bond and practical benefits, but, at the base, even a brief conversation depends on restored lines, a place in the queue, and time to reach her.

Across these episodes, the relationship is neither a simple romance nor a settled partnership. It is made through small acts of attention, shared argument, practical decisions, and separations they cannot control. Emily’s guardedness coexists with her declarations of love and her proposal; the narrator’s early shyness gives way to travel, commitment, and longing. Their secret wedding crystallizes that mixture: they choose one another while anticipating divorce, and then part in tears as the narrator leaves for war.