the invisible and the visible
On “IHOP,” episode nine of this season of The Americans, the retired handler Gabriel pays a visit to Martha, who last season was sent to the Soviet Union after she became exposed as a Russian spy asset. This wasn’t a role she chose; it was one she was unknowingly manipulated into by her husband, “Clark,” who was actually Philip Jennings, a Russian spy.











I believe that part of what Martha understands here is that the whole reason that Clark loved her in the first place was because she was invisible, unlovable. This is why she was targeted. This is what made her susceptible to manipulation and exploitation; the lack of love in her life. Clark was able to come in and fill that void. If the void hadn’t existed, if she had been more visible in her day-to-day life, more loved, Clark would have had nothing to latch onto.
I understand Martha, and I understand what she understands. I struggle with bitterness sometimes, too, the kind of bitterness you can sense coming off of her when she tells Gabriel–who both was part of the group that manipulated and exploited her, an unspeakably cruel act, and who is genuine in his expressions of concern for her–that he can go. She has every right to be bitter. And perhaps I do, too, as someone who should know by now what it is to see and be seen, to know and be known by someone, but doesn’t, who doesn’t know what it is to stand out from the crowd for the person who stands out from the crowd for me on the proverbial or literal dance floor, but is instead still dancing on her own. I know that bitterness is no friend of mine, and only shuts down possibilities rather than opening them up, but it can be seductive at times, a way of feeling something other than the constant ache of yearning.
Two episodes prior, in “The Committee on Human Rights,” Paige, the daughter of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, broke up with her boyfriend Matthew.





Matthew’s responses are so terrible. If he understood anything at all, he might have said something like, “I know that I don’t know you yet, but I really want to know you.” Perhaps he can be forgiven for being a clueless teenager, but those who are visible in the sense that Paige is and, when she is older, will be visible–conventionally attractive, seen as desirable–often face these kinds of misperceptions throughout much of their lives. A friend of mine who is what many would consider attractive and who has had no shortage of relationships in her life said to me not long ago, “They think I’m [this] or they think I’m [that],” as if the ideas people who see her sometimes have about her feel a bit like cages. Even if these ideas recognize the truth of one aspect of her, they may not allow room for the fullness of her, for her complexities or contradictions.
And I wonder what it might have been like if you and I had written a book about love together, me with everything I’ve learned from being invisible and you with everything you’ve learned from being visible.
Notes
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