SHE FEIGNED SLEEP as he moved around the room in the shadows of early evening. When it had been nearly time for him to leave, they had lain down to sleep together one more time. There was nothing more comforting or intimate than sleeping with him. Sex hadn’t brought them so close as sleeping together had.
He packed his clothes and took a quick bath and put his uniform back on. She could see him buttoning his shirt and straightening his tie in the floor-length mirror that was fastened to her wall, even though she lay with her back to him. She didn’t want to get up and tell him good-bye. If she did, it would be finalized. She knew she would have to at some point, but for now she just lay there and tried to keep him with her as long as she could.
He carried his bags out to the front door and took his time coming back into her bedroom, as if he was memorizing the apartment. When he came into her bedroom he stretched out beside her in his meticulously ironed uniform. He kissed her on the forehead.
“I love you,” he said. For a moment she thought these might be the simple words of a soldier who needed to utter such a phrase so that he could hold on to this moment for later, when he smelled death, but she knew that he meant it. She could see the truth in his eyes. And a man had never said it to her this way, either, emphasizing each word—because each one was equally important, really. People always made a big deal about the word love, but it was really the other two words in that sentence that mattered.
She had never cried over a man in her life, but after she kissed him and he walked out, she buried her face in the pillow and wept, trying to block out the sound of the train when it approached. And then she heard it leaving, each turn of the great metal wheels on the metal track a sign that he was getting farther and farther away. Each scratching grind of the train taking him closer to the war. When she couldn’t hear the train anymore she sat up in the bed with a start.
“Oh, my Lord,” she said, feeling the warmth there, the spirit that stirred within. “I’m pregnant.”