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by Aliza Dube
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You had been preparing for deployment since the earliest days of your military girlfriendhood. It was always the one hurdle to your perpetual happiness, the one fly in the soup of your marriage. If it wasn’t for these nine months, you had always been so sure that your lives together would be flawless. You have spent years imagining homecoming. In your daydreams, you see your husband across a field and you go running for him. You jump into his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist like this is the airport scene of some sappy Nicolas Sparks movie. Your small son is somewhere in the background, holding an ironic homemade sign saying something along the lines of dad, thank god you’re home, mommy quit three weeks ago. The sun would be shining, someone would be taking pictures of this heartfelt moment. You would cherish these images for the rest of your lives. You would look at those teary photos in times of stress, in times of disagreement and remind each other, look how much I missed you, look how much I love you, look how much we have always sacrificed for each other.
This is not how homecoming is playing out. It is the week of Halloween. The sky is dark and close against the windshield of the Honda. You are a part of a line of cars nearly a mile long, parked on the outskirts of post. Men in uniform and surgical masks remind you of the guidelines. No one is allowed to exit their vehicle, unless they have to use the facility. The facility consists of two over-used porta-potties parked on the curb of this slow flow of traffic. You think you’ll pass. No one is allowed to exit their vehicle to run up to or approach their soldier. Stay in line. Do not exit your vehicle to talk to other spouses. Keep the windows up, keep your mask on. You stare straight ahead, in your own bubble. You’re not sure how 2020 has managed to make even a reunion feel isolating.
The soldiers pass like silent aliens in the night past the fogged up windows of your car. It is past the baby’s bedtime. He has never been in the car at night before, or at least not that he can remember. Your phone is winding its way down to dying. You can’t afford to play music for him, or else you won’t be able to text your husband. You did not come this far only to not be able to find him in the final moments of your separation. You’ve waited too long to put an end to this thing. You find yourself singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” to the baby, in desperate and faltering pitches. You’ve never known it not to quiet him, not to calm him, but tonight you cannot get out of the driver’s seat, tonight you cannot look back. His howling doesn’t stop.
And love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah….
The cars shuffle along in a trickle. The air outside is picking up a bite. The exhaust fumes from other vehicles curl up around your hood with the irreverence of cigarette smoke. A fox scuttles through the tall grass, sinking itself into a gutter. Its eyes glow, gazing out over the lunacy that humans will put themselves through. You sink your forehead against the steering wheel, in the stillness, in the noise of it all. You are trying to be grateful. He’s home, in a matter of minutes, he’s home. You try to count up all the things the army has done for you, for your family; a roof over your head, a consistent paycheck, time with your child, a mountain of medical bills all paid. But when you stand before your final hour, will you still be able to look back and say yes it was all worth it? Or will you only see all the hours it has stolen from you, the irreplaceable moments. Will you only be able to see it for the indentured servitude that it is, an almost sordid exchange of years for money. Just money. No, you’ll shake your head, it was more than that, it was for security, safety, a solid foundation for your child to stand on. But some nights, you still won’t be sure that it’s enough.
You scour the faces of the strangers passing by, searching their features for some trace of your husband. You wonder if the baby will remember him. You know it will break your heart if he doesn’t. Your eyes flit through a sea of camo in the dark. You can’t find him. You worry that this is all some sort of cruel joke, that he’s not here after all, that you’ve been lied to or you got the date wrong. You worry that the travel bans have made it impossible for him to ever return.
Your husband slips into the passenger seat. You don’t see him coming, you were looking in the wrong direction. It’s familiar, the shape of his body in this car, beside you. As though he never left. As though the past nine months have been just one huge nightmare you are now waking up from.
“Hey buddy,” he calls into the backseat. You give up the driver’s seat. You let your husband lead you home. For the first time in a long time, it finally feels something like home. You want to feel relieved, to feel like you’ve survived something. You want to believe that your lives will continue now, as they used to be. It’s over, it’s over, you think to yourself, but your shoulders can’t relax. This is a new normal you will have to adjust to. You will have to relearn what it’s like to live with each other. It’s something you’re too exhausted to contemplate.
“I missed you,” you say, as he leans across the cupholder to kiss you. But the sentence seems too small. He’s back, but you’re still longing, reaching, yearning. You missed him, yes. But you miss the girl you were before all this so much more. Your husband is home, but she is never coming back.
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Aliza Dube is the author of The Newly Tattooed’s Guide to Aftercare through Running Wild Press. She is currently enrolled in University of Southern Maine’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She is a military spouse and a children’s librarian. She is currently searching for a literary agent to represent her most recent project, a historical fiction novel about the literary world of the 1920s.
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