Free Next to Love by Ellen Feldman Page A

receptionist looks up from her desk. On her first visit, the woman could not have been more friendly. She asked where Babe was from, and where Claude was stationed, and whether she was going for a visit or to live there until he was assigned elsewhere. Now she hands Babe an envelope without a word.
    “Doesn’t the doctor want to see me?”
    “The results of your tests are in there.” She nods at the envelope without looking at Babe.
    There is nothing Babe can do but take it. She starts to leave the office, then decides to open it there. She cannot risk misunderstanding the results.
    She crosses the room to a chair in a corner, away from the two women who are waiting. As she slides her finger under the flap, she feels the paper slice her skin. A red spot spreads on the back of the envelope.
    Holding the finger with the cut away from it, she draws out the sheet of paper and unfolds it. The words wriggle across the page. She cannot understand most of them. But one word, repeated twice, she does know.
    NEGATIVE .
    NEGATIVE .
    She carries the paper back to the receptionist.
    “This says negative.”
    “Yes.” Her voice is curt.
    “That means I don’t have … anything.”
    “I don’t know about anything. It means you do not have syphilis and you do not have gonorrhea.”
    She feels the other two women’s eyes snap up to stare at her. She does not care. She is saved. She goes to the Western Union office and wires Claude that she was delayed several times, but she will arrive tonight.
    THE TRAIN IS PACKED AGAIN , but she manages to find a seat next to a girl who is holding a baby on her lap and clearly pregnant with another. The girl is sitting on the aisle, and Babe has to climb over her to get to the empty seat. When she is settled, she turns to face the window, though there is little to see at this hour. Here and there, a light from a farmhouse burns a hole in the darkness. For a short stretch, the beams of twin lights keep company with the train. Then the window goes dark again, and her face stares back at her from the black glass.
    The smudges under her eyes are gone. Beneath her freshly brushed hat, her hair hangs clean and carefully curled under. Her lipstick is impeccable. Her face gives away nothing. And neither will she. She will never tell anyone. If she tells no one, it never happened.
    After a while, the lights in the window begin to crowd closer together, the beams of the cars grow more numerous, and she feels the train beginning to slow. People are standing, taking their luggage down from the overhead racks, and lining up in the aisle. The soldiers’ faces turn flat. Their eyes go out like snuffed flames. The smiles slip from their mouths. They are back. The wives take compacts from their handbags, smooth their hair, and reapply lipstick, though most of them have been powdering their noses and putting on lipstick for the past twenty minutes. Then they put their compacts away and, leaning on the backs of the seats, bend to look out the windows.
    Babe snaps her own compact closed, puts it in her pocketbook, and bends. Through the window, she sees crowds of men in uniform, but no sign of Claude.
    The train lurches to a stop. She hears the scraping sound of the metal doors being opened. The line begins to inch forward. When they reach the steps, she holds the pregnant girl’s baby, while a soldier helps the girl maneuver her suitcases down. The baby’s breath is warm and faintly sour against her neck. She hands the baby to his mother, picks up her suitcase, and goes down the steps.
    The platform is mobbed but strangely hushed. The girls take a few steps away from the train, then stand on tiptoe, searching the crowd. Here and there, a soldier breaks away from the group of men waiting along the platform, and a name detonates in the night air. Then two bodies go crashing through the crowd like wild animals through underbrush, and the other soldiers and wives avert their eyes to give them privacy.
    Babe’s