From the very beginning, the calls and letters between us were regular. We e-mailed as well, but I soon learned that Savannah preferred to write, and she wanted me to do the same. “I know it’s not as immediate as e-mail, but that’s what I like about it,” she wrote me. “I like the surprise of finding a letter in the mailbox and the anxious anticipation I feel when I’m getting ready to open it. I like the fact that I can take it with me to read at my leisure, and that I can lean against a tree and feel the breeze on my face when I see your words on paper. I like to imagine the way you looked when you wrote it: what you were wearing, your surroundings, the way you held your pen. I know it’s a cliche and it’s probably off the mark, but I keep thinking of you sitting in a tent at a makeshift table, with an oil lamp burning beside you while the wind blows outside. It’s so much more romantic than reading something on the same machine that you use to download music or research a paper.”
I’d smiled at that. She was, after all, wrong about the tent and the makeshift table and the oil lamp, but I had to admit that it did paint a more interesting picture than the reality of the fluorescent-lit, government-issued desk inside my wooden barracks.
As the days and weeks wore on, my love for Savannah seemed to grow even stronger. Sometimes I’d sneak away from the guys to be alone. I would take out Savannah’s photograph and hold it close, studying every feature. It was strange, but as much as I loved her and remembered our time together, I found that as summer turned to autumn, then changed again to winter, I was more and more thankful for the photograph. Yes, I convinced myself that I could remember her exactly, but when I was honest with myself, I knew I was losing the specifics. Or maybe, I realized, I’d never noticed them at all. In the photo, for instance, I realized that Savannah had a small mole beneath her left eye, something I’d somehow overlooked. Or that, on close inspection, her smile was slightly crooked. These were imperfections that somehow made her perfect in my eyes, but I hated the fact that I had to use the picture to learn about them.
Somehow, I went on with my life. As much as I thought about Savannah, as much as I missed her, I had a job to do. Beginning in September—owing to a set of circumstances that even the army had trouble explaining—my squad and I were sent to Kosovo for the second time to join the First Armored Division on yet another peacekeeping mission while pretty much everyone else in the infantry was being sent back to Germany. It was relatively calm and I didn’t fire my gun, but that didn’t mean I spent my days picking flowers and pining for Savannah. I cleaned my gun, kept watch for any crazies, and when you’re forced to be alert for hours, you’re tired by nightfall. I can honestly say I could go two or three days without wondering what Savannah was doing or even thinking about her. Did this make my love less real? I asked myself that question dozens of times during that trip, but I always decided it didn’t, for the simple reason that her image would ambush me when I least expected it, overwhelming me with the same ache I had the day I’d left. Anything might set it off: a friend talking about his wife, the sight of a couple holding hands, or even the way some of the villagers would smile as we passed.
Savannah’s letters arrived every ten days or so, and they’d piled up by the time I got back to Germany. None was like the letter I’d read on the plane; mostly they were casual and chatty, and she saved the truth of her feelings until the very end. In the meantime, I learned the details of her daily life: that they’d finished the first house a little behind schedule, which made things tougher when it came to building the second house. For that one, they had to work longer hours, even though everyone involved had grown more efficient at their tasks. I learned that after they completed the first house, they had thrown a big party for the entire neighborhood and that they’d been toasted over and over as the afternoon wore on. I learned that the work crew had celebrated by going to the Shrimp Shack and that Tim had pronounced it to have the greatest atmosphere of any restaurant he’d been to. I learned that she got most of her fall classes with the teachers she’d requested and that she was excited to be taking adolescent psychology with a Dr. Barnes, who’d just had a major article published in some esoteric psychology journal. I didn’t need to believe that Savannah thought of me every time she pounded a nail or was helping to slide a window into place, or think that in the midst of a conversation with Tim, she would always wish it were me she was talking to. I liked to think that what we had was deeper than that, and over time, that belief made my love for her grow even stronger.
Of course, I did want to know that she still cared about me, and in this, Savannah never let me down. I suppose that was the reason I saved every letter she ever sent. Toward the end of each letter, there would always be a few sentences, maybe even a paragraph, where she would write something that made me pause, words that made me remember, and I would find myself rereading passages and trying to imagine her voice as I read them. Like this, from the second letter I received:
When I think of you and me and what we shared, I know it would be easy for others to dismiss our time together as simply a by-product of the days and nights spent by the sea, a “fling” that, in the long run, would mean absolutely nothing. That’s why I don’t tell people about us. They wouldn’t understand, and I don’t feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can’t help smiling, knowing that you’ve completed me somehow. I love you, not just for now, but for always, and I dream of the day that you’ll take me in your arms again.
Or this, from the letter after I’d sent her a photograph of me:
And finally, I want to thank you for the picture. I’ve already put it in my wallet. You look healthy and happy, but I have to tell you that I cried when I saw it. Not because it made me sadthough it did, since I know I won’t be able to see you—but because it made me happy. It reminded me that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
And this, from a letter she’d written while I’d been in Kosovo:
I have to say that your last letter worried me. I want to hear about it, I need to hear about it, but I find myself holding my breath and getting scared for you whenever you tell me what your life is really like. Here I am, getting ready to go home for Thanksgiving and worrying about tests, and you’re someplace dangerous, surrounded by people who want to hurt you. I just wish those people could know you like I know you, because then you’d be safe. Just like I feel safe when I’m in your arms.
Christmas that year was a dismal affair, but it’s always dismal when you’re far from home. It wasn’t my first Christmas alone during my years in the service. Every holiday had been spent in Germany, and a couple of guys in our barracks had rigged up a tree of sorts—a green tarp braced with a stick and decorated with blinking lights. More than half of my buddies had gone home—I was one of the unlucky ones who had to stay in case our friends the Russians got it in their heads that we were still mortal enemies—and most of the others trooped into town to celebrate Christmas Eve by getting bombed on quality German beer. I’d already opened the package Savannah had sent me—a sweater that reminded me of something Tim would wear and a batch of homemade cookies—and knew she’d already received the perfume I’d sent her. But I was alone, and as a gift to myself, I splurged on a phone call to Savannah. She hadn’t expected the call, and I replayed the excitement in her voice for weeks afterward. We ended up talking for more than an hour. I had missed the sound of her voice. I’d forgotten her lilting accent and the twang that grew more pronounced whenever she started speaking quickly. I leaned back in my chair, imagining that she was with me and listening as she described the falling snow. At the same time, I realized it was snowing outside my window as well, which, if only for an instant, made it feel as if we were together.