The War Council

by Ann Shepphird

Not that I’m a crier, but my eyes got a little funky, and my voice was starting to crack while talking about Granny Banks. I had never told anybody how much she meant to me before, and I guess it, you know, got to me a little. Kiki took my hand and smiled at me, her eyes welling up a little, too, as I finished my story.

  “At her memorial service—which was packed full of Granny’s eclectic menagerie of friends—Sam got up to speak. He talked about their courtship and how smitten he was the minute he saw Granny’s smile. How he’d made up his mind on the spot that day in the hospital that he wanted this woman to be his bride and had set out to woo her and that their wedding day was the happiest day in his life. Sam said that they always knew they didn’t have a lot of time together. Sam had a bad ticker and said that he always thought he’d go first, but it was Granny. Her death was quick and painless. Sam said she had lived life to its fullest and was loved and it was just her time to go. He said that we were the unlucky ones because we would miss her.

  “And then Sam said something that really hit home. Sam said that because he and Granny knew they didn’t have a lot of time together, every night before they fell asleep, they would hold hands and thank each other for another day together.”

  I looked over at Kiki, with her bloodshot eyes, red nose, and tears streaming down her face—god, she was beautiful. I held her hand a little tighter.

  “And I guess why I’m telling you this, Kiki, is that I want you to know how grateful I am for the time we’ve had together, how much I love you, and that, well, I’d like to spend the rest of my life falling asleep holding your hand. So, um, how would you feel about marrying me?”

  MONIQUE

  With a proposal like that, how could I say no? Not that I wanted to. I was so in love with this man that I wanted to enjoy his embrace for the rest of my life. And yet he also made me want to conquer the world. With Michael at my side, I felt that anything was possible. So, we decided to get married—right away. Being in Nevada made that easy.

  I felt it would be appropriate to conquer two of my fears at once. I’ve always been afraid of marriage—afraid of being trapped in the silently suffering martyrdom my mother placed herself in. I’ve also always been afraid of heights. Therefore, it was my suggestion that we get married atop one of the myriad mountains in the Tahoe area.

  Michael loved the idea. I think he particularly appreciated the idea of tackling the convention of marriage in an unconventional way—kind of an ode to his grandmother, who sounded like a remarkable woman. We spent the day scurrying around trying to locate a mountain and a minister who would travel up a mountain to marry us.

  Phenomenally enough, it all came together, and Michael and I were married at the peak of the Heavenly Valley ski area. Michael and I hiked up the mountain while the minister—a retired Anglican priest who preferred a tweed suit jacket and hat to the more traditional fleece garb you see around Tahoe—and his wife rode the lift. A skinny teenager helped the couple off the lift, and we all walked over to the peak, which had a gorgeous view of the lake below and of the hikers and mountain bikers on the trails around us.

  Michael and I said our vows looking out over all of Lake Tahoe. I looked down the mountain and was not afraid. I said my vows and was not afraid. I looked into Michael’s eyes, held onto his hands, and was not afraid.

  Michael joined me as we stood before the minister, his wife, the lift operator, and the magnificent beauty of our surroundings and added to our vows the phrase: “With this person by my side, anything is possible.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  MAGGIE

  Suddenly, everything was crystal clear. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. Ah, hindsight—everything is logical in hindsight.

  I don’t want you to think my epiphany came overnight because it didn’t. Does it ever? Does anyone just go “poof” and see the light? I don’t think so, or at least, it certainly had never happened that way with me. No light bulbs went off. No sunbeam shining through the clouds. More like a fog that slowly lifted until everything sparkled with such clarity. My insights came at the end of a long process of growth that began when I first fell in love more than six years ago.

  I was alone. And yet, the wondrous thing about it was that I would never feel alone again.

  It was October. Fall in Northern California. I walked around the Berkeley campus—my campus—reveling in my surroundings. I felt free and happy and secure. I delighted in everything around me: the academic buildings with their majestic bearing, the football games with their form and ritual, the students at Café Strada, so immersed in their studies and in each other. I loved my world, but mostly, I had finally come to love myself.

  For the first time in my life, I realized that I really liked me. I liked my life. I loved teaching and learning and writing and my friends and my apartment. And, most importantly, it was a love that didn’t come from a man or an accomplishment or any outside thing; it came from within and that could never be taken away. I was finally content in my own skin. Everything felt just so… so… clean.

  Things were not so clean two months earlier. With the AWAC exposure, my breakup with Nick, my reunion with Bill, and the beginning of the fall semester, my life was in turmoil. It was messy. I hate messy. Messy is just, well, messy and confusing. I like clean—not in terms of lack of dirt but lack of clutter. I don’t like a cluttered life. I like knowing where I stand and with whom and why—but I didn’t know. There was Nick and there was Bill and there was me, and I was one confused chiquita.

  Nick. I didn’t know what to think about Nick. What was real, what was manipulation, what was love, what was psychological coercion? Who knew?

  Bill. I didn’t know what to think about Bill, the man who had helped me to believe in myself and believe in love, then left me without a backward glance and had let me down so many times with promised visits that never materialized.

  This time Bill had kept his promise. He arrived on August 8th. He didn’t ask me to meet him at the airport. Instead, he dropped his bags at a friend’s house and showed up on my doorstep later that day. The sun was setting, and I hadn’t heard from him all day—no call, no text, nothing. I had just about given up on him again when there he was casually sitting on the stoop reading a New York Times.

  “Hi, Maggie,” he said, lowering the paper to reveal himself, the totality that was Bill.

  “Bill.”

  I was stunned. What should I do? I tried to take it all in. What did he look like? How did I feel? I wanted an on-the-spot monitoring of my feelings, and it just wasn’t processing.

  “You look great, Maggie.”

  He stood and kissed me on the cheek. Again, I tried to process it all, but it wasn’t happening. How did he look? He looked like, well, Bill. But not Bill. This was weird.

  “Uh huh. So, do you want to come inside?”

  “Sure.”

  We went inside, and he began prowling around the apartment—the same apartment we had spent so much time together in three years ago.

  “Wow, it looks the same. Well, not quite the same. You got some new prints, huh?”

  Yep. I’ll confess some of them I’d bought knowing he’d love them. “Uh huh.”

  “They look great. Wow, same view. Same couch. Remember this couch, Maggie?”

  “It’s my couch, Bill. I’ve seen it every day for three years.” Uh oh. Too snippy?

  “Yeah, sure, sorry. Stupid comment, huh?”

  He looked at me. Oh god, don’t do that. He looked just the same. A little older, a little worn out, maybe, but he had those same warm brown eyes, those pools I wanted to jump right into again. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I was so fucking scared of him ripping my heart out again.

  “No, it’s not stupid.” I smiled and pulled myself away from those seductive eyes. “You want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  I needed a drink. I went int
o the kitchen and found a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the refrigerator. He followed me in and offered to open it for me. He brushed by me to get to the bottle opener, and I could feel my skin prickling as he went by. Damn physical chemistry. I didn’t want to feel this, not now.

  Bill handed me the filled glass. “To reunions.”

  I clinked my glass against his and drank. Downed it, I think you might say. We filled them again and moved into the living room and sat on the couch, our couch. We had spent hours on this couch talking about our dreams and our futures, and now we sat very stiffly just looking at one another. This was weird.

  “You look so good, Maggie.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve loved your emails and texts.”

  “Thanks.”

  “This is weird, huh?”

  “Too weird.”

  “Yeah, I know. How do you feel, you know, about this? Us?” he asked, lowering his eyes as if fearing my response. I realized he was as nervous as I was.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Uh huh.”

  A moment of silence passed before I felt brave enough to ask: “How do you feel, Bill, you know, about this?”

  He seemed please to get the chance to answer. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long and had so much to say, but now that I am looking at your beautiful eyes and your face and listening to your voice, all I can think about is kissing you.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I guess it’s a gut male response.”

  Another moment of silence.

  “Well, what if I said I wouldn’t mind a little gut male response?”

  I mean, come on, I was thinking the same thing. The man was making me tingle all over. I had trouble looking him in the eye, but I just really wanted to see if the connection we had was still there.

  Bill leaned over and kissed me, softly, tenderly, lingering. Then he scooted closer on the couch and took me in his arms and held me while he kissed me, softly, tenderly, lingering. And then I couldn’t help myself, and I got into it. We got into it. Next thing I knew we were in my room going at it like people who haven’t seen each other in, well, three years.

  My visceral responses were feeling great, just great, while the rest of me—we’re talking the brain and the heart here—couldn’t feel a thing. It was so bizarre. Here I was with Bill, the man I had loved more than life itself, and he had finally come back, and I was numbed from any feeling whatsoever. It was bizarre.

  I walked around the whole week in a fog like that. I was doing everyday chores, getting ready for the fall semester, things like that, and although I enjoyed being with Bill again, I had yet to feel anything.

  Then one night I went back to the apartment, and he was cooking. He was standing in the kitchen in a t-shirt and briefs. Tomato sauce had splattered all over the stove and some had splashed his shirt. He looked up at me and smiled, sauce smeared across his face and said, “Mi amore, I am cooking for you. Do you want to hug me, the tomato sauce king of Berkeley?”

  I don’t know how to explain it except to say that the ridiculous sight of Bill standing in the kitchen in his underwear covered in sauce and grinning made me realize, for the first time since he’d returned, that he really did love me. Bill still loved me. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I’d been so numb I couldn’t figure out what to believe. He’d been there for a week, had returned to me, and was physically right in front of me and living with me in my apartment, but I still couldn’t feel it or see it.

  But then somehow, there, with Bill looking just so ridiculous, I saw it. I saw love. That he loved me then and loved me now and that I wasn’t wrong about what we’d had three years ago. That his leaving hadn’t meant he didn’t love me or that what we’d had wasn’t special. I had equated his leaving with not really loving me, but there it was in black and white and red tomato sauce.

  Bill really loved me.

  I burst into tears. Not pretty little drops falling from my eyes but huge racking sobs that released all of the feelings I had been bottling up for a week—hell, for more than three years. I hadn’t been wrong. I had loved him so much, and he had felt the same way. It was as if I was finally validated for believing in our love all those years. I had questioned everything when he left, and now I finally knew that it had been real.

  I had loved and been loved and no matter what happened after this point, I could be solid in those feelings. I would never feel like a gutted fish again.

  Bill came rushing over and held me in his arms as I laughed and cried and sobbed and blew my nose all over his shirt. Naturally, he had no idea what had set me off and thought maybe I’d been mugged or something. I told him I was just hormonal, and he seemed to buy it. He looked perplexed, but after I assured him I was fine, he returned to the stove.

  I watched Bill as he stirred the sauce with his typical intensely focused attention. This man who had turned my life upside down loved me. But it still didn’t explain why he’d left. Ironically enough, it was Nick who opened the door to that answer.

  Nick, sweet Nick with the twinkling smile and loving eyes. Nick, who made me feel warm and comfortable and safe. Who taught me that I didn’t need to be afraid of love. Nick. The thought of Nick brought a warm feeling to my insides and the memory of the two of us working our way through his music collection brought a delighted grin to my face. Unfortunately, while I was dealing with my feelings for Bill, there was no room for Nick. The clutter thing.

  I tried to explain to Nick that it wasn’t that I was still angry about the AWAC conspiracy. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I knew that what we’d had was real and not manufactured but this was something I had to do. At first, he wouldn’t accept my explanation.

  “I can’t believe you just stopped loving me, Maggie.”

  “Don’t say that, Nick. I do love you, but I have to do this. Besides, you’re going to Paris.”

  “I would stay.”

  The way he looked at me, I knew he would. But it wouldn’t be right.

  “Don’t you see, Nick? How can I ask you to give up one of your dreams?”

  “But I don’t want to go anymore.”

  “Come on, Nick. Don’t do that. We had a wonderful relationship, and we may again. But now I think we both need a little space to clean things up. You with your adventures and your feelings about me and me with my feelings about you and about Bill. Maybe there will be a time when we can both have a clean slate and can be together without AWAC or Paris or Bill to clutter our thinking. If we’re meant be, we will be. We’ll be together.”

  “But we are meant to be together. Don’t you see, Maggie?”

  His pleading sounded familiar, as did my response.

  “No, I don’t. I wish I did, Nick, but I don’t. Not now. Now with all that’s happened and is happening. If I don’t see things through with Bill, I will always wonder, and if you don’t see things through with Paris, you will always wonder. If we don’t let each other go and give ourselves the chance for a clean slate, we’ll always wonder how much was the AWAC and how much was us. Don’t you see, Nick? We need time to see if we really belong together.”

  “But I believe in us.”

  “I do, too, which is why I know we can handle being apart.”

  Our conversation had started outside my office, where Nick had surprised me with one of his patented chance encounters. It was dusk now as we crossed the quad. When we reached the Sproul fountain, the setting of our first date, Nick turned and hugged me tightly.

  “I’m going to email and text you all sorts of pictures of berets and baguettes.”

  “I hope you will.”

  “God, I love you so much.”

  Nick and I just stood there in the twilight, holding onto each other and to all our spring and summer together had meant. It hurt to say goodbye, but it was a good hurt. A hurt that meant I’d felt—I’d felt love for this wonde
rful man who meant so much to me. I was letting him go, but I just knew that if it was meant to be, we would be together again.

  It was a couple days before the words Nick and I had used in our goodbyes finally sank in, and it clicked as to whether I’d heard them before: Bill. They were the same words Bill and I had used three years earlier when he’d left. Only this time my role was reversed. Instead of believing so totally that I was right, now I was the one who needed time. I realized, and I know this may sound simple, that sometimes people do things that unfortunately hurt other people. It doesn’t mean they don’t love those people or mean to hurt them: it just happens.

  I returned to the apartment realizing that Bill’s leaving was not an indictment of our love, just as my needing time was not an indictment of my love for Nick. Realizing that you can love someone while also choosing not to be with them liberated me. I had always linked loving someone to them being by your side. Now I realized that sometimes loving someone means letting them go. It was a good place to have gotten to because, as I returned to the apartment that evening, I was about to get the news that Bill was leaving again.

  I had known for days that he would. When he first returned, it was to the safe secure environment that was our life in Berkeley. He was burned out on journalism—at least the form he’d been working—and life and he needed to refuel in a sense. At first, he reveled in the role of the happy hausfrau. He cooked, he followed me to lectures, went to museums and enjoyed the first breath of freedom he’d had since deciding to take his “time off” from the wire service.

  But then I began to sense a listlessness growing in Bill. It wasn’t me or even us but his life. It was like he was treading water. He wasn’t moving forward. He was living in my life. I was happy in my life. I was fulfilled and growing every day. But he wasn’t. He was still searching, and his searching would take him away from me. I realized he would leave me again, but this time I wasn’t afraid. I would be okay.

  Bill left a month later. One of his Tokyo contacts was now an editor at New York magazine and offered him a reporter/researcher position. He was really excited because it offered the hope of moving up into a position where he could write the kind of long-form investigative pieces he’d always wanted to write. I was happy for him. Happy to see him excited and ready to tackle life again. I mean, let’s face it: His hausfrau expertise was rather limited.