The War Council
Page 19
So, Bill and I said goodbye. He started to give me a speech about how much I’d meant to him and how hopefully we could be together someday, but I stopped him. I didn’t need to hear it. Not this time. I knew. I had this image of us as these two old folks who find each other again and spend our days holding hands in the park. It made me feel good, as did the knowledge that our love would always be with us even if we were apart. I would always carry a part of him with me, and he would carry me with him. Our first breakup had left me with so many questions and now they were answered.
So, I was 31 now and I was alone. But the wondrous thing about it was I realized I would never really feel alone again. I had love. I had the love of two fascinating men, of life and who I had become. That was something no one could take from me. Never again would I question that my feelings were real or that what I felt from others was real. And never again would I question the innate logic found within the mysterious workings of the world, which is of course why the War Council was such an atrocity and why I continued to argue its merits with Kathy at our weekly meeting at Café Strada.
“Sorry I’m late. I’ll grab my latte and be right back,” said Kathy as she dropped her bags and rushed toward the counter, waving to a depressing amount of coeds who’d used the War Council’s services.
Naturally, I had forgiven Kathy for her part in the AWAC conspiracy. Funny how we give our friends so much more latitude than our lovers. Still, I couldn’t understand why she was so obsessed with the War Council—or just “The Council” as she now liked to call it. I mean, come on, it was an experiment, an experiment that failed, in my opinion.
Kathy didn’t agree. She was the only one of us to stay with the War Council and had managed to parlay an embarrassing little scandal with the chancellor into a national marketing ploy. She had hired new personnel, moved off campus, was beginning to turn a profit, and even had plans to start franchising the concept in other college towns across the country. It was crazy.
“What’s so crazy about it?” Kathy asked as she sipped her latte.
“Everything.”
“Everything what?”
She was getting that smug Kathy look that she knew made me crazy.
“Kathy, you can’t try to control relationships the same way you can’t control, I don’t know, the weather. You just go with it.”
“Go with it how?”
“Go with what how?”
“Go with the weather how?”
“What do you mean?”
“How is it you learn to go with the weather, Maggie?”
“Sheesh, Kathy, I don’t know. I guess you learn that when it rains, you should wear a slicker, and when it’s sunny, you wear a hat.”
“Uh huh. Relationships as weather. Interesting concept, Maggie. New book?”
You can see how patronizing she could be, right?
“Don’t get like that, Kathy.”
“Like what?”
“You get defensive when I disagree with you.”
“I’m not defensive. Go ahead. Make your point.”
The woman could be exasperating.
“I’m just saying that you can’t coerce the weather to be like you want just like you can’t coerce people to be like you want. All you can do is go with what you’re given and make the best of it or learn from it.”
“I see your point, Maggie, but I don’t see us as trying to coerce anything. I see us as supporting people through the minefield that love has become.”
“Putting electrodes in a man’s chair?”
“Sometimes people need a little shove in the right direction.”
“But that’s just it. Who are you to decide what the right direction is?”
“So, we should have left the guy sitting in front of the TV the rest of his life while his wife became more and more resentful, and their marriage fell apart?”
“You could have supported her without the electrodes.”
“Maggie, we don’t have the time. We have to get quick results and move on. There are a lot of people to help out there. The electrodes worked. Period.”
“What about our first client, what was her name, Cindy? We coerced her boyfriend—okay he was a prick but that’s beside the point—into proposing because that’s what she said she wanted, and then she runs off to Italy with her friend.”
“That breakup would have occurred sooner or later. We probably just saved that poor girl two or three miserable years. He would have dumped her, and she would have been left with no self-esteem AND no boyfriend. This way Cindy realized all she had apart from Biff and is embarking on a brand new life as we speak.”
Kathy finished by taking a slurp from her latte and looking rather pleased with her explanation. I was incredulous.
“How do we know that?”
“What?”
“This little scenario you’ve concocted to relieve yourself of guilt.”
“I have no guilt.”
“Still, how do we know what would have happened? We stuck our noses where they didn’t belong—and I take full responsibility for my part in that—and sent her life off on a course it never would have taken otherwise.”
“I don’t agree,” said Kathy. “Her life took that path, which means it was the path she was meant to take. We tried to intervene, but she still headed off in the direction she was meant to.”
“Which means we never should have intervened.”
“Which means it only helped for us to intervene.”
What the…? I had to ask: “When did you get like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like into playing god.”
“I’m not playing god. I’m helping people who desperately need the support. I’m part of a team helping people who desperately need it. You were right, Maggie. I was wrong and you were right. It’s a war out there. People have forgotten how to act on the battlefield that is love and I, we, are now there to help them.”
I felt like I was looking at a stranger. Love as a battlefield? If I’d learned anything, it was that love was a miraculously wondrous mystery, so why was Kathy overanalyzing it so much? Why was the world overanalyzing it so much? I mean, I had to admit the War Council was successful, but it was just so wrong. It seemed I’d created a monster.
I was never going to win the argument with Kathy while she was in the mood she was in, so I left her handing a business card to a lovelorn guy whose girlfriend had apparently just ditched him and wandered back to my office. I refused to buy into Kathy’s solution of coercing the world to be a certain way. It just left out so many unexplored avenues.
As you can probably tell, the past year had really changed me. Instead of trying to control my world and see only one path as the right path, I was reveling in how many directions were open to me. What had happened with Bill, with Nick, and even the stupid War Council had brought me to this place where I could just enjoy my life and where it was taking me. I had let both the men I loved go. Fate would bring me together with one of them… or someone new. I really felt that ultimately I was going to end up with whoever or whatever was right for me and felt so open to what the future might bring.
I began to see how the world seemed to run on this invisible course that sends us signals to help guide us on our journey if we’re open to accepting them. I wasn’t able to see them before, but now I did, and life for me had become a wonderful adventure filled with possibilities. I was ready to move on armed with the knowledge that whatever path I chose would be the right one because I chose it.
I was still musing about the wondrous nature of the universe and its signals when I arrived at the departmental office to pick up my mail. Blanche, the communications department office manager, was on the phone when I walked in but gestured wildly for me to wait and talk to her.
“Maggie Maggie Maggie,” Blanche admonished as she hung up the phon
e.
“What?”
“You haven’t given us your answer as to where you’re going next year so we can start making plans.”
Going? What was she talking about? Then I remembered: my sabbatical. I had been corresponding with a number of programs and organizations that wanted me to come and lecture on my book, but par for the course in the university system, the prospectus had been sent to my department chair so long ago that I’d forgotten all about it. I’d practically forgotten I was taking a sabbatical.
“Did Lazarus get back with his recommendations?”
“Yes, he left them on my desk this morning. Dr. Lazarus suggests that you might look at the offers to lecture at either the Annenberg School of Communications at NYU or the American University in Paris.”
It took a while to sink in.
“New York or Paris?” I said, a huge grin breaking out on my face.
“Yeah, toughie, huh?”
New York or Paris. I felt a little lightheaded and started to giggle. Blanche looked at me like I was mad. I left the office and started down the hall, my head spinning at the possibilities. I was being asked to make a choice and the world was not particularly shy about giving me a sign.
New York Paris. Paris New York. Nick Bill. Bill Nick. Or Berkeley. It was my sabbatical. I could do whatever I wanted.
I thought about my options, and as I stepped out onto the quad with the sun streaming through a crack in the clouds, the leaves on the trees rustling in the breeze and the faint sound of voices cheering “Go Cal” in the distance, I knew what my decision would be. I knew where I belonged.
It was just so logical.
THE END
About the Author
In her 20+ years as a writer and editor, Ann Shepphird has covered everything from travel and sports to gardening and food to design and transportation for a variety of publications.
Now Ann is tackling her favorite topics—rom-coms and cozy mysteries—for 4 Horsemen Publications. The University Chronicles series of rom-coms are based on Ann’s days as a college-level communications instructor, while the Destination Murder mysteries combine Ann’s experiences as a travel journalist with her stint working for a private investigator.
Ann lives in Santa Monica, California, with her long-time partner, Jeff, and their furry companions Melody and Winnie. When she’s not writing, Ann is most likely to be found on a tennis court or in her garden.
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