“Uh huh,” I squeaked.
“Talk to you soon. Bye.” And with that the call ended.
I put my phone down. At least, that’s what I think I did. I was so spaced that I wasn’t really in control of my actions.
Bill. After all these years. Bill. Coming here. Coming to see me. And he said he missed me, and from the tone of his voice, I could tell there was still something there. Dammit.
I must admit that the first thought that came to mind was “Ha!” to all the naysayers like Kathy who said he’d never come back. He was coming back. So, ha! I jumped up and began dancing around the apartment. Bill missed me, and he’s coming back. Ha!
Then it began to sink in. He’s coming back. The man who had been living as a fantasy in my mind for three years was coming back. What would it be like? What would he be like? Would I still love him? Would he still love me? What if he brought out all the old feelings and then left again? Or what if none of the old feelings were there and the memories of what we had three years ago were destroyed?
I slumped back down into the couch. Shit. What would I do now?
Chapter Twenty-One
NICK
I was dumped. No two ways about it. Dumped. Yep, Maggie dumped me. And I have to admit, it was a whole new experience for me.
Maggie admitted that she was over the “betrayal,” as she still chose to call it, that she realized I had only the best intentions—and really I did. I mean, you know I did, right?
But I had two strikes against me. One, I hadn’t told her the truth. Even though she understood my “betrayal” (a word that still made me cringe), she didn’t understand why I had lied—“by omission” she kept saying. That if we were so close, we should have been able to be honest with one another. That even though she probably still “cared” about me… Cared. Ugh. Strike me down if I ever utter that word to a woman again.
That’s probably why it bothered me so much. I was on the receiving end of one of my own speeches. Anyway, she said that even though she probably still “cared” about me, she wouldn’t be able to trust me. That was another cringeworthy word: trust. Dig at my soul, woman.
The other strike against me was a lot more powerful: Bill. Bill was back and he had moved back in with Maggie. Maggie’s first love, the one who had been living in her head as a perfect memory for all of these years, was back. The rather precarious present I had been sharing with Maggie was no competition for the perfect memory that Bill represented. So, I had to accept it. I was dumped.
Once my heart and ego had started to recover from the dumping, I realized it was actually a nice feeling. Well, “nice” probably isn’t the right word. It’s just that there was such a refreshing lack of responsibility that came with being dumped. So, while my first impulse was to run back to all the women I’d dumped in the past and apologize, I then realized they’d gotten off easy. I’d had to walk around feeling responsible and guilty for hurting another human being and wondering if I’d done the right thing. But when you’ve been dumped, there are no doubts. You had no hand in it. It wasn’t your decision. You’ve been dumped. There it is. Live with it.
So like I said, while my ego was a bit bruised with the brush off and my heart ached with the thought of losing Maggie, I realized that my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do except move on with my life. I wasn’t being given any options. It was over. For the first time, it wasn’t my doing and that left me free to tackle my next adventure without guilt or recriminations. I had finally fallen in love, but it was not meant to be.
So, my heart said goodbye to Maggie. I knew that I would always love the feelings she had conjured up in me, but I was going to have to move on with my life. Maybe someday we could be together, but for now it was not meant to be. I would leave her to figure things out with Bill, and I would go as scheduled to Paris. I would email and text her fun photos of baguettes and berets, and we could stay friends—an option I’d never really considered with my past girlfriends. It would be great. That was my mantra. I said those words every day until, armed with those thoughts and feelings, I boarded the plane to Paris.
If only the dull aching in my heart would go away.
BILL
Maggie.
What was it about this woman that brought me back after all these years? What was it about the thought of her that had helped me through the three grueling years at the wire service in Tokyo? What was it about her that inspired me to want more from life?
I sat and tried to figure out my feelings for Maggie as I watched her walk up to the podium and prepare to greet her first fall class. It was two weeks before Labor Day, and the fall semester at UC Berkeley was just beginning. Maggie was teaching one of those huge freshman lecture courses: 300 students taking Introduction to Communication Studies. Although her specialty was business communications, she had to teach the introductory course once every couple years. Most professors hate teaching those lower-level courses, but Maggie loved it. She felt it brought her back to her roots. She’d been inspired by one of those courses once and loved giving that back.
I looked around the lecture hall and checked out the students. Most of them were smug little pricks who’d been the top of their classes in high school and thought they knew it all. It was Maggie’s job to help them realize that in the big scheme of things they knew nothing and then build them back up to where they were inspired with what knowledge and critical thinking could bring them. Maggie was a master at it. Logical manipulation.
I remembered watching her lecture five years earlier and being awe-inspired then. She was only a teaching assistant at first, leading small discussion sections, but I could see that something about teaching, about knowledge, about learning, inspired the passions inside Maggie.
What was it about this woman that brought me back to her after all these years and continued to inspire me?
I’d always known that what we’d had was special. Sheesh, we both knew it. I mean, I told her often enough. But then I’d left. I knew it had been a blow to Maggie, but she hung in with me while I figured things out with my career and my life. Her emails were wonderful summations of her life in Berkeley and helped me to stay connected to the life I had left. It helped to know that no matter how bad things got, there was Maggie in Berkeley. Those memories sustained me through three stressful workaholic years.
I don’t know why I left and didn’t feel that I could ask her to come with me, but I couldn’t. I loved her enough, but I wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of another human being. It’s not that I feel that I have to justify myself, but my life became so complicated after I got my master’s. I needed something for myself before I would be ready to really share my life. That’s what I told myself anyway.
I hated the thought of losing her, but really, how could I have asked her to just drop her life to follow me when I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for? I wasn’t really sure who I was and incredibly absorbed in beginning my career so how could I inflict the selfishness associated with that time on another person? Especially Maggie.
Maggie was always so… directed. When we were together, she had gotten to a point where she meshed perfectly with the world she lived in. Her passionate idealism belonged in academia. She was obsessed with how people related to one another, with the illogical nature of our human communication, and how power influences the dynamic. That’s why business communications was such a natural fit for her. Maybe I was rationalizing, but I really felt that Maggie belonged here—and I didn’t. I did when I was getting my degree. Our timing was perfect then. We were both in school and deeply in love.
I did really love being with her in those days. We balanced each other so well. Maggie saw the small nuances of human existence while I looked at the big: the world and its movements and clashes. I remember getting together with friends and the way Maggie’s eyes would light up when we got into a debate on a subject she was passionate about.
Passion. Maggie’s passion.
In a way, she was the one who helped me realize that it wouldn’t be enough for me to stay in the Bay Area. I would have been lost staying put and working for a local publication when what I wanted to do was to see the world, to write about the world, and to delve into its mysteries.
It’s funny because when we met, she was the one who was lost, not sure what she wanted, working in this silly little café bookstore that I only kept going to because she was so intriguing. Every day I would go in and buy a paper from her. I’ll admit I was first attracted to her looks—and her voice. She had this really sexy voice, and I was drawn in by it. Every day I would ask how much the paper was just to hear her say “dollar fifty.” Oh, that voice.
She sat behind the counter reading all these crazy books—I swear they were different every day. Everything from metaphysics textbooks to classic novels to political thrillers. And the music—that changed daily, too. Then one day she played B.B. King, and I saw my chance.
For two years, we had a great relationship. Again, the timing was so good. We were intensely in love with each other and with learning and with life. We fueled each other.
That belief is what made it impossible for me to stay with her after graduation. She inspired me to want so much out of life, to climb my mountain. And so I left.
The class began to settle into the lecture hall, and I watched Maggie perusing her notes. The first day in a large lecture class like this is the most important. It sets the tone and the respect level for the professor teaching the class. Maggie looked so poised, so in control, and—okay, I’ll say it—so damn sexy standing up there. Oh how I wished I’d had a professor like that when I was in school.
She began to speak, and within minutes had mesmerized the class with her voice, her knowledge, her authority, and her passion. I watched Maggie work the room—because that’s what she did—and realized how much she had actually grown from when I knew her. I mean, I’d watched her lead her discussion sections, and I’d watched her finish her dissertation, but this was different. She’d matured. Flourished, even. If I’d had any qualms about leaving her, they were dashed when I saw how far she’d come. She would have been miserable in Tokyo while I ran around cities in Asia picking up leads for the wire service. The truth is I was miserable most of the time, and yet I knew it was something I had to do in order to move up in the world of journalism. I was paying my dues. How could I have inflicted that on Maggie?
Maggie never could—or, really, should—have dropped everything to go with me. Her work meant too much to her. You don’t ask a person to give up their passion just to be with you. And, again, I had to be impressed with how much she had accomplished.
I’d kept up with her progress over the years and knew that her dissertation had been very well received, then she’d surprised them by turning the concepts in it into a mass market book that used telenovelas to illustrate the power structures in corporate communications. It was a great book—very funny and yet containing what many considered to be a break-through theory. She took a chance with it, though, as it was sure to upset the old guard of social scientists to write a commercial book instead of an academic one—heaven forbid you present an idea in an enjoyable way.
But it worked. The book was positively reviewed in some prominent business journals and made a lot of college course lists. Corporations and other universities were constantly inviting her to take a semester to be a visiting lecturer, but she hadn’t left Berkeley except for some short speaking gigs here and there. Not yet. This was still her home.
As I watched Maggie lecture, I began to realize that I still wasn’t sure where I wanted to be. Not yet. I’d spent three years building up a reputation as a good boots-on-the-ground journalist, but I wanted more. I wanted to be a good writer. I was tired of scrounging for bits of news and never signing an article. I wanted to really delve into stories and bring them to life and write about important issues. The wire service job had taught me a lot, but it wasn’t enough anymore. I’d been back with Maggie for almost three weeks, and although I loved being with her, something was still missing. She was where she wanted to be, but I wasn’t. Not yet.
I knew that I would be leaving the job at the wire service. I had taken all I could from the job, and it was time to move on. Maggie’s belief in me would make it possible to keep climbing my mountain. Unfortunately, I knew that it would also mean leaving her again.
Ironic that the force that kept bringing me back to Maggie was also the force that fueled me to leave her. Her inspiration forced me to push myself to see what I was capable of and venture out into the world once again. When I had arrived in Berkeley, I was a burned-out workaholic sick of his job. Now I felt ready to tackle the world again.
I watched Maggie lecture and was filled with a profound feeling. Was it love? For me, love was such a complicated issue. It was more simple for Maggie, but I’d grown up in a house where love meant fights and divorce. I do know that Maggie conjured up feelings in me that I’d never felt for anyone else. What was it about her that brought about those feelings? Was it that she loved me while also giving me the freedom to find myself?
Looking at her, the glow on her face as she wrapped 300 snotty freshmen around her little finger, I had to hope that someday we would be at the same place at the same time again and could be together. That maybe someday love wouldn’t be so complicated for me. That we could be in a world where we could live our passions while sharing our lives, but watching her lecture, I realized that now wasn’t that time. She had found her life, but I still hadn’t. I really did love her, but I also knew that I would have to leave her again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
CINDY
Mrs. Robert Billingsley V. Mrs. Biff Billingsley. Cindy Billingsley. The Billingsleys. Cindy and Biff Billingsley.
Okay, so I said yes. I mean, it’s what I wanted, right? It’s what I’d always wanted, right? I would be Biff’s wife. Instead of deciding between a career or grad school, I would be Biff’s wife. We’d get a cute little apartment in the city, and Biff would go off to his entry-level finance job every day. I’d get a job, too, but since I still had no idea what I wanted to do for a career—a degree in History meant I could do pretty much everything and nothing at the same time— it would probably just be temporary. I mean, Biff and I would start having babies in a few years so any thoughts of a real career might have to wait anyway.
My friends were really excited. They all screamed when I told them, and we started talking about dates and what colors my bridesmaids would wear and, naturally, who my bridesmaids would be. I knew I probably had to keep it to eight bridesmaids, and it would be so tough to choose just eight of my friends from the house. They all wanted to know who Biff’s ushers would be—which frat guys he would pick—so they could figure out who they could scam on at the reception.
Naturally, Bunny would be my maid of honor. She was my best friend after all. Bunny didn’t like the way she looked in pink, which was my first choice for bridesmaid dresses, so I told her she could help me pick them out. All in all, it was an exciting time. I was getting so much attention. I mean, it’s what I wanted, right?
Things started to change when I started discussing the wedding with Biff’s mother. Up until then it was kind of pretend, you know? Only then it was, like, real. Not that Biff’s mom was mean to me. Actually, she really accepted me. She did. She kind of took me on as this pet project. We went to lunch at the Burlingame Country Club—very fancy schmancy. Waiters in suits served iced tea in these crystal glasses. I swear, though, the average age of the people there was, like 75. Like, were codgers the only members of the club or what?
I wore a cute sundress that Biff’s mother said brought out the blue in my eyes. She wore a Chanel suit. I knew it was the real thing, too, you know? Biff’s mother—Candace, she wanted me to call her, but it was kind of easier just thinking of her as Biff’s mother—pulled out this li
ttle notebook and started discussing dates for the wedding.
She thought that a winter wedding might be nice, and I thought Well, then pink would definitely be out, and that we could have a formal reception at the country club—that, naturally, since the Billingsleys had been founding members, that would be the proper thing to do. I suppose it sounded nice, only I wondered if all the codgers would come, too.
Biff’s mother said that she realized that my parents couldn’t afford anything lavish and that Biff’s father would be happy to help out and that, aside from using their name with the country club and paying for the reception, I should know that she was there for me whenever I had any questions.
She turned back to her notebook and began listing off everything we should have and how it should be done. I felt kind of overwhelmed and just kind of agreed to everything she said. When I went home later that night, Bunny said I shouldn’t let her boss me around, but you know, he’s her only son, and she did seem to know more about these things than I did.
I mean, I think you can see that everything was moving along, and I was getting everything I ever wanted. I was going to be a beautiful bride in a beautiful wedding with a beautiful husband. My future mother-in-law was being nice to me and helping me plan the wedding, and we’d have a beautiful life.
Only… why did it feel so claustrophobic? I started having these dreams where I was this bride only, I couldn’t see the face of the guy I was marrying, so I didn’t want to get married until I could see his face because I didn’t want to spend my life with someone I didn’t know. But I did know. I was marrying Biff, and I loved Biff, and he’s all I ever wanted, right?
It’s what I thought I wanted anyway. But then I started thinking about Biff’s parents’ living room. I know it sounds weird, but I remembered the first night that Biff and I spent together in his parents’ house when they were away, and I noticed that they had one of those rooms that nobody ever goes into. It was beautiful and filled with antiques and stuff like that, and Biff’s mother had a rope across it so nobody would sit in it. I swear I never saw anybody sit in that room. Even when they entertained, it was always outside on the patio or in the dining room, and maybe they did pass through the living room once, but I don’t remember anybody ever sitting in there.
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