CRY FATHER: Chapter Three: Maggie's Dilemma

Margaret Thomas was at a crossroads. After a four-year absence she had resumed a selective law practice that elevated her profile in the Seattle community above and beyond her substantial resources. Her sabbatical had been a disruption of the life to which she was accustomed and at some level she resented it. She had served a worthy cause with a devotion and competence that inspired those around her and she was proud of what they were able to accomplish for the Native American community but she resented that it was necessary.

Maggie believed that life should be simple. She believed in family and friends. She believed that if you were honest and good you were fulfilling your responsibility to society. She never wanted to be a leader but circumstances thrust that role upon her. She accepted that there were forces beyond control that shaped one’s destiny and those forces had shaped hers. She embraced and devoted all her efforts to the cause.

Now however that she had played her part, now that she had found her soul mate, she wanted nothing more than to return to a normal life. She wanted a family. She wanted children. She wanted to share the joys of life with those she loved most.

Her soul mate had another idea.

She chopped yellow squash and broccoli with a little more force than the task required. John noticed. Tending the pasta in a pot of boiling water, he knew what was bothering her. His writings had turned from the familiar rants on the rights of Native Americans to a scathing indictment of American politics. She knew what he intended.

He poured her a glass of wine and studied her silence from across the dinner table. He felt sympathy and love. She was the constant in his life. She kept him grounded and saved him from his inevitable descents into the lower depths of despair. She alone could reach through the darkness to take his hand. She alone could soothe his unsettled soul. He needed her and in some strange incomprehensible way she needed him.

As he admired her honey brown eyes he felt a familiar twinge of guilt. He was being selfish again. He had no right to ask anything more of Maggie. She had given enough. She had served the cause at his urging. He would not ask her to do so again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She lifted her glass and flashed a wry grin in her trademark sign of resignation.

“Don’t be.”

It was Maggie being Maggie and it gave him comfort. She had the power. If she chose to use it she could mold him like soft clay but she chose restraint.

“No one knows you better than I do, John. Without a cause you have no life. If I resist now and then it’s only to remind you that I am my own person. I won’t be taken for granted but I know better than to stand in the way.”

John shifted in his chair and sipped his wine, suddenly aware of Maggie’s watchful eyes, studying his silence as he had studied hers only moments ago. She felt that she had disarmed the tension between them but now she realized there was something else. She had given her blessings but it was not enough. Was there a misunderstanding?

“You missed the punch line,” said John.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m not the one to lead this cause, Maggie. You are.”

She looked straight through him as she had so often done before. It was the kind of surprise she was accustomed to in her lover but it did not dampen the impact. She sighed and braced for whatever followed.

“I’ve been having dreams,” he said.

She might have known. John was an active dreamer. He walked and talked and acted in his dreams. It was not something he could control. It came and went as it pleased but he believed in his dreams as a Catholic believes in the Holy Trinity or as a Lakota medicine woman believes in the Great Spirit. He believed his dreams were celestial messages meant to shape his destiny and Maggie shared that belief.

“Vivid, recurring and unambiguous dreams,” he continued. “It’s you I see behind the podium. It’s your face on the television screen and your name on the ballot. You’re the candidate.”

She sifted through the memories of all their conversations and discussions regarding politics. The common thread was mutual disgust. Politicians were corrupt, unscrupulous and conniving creatures who fed on the misfortunes of others, who allowed focus groups and pollsters to set their moral compasses, who profited by betraying the people who elected them to office. Even those who began their careers with virtuous intent were swept into the web of corruption. Those who thrived did so by embracing a system that disdained virtue.

Maggie’s distaste for politicians and all things political went beyond abstraction. She blamed politicians for corrupting her father. It was nothing short of miraculous that he had been able to extricate himself from their tangled web to go on with his life.

“Why would I become the very thing I most despise?”

“To prove it’s possible.”

John twirled his pasta in his fork, drank his cabernet and continued consuming his meal as if the topic of conversation was no more complicated than the weather or the next movie they planned to see. Maggie saw through the façade and he knew it. Without passion he was not himself. When he assumed this demeanor there was a purpose. It meant the opposite of what it appeared. If he pretended not to care it was because he cared too much.

“There’s Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and Bernie Sanders,” she replied. “That’s proof enough.”

“They’re Democrats,” he sneered. If anything he despised Democrats even more than Republicans. Republicans were pretty much straightforward about representing the elite with their tax cuts and deregulation and trickle down theories. Democrats pretended to represent the working people but they fed from the same trough of corporate contributions.

“Sanders is an independent,” she corrected him.

“In name only,” he replied.

She smiled and his demeanor shattered. She had him and he knew it. They both admired the congressman from Vermont. A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, he was an enigma in American politics. There were rumors he would run for the Senate and they would support him if he did. He had taken some criticism from the left but neither John nor Maggie questioned his integrity. The same was true for Kucinich, the diminutive congressman from Ohio, though he was a loyal Democrat, and Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from California who was the only member of congress to vote against the Gulf War, the Afghan War and the War in Iraq. She was an heroic exception to the rule.

“You’re right,” said John after a moment’s reflection. “We don’t need another symbol. We need a movement and we need you to lead it.”

“Why me? This is your cause, your dream, your bliss. Why not follow it yourself?”

“You know me, Maggie. I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. I don’t have the name, the standing or the reputation. We don’t need a martyr any more than we need a symbol. We need a winner.”

It was fundamentally true. John was too direct, too outspoken, too driven by the waves of passion to be an effective candidate. He had created a financial empire that rivaled all but Microsoft in the Pacific Northwest but he had gone to great lengths to protect his privacy. Outside his small circle of friends and associates he was unknown. Those who did know him considered him an uncompromised radical.

“Just think about it, Maggie. You know I’m right.”

She felt a surge of anger rising to expression and fought to suppress it. There was truth in what he said but it was not the whole truth. It was the kind of truth that rationalized resignation. It was a quitter’s truth.

“No, I don’t know that you’re right. I know that if you set your mind to it there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. You have to pay the price. You have to take the risk. You have to be willing to compromise and god knows you’re not accustomed to that.”

He threw up his hands in protest and resignation, shaking his head in wonder at the twists and turns in this discussion. It hadn’t gone as he had hoped.

“Alright, Maggie, you win!”

“It’s not about winning!”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

Wine in hand, he walked over to the plate glass windows and gazed out at the Sound. Maggie joined him. It was a calming influence, the waves rolling in from the sea. It was why they had chosen this apartment and they relied on it often.

“But in a way,” he said softly, “it illustrates my point. I sat down to dinner this evening fully prepared to make my case and you tore it to shreds. You’re better at this than I am.”

Maggie smiled and the tension floated away with the Sound. John placed his arm around her shoulders and reflected on his life. It was something like a disease: his causes, his social conscience, his obsessions. Life would be easier if he could only embrace Maggie’s simple values – family, friends and a normal life – but he could not. Still, he would never lose the feeling that he was not worthy of the woman he loved.

“Just think about it,” he mumbled.

“I will.”

They allowed their thoughts and cares to drift away as the jazz station on the radio struck a gentle chord. They sat back down and finished dinner, talking about friends, books, vacations, music, and art – anything but politics. Finally, they settled on a bundle of pillows and blankets before the glow of an open fire and leaned upon their love.

John counted his blessings in the warmth of Maggie’s embrace. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, the kind men fawned over, the kind that gathered all eyes as she walked into a room. He brushed her hair aside, kissed her gently on the forehead and vowed not to push any further. She was the woman of his dreams and he had no doubt the only companion who could endure his eccentricities.

Maggie guided his lips to hers and returned his affection. She never doubted that they were made for each other no matter the trials they would face. They would face them together. Life was not meant to be easy and with John it never would be. Yet they understood each other as well as any two humans could. Their arms entwined, their lips caressing, their bodies came together in the harmony of slow jazz and they knew that their love would conquer all worries.