‘Exceptional Times, Exceptional Measures’
Eojin Hwang is an 11th-grade student at Newton Academy in Seoul, South Korea. She offers dynamic leadership across diverse extracurricular activities. As Co-Head of the Environmental Club and enjoys taking photraography during her free time.
Exceptional Times, Exceptional Measures
Bill’s considerable intelligence and above-average sensitivity allowed—or perhaps forced—him to recognize that his fiction, although of an exceptionally high quality, did not accord with current literary fashion. Bill, for example, refused to employ so-called “magical realism”, which he called “un-real magicalism” and considered lazy writing, and thereby seemed to alienate many editors. Bill’s recognition led to no little frustration and some resentment of the literary establishment. Further contemplation of the subject led Bill to think, Fuck ’em! If the world can’t appreciate the quality of my stories, they can damn well do without them. A handful of friends, including seven who had served as beta readers for Bill’s work, and at least one girlfriend attempted to dissuade Bill.
“Your writing is beautiful,” Audrey said. “It must be published. People will enjoy it hundreds of years from now.”
Not inclined to argue, Bill generally responded with something like, “Thank you, dear. If a publisher would like to make that possible, I’d be only too happy to work with them to effect the necessary arrangements,” or something similar. Dozens of similar conversations took place between Bill and Audrey and between Bill and his many friends as well as between Bill and several writing colleagues. None of those conversations effected any change in Bill’s feelings or led to publication of his novels.
Bill recognized that his age, considered “advanced” by many, placed an upper limit on the amount of time remaining to effect publication of his novels. Having spent more than two decades writing, refining, and editing the six completed novels that resided on his hard drive and a large handful of backup flash drives, and nine years doing the same with his short fiction, he didn’t like the idea of succumbing to his final, his ultimate retirement without having seen his novels in print. Bill had seen a great deal of his fiction in print: he had more than a hundred short stories, novelettes, and novellas published in a-hundred-and-twenty-odd literary journals and almost a dozen anthologies. He nonetheless wanted to see his novels available in bookstores and libraries for the benefit of the reading public. Literary agents, he thought with considerable frustration, seemed not to want that at all.
The frustrated novelist had invested, prudently for the most part and mainly in wind and solar start-ups and other environmentally benign industries, his savings from the more-than-sufficient income he earned in the course of his successful three-plus decade career as a musician and entertainer. He therefore did not need a large income from his writing. He wanted the literary world to recognize him as an author, however, and publication by one or more mainstream publishers would attest such recognition. At the same time, the entertainer-turned-author felt something approaching contempt for editors so addicted to current fashion that they failed to recognize good writing, when it lay on their desks for their perusal.
Bill’s attitude of “Fuck ’em!” was not a pose. Recognizing, accurately it must be said, the quality of his prose, Bill found himself thinking a world in which editors failed to seize any opportunity to publish such good stories—and, having served as a beta reader for many of those stories, this narrator can assure the reader they are indeed exceptionally good—perhaps did not deserve the opportunity to enjoy them. Bill felt quite prepared to go to his grave without seeing his novels in print rather than modify them to suit literary fashion. As mentioned, Audrey and other friends and writing colleagues argued against Bill’s stance, but he remained obdurate.
“If I change them, they’re no longer the stories I conceived and wrote,” he said. “I’m not desperate to see any old story published with my name on it. I want to see my stories published.” Some of Bill’s writing colleagues accepted and appreciated—and, indeed, in a few cases revered—Bill’s stance, but others said, “Just do whatever the agents and editors tell you to do.”
Bill, of course, refused to do that. “I’ll make corrections, of course, and adjust other passages where necessary and appropriate,” he said, “but I’m damned if I’ll change my good prose for someone else’s bad prose.” He had withdrawn permission for a journal to publish one of his short stories because the fiction editor could not correctly distinguish between “effect” and “affect” or between “infer” and “imply”. “To allow that editor’s version to appear in print would have been too embarrassing for me,” he told a friend and writing colleague. “I’d’ve thought it would be too embarrassing for the magazine, too, but they were prepared to publish it that way.”
Apart from socializing with Audrey and other friends, a few practice sessions and casual gigs with four separate bands—performing three distinct types of music—a few serious gigs, and a few days a month as a volunteer training with the communications arm of a local disaster response team, the greatest part of Bill’s waking hours went into writing, editing, and submitting his literary work. Bill’s volunteer work derived from his participation in such activities since he obtained his first amateur radio license, when in intermediate school in his now-distant native land. His understanding and knowledge of and skills in radio technology and related communications practices made him a valuable and valued member of the local and regional emergency communications teams but brought no remuneration or other recognition or kudos, which was fine with Bill.
The frustrated novelist volunteered his time, because he felt it was important, was incumbent upon him and other skilled and successful individuals, to give back to the community that had made his, and their, comfortable life and lives possible. He sought no honors and wanted only to help, when that help could provide benefit to other members of the community. Many—indeed, perhaps most—other volunteers in local community groups, such as the community garden, the information center, the volunteer fire brigade (of which Bill was also an active member), the historical society, the arts center, and the like probably felt much the same: the community has given to me, it’s time I gave something back.
Although not in desperate or even difficult financial straits, because of his previous income as a popular touring entertainer, Bill thought commercial success as a writer could provide, in addition to the recognition he desired, the opportunity for him to contribute money as well as his skills and time to local groups. The apparent lack of interest of literary agents frustrated Bill and prevented such largesse for the time being. He nonetheless wished he could make financial contributions to, for example, the historical society, the community garden—of no personal benefit, because he maintained a large garden and orchard at home—the arts, the local railroad restoration group, and so forth. He damned the narrow-minded editors anew, when he thought of how his contributions might benefit the community.
Russia’s—or Vladimir Putin’s—invasion of Ukraine evoked a more-intense-than-expected response from the partially-successful author. Bill had cherished, one might even say venerated, fairness and justice since before he first attended school. His most intense conflicts, with his parents, teachers, and others, throughout his childhood and teens—and, indeed, throughout his adult life—revolved around justice, fairness, and, of course, unfairness and injustice. The invasion of a non-aggressive nation by one of the world’s so-called super-powers elicited both sympathy and outrage from the frustrated novelist.
Pondering the concept that his querying of literary agents and his writing, editing, and submitting short fiction to literary journals added little to the artistic corpus of the world in which he lived—and perhaps disheartened by an apparent waning of Audrey’s interest in the semi-successful author—Bill wondered if maybe his technological and related communications skills might provide greater net benefit to the world if devoted to the invaded country. Over intense and repeated objections from friends, potential and actual girlfriends, writing colleagues, and local volunteer colleagues, Bill proposed to travel to Ukraine and to provide what help he could with the skills he possessed.
Many weeks of dicussions and contemplation resulted in a series of flights that brought Bill to Kyiv, where military personnel assessed his technological and communications skills and provided some minimal instruction in the Ukrainian language, made easier by his having decades earlier learned a smattering of Russian and a few words and phrases in Polish. After learning he would be near but not on the front line, Bill travelled via a series of train and bus rides to Oleksandriya in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad Oblast. From there, he proceeded as instructed, accompanied by a substantial amount of high-tech radio and computer equipment, to a small village near Dubivka (or Дубівка, as the local people wrote the name), also in Kirovohrad Oblast.
To Bill’s surprise, he found almost no military personnel in the village—they were, he discovered, more urgently needed elsewhere. He and the tiny complement of soldiers with whom he worked had no field kitchen or camp but were graciously housed and fed by the grateful residents of the village. Despite the obvious wartime deprivations, the small cadre of defenders quartered in the little settlement proved no significant burden to the local community. Bill in particular made a point of imposing on the local residents as little as possible, but most of those residents seemed eager to help.
The greater part of Bill’s technological and communications activities required no assistance from anyone else, the significant exceptions being the erection, or re-erection after drone, missile, or bomb strikes, of antennas to facilitate the radio comms, and the occasional replacement and restoration of connections to Ukraine’s national electric power grid. The eight local males—or, more accurately, two local males and six local former males, who had suffered emasculation at the hands of their Russian captors many months earlier—provided lifting power for heavy and large-scale jobs of that nature.
Bill’s early requisitioning of substantial amounts of aluminum tubing, appropriate fittings, and miles of copper wire and coaxial cable allowed him and his helpers to erect a virtual forest of dummy and duplicate antennae in and around the village. To the delight of the region’s and the nation’s senior military staff, that meant that he could almost always switch immediately from a damaged or destroyed antenna to an intact one and thereby provide almost continuous communications from and relays via his location. Despite dozens of attempts with drones, missiles, and conventional artillery, the Russian forces never managed to shut down Bill’s station for more than a few minutes at a time.
Glad his skills were valuable and of use to someone, Bill tended to spend twelve or fourteen hours each day either actively passing information from one command to another or effecting technological repairs or improvements. That of course meant he spent little or no time socializing. He socialized almost not at all with his military colleagues, although they got along well, respected each other, and enjoyed each other’s company. The army personnel tended to socialize as a rather closed group—notwithstanding that every one of them had at one time or another invited Bill to join them—and to consume a good deal of vodka—although, as they pointed out and Bill later confirmed, nowhere near as much as the Russian troops.
With his focus on providing the greatest possible benefit to the people and nation of Ukraine, including but not limited to the village he had begun to think of as home, Bill had little time for and felt no great need for socializing with his military comrades or anyone else. He did sometimes, fairly often in fact, think a partner or girlfriend would be nice, but disciplined himself to focus on supplying the help he had travelled thither to provide.
As the Ukrainian counter-offensive carried the front-line, as well as the small cadre of soldiers who had supported Bill’s initial set-up and operations, further from the little settlement in Kirovohrad Oblast, the intentional redundancy of Bill’s antenna farm continued to make him a vital hub for communications from that area and from the increasingly fluid front lines. Bill asked the senior officers if they needed him to move further east or elsewhere, but they replied, “We need you right where you are. You’re doing a great job. Keep it up,” and the like, so he did, maintaining and extending his post’s antenna farms with the help of locals he had trained and improving his operation’s technological reliability and quality at every opportunity.
Two local widows, Olena and Lyubov, tended to linger and socialize with the entertainer-turned-author-turned-radio-technician, when they brought meals two or three, or sometimes four or five, times each week. Bill enjoyed the company of both and each, enjoyed learning more of the Ukrainian language in their lingering conversations, and found both and each of the women physically attractive. At first, he admonished himself not to become involved with either of them or any of the other apparently available women in the community. When Lyubov finally asked him, in one of their regular post-dinner conversations, if he didn’t feel some need or desire for intimate companionship, Bill said, in his limited but improving Ukrainian, “Oh, I do, Lyubov, but it would not be right for me to get involved with someone here. I am here to provide a service to the country, not to take advantage of beautiful women.”
“Chomu b i ni, Bill, lyubyy?” Why not, Bill, darling? his visitor asked. Before Bill could respond, his companion said, in Ukrainian, of course, “You are providing an important service for this country, but you could be providing another important service at the same time, without reducing your contribution to the military effort.”
Bill expressed concern but also considerable excitement in response to Lyubov’s suggestion and yielded in short order to her requests for physical demonstrations of the desire he admitted feeling for her. Her initial claim proved somewhat inaccurate, when Bill’s total time on the air declined noticeably in the following eight or ten weeks. He nevertheless made sure to provide all essential communications and even leapt out of bed a few times to do so, but he devoted the majority of his waking hours to physical and verbal sharing with his new inamorata.
Olena’s sadness bordering on grief led her close friend Lyubov, in the third month of Lyubov’s wonderful new relationship, to offer to share Bill’s time, passion, and physical charms. Bill again worried about propriety and also about keeping his and Lyubov’s relationship sound and healthy, but both women prevailed upon Bill to expand his ideas of a healthy relationship. Over a period of about ten weeks, the women’s arguments and requests wore down the radioman’s resistance. His acquiescence resulted in another contribution to the war-torn country, when he and his lovers produced two sons, about three months apart, to begin rebuilding the male population that had suffered catastrophic reductions in and after the many battles and bombardments raging for two years throughout the eastern part of the invaded nation. Indeed, several months later, the three loving friends discovered they had unintentionally but joyfully duplicated that feat.
By the time of the birth of Bill’s third and fourth sons, the unconventional family had moved into a large home on an estate the owners of which, being Russian sympathizers, had fled the country—and later apparently been killed in the course of some financial intrigue in Moscow. Over the same period, the Russian economy, crippled by sanctions and the unsustainable cost of munitions, had almost collapsed. That, of course, created major obstacles to Putin’s continuation of his aggression in Ukraine. The invaded country’s forces cleared more and more of their countryside and cities of Russian troops—and, more slowly and laboriously, of Russian landmines—with much of the Crimea back under Ukrainian control and almost no threats in the north of the country.
Bill’s improved and better-fortified radio-computer-technology hub continued to provide some of the nation’s most reliable communications. His installation of redundant—and, in some cases admittedly personally convenient, copper and fibre-optic data transmission systems between and among several locations about Dubivka, including of course the manor where his new family resided as well as their nearby bunker, meant no attacks ever managed to prevent his receiving, transmitting, or relaying information for more than a very few minutes.
With copper available from Western allies, and even though the pro-Russian gangsters had abandoned a 20KVA diesel generator and the Ukrainian military had provided and buried a large diesel fuel storage tank at the radioman’s manse, the entertainer-writer-radioman made some useful suggestions that led to increased redundancy of electrical power transmission in Dubivka, the surrounding region, and elsewhere, which in turn led to intentional redundancies that reduced power outages for the radio hub, the family, the local community, and the region as a whole.
As the number of Russian and allied mercenary and North Korean and Chinese soldiers in Ukraine dwindled, the need for Bill’s technological and communications skills did likewise. On a few occasions, Bill asked the general staff if they wouldn’t prefer to install a skilled Ukrainian soldier or civilian, of both of whom Bill had trained several, to take over operation of the Dubivka communications hub. Whether because of the common human (mammalian? animal?) preference for the known over the unknown or because of respect for Bill and his accomplishments, the senior officers consistently responded with statements such as, “No, we are very happy with what you are doing and would like you to remain where you are as long as you are willing.”
With no particular desire to be anywhere else and feeling gratified that he could and did provide help to a beleaguered people and improve their situation, Bill felt content to remain in Dubivka, comforted by Lyubov and Olena, and to enjoy sharing his time and energy with those two beloved women and the trio’s four sons. All three of the adults, in the course of several months and many intense discussions, recognized and accepted the importance of openness as well as complete honesty in their sharing. Bill therefore shared with his inamoratae his opinions that, one, Ukraine had won the war to defend its territory, and, two, he would therefore like to return home to either Australia or New Zealand.
Olena and her dear friend Lyubov separately and jointly and in a few tearful exchanges expressed their intense concern that their beloved Bill wanted to abandon them. Their shared lover reassured both that he wanted them to accompany him, if they were willing to leave the land of their birth. Both, again separately and jointly, told their shared inamorato they wanted to be with him, wherever he chose to live.
“No,” Bill said. “It isn’t just up to me. If you don’t feel comfortable about emigrating, I will stay here with you—I must stay here with you.” A moment later and before either of the others began speaking, Bill said, “I would prefer to be in one of those South Pacific countries, but if you—both or either—would prefer to remain here, I will remain with you—if you really want me to. I love you, dammit! I love you, Lyubov, and I love you, Olena, and I’m not going to go off and leave you behind. I want us to be together, to share our lives as the family we are. Don’t you?”
Both women assured Bill they wanted precisely the sharing he described, and both also told him they would be more than happy, ecstatic even, to live with him in either Australia or New Zealand despite having to become fluent in English. Such discussions led the three to explore jointly and individually the options for obtaining visas to allow the two women to immigrate to one or both of Bill’s preferred home countries. Searching both countries’ government websites led the radioman to information that suggested a strategy allowing them to remain together.
Bill therefore began arranging each of the necessary steps to bring the three of them to that happy result. At the same time, Bill began tutoring his beloved friends in English, an easy task for a man who had taught English-as-a-Second-Language in three countries and now tutored two students of exceptional intelligence and ability.
While the three intimate friends, and especially Bill, worked on those projects, notification of events far away brought the writer-radioman unanticipated satisfaction and joy. To Bill’s—and, after a lengthy explanation, his beloved partners’—delight, a prestigious New York literary agent expressed her interest in representing one of Bill’s novels.
In the meantime, the two women Bill had come to love more than anyone else he had ever known, between themselves and with the man both loved more than anyone else either of them had ever known, discussed at length ideas of community and ultimately suggested an expansion of their shared lover’s role in helping to rebuild their nation and local community. Seven of the village women whose husbands could no longer provide offspring or conjugal pleasure, six with their husbands’ consent and one without, availed themselves of the arrangement offered by Lyubov and Olena and, in addition to enjoying more pleasure than expected, produced five healthy baby boys and two healthy baby girls.
When the dictator of Belarus made a flat statement that he would use thermonuclear weapons against the forces of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland massed near those countries’ borders with Belarus in response to mercenary armies on Belarussian territory a few hundred yards away across those borders, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finally saw the writing on the wall. In a day and a night of well-planned and well-executed surgical strikes, NATO effectively destroyed all of the threatening nation’s nuclear capability and arsenal.
Belarus managed to launch two of its nuclear missiles, one of which detonated just above the surface of the Baltic Sea about midway between Denmark’s island of Bornholm and Poland’s Zalew Kamienski and the other of which detonated a few hundred metres above the Baltic several miles north of the Polish resort town of Jastrzębia Góra. Neither weapon killed or injured any humans, although both probably killed and otherwise compromised the lives and health of many marine creatures.
In any case, Belarus’s launch of Weapons of Mass Destruction, caused the leaders of NATO to recognize the necessity of occupying the aggressive country, which NATO accomplished almost without having to fire a shot. The generals commanding Belarus’s military recognized within minutes that they had no chance at all of repelling or defeating any invading NATO force and also no hope of Russian reinforcements, so offered their surrender almost immediately, and presented no objection to the occupying forces arranging a fair and UN-supervised election.
Poland, meanwhile, had re-distributed its forces to its border with Russia, further reducing the latter country’s opportunity to divert forces toward Ukraine. With Belarus no longer a threat to anyone, the NATO general staff agreed to support and augment the substantial force Poland’s leaders had ordered to assemble on the country’s eastern frontier. That, of course, reduced even further Russia’s ability to devote troops to its invasion force being steadily whittled down by the defenders in Ukraine.
While almost everyone seemed aware Vladimir Putin’s health continued to deteriorate at an accelerating rate, few seemed to anticipate the implications. The Russian intelligence community as well as the Western intelligence community seemed to accept the likelihood
Putin would remain commander-in-chief into the indefinite future. The Western intelligence community’s acceptance of such a scenario therefore failed to anticipate any departure from the status quo.
The illness and increasing disability of President Putin, although concealed, insofar as possible, and rarely mentioned in the press, led to a corresponding decline in the morale of his commanders in Ukraine. With the Russian officers hesitating and wavering, Ukrainian defenders redoubled their efforts to drive the invaders out of the occupied land. Those efforts proved increasingly effective against the seemingly demoralized Russian troops.
Bill married Lyubov and, because he was and is a New Zealand citizen, obtained a spousal visa that allowed her to reside in that country. A few days later, the entertainer-writer-radioman, as also an Australian citizen, obtained a partner visa that allowed Olena to reside in Australia. Olena’s status as a resident of Australia allowed her to enter New Zealand as a permanent resident, which she did with her beloved Bill by her side. The family of seven, after several weeks of physical and on-line searching, rented a rural property in that country’s Far North and then spent most of a year looking and waiting for a place they wanted to embrace as their long-term home.
The passing of a former neighbor, from the years Bill lived in the region more than a decade earlier, led that former and now late neighbor’s sons to offer for sale a property Bill liked and, after a modicum of negotiation, bought. The literary agent’s sale and the subsequent commercial success of Bill’s second—that is, second to be written but first to be published—novel enabled him, on behalf of his family, to buy the desired property without the encumbrance of a mortgage. The existing house, close to the river and possibly at risk of flooding in years of exceptional rainfall, held little appeal for Bill, but his agent’s willingness to represent another of his novels and her subsequent success in placing it with a Big Five publisher on good terms, plus the agency’s successful marketing of film rights to two of Bill’s novels, made construction of a new dwelling several hundred feet further up the hills affordable, possible and, indeed, easy.
The family of seven at first squeezed into the three-bedroom house that had provided the late previous owner with a rental income and made themselves as comfortable as possible. Both Olena and Lyubov pronounced their new residence more comfortable than their previous homes in Dubivka. Bill opined that Dubivka’s overnight winter-time low temperatures of negative-25 or even negative-28 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with their new home’s overnight winter-time lows in the positive (Fahrenheit) forties and fifties, or maybe thirties and forties, might have influenced the Ukrainian women’s assessment. Lyubov and Olena concurred but also repeatedly pronounced themselves more than satisfied with their current home and situation.
In the meantime, Bill engaged a firm of civil engineers to examine his preferred house-site and a couple of possible alternatives. Although expensive, the engineering firm’s work proved useful. Bill’s new literary income paid for the engineering and, as it turned out, subsequent design work.
With sales of Bill’s novels exceeding her expectations, his agent offered to represent any other fiction he wanted to publish and then suggested he write something about his experiences in Ukraine. After several positive email exchanges, she approached editors with Bill’s first and fourth novels and two collections of short stories, and he began writing a memoir about his time in Kirovohrad Oblast. The fourth novel sold quickly, after a brief skirmish between two competing publishing houses; the short story collections did the same, and his first novel, an epic family saga, found an enthusiastic editor almost a year later. The entire situation became more complex, and Bill’s family’s financial situation became more secure, after a major Hollywood studio offered a seven-figure sum for film rights to that first-written novel.
That long-delayed but substantial and welcome commercial success allowed Bill to contract with the civil engineering firm to design and supervise construction of a nine-bedroom, two-office home at one of the previously-surveyed locations on the family’s new property. The cost of earthworks to make the new home and its position safe and secure from any seismic or related activity amounted to almost two hundred thousand New Zealand dollars, but the continuing success of Bill’s books and the movies made from them comfortably financed the family’s expenses.
When Bill expressed concern about Lyubov’s and Olena’s having to live in the relatively-cramped conditions of the previous owner’s rental house, the two women resumed telling him, together and separately, “Bill, this is more comfortable than anything we ever experienced in Dubivka, except that mansion the army found for us, and we get to be with you,” and similar reassurances. In less than a year, the unconventional-but-healthy-and-happy family moved into the new home the successful movie from Bill’s first published novel provided. Fourteen or fifteen months after moving into what both Lyubov and Olena thought of and often referred to as their mansion, both women told their happily-shared lover and partner they had begun experiencing nausea upon waking.
“It’s alright, Bill, lyubyy,” each said in separate intimate conversations, “it goes away as soon as you begin caressing me.”
“But only in the morning?”
“Y—!”
So did the three still-enamored lovers discover, recognize, and discuss the exciting fact that they had begun to expand their family. All three delighted in that wonderful new development and recognition, and free of the dangers of a wartime environment hanging over them. Lyubov became the first to ask, “Is that why you had them build that little room, beside the big bedroom, s—”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t—and don’t ever—want to stop making love with you, and I thought we would need a nursery room for the newborns. D—”
Lyubov’s tears upset Bill, but she reassured him, “These are happy tears, Bill, lyubyy. You are just so wonderful. You are so good at…at everything.”
Olena expressed similar sentiments along with delight at her newly-confirmed condition foretelling the expansion of their family.
The consistent, affectionate and passionate, and enduring, love of Lyubov and Olena allowed Bill to relinquish—in fact extinguished—their shared inamorato’s longing, desire, and aching for the ex-wife who lived a few miles down the road from the new family. When Bill and Lyubov or Olena, usually with one or two of their children in a pram and another on Bill’s back or chest or sometimes one on each, encountered his ex-wife on a street in town, the radioman and his family offered conventional and hearty—and sincere—greetings and went about their business, more than content in each other’s company. Earlier than their beloved Bill, Lyubov and Olena observed that their darling’s ex-wife appeared less willing or able to accept the changed circumstances of the company.
When, many months later, Bill suggested the family invite his ex-’s family for dinner as a sort of reconciliation or re-normalization, both Lyubov and Olena said, separately but in almost identical words, “I don’t think she’s ready for that.”
“What do you mean? She’s been with Alvin for almost a decade.” Bill said. “They have an eight- almost nine-year-old son. Besides, she left me; I didn’t leave her. She couldn’t possibly resent you two angels, who probably saved my life.”
Olena said, “If that is really true, Bill lyubyy, I am very glad, because yours is a life very much worth saving.”
Lyubov expressed identical feelings, and all three grew even closer in the course of their several loving discussions. Lyubov also observed, “I think your ex-wife now recognizes she made a huge mistake in ever letting you out of her lif—”
“Letting me!? I didn’t want out of her life, not then. I wanted us to continue sharing a life.” Bill paused to draw a breath, then continued, “That was before I had met you, of course. Now, I would much rather share with you,” and, after a very brief pause, “both of you, of course.” After an even shorter pause, Bill said, “It was more like throwing me out of her life.”
Olena said, “Yes, lyubyy Bill. That was then. Now, I think she recognizes what a big mistake she made by ending the marriage you shared. I think—don’t you, Lyubov?—she wishes she could take all that back, could reverse everything she did.”
“Well, if she does wish that, it’s too bad for her. Whether she wishes that or not, I love you, both of you, and have no room or desire for anyone else.”
“But you loved her so much,” Lyubov said. “Do you not still feel that intense desire for her?”
Both Olena and Lyubov gasped, when their darling said, “Yes, of course I do.” The two woman began to relax a moment later, when Bill continued, “But I don’t feel nearly as much love or desire for her as I do for either—and, of course, both—of you.”
Several repetitions of that and similar conversations plus their day-to-day lives left both Olena and Lyubov feeling secure and comfortable in Bill’s love for them. While both felt resentment toward Bill’s ex-wife for the pain she had caused him, both also recognized they would not enjoy his love, his ministrations, his wonderful person, had she done otherwise. While neither developed what one might call gratitude toward the woman, both accepted that she had, albeit foolishly and inadvertantly, provided the two friends with the greatest gift either of them had ever enjoyed.
Lyubov and Olena’s resentment toward their darling Bill’s ex-wife has softened a good deal in the ensuing decade, but neither has come to consider her a genuine friend. The two former neighbors, close friends, and unconventional partner-sharers have each and both several times expressed, if not sympathy, at least pity. As Lyubov said in a conversation with Olena now a few years past, “Imagine knowing you could have had what we have—you know?—could have had Bill beside y—”
“And inside you!”
Lyubov nodded vigorously, grinned, and continued, “—and you sent him away so you could be with some nevdakha.”
She paused, and Olena said, “I think they say ‘loser’.”
“Tak. Dyakuyu tobi,” Yes. Thank you, “—to be with some loser.”
Olena interrupted her friend’s next thought with, “Tochno!” Exactly! “She made a mess of her own life, and now she recognizes that. It is sad,” Olena paused for one brief moment and, with a grin from ear to ear, continued, “but I am so very glad she did.”
Recognizing that pity can never form a good foundation for a healthy relationship, neither of the two close friends and shared partners has reached out to Bill’s ex-. Those two and Bill remain busy looking after their own brood, the oldest of whom have embarked, with substantial support from their loving parents, on so-far-successful—and, indeed, exceptional—undergraduate careers. Bill also devotes a great deal of his time and energy to pleasing his two beloved partners, as they likewise focus on pleasing him, with all of them sharing joy, love, pleasure, and delight every day and every night.
Cora Tate is a full-time professional entertainer with work in 88 literary journals.
