They were on Pennsylvania Avenue now—almost home.
“Are you going to come upstairs and have dinner with us?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Sorry. Too much work.”
Since he probably averaged eighty or ninety hours, if not more, at the White House during the average week when nothing went horribly wrong—not that there was ever an average week—his job probably had a lot to do with why he and Rachel had broken up. Maybe everything to do with it.
And she hadn’t helped much today, by making him take the afternoon off, so that now, inevitably, he would have to stay much later than usual tonight.
“Thank you,” she said. “For before, I mean. I don’t know why I did that.”
“I saw your hand clench, Meg,” he said. “That was about all that happened.”
What a nice man. “Thank you, anyway,” she said.
They pulled through the Northwest Gate, and up to the North Portico. Her knee had stiffened pretty badly, and it was a struggle to get out of the car. But, in case there were any photographers around—and she could see some of the news correspondents doing their early evening stand-ups on the lawn, off to her right, she was careful to keep a smile on the entire time.
In the bright light of the Grand Foyer and Entrance Hall, she could see that Preston really did look worn out.
“At least come up and get something to eat,” she said. “Instead of take-out, or whatever.”
He grinned at her. “You suddenly sound just like Beatrice Fielding.”
His mother. Great. Meg flushed, and looked down at the very shiny, diamond-patterned floor, which was so incredibly well-polished that she could almost see her reflection.
“Although it is the most coveted invitation in Washington,” he said.
That was the rumor. The President so rarely allowed anyone to eat privately with the family—because, yeah, all they had were the god-damn meals—that it had become a much sought after, and almost never achieved, political goal. The current Beltway Holy Grail. “If they only knew,” Meg said, wryly.
Preston laughed, and walked her towards the elevator, adjusting his stride to match hers.
“Um, thank you for coming with me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it, otherwise.”
“Yeah, you would,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Be nice if he were right.
6
DINNER WAS EVEN more tense than usual. Steven had the good sense to tell their parents about the fight, instead of their having to hear about it elsewhere—like the network news, say—but they were both pretty mad. Meg’s father, more so. Her mother had been in Chicago most of the day, and was now fielding calls about a massive earthquake in Indonesia, and an apparent new rebel insurgency in Sudan, and so, was too distracted to pay much attention to anything else.
“How many times are we going to have this conversation?” their father asked, as they all ate—or tried to eat—their salads. “If this keeps happening, you aren’t going to be allowed to go out for sports anymore.”
Steven scowled. “I get in fights at school, too. You gonna make me not go to school?”
“The idea, is for you not to get in fights at all,” their father said. “For you to start behaving more responsibly.”
Steven slouched down, his arms folded across his chest. “He called me a pussy,” he said sulkily. “Nobody calls me a pussy.”
Now, their mother stepped in. “Steven, I recognize that you swear, but I really don’t like that word.”
“I don’t either,” Steven said. “That’s why I hit him.”
Meg laughed. Christ, this conversation was predictable.
“It’s not funny,” Steven said, glaring at her.
“Yeah, it is.” Meg took a bite of her corn bread. Carl, one of the chefs, made genuinely fabulous corn bread. “I mean, Christ.” She glanced at her mother. “Sorry.”
Her mother shrugged a “my life is a heavy burden” shrug.
“I had a fun time,” Neal volunteered. “I’m totally glad we went.”
Since the rest of her family was not prone to spontaneous utterances, they all thought about that.
“Did you win?” their father asked.
Steven shook his head, still sulking.
“How many points did you score?” their mother asked.
Steven shrugged. “Sixteen. And seven rebounds.”
“He was really good,” Neal said. “Like, when the coach took him out, they were losing and stuff.”
“How about you?” their father asked. “How was school?”
“Boring,” Neal said, sounding as happy as can be. “Can you pass the milk, Meg?”
Before doing so, Meg paused to wait for the inevitable.
“Please,” their father said.
“Please,” Neal said.
Meg passed the milk.
“Was school all right for you?” her mother asked.
Meg looked up. “Me? I mean, yeah. I guess so. How was Chicago?”
Her mother frowned. “Cold,” she said finally.
“Metaphorically speaking?” Meg’s father asked.
Her mother smiled a little. “It’s a tough town, Russ. Very tough town. How was your trip?”
“It’s a warm town,” he said. “And I had some absolutely delicious iced tea.”
Her mother’s face relaxed into a full smile. “Your day beats mine, then.”
“Did you get to hammer, Dad?” Neal asked. Since a visit to a building site, especially down on the Gulf Coast, inevitably meant that her father would bring along a pair of work boots, take off his jacket and tie, and pitch in, using tools with both skill and abandon.
Their father nodded. “I did. Along with some drilling and sawing.”
Which might explain why he seemed more cheerful than usual.
Now that the tension had been broken, Meg felt hungrier, and was glad to see Jorge and Silvio coming in with the main course. Chicken, in what smelled like some kind of mushroom and wine sauce, rice pilaf, baby carrots sauteed with honey and dill. Okay by her.
Her mother started getting ever-more-frequent phone calls, and she left a few minutes later to go back downstairs to the West Wing. After the rest of them had dessert—or, at any rate, her brothers had dessert, while her father drank coffee, and Meg ate half a chocolate chip cookie, she went down to her room. She wanted to go straight to sleep, but steeled herself to work on her English paper, instead.
Religious Imagery in Selected Twentieth-Century Fiction. Fun.
She could order anything she wanted from the White House librarian, who would have it sent over from the Library of Congress or someplace—a service which had gotten Charles Colson, among others, in trouble, as she recalled—but asking the librarian to get her “you know, holy stuff” wasn’t going to be much help.
After answering her email—one from Beth, who was obviously upset about the way their phone call had ended the other night, although Meg just wrote “no big deal, don’t worry about it” in response; as well as emails from Josh and a couple of people she knew from various newsgroups and forums, who had no idea they were corresponding with the President’s daughter—she ran a quick search for information which might be germane to her paper, but didn’t come up with much. At any rate, nothing which seemed terribly reliable.
Her parents had set her up with several special keyboards designed for one-handed typing, but she was so accustomed to a traditional lay-out that the adaptive ones were too complicated to use. She also had all of the latest versions of voice recognition software, but they seemed like more trouble than they were worth, and she couldn’t get excited about head-movement controlled, or wand mouse, technologies, either. So, she had gone back to a regular laptop, and sometimes a foot pedal, and just typed far more slowly than she once had, using her left hand.
She forgot, at one point, and tapped the space bar with the heel of her bad hand, which sent a jolt of such intense pain reverberating through her entire
body that she had to stop and huddle over her splint until she could absorb the spasm. If she hadn’t been afraid that someone would come in and see her, she might even have let herself rock back and forth and groan pathetically for a while. But she just swallowed, very hard, shook her head a few times, and went back to what she had been doing.
By eleven, she was so tired that she decided to watch CNN for a while to clear her head. The lead story was the earthquake in Indonesia, with videos showing a distressing amount of devastation. Entire villages appeared to have been wiped out, and rescue and relief teams from the United States were already en route to the region, with the White House—well, okay, the President—also issuing a statement expressing great sympathy for the Indonesian people and pledging a very large sum of money to help with the rebuilding and recovery.
Her mother, of course, was in a number of the other news stories—among other things, there was a G8 summit coming up soon—and Meg found watching a clip of her responding to questions, during a press availability on the South Grounds, after she got back from Chicago, more eerie than usual. Despite the warm smiles and light humor here and there, she looked so sad. Haggard. Listless. As though she neither swashed, nor buckled, anymore. Had the changes happened so subtly that no one who didn’t know her well would notice—or did people just feel better picturing their President a certain way, regardless of reality?
The door was open, but her father still knocked.
“How’s the paper coming?” he asked.
Meg turned away from the television. “I’m just taking a break,” she said quickly. Although, really, she was old enough to make the choice to goof off, if she wanted. She should have grown out of all those years of having him—or Trudy, who had been their housekeeper in Massachusetts, but had morphed into being their adopted grandmother—say sternly, “Is your homework done yet?” Her mother, often foolishly, assumed that her children were honorable enough to turn off the television if they still had studying to do. Except, maybe, for Steven, who took great pride in never doing anything until he was forced.
Her father sat down in the rocking chair, then indicated the television. “Not much good news.”
Was there ever? “The earthquake looks pretty bad,” Meg said.
Her father nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, fires, plane crashes, bombings—all too often, current events just seemed like an endless stream of tragedies. The news anchors must have wanted to spend time on something less dire, too, because now they were discussing the Congressional squabbling—oh, yeah, there was some red-hot information—over the pending selection of the new Senate Minority Leader, after the former one had stepped down, due to health issues, or an ethics problem, depending on the source. The President had yet to indicate her official preference, but one of the proposed leaders had, very recently, very conveniently, been invited to a private luncheon meeting with her, while the other two had attended a group breakfast. Much was being made of this, and probably with good reason. Publicly, her mother had been saying that they were all fine men, with whom she’d served for many years.
Her father sighed. “All that politicking.”
Meg nodded, glad that neither he, nor she, had added, “And, for what?” She had thought it; maybe he had, too. “Funny they don’t notice,” she said.
“Notice what?” he asked.
She pointed at the screen, even though it was a commercial now. “How different she looks.”
He shrugged. “Some of the more astute ones do.”
“To me, she looks like someone going through the motions,” Meg said. Hesitantly.
“Well, you know her better than they do,” her father said.
Not exactly a contradiction.
“Besides,” he said, “they’re probably hoping she’ll get her second wind back.”
Wasn’t she on her fourth or fifth wind by now? “Do you think she will?” Meg asked.
His glance at her knee brace was, she knew, inadvertent. “I hope so.”
Right. The whole family was being dragged down by her lack of well-being. She unfastened the top two straps on her splint, and lightly rubbed the scar tissue below her pinky and ring finger, on the off chance that one of these days, some of the fascia might release.
“It’s feeling better?” he asked. “Lately?”
Since it wasn’t, Meg shrugged in lieu of answering, and they watched as the network cut to a grimy, and just a shade too chipper, field reporter giving a live report from the scene of the earthquake, standing in front of mud and rubble, which had been a thriving marketplace less than ten hours earlier.
The next time a commercial came on, Meg let out her breath.
“I’m in the way here,” she said.
Her father looked up, startled. “What?”
“I’m in the way,” she said again. “In the White House.”
“Of course you’re not,” he said. “You could never be.”
Meg shook her head. “I’m supposed to be away at school. And as long as I’m here, limping around, and hiding, and sleeping a lot, things can’t get back to normal.”
If, of course, they’d ever been normal—but, that was a different issue.
“Meg, you could never be in the way,” her father said, sounding very upset. “I don’t know why you would think a thing like that.”
Was he being dense, or just trying not to hurt her feelings? Or was he so clouded by guilt that he wasn’t really listening? “Dad.” She stopped, afraid that she might be going to lose her temper, and took a minute to pick up the remote and flick off the television. “Just—pretend I’m an adult for a minute, okay?”
“I know you’re an adult, Meg,” he said. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
What was too bad, was that he had done it automatically. “Every second I’m here is a reminder that I’m not supposed to be. That everything’s wrong.” She went on before he could interrupt, or contradict her. “I don’t just mean all of you. I mean me, too. I mean, everyone. It’s like—advertising—that something bad happened. That our lives changed.” That the son-of-a-bitch had beaten her down.
That she was a god-damn victim.
“I don’t—” Her father frowned. “Meg, recuperation is bound to be—”
“Dad, listen to me,” she said, trying not to lose patience. “I’m not doing a pity thing, I’m making sense. Everyone’s spending their time being so god-damn careful and nervous, and I just end up feeling—I don’t know—omnipresent.”
Her father sighed, and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “It’s only been a few months. You shouldn’t expect—”
Meg shook her head so that he would stop. “She can’t even look me in the eye,” she said quietly. “Neither of you can.”
Her father—right on cue—didn’t quite look at her. “Naturally, we both feel responsible.”
Yeah. They never looked at her, and for the most part, they never looked at each other anymore, either. “As long as my life’s a disaster, no one can get beyond it. I feel like—I don’t know,” she said. “Like everything’s revolving around me, and I hate it.”
He nodded.
“I mean, Christ, I feel—” It all seemed so damned hopeless. She had managed to hold off on her pain medication earlier, but now, she took one, with the dregs of a glass of Coke on her bedside table. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re already doing it,” her father said. “You get up, you go to your classes, you study—you’re taking it as it comes. We’re very proud of you.”
He just plain wasn’t hearing her. “I can’t even talk to Beth anymore,” she said. “I feel—” Stupid. “Embarrassed.” And left out. Left behind. Lost.
He nodded.
“I just—I don’t know. I didn’t expect my life to turn out this way.” She glanced over to see him watching her intently. “I hate it here, and I don’t belong anywhere out there. I’m like a—pariah.”
; Her father sat back in his chair, rubbing his temples this time.
“What,” she said, amused in spite of herself. “Stumped for an answer?”
He smiled faintly. “This is a tough one, Meg. The only thing I can tell you is that it’s going to get better. And that you’re doing all of the right things.”
Be nice to be back to the days when her parents had had no trouble answering her questions. She, personally, could think of only one possible solution here. “I—I want to leave next semester,” she said. “Go to school for real.”
Her father blinked. “Next month?”
She nodded.
“All right,” he said, after a pause. “Then, we’ll arrange it. The Secret Service has already been spending time up there, just in case.”
Now, it was Meg’s turn to be surprised. “So, that’s it? I mean, just like that?”
“If that’s what you want,” her father said.
Jesus, was it? Maybe she’d better give this a little more—no. If she thought about it, she would back out. “Well—okay, then,” she said. “That’s what I’d like to do, if it’s okay with you.”
Her father nodded. “We’ll get to work on it first thing tomorrow.”
Somehow, she’d expected him to put up more of an argument. Tell her all the reasons why she wasn’t ready, and should wait until next fall, or her junior year, or—
“This doesn’t have to be final,” he said. “I mean, you can always—”
Meg shook her head. “No. I’d really like to try it. I think I—yeah, this is definite.” Christ, she hoped she wasn’t going to regret this.
Actually, she already did.
* * *
ON FRIDAY, SHE handed in her English paper, and also finished up the last assignment for her Astronomy online laboratory section. She studied all weekend for her finals, both of which were scheduled back-to-back on Monday afternoon. That morning, she was so nervous that she couldn’t manage to eat breakfast, and by the time she got to the campus, she felt weak and dizzy enough to regret not making more of an effort to force something down.
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