Long May She Reign

  Naturally, the minute she stretched out on her bed, she fell asleep, and her father had to come in and wake her up for supper. At first, she didn’t recognize where she was, but then, when she figured out that it was her real room, and not her dorm room, she wasn’t sure whether she was happy about that—or disappointed.

  “Would you rather have a tray?” her father asked.

  What, and live up to Steven’s low expectations? She shook her head, and forced herself to sit up. “No, thanks. I’ll be right there.”

  By the time she’d gulped some ibuprofen, washed her face, brushed her hair, and made it down to the dining room, everyone else was already at the table, and her brothers had started eating without her.

  She wasn’t even remotely hungry, but she told Trudy how good everything looked, and made an effort to appear to be eating heartily.

  Trudy had just come back from a visit to Massachusetts, where she had seen a number of people they knew, and her parents asked questions about this and that, while Neal talked about how fun it would be if they could spend a bunch of time up there during the summer—and Steven plowed through about three helpings of everything, his conversational gambits erring on the side of being short, and mostly monosyllabic. And, of course, her mother left the room several times to take phone calls or speak to one of her seniors aides out in the West Sitting Hall.

  For her part, she tried to walk the line between being agreeable—and unobtrusive. But then, about halfway through the meal, she felt so exhausted that she was afraid she might have to go down to her room and straight to bed for the rest of the night. And the thought of not being able to do so, without everyone getting overly concerned, was enough to set off a jolt of wild panic inside.

  Her mother and Steven picked up on it almost instantly—and she could see them both go rigid in a “God, nothing’s changed, and we’re right back to where we were” way. Her father, Neal, and Trudy picked up on that, and then, the conversation which had been flowing along fairly easily slowed down—and ultimately stopped dead.

  “Long day,” her mother said.

  God, yes. Meg nodded, trying to breathe through the dizzy spell which had predictably come to join the panic. Nausea would be next. “Is it okay if I—” Except that if she fled—limped—to her room, it was only going to confirm their worst suspicions. Reignite the family malaise. Make her, once again, the agent of their collective destruction.

  Felix was coming in with more mashed potatoes, and she caught his eye.

  “Could I please have a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  He was back in less than a minute, pausing to refill her parents’ cups on his tactful way out of the room.

  “You don’t like coffee,” Neal said, accusingly.

  The hell she didn’t. Meg added more sugar than usual for the extra energy burst. “I do now.”

  It was very quiet, and she could tell that they were all busily overanalyzing the possible implications of that remark.

  “Well, there’s the sure sign of a college student,” Trudy said, with a smile.

  Which changed the atmosphere in the room, and she could almost literally see everyone else’s brains process the concept of her as a college student, as opposed to a traumatized, housebound cripple, and calm down somewhat in response.

  The conversation kicked back into—balky—gear again, with Neal carrying most of the load, as he asked her if she stayed up all night, every night; whether she had a whole bunch of new friends; and if she got to eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She had to fib, a little, with each of her answers, but none of them seemed to raise any red flags until she said that the food was great, and she saw her mother and Trudy exchange glances.

  She managed to make it through the rest of the meal without falling apart—drinking two more cups of coffee along the way—and then, Trudy went into the kitchen to order the stewards to let her help clean up, her mother was on her way back downstairs because of the usual flurry of emergencies, large and small, and, since it was dark now and he wouldn’t be bothered by anyone, her father took Kirby outside to walk around the South Lawn. Steven had disappeared right after dessert, but she didn’t know where he had gone. Or why.

  She also wasn’t sure if she cared, at the moment.

  “Will you watch a movie with me?” Neal asked.

  She really just wanted to sleep, but she could tell that he was eager to have her join him—and expecting to be turned down. “Does it have soldiers in it?”

  He looked perplexed. “You mean, they make movies without soldiers?”

  Christ, what a one-track mind. But then, she saw him grinning. Okay. Maybe he was on the verge of becoming just as snarky as she and Steven had always been inclined to be. “All right, smart guy,” she said. “Find a movie without any guns, and I’ll be right up.”

  While he raced off, she went down to her room and splashed cold water on her face, since she was still so tired that if she got onto her bed, she knew she wouldn’t even have enough energy to drag herself underneath the covers before she fell asleep again.

  When she got up to the Solarium, she found him in there alone, perched on the couch, waiting for her with great anticipation.

  “Dad and Steven aren’t going to watch with us?” she asked.

  Neal shrugged. “I think maybe Dad’s going to come up in a while.”

  Which only answered half of her question. She wanted to ask him what the hell Steven’s problem was, but he was fooling around with the remote, in an apparent attempt to avoid meeting her eyes.

  Swell. It was her first night back, and Steven couldn’t be bothered to—just swell. Would it kill him to pretend to be happy to see her?

  She moved her jaw. “Is he in his room?”

  Neal shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Terrific. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and motioned towards the little side kitchen, which had a refrigerator and a microwave and everything. “Why don’t you make some popcorn and stuff, so we’ll be ready to go?”

  He nodded, but still wouldn’t really look at her.

  She found Steven lying on his bed, facing the headboard and bouncing a tennis ball off the wall—an activity guaranteed to make the White House curator, and presidential historians everywhere, blanch.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He nodded, tossing and catching the ball.

  “How you doing?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  Mr. Communicative. “Neal and I are going to watch a movie,” she said. “And we thought you might want to hang out, too.”

  He shrugged again, throwing the ball.

  Mr. Enthusiasm, as well. She waited to see if he was going to say anything, and then sighed. “Well, okay. We’ll be upstairs.”

  He shrugged.

  Christ, could he make it any more clear that he liked it better when she was away? It wasn’t as though she didn’t already know that he hadn’t missed her at all.

  “Are Mom and Dad going to watch with us, since you’re here?” he asked after her.

  She paused, off-balance, and had to lean against the wall to catch herself when she didn’t get her cane down in time. “What do you mean?”

  He threw the ball, hard. “Fake like they don’t hate each other. You know, so you don’t get upset.”

  It would be a relief if it turned out that he was actually mad at them—and not at her. She made her way back into the room. “They haven’t been faking it in front of you and Neal?”

  Steven scowled. “They think they have. Or else, they think we’re way dumber than you, and maybe can’t tell the difference.”

  Her knee hurt, a lot, and she sat down at the bottom of the bed. “You mean, the stuff where they don’t look at each other, and she leaves the table too soon, because she suddenly has a bunch of work she conveniently forgot she had to do?”

  Steven nodded.

  “Or,” Meg said, “if you go into their room and she’s reading, he’s over on the couch, and if he??
?s reading, she’s at her desk?”

  Steven nodded. “If they’re both in there in the first place, which, like, they aren’t, mostly.”

  Sometimes she wondered if her parents realized what a rapt little audience of three they had, during every waking hour. “That sucks,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Has Neal noticed?” she asked.

  He looked at her with true scorn. “Neal notices everything. He only pretends not to, because it makes his stomach hurt.”

  Oh. Sometimes, Neal was sort of trapped in her mind as being younger than he actually was—and he would be quite justified if he found that insulting. “Is he doing okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I guess.” He threw the ball, and the wall actually shook this time. Somewhere, the head usher was cringing. “He still talks to that lady. Says he likes her.”

  After—everything, her parents had brought in various therapists for the three of them, although Neal was the only one who had been cooperative. In her case, a series of psychologists and psychiatrists had “stopped by to say hello,” mostly while she was still in the hospital, or at physical therapy sessions, but also during and after interviews with the FBI, and twice when she was downstairs having checkups with Dr. Brooks. Each time, she had been disinterested to the point of nearly being impolite. She knew that Steven had been forced to go to at least one appointment, with three different psychologists so far, but had hated every second.

  “What do you think they talk about?” she asked.

  Steven snagged the ball one-handed, and then looked over at her. “You really asking, or you trying to figure out what I would maybe be talking about?”

  Too often, Steven was so busy acting like a jock—or a jerk—that he didn’t get enough credit for being unusually intelligent. “Both, I guess,” Meg said. “Are you still going?”

  He made a face. “I said, no way, but they say it seems like I’m maybe, you know, depressed, and that I have to go for a while, so it really sucks. I mean, you don’t have to, and it happened to you. It’s totally not fair.”

  Her parents weren’t happy about her refusal to participate in any form of mental health rehabilitation, but the difference was, that she could get away with saying no—and Steven couldn’t. “No, it isn’t,” she said. “But at least I abuse Beth and Preston’s goodwill by talking to them a lot about stuff.”

  Steven shrugged and threw his ball.

  “Steven, you don’t even talk to me anymore,” Meg said. Despite the fact that, for most of their lives, they had been nearly inseparable. “So, I kind of figure you’re not saying much to Vinnie or Jim or anyone, either.”

  “We’re not supposed to talk to you,” Steven said, “because you might get upset, and like, cry or something.”

  And now, yet again, they found themselves mired on that hellish good intentions road. Meg shook her head. “You can always talk to me, about anything you want. And even if I got upset, what’s the big deal? We should be upset, so we might as well quit acting like we aren’t.”

  Steven shrugged, not looking at her.

  Great. Half the time, it almost felt as though, privately, they all hated her for having had—bad luck. Like it was her damn fault or something. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Meg said stiffly. “And I’m getting really tired of you—I don’t know—blaming me for it. I’m sorry I got kidnapped, okay? I’m sorry I ended up crippled. I’m sorry it’s been inconvenient for you, all right?”

  Steven threw the ball so hard that it bounced all the way out into the room and crashed against his dresser.

  Meg got up. “Fine. Just—do what you want. If you want to hate me, go right ahead. And—go to hell, while you’re at it.”

  “You want to know what I think?” he asked, as she limped towards his door. “What I think is, fuck you for almost getting killed.”

  What? Like that was fair? She resisted the urge to slug him with her cane. Aim for his pitching arm, maybe, and see how he liked it. “Yeah, well, fuck you for being mad at me for almost getting killed.”

  She was furious, and he was probably even more pissed off and they stared at each other, but then, suddenly, they both laughed.

  “Please pretend you’re happy to see me, okay?” she asked. “And come up and watch a movie with us.”

  Steven nodded, but stayed on his bed, his shoulders slumping.

  “Come on,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  Talk about one step forward and two steps back. “What?” she asked.

  He looked at her unhappily. “They almost got you again this week.”

  It hadn’t even crossed her mind that he might know about the latest spate of threats—and maybe be obsessing about them. “I didn’t know they told you guys about that,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, looking at her as though she had an IQ of about twelve. “I mean, we suddenly have a whole bunch more agents with us, and we’re not supposed to think something’s going on? And Mom and Dad were all flippo, and we had to come home right after school, even though I had practice.”

  Was he mad that he’d had to miss practice, or had he been worried about her? “It was just some guys your age screwing around,” she said. “It wasn’t any big deal.”

  Steven scowled. “Turned out that way, that’s all. It might not have.”

  Yeah, but there wasn’t a single god-damn thing in the world she could do about that, one way or the other.

  “Next time, it might be real,” he said.

  And the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after that. So, what else was new? “Yeah,” she said. “Come up and watch a movie, anyway.”

  She thought he was going to get mad again, but he just sighed and stood up.

  “It better not be the damn Sound of Music,” he said.

  What an excellent idea; she should have thought of it herself. “It will definitely be The Sound of Music,” she said.

  He groaned, but followed her out to the elevator, anyway.

  * * *

  THE MOVIE NEAL picked out was supposed to be a comedy, but mainly, it was profane and scatological. Her brothers loved it. Her father and Trudy both came up at different points, were disgusted, and left after about ten minutes of puerility each.

  When the movie ended, Trudy appeared again to haul Neal downstairs to get ready for bed, and to warn Steven that he could only stay up for another hour and a half.

  “I’m going to watch The Sound of Music now,” Meg said, when Neal started complaining that it wasn’t fair that he had to go to bed so soon.

  “Yuck,” he said, and followed Trudy without any further argument.

  “How many times you seen this movie?” Steven asked, as it started.

  A couple of hundred, maybe? “Not nearly enough times,” she said.

  He laughed, and went into the little kitchen to fix some more popcorn, also bringing back a Coke for her and some orange juice for himself.

  While Maria was running into the abbey at top speed, disgracefully late for evening prayer or vespers or whatever it was that she had been missing while cavorting in the Alps, Meg glanced over at him.

  “How’s baseball?” she asked.

  “Okay.” He drank some orange juice. “We’re kind of not as good as I thought we’d be.”

  Steven had won his first start, but they’d gotten blown out in their other scrimmage—by a notoriously weak team. She was pretty sure his ERA was in the 1.30 range—although if she asked, he’d be mad that she hadn’t committed the exact number to memory. “Are they being okay about you playing?” she asked.

  Steven shook his head. “They’re all uptight and stuff. Like someone’s going to show up and grab me right off the ballfield, or something. I mean, they might, you know, shoot me, but they might do that any time, so why’s baseball any worse?”

  Because, more often than not, he was standing out there all by himself on the mound, a perfect target. The Secret Service hated having to try and protect a la
rge open field, especially at away games, where, no matter how much advance work they did, they just weren’t as familiar with the surrounding area.

  “I mean, you were coming home from school,” he said. “And Mom was just, you know, going to some dumb speech. If something bad’s going to happen, anyway, I’d way rather be playing ball and having fun and stuff, you know?”

  Made sense to her. But, it still sucked beyond belief that a ninth grader had to spend time worrying about whether a maniac was going to kill him someday, just to make a political point.

  “Dad says he’s coming to all my games,” Steven said, “and he was maybe going to come to the practices, too, but that was getting—it was screwing me up at the plate and all.”

  Meg nodded. They were so used to their parents not being able to show up for things regularly, that it seemed kind of unfamiliar when one of them did.

  Steven glanced over at her tentatively. “I’m supposed to think he just wants to see me play. But he’s figuring that like, if he’s there, they’ll decide to shoot him, instead of me.”

  Yes, that was the way her father’s mind would be working. For that matter, it was also probably exactly how hate-crazed terrorists would react, if confronted with the situation. Knocking off the First Gentleman would be far more of a thrill than going after his son.

  Steven looked guilty. “So, if something bad happens to him, it’s going to be my fault.”

  Meg shook her head. “No way. If something bad happens, it’ll be their fault. The terrorists, I mean—not Mom and Dad.” Which maybe wasn’t terribly helpful. “I mean, nothing’s going to happen, but, at least if he comes, he gets to feel like he can protect you a little, and you get to have him at your games, so that’s good.”

  “I guess,” Steven said, without much conviction.

  They were getting along so well that she hated to start trouble, but— “Do you, um, tell any of this stuff to the person they’re having you talk to?” she asked.

  Steven shook his head. “Hell, no. But, the guy they found this time, like, works with baseball players, when they’re in slumps and everything. Real baseball players, I mean. You know, with visualization, and all.”