“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded, looking out the window on her side. A number of tourists were standing around on Seventeenth Street, watching the small motorcade go by, most of them taking pictures of the cars, and presumably speculating about who might be behind the tinted windows.
“I was swinging at her last night,” Meg said, “but I think I was aiming at you.”
Her father nodded, unhappily. “I know that, Meg.”
Which might explain his very long stay in the Presidential dressing room, and current inability to sit next to her without fidgeting. “Does Mom know, too?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “In her way, she can be surprisingly bright.”
Oh, good—humor. Things would be so much more bearable if they could all sometimes remember the concept of humor. She glanced at his agents up in the front seat, who, in typical Secret Service fashion, were going out of their way not to listen. There was an unspoken covenant that protectees had to be able to have otherwise private conversations, and try to live their lives, in front of their agents, who, as reluctant but necessary witnesses, were never supposed to reveal anything they might have overheard.
“It’s ironic,” her father said, “that, in essence, you’re angry at me precisely because I put your well-being, and that of your brothers, above everything else.”
With that particular spin, she felt rather petty. And yes, she could see the irony. “You spent about seventeen years running interference between the two of us,” Meg said, “you know, trying to keep the peace and all, and when she finally actually did something really awful, I wasn’t even very upset about it.”
Her father nodded. “I know. It’s a little infuriating.”
Of this, she had no doubt. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she said, “okay?”
He shook his head. “I’m not, Meg. Stop worrying about it.”
Yeah. It wasn’t as though she had any good reasons to be worried. It made her sick to admit it, but— “Sometimes I’m scared of you now,” she said.
He looked startled. “What?”
“You,” she said. “Preston. My agents.” Except for Paula and Nellie. “My god-damn political science professor, because he has dark hair and he’s in his thirties.” Although her political science professor probably was a threat, but only an academic one.
For the second time in less than twelve hours, she saw tears in her father’s eyes.
“You’ll never have any reason to be afraid of me, Meg,” he said. “Not ever, under any circumstances.”
She knew that, intellectually. She was safe with her father. And Preston. And, probably, her agents. Martin, for sure. Garth. Mr. Gabler.
Jack? Maybe.
She hoped so.
“I need to feel better about you,” Meg said.
Her father tilted his head.
“Men, in general,” Meg said. “I don’t want to start seeing you as people who are mean to women.”
Her father sighed. “If I may say so, women are generally mean right back to us.”
Only when provoked—although she might be displaying a little gender favoritism there.
“And in my own defense,” he said, “I haven’t been in my thirties for quite some time now.”
His hair wasn’t all that dark anymore, either. In fact, during the past two years, it had turned frighteningly grey. Her mother had aged in office, but it was much more visible with her father. Alarmingly so.
She indicated her own hair. “How much of that is from me?”
Her father grinned wryly. “About a third. Your mother and Steven took care of the rest, although Mark’s probably responsible for a big chunk.”
Her too often ne’er-do-well ski-bum uncle. “None from Neal?” she asked.
“A patch as big as a dime,” her father said.
Yeah, that sounded about right.
She looked at him, not completely sure what she was thinking, or how she felt. When she was little, her father had been the one person, other than Trudy, around whom she always felt protected. The person who was always there. In direct contrast to the person who, more often than not, wasn’t.
“I know it may not seem that way,” her father said, “but your mother and I are actually working very hard to—we’re working extremely hard.”
It sure as hell didn’t show. She glanced at the two agents in the front seat, neither of whom appeared to be paying any attention to them whatsoever. Even so, she lowered her voice. “Do you think a woman could have gotten me to crawl?” she asked. She had told them, the night before, about having to drag herself down the hall to the filthy little room after her knee was dislocated, the guy watching, and smiling, every inch of the way. Amused. Triumphant, even. Although she hadn’t really gone into depth about the fact that she had had to cry from the pain, handcuffed hands covering her face, in the unrealistic hope that he wouldn’t be able to tell. “I mean, if she had a gun? Or was it because he was so much bigger, and we both knew he could turn it into rape, whenever he wanted?”
Her father’s shoulders noticeably hunched. “I think a gun makes all the difference in the world.”
Maybe, but physical size, and sexual menace, didn’t hurt. “It was weak,” she said.
“It was sensible,” her father said.
But not exactly valiant.
He let out his breath. “As you pointed out to your brothers this morning, you had to use your instincts, Meg.”
Unfortunately, her instincts generally sucked.
“I suspect there were moments when defiance helped you,” he said, “but that there were many others when it only would have resulted in your being even more seriously injured, or him deciding that it would be less trouble just to go ahead and—” He stopped.
Kill her.
“You have a superb mind,” he said, “and you had the good sense to use it.”
One man’s opinion. They were very close to the school now, and with unfailingly bad timing, she realized that he was right, and it was a terrible idea for her to have come, and that it was going to be too scary, and she might have to ask to be driven home, without even taking the risk of getting out of the car.
“He had to handcuff, starve, and injure you, repeatedly, with God knows how many armed accomplices for backup, to get you to cooperate at all,” her father said with great intensity. “And despite stacking the deck in every way he could, how’d it play out?”
She really didn’t like this conversation anymore. Or this entire day, for that matter.
“You beat the son of a bitch,” her father said. “He’s the one sitting around right now making excuses and second-guessing himself.”
Or, possibly, sitting around and dreaming up a fiendish revenge plot.
“He had every possible advantage at his disposal,” her father said, “and you beat him in front of the entire world, with a god-damn rock.” He smiled unexpectedly, in a way that made him look very much like Neal. “Not to sound too much like your brothers, but it was excellent, Meg.”
Her father never spoke that way—particularly not when he was in full formal First Gentleman regalia, and it was both jarring and amusing to hear such an adolescent sentiment come out of his mouth. “You need to go with ‘wicked excellent,’” she said, “to get the full effect.”
Her father nodded, took a small leather pad with a Presidential Seal on it out of his pocket, and wrote a note to himself—which would have been much too goofy, if she hadn’t known that he was kidding.
They were at the school now, pulling into the driveway in front of the administration building. It was too late to change her mind, and she followed her father out of the car, letting him support her elbow while she tried to get her crutch planted properly.
Her brothers had gotten there ahead of them, because she could see some of their agents, along with a couple of DC police cars, and people from the school security staff. Her old headmaster, the Upper School principal, and the academic dean all came outside
to meet them, and she figured that the White House must have called ahead to—yeah, there was Anthony, standing next to the administration building.
She was dreading a “We are so sorry about what happened to you, it’s all our fault” encounter, but they just told her how happy they were to see her, asked how she was liking college, and shook hands with her father. And they did seem really happy that she was there, actually.
Her father had wanted her to use a wheelchair, instead of staggering around on her crutch, but that was the last thing she wanted to do, in front of so many people from her past. It probably would have been a lot less painful than trying to walk, though.
He didn’t say anything, but he looked very worried as she made her way across some fairly rough ground, heading towards the baseball field.
Josh, and Meg’s friends Nathan and Zachary, had all been on the team, so she’d spent a lot of time on those rickety bleachers during her junior and senior years. Usually, she would go to the games with Alison, who had been her closest friend in Washington, and maybe Phyllis and Gail, or—Jesus Christ, but she’d lost touch with a lot of people.
The bleachers were up above the baseball field, not too far from the tennis courts—which she really should have given some consideration before deciding to come to the game. Not that she had to look over there. She could just watch the two baseball teams warm up, or look across the field at the girls’ softball team over on the other side of the complex, which seemed to be practicing, as opposed to playing an official game today. Besides, she was only here to cheer Steven on, not to get caught up in some self-pity reverie.
Even though the sounds of tennis—balls hitting rackets, the swift noisy footwork of rubber-soled sneakers, the rattle of chain-link fences—were enough to make her feel like weeping.
Neal was sitting on the grass right behind the visitor’s side with Ahmed, and one of his other friends, Yancey, and he came bounding up the hill when he saw them, a big grin on his face.
“I thought you’d be all tired and stuff,” he said to her.
She was, but she shrugged.
“Steven said no way you’d come,” he said. “So, this is cool.” Then he gave their father a big hug, since he either hadn’t grown into finding public displays of familial affection embarrassing yet—or, quite possibly, given his amiable ways, he was never going to develop that particular character trait. “Hi, Dad! I’m going back down there, okay?” He headed towards his friends without waiting for an answer.
She probably knew at least half of the guys on her school’s team pretty well, and some of the others looked familiar. They were all warming up on the sidelines, while Steven’s team finished up batting practice, and Jamal, who must have taken over first base after Nathan graduated, saw her just as he was about to throw to another guy she knew named Christopher. He paused, and then waved tentatively.
She waved back, also feeling hesitant, and he stood there for a minute, then came around the backstop and up the hill.
“Hey,” he said.
She felt stupid about being quite so impaired, but it was nice to see him, find out where he was hoping to go to school—his first choice was Cornell—and otherwise catch up.
Then, a lot of the other guys wandered over, in twos and threes, to say hi, with a certain amount of mumbling and shuffling of their feet.
“You gonna be mad when we score about thirty runs off him?” one of them asked, motioning towards Steven, who had just finished his warm-up tosses, put on a jacket and his Oakley Thump sunglasses, and gone to sit at the end of his team’s bench, with his customary “don’t even think of invading my space when I’ve got my head in the game” pre-pitching glower.
Mostly, she was going to be amazed if they scored thirty runs off him.
It was a relief when the game started, and she could try to concentrate on baseball, although various teachers began appearing, too—word must have gotten around pretty quickly. Interestingly, even teachers who had never been overly fond of her seemed to have embraced a revisionist history which resulted in their forgetting that small truth when they greeted her enthusiastically, asked about college, and told her how wonderful she looked and so forth. Her favorite English teacher, Mrs. Hayes, asked if she was going to be majoring in political science, and Meg shrugged shyly and said that she hadn’t decided yet, but she was considering, um, English. Her father raised his eyebrows, but didn’t contradict her.
Inevitably, the press started showing up, including Hannah Goldman, although Anthony went over to distract them, and so far, they were all keeping their distance. The presence of all of the agents and security people, and the fact that the school was private property, didn’t hurt, either.
She had been going out of her way not to look at the tennis courts, assuming that it was only the boys’ team practicing, but she glanced over by accident—and recognized Renee, who had been ranked number two when she was the top-seeded player on the girls’ team.
As she came over to the fence to pick up a ball, Renee saw her, too, and straightened up, the ball dropping out of her hand. Meg felt like a jerk, and, for some reason, a failure, but she nodded in her direction, and Renee nodded back, then left the courts, coming towards the bleachers.
“How you doing?” Renee asked, avoiding looking at her sling and knee brace.
Tip-top. “Fine,” Meg said. “How about you?”
Renee nodded, then looked down at the baseball field. “Your brother?”
“Yeah, he’s pitching,” Meg said.
Renee turned to check the scoreboard in deep right field. “Looks like he’s doing okay.”
So far. And he’d be doing even better, if his teammates were making fewer errors. He was also two for two, with an RBI. “How’d you guys do this season?” she asked.
Renee shrugged. “Our best player graduated.”
More or less.
Renee glanced at her hand. “Are you, um, going to be able to play anymore?”
No. “I’m not sure,” Meg said. “I hope so.”
Renee nodded, sneaking another quick look at the splint.
It made perfect sense that people always did that; she should stop finding it so invasive.
When Renee had gone back—looking slightly hangdog—to finish her match, Meg wanted nothing more than to go lie down somewhere. Normally, baseball wasn’t a nerve-racking experience, but she was going to have to reevaluate that analysis.
“Relaxing way to spend an afternoon,” her father said, not without irony.
And how.
41
STEVEN WAS AVERAGING more than a strikeout per inning, but he’d also hit two batters, and brushed back a few more. In the bottom of the last inning, with his team hanging on to a 4–3 lead, he did it again, and the benches emptied, although mostly, they all just stood around. There were a few shoves, and scowls, and Meg could hear Steven shouting, “Hey, I’m just trying to establish the inside of the plate!” Finally, the umpire and coaches got everyone calmed down, and Steven was back on the mound, digging his cleats into the dirt in front of the rubber.
The bottom pretty much dropped out of his next pitch, and the batter—a guy she knew, Raymond—struck out with a flailing swing.
Her father frowned. “That damn kid just threw a splitter.”
And a dandy one, at that. But Steven’s coach must have noticed, too, because he was on his way to the mound. “Dad, he’s trying to get seniors out,” she said.
Her father nodded. “And by the time he’s sixteen, he’ll be having Tommy John surgery.”
For Steven’s sake, she hoped not.
After a fairly heated exchange, his coach went back to the bench, and Steven shrugged a few times, then stared in at the catcher to get the sign for the next pitch.
“You were a wonderful athlete, Meg,” her father said, out of nowhere. “It was a pleasure to watch you play.”
Nice of him to remind her that that was part of her past. She wanted to snarl something of that nature at him, but
someone, among the spectators, was probably listening in, so she just stared down at the field.
“Which doesn’t change the fact that your mother and I used to spend a lot of time worrying that you were going to waste far too much of your life playing some sport or other,” he said.
What, and that would be the end of the world? Her getting to do the two things she loved best, one of them possibly even professionally? Meg nodded. “So, I was wasting my time, but it’s okay for Steven to put everything he has into baseball?”
“No, we worry about that, too,” her father said.
Just not as hard, apparently. She watched as Steven scrambled off the mound to field a bunt bare-handed, and threw it to first in time to get the runner by two steps.
“I don’t meant that—” Her father let out a frustrated breath. “I’m not doing very well with you today, am I?”
Nope.
They watched as the next hitter popped up to the third baseman—who muffed it completely. Steven did a decent job of not looking pissed off, although Neal, who was hanging around down by the backstop, looked up at her uneasily. Meg shrugged, and Neal nodded and refocused on the game.
“What I meant,” her father said, “is that you’re extraordinarily gifted, in so many ways, and I’m not sure if there’s anything you couldn’t do if you put your mind to it.”
Other than, say, walk.
Her father sighed. “Maybe what I meant is that you don’t have to keep pretending that you’re majoring in English. That’s all.”
Yeah, he just loved politics. And politicians. Christ, if they were having this much trouble getting along now, she couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if she chose his least favorite thing as her career. So, she confined her response to a brisk shake of her head, and tried to pay attention to the game.
Steven came in high and tight to the next batter—her friend Jamal, as it happened—who stepped out of the box long enough to glare at him, before stepping back in. On the next pitch, he grounded to the shortstop, who overthrew the second baseman, and suddenly, there were men on second and third. Steven stayed very still on the mound, with no expression whatsoever, but his catcher came trotting out to talk to him. Calm him down, more likely.