Long May She Reign

  Beth choked on her coffee. “I don’t know,” she said, once she’d stopped coughing. “Probably. Is that where you are these days?”

  Meg shook her head. “No, I’m still pretty sure the vengeful, malicious puppet-master version is the accurate one.”

  Their waitress was heading over with more coffee and Beth politely waved her away.

  “How much time do you think your mother spends wondering about what would have happened if the bullets had hit her two inches over?” she asked.

  “A lot,” Meg said. Possibly every night before she went to sleep. And, for all Meg knew, she did have nightmares—and plenty of them.

  Beth looked at her. “Honest opinion?”

  What, like Beth was capable of anything else? Meg shrugged, but found herself gripping the edge of the table, not sure if she was prepared to hear it.

  “I think they might have gone after you, anyway,” Beth said. “I guess you still would have had some protection, until you turned eighteen, but you wouldn’t’ve had as much, and Mr. Kruger’s kids are all grown up, and probably not as tempting as targets, so maybe they would have thought—I mean, imagine how people would have reacted if they grabbed the orphaned daughter of the dead President, and made a big violent splash doing it. It would have shocked the hell out of everyone, and—I don’t know—been cruel in a whole different way.”

  Jesus, this couldn’t just be coming off the top of her head; Beth had to have thought about this before. At length. Which was disturbing.

  “And, considering the circumstances, Mr. Kruger would almost have had to negotiate,” Beth said, “while your mother could say, ‘nope, my kid, my call, not a chance,’ and there was no one around with the moral authority to stop her.”

  Except for her father, who had failed in whatever efforts he had made. “Jesus,” Meg said. “Maybe you need a damn hobby or something.” Should spend more of her time reading about Miranda and Griswold, and such.

  “You don’t think that the extra-vicious spin on it would have appealed to the guy?” Beth asked. “Put the new President in a situation where he had to make decisions about an even more sympathetic hostage than you already were?”

  That was a line of reasoning she would have to think over, because right now, she wasn’t necessarily buying it. “And what,” Meg said, “he still wouldn’t have had the sense to kill me, and it would have played out the same way?”

  Beth shrugged. “I don’t know. Too many variables. And maybe some money would have changed hands, behind the scenes, and you would have ended up being dumped by the side of the road somewhere.”

  Alive, or dead? More to the point, maimed, or mostly intact? Besides, the guy had told her that he’d been paid in full up front, and had insisted on working with total autonomy, so any negotiations wouldn’t have involved him—or probably even interested him, one way or the other. On top of which, Mr. Kruger would probably have taken just as hard a line against terrorist demands as her mother had, because even if he liked her personally, and felt very sorry for her father and brothers, she wasn’t his child, and he would have been able to keep some objectivity—and make the right choice for the country, the same way her mother had. It was what Presidents did, or they god-damn well didn’t have any business setting foot in the Oval Office.

  Arguably, they shouldn’t have children, either, but that was a subsidiary issue.

  “I guess I’m still trying to say that it all already happened, no matter how many ways you try to change it in your head, and you’ll make yourself crazy if you keep trying to force any of it to turn out differently,” Beth said.

  Like she wasn’t already less than sane? Her head was starting to hurt, and she reached into the front pocket of her sweatshirt to see if there might be a painkiller or two floating around loose in there. One ibuprofen, which would have to do. “If they’d come after me up in Chestnut Hill,” Meg said, taking it with what was left of her coffee, “there’s a pretty good chance you would have been with me, at the time.” Since they’d been together, more often than not, especially at school.

  Beth nodded. “A really good chance.”

  So she’d run through that version mentally, too. And maybe she wouldn’t have been able to duck in time, the way Josh had. Maybe—

  “It’s theoretical, Meg,” Beth said impatiently. “The only thing either of us knows for sure is that no matter who took you, or when, or where, you would have fought back like a rabid demon the whole time.”

  Except during the parts when she capitulated. And cowered, and cried, and all of that good stuff. Meg shook her head. “You can fight like crazy, and still only win because you got lucky.”

  “Doesn’t make the fight any less worthwhile,” Beth said. “I mean—” She hesitated. “There are supposed to be a lot more Shulmans and Morgenthals walking around the world, you know? But there aren’t, and I don’t have an answer for that one, either.”

  Both sides of Beth’s family had lost numerous relatives during the Holocaust, and Meg had a very vivid memory of seeing a row of blue numbers on one of Beth’s grandmother’s arms, back when she was about nine and had been invited to a seder. She’d managed to figure out that she wasn’t supposed to say anything about it, but asked Trudy what they meant as soon as she got home. It was one of the very few times she could ever remember Trudy having difficulty explaining something to her, and later that night, when her father came in to say good-night to her, he hadn’t done much better.

  Some people survived tragedies, and some people didn’t, for no logical reason—and how in the hell did anyone ever come to terms with that, or make sense of it?

  “More honesty?” Beth said.

  Christ, maybe it was good that they went to school a couple of hundred miles apart. But, Meg nodded.

  “What if the rock hadn’t worked?” Beth asked. “I mean, if you smashed the crap out of your hand, and it stayed jammed inside that god-damn cuff, anyway. And you never got out of there. Or you did get out, but the fucking forest was too much, and none of us ever knew what—” She stopped, but then just squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds, and opened them again. “The outcome isn’t what made it important, the fight was what mattered.”

  One ibuprofen wasn’t going to be enough to handle this discussion. Twenty might not do the trick. She was starting to feel close to the edge of her temper again, or maybe just on the verge of tears, and she took the damn fake glasses off, because they were making her headache worse.

  “And now, maybe I should say I’m really sorry I’ve been giving you such a hard time today, and shut up already,” Beth said.

  It was an idea.

  They both sat back as the waitress came over to refill their coffee and water. Meg forgot that she still had her glasses off and that her splinted hand was resting on the table, and saw the waitress glance at it, glance at her cane—and then look at her face more closely.

  Well, she’d made it a little while without being recognized, at least.

  She ducked her head, slipping the glasses back on and lowering the brim of her cap, which probably only confirmed the woman’s suspicions.

  “Anything else?” the waitress asked, after a pause.

  “Just the check, please,” Beth said.

  The waitress nodded, made a point of not looking at Meg, and headed up to the front counter to total up their bill.

  “Got to be anonymous for about an hour and a half,” Beth said.

  Meg nodded. Much longer than usual. She glanced at the television, where the Red Sox were now down by five runs in the eighth. And the waitress must have whispered something to her co-worker, who was showing her a tabloid from the stack of newspapers and magazines, which appeared to be the Secret Anorexia Nightmare issue.

  “At least they saw you eat,” Beth said.

  And hadn’t witnessed her racing off to the restroom in a potential bulimic frenzy, either. Since her cover was already blown, she took off the glasses for good, picked up her cane, and went over to Kyle an
d Jose’s table to let them know that she and Beth were almost ready to leave, and that Garth and Ed should come in and order some takeout, if they were hungry.

  After finding out that she had an overnight guest, Dirk—outdoors guy, that he was—not only rounded up a sleeping bag for Beth to use, but located an air mattress, too. Various people from her entry stopped by to say hello—and Tammy actually said, “Wait, you’re the one who writes the terrible Internet stuff about her?” —but Beth seemed to be even more tired than she was, and so, atypically, by midnight, they were both lying down with the door closed, and the light out.

  “I’m glad you came up here,” Meg said. “But I’m sorry you felt like you had to. Sometimes it seems like all you ever do is try to pick me up when I fall down.” Even literally, these days.

  Beth lifted herself up onto one elbow. “Is that what you think?”

  Considering that it was smack in the middle of the completely self-evident category, yeah.

  “Walter Reed,” Beth said.

  Meg shook her head. “That doesn’t count. I didn’t do anything.”

  “But, you would have,” Beth said. “I was freaking out, and it took you maybe thirty seconds to come up with a plan to solve it, and I thought, okay, even if I am pregnant, Meg’s going to help me, and—well, I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

  Meg turned on her side so that she could look right at her. “I don’t ever want anything bad to happen to you, but if it did, I would always help you. No matter what.”

  “I know that,” Beth said. “Hell, I knew that in kindergarten.”

  They had been the only two in the class who were already reading chapter books, so they got thrown together pretty much from the very first day. Fortunately for both of them, they had hit it off.

  “Remember the way teachers used to treat me?” Beth asked.

  Very much so. “Yeah,” Meg said. “They were unbelievably mean.” The thought of which, even years after the fact, still infuriated her. For some reason—probably because she had always been astute and observant—and vocal about it, most of their teachers had been inclined to dislike Beth, and slap her with detentions, and extra homework, at every possible opportunity.

  Beth laughed. “And when they’d stop during class and yell, ‘Miss Shulman!,’ you’d almost always raise your hand and say, ‘No, ma’am, it was me.’”

  Meg shrugged. “Sometimes it was.”

  Beth laughed again. “Yeah, but mostly, it wasn’t, and you’d still try to take the hit for me.”

  It felt weird to be reminded of that period in their lives. “Well, you were, you know, having a rough time,” Meg said. Beth’s parents’ divorce had been so drawn out, and openly vicious, that Beth, as the only child, had been dragged into the middle of it for what seemed like years.

  “Remember how I’d call you up constantly, and give you a bunch of grief?” Beth asked.

  Meg nodded. When Beth got angry, it was generally because she actually felt like crying—and she’d been angry a lot, for a while there.

  “I had dinner at your house and spent the night, what,” Beth said, “about seven hundred times?”

  Give or take a hundred.

  “And we’d hang out,” Beth said, “and bug Trudy, or your father would drive us to the movies, and—you were pretty much the only person I could talk to about things.”

  Yeah.

  “You still are,” Beth said. “I mean, okay, we’re both making friends, and all, but you’re who I call.”

  It went without saying that Beth was who she called.

  She wasn’t sure which one of them fell asleep first, but she woke up again a couple of hours later, tired and confused from a nightmare she couldn’t remember. Beth was still on the floor, breathing evenly, so it must have been a silent one, and gradually, she dozed off again.

  The pattern repeated itself, at about four in the morning, but this time, Beth must have been awake, because when she stopped crying, Beth said, very quietly, “You okay?” She said yeah, but the room was too still for a while, and she knew that they were both wide awake, and likely to remain so.

  “After he kicked my knee out, I cried for several hours,” Meg said. Most of it unwitnessed, but not all of it.

  “Well, your knee was torn to pieces,” Beth said.

  Yeah.

  “He was a monster,” Beth said.

  Yes, indeed.

  Trying to escape had seemed like a good idea. The odds of success were low—and that was even before she knew about the armed guards posted everywhere, but she hadn’t wanted the guy to think less of her, so she took a chance. Hoped he would respect her for it. But he hadn’t—and it had cost her a working leg. Almost cost her her life.

  “He was, he was so angry,” she said. “He—” Beth probably couldn’t see, because it was dark, but she caught herself gesturing towards her face, holding her hand as though it were a gun.

  And the guy had meant it that time. Not just trying to scare her, but a finger-twitch away from killing her. Planning to destroy her brain. He had been too crazed with fury to speak, but she was almost sure she could remember one of the other men behind him saying, over and over, “Do it, man. Fucking kill the bitch! Do it.” And the guy just stared at her, gripping the gun with violently-shaking hands, trying to make up his mind—while she did nothing at all, other than stare back at him.

  The first kick had been pure anger, and she hadn’t seen it coming. But, after that, it had been different. “He walked around me, the second time,” she said. And the third time. And even the time he slammed her leg into the door-frame. “You know, back and forth, really slowly, looking at me, trying to figure out the best angle for the next kick.” The one which would do the most harm. “Making me wait for it.” Giving himself the extra thrill of putting her through the terror of anticipation, his eyes crinkling with the exact same deep amusement she saw whenever she said something funny to him, the tilted grin on his face. She hadn’t been able to keep herself from crying, but she only screamed the first time—because the kick had been so unexpected.

  And so excruciating. And so brutal.

  “When they came in, though, that last day, and I was sure they were about to kill me, I didn’t cry,” she said. Had been god-damned determined not to give him the satisfaction. “I swear I didn’t. Not even when he told the really big guy to hold me down.”

  The only response Beth made was to let out a very shaky breath.

  “I tried to hit back,” she said. Panic-stricken, flailing punches, with her unhandcuffed arm, none of which seemed to have any effect on the men. “I lost the fight, though.”

  “Yeah,” Beth said. “But you’re going to win the war.”

  Maybe.

  “You are,” Beth said.

  She was god-damned well going to try, at least.

  “Most of that, you never told me before,” Beth said.

  Really? It was often hard to remember what she thought, and what she actually said aloud.

  “You know what I think?” Beth asked.

  Well, if nothing else, her response was going to be entirely honest.

  “I think, fuck him, and the horse he rode in on,” Beth said.

  Yup. Meg didn’t expect to laugh, but did. “And fuck his family, and their horses, and everyone who ever met them—or met their horses.”

  Beth laughed, too. “And how,” she said.

  49

  BETH HAD A paper due, and her exam to make-up, so Meg talked her into taking the first bus out in the morning, instead of waiting until the afternoon one. The bus stop was in front of the Inn, so they went there for an early breakfast, Meg not at all sorry to have her agents drive them the short distance. When the bus pulled up, they went outside with a group of five or six other people going back to the city, and Beth dug her ticket out of her bag.

  “How’s your sense of humor?” she asked.

  Well, that was really for others to say, wasn’t it. Meg shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  Bet
h nodded, and pulled a folded t-shirt out of the bag, too. “I got you this a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure if I should give it to you.”

  Meg shook it out with her good hand, and saw that there was a picture of the White House on the front, along with the boldly printed slogan, “If Lost or Stolen, Please Return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  Which was funny as hell.

  When she laughed, Beth relaxed. “Good. I was afraid it might be pushing it.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” Meg said, and put it on over her Williams shirt. “Thanks.”

  “The tabloids are going to love it,” Beth said.

  Meg nodded. “Fuck them, and their horses.”

  They both grinned, and then looked at each other.

  “Thanks,” Meg said.

  Beth shrugged an embarrassed shrug. “See ya,” she said, and got on the bus.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME the bus left, her psychology class was almost over, but she made it to her Shakespeare class—and after that, doggedly ate some lunch over at Driscoll, a dining hall where freshmen didn’t go very often. Naturally, she wasn’t hungry, but—well—she was just going to have to try to figure out a way to work around that. If she could.

  Then, when she went down to physical therapy, she was cooperative, and even a little bit communicative. A different acupuncturist came this time—and never left the room, so apparently, they were all worried about a repeat of what had happened on Monday.

  But, as soon as she got a chance to be alone with Vicky, right after their knee session, she cleared her throat.

  “Um, I was thinking,” she said.

  Vicky looked up from the post-exercise ice packs she was arranging around her knee.

  “Maybe you should start weighing me sometimes,” Meg said. “See how I’m doing.”

  Vicky was obviously caught off-guard by that, but then, she smiled. “That sounds like a very good idea,” she said.

  When she returned to the dorm, she studied for a while, but then went down to Susan’s room, where—as ever, the door was open, and the Doctor was In.