If they were swinging for the fences today, fine. No point in hiding her own big secret anymore. “I gave serious thought to trading sex for freedom,” Meg said.
Her mother nodded. “I thought you might have.”
Which was the last reaction she had expected, and Meg stared at her, horrified by the idea that her mother had known that she was a coward for all these months, and never said so.
“Did he talk you into it?” her mother asked.
Jesus Christ, that was what she had assumed for the past year? Meg scowled at her. “What in the hell kind of question is that?”
Her mother moved her hand up to cup her cheek. “I’m sorry. But—all rumors to the contrary—I know you pretty well, and there has to be some reason why you’re so very angry at yourself.”
It might be better if her mother were a little less perceptive.
“And,” her mother said, when she didn’t answer, “it’s really your own private business, isn’t it.”
That was for god-damned sure.
But, if she didn’t respond, her mother would end up with some very incorrect assumptions. “He talked me out of it,” Meg said through her teeth.
Her mother’s hand tensed for a second. “Ah,” she said, then. “A few things suddenly make a great deal more sense.”
The reality of her not being brave enough, for example.
Her mother put her arm around her. “Sometimes, there aren’t any good decisions available, and you still have to make one, anyway.”
When it came to that, she was certainly sitting next to an expert.
Her mother sighed. “Meg, do you honestly think I didn’t come very close to negotiating? I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to do it, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t weigh my options, every single minute of every single hour, for thirteen days.”
Was that really an apt comparison? The political, as opposed to the personal.
Her mother brought her other arm over, and held her the exact same way she had the time they’d stayed up all night. “And there’s nothing wrong with having mixed feelings about him, either,” she said gently. “I’m grateful if there were moments when he showed humanity.”
The moments had been few and far between, but they had been there. “I feel like a coward,” Meg said.
“And I feel like an absolute failure,” her mother said. “But, that doesn’t make either of us right.”
Meg leaned against her, wishing that the hospital was much farther away, and that they weren’t going to have to get out and face the world soon.
“I can’t remember the last thing I said to you,” her mother whispered.
How unsettling. “Well,” Meg edged away from her slightly. “We were talking about whether I should feel like a—”
Her mother shook her head impatiently.
Oh.
Her mother looked at her with great intensity. “I go over it, and over it, and I can’t remember that morning at all.”
Whereas she remembered the entire thing, almost verbatim.
“I remember that you didn’t really eat anything,” her mother said unhappily. “And I kept thinking about how hungry you must be.”
An area where the man had entirely lacked humanity.
“I can’t bear it that we sent you off that way,” her mother said.
Which was kind of silly. “I’ve almost never had a good breakfast,” Meg said. “I mean, you guys let me go to school like that for years.”
Her mother nodded, guiltily, then looked at her with distinct urgency. “Was I unkind to you that day? I think I remember being cross.”
Again, a run-of-the-mill family breakfast. “Well, yeah,” Meg said. “Sort of. You guys didn’t approve of what I was wearing, and Neal and I had a little scuffle, and you didn’t like it that I ate cereal right out of the box, and you also wanted me to maybe go somewhere else and do homework and stop bugging you.”
All of which, from the look on her mother’s face, was even worse than she’d imagined.
“That’s every morning, Mom,” Meg said. Or, anyway, before, it was. “You also laughed at some of the stuff I was saying, and you and Dad both wanted to know if I was staying after school, or if I was coming home to play tennis, and I said yes, and yes, but I didn’t hug either of you good-bye, because I was too cool for that.”
Her mother’s shoulders slumped. “I just wish I’d sent you off with a reminder of how deeply I love you. That maybe it would have been something you could hold on to during—that you would have had the strength of that behind you.”
“I did have it, Mom,” Meg said. Which was actually the truth. “I also had it yesterday.”
And today, too, if either of them happened to be keeping score.
“God, I hope so,” her mother said.
They were very close to the hospital now, and people on the sidewalks, and strip mall parking lots, were all stopping to stare at the motorcade as it passed them.
“I don’t want to spend the whole damn summer going to doctors’ appointments and physical therapy,” Meg said.
Her mother nodded. “I know. Maybe we could set something up for you over at Brookings—” which was a mostly non-partisan, but also very open-minded, think tank— “or, perhaps—”
“I want you to help me put together something humanitarian,” Meg said. “Not just, you know, a goodwill appearance, but me really trying to accomplish something.”
Her mother frowned. “You know how strongly your father and I feel about lowering your profile as much as possible.”
And what a fine, sturdy barn they were building to house their long-gone horses. “Technically,” Meg said, keeping her voice as non-confrontational as possible, “given the fact that I’m an adult, I could decide to decline my Secret Service protection, go out and find full corporate or NGO sponsorship, and head out on any god-damn trip I want.”
Her mother took that one without much more than a small twitch at the side of her jaw. “Well,” she said, sounding just as reasonable, “ideally, you’re considerably more intelligent than that.”
Ideally—but not necessarily.
“Do you have any specific humanitarian effort in mind?” her mother asked.
Well, there were certainly lots of social problems out there to be tackled. Poverty. Prejudice. Disease-stricken children. Illiteracy. Land-mine victims. AIDS orphans. Subjugated women. Religious intolerance. “Your world hunger initiatives,” Meg said.
“No war-torn lands,” her mother said instantly.
Hmmm. Given the nature of hunger, that could be limiting. Meg thought that over. “Define ‘war.’”
Her mother looked very tired.
“Okay. But it has to be a hell of a lot more than some lame afternoon photo-op at a soup kitchen in downtown Washington,” Meg said. And more than sitting in a tiny cubicle somewhere doing policy research.
That left a lot of middle ground, and her mother gave her a careful nod. “I’m willing to have our people explore the logistics, and maybe come up with some possible itineraries, but if your father isn’t going to accompany you the entire time, the whole idea goes off the table. It can’t come at the expense of your physical recovery, either.” She paused. “And you have to gain ten pounds.”
Wait a minute, how had that last one gotten in there?
“Meg, you can’t go out there and talk about world hunger, when you look like you’re suffering from it,” her mother said.
Oh. Okay, she had a point. And there was a workable compromise to be found somewhere in all of that, so Meg nodded, and her mother nodded back.
They were pulling up to the main entrance now, surrounded by the flashing lights of police cars, as well as her mother’s massive security contingent.
Even though this was an impromptu, unpublicized visit, a small clump of protestors was already waiting, waving signs, and standing behind a police-line in the parking lot. Christ, did they carry posters around in the trunks of their cars—or, more li
kely, inside the cargo holds of their stupid, gas-guzzling SUVs—on the off-chance that the President of the United States might happen by, on a given day, and they would have the opportunity to fling invective and verbal abuse in her direction?
She considered being afraid, but really, what was the point? So, she nudged her mother’s arm with her cast and gestured towards the seedy little crew. “Pissed off any wacko fringe groups today?”
“Oh, no doubt,” her mother said, sounding simultaneously wry and resigned.
Meg nodded. “Okay. When the car door opens, you go left, and I’ll go right. It might confuse them, if they have to choose, and maybe it’ll improve our odds.”
Her mother looked at her—directly at her, which was good—for a very long minute.
“It’s never going to be funny, Meg,” she said finally.
“No, it isn’t,” Meg said, and—what the hell—laughed, anyway.
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers
LONG MAY SHE REIGN. Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Emerson White. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36767-1
ISBN-10: 0-312-36767-8
First Edition: November 2007
www.feiwelandfriends.com
eISBN 9781466831919
First eBook edition: October 2012
Ellen Emerson White, Long May She Reign
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