Meg was about to get mad, but she forced herself to take a slow, deep breath. “Am I the only one who knows that you talk a lot?”
Beth nodded. “Don’t spread it around.”
Especially since Beth had always preferred passing around rumors of that sort herself. Meg slouched down, staring at Steed and Mrs. Peel, without really watching the show. “It is a big deal,” she said quietly.
Beth nodded. “If you think about it, Meg, you’re lucky to be in a position to be considering it.”
A fair point. “Still the same old losers at our school, hunh?” Meg said. Jocks and jokes, predominantly. All of whom were absolutely determined to attend Ivy League schools.
“Pretty much. Anyway,” Beth swung her feet onto the coffee table, “you know me. I’ve got a thing for older men.”
“You don’t know any older men,” Meg said. At least, not any dating prospects.
“I know.” Beth looked sad. “I guess it’s my own private hell.”
And she was probably only half-kidding. Meg grinned. “You are such an asshole.”
“I know,” Beth said.
They were companionably silent.
“I couldn’t say that to anyone in this whole stupid city with them getting all hurt or mad or something—even Josh.” Meg sighed. “Especially Josh.”
Beth nodded.
“It’s like, I don’t even have friends anymore,” Meg said.
Beth shrugged. “It changed at home, too. By the convention, even Sarah was treating you funny.”
“Yeah,” Meg said. As the primary and election season had progressed, people she had known half of her life—like Sarah Weinberger—had been so intimidated, or freaked out, or something, that they barely spoke to her anymore. She glanced over. “I was afraid you were going to get weird, too.”
“I was already weird,” Beth said.
True enough, albeit in a different way. Meg shook her head. “You know what I mean.”
Beth looked at her as though she were a complete idiot. “My God, Meg, I remember you sitting in first grade, crying.”
“My ear actually ruptured that day,” Meg said defensively.
“Yeah, I know,” Beth said. “It’s just if I start to get flipped out, I think about things like that.”
Meg nodded, her hand automatically cupping her ear from the memory. They were supposed to be writing their sentences while their teacher, Mrs. Stokes, worked with a reading group. Meg had sat in the back of the classroom, crying and holding her ear, too shy to tell her teacher because it was supposed to be quiet time. But Beth had noticed, and had no qualms about interrupting the reading group. Mrs. Stokes had had Beth walk her down to the clinic, where she stayed on a green leather cot, crying, until Trudy came to pick her up.
“Makes me not feel weird about you,” Beth said.
She and Beth were—she hoped, inescapably—nothing if not caught up in each other’s histories. “My mother flew home that night,” Meg said. “Even though it was a Wednesday.”
Beth nodded. “She always flew home, when there was something wrong with you guys.”
Almost always. But, anyway, she had that time. “Yeah.” Meg lifted her legs up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around her knees. After an emergency trip to the pediatrician, Trudy had tucked her into bed with soup and toast triangles, but Meg couldn’t stop crying, even though her father had come home early from work.
Then, suddenly, her mother was there, smelling of winter wind and perfume, gathering her up in a big warm hug while Meg cried and told her about how much it had hurt. Told her more than once. Trudy brought up a big bowl of mashed potatoes, which was Meg’s favorite food in those days, and she and her mother—who still hadn’t even taken off her coat—shared it, her mother saying funny things to make her laugh, Meg forgetting that she had ever had an earache.
Feeling self-conscious, she glanced over at Beth. “Uh, sorry.”
Beth just shook her head.
“She was such a good Senator,” Meg said, then sighed. “I wish she’d stopped there.”
NEITHER OF THEM spoke for a while, looking at the Avengers, as one episode ended, and another one started.
“I don’t know what to do,” Meg said.
“About what?” Beth asked.
Good question. Meg grinned wryly. “Well, everything—but, I meant Josh.”
“I like Josh,” Beth said. “I don’t think you should blow it over something like this.”
Maybe. Then again, it was probably already irretrievably wrecked, anyway, and this entire conversation was moot.
“So, he didn’t react exactly the way you wanted,” Beth said, “so what? Let him have faults, why don’t you?”
It wasn’t that easy. Meg frowned at her. “Being afraid of me is a pretty god-damn big one.”
“It’s a pretty god-damn normal one. I mean—” Beth drummed on the arm of the couch with one hand for a minute. “Did it ever occur to you that you’d have a lot of these problems even if she weren’t President?”
“Sure,” Meg said. “She’d still be Senator.”
Beth shook her head. “I mean, if she weren’t in politics at all. If she was—I don’t know—a bus driver or something.”
Meg pictured her mother perched elegantly in the driver’s seat, taking people to places she thought they would enjoy more than where they had asked to go. “A tight ship, but a happy one,” she would say, smiling.
“It’d be great, if she were a bus driver,” Meg said. And she was sure that every night, her mother would sit at the kitchen table for hours, industriously polishing the badge on her Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority cap, studying the transit code and route books so that she would be able to speak intelligently about every facet of the MBTA, and its probable future development needs, and ways in which the agency could evolve and better serve the public.
“You’re missing the point,” Beth said, sounding impatient. “I mean—you’re doing it right now.”
Meg looked up. “Doing what?”
“Do you have any idea how hard you can be to deal with?” Beth asked.
Whoa. Meg leaned away from her. “What do you mean?”
Beth glanced at the television, and then clicked it off entirely. “Well, for one thing, you’re always so busy thinking, that people can’t tell if you’re thirty miles away, or listening to them, or what.”
“I listen to people,” Meg said uneasily.
“Only sometimes,” Beth said.
Hmmm. Meg folded her arms, starting to get very uncomfortable. “What else do I do?”
“You don’t talk to people,” Beth said without hesitating. “You get all upset about things, but you won’t tell anyone about it, and you just walk around looking mean.”
“My mother got shot,” Meg said. “Of course I’m upset.”
Beth shook her head. “You do it all the time, Meg. You always have.”
Meg looked at her for a minute, then scowled. “So, I don’t talk, and I don’t listen. Great.” She moved her jaw. “That’s just great.”
“You’re also touchy as hell,” Beth said, then grinned. “It doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”
“It’s not like I’m the only person in the world with faults,” Meg said, feeling extremely sulky.
“Right. You have faults, I have faults, Josh has faults—maybe even Preston has faults.” Beth paused. “Although I can’t think of any.” She glanced over. “And don’t pretend like you didn’t laugh, because I saw you.”
“I didn’t,” Meg said.
Beth just looked at her.
Maybe knowing each other so well wasn’t such a terrific thing. “Well, I didn’t,” Meg said.
Beth nodded. “Good for you. Talk about an iron will.”
Meg tightened her arms across her chest, somewhere between being amused—and giving her a smack. “You really make me mad, you know that?”
Beth nodded again. “‘That little Powers girl,’ my mother used to say. ‘Such a temper.’?
??
“She did not,” Meg said.
“Well—no,” Beth conceded, and now Meg did laugh. “But, I wouldn’t have argued.”
“You would have encouraged her, more likely.” Meg slumped down into her sweatshirt, pulling the material up to cover the bottom half of her face. “I don’t give you lectures.”
“It’s one of the things I like about you,” Beth said. “Everyone else does.”
Meg nodded. What with parents, and step-parents, and a long series of teachers who had never particularly seemed to enjoy having such a sharp, opinionated kid in their classes, Beth had probably gotten more than her share.
“Are you mad at me?” Beth asked.
For being honest? “I don’t know, a little.” Meg sat up, taking her face out of the sweatshirt. “Not really.”
“You should just be—more receptive.” Beth gestured around the room, indicating the entire White House in general. “Don’t use it as a crutch, you know?”
Yeah, right. Meg shrugged. “Easy for you to say.”
Beth nodded cheerfully.
“I’m always going to be the President’s daughter,” Meg said. “I mean, as long as I live. Me, and Amy Carter, and Chelsea Clinton, and—”
“You’re also the only person I know who’s ever had lunch at Buckingham Palace,” Beth said.
Meg flushed. “It was more like high tea.”
“For Christ’s sakes,” Beth said, and laughed. “Will you listen to yourself?”
“I don’t listen to anyone,” Meg said.
Beth nodded. “Oh, right, sorry. I forgot.”
They looked at each other for a minute—a tense minute—and finally, Meg grinned.
“Let’s go get some lunch,” she said.
Beth glanced at her watch. “It’ll be more like high tea.”
Once again, slugging her seemed like an excellent idea. But, Meg settled for giving her a fairly hard shove, instead. “You really are an asshole.”
“I know,” Beth said. “Good thing I’m beautiful.”
AFTER HIGH TEA, SOMEONE in Preston’s office arranged for a car to take Beth to the airport, and Meg went outside with her to say good-bye.
“Feel free to, you know, call me up sometime,” Beth said. “Let me know what’s happening.”
A not-so-gentle reminder to return some of her god-damn messages. “Well, I don’t know.” Meg looked around to make sure that at least five people were within earshot. “If you can’t manage to bring me more than a kilo, what good are you?”
Beth shrugged expansively. “Hey, I did my best. If you start getting greedy, you’re going to blow the whole thing.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better get it right next month,” Meg said.
Beth nodded. “I’ll talk to my people in South America.”
“Good,” Meg said. “Have your people call my people.”
They both laughed, and Beth adjusted the tilt of her hat.
”Still no photographers,” she said sadly.
“Sorry.” Meg shifted her weight. “Look, um, I’m really glad you came.”
Beth shrugged a “don’t mention it” shrug. “Just keep it in mind when you’re doing your Christmas list.”
Meg laughed. “What a jerk.”
“I know,” Beth said. “I can’t help myself.”
After the car was gone, Meg went back upstairs, running into Neal in the Center Hall.
“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”
He stopped, looking at her accusingly. “How come me and Steven had to go to school, and you didn’t?”
“Because I’m the favorite,” Meg said.
He scowled.
“That was a joke,” she said.
He just scowled.
“I’m going to go take a shower and change,” she said. “You and Steven get cleaned up, too, so we can be over at the hospital by five-thirty. And one of you ask Mr. Collins to get some flowers together, okay?”
He nodded sulkily.
“Okay.” She bent down. “Should I hug you, or am I too gross and ugly?”
He squirmed away. “Way too gross.”
“Fine. Your loss.” She walked to her room, pleased to hear him laugh.
“When they arrived at the hospital, their mother was just returning from a brief walk down the hall, surrounded by doctors and aides and agents. Their father had his arm around her waist, and she was leaning heavily on him, exhausted from what had probably only been fifty or sixty feet. But when she saw them, she straightened up, smiling.
“Is it five-thirty already?” she asked.
They nodded.
“How do you feel?” Meg asked.
“Oh, much better.” She had stopped leaning on Meg’s father. “In fact—”
“Madam President, why don’t we go into your room,” Dr. Brooks said, “so I can check you over, and then you all can have some privacy.”
Her mother nodded, and Meg knew she had to be feeling awful as she sank into the wheelchair a doctor rolled over.
“Don’t I look silly?” she asked Neal, who giggled. She looked at the rest of the family, smiling her politician smile—which always made Meg sad, because she would only use her mouth, and her eyes would look terrible. Lonely, angry, depressed—whatever. In this case, fighting pain. “When I come home,” her mother motioned towards the wheelchair, “I’ll see if I can get two of these, and then, we can have races.” Meg’s father was the only one who didn’t smile, and she lifted an eyebrow at him. “The image doesn’t appeal to you?”
“It’s a delightful image,” he said.
“Thank you.” She smiled at Meg and her brothers—which, somehow, wasn’t at all reassuring. “This will only take a minute,” she said, and let the doctors wheel her into the Presidential Suite.
Their father sat on a low couch. “Come here,” he said. “Let’s have some hugs.”
Neal jumped on his lap, and their father hugged him very tightly, Meg and Steven standing with their hands in their pockets. Their father gestured to the couch and they sat on either side of him.
“Beth get off okay?” he asked Meg, and she nodded. “Good.” He turned to Steven. “How about you? How was your math test?”
Steven shrugged. “You know.”
Neal pulled on their father’s tie, and when he nodded, took it off completely. “Can Mom come home now? ‘Cause she’s walking around and everything?”
“Well.” Their father hesitated. “It may be a few more days.”
“This weekend?” Neal asked.
“More like next week, I think. But, we’ll see.” He shifted Neal so that he could see all three of them. “Your mother’s pretty tired today, so let’s all be nice and quiet with her.”
“What,” Steven said, “you mean we have to go home?”
Their father shook his head. “No. I just meant to take it easy. Not to jump around or anything.”
“Why would we do a jerky thing like that?” Steven asked. “You think we’re that stupid?”
“No, I’m sorry,” their father said. “I know you’re not.”
Steven glared at him. “Then, why the hell do you keep telling us all the time?”
“I’m sorry.” He put his arm around Steven’s shoulders.
As far as she could tell, Steven always picked fights at the hospital because he was afraid he would burst into tears. When they were in her mother’s room, he would slouch in a chair, fists clenched, not saying anything, and more than once over the last week, he had had to run out because he was crying.
“Quit looking at me,” he said to Neal.
“I’m not,” Neal said, looking at him.
Steven’s right fist tightened. “Dad, make him quit looking at me!”
“Shhh,” their father said gently. “Everything’s okay.”
“Oh, yeah.” Steven stood up. “So okay she can’t even god-damn walk.” He hurried down the hall, disappearing into the men’s room.
Meg’s father sighed, starting to move Neal onto Meg’
s lap.
“Don’t!” Neal grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave!”
“I’ll go,” Meg said, to avert a possibly noisy crisis. She walked down the hall, frowning at the agents by the restroom door. “Don’t come in here,” she said, then knocked. “Steven? You in there?” Which was a pretty dumb question. “I’m coming in, okay?”
Slowly, she opened the door and saw Steven sitting on the floor, below the paper towel dispenser, arms around his knees.
“You’re not allowed in here,” he said.
“What are they going to do about it?” She sat next to him. Men’s rooms were colder and creepier than ladies’ rooms. At least, this one was. She didn’t think she had been in any others.
He was trying very hard not to cry, but it didn’t work, and he hid his face in his arms.
She rubbed his back. “Come on, it’s okay.”
“She can’t even walk,” he said, his voice choking. “She can’t even stand up.”
Yeah. It was pretty horrifying to see. “It takes a while to get better, that’s all,” she said.
“Oh, right,” he said bitterly. “So she can go outside and have someone else shoot her?”
There wasn’t much she could say in response to that, so Meg just rubbed his back.
“It’s not fair,” he said.
Nope. It wasn’t.
“She should quit,” he said.
It was impossible, but Christ, if only she could. “She’s President,” Meg said. “The President can’t just quit.”
He didn’t say anything.
Meg sighed. “She can’t, Steven.”
He nodded grimly. “‘Cause she doesn’t care about us. That’s why.”
It had to be more complicated than that—but sometimes, she wasn’t sure, either. “Steven, come on,” she said. “You know that’s not true.”
He stood up, laboriously washing his face with a paper towel. “You gonna stay here and watch me go to the bathroom?”
She shook her head, also getting up. He kept his back to her and as she left, she heard a small sound, which meant that he was crying again. She kept going, not wanting to disturb his privacy, leaning against the wall outside to wait.
After what felt like a very long time, he finally came out, his eyes red and his hair wet from having washed his face. She put her arm around him before he could say anything defensive, leading him down the hall to their mother’s room. She released him at the door, and they walked in, Meg with her arms folded across her chest, Steven’s hands stuffed in his pockets.