Long May She Reign (11 page)

Two hours. She only had two hours. They were all scribbling away, and right now, she didn't know if she could spell her name right. Meghan did have an “h,” right? Maybe her parents hadn't actually wanted the Gaelic form, after all, maybe—she gripped her pen, trying to stop shaking.

It was a test. It was only a test. It wasn't life or death—she
knew
what life and death situations were like, and this was only—but, Christ. She couldn't remember anything.

She bent over the paper, rereading the question. How was she going to choose three, if she didn't know the answers to
any
of them? Oh, God.

Something grazed her arm, and she damn near flew out of her seat. Then, she saw her professor bending down next to her.

“Relax,” Dr. Raleigh said. “It's not that important.”

Not that important? It was a
final
. Meg swallowed, horrified to find herself on the verge of tears. Yet again.

“You've done excellent work all semester,” Dr. Raleigh said. “This won't affect that.”

Meg looked around, and saw that everyone else was crouched over their blue books, writing industriously. “I don't want special treatment,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“You've done A work,” Dr. Raleigh said. “Just relax.”

A couple of people glanced at her covertly as their professor returned to the front of the room, and Meg pretended not to notice.

A test. Only a test. Okay. Meg took a deep breath, read the questions one more time, and then picked up her pen.

They probably weren't the most sparkling and incisive essays ever written, but she managed to finish the exam, handing it in a couple of minutes before the two hours were up. After she turned her blue books in—she had gone through one and a half, Dr. Raleigh reached out to shake her hand. Her
left
hand, luckily, but Meg was still caught off-guard, and had to awkwardly shift her cane out of the way so she could return the handshake.

“I've enjoyed having you in class this semester,” Dr. Raleigh said.

Yeah, what with all four oddball comments she'd made. “Thank you.” Meg knew she should say something else, but her mind was as much of a tabula rasa as it had been all morning. “It was very interesting.”

“I hear you're going to be transferring next semester,” Dr. Raleigh said. “Good luck up there.”

Which was very nice of her.

Especially since, odds were, she was going to
need
it.

*   *   *

BY WHITE HOUSE
standards, they had a quiet Christmas. There were, of course, lots of parties—for the staff, the press corps, the Secret Service, the Foreign Service, members of Congress, and all of their respective families. There were also innumerable other receptions being held, including one for a group of homeless families who were enrolled in an ambitious job training program and also helping build new housing units for themselves—which had given her father a few chances to hammer
locally
, another for a highly-decorated Army unit which had just returned from a lengthy peacekeeping mission overseas, an afternoon tea for cancer survivors, and a party for handicapped children, featuring a jovial White House electrician dressed as Santa Claus and a lot of outrageously good-looking, mostly well-meaning, celebrities. Plus, her parents—her father, in particular—were making daily visits to veterans' hospitals, nursing homes, drug treatment centers, hospices, and the like.

Meg skipped all of the major public events, like the Congressional Ball, and the Kennedy Center Honors, but she steeled herself to make appearances at most of the parties in the Residence, especially the ones which included children, or anyone who was physically challenged. Seeing people who were small, and sick—and beaming away, or were completely crippled, but still full of joy and enthusiasm, really made her feel selfish for worrying so much about her own, relatively manageable problems. One little girl in a wheelchair
really
broke her heart by complimenting her cane prowess. And when a bright-eyed boy, about eleven years old, who'd recently undergone a liver transplant, asked her to show him where and how she had used the rock to break her hand, she found herself quite willing to do it, making the story—she'd had plenty of experience with little boys, after all—as harmlessly gross as possible, with just enough gore to keep him happy. His response was “
Cool!
”, and she'd laughed, and said, “Yeah, well, don't try it at home.”

The White House looked excessively festive, with wreaths and trees and garlands and ribbons and lights galore. The pastry chef had created the traditional towering homemade gingerbread house, and her father was a good sport about having to appear on all of the morning network news shows to talk about the history of White House Christmases past and present. He even read
The Night Before Christmas
aloud on a nationally televised holiday special, sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace in the Blue Room, wearing bright-red suspenders, in what her mother generally described as his “Daddy Walton” mode.

Every year, Christmas at the White House had a different theme, and this year's was “Our Global Community,” with exhibits explaining various traditions and customs, complete with handicrafts from countries all over the world, most of which had been made by children. It was all a little cloying, but also very well-intentioned.

The huge tree in the Blue Room had been donated by a family farm in Wisconsin, and smaller trees had been placed in strategic spots throughout the entire complex. The tree in the family quarters, from the same Wisconsin farm, was still alive, in a big plastic container, so that it could be replanted outdoors after the holidays were over. The First Family, being a Good Environmental Role Model. Vanessa and the other cats thought the dirt was great, and kept climbing into the planter, and scratching clods all over the floor in the Yellow Oval Room. Neal and Steven kept pretty busy sweeping the dirt up—no point in upsetting White House purists, or the staff, any more than necessary—and one night, very late, she even saw her mother bent down by the tree with a little broom and dustpan. She kind of wished she had a camera handy, so she could post the photo on the Internet, and caption it: What the President
really
does with her time.

They went up to Camp David early on Christmas Eve, which—because it was a secure, well-guarded military facility—meant that most of their agents, and as many members of the White House staff as possible, would have a chance to spend Christmas with their own families.

Of course, normally, they probably would have headed off to Stowe or someplace, and skied all week, and Meg insisted that they still should, but the rest of the family must not have wanted to remind her that she couldn't participate anymore. Although she
would
, admittedly, have felt envious, and maybe even bitter, the entire time, it didn't seem fair that everyone else had to suffer because of her misfortunes. And, in the wake of the holiday parties, she had to remind herself that they were pretty minor misfortunes, in the scheme of things.

Albeit, extremely major for her.

By New England standards, the weather was very warm—even up in the mountains, and on Christmas night, she sat on the patio outside Aspen, the First Family cabin. There were some lights around—other cabins and buildings, and that sort of thing, but it was also dark and woodsy, with trees everywhere. Very much, in a lot of ways, like the forest she'd dragged herself around for all those days—which was the main reason she had been avoiding Camp David ever since. But she must be doing better, because while the idea of being in the midst of so much nature made her feel edgy, she was able to sit outside by herself without falling apart.

Or, anyway, so far. It helped that it was getting foggy, and she couldn't see all that much.

The rest of her family was inside the cabin, and the sound of Christmas carols playing drifted through the open windows. Her mother was still probably making holiday phone calls to a long, carefully researched, staff-provided list of service members stationed around the world, and Meg wasn't sure what her father was doing, but her brothers were almost certainly busy trying out all of their new video and computer games. Right after dinner, they had screened one of the new Christmas movies—First Family fringe benefit—and they had more to watch later, if they wanted.

She hadn't been able to get very good gifts—just one quick Sunday afternoon shopping trip with Preston, but it was always hard to go into stores unnoticed, anyway. And even more difficult to keep gifts a surprise, what with photographers all over the place. She'd had to get Preston to leave her alone—except for several agents—in the Men's Department for a few minutes, so she could pick out the most outrageous, yet tasteful, tie possible for him.

The majority of the gifts she had been given—mostly, of course, from her parents—were different from any presents she'd ever gotten before. College stuff. Yet another new laptop computer, pens, pencils, highlighters, large plastic paper clips, legal pads, lots of software, a little voice-activated tape recorder, in case she wanted to record her lectures, an iPod with massive amounts of storage space, fancy headphones, a special tray with a handle to use in the dining hall, a folding rocker knife for the same purpose, a very thick terry-cloth bathrobe—because shrugging one on was often easier than trying to use towels one-handed, books, several pairs of sunglasses, and all kinds of other things. So many gifts, that it was more than a little obscene. Steven's present had been a sweatshirt with the slogan “The Queen Is Not Amused,” which she was already wearing, and Neal had selected a video game for her that revolved around soldiers and many complicated missions behind enemy lines. Not her kind of thing at all, but she had been careful to act wildly excited about it, to make him happy.

She looked at the trees, her leg propped up on a small pillowed bench. The woods
were
dark and intimidating, no question about it, so maybe she should go inside. There were guards everywhere, so there wasn't much chance that anyone could infiltrate the compound, but what if—she heard the cabin door open, and stopped gripping the arm of her chair so that she would be able to appear calm, and relaxed, and full of holiday cheer.

Her mother came out, bundled up in a heavy cardigan, accompanied by a Navy steward, who was carrying a tray with mugs of cocoa and just-baked cookies.

“Hot chocolate?” she asked.

“Sure,” Meg said. “Thanks.”

After the steward had left, her mother sat in the rustic wooden lawn chair next to hers.

“You warm enough?” she asked.

Meg briefly considered taking umbrage at this—shouting that she was an adult, and bloody well old enough to decide whether she needed a jacket or not—but it was, after all, Christmas. Besides, if her mother
hadn't
asked, Meg would have been disappointed in her. So, she just nodded.

“Not much chance of snow with these temperatures,” her mother said.

It probably wasn't the right time to bring up global warming. Meg stirred her cocoa with the candy cane adorning the mug, and then drank some. “Nice and quiet up here,” she said.

“Good to get away,” her mother agreed.

She kind of liked it when she and her mother spoke in terse, incomplete sentences. It seemed—slangy. Dashing.
Macho
. “Going back tomorrow?” she asked.

Her mother considered that. “Day after, probably.”

Meg laughed. How brusque, and pithy.

“What?” her mother asked.

“Nothing,” Meg said. She and her brothers were going to stay up here through New Year's, while her father would probably—it had yet to be determined—go back and forth at least once. “Thanks for all the stuff. I mean, you guys gave me way too much.”

“Well,” her mother said, and left it at that. She had always been a big gift-giver, and the reason was probably some complicated combination of guilt and generosity.

“Anyway, thank you,” Meg said. “They were all really nice.”

Her mother sipped some cocoa. “We'll have to make a list of whatever else you might need up there.”

Beth, who was supposed to fly down to Washington for a few days before her winter break was over, would, without question, be full of advice. Most of it solicited. “I'm sorry Mrs. Peterson couldn't come,” she said.

Her mother nodded, and looked worried.

Her mother's best friend—one of the only people around whom Meg ever saw her come close to relaxing—was in the midst of radiation and chemotherapy for breast cancer, and hadn't been feeling up to traveling lately. So, her mother had been flying to Boston every month or two—using various transparent, manufactured political excuses—to see her, instead.

Inside the cabin, there was a crash, then sounds of a scuffle, followed by a yelp. Human, not canine.

Meg looked at her mother. “
I
didn't hear anything.”

“Neither did I,” her mother said.

Being as it was Christmas and all.

There was another crash, and Meg heard her father shout, “Hey!”, and Neal saying, “
Steven
started it!”

Yes, it was nice to be outdoors. “When's Trudy going to get here?” Meg asked.

“By the weekend, as far as I know,” her mother said.

They didn't have any grandparents—hadn't, for many years—and Trudy had assumed the role by default. In general, since they didn't have much of an extended family, Trudy—and now, Preston—had always taken on extra importance. Her father's sister, and somewhat bohemian ne'er-do-well husband, were also supposed to visit for a couple of days later in the week, along with two of her much-older cousins, and some of her parents' friends would probably be around, too.