Long May She Reign (68 page)

They sat on the couch, the clock ticking away.

“Could you have borne it?” her mother asked, her voice so soft that Meg had to move closer to hear her.

Rape. Torture. Some unendurable combination of the two. Meg couldn't help shuddering. “I don't know. I guess it would depend on how long it went on, and how sadistic they got.”

Her mother slowly released her breath. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

Not much else to say, beyond that.

The sun was coming up, which meant that the President wasn't going to be able to hold off the world much longer.

“How's the pain right now?” her mother asked.

They were being honest tonight. This morning. Whatever. “I feel like slaughtering a busload of nuns and orphans,” Meg said. Maybe some puppies, too. Kittens. A nest full of newly-hatched robins.

Her mother nodded. “Just as well you took it out on us, then.”

Yes, much less collateral damage that way. But, still. “If I had it all to do over,” Meg said, “I think maybe I just would have come in here last night, and asked you to hold me like this until I fell asleep.”

“Well,” her mother kissed the top of her head, “we'll try that tonight, maybe.”

Yeah.

39

AFTER A WHILE,
her father came out again, and they all acted as though it was a normal morning—mostly because there was enough commotion out in the hall to indicate that her brothers were up and about, and probably already on their way into the dining room to eat breakfast. Her parents looked so wrung-out that she felt guilty, especially since they weren't going to have the luxury of going straight to bed after breakfast, if they felt like it.

Her mother gave her one last squeeze and then stood up, noticeably stiff, pausing to stretch her back slightly.

“Make sure they put some down-time in your schedule today,” her father said.

Her mother shrugged. “A shower, and I'll be fine.”

“
Kate
,” he said, and her mother nodded impatiently.

Were they always this abrupt—and grumpy—in the morning? Now that she thought about it, she had no idea, because they almost never used marital shorthand in front of her.

Her father was wearing a flannel pajama shirt and old grey sweatpants, and he frowned down at himself, then walked over to his dresser.

“You'll go this afternoon?” her mother asked. Steven's game, presumably.

Her father nodded, as he pulled on a sweater and stepped into a pair of ancient loafers.

“Good,” her mother said.

The first knock—the timing of which had been nervously debated by the staff, no doubt—on the door came, and Felix brought in coffee, English muffins, and a pile of morning newspapers. Then, Frank arrived with a stack of leather-bound folders, paperwork, and daily briefing reports, the phone started ringing off the hook—and the President, still dressed in yesterday's work clothes and unshowered, was back on the clock.

Her father reached out to ruffle Meg's hair. “I want you to get some sleep, but come have breakfast, first, okay?”

Meg nodded. Against all odds, she was pretty hungry, which seemed wrong, somehow. He gave her a hand up, and then held her crutch out for her. She had to stand very still to make sure that she had her balance, but then followed him to the hall.

He covered it up pretty well, but she pretty much
lurched
into the dining room, where Trudy was fussbudgeting around, while Steven and Neal sat at the table, eating pancakes and sausages.

“Well, don't you two look scruffy this morning,” Trudy said.

Odds were, the President wasn't going to be at her most perky, either.

“Me, too, Dad?” Meg asked, as her father poured himself some coffee from the silver pot on the sideboard.

He brought over an extra cup, and she drank half of it before even remembering that it might have been nicer to add milk and sugar, first.

Her brothers didn't ask why her father wasn't wearing a suit, but she could tell that Steven was suspicious. And Neal seemed to notice Steven's reaction, because he looked worried, but neither of them said anything.

Her conversation with her parents had been private—but, that didn't mean that her brothers shouldn't know about it. In fact, arguably, they
should
. Except for the more gruesome, and personally unflattering, parts, of course. But she wasn't sure if she wanted to be the one to bring it up, although she was positive that her father had no intention of doing so, since he was drinking coffee and bent over
The Washington Post
. So, she decided just to let Trudy fix her a plate of breakfast and try to stay awake long enough to eat some of it.

After about fifteen minutes, her mother came in, all decked out in a royal blue designer suit and high heels, looking extremely soigné—except for one small detail, and Meg laughed.

“What?” her mother asked, pausing halfway to her chair.

“You, um, have a Mary Tyler Moore hair-bump,” Meg said. As so aptly demonstrated in what might be her all-time favorite episode of the entire series—or any other television show, for that matter.

Her mother frowned. “Oh, I most certainly do not.”

Her brothers and Trudy—and even her father—grinned.

“Well, of all things,” her mother said, and bent to check her reflection in the side of the coffee pot.

Watching her try to fix her hair-bump—which kept popping stubbornly back up every single time she patted it down—made the atmosphere so wonderfully relaxed that it crossed Meg's mind that her mother had never once in her life left her bedroom without stopping for a long, critical examination of herself in the mirror, first.

“Does the President need a comb?” Meg's father asked.

“The President does, indeed,” her mother said, and glanced at Neal. “Be a good kid?”

Neal laughed, and hustled out of the room, returning with a comb, and two different kinds of hairbrushes, all of which her mother employed, with questionable results.

This was an entirely intentional hair-bump, no two ways about it. The President, attempting to change the tone of family interaction, by providing unexpected comic relief.

“You should, perhaps, find this somewhat less amusing,” her mother said to her, “given the fact that you have a significant hair-bump of your own.”

Stop the presses. “Have I ever gotten through an entire day when I
didn't
have a hair-bump, at least part of the time?” Meg asked.

Her mother thought about that. “Sadly, no, but I think I might have preferred it if you hadn't reminded me of that troubling fact.”

Felix appeared with more coffee, whole wheat toast, a bowl of fresh blueberries and cantaloupe, and a crystal parfait of yoghurt mixed with granola. Meg saw him register the President's hair-bump, with a second of indecisive consternation, but then continue serving her without missing a beat.

They were having a pleasant meal. Should she be smart, and leave it at that, or should she take advantage of the situation, and try to move things forward? She looked at her father, who shrugged in a resigned way, and then, at her mother, whose shrug was tentative, and maybe even had a touch of restrained panic in it.

Screw it, then. Back into the breach. She waited until Felix was gone, and then put down her fork. “Mom and Dad and I talked for a long time last night,” she said.

Only to be greeted by complete, not terribly receptive, silence.

Noticing Trudy make a movement towards the door, as though she was about to make a tactful exit, Meg shook her head.

“You're part of the family,” she said. And an ideal combination of peacemaker and strict disciplinarian—both of which they might need, to officiate. Referee. “Please stay.”

Trudy glanced at her parents, then nodded, and settled back into her chair.

“I know everything's—” She should be careful here; Trudy hated profanity— “messed up, and we're all mad, and scared, and—” Okay, she was also in danger of doing some serious rambling. Maybe she should wait and bring this up on a morning when she'd actually had some sleep. Could think more clearly. “
I'm
scared, okay? All the time. And I'm just god-damned—” So much for avoiding swearing; she looked at Trudy— “uh, sorry—if I want to let them wreck our family like this. I want us to—Christ, I don't know. Try to be ourselves again. You know?”

“So, like, you mean,
all
of us trying to fix stuff?” Steven asked stiffly. “Or just you and me and Neal?”

Their father sighed. “She means all of us, Steven.”

Steven's shoulders were even more stiff than his voice had been. “Yeah, well, at least Meg and Neal and me have been
trying
. You know, to act like we
like
each other.”

Her parents didn't respond to that, but they also didn't contradict him.

“But, we do like each other,” Neal said uneasily. “I mean, this is our, you know, our
family
. And everything.”

Funny that her brothers couldn't quite bring themselves to look at their mother—but they weren't having any trouble sending glares at their father. Her mother's expression was blank to the point of being frightening; her father mainly looked worn out.

“You've all had a very hard time,” Trudy said. “It's going to take a while for you to sort through things together, that's all.”

Steven scowled at her. “It's
been
a while, Trudy. And they just, like—it keeps getting, you know,
worse
, not better.”

Trudy smiled at him. “It's not a train, dear. You can't make it run on time.”

A wise, and peaceful—and somewhat tiresome—remark.

“If it happens to me,” Steven said, staring at their mother now, “or Neal, or Dad, or Meg again, you gonna negotiate or anything this time?”

Her mother's face was immobile—the shade of her skin seeming like some combination of green and grey—and then, she very gently shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “I'm sorry.”

Whereupon, the silence was so oppressive that it seemed
loud
. Deafening, really. Her father wouldn't look at anyone, but Meg saw his fists tighten.

“Yeah, well,
good
,” Steven said, unexpectedly. “Why should Meg be the only one who gets to be all heroic and stuff?”

Christ, could he be any more god-damned competitive? What a jerk. Meg shook her head.

“I'd break
both
hands,” he said to her, in a challenging way. “You know, if I had to.”

Oh, yeah, right. “The hell you would,” Meg said. “After you broke the first one, it wouldn't work well enough anymore to hold the rock.”

Steven frowned. “Then, I'd, you know,
stomp
on it.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In his dreams.

Sitting up at the end of the table, her mother's mouth was trembling, but she closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she wasn't trembling anymore, but she looked about as sad as Meg had ever seen her—which was saying quite a lot.

“Mom,” she started.

Her mother shook her head, pushing herself to her feet. “I'm sorry, I—I'd really better—” She turned her head enough so that it would be impossible to make eye contact with any of them. “I'm going to excuse myself now.”

“If it happens to me, will it be scary?” Neal asked.

For a second, Meg thought her mother might actually pass out, and then she very carefully sat down again. Not that Neal seemed all that upset, since he had gone right back to drinking orange juice and dumping more maple syrup on his pancakes.

“Neal,” their father said, “nothing's going to—”

Oh, enough already. Her parents trying so hard to shield them all the time had
caused
a lot of this. “Yeah,” Meg said, cutting him off. “It would be scary.”

Her parents, and Trudy, looked at her with absolute fury.

“I wasn't prepared,” she said to them, collectively. “It would have been so much easier if I had been even a little bit prepared.”

There was no question that they didn't like that much, but none of them said anything.

And her brothers were waiting for her to go on.

“You're both safe,” she said to Neal, even though she knew Steven was listening just as intently, if not more so, “because of all the new precautions and procedures we have now, but if, God completely forbid, it ever happened, yeah, it would be scary. It'd be fast, and loud, and they'd be swearing like crazy—maybe in English, maybe not—and banging you around while they grabbed you. But, they would have gone to a lot of trouble, and they'd want to keep you alive, so you'd just have to stay really calm, and pay attention to whatever your instincts were telling you, because they would probably be right.”

Neal nodded gravely.

“And do your best to be quiet, and polite, and try to do what they want,” Meg said. “If you cooperate, mostly, it might go better. I kept bugging the guy—” maybe not such a bright move, in retrospect— “which probably made things even worse than they had to be.”

“Yo, I so totally can't picture that,” Steven said, to no one in particular.

Neal—no doubt to her parents' horror—laughed. “I bet she was telling him he was all stupid, and how mad she was and everything.”

Well—yeah. More or less. Maybe her brothers knew her a little too well. “Why don't you guys shut up and eat your damn pancakes,” Meg said, grinning. “I mean, I got back here—I must have done something right.”

Her mother had a ten-thousand yard stare, her father was squeezing his temples, and Trudy looked as though she wished she could slump down and cover her head with her arms.

“Look,” Meg said, “about six years from now, when we're all back in Massachusetts—” She stopped, not sure why her parents and Trudy had frowned at her again. Wait, she'd said
six
. Dr. Freud had apparently come leaping out of his dark, furtive corner, yet again. “Okay, I'm sorry. That's a different conversation, isn't it?”