Long May She Reign (69 page)

The three of them nodded, still frowning.

Right. “Well, just think of me as the Iowa caucus,” Meg said. “So, I'm either an aberration—or a
trend
.”

She thought that might make them mad, but her mother smiled a tiny smile, and her father actually laughed. Trudy didn't seem to have committed to a position yet, and her brothers looked confused.

“You can be all of the southern states on Super Tuesday, Dad,” she said.

Her father laughed again. “Thanks, Meg. That sounds about right.”

The tension had eased enough for her mother to pick up her coffee and take a small, unsteady sip. “If you'd prefer,” she said, dryly, “you can play the role of a vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Meg grinned, visualizing a Broadway marque which read: “Russell James Powers: Appearing Now as
The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
! Two Terms Only!”

“Just promise that I get to be Texas, Katie,” her father said. “That's all I really ask.”

Meg still had the uneasy feeling that this conversation might swing wildly in either direction, any second now, and Trudy must have, too, because she got up and started bustling around, transferring glasses and dishes over to the sideboard.

On the other hand, he'd said “Katie.” She couldn't even remember the last time he'd called her mother Katie. She looked at Steven to see if he'd picked up on that—and since he beamed at her, he must have.

“I think you're all so overtired that you're starting to get silly,” Trudy said briskly. “Boys, why don't you go brush your teeth, so you can get to school.”

Steven looked alarmed now. “But, we're totally late. I'm gonna need a note. If we don't have notes, they might say I can't play in the game today. And I'm
pitching
.”

“Relax,” their father said calmly. “We'll write you notes.”

Saying
what
, exactly? That Steven and Neal were late, because the family had been carried away by a grueling, disturbing, psychological nightmare of an impromptu encounter session over breakfast and lost track of time? Meg shook her head, wondering what euphemisms they were going to use. Probably something along the lines of “Please excuse Steven's tardiness this morning, he was unavoidably delayed.”

Or maybe the phrase “pressing national interests” could be employed.

“Can Mom write them?” Neal asked, sounding like his regular, happy self. “It's way fun when she writes them.”

They all looked at her mother, who seemed to have retreated back into herself, looking a bit dazed—and very fragile.

“Kate,” Meg's father said. “Notes. The boys need notes for school.”

Her mother blinked. “What? Oh. Of course. Would you mind taking care of—” She stopped, studied Neal for a second as though he were unfamiliar, and then nodded. “Right. I'm sorry. Let me—go get some stationery.”

Meg watched her walk, with cautious and deliberate steps—a little stilted, a little slow—out of the room—and felt guilty as hell. Why, after last night, had she thought it might be a good idea to spend breakfast inflicting even
more
stress on everyone? Christ, if anything major and unexpected happened in the country—or the world—today, they were all going to be in trouble.

Her father frowned, and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said, and went after her.

The room got very quiet again, as they watched him go.

“So, who am I in your dumb game?” Steven asked, breaking the silence.

Right. The game. “You're the unexpectedly close call in New Hampshire,” Meg said.

Steven made a sound that was something like a laugh, shook his head, and left the room.

“Who am I, Meggie?” Neal asked, smiling with great anticipation.

That was an easy one. “You're the dependable Democratic strongholds,” Meg said.

Neal thought about that. “So, I'm like, New York? And maybe, Michigan and Illinois?”

Christ almighty, she was related to a little boy who understood the Electoral College. Maybe, if she was lucky, he would sit down sometime and explain cricket to her, too. The allure of effeminate male pop stars with no apparent musical talent. How, exactly, it made sense that people who were anti-choice seemed, almost invariably, to be
pro
–death penalty. And why, for God's sakes, Grady hadn't taken Pedro out of the game. “Yeah,” Meg said. “Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, California, Wisconsin, Maryland, New Jersey—and, if we play our cards right, Ohio and Pennsylvania, too.”

Neal looked delighted. “I am some totally
cool
states. Big ones!”

Oh, yeah. Rhode Island, leading the pack.

“Young man, there is a toothbrush waiting somewhere with your name on it,” Trudy said, sounding more stern than she looked.

Neal laughed, and went out to the West Sitting Hall.

Everyone was gone now, except for Trudy, and once again, silence hung over the room.

“All right, dear,” Trudy said, as Felix and Pete—looking as though they were trying very hard to disappear into the woodwork—came in to start clearing away the breakfast dishes. “Who am I?”

Another easy one. “A completely non-partisan version of the Supreme Court incapable of ill-advised judicial activism,” Meg said.

Trudy smiled. “Go get some sleep, Meg. You're a little punchy.”

Only a
little
?

She limped down to her room, and pretty much fell onto her bed—which Vanessa found deeply offensive and inconsiderate. She was too tired to take the time to guide her leg underneath the covers, so she just stretched out on top of the spread. But she couldn't quite relax enough to close her eyes, so after a while, she picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the new communications director.

“Can you try to get them all to kind of take it easy on my mother today?” Meg asked, once the call had been put through. “She's really tired, and—well, I want to be sure she's okay.”

“What in the hell went
on
up there last night?” Preston asked. “You're the third one to call so far.”

She was very slow on the uptake, then, not to have thought of it sooner. “Who called? Trudy and Steven?”

“Your
father
and Trudy,” Preston said.

Oh, well, that made more sense. And it was a relief to know that, despite everything, her father was still concerned about her mother's well-being. “Okay, that's good,” Meg said. “I mean—” No need to drag Preston in any deeper than he already was. “Well, she didn't get much sleep—” or even,
any
— “so—”

Preston's sigh was absolutely long-suffering. “Yes, that piece of information is starting to sink in, Meg.”

She couldn't help grinning. “Third time was the charm, then?”

“I'm hanging up now,” he said, and did just that.

*   *   *

SHE THOUGHT SHE
might sleep for several days straight, but when she woke up, it was barely past noon. She was going to close her eyes again, but she was so thirsty that she decided to get up, instead.

She was on her way to the kitchen when she saw Trudy on the couch in the West Sitting Hall, lighting a cigarette. Naturally, the Residence—hell, the entire
complex
—was supposed to be a smoke-free zone, but given her status within the family, no one was likely to confront her about it.

“You don't see me smoking,” Trudy said.

“Nope, I sure don't,” Meg said, and sat down in one of the easy chairs, propping up her leg.

Jorge came out to ask if she wanted anything, and she declined the offer of lunch, but was more than willing to accept a glass of lemonade, while he also brought a fresh pot of tea for Trudy.

“I really don't want you to skip any more meals,” Trudy said.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Meg nodded a perfunctory nod, and looked out the window, in the direction of the West Wing. Her mother sometimes went stir-crazy in the Oval Office, and held informal meetings out on the patio, or in chairs set up at the end of the Rose Garden, but today was an unlikely candidate for anything that relaxed.

“That woman never left her room with a hair out of place in her life,” she said.

Trudy grinned. “No, I don't believe she has.”

With luck, she'd regained her emotional wherewithal enough to repair the presumptively self-inflicted coiffure damage before going downstairs to the West Wing. If not, the press corps would have an unexpected Day of Joy. Meg drank some of her lemonade, hoping that she wouldn't finish it too quickly, since she would then immediately crave more. “I'm sorry breakfast ended up being—complicated.”

“You're all doing better than you have any right to be,” Trudy said.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Meg nodded. “Not at all uptight or repressed, right?”

Trudy smiled, and smoked. Although she had only one son, in his mid-thirties, Trudy's extended Irish family—her husband had died about sixteen years earlier—was large, and cheerful, and rambunctious, and prone to a great deal of hugging and shouting and laughing. And, while they might be geographically close, Brighton—the Boston neighborhood where she had always lived—was barely on the same planet as staid Chestnut Hill.

“Do you ever wish you'd gotten involved with a different family?” Meg asked.

“It's inconceivable at this point,” Trudy said.

Hmmm. Not exactly a resounding “No! Of course not! How could you even
think
such a ridiculous thing?”

“Sean left me in very good shape financially,” Trudy said, and looked unhappy for a few seconds, the way she always did, whenever she mentioned her late husband. “I really didn't need to work at all. Frankly, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to.”

“Why did you?” Meg asked.

Trudy shrugged, her expression somewhat closed off—because, of course, even though she was often gregarious, she was
also
a born-and-bred New Englander. “After a while, I decided that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life rattling around an empty house.”

Meg nodded, and let a respectful silence pass. “I can see that,” she said, then, “but why would you want to get tied up with
my
parents?”

Trudy tapped some ashes from the end of her cigarette into a pristine glass ash tray dating back to, as far as Meg knew, the Johnson Administration. “We all knew it was a huge mistake within about five minutes of sitting down for coffee together.” Trudy paused. “Which your mother had made, and wasn't tasty.”

Not gifted at the stove, her mother—with the possible exception of a surprisingly good lemon-blueberry cake, which she baked every now and then for no readily apparent reason. Other than that, her culinary skills were exceptionally pedestrian.

“We were in the den,” Trudy said, “and she was jittery and guilty about needing full-time help, even though she was commuting back and forth to Washington, and oh, about six months pregnant, and you were only three.”

Pregnant with Steven.

“She was still in the House, then,” Trudy said.

Meg nodded. Many of her very first memories involved things like being on the floor of the House and banging the Speaker's gavel after the session was over, and riding on the underground Congressional subway, and such.

“They were starting to look at her for the Senate seat that was going to be opening up,” Trudy said, “but she was thinking that being Governor might be more compatible with raising children.”

Yeah. Good plan. Meg laughed. After all, what could be a better career choice for a person who was hoping to be an aggressively hands-on parent than serving as the Governor of a state?

Trudy grinned, too. “And I thought, oh, dear.”

Why she hadn't, instantly, run for the hills—or the beaches of Florida—was a complete mystery. Meg shook her head. “In some ways, she really doesn't have a clue, does she?”

“She never learned how, Meg,” Trudy said.

No. Her mother had been only five when
her
mother died suddenly, and tragically, in a riding accident, and her well-meaning, workaholic father, a strict British nanny, and a couple of elderly aunts, had done their best, but as far as Meg could tell, they had produced a child who was missing a few crucial emotional pieces. “She just automatically assumes that we don't love her unconditionally,” Meg said.

Trudy nodded.

Which pretty much
ensured
it, of course. And made them all behave accordingly.

“Your father was very quiet, over in the green chair,” Trudy said, after a long minute.

He loved that chair. Sat there constantly, drinking long-necked Molsons or Rolling Rocks, doing paperwork from the firm, and listening to the Red Sox or laughing at feverishly impassioned sports call-in shows.

“Your mother was also defensive,” Trudy went on, “because it should have been your nap time, but you were sitting on the rug, singing some little song and playing with a plastic container. Tupperware, I think.”

She had been told, many times, that she had been the kind of child who always enjoyed the packing materials more than the toy itself. Her father insisted that he had once heard her mother on the phone, right before Christmas, talking to some mail order company, saying something to the effect of, “Yes, yes, I'm sure it's very nice, but please, could you tell me more about the
box
it comes in?”

“She was embarrassed that your hair was a mess, too,” Trudy said, “but, as we now know, that's typical for you.”

Probably even at this very second. Meg smoothed it down. “Tousled. I think ‘tousled' is the word you wanted.” Artfully so.

Trudy smiled, and stubbed out her cigarette.

“You, um, you really shouldn't smoke,” Meg said. “It's bad for you.”

“I know,” Trudy said, and lit up another.