White House Autumn (17 page)

“I’d be mad, too,” Beth said.

“No, you don’t understand. He was acting like we don’t even know each other. Like I was the President’s daughter and he was some, I don’t know,
peon
or something.” She glanced over at Beth, who was frowning. “I’m not explaining it right.”

Beth shrugged. “So, explain it.”

Which was going to be a challenge, since she didn’t completely understand it herself. “I don’t know.” She rubbed her eyes, since her head was starting to ache even more than her stomach already did. “It was like he didn’t know what to do at all. Like, I yelled at him, and he just got all nervous and scared. And then at school, he was doing the same thing. Like he thought I was going to
hit
him or something.”

“Maybe he thought you were,” Beth said.

Oh, please. Meg just looked at her. “What was he, threatened?”

Beth didn’t say anything, looking right back, unblinking.

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t do that. I mean, part of it—
most
of it, even—was that I was mad in general, not at him. I mean—” She shook her head. “We’ve been seeing each other for a hell of a long time—I should be able to yell at him, you know?”

“What,” Beth said, “because you’re close, you should be able to abuse him?”

“No, I—” Meg stopped to think that one over. “Is that what I was doing?”

Beth nodded. “Sounds that way, yeah.”

Oh. Meg looked at her uneasily. “I wasn’t trying to. I mean—you know what I mean. I can yell
at you
, and you don’t fall to pieces.”

“It’s different,” Beth said.

Yes, and no. “No, it isn’t. I mean,
Christ
, for all I know, we’re going to—” She flushed slightly. “Well, you know.”

“No.” Beth brought her eyebrows together in pretended confusion. “I don’t.”

Right. “Don’t be a jerk,” Meg said.

“But,” Beth’s eyebrows moved even closer, “I really don’t—”

“’
Sleep
together, for Christ’s sakes!” Meg said.

“Oh. That.” Beth grinned. “What, you think that’s a big deal?”

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.