Long May She Reign

by Ellen Emerson White

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I just got scared, and—I really thought I might have hurt you somehow, by accident.”

  Made sense. She shook her head. “You didn’t. I’m just—I don’t know—still trying to find my way back. And, I have to be honest, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, or even if—well, I might not ever be able to get there.”

  Strangely enough, he didn’t disagree.

  Which left them, where?

  “I’ve never made love with anyone,” he said.

  Could have fooled her. But she looked around to make sure that her agents were all a safe distance away, which seemed to be the case.

  “What I do, is have sex,” he said. “A girl says yes, I say, ‘Yay!,’ and away we go.”

  Which wasn’t likely to happen here. It wasn’t any secret that she was going to need a hell of a lot more from him than that.

  “I don’t even know if I know how,” he said. “And if I try, I’m going to do stuff wrong, and you’re going to get your feelings hurt sometimes, and I’m going to get my feelings hurt, and—well, I don’t know.”

  “So, we both feel like running away,” she said.

  He nodded.

  This entire conversation was making her feel even more tired than usual.

  “Does your mother give your father that ‘I’m not sure if you’re even worth the effort’ look?” he asked.

  An expression she could picture all too easily on her own face. “No,” Meg said. “He gives it to her.” As a rule.

  Because her mother had gone out of her way to pick an equal, instead of someone who would let her completely run the show.

  “I hate that look,” Jack said.

  Yeah. Josh had hated it, too. So, she nodded. “Well, maybe you can study up on the making love business, and I’ll work on the trying to do a better job of letting you in part.”

  Jack grinned at her. “Works for me,” he said.

  50

  HE HELPED HER up from the picnic bench, and she was shaky enough so that she leaned against his arm for a minute, until she was sure she could stand on her own. Then, he kissed her good-night, they looked at each other, he kissed her again—and they left it at that.

  For the time being.

  Although she did call Beth—who was very pleased—the second she got upstairs.

  She had dinner with him the next night, and they went out for a very long session of coffee and pastries down on Spring Street the following day. Spent a fair amount of talking on the phone, and sending lots of cryptic, flirtatious emails and instant messages, too.

  Both Maureen and Hannah emailed her advance copies of The Washington Post profile, and while it seemed to be very well done, she felt uncomfortable reading about herself, and stopped after the first couple of paragraphs. Regardless, she arranged to have flowers sent, with a “Great job! Thanks— Meg” note attached.

  Jack’s ankle was still pretty bad, and he probably had no business being out on the field, but the team was playing at home on Saturday, and she and Juliana and Mark went to watch. He seemed to love having her as an audience, and did quite a lot of showing off, but also made some sparkling plays along this way.

  If it hadn’t been a required uniform, and he had been able to take his shirt off, it would have been a nearly perfect afternoon.

  They spent most of that night alone in her room, closing the door for the first time since the nightmare. She was pretty sure that he was trying to take it slow—but that didn’t last long, and she knew that she was getting very much closer to saying yes, and probably would once she was sure the birth control pills she’d finally started taking had really and truly kicked in.

  Right before midnight, he used his cell phone to order some pizza, and she ended up eating three pieces, while they watched a replay of that afternoon’s Red Sox victory on NESN, and took time to fool around at odd moments. It was erotic, and entertaining, and just a hell of a lot of fun.

  They hadn’t discussed whether he was going to spend the night, but it was getting late, and they were both drowsy, and it seemed to be inevitable. Plus, Martin was out there on overnight duty, in his staunch way, which made her feel less anxious about what might happen, if things didn’t go well.

  Once the light was out, and they were lying together, she got the nerve to bring up something which had been bothering her.

  “Are you a Republican?” she asked.

  Jack laughed. “What?”

  “Are you?” she asked.

  “Well, I think, lots of times, entitlement programs cause more problems than they solve,” he said.

  What? She sat up. “You do?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Don’t you?”

  Oh, dear. Although her mother was a devotee of Moynihan’s works, and entitlement strategies sometimes seemed to lead to a certain infantilization, and large bureaucracies didn’t tend to breed efficiency, but it was still potentially troubling. “Gun control, freedom of choice, estate taxes, states’ rights, big government, gay marriage, medical malpractice, affirmative action, the separation of church and state,” she said.

  “I don’t know.” He sat up, too. “Yes, yes, no, mostly, no, sure, out of control, sometimes, and maybe.” Then, he frowned. “Is this a litmus test?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh.” He frowned. “Jesus, hope I didn’t get them out of order. Did I pass?”

  Hmmm. “You got an incomplete,” she said.

  “The President’s kind of centrist,” he said, sounding very annoyed. “Why can’t I be, too?”

  She herself was also closer to the middle than the left, in many cases, but— “Separation of church and state,” she said.

  He folded his arms. “What’s the big deal if someone wants to put up a damn Christmas tree? If someone else comes along, and says, hey, can I add a menorah or something here, why can’t they do that, too? I mean, what the hell. A person feels like saying, ‘God bless America,’ it doesn’t wreck my day.”

  “Okay,” she said, and tilted her head to look up at him, squinting to see in the very dim light. “Gay marriage is fine?”

  He shrugged. “People loving each other and getting married? Sure. Besides, my brother’s gay, and what if he wants to have a family or something?”

  She would have to give him a full passing grade, simply for apparently not being at all bothered by the fact that his brother was gay. “Is your father upset about it?”

  “Pretends he doesn’t know,” Jack said. “But his partner, Bucky, stayed with us during the holidays and everything, and he can’t be that dense. I don’t think.”

  Interesting. “What do your parents think about my mother?” she asked.

  Jack shrugged again. “Mom likes her, mostly. Dad says at least she turned out to be an Iron Lady, so the country will probably still be here once we get someone good back in office again.”

  Not a rave, but not a disaster, either.

  He grinned. “My brother says it was like getting to vote for Emma Peel.”

  She grinned, too. “Gay brother, or straight brother?”

  “Greg,” he said. “So, gay brother. But, Phillip started calling her that, too.”

  Jack, and his unexpectedly Anglophilic family. Hell, when she’d visited his dorm room, she’d even seen a whole sketchbook devoted to little line drawings of London and the English countryside.

  “I think it’s why she won,” he said seriously. “I mean, yeah, she’s incredibly smart and all, but she also charmed the hell out of everyone.”

  “It didn’t hurt that the other guy was so smug,” Meg said. And wishy-washy. And seemingly perpetually angry, in an off-putting smiley way.

  “No,” he agreed, “but in the debates, and with the press and all, the harder they went after her, the more sparkly she got, and it was fun to watch. Like you really wouldn’t mind having her all over the place for four years. Wouldn’t get sick of seeing her. And Greg’d be sitting there, pumping his fist and pissing my father off, saying, ‘You
go, Mrs. Peel!’”

  Something she would definitely have to run by the President, who was probably going to be very pleased by the comparison, regardless of whether she admitted it.

  “That’s who the country voted for, and that’s who they want back,” he said, very seriously.

  Because the President was no longer—jaunty—in the same way. No longer necessarily fun to watch go through her day. “Maybe she’d rather do theater,” Meg said.

  He laughed, and then reached out to touch her cheek, his fingers moving up and across the scar on her forehead lightly. “How long did it take?”

  To split her eyebrow with a smack of a machine gun? Oh, say, two seconds?

  “They had you with them, what, three, four days?” he said.

  She stiffened. He had never asked her anything specific about the kidnapping. Why start now, when they were having such a nice time? “Something like that, yeah,” she said, her throat feeling tight.

  “So, how long before you wised off to them?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” Meg said stiffly. “I was afraid.” When she woke up in the dark room, and the man came slamming in for the first time—a big muscular guy, looming over her in a stocking mask—she had trembled so hard that the damn metal bed actually shook. And, he’d laughed, with a soft contempt she could still hear somewhere inside her head.

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure you were, but I still bet it didn’t even take you an hour to pop off for the first time.”

  More like five minutes. But—the guy had been so cocky that it made her mad, and well, what was she supposed to do, just sit there and let him think he’d already beaten her? Even though he had?

  And still might, long-term.

  “Shit,” Jack said. “It wasn’t even close to an hour, was it.”

  No. None of which changed anything, but—no. “Um, can we talk about something else?” she asked.

  He nodded, and eased her down so that they were lying next to each other again, and she was resting on his chest. She couldn’t relax at all, but he massaged his hand up and down her back, and after a few silent minutes, she finally felt herself release something resembling a normal breath.

  He pulled her closer, his arms feeling heavy now, as though he was starting to fall asleep. “When Greg emails me lately, he always asks, ‘and how’s Little Emma?’”

  The Taylor boys were goofy. “My brother calls you Malibu Bobby,” Meg said.

  “Yikes,” he said. “I’m not sure I like that one.”

  Then he was going to be even more upset if he ever found out that Steven’s agents must have mentioned it to her agents, because she had heard the nickname bandied about more than once of late.

  She would have sworn that she never fell asleep, but suddenly it was light out, and she was being kissed awake by someone who tasted like pepperoni.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sleep okay?”

  It seemed entirely improbable, but— “Yeah,” she said, and kissed him back. “I think I did.”

  * * *

  FOR THE NEXT week or so, she tried to ease back into—well, whatever it was that her life was. On Monday afternoon, she dropped her new political science paper in Professor Richardson’s box, and without a word, but smiling—he handed it back to her the next day, with an A+, and a succinct and interesting half-page of handwritten comments. Which pleased her enough so that she actually spoke up during one of her classmates’ diatribes, and spouted out a little riff about the dangers of the tyranny of the majority, and the probable intent of the framers of the Constitution, and while her professor didn’t entirely agree with her analysis, she could tell that he was glad to see her make the effort.

  Other people in her classes had either decided she didn’t make them nervous anymore—or picked up on her somewhat increased comfort level, and she ended up having lunch or coffee with a couple of them. Maybe she actually could start making friends.

  Her mother took a three-day trip to London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Dublin, which meant that her security was jacked up during that time period, and presumably her brothers’ and father’s details were expanded, too, but none of them—including her mother—mentioned this state of affairs during telephone conversations or in emails. There were, as always, a number of angry anti-American protests held wherever her mother went while she was abroad, and when Meg saw film of the President walking over to engage some of the people in conversation—an infuriating, but not shocking move on her part, made that much more irritating when many of the protestors looked pleased, and even laughed in response to whatever it was she said to them—she found herself wishing that there was a brick nearby, so she could throw it through the god-damn screen. The only mitigating factor was that her mother was wearing a chic raincoat during the spontaneous stroll, so there was a chance that it had a bulletproof liner—but Meg still felt like slugging her for taking stupid chances. Yet again.

  Jack went away the next weekend to play in the sectionals tournament, which was being held at Middlebury—and called her several times, including from a noisy party on Saturday night, at which he was clearly very drunk, somewhat maudlin, and more than a little preoccupied by the idea of sex and what she might be wearing, or, ideally, not wearing. He also said that his teammates were kind of pissed off at him, because they thought his game focus sucked, especially in the red zone, and that they’d lost to UMass that afternoon, and he’d had to leave the game with a yellow card, because he’d gotten into a fight with some guy who asked how she was in the sack, but that she shouldn’t worry, because while it bled a lot all over his shirt, his nose wasn’t broken.

  “So, anyway,” he said, after some more drunken rambling. “What are you wearing?”

  Just to get him going, she told him that he should picture Mrs. Peel’s outfit in the “A Touch of Brimstone” episode, except with a much bigger snake.

  Which might have erred on the side of being too provocative, because she was treated to some lengthy stream-of-consciousness questions and suggestions, most of which were funny, but also quite X-rated. But then, suddenly, he said, “Oh, wait, there’s that UMass son of a bitch now, I gotta go,” and hung up.

  The next morning, she watched the Sunday political shows, which were pretty uneventful, except that the Attorney General—who was appearing on one of them, in an attempt to rectify her poor performances a few weeks earlier—managed to boot it again. Meg had met her a number of times, and knew that she was a very intelligent, articulate, and reasonably pleasant person, but live television was apparently not her bailiwick.

  When she called home right after the show went off the air, the President was extremely annoyed about the situation, and said something snide to the effect that that was what a Yale education did for a person, and it seemed quite possible that the Department of Justice would be under new leadership sooner, rather than later.

  The weather was absolutely beautiful—a perfect spring day, and even though the Red Sox were on, and playing well, she felt restless. She had plenty of work to do, including a psychology lab report and a philosophy paper, but she wasn’t about to pick doing that over baseball.

  But, even the Beloved Team wasn’t holding her attention today.

  The dorm was so quiet that it seemed as though the building might be empty. Was everyone off frolicking in the sunshine? Or, more likely, out playing some damn sport or other? Off in the library, studying industriously? Or just in their rooms, taking naps?

  She considered doing the latter herself, but the thought was pretty depressing. Sometimes, it felt as though she was napping her whole life away.

  She had on her “If Lost or Stolen” shirt, sweatpants, and air pump sneakers, which would all work quite nicely as afternoon sleepwear, but were designed, of course, for athletics. Activity. Fun. Not for lying around with splints and braces and canes and ice packs.

  Christ, and it was such a nice day out.

  Oh, the hell with it.

  She made sure that her sneakers were tightly fast
ened with their elastic laces, and reached for her cane.

  Time to go play sports already.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE WENT down to the second floor, Susan was just getting back from running, looking healthy and energetic and only slightly overheated.

  “Hi,” Susan said, not at all out of breath, although she had probably sprinted up the stairs, since that’s what she always did when she was by herself.

  Meg nodded. “Hi. Good run?”

  “Not bad.” Susan opened her door. “What’s up?”

  Nothing whatsoever. Who was she kidding? She could barely stand on her damn cane. The only thing she should do this afternoon was go back upstairs and lie down, and watch the rest of the Red Sox game. “Not much,” Meg said. “Um, how far did you go?”

  Susan picked up a towel to wipe off her face. “I don’t know. Five and a half, something like that.”

  How weird was it to go running, and not even keep track of the distance? “How fast did you go?” Meg asked.

  Susan shrugged. “Six and a half minutes, maybe. I don’t know, I was a little tired today.”

  It made no sense to be good at something—and not care, one way or the other. Meg looked at her curiously. “How fast could you go, if you went all out?”

  “I don’t know.” Susan tossed the towel at the laundry bag in the corner, and then drank some water from the CUPPS cup—the reusable coffee travel cups students were issued, although most of them, Meg included, usually forgot to carry them around—on her desk. “Pretty fast, probably.”

  Christ. Jill Kiley, from her Shakespeare class, had told her at Brunch Night one time that the cross-country coach had seen Susan out running during their freshman year, and had tried, for weeks, to recruit her for the team, never getting more than a “No, thank you, but it was very nice of you to ask me” from her. What a waste of talent. Jill, who was on both the field hockey and softball teams, didn’t get it, either.