Long Live the Queen (29 page)

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Authors: Ellen Emerson White

BOOK: Long Live the Queen
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“I feel that it's
imperative
for us play,” Beth said. “Right after dinner.”
“Me, too?” Neal asked.
“Of course,” Beth said, and glanced at Meg's crutch. “If you
want,
you can sit in your damn chair.” She looked at Trudy. “Excuse me.”
“Oh, yeah, sounds great,” Meg said, passing her plate to Steven for another helping of baked beans, nodding when Trudy put some coleslaw on there, too. As she took her plate back, she saw her parents exchange happy glances, and she flushed. Her mother, as a rule, had too much dignity to say, “I told you so,” but maybe it
hadn't
been such a terrible idea for Beth to come down and visit.
 
BY THE TIME dinner was over, Meg was so exhausted that it was an effort to sit up in her chair. And her knee hurt. Her knee hurt
a lot
.
“Would you like some more cake?” Trudy asked. “Some ice cream?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.” Which made her even
more
tired, and she held back a yawn, resting her chin on her propped hand.
“You want to maybe skip bowling tonight?” Beth asked. “Watch some television?”
“I, uh—” She didn't want to be rude. “I'm sorry, I'm really tired.”
So
tired, that sitting here at the dinner table was beginning to make her feel panicky. “I kind of—I think I need—”
Her mother shot a glance at one of the butlers, who instantly brought over her wheelchair, Meg nodding gratefully. The idea of moving was more than she could handle, but her father was already up and helping her into the chair.
Feeling guilty—and ashamed, she looked at Beth. “I'm sorry, I—I just can't—I'm really sorry.”
Beth shrugged, but was obviously a little unnerved. “No problem. I'll see you later.”
Meg nodded, wishing desperately that she was already in bed, relieved when her parents took her down the hall, her mother helping her into her nightgown, then under the covers. As her father turned out her lamp—the bathroom light already on—she was so glad to be in the safety of her bed that she almost started crying. Then, when her mother bent to kiss her good-night, she
did
cry.
“This is why I can't have visitors,” she said. “It's too hard.”
“It's all right,” her mother said. “Beth understands.”
No one
understood. Meg pulled a Kleenex from the box by her pillow—a concept depressing in and of itself—and wiped at her eyes. “I don't want her to be mad at me. I just—I
can't
.”
“Beth will be fine,” her father said. “Don't worry about a thing.”
Don't
worry
? Jesus, was he from another
planet
? “All right,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I just have to sleep.”
“Okay.” Her father leaned over to kiss her, too. “We'll see you in the morning.”
“
Please
don't let anyone come in here,” Meg said, fighting back what felt like an
explosion
of tears inside. “I just want to sleep.”
Her parents nodded, then quietly left the room.
WHEN SHE WAS sure she was alone, she let the tears come, turning her head away from the door, praying that no one would hear. She cried until she was so exhausted that she couldn't do anything
but
sleep, her arm over her eyes in case someone came in. For some reason, Vanessa wasn't on the bed—or even in the room, which made her feel even worse
.
If nothing else, she slept
soundly
, not waking up—or maybe even moving—until Trudy knocked on her door the next morning and came in with her breakfast.
“Good morning, dear,” Trudy said, putting the tray down on her desk, then moving the curtains to let in some light. “How do you feel?”
Awful
. Meg sat up with some difficulty, hoping that her eyes weren't as red as they
felt
—and wondering where Vanessa was. “I-I'm all right. I mean, good morning.”
After helping her into the wheelchair so she”could go into the bathroom, Trudy set up the tray for her—orange juice, broccoli and mushroom quiche, toast triangles, and a dish of strawberries and cream.
“I, uh—” Meg picked up her juice glass, her hand so shaky that she almost dropped it. “Is Beth still here?”
Trudy nodded. “Would you like her to come in?”
“Well, I—” The room seemed very bright—painfully so—and she wished Trudy would pull the shade back down. “I don't really—I guess so.” She looked at her clock. Ten-fifteen. That meant that she would have to do the god-damned physical therapy in—Jesus, there was
no
way she could face that today. “I, uh, I don't
feel very good. Can you tell them I'm going to stay in bed today? That I can't—I
really
don't feel good.”
Trudy looked at her clock, too. “Maybe after you—”
“Can you
please
tell them?” Meg asked. “I
need
to stay in bed today.”
Trudy nodded, her eyes so sad that Meg couldn't look at her, focusing down on her tray.
“Thank you,” Meg said. “For breakfast, too.”
After Trudy had been gone for a few minutes, there was a small knock on the door.
Her parents, to
make
her do her therapy, probably. Meg pressed her teeth together. “Who is it?”
“Me,” Beth said.
Christ. “Okay,” Meg said, humiliated by the idea that she was going to be caught lying in bed with a god-damn tray.
Beth came in, wearing jeans and her old—but, Meg knew, beloved—maroon Sunnydale High t-shirt. “Hi,” she said, her hands awkward in her pockets. “How do you feel?”
Meg shrugged, not looking at her, ashamed of how red her eyes—she knew, from her trip to the bathroom—were. “You, uh, you get breakfast and everything?”
Beth nodded. “Trudy went all out.”
Meg nodded, too, although she hadn't touched hers yet. “Uh, sorry about last night.”
Beth shrugged. “Your brothers and I did some bowling.”
“Oh. I mean, that's good,” Meg said. “I guess they're not having much fun lately.”
“Not really,” Beth said.
Yeah.
Neither of them spoke for a minute.
“You should at least eat the strawberries,” Beth said. “They were really good.”
Meg nodded, and moved the dish closer, but didn't pick up her spoon.
“Look, I—” Beth stopped. “I don't know what I should do.”
Go home
. Meg shrugged, looking at her breakfast.
“Meg—” Beth let out her breath. “I don't know. You're a lot worse than I thought you'd be.”
Meg looked up, furious. “It's not my fault!”
“I meant
feeling
worse, not
being
worse,” Beth said.
Oh. Meg scowled, her good hand clenched around the side of her tray.
“Look, just tell me what to do,” Beth said. “I'll do whatever you want.”
“I kind of—” she
really
didn't want to hurt Beth's feelings—“I want you to—” Oh, hell.
“I
know
you're not ready to see people yet,” Beth said, her voice very quiet. “And Christ, the last thing I want to do is—” She stopped, her voice getting even quieter. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe
I
sort of needed to see
you
?”
Beth, whose goal in
life
was to be ever cool and invulnerable? Beth, who—at the moment—looked rather small, and upset. “I don't know,” Meg said.
“Well, think about it,” Beth said.
Meg thought about it. About how she would feel if something terrible happened to
Beth
. Thought about how much she would want to see her, be sure she was all right. “I'm sorry,” she said, looking down. “It's just so hard.”
“Dragging yourself through the fucking
woods
was hard,” Beth said. “Hanging out with
me
is easy.”
Meg smiled a little. “Oh, yeah?”
“I promise not to pressure you,” Beth said. “You just tell me what you can't do, and we'll go from there.”
“What I
can't
do?” The question was so all-encompassing that Meg smiled a little more. “How much time do you have?”
Beth grinned, sitting down in the rocking chair. “This girl has nothing
but
time.”
 
THEY DIDN'T DO much. In fact, about the most Meg could manage was to—watch
The Brady Bunch
. She and her brothers owned the entire series, courtesy of their aunt, and loved every single episode in which Cousin Oliver
didn't
appear.
They started at the beginning—and kept going.
“I think I may be lapsing into a coma,” Beth said, as they watched the episode where Cindy got to be the fairy princess in her school play, but was only given
one
ticket—and couldn't decide which parent to invite. “Slide over.”
Meg nodded, and carefully eased herself to one side, so that Beth could stretch out on the bed next to her.
They were watching the one where Jan seemed to be allergic to Tiger, but was, in the end, only allergic to his new flea powder, when her father and Trudy brought in lunch—chicken soup, BLTs, and—of all things; Trudy winking at her—Cokes.
Her father looked at the television. “Maybe we should have just brought you two some Jell-O.”
“There's
always
room for Jell-O,” Beth said, to no one in particular.
Meg's father smiled, then looked at Meg. “Bob is going to come by in a while? Say hello to you?”
Meg nodded, drinking her Coke.
They watched
The Brady Bunch
for a very long time.
Hours,
to be precise. Dr. Brooks came in, checked her over, and said jovially that a nice day of rest might be “just the ticket.” Steven and Neal showed up more than once, and each time, they looked at the television, then one of them would say, “
Still?
”, and they would shake their heads and leave. Her mother called from the West Wing, “to say hi,” although when she asked what they were doing, Meg just said, “Oh, you know, hanging out.”
“We're getting stupid, Meg,” Beth said, as they watched the one where Alice hurt her ankle—and was in danger of not being able to attend the Meatcutters' Ball with Sam the Butcher. “I can
feel
it happening.”
Meg nodded. She was, indeed, feeling pretty stupid. “You want to call it quits?”
“What, are you kidding?” Beth said. “The one where Marcia gets braces is next.”
Oh, yay. Meg grinned. “
Perfect,
” she said.
 
WHEN NEAL CAME in to tell them it was almost dinnertime, Beth looked over at her.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked.
Meg sighed. “Okay, but that's
it
for tonight.”
“Fair enough,” Beth said.
So, Meg put on sweatpants, and
her
—not quite
beloved
, but certainly well-
liked
—Sunnydale High t-shirt, and they went down to the Presidential Dining Room. They compromised, Meg riding the wheelchair down there, but crutching into the room itself.
She was too tired to participate in the dinner conversation, but luckily, Steven and Neal had spent the afternoon playing basketball with Preston and off-duty Secret Service agents, and were all charged up, agreeably yapping away throughout the meal. Beth was pretty quiet, too, suffering—almost certainly—from a severe situation comedy overdose.
“Steven and me played
excellent
,” Neal said, his mouth full of scalloped potatoes. “We—”
“Try some chewing and swallowing,” their father said from the end of the table, sounding much less annoyed than he ordinarily would have.
Before
, anyway.
Neal chewed, and then swallowed. “They couldn't stop us at
all
, practically.”
Steven laughed. “Yeah, you should have seen Baby Skyhook here. He's a wild man.”
Which was all too easy to picture. Steven had been coordinated before
birth
, but Neal was—to put it nicely—kind of a late bloomer.
“So, hey.” Steven jabbed his fork in her direction. “We watching the game tonight?”
Meg shook her head. “I sort of think I'm sleeping tonight.”
“Yo, you traitor,” he said, and pointed his fork at Beth. “
You
watching?”
“Sorry,” Beth said, and shook her head, too.
“Traitors,” he said grimly. “I'm
totally
surrounded by traitors.”
Meg grinned, finishing up her last piece of asparagus. Steven was pretty funny when he wanted to be.
“I bet those girls are going to watch the
Yankees,
” he was saying to Neal. “I bet they're going to watch the Yankees, and
clap
.”
Beth laughed. “You know it. And the Mets are on the coast tonight, so we can watch
both
games.”
Steven collapsed in his chair, pretending to faint. “Smelling salts,” he said weakly to Trudy, who was sitting to his left. “Where are my smelling salts?”
“You just sit up and eat your dinner,” she said, rapping sharply on the table with her fork. “Don't be so silly.”
Meg found
that
amusing, too. Trudy had always been one to crack the whip of authority, especially during meals. Felix paused by her seat to offer her more salad, and she shook her head, her eating energy depleted. But, she sat through the rest of the meal, smiling at the right times, and nodding or shaking her head, if anyone asked her a question.
Her mother spent half of the meal out in the West Sitting Hall, conferring with Glen, who was her Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, and the National Security Advisor, and various aides about—Meg assumed—the latest wave of turmoil in Pakistan, although it
was sometimes hard to keep track of the rapidly changing problems her mother juggled on a daily basis. Anyway, when she finally came back in, Meg caught her checking her plate to see how much she had eaten, and then glancing at Trudy for confirmation.
Although Meg didn't think she had a right to be critical—since she'd barely touched her
own
dinner.
However, the butlers were now
used
to working for a President who forgot to eat on a regular basis, and as they served dessert, Felix brought out some fresh yogurt and fruit, as well as a small chef 's salad and some matzoh crackers for her. It seemed to take her mother a minute to remember that she was—ever so briefly—back to being a regular human being again, and start eating the salad.
In the meantime, her father and brothers were digging into dessert, and Beth—because she was just too god-damn cool for her own good—opted for black coffee, to which she added quite a lot of sugar.
“Are you sure you don't want some, dear?” Trudy asked, after giving Neal a second serving.
Butterscotch pie, no doubt delicious. Meg shook her head. “No, thank you, I'm full.”
“You look like you've just about had it,” her mother said. Very much so. Meg nodded, reaching for her crutch. “Yes. In fact, I kind of think—”
“You're right,” Beth said, getting up. “The Yankees game starts in about five minutes.”
Shaking her head when her father moved to help her, Meg eased herself up onto her good foot while Beth went out to the hall to get her wheelchair.

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