White House Autumn (4 page)

“You want to come?” she asked Vanessa, who was sound asleep on her computer keyboard. Except that was pretty contrived. If she was going to go for the cat cuddled to her cheek, she might as well wear the damn headband.

Preston and the reporter were waiting in the solarium, with a bearded photographer. The reporter was an earnest-looking woman with curly brown hair and tortoise-shell eyeglasses, who was wearing a khaki pantsuit which might as well have
shrieked
“sleek, but practical.” Preston had on a pair of leather ankle boots, black slacks, a light grey shirt with a skinny black silk tie, and a darker grey jacket over it,
his handkerchief perfectly folded in the outside pocket. Very stylish man. He saw her, and stood up.

“Meg, this is Kelly Wright,” he indicated the woman, “and this is Ed Crouthers,” he motioned towards the photographer, who nodded at her.

“How do you do, Ms. Wright,” Meg said. “Mr. Crouthers.”

“Please,” the reporter said, her smile friendly. “Just call me Kelly.”

Her mother’s press secretary, Linda, had often said, grimly, “when they smile at you,
run.”

Meg nodded. “Okay, thank you. I’m Meg.”

Although they probably already knew that.

“I had them bring a Coke for you,” Preston said, pointing towards the tea tray.

Drinking Coca-Cola was
very
all-American. And well-adjusted. And non-controversial. Except, perhaps, for Pepsi devotees. “Thank you.” Meg picked up the glass, noticing that everyone else had coffee. She was going to have to learn to like coffee. Holding it made her feel older.

Preston sat in an easy chair perpendicular to the couch, and Meg hesitantly took the place he had vacated, very self-conscious, trying not to flinch as the camera flash went off. She would not do well at the Barbizon School.

“You have a beautiful view,” Ms. Wright said.

“Yeah,” Meg said, looking out the windows at the South Lawn, and the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial beyond it. “I mean, yes, we do.”

“I gather you all spend a lot of time in this room?” Ms. Wright asked.

“Yeah—I mean, yes,” Meg said. Maybe her mother was right about the ruffian. “Pretty much. I mean, what with the television, and the little kitchen, and all.” She coughed nervously, glancing at Preston, who gestured with one hand for her to relax.

Ms. Wright drank some of her coffee. “What I thought we’d do, Meg, is sit here and talk for a while, and I’ll just ask informal questions. Does that sound all right to you?”

Meg nodded, her hand tight in her lap. Publicity definitely wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. At least Preston was here, instead of being off running interference for her father—which took up most of his time, since, even all of these months later, people didn’t seem to be quite sure what to think about the reality of having a First Gentleman. There had been a big media splash when her father had chosen him—the very young, cool and charismatic destined-for-the-West-Wing black guy to be his press secretary, and Meg was pretty sure that her mother would much rather have given Preston a high-ranking position on her
own
staff, but obviously, it hadn’t worked out that way. Preston was always making fun of her father—whom he called “Russell-baby” in private—for being bourgeois, and for Christmas, had given him subscriptions to several men’s fashion magazines. It always amused Meg to see her father on a Saturday morning, slouching in old corduroys and a sweatshirt, reading
GQ
. Steven took a picture of him once.

“How do you feel about living in the White House?” Ms. Wright asked.

“Uh, well.” Meg tried to think of something profound, or at least interesting, to say. “I don’t know. It’s, uh, it’s pretty big.” Great. That put her in the finals of the Inane Remarks of the Year contest.

If only she had some anecdotes. They probably wanted anecdotes.

Kirby came nosing out from underneath the coffee table and without thinking, Meg handed him a butter cookie from the tea tray.

“You have five animals?” Ms. Wright asked.

Meg almost said, “Six, if you include Steven,” but was able to stop herself. “Yes. I think the cats are all downstairs.”

Kirby wagged his tail, and she gave him another cookie. When they had gotten Kirby seven years earlier—at the pound; her parents
believed in that—they had been assured that he was a German shepherd, but he had grown up into a large brown shaggy dog with odd splotches of white. Her mother said he was a collie; her father thought he was mostly retriever; Steven insisted that he was part Airedale. Meg usually just said that he was brown and white.

“Let’s see.” Ms. Wright checked her notes. “You have two Siamese, a tiger cat, and the grey one is yours, right?”

Meg nodded. “I found her at the Chestnut Hill Mall when I was thirteen.”

Ms. Wright smiled. “What was she doing at the Chestnut Hill Mall?”

“She was in Bloomingdale’s,” Meg said, forgetting to count to three. She blushed. “I mean, I guess someone abandoned her, and the ASPCA said it was okay for me to keep her.”

Mr. Crouthers decided that he would like a photo of Meg with her cat, so Meg went downstairs to get her, returning and posing for a few pictures. Cute and contrived. Then, Ms. Wright began asking more directed questions—about her friends, hobbies, and White House routines.

Meg answered them, saying that she liked skiing, tennis, and reading. Reading what? Oh, anything—political novels, classics, whatever was around. No romances? No, Meg said. What would Josh Feldman say about that? He’d laugh, Meg said—which was true, and then went on to answer questions about Josh; about how he was in her class, and he was a really good pianist and baseball player, and yeah, it was kind of serious, but not really serious. She looked at Preston to see if she should maybe elaborate on that, but he shook his head.

The questions got harder. Like, how did it feel to be the only daughter of the first female President of the United States. Unique, Meg was going to say, but she counted to three, and said “challenging,” instead.

“In what way?” Ms. Wright asked.

Maybe she’d outsmarted herself by not going with her original response. “Um, well.” Meg thought. “I guess everyone has to work harder. To be a family, I mean. To make time for everyone else.”

Ms. Wright nodded, and wrote that down. “Would you say that you have a good family?”

“Well, yeah.” Meg shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, I think so.”

“How do you and your parents get along?” Ms. Wright asked.

“Fine,” Meg said. Classic, cautious answer.

Ms. Wright raised her eyebrows. “You never argue?”

What a no-win question. Either she had to air a bit of dirty laundry—or lie. “Well, sometimes,” Meg said. “It’s nothing major, though.”

“What sort of things do you argue about?” Ms. Wright asked.

Foreign policy. “Well.” Meg glanced over at Preston, who nodded. She sipped some Coke, planning an answer. “I don’t know. About bedtime.” She looked at Ms. Wright, who motioned for her to continue. “I mean, I usually stay up pretty late, and sometimes my parents grump and say I’ll never be able to get up in the morning.”

“Are they right?” Ms. Wright asked, seeming a little disappointed by the very tiny scope of the answer.

“Sometimes,” Meg said. Lots of times.
Most
of the time. Her mother, who always woke up instantly, couldn’t understand why other people might have trouble.

“What else do you argue about?” Ms. Wright wanted to know.

Damn. The smiling reporter had finally decided to dig her cleats in. “I don’t know.” Meg broke a butter cookie in half, and then, in quarters. “If my room’s a mess. If I’m screwing around”—she flushed—“I mean, fooling around, instead of doing homework.” She looked at Preston, who indicated for her to relax, that they knew what she meant.

“What about drinking and marijuana?” Ms. Wright asked.

Meg counted to six. “What about them?” Steven had once told a really obnoxious reporter that he was a methadone addict, and it had
taken some quick work on Preston’s part to keep it from getting printed.

Ms. Wright shrugged. “Well, a lot of young people today—”

“I don’t,” Meg said. That would be all she needed—to show up in the tabloids, or on the Internet, drunk at a party.

Ms. Wright nodded. “I see. Because of your position?”

Enough already. “Because I don’t want to,” Meg said, barely keeping the irritation out of her voice. “The people I hang around with aren’t into that.”

“What
are
they into?” Ms. Wright asked pleasantly.

“Whips and chains. “I don’t know,” Meg said, and shrugged. “Movies, parties, sports. The same as anyone else.”

Ms. Wright picked up her coffee cup so casually that Meg was immediately on guard. “What about your boyfriend?”

Hadn’t she just answered that? “Well,” Meg said. “We go to movies, mostly.” A couple of times, they had gone to hear jazz—which kind of bored her, but Josh was really into it, so she always pretended to be having an
excellent
time, even during really monotonous solos.

“Do you and your parents discuss your relationship?” Ms. “Wright asked.

Meg nodded. “Well, yeah. Sure.”

Ms. Wright put her coffee cup down. “Are your parents as liberal in practice as they are on paper?”

And, the mild-mannered reporter moved in for the kill. Meg counted to three. And then, to five. Her mother was right; the trick to handling an interview was to control the pace. “Of course they are,” Meg said. “They wouldn’t be very honest, otherwise.”

“What about premarital sex?” Ms. Wright asked.

“Whoa. Now, she was getting mean. Meg looked at her as benignly as possible. “In what sense?”

Ms. Wright smiled back. “What do you think about it?”

Meg coughed so that she wouldn’t say that she thought about it constantly. “I think it’s a subjective issue.”

“How do you feel about it personally?” Ms. Wright asked.

“It would depend on the situation,” Meg said.

Ms. Wright actually leaned forward. “How so?”

Upon which, Preston stepped in. “Come on. Are your readers really interested in that sort of thing?”

“How many teenagers do you know?” Ms. Wright said, but then raised a hand to show that she knew she had overstepped her bounds. “What about college, Meg?”

Whew. She was back on solid ground, for the moment. “I’ll probably be applying to seven or eight schools,” Meg said, “and then, it’ll depend on where I get in.”

Ms. Wright looked at her over her glasses. “You’re not really expecting to have any trouble getting in, are you?”

Well—no. Which sucked, regardless of whether anyone believed her about that. “College admissions are a pretty subjective thing,” Meg said.

“Like sex?” Ms. Wright asked, and Meg laughed.

The interview got a little better after that, and Meg answered questions about her parents, her brothers, and about how they all considered Trudy, their former housekeeper, to be their grandmother, since they didn’t have any grandparents of their own anymore. She also said that having Secret Service agents didn’t bother her—which wasn’t true, that the White House was actually very homey—which was
sort
of true, and that no, she had never resented her mother for having spent so little time at home over the years—which wasn’t even
close
to being true.

Ms. Wright scanned her notes. “Just one more thing. Do you have any advice you’d like to give to other teenagers?”

Meg stared at her. “Advice? Like what?”

Ms. Wright shrugged. “You tell me.”

For starters, she would advise them all to buy low, and sell high. Meg laughed. “What, you mean like, something inspirational? You’re kidding, right?” She saw that Ms. Wright wasn’t laughing. “You’re not kidding?” What was she supposed to talk about—good citizenship? Family values? Her personal relationship with Christ? She could spout about economic recovery, but Preston would get mad.

“You can’t think of anything?” Ms. Wright asked, sounding faintly disappointed.

“Well—no.” Meg played with her Coke glass. “If I start talking about—I don’t know—social responsibility, I’m going to sound like a real jerk.”

Ms. Wright immediately seized upon
that
one. “Do you think there’s a need for social responsibility?”

Meg hesitated. “Is this on the record?”

Ms. Wright laughed, shutting her notebook and capping her felt-tip pen. “No. It’s not on the record.”

Meg smiled uncertainly.

They ended up going downstairs, where they ran into Steven and two of his friends, who were eating ice cream and laughing raucously, while Neal tagged along after them. The photographer took some pictures, Ms. Wright asked some questions, and then, finally, they left. After accompanying them to the East Wing Lobby, Meg sank down on a small settee in the Garden Room, exhausted.

“Well.” Preston sat down next to her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Meg just groaned.

”
PRESTON TELLS ME
you were quite the political kid today,” her father remarked at dinner.

He had also said that her outfit had not only looked conservative, but downright
Amish
. “Yeah,” she said, briefly. “Neal, can you pass the salt, please?”