Long May She Reign (72 page)

Her father had wanted her to use a wheelchair, instead of staggering around on her crutch, but that was the
last
thing she wanted to do, in front of so many people from her past. It probably would have been a lot less painful than trying to walk, though.

He didn't say anything, but he looked very worried as she made her way across some fairly rough ground, heading towards the baseball field.

Josh, and Meg's friends Nathan and Zachary, had all been on the team, so she'd spent a lot of time on those rickety bleachers during her junior and senior years. Usually, she would go to the games with Alison, who had been her closest friend in Washington, and maybe Phyllis and Gail, or—Jesus
Christ
, but she'd lost touch with a lot of people.

The bleachers were up above the baseball field, not too far from the tennis courts—which she really should have given some consideration before deciding to come to the game. Not that she had to look over there. She could just watch the two baseball teams warm up, or look across the field at the girls' softball team over on the other side of the complex, which seemed to be practicing, as opposed to playing an official game today. Besides, she was only here to cheer Steven on, not to get caught up in some self-pity reverie.

Even though the sounds of
tennis
—balls hitting rackets, the swift noisy footwork of rubber-soled sneakers, the rattle of chain-link fences—were enough to make her feel like weeping.

Neal was sitting on the grass right behind the visitor's side with Ahmed, and one of his other friends, Yancey, and he came bounding up the hill when he saw them, a big grin on his face.

“I thought you'd be all tired and stuff,” he said to her.

She was, but she shrugged.

“Steven said no
way
you'd come,” he said. “So, this is cool.” Then he gave their father a big hug, since he either hadn't grown into finding public displays of familial affection embarrassing yet—or, quite possibly, given his amiable ways, he was
never
going to develop that particular character trait. “Hi, Dad! I'm going back down there, okay?” He headed towards his friends without waiting for an answer.

She probably knew at least half of the guys on her school's team pretty well, and some of the others looked familiar. They were all warming up on the sidelines, while Steven's team finished up batting practice, and Jamal, who must have taken over first base after Nathan graduated, saw her just as he was about to throw to another guy she knew named Christopher. He paused, and then waved tentatively.

She waved back, also feeling hesitant, and he stood there for a minute, then came around the backstop and up the hill.

“Hey,” he said.

She felt stupid about being
quite
so impaired, but it was nice to see him, find out where he was hoping to go to school—his first choice was Cornell—and otherwise catch up.

Then, a lot of the other guys wandered over, in twos and threes, to say hi, with a certain amount of mumbling and shuffling of their feet.

“You gonna be mad when we score about thirty runs off him?” one of them asked, motioning towards Steven, who had just finished his warm-up tosses, put on a jacket and his Oakley Thump sunglasses, and gone to sit at the end of his team's bench, with his customary “don't even
think
of invading my space when I've got my head in the game” pre-pitching glower.

Mostly, she was going to be
amazed
if they scored thirty runs off him.

It was a relief when the game started, and she could try to concentrate on baseball, although various teachers began appearing, too—word must have gotten around pretty quickly. Interestingly, even teachers who had never been overly fond of her seemed to have embraced a revisionist history which resulted in their forgetting that small truth when they greeted her enthusiastically, asked about college, and told her how wonderful she looked and so forth. Her favorite English teacher, Mrs. Hayes, asked if she was going to be majoring in political science, and Meg shrugged shyly and said that she hadn't decided yet, but she was considering, um, English. Her father raised his eyebrows, but didn't contradict her.

Inevitably, the press started showing up, including Hannah Goldman, although Anthony went over to distract them, and so far, they were all keeping their distance. The presence of all of the agents and security people, and the fact that the school was private property, didn't hurt, either.

She had been going out of her way not to look at the tennis courts, assuming that it was only the boys' team practicing, but she glanced over by accident—and recognized Renee, who had been ranked number two when she was the top-seeded player on the girls' team.

As she came over to the fence to pick up a ball, Renee saw her, too, and straightened up, the ball dropping out of her hand. Meg felt like a jerk, and, for some reason, a
failure
, but she nodded in her direction, and Renee nodded back, then left the courts, coming towards the bleachers.

“How you doing?” Renee asked, avoiding looking at her sling and knee brace.

Tip-top. “Fine,” Meg said. “How about you?”

Renee nodded, then looked down at the baseball field. “Your brother?”

“Yeah, he's pitching,” Meg said.

Renee turned to check the scoreboard in deep right field. “Looks like he's doing okay.”

So far. And he'd be doing even better, if his teammates were making fewer errors. He was also two for two, with an RBI. “How'd you guys do this season?” she asked.

Renee shrugged. “Our best player graduated.”

More or less.

Renee glanced at her hand. “Are you, um, going to be able to play anymore?”

No. “I'm not sure,” Meg said. “I hope so.”

Renee nodded, sneaking another quick look at the splint.

It made perfect sense that people always did that; she should stop finding it so invasive.

When Renee had gone back—looking slightly hangdog—to finish her match, Meg wanted nothing more than to go lie down somewhere. Normally, baseball wasn't a nerve-racking experience, but she was going to have to reevaluate that analysis.

“Relaxing way to spend an afternoon,” her father said, not without irony.

And how.

41

STEVEN WAS AVERAGING
more than a strikeout per inning, but he'd also hit two batters, and brushed back a few more. In the bottom of the last inning, with his team hanging on to a 4–3 lead, he did it again, and the benches emptied, although mostly, they all just stood around. There were a few shoves, and scowls, and Meg could hear Steven shouting, “Hey, I'm just trying to establish the inside of the plate!” Finally, the umpire and coaches got everyone calmed down, and Steven was back on the mound, digging his cleats into the dirt in front of the rubber.

The bottom pretty much dropped out of his next pitch, and the batter—a guy she knew, Raymond—struck out with a flailing swing.

Her father frowned. “That damn kid just threw a splitter.”

And a dandy one, at that. But Steven's coach must have noticed, too, because he was on his way to the mound. “Dad, he's trying to get
seniors
out,” she said.

Her father nodded. “And by the time he's sixteen, he'll be having Tommy John surgery.”

For Steven's sake, she hoped not.

After a fairly heated exchange, his coach went back to the bench, and Steven shrugged a few times, then stared in at the catcher to get the sign for the next pitch.

“You were a wonderful athlete, Meg,” her father said, out of nowhere. “It was a pleasure to watch you play.”

Nice of him to remind her that that was part of her past. She wanted to snarl something of that nature at him, but someone, among the spectators, was probably listening in, so she just stared down at the field.

“Which doesn't change the fact that your mother and I used to spend a lot of time worrying that you were going to waste far too much of your life playing some
sport
or other,” he said.

What, and that would be the end of the world? Her getting to do the two things she loved best, one of them possibly even professionally? Meg nodded. “So,
I
was wasting my time, but it's okay for Steven to put everything he has into baseball?”

“No, we worry about that, too,” her father said.

Just not as hard, apparently. She watched as Steven scrambled off the mound to field a bunt bare-handed, and threw it to first in time to get the runner by two steps.

“I don't meant that—” Her father let out a frustrated breath. “I'm not doing very well with you today, am I?”

Nope.

They watched as the next hitter popped up to the third baseman—who muffed it completely. Steven did a decent job of
not
looking pissed off, although Neal, who was hanging around down by the backstop, looked up at her uneasily. Meg shrugged, and Neal nodded and refocused on the game.

“What I meant,” her father said, “is that you're extraordinarily gifted, in so many ways, and I'm not sure if there's anything you couldn't do if you put your mind to it.”

Other than, say,
walk
.

Her father sighed. “Maybe what I meant is that you don't have to keep pretending that you're majoring in English. That's all.”

Yeah, he just loved politics. And
politicians
. Christ, if they were having this much trouble getting along now, she couldn't even imagine what it would be like if she chose his least favorite thing as her career. So, she confined her response to a brisk shake of her head, and tried to pay attention to the game.

Steven came in high and tight to the next batter—her friend Jamal, as it happened—who stepped out of the box long enough to glare at him, before stepping back in. On the next pitch, he grounded to the shortstop, who overthrew the second baseman, and suddenly, there were men on second and third. Steven stayed very still on the mound, with no expression whatsoever, but his catcher came trotting out to talk to him. Calm him down, more likely.

“Not bad,” Meg said to her father, who nodded.

Once, in Little League, Steven had yelled so furiously at a teammate who screwed up a crucial play that her parents had threatened to make him quit baseball altogether, if he couldn't be a better sport. Typically, it had been her father who did most of the lecturing on the subject, while her mother looked disappointed and took the more moderate position that lambasting a teammate simply wasn't done, and that he needed to learn how to keep his composure, because otherwise, it was very bad form.

“Come on, Steven!” Neal said, as the catcher trudged back to the plate and Steven scraped his cleats across the dirt. “Smoke 'im!”

Steven must have been paying attention, because he blew away the next—and final—batter on three straight pitches.

“Went right up the ladder,” her father said, and Meg nodded, as Steven's team erupted into a small victory celebration, with the exception of the shortstop and third baseman, who looked somewhat shamefaced. But Steven gave them each a friendly smack with his glove, and the two guys relaxed and returned the slaps.

“I'll just head down there for a minute,” her father said. “Do you want me to meet you in the car?”

Meg shook her head. “I'll wait for you here. Tell him I said he was really good.”

Once he had finished shaking hands with everyone on both teams, Steven looked up at the bleachers until he was able to make eye contact with her. Meg gave him a left-handed salute, and he grinned back.

Some of the reporters, Hannah among them, took advantage of her father's departure to come traipsing over, and Anthony moved to intercept them. Normally, she might have told him not to bother, and wasted some time bantering around, but she was tired, and out of sorts, and her new pain medication had either worn off—or wasn't any damn good. So, she pretended that she hadn't even noticed that they were there, and some of their many agents, along with school security people and a few police officers, began escorting them away.

The guys from her school weren't too happy about having lost—or the fact that they thought her punk little brother had been head-hunting—but they were friendly enough about it as they went slouching past the bleachers on their way to the locker-room, giving her nods and good-byes, and telling her to be sure and say hi to Josh and Nathan and Zachary the next time she spoke to any of them.

Which wasn't likely to be soon, much to her discredit.

Steven was going to ride back to school with his team, but he came up to say hello—and accept profuse compliments about his pitching prowess, which she gave him, at length. He was holding a plastic bottle of Gatorade, and she had to force herself not to look at it.

Steven, who had been about to gulp some, stopped. “I don't really want this. You feel like taking it for me, so I don't have to carry it around?”

Christ, had she been staring? Meg felt her face turning red. “No, I'm fine, Steven. And you were really great—made
them
look like freshmen.”

“Yeah, kind of,” he said, and grinned. “But, look, if you don't want it, I'm going to pour it out.”

And he would, just to prove a point. Maybe he
was
a punk.

Steven sighed. “Meg, they have more down there. Like a whole cooler full. I'll just get another one.”

Since it would be less stressful than arguing, she accepted the bottle, drinking more than half of it immediately, then feeling like an idiot and trying to give it back.

Steven shook his head. “What, with your germs all over it now? No way.” He started back down the hill. “Thanks for coming and stuff. Later.”

His father walked Neal and his friends to their minivan, waiting until they had pulled away. He seemed to be having a conversation with Ryan, the head of his detail, but she knew he was also going to stand there until Steven's bus left safely, too. Probably a fruitless exercise, but maybe it made him feel better. She hoped so, anyway.