Page 87 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
Why am I here?
I forget.
A bicyclist whisks by, all primary colors and determination, the kind of person who makes a point to exercise in the cold darkness because he’s desperate for the routine or for the self-discipline or for the smugness, and I stare at him as he disappears down the trail. Everything else around me feels still and flat, even the Key Bridge, which at four in the morning is mostly empty of cars.
I climb up on the aqueduct and walk to the edge. Virginia stares back over the Potomac, still sleepy and studded with twinkling night lights, the kind that used to be in my room as a girl. Little dollhouse shore with its little dollhouse buildings and medium-rises, little dollhouse people who are happy happy happy.
Why am I here?
I sit down, not minding the bite of the cold stone through my dress. It’s a very pretty dress, white and gold with a black belt, long and a little flouncy. I wore it to Greer and Maxen’s engagement party, and Maxen had told me that I looked nice. He had said it in a perfunctory way, maybe, and while his eyes were glued to Greer across the room, but it was easy to tell he really meant it, Maybe if we’d been alone, maybe if Greer hadn’t been there, maybe if I would have tried just a little harder to make him see…
Unhappiness is the color of Greer’s eyes. Because it’s the color Maxen loves.
I put on this dress before I came here. I remember that now. I remembered the earrings but forgot the shoes. I’m still holding my car keys in my hand. Where is Galahad?
Enid. I left him sleeping with Enid. That’s right, because even now I can feel the plush sink of the carpet under my feet, hear my dress rustling as I bent over his crib and brushed his hair away from his face. Can hear Enid’s snores in the adjoining room.
How I wish I could have loved you more, I thought. How I wish you were Maxen’s. If only he’d had black hair instead of brown, green eyes instead of blue. Morgan doesn’t deserve Lyr, she doesn’t deserve to have a son of Maxen’s, but I would have. I would have deserved it.
I left the little Embry-baby to his baby dreams and went driving alone.
Below me, the Potomac is a cold swish and drift, boring to watch, boring to hear, not dirty enough to be interesting, not clean enough to be pretty.
I watch my bare toes silhouetted against the dark water. Now that is interesting. Romantic maybe. I could see someone in a movie like this—beautiful dress, naked feet, dark river. But the movies are better; it’s too chilly to stare for long and the wind won’t ruffle my hair like I want. Instead it whips up in weird, sudden bursts, yanking tangles into my hair and blowing it across my eyes into my mouth.
I hate it suddenly. I hate it for ruining my unhappiness—my unhappiness is supposed to be pretty, it’s supposed to be tragic, it’s supposed to be the flower-scented Ophelia and the regal Cleopatra and the noble Lucretia. How fucking dare it be a shitty kind of cold, a shitty kind of windy?
I can’t remember why I’m here still. It’s like a half-forgotten word, pulled out with snapping fingers and exclamations, or a song that you can remember loving but the melody has vanished somewhere in your mind and all that’s left is a single, broken bar.
I stand up and walk back the way I came, off the aqueduct and down to the path on the river, thinking of the dress and how much Maxen liked it. I knew he would, I picked it for him, I’ve done everything for him ever since the first moment I saw his face on the television. Done everything for him since I’d discovered we’d been at the same London party mere weeks before he became a hero.
What if I’d ended up kissing him instead of the diplomat that night? What if he’d seen me first, my shape so tempting in that electric blue dress, what if he’d seen me and kissed me? Slipped me his hotel key? Said nothing, but dreamt about me for years and years like I did with him?
Of course he did. It’s what happened, I’m sure of it. He saw me and he was captivated, but he knew I was too young and so he waited for me like I was waiting for him, and Greer was only ever a way to get close to me—just as all the politicians and lobbyists I dated were a way to get close to him.
How can I ever tell him how much I loved him? How that love grew and grew when I was still a student at Cadbury and then later in college, as if it grew bigger the longer I lived without meeting him? As if his perfection doubled itself over and over again all those years I went without even knowing what he looked like in person? He was so bright, so perfect, all mine, and every other boy around me seemed like a cheap facsimile, a pointless fake when I had Maxen in my mind.
He had me in his mind too, I know he did.
Maxen.
Can’t you see it? I can see it. Can’t you feel it? I can. I’d fit you better than any woman, you’d love me like I love you if you only knew me.
Maybe you already love me.
The edge of the river is awful up close, and I watch the orange bob of an empty prescription bottle float by.
A memory floats by with it.
Pill bottles in a bathtub. A wineglass shattering on the floor and my father’s voice, so angry, so angry, followed by the splash of water and a hard slap across my mother’s face. He’d never hit her before or since, but she’d found the one thing that could break him.
I’d forgotten about the bathtub, the bottles. The times my mother stared at the ceiling with an empty face and an even emptier mind, when I’d crawl up next to her and try to hug her and it would be like hugging a corpse. The jags of crying that would last for days and days and days. It was easy to forget those, because who would want to remember? She’s not well today, was the delicate way we talked about my mother.
Not well.
Not well meant days in bed, or flashes of anger so hot they burned everyone around her, or strange, brittle laughter echoing through the halls. Not well meant it wouldn’t be long before I was sent away again, because I upset her in mysterious ways that were never properly explained to me, because I was the opposite of the rest and quiet everyone said she needed to become well.
Am I well?
