or more. And there was no end in sight.
Chevy Chase Elizabeth McGarvey awoke in a cold sweat, disoriented and not exactly sure where she was for the first few moments. She’d been having the familiar dream again in which she was at a mall carrying around a bottle of perfume she wanted to buy for her mother’s birthday. But she couldn’t find a cashier. She was a teenager still in junior high school, and she had just enough money to the penny to pay for the perfume. Her mother had been on her case about spending her allowance as fast as she got it. It was something that her father would never approve of. He’d been gone long enough from their lives that she had begun to fantasize about him. Whenever she found herself in a situation she would try to think what her father would say or do. This time she had saved her money, which would make him proud, and she was buying a good bottle of perfume, which would make her mother happy. She couldn’t lose except that she couldn’t find a cashier.
She found herself at the main exit from the mall, the bottle of perfume still in her hand. For some reason she thought she might be able to find a cashier outside in the parking lot; maybe one of them coming to work. The moment she stepped outside, however, sirens began to blare, and two policemen, guns drawn, came running after her, shouting for her to stop or they would shoot. That’s when she spotted her parents. Her father had come back and he was standing in her mother’s driveway. They were having a terrific argument, and no matter what she did to get their attention they were ignoring her. She figured if she could get across the street her father would know what to do; he would straighten out the mess, give the policemen the money for the perfume and send them back to the mall. But her mother was saying something to him in that maddeningly calm voice of hers, and her father was just standing there taking it, and she knew she would never be able to reach them until it was too late, though she wanted nothing more than their love and for them to be proud of her.
The house was quiet. Elizabeth looked at the clock radio on the nightstand as it switched to 12:21 a.m.” and her heart began to slow down. She was in one of the spare bedrooms down the hall from her mother. She was safe. Nothing could hurt her here. And yet she was frightened.
She got up, used the bathroom without turning on the light, then put on a robe and went to her mother’s door. Her mouth was gummy from too much wine. She hesitated a moment, then knocked softly.
“Elizabeth?” her mother’s voice came softly from within.
“May I come in?”
“Of course, dear.”
Her mother, dressed in a bathrobe sat in one of the chairs by the window that looked out over the country club’s fifteenth fairway. The window was open. Elizabeth could smell the night grass smells from the golf course and hear the sprinkler systems at work.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Elizabeth said. She came to the window and looked outside. The sky was partly cloudy, but it was a moonless night and despite the glow of Washington’s lights she could see a lot of stars. The same stars, she thought, that her father might be seeing. But then she realized that in Afghanistan it was already morning. No stars. The thought made him seem even more distant to her.
She looked back. Her mother, her face still unlined and beautiful even without makeup, was watching her. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I,” Kathleen said. “Are you okay?”
Elizabeth sat down beside her mother. “I was having a bad dream.”
“About your father?”
“And you,” Elizabeth said shyly. She’d never told her mother about that dream.
“The shoplifting one?” her mother asked, and Elizabeth’s mouth opened. Her mother smiled gently. “Close your mouth, dear. You sometimes talk in your sleep.”
Elizabeth looked at her mother closely for the first time in a long time. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and full lips, but her eyes were clear and startlingly bright even in the starlight. There was a calmness in her expression, a peacefulness that overrode even a hint of fear. She’d been in this position before; waiting, wondering when the phone would ring with the news. Her husband was in harm’s way, and although he’d always managed to somehow survive, there was always that possibility that even his skill and luck would finally run out. She was steeling herself for it, as she had before, only this time it was different. This time she wanted him to come back. She wanted to know that he was safe and that she would have him back in her life at least for a little while until he went off again on another assignment.
Elizabeth saw all of that in her mother’s face, and understood now how much hell her mother had somehow endured over the past twenty-five years. A very large wave of love washed over her and she reached out for her mother’s hand.
Kathleen smiled gently. “A penny,” she said.
“I was just thinking that I love you and Daddy. But I never knew just how much until right now.”
Kathleen’s eyes glistened and she looked away. “Dammit.”
“It’s what he does, Mother. It’s who he is.”
Kathleen turned back, her delicate nostrils flared in a flash of anger. “He’s very, very good at it. But he’s a stupid man because he won’t admit to himself how many people are dependent on him. They’re going to suck him dry until there’s nothing left.”
The outburst left Elizabeth speechless, but her mother always had the ability to surprise her. On the surface she was nothing more than another well put together post Junior League society woman. In reality she was one of the major behind-the-scenes fund raisers for a dozen charities and major organizations, among them the American Red Cross. She had the ability to mingle with the wealthy and talk them out of significant amounts of money before they realized what had hit them. She was as intelligent, well bred and knowledgeable as she was beautiful.
“It’s true,” Kathleen said. “You work in the Directorate of Operations now, so you’ve seen your father’s file, and I suppose there are stories you could tell me. But I have my own stories too. I’ve seen what the job has done to him over the past twenty-five years. I don’t think anybody knows where it will end, least of all your father.”
“He’ll never go back to teaching,” Elizabeth said with a little anger. She was afraid she was hearing her old mother now, the one who had driven her husband away.
“Don’t give me that look, Elizabeth. I’m not asking your father to quit for my sake. But he’ll destroy himself unless he can finally learn how to depend on someone other than himself.”
“He has Otto and Dick Adkins and the rest of his staff.”
Kathleen shook her head. “I mean emotionally. The difference between your father and me, is that when I get hurt I want to be surrounded by people I love. But when he’s hurt he’s like a dog who runs under the nearest porch to be alone so that he can lick his wounds.”
Elizabeth understood exactly what her mother was saying, because she’d always been torn both ways herself; wanting to run home to her mother for sympathy, while at the same time wanting to be left alone to nurse her own wounds. It was one of the messages from her dream, she supposed. She wanted to get to her father so that he could take care of the policemen chasing her, yet she could never reach him. Her subconscious was telling her to work out her own problems. How else could her father be proud of her?
They sat for a while in silence, looking out the window at the golf course. The windows on this side of the house were Lexan plastic because of the occasional stray ball. Her mother didn’t seem to mind; she’d lived here for a long time and she was a member of the club.
“Where did your father go this time?”
“Afghanistan,” Elizabeth answered without hesitation.
“Is he going after bin Laden?”
“Just to talk.”
“Is he still there? Have you heard anything yet?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Nothing yet, but he’s carrying something that allows us to know where he is at all times.”
“I thought the chip was only for field officers,” Kathleen said, but then she smiled wanly. “That was a dumb comment, I suppose.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
“How is Todd Van Buren these days? I haven’t heard anything about him lately.”
“We’re going to dinner on Friday,” Elizabeth said, feeling a sudden warm glow. Van Buren was an instructor at the CIA’s training facility in Williamsburg. He’d saved her life on a mission that had gone sour last year. Since then they’d had a slowly developing relationship. Van Buren was a little too macho and Elizabeth was a little too
