“Have you met Henry?” Alex says. “How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.”
“Are you really not understanding how much I don’t care at all how you feel about this?” Zahra says. “This is what’s happening so your stupid ass doesn’t distract the entire country from your mother’s reelection campaign. Do you want her to have to get up on the debate stage next year and explain to the world why her son is trying to destabilize America’s European relationships?”
Well, no, he doesn’t. And he knows, in the back of his mind, that he’s a better strategist than he’s been about this, and that without this stupid grudge, he probably could have come up with this plan on his own.
“So Henry’s your new best friend,” Zahra continues. “You will smile and nod and not piss off anyone while you and Henry spend the weekend doing charity appearances and talking to the press about how much you love each other’s company. If somebody asks about him, I want to hear you gush like he’s your fucking prom date.”
She slides him a page of bulleted lists and tables of data so elaborately organized he could have made it himself. It’s labeled: HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET.
“You’re going to memorize this so if anybody tries to catch you in a lie, you know what to say,” she says. Under HOBBIES, it lists polo and competitive yachting. Alex is going to set himself on fire.
“Does he get one of these for me?” Alex asks helplessly.
“Yep. And for the record, making it was one of the most depressing moments of my career.” She slides another page over to him, this one detailing requirements for the weekend.
Minimum two (2) social media posts per day highlighting England/visit thereof.
One (1) on-air interview with ITV This Morning, lasting five (5) minutes, in accordance with determined narrative.
Two (2) joint appearances with photographers present: one (1) private meeting, one (1) public charity appearance.
“Why do I have to go over there? He’s the one who pushed me into the stupid cake—shouldn’t he have to come here and go on SNL with me or something?”
“Because it was the royal wedding you ruined, and they’re the ones out seventy-five grand,” Zahra says. “Besides, we’re arranging his presence at a state dinner in a few months. He’s not any more excited about this than you are.”
Alex pinches the bridge of his nose where a stress headache is already percolating. “I have class.”
“You’ll be back by Sunday night, DC time,” Zahra tells him. “You won’t miss anything.”
“So there’s really no way I’m getting out of this?”
“Nope.”
Alex presses his lips together. He needs a list.
When he was a kid, he used to hide pages and pages of loose leaf paper covered in messy, loopy handwriting under the worn denim cushion of the window seat in the house in Austin. Rambling treatises on the role of government in America with all the Gs written backward, paragraphs translated from English to Spanish, tables of his elementary school classmates’ strengths and weaknesses. And lists. Lots of lists. The lists help.
So: Reasons this is a good idea.
One. His mother needs good press.
Two. Having a shitty record on foreign relations definitely won’t help his career.
Three. Free trip to Europe.
“Okay,” he says, taking the file. “I’ll do it. But I won’t have any fun.”
“God, I hope not.”
* * *
The White House Trio is, officially, the nickname for Alex, June, and Nora coined by People shortly before the inauguration. In actuality, it was carefully tested with focus groups by the White House press team and fed directly to People. Politics—calculating, even in hashtags.
Before the Claremonts, the Kennedys and Clintons shielded the First Offspring from the press, giving them the privacy to go through awkward phases and organic childhood experiences and everything else. Sasha and Malia were hounded and picked apart by the press before they were out of high school. The White House Trio got ahead of the narrative before anyone could do the same.
It was a bold new plan: three attractive, bright, charismatic, marketable millennials—Alex and Nora are, technically, just past the Gen Z threshold, but the press doesn’t find that nearly as catchy. Catchiness sells, coolness sells. Obama was cool. The whole First Family could be cool too; celebrities in their own right. It’s not ideal, his mother always says, but it works.
They’re the White House Trio, but here, in the music room on the third floor of the Residence, they’re just Alex and June and Nora, naturally glued together since they were teenagers stunting their growth with espresso in the primaries. Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest.
They settle into their usual places: June, perched on her heels at the record collection, foraging for some Patsy Cline; Nora, cross-legged on the floor, uncorking a bottle of red wine; Alex, sitting upside down with his feet on the back of the couch, trying to figure out what he’s going to do next.
He flips the HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET over and squints at it. He can feel the blood rushing to his head.
June and Nora are ignoring him, caught in a bubble of intimacy he can never quite penetrate. Their relationship is something enormous and incomprehensible to most people, including Alex on occasion. He knows them both down to their split ends and nasty habits, but there’s a strange girl bond between them he can’t, and knows he isn’t supposed to, translate.
“I thought you were liking the Post gig?” Nora says. With a dull pop, she pulls the cork out of the wine and takes a swig directly from the bottle.
“I was,” June says. “I mean, I am. But, it’s not much of a gig. It’s, like, one op-ed a month, and half my pitches get shot down for being too close to Mom’s platform, and even then, the press team has to read anything political before I turn it in. So it’s like, email in these fluff pieces, and know that on the other side of the screen people are doing the most important journalism of their careers, and be okay with that.”
“So … you don’t like it, then.”
June sighs. She finds the record she’s looking for, slides it out of the sleeve. “I don’t know what else to do, is the thing.”
“They wouldn’t put you on a beat?” Nora asks her.
“You kidding? They wouldn’t even let me in the building,” June says. She puts the record on and sets the needle. “What would Reilly and Rebecca say?”
Nora tips her head and laughs. “My parents would say to do what they did: ditch journalism, get really into essential oils, buy a cabin in the Vermont wilderness, and own six hundred LL Bean vests that all smell like patchouli.”
“You left out the investing in Apple in the nineties and getting stupid-rich part,” June reminds her.
“Details.”
June walks over and places her palm on the top of Nora’s head, deep in her nest of curls, and leans down to kiss the back of her own fingers. “I’ll figure something out.”
Nora hands over the bottle, and June takes a pull. Alex heaves a dramatic sigh.
“I can’t believe I have to learn this garbage,” Alex says. “I just finished midterms.”