A Song for Julia

infidelity, secret abortions, divorce, suicide …
    On Sunday morning, she posted, front and center, a photo of me in Crank’s arms, kissing. In front of the White House. Which meant she’d followed us out of the restaurant, looking for dirt, and found it. And then made up a story to go along with it, a story which dredged just enough of my past into it to paint me as a complete slut.

    Are wedding bells in the air? Or rock guitars clashing? That may be the case for Julia Thompson, the eldest daughter of Ambassador Richard Thompson, who retired to San Francisco after a mere one year as Ambassador to Russia. Longtime readers of Maria’s Meanderings will remember that Ambassador Thompson’s appointment to Russia dragged on for more than two years when Senator Rainsley of Texas questioned his fitness for the post.
    Young Ms. Thompson was found in the passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. He has a rap-sheet nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts. After tourists and observers objected that the young couple’s public display of affection was unseemly, they moved on to a quieter location. Could it have been Wilson’s room at the 1-star Hotel Riviera in Arlington? Readers will forgive me if they do not recognize the Riviera: home to prostitutes, drug addicts and apparently down and out rock stars. It isn’t exactly Society’s venue of choice for family functions.
    Of course, we don’t know how serious the relationship is or if it serious at all. After all, this is not the first time Julia, now a student at Harvard, has been involved with dubious characters. Her classmates at the International School of Beijing, where she attended her first three years of high school, described her as a “party-girl” and whispered rumors of sex-parties and a back room abortion when she was fourteen years old. It was these rumors that put a halt to Ambassador Thompson’s appointment, until after President Bush took office, according to a confidential informant on the staff of Senator Rainsley.

    The story was followed by a link that led to the subscription-only bowels of her website. I didn’t have access to that, but I knew what was there—years’ worth of stories smearing my family. None of those mentioned me by name, and most didn’t even say my father’s name; Clawson danced on the edge of legality and had somehow managed over the years to avoid being sued out of existence.
    When I read the story in my room Sunday evening, I felt my stomach clench, nausea flooding me. The rumors that Maria had published on her website in the past never included my name. I guess that’s because I was still a minor, so I was safe.
    Not any more.
    Party-girl. Yeah, right. It was one thing to make things up. It was another thing to write complete fiction and pass it off as truth. I was a lot of things in high school, but I was never a partier. Except when Harry pushed it too far. When he pushed me too far.
    No wonder, really, that my mother reacted the way she did. Our family had occupied first place on Maria’s website for quite a long time, and everybody knew it was my fault.
    But nobody knew what actually happened. That was too simple and sad and sordid a story to be of any real interest to anyone.
    After I read the blog entry, I sat, staring off into space for a long time.
    Finally, I got up and walked out of the room and wandered aimlessly around the campus for a while.
    It didn’t happen often, but sometimes I could hear his voice in my nightmares.
    You love me, don’t you? See? That wasn’t so bad.
    It had been years since I’d heard that voice in daylight hours, but here I was, and here it was, and I felt fourteen and vulnerable and scared and alone all over again. My stomach was turning; I wanted to vomit. It had been a long time since I’d felt that way. A very long time. See … the thing is, I had no one to go to. No one to ask for help. No shoulder to cry on, no one to tell me it was going to be all right. It’s not like my sisters were going to be of any help. After all, Carrie was only nine years old back then. And I could hardly go to my parents. When they did learn about it, it was only secondhand, and I still hadn’t lived down the consequences.
    I didn’t bring my daughter up to be a slut, she told me, contempt in her