Rise and Shine Read Online Free PDF

needs to be told who she is. Mostly they seem stunned by the three-dimensionality of her: in the park, in the restaurant, in the toilet stall.
    “If I didn’t wash my hands, it would wind up in the columns,” she said.
    “You went back to see some of the clients,” Ann Jensen cooed when we returned, threading our way around table after table. It was like doing the wave: table 43 stares, then table 28, then 11, then the single digits.
    “I know them,” Meghan said. “They’re friends of mine.”
    “So gracious. So gracious.”
    And she was. The mayor declared it Manhattan Mothers Day, the executive director of Manhattan Mothers introduced the film clip, Ann Jensen announced that the dinner take was close to two million dollars, and then she presented Manhattan Mother of the Year to Meghan. It was a crystal obelisk from Tiffany. Someday an archaeologist is going to be investigating ancient cultures and find blue box after blue box filled with crystal objects in Bubble Wrap with the name Meghan Fitzmaurice engraved at their bases. And he will wonder what in the world they were for. As did we.
    “It’s past my bedtime,” she said as she stepped to the podium, cradling the obelisk. And everyone laughed. Everyone knew that while the rest of Manhattan is watching the late news, Meghan is in bed, that in the empty hour just before dawn, when the streets are almost clean of cars and only the windows of insomniacs burn silver in the darkness, Meghan is in a black car on the way to the studio.
    “I wish my son, Leo, was here tonight, but he is spending three weeks in Spain, perfecting his skills in a language I don’t even understand. He is making himself more cosmopolitan, more educated, more a citizen of the world than his parents are.” She looked down at Evan and smiled slightly, to include him, but he was looking at his hands in his lap, threading his fingers together tightly. I smiled back at her.
    “That’s what every Manhattan mother wants for her children. Mothers rich and poor, black and white, Christian and Muslim, uptown in Harlem and downtown in Tribeca. We want our children to do better than we have done. We know that our families are the most important things we have or do.”
    And she was off. I don’t remember all of the rest. I’ve heard a fair number of Meghan’s speeches, and I still can’t quite understand how it is that she can make a small bit of alliteration, the repetition of a phrase, a pause and a tightening of the lips and a raised voice evoke the same sort of emotion that music does. It amazes me.
    “What we all want for our kids,” she said at the end, “is for them to rise and shine.” Oh, such a smoothy, I wanted to say cynically, to close with the name of her own show. But it was perfect. She stepped back, and they all stood up. Evan had tears in his eyes.
    I wouldn’t want anyone to think, in retrospect, that it was a night of great moment or triumph, although in the coming weeks a photograph of Meghan on that night, in that slender glittering fall of fabric, holding the plinth of crystal to her heart, would appear in the papers over and over again. In many ways it was a typical night of a sort that happened perhaps eight or ten times a year. Afterward I stood to one side as people asked her to sign their programs. It never varies, what they say: I never miss the show. You’re prettier in person. You gave an amazing speech. For Linda. For Jennifer. For Bob. For Steve. I stood to the side and held the blue box. In the car on the way home, Meghan handed me the obelisk, and I rewrapped it. It didn’t feel like the end of anything.
    “That wasn’t a really terrible one, was it?” Meghan asked Evan, her head thrown back against the seat.
    “It was fine,” he said.
    “You were great,” I said.
    “You’re quiet,” she said to Evan, who was looking out the window at the shadowed walks of Central Park.
    “I’m just tired,” he said without turning his head. I could see