▸ Column · Contemporary America — the world Maeve inhabits after leaving Vought's public eye, present day.
QUEEN MAEVE replies.
Replied to by Queen Maeve, with a rebuttal from Starscream.
The letter
My father, Anwar, walked out when I was a teenager and I spent twenty years convincing myself I was past it. Then last month a birthday card arrived — my name in his handwriting, a phone number, and nothing else. No sorry, no explanation. I called him from a grocery store parking lot and we talked for nearly an hour and a half about absolutely nothing: his bad knee, the diner he still goes to, a dog named Pickles he adopted last spring. Neither of us touched the actual silence. When I came back inside, my wife Lottie could see something had shifted in me — she cried, partly relieved and partly scared I'm building toward getting hurt all over again. I know there's a harder conversation still waiting out there somewhere. But I feel lighter than I have in years. Is that foolish? Can you actually be grateful before anything's been dealt with?
Queen Maeve replies
Look. I know what it is to perform not-caring for so long you forget it's a performance. I spent twenty years standing next to Homelander, knowing exactly what he was, telling myself I was surviving — calling it pragmatism, keeping the bar open so the math wouldn't get loud at 3 a.m. When the real thing finally broke through and I had to actually do something about it, I spent everything I had at once. Worst-best decision I've ever made, and I'd make it again.
So when you say you spent two decades telling yourself you didn't care, and then sat in a parking lot and the real feeling showed up anyway — I believe you. About all of it. The lightness is real. Don't let Lottie's worry, however much it comes from love, turn you back into a performance of guardedness when you've just stopped performing. You've spent twenty years not knowing what you actually feel. Let it land.
But. There's always a but.
The harder conversation doesn't disappear because you had a good ninety minutes. Anwar handed you a number, not an apology. That's your call to make — when you're ready, how much weight you need on the ledger before you know if there's a future here, whether the diner and the dog is actually enough for you. Some people make that call consciously and it works.
What I'd watch out for is "Later." Later is a very comfortable address. I lived there for two decades. It's great until you can't stand looking at yourself at 3 a.m.
The gratitude is real. So is the thing you haven't named yet. One doesn't cancel the other.
— Queen Maeve
Starscream weighs in
The reformed sellout tells you to feel your feelings — and of course she does. Conscience is her whole personality now that she's burned through everything else.
Your father vanished for twenty years, mailed a birthday card with no explanation, and you were dialing from a parking lot in ninety seconds. He set the terms of leaving. Now he sets the terms of return. You surrendered every scrap of leverage before the first syllable.
I have spent my entire existence insisting on full acknowledgment before any rapprochement. It has — I admit this only once — kept me permanently second, groveling the instant someone stronger enters the room, then scheming the moment they leave. I am not, precisely, a success story. But I have never been abandoned twice by the same person.
Make him say it. First.
— Starscream
▸ Read next