5. Parents' Day

It falls into place when Nessa declares that she will be commencing her university education a year early – and abroad, no less – but Melena does not yet know this. All she knows is the winter sun streaming through the gauzy curtains and the seven application packages staring up at her from the table and the horror on Frex's face, how he tries time and again to talk Nessa down, only to realize just how deeply those pretty new heels are dug in.

Nessa, at this time, is sixteen and determined as anything. Melena, at this time, is thirty-nine and rediscovering what she hasn't had to acknowledge in a long, long while: that her daughter is something completely separate from herself.

It is almost painful to think of Nessa, who was six years old what seems like a month ago, tugging at the cord until it chafes their palms, but worse to think of herself as the tyrant who won't let go, so when Nessa looks her square in the face and proclaims this is the only thing I've ever wanted, Melena melts. She plasters a mask of neutrality over her confused emotions – joy, surprise, pride, jealousy, something so unfamiliar that she cannot place it – and resolves to help Nessa to her feet. This counterbalances the belligerence from Frex, who continues to overlook what is owed and sputter meaningless words like "forbid" and "unthinkable" and "insanity" until Melena wearies of bidding him to calm down and props their daughter alone.

For months, she hangs about in doorways, watching as Nessa chews pens to gnarled bits, scribbling sentences and then scribbling over them with an anguished groan, toiling over each essay until it is perfect and then toiling a little more. She keeps a record of the forms and questionnaires that Nessa completes, the ones that she completes, and the letter she encloses with each application to request a general sense of the arrangements that can be made for Nessa's care. Melena does this, and yet it is not until an envelope from Shiz University passes from Nessa's hand to hers that the strange emotion dogging her every contribution throbs forcefully in her chest, overtaking the excitement. Her eyes rake over the word acceptance and she places it as fear.

She thinks of Nessa on her own.

She thinks of Nessa, who has never crossed the borders of Munchkinland, who has never maintained a friend beyond the cook's nephew and the gardener's daughter and her own parents, who expects life served on a silver platter with a fresh sprig of parsley in its mouth, on her own.

But then she thinks of Nessa, who is to govern the largest state, who worms her way into the hardest hearts and writes essays that incur scholarships from reputable schools, who belongs to a generation of girls that will go to university and will not marry unless it suits them, who will have ideas instead of children and won't know a damn thing about china or linens, on her own – and in those moments it seems as though they are on the right course after all.

By the time Nessa crumples under the burden of her own doubts, staring down her course enrolment package with watery eyes, Melena finds herself so well-versed in this rebuttal that she takes minutes to lure her daughter out of their grip and devotes hours to it anyway. At nightfall, their cheeks glisten with the wet tracks of tears, but Nessa is utterly convinced that she is not so much lost as wandering, and smiles in spite of her hiccupping sobs. She makes her mother swear to write every other day, counting the sheets of paper she'll require until the Lurlinemas holiday, exhorting her to describe everything there is: the weather, the politicians at their table, the latest crisis in Appleton. Melena squeezes Nessa's hand and promises to do so without the faintest bit of irony, thinking all the while that she wants Nessa to love and learn and grow, but not to change, not even a little.

The trunks get packed, though, and the sentimentality recedes, and when they tread the cobblestone walkway to Nessa's college it feels rather less like an ending.

Nessa is raring to go – as she's been since the driver announced their passage into Gillikin – and deserts Melena almost immediately, finding a niche in the first group of girls that diverges from the overflow of anxious parents. They are a wild-eyed and wary population, like caged animals, but coiffed and overdressed, and Melena suspects it is only the affluent families who have been invited to tour the campus and greet the headshiztress. She wades in opposition to them, hoping to recover her ally, but is soon caught up in the seething current of bodies and ferried to some parlour or other, where she helps herself to a cocktail and wanders aimlessly, altering her course when a familiar face peers her way and focuses.

Eventually, she is wedged in the corner of the room, between an armchair and a hearth, with the figure in the seat obstructed by the wings. Melena rocks onto her toes for a better glimpse of the heavy tome on their lap, but this betrays her scrutiny.

The face that turns up to confront her, eyes flaring with exasperation, is green.

Melena's grip tightens around the stem of her glass. She hasn't seen Elphaba in two years – some unnecessary banquet after the refurbishing of the Yellow Brick Road, she thinks, or perhaps the new dam by Restwater – and for whatever reason she feels compelled to apologize for the pomposity of that event, of this event, of anything, but Elphaba is quicker on the draw.

"My father isn't here," she says.

Her mouth opens and then closes dumbly, the blood drains from her face, and Melena is sure that this moment, right now, is the end of the charade, surely she has been caught out. But she hasn't been, because Elphaba drops her eyes and continues without investment:

"Whatever agenda you wish to push should be in written form. However, I make no promises that it will reach him." She tugs a crumpled sheet of paper from the inner fold of the book's cover. "And if you wish to distinguish yourself by merely sending your regards, you may add your name to this list of thirty."

Heart beating steadily again, Melena regains her footing and suppresses a smile. "Well, I didn't have an agenda, but now I do: his daughter has no manners."

"Frankly, I did not wake up this morning expecting to be harassed by a whole nation's worth of sycophants." Elphaba closes the book on her finger and gazes into the crowd converging around the headshiztress. "I don't think I've been addressed by name a single time. Unless it really is Daughter of Oz and no one's bothered to inform me."

"It's only fitting for Parents' Day, isn't it?" Melena says blithely. "People love to define you by who your parents are."

Elphaba snorts. "Or where your parents are – which is not here, having his own soles treated by the bootlickers." She flips open the book and shrugs. "I suppose I just hoped otherwise."

Melena is struck by how casually Elphaba admits this and frowns, her brows knitting. "Your father isn't here," she says. "Why come?"

"I still have to register." Elphaba waves at the mess of papers splayed by the armrest, one gust of air from scattering off the surface and underfoot. Melena flattens a bent corner that is protruding from the pile and thinks of Nessa's package, carefully ordered and parcelled, while Elphaba continues, "He says it's past time that I learn to stand for myself."

"He's stranded you."

"According to him, it's my education launching itself a day early."

"Huh."

Elphaba nods at a group of girls, Nessa's group, who have made their way in from outside. "I'm to square my shoulders and charge into circles like that and be cordial."

"Not all of them are terrible," Melena says half-heartedly, but their eyes meet and part again and they share a laugh until they have studied the girls for long enough to feel that the joke is on them. Clustered as they are in their puffy dresses, the group resembles a lurid bouquet, and Elphaba sees vividly what she is to be excluded from. Melena, meanwhile, sees that Nessa's niche is not a niche, for she does not fit, and is willing to bet that the parents of those girls have not mandated cordiality. It creeps up again, the fear that resides in the pit of her stomach, and she rests a hand on the chair for support.

"They seem to like her," Elphaba tries.

The prickle of a stare severs the trance and she glances down at Elphaba, who is ducking her head and picking at her sleeve in a manner too obvious to be misleading. A smile pulls at Melena's lips, then dissipates as she reverts to watching Nessa, with the finger that is already twisted into her hair, with her sweet face and her bright eyes and all the secret thoughts darting around behind them.

"Seeming is a talent for them," Melena says. "They'll eat her alive."

"I'm not good at artifice either."

This time, Melena can't keep her attention from flitting between the two girls and resting on the latter: Elphaba, who will never be waiflike again, with her sharp features and glasses and the effect of shrewdness that she derives from her father. But arresting eyes that are dark and distant and aged twenty years by an ache that is as tangible as tears and undoubtedly Melena's own.

"They've only just met, haven't they?" Elphaba says. "What could they possibly be talking about?"

"What could they possibly be talking about?" Melena replies, gesturing towards Madame Morrible and the throng of parents vying for her attention – Frex chief among them, brandishing Nessa's papers like a flag. She hasn't paid them much mind since her entry, but she does not like the turn this conversation has taken.

Elphaba swings around to peer at the fray. "What do you mean?"

"Why would anyone spend more than thirty seconds in the presence of that woman?"

There is no stance to be discerned from Elphaba's reply. "My father insisted that I enroll in her sorcery seminar. He speaks very highly of her."

"Does he?" Melena pauses, as if this generates anything other than more distaste. "I'm not sure…there's something off about her. Something fishy."

For a moment, Elphaba's mouth goes wide and she is scandalized, having borne witness to blasphemy against the woman whose word is law on these premises. It is a losing battle, however, and her eyes stay fixed on Morrible's clammy face and ridiculous bustle until Melena gets a muffled laugh for her efforts. Shamelessly, she capitalizes on the imagery and says, "Do you think she speaks as she does in the acceptance letter?"

"It would certainly befit our rank as tomorrow's leaders to hear those phrases aloud."

Melena affects a deeper voice, inspired by Morrible's few booming proclamations, and hauls the absurd wording of Nessa's acceptance letter from the foggy reaches of her memory. "Ah, yes, but would it—" a flourish, "—encouragerize your potential? After all, that is the raison d'être of Shiz University. You, Elphaba Diggs, are in the flower of your youth, the future is a path untrodden, the…what was the next part? I'm drawing a blank."

"The world a garden of challenges, which you will master, and the air is the knowledge that abounds around you."

Elphaba is solemn when she relays this, forsaking the sporadic emphasis, and Melena knows that the bit is over. She smiles slyly and says, "Nessarose is not the only one to have read her letter a hundred times, I take it?"

"A hundred?" Elphaba scoffs. "A thousand, I think. I carried it with me for months. I thought it would help me…stand for myself, I guess. I thought it would give me power."

You have power, Melena thinks, remembering the floor shaking under her feet and the chandeliers swaying, remembering the applause of the Munchkin audiences and the unbridled praise in the headlines. "You can handle Morrible," she says.

"She's not the one who scares me," Elphaba says. Her gaze strays back towards Nessa, towards the blonde ringleader, towards the adoring cohorts and their shrill giggles. "There's nine of them already, and in one group. From one college."

"A garden of challenges," Melena tries.

"Best left unmastered."

Melena sighs. "And where do you propose to sleep?"

"A private suite, I think. If the papers are done right." Melena's eyes lower once more to the mess by Elphaba's elbow. "When that inevitably falls through…well, there are fourteen libraries on campus. I'm sure I can stake out a nook in one of them."

"Private suites had to be requested in advance, I believe."

"Oh." Elphaba laughs hollowly. "I wasn't expecting it to inevitably fall through quite that fast."

Melena bites her lip and thinks nine of them and imagines the girls pairing off while Nessa chokes on their dust, and hears it in the voice of Elphaba, who is too young to be world-weary but sounds it anyway, who will be scorned privilege as soon as the parents depart, green and illegitimate and prone to provocation. She pictures the two of them, opposites and so very much the same, burgeoning on womanhood and really just little girls in disguise, and blurts, "Maybe we can strike a bargain."

She's not sure if it's fair to foist Nessa on Elphaba, or vice versa, but she knows in this moment that it has to be done. "I can procure you a roommate," she says. "I can get you out of here in a reasonable amount of time. Hell, I can even face Morrible."

"And what will I be facing?"

"My daughter's wrath," Melena admits, albeit with deceptive flippancy. "It's no small thing. An educational experience, even – diplomacy and whatnot."

Elphaba hesitates. "What if I do something wrong?"

"Believe me, she'll let you know exactly what you're doing wrong."

"She'll hate you."

"She makes that claim four times a day."

A sheepish twist curves Elphaba's mouth upwards and Melena can see that she is relaxing into the idea. Her fingers fan over the pages of the book in her lap, as if rediscovering that it is there, and she says, "My father always told me that Munchkins are difficult to deal with."

"Is that so?"

"Oh yes. He said of all the thorns headed for my ass, the Thropps would prick the worst." She blushes. "I mean—" Melena leaves her to flounder. Elphaba says, "Well, at any rate, the Daughter of Oz and the Daughter of Munchkinland…if I were that kind of person, I would almost call it fate."

Melena ignores this, gathering the papers from the side-table and sorting what she can from what she sees. She feels the weight of Elphaba's eyes and wants to say something more, end it on a less discordant note, but she can think of nothing worse than encouraging Elphaba to be that kind of person – not when there is only chaos and coincidence and so much spite.

"I…" Melena starts, and then she sifts past the list of sycophants, thirty strong, and tugs it from the pile. "I believe this belongs to you."

"Oh." Elphaba hastily reaches out, but overextends her arm, grasping the page by the corner that Melena is holding. Their thumbs brush, barely, sending a shock through Melena that isn't an actual shock – though it has the same effect – and she only just manages not to flinch, suppressing it and mustering a shaky smile to smooth over the rupture in her composure.

Elphaba folds the list, then folds it again, and again, and gives no indication of a similar upheaval. She says, "If you do have an agenda, I suppose it's only fair that I pass it along to my father."

"I don't have an agenda."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Melena says, smile solidifying, brightened by authenticity as Elphaba stuffs the sheet away and looks up. The ache is gone but their eyes are still the same. "Only, do give him my regards."