The Third Child (11 page)

“You’ll go too? Really?”

“I’ll go too,” Fern said. “As long as I don’t have to say anything.”

Emily tilted her head back, eyes on the ceiling. “I always wanted to be in a demonstration. My parents did all that when they were young, back around the Spanish-American War.” Emily straddled the desk chair. Her voice rose in amused excitement. “They get all misty when they talk about the good old days on the barricades. Your parents will want to quarantine you, but my parents will adore me. They’ll be thrilled. I bet I get the car I’ve been bugging them for.”

“Wow, I wish you would. That would be great.”

“It’s worth a try,” Emily said, yawning. “I’ve got to catch up on sleep this weekend. I fell asleep in class today.”

If Emily and Fern didn’t think what she was doing was insane, it must not be too bad. She would tough it out with her parents. She made most of the phone calls, giving her name but not mentioning her father. Melissa Dickinson was a common enough type of name. If people didn’t know who her father was, they never guessed. Why seek out trouble? Emily volunteered to call two TV stations. Emily was such a good friend that Melissa almost began to think of herself as unusually lucky, for she had a great boyfriend and a great roommate and friend. Even if her family despised her, she had Blake and Emily and Fern.

The day of the demonstration loomed. That morning it was raining semifrozen drops when she awoke—if waking meant anything after dozing in brief fits all night. She was relieved. She wished it were a monsoon. Then she got scared all over again. She would be branding herself a trou
blemaker, one of the weird wanna-bes who hung around the African-American students and imitated their clothes, their language, their style. But Blake’s group was in the right, and she should be supporting them.

The sleet kept up. The demonstration was called for noon. The local TV station had driven their truck right onto campus and had lights set up. She felt awkward, conspicuous, out of her element. The African-American students and their supporters trickled into the area, lots of raincoats and ponchos and parkas, two faculty umbrellas, a sea of baseball caps. The sleet made the scene look like bad TV reception. Her teeth chattered, perhaps from cold, more likely through pure nervousness. She saw Blake, taller than most in the crowd and far handsomer, already talking to a reporter under one of the outdoor lights they had rigged up. Florette was beside him, both holding forth. Ironman arrived late, but the camera immediately focused on him. She did not go over to join them. She waited on the edge of the small crowd with Emily and Fern. They huddled together, waving their signs. The printing held, but the drawings that Emily had made were running. Fern looked miserable but held her sign high, waving it occasionally.

She hated to see Blake on the other side of the plaza and not to go to him, but she didn’t want to be interviewed, she didn’t want to appear on TV. She saw Blake gesturing at one point that she should come over, but she pretended not to understand. Instead she just hoisted her sign higher and waved it harder, as if that was what she understood him to want. They had about forty-five, maybe fifty students taking part. Along the other side of the plaza were some antis, frat boys yelling at them. One heavyset guy was in a shouting match with Jamal. Someone from the dean’s office appeared to represent the university. An occasional chant arose, but the real confrontation was between Jamal, Ironman, Florette, the guy from the dean’s office. There probably wasn’t enough action for the reporters, because they closed down and drove off when it became apparent nothing more exciting was going to happen. No building takeovers, no violence. It would be, she suspected, a thirty-second item on the evening news.

Blake made his way to her. “I wanted you to talk to the reporter.”

“Would it be appropriate for a white girl to seem to be speaking for the
African-American students? I thought you just wanted me to show my sign to the camera.”

“It’s okay.” He grinned. “We made our point. And it stirs things up a bit. Gets some people involved. What more can you ask?”

It was over. She felt an immense relief. Blake was turning back to Florette and Jamal, who were waiting for him. Melissa took Emily’s arm and Fern’s, and they trotted back to the dormitory to change out of their wet clothes. She was chilled through. “Let’s have hot chocolate,” Emily said. “I have a two o’clock, but there’s time. One of those coffee machines has hot chocolate, if I can remember which one.”

Fern shook her head, but Melissa said, “My treat.” Fern went along then. Melissa had noticed Fern never wasted money.

She felt as if she were slinking away, but at least she had done what they asked of her, almost all of it, and she hadn’t appeared on TV herself. She could hope her mother wouldn’t hear about it. She learned later that one of the Kennedy cousins had been in an automobile accident that morning, and the crews had rushed to the Boston hospital where he was being operated on. She was vastly relieved. The Kennedy cousin had saved her.

THE NEXT NIGHT,
she studied with Blake in his room. They worked for a couple of hours, and then he scooped her up out of her chair and carried her toward the bed. She loved being carried. It felt romantic, like a movie, and she was half sorry he did not have to carry her farther. She reached up to him and they kissed, and then, quite slowly and gently, he lowered her to his bed. Then just as slowly he removed her clothes, kissing the skin he uncovered as he went. “I know you were scared,” he said in his softest most velvety voice. “I know you were afraid you’d get in trouble with your family.”

“I was a little scared.”

He went on uncovering her bit by bit and letting his lips travel across her skin. “More than a little.”

“I did it. Everything you wanted.” She worried he would bring up the
moment when he had motioned toward her and she had pretended not to understand.

As if he could read her mind, he said, “Florette wanted you on camera. But I wasn’t pissed that you didn’t come over. That would have been begging for trouble. And you’re right about it being sleazy using a white spokesperson…. So you didn’t end up doing anything you didn’t want to do, did you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I want to be with you in everything you do.”

“I know.” He smiled and went on making love to every inch of her. “Because what we do, we do together. We move as one. We act as one.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said, her voice catching. She was aroused to the point of almost finding his kisses painful. “Come into me.”

“No, I want to eat you first.” He stripped rapidly, as always folding his clothes over his desk chair. He never threw his clothes on the floor the way Emily and she did. Each item was processed.

She bent to suck him, but he pushed her back down. “No. This is for you. Because you were brave in spite of being scared. Because you didn’t let your family intimidate you. You dared to go against them and what they stand for. You fought them in your own way. That’s real strength, babes.”

She was embarrassed to have him laboring over her. She had never just lain there and had a man do oral sex on her. “Baby, you don’t have to do this,” she murmured, trying to pull his head away.

“Why would you think I wouldn’t enjoy it?”

“You know. I mean, I’m not beautiful or anything. I’m too fat.”

“Fat? You’re up a tree. You have a great body. Who ever told you different? You’re built like a woman should be. Now shut up.”

She felt as if she were taking too long, but she was beyond a level of excitement when she could make him stop. When she came, she found she had tears in her eyes.

M
elissa was disappointed with their lunches. Blake had been sitting down with other people. First it was Florette and Jamal. Now it was a white kid from Philadelphia, Phil. She wondered if Blake was growing bored with her company. Emily warned her not to try to keep Blake to herself, no matter how much she desired it. Em knew much more about guys than she did, so she listened. She fantasized that Blake and she were cast away on an island, sent into space in a two-person rocket ship on a five-year mission. Or just snowbound in a cabin. She longed to pull him away from his demanding friends and acquaintances, from distractions and classes, even from the bike he rode off on by himself, claiming it was too cold for her. She never got enough of him.

Florette and Jamal she could understand: they were his closest African-American friends on campus. But Phil? He was a runty guy with red hair cut roughly punk, as if he had done it in the dark in a fit of pique. He rolled his own cigarettes with a flourish. His fingers looked yellow, and he always seemed to have a cold. Em and she considered him weird. She worried that Blake was growing tired of her, that she no longer commanded his prime attention. Yet at moments she was convinced he loved her passionately. She tried to imagine how to make herself more interesting. Emily told her to take an interest in what Blake was interested in. “Guys always fall for that. Even if it’s, like, football.”

“You’re really into Phil,” she said tentatively, ready to back off if the statement bothered him.

“I thought he was someone you should know.”

“Me? How come?”

“Well, you want to be a crusading journalist, right? Or you did last week.”

“That’s what I want,” she said. The way he said it, it sounded silly. Her mother would certainly think so.

“So, Phil ought to be useful to you…. He knows who your father is. How come you don’t know who his father is?”

“Phil Lippett?” The last name was vaguely familiar. She tried to think where she had heard it. Back when Dick was governor, Rosemary had tried to cultivate a Lippett who had been attacking her father and whom she had hoped to win over or at least neutralize. He had been one of her failures. “Roger Lippett. A reporter for the
Philadelphia Inquirer
.”

“One of their best.” Blake beamed at her, tousling her hair. “Yes, babes, that’s his father. Our Phil intends to follow in his footsteps. Linking up with him could be useful for you. He’s a junior who spends his summers at the
Inquirer.
”

“A junior? Why would he hang with us?”

“We intrigue him, babes. It’d be useful for us if we continue to do so.”

She felt a rush of gratitude. No matter how unimpressed she had been with Phil, Blake was charming him for her benefit. He actually took her vague ambitions seriously and was trying to help her. Nobody else had ever done that.

“Like his father, he’s fascinated with King Richard. By the way, he was on CNN today, Phil told me. I wish I’d known. I like to see King Richard in action.”

That was Blake’s new name for her father. She had begun using it when she e-mailed Billy, who picked it up at once. King Richard seemed appropriate for Dick, who had always appeared larger than life but also hollow—like the huge balloons she remembered from the parades of her childhood Noreen had taken Billy and her to watch. Blimpy Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, huge and almost frightening to a child. She had read about a woman killed by one of those balloons that had got loose at a Macy’s parade in Manhattan. Dick could seem like that: huge, cartoonish, but dangerous too. Rosemary never forgot a slight, but Dick said, “Keep your eye on the ball. The best revenge is turning an enemy into an
asset. Watch for their weaknesses, watch for what they most need. Win them over or neutralize them. Only fight when you have to. Revenge isn’t victory.”

“Oh.” She grimaced. “He just wants to know me to get some dirt on my father.”

“He’s not a reporter yet. He’s learning the ropes, as you must. I thought you could help each other. And this is a start to informing yourself so you can learn to act as a conscience for your father. You can’t catch his attention unless you know a surprising amount.”

“Why would Phil want to help me?” She had a deep mistrust of those who came at her father. Dick might be a little corrupt, but politicians were under far more scrutiny than businessmen or professors. Her father did what he had to, what he could—the same as the President, the same as every other governor or senator. He was cleaner than the others, she was sure of that. Reporters were no better, willing to do anything to get a story, willing to smear people.

“Because you aren’t in your father’s pocket. I know how difficult growing up in that household has been for you, and I’ve told him how independent you are. We won’t share with him our real aim—to educate you in the ways of your father’s politics so eventually we can influence them. That’s our project and he doesn’t have to know about it.”

He was flattering her. She resented it and she ate it up. “How come you started hanging with him? A junior.”

“We met in Philadelphia last summer. My parents know his father.”

“So maybe he’ll just put up with me because he likes you and he knows we’re knocking boots.” So far, in the two times they’d had lunch together, Phil had barely spoken to her.

“You haven’t been open with him either. You just sit there staring at the tabletop.”

“I’ll do better,” she promised. “You know I’m not real forward with people I don’t know.”

“That’s got to vanish if you plan to be a journalist, babes.”

“You’re right, of course.” She felt as if he were the only person she had ever known who saw what she needed and who pushed her to do what she
ought to. Emily was on her side, but she didn’t put that much intelligence or forethought into daily life. Blake did. That made her fearful she would not live up to his expectations, that she would fail. She had been failing all her life, but at a game she had not agreed to, where she had been discounted before she began. She did not want to fail with Blake. She could just go along with Phil and Blake and keep her opinions to herself, just pick up pointers on doing research and that would be the extent of it. She would treat it like any other course, something unreal but necessary to pass through. And always, as Blake said, she would keep in mind her real goal: to become someone whose political opinions her father would respect, would listen to. It was a fantasy she could slip into easily. Instead of consulting only Rosemary, instead of closeting himself with Rich and leaving her out in the cold, he would be astonished by her insight. He would once again let her into his attention. Rosemary would be shocked, but she would prove herself. She could see herself in her father’s office, consulting with him on some bill he was trying to decide whether to support or argue against. Maybe it would never happen, but just maybe it could.

She looked carefully at Phil when they sat down together the next week, just before Christmas break. He was as runty as she remembered, with hair the color of the poinsettias decorating the food court. His eyes were wary as he examined her in return. She suspected that Blake had been talking up each to the other, trying to persuade them to open up, to form an alliance through him. “Blake said you were doing a research project that I might be able to help with—so I’d learn something about how an investigative reporter works.”

“I’m hip deep in the Big Muddy of a project, but I don’t know that you’d want to help out,” he said. He had a surprisingly deep voice for a little guy. She would bet that anyone he was speaking to for the first time on the phone would think he was tall and robust.

She bridled. “Oh. Why is that?”

“The subject of my investigation is some of Dick Dickinson’s activities as governor of Pennsylvania.”

She felt as if she had been kicked. She had been set up. For a moment she said nothing at all but looked at Blake to ask him with her eyes,
Why?
But he was beaming at her as if he expected her to be overjoyed. She felt trapped. Blake obviously expected her to get involved in whatever project Phil was working on. Oh, she ought to have guessed, when she heard who Phil’s father was. Blake was saying, “But Lissa’s no fan of her father’s. She’s been fighting with him for years.”

“Arguing about a pet or a curfew is one thing. Digging up the dirt—and there’s plenty—is something else again. How did you guys ever hook up?”

“We have a class together,” Blake said dismissively. “What kind of dirt?”

“What he’ll do for contributors, what he’s done for them. Especially around environmental issues. That’s my kick.”

Roger Lippett had been trying to embarrass her father for years, with only intermittent success. Why did this stupid-looking kid think he could do better? She drew into herself, fearful that Blake could read her reaction. How could working with this nerd possibly bring her closer to her father and gain his respect? But she had to go along. Blake seemed to think it would do her good, both as a potential journalist and as a potential influence on Dick.

Finally she said slowly, still looking down, “The truth is important to me.” That didn’t commit her to anything. Rosemary often said that reporters didn’t care about the truth, only about their bylines and the circulation of their papers.

“In politics,” Blake said, “truth is a malleable thing. Depends on who’s telling it. Depends on who’s hearing it.”

“I don’t agree,” Phil boomed. “The facts can be uncovered, discovered. People can have different opinions about values, but facts are rock-bottom.”

“What do you think?” Blake turned to her. “Are facts like bricks? Or like clouds, that change while you watch them from a lion’s head to a running dog?”

“I agree with Phil,” she said firmly but softly. “Interpretations differ. But facts if you can get at them are what you can rely on.”

“So are you really going to help me get at some facts?”

She might as well meet with Phil a couple of times and see if he had anything to teach her. He wasn’t about to uncover anything that would hurt her father. If Roger Lippett hadn’t managed to injure Dick for all his years of trying, his ridiculous son didn’t have a chance. She would humor Blake by pretending an interest, just as Emily had advised her. Plus she would learn more about her father’s political activities. “I don’t know how to do that, but I’m willing to learn. I am taking a full load of courses, so I don’t have lots of time.”

“So am I. So am I. This is just a little project on the side, something we can all three fool around with,” Phil said.

THE NEXT EVENING,
Melissa asked Blake, “Do you really like Phil? ’Cause you kind of play with him.” She was sitting in his desk chair as he sprawled on his narrow bed, both of them studying for finals.

“He’s not my bud, if that’s what you mean. What he’s trying to do is interesting, and he could teach you a lot. Liking is beside the point.”

“Sometimes you can be very cold.”

“Absolutely. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of how cold I can be, babes.” His voice was lazy but lined with hard metal. “You don’t want to know that.” He tousled her hair, almost too hard.

“Well, I’m going to apprentice myself to him. I’ll learn what I can. Both method and facts…. To learn what I can about my father. I mean, wouldn’t you learn about your father if you could?”

“I know all I need to know about my father.”

“But you don’t know who—Oh, you mean your adopted father?”

“Who else?” Abruptly he reached over and pulled her down to him on the bed. “I desperately need a break. Let’s tussle.”

Sometimes he stopped a conversation that way, by starting to make love to her, but she didn’t mind. She would rather have sex than talk about Phil and his dirt-digging mission, for she didn’t want Blake to guess her lack of enthusiasm.

CHRISTMAS VACATION
loomed. All that time stuck at home. Emily suggested they spend a week together. Melissa would be in Philadelphia. Dick needed to be pressing the flesh with his constituency and backers. Mother wanted to spend time with Rich and Laura. Melissa was a little nervous about Blake. They would be in Philadelphia with their families, but she was in no hurry to introduce him.

“There’ll be some family junk to get through, but we should have plenty of time to get together,” he said. “Show you my old haunts. We’re out in Mount Airy, not that far. Will you have wheels?”

“Not a chance. But I can take a cab or public transport…. Do you want me to meet your family?”

“Let’s see how the ground lies first. You’ll be in Connecticut part of vacation, right?”

“I was going to. Emily and I usually visit during the holidays.”

“I told you, there’ll be a lot of family stuff. My brother and sister, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, third cousins four times removed, grateful clients of both my parents, other lawyers from the Guild. The place is like an airport with everybody coming and going and yelling at each other, and every five minutes we have a huge sit-down meal.”

“It sounds wonderful!”

“If you like that kind of thing.” He was noncommittal, but she didn’t believe his cool demeanor. She wished she could be a part of his family scene, but then she would have to introduce him to hers—and that would be a declaration of war. It was probably better if, for the time being, they got together without making a fuss—met someplace.

“We can just avoid the family thing,” she said, “at least for now, if that’s okay with you.”

“Don’t want me to meet your folks, do you?”

“Well, do you want me to meet yours?”

His eyebrow rose sardonically. “I’m trying to spare you bedlam. But I
think you’re afraid for your parents to lay eyes on me. Who is that?
What
is that?”

“I just don’t know if we want to fight that battle yet.”

He sat up, glaring. “You’re ashamed of me.”

“How could I be? You’re handsome and smart and wonderful.”

“And not exactly white….” He was still glaring at her.

“Do you want to meet them?”

“When you’re really ready,” he said. “Time to douse it this evening. I’m leaving tomorrow on the early side and I still have to pack.”