The Third Child (12 page)

She was being punished. They hadn’t made love that evening and now they weren’t going to. She felt hollow as she strode across campus. Blake wasn’t fair to her. He’d been the one who wasn’t in a hurry to bring her home, before she let him know she wasn’t eager either. Now he was sulking because she hadn’t insisted. She didn’t want to court trouble with Rosemary and Dick. Blake was her secret. She had always hidden what really counted from them, what she cherished most, the same way she hid her diaries and finally destroyed them for fear they would be found. She could see herself throwing her diary into the Schuylkill River when she was sent away to boarding school, for fear Rosemary would read it. Not that she had much to hide, just secret dreams and resentments, her anger, her fantasies. She imagined herself heroic and daring, all the traits she had never possessed. She was the heroine of her own stories, saving villages, leading charges, a clever and dangerous spy. She could not have endured Rosemary or Merilee reading her stories or even the prosaic narratives in her diary about school, her crushes, her daydreams, her sense of being overlooked and undervalued.

Even though it would mean not seeing Blake all vacation, not even seeing Emily, she wished she could just stay at school, the way she had during spring vacation when she was at boarding school when she was sixteen: then her parents had gone abroad. Her father was on a mission to increase exports from Pennsylvania, to secure lucrative overseas contacts and contracts, and of course Rosemary had gone with him. Melissa had felt a little sorry for herself, but only a little, because she could indulge in fantasies and reading and lying late in bed with no one to berate her for
lack of ambition. But now, she must go to Philadelphia and just hope that she and Blake could hook up a few times and that she could keep him under wraps awhile longer.

Emily said, “At least we’ll have a great week together. Maybe I’ll get to Philadelphia, if the folks approve. It doesn’t do to ask them beforehand. They’d say, Don’t you want to be home with us? But after I’m home for a week or two, they won’t care if I take off. Parents always like you better when you’re away, don’t you think?”

“I’d have to be on Mars to get far enough away to make them miss me.” Melissa was trying to cram her laundry into her backpack along with the clothes she would need for parties and dates and dinners. It wasn’t working. She hated suitcases. They were so not cool. She would have to take her backpack filled with laundry and then a suitcase stuffed with clothes her parents would expect her to wear. She hated to drag all that stuff out of the dorm. Maybe no one would look at her. But Whitney and Ronnie and Carol would notice her, loaded down like a pack animal. It was too embarrassing, but at least it wasn’t as bad as Fern, who was walking out with a battered old imitation leather suitcase, like something from the fifties. Well, Whitney always had loads of luggage, so she should just relax.

M
elissa had spent little time in the town house in Philadelphia, purchased through Stan Wolverton, Rosemary’s financial advisor, to provide a legal residence in Pennsylvania. It was a deep narrow redbrick row house two stories tall, plus a converted attic, a few blocks from Rittenhouse Square. Many of the row houses had been rehabbed, but some hadn’t. There were lots of young professionals with babies on their block. Behind their row, a paved alley ran, but it had its own name, as if it were a real street. Most of the tiny backyards were taken up with makeshift garages, but theirs was just paved for parking. She liked the square with its cool places to eat and have coffee, but in the daytime it was full of people with dogs, mommies and nannies airing their babies. Next to Georgetown, this lacked excitement.

She had her own room at the top of the house. Her parents did not require much staff on their visits, although Alison came along. Rosemary always needed her, and besides, Melissa could not imagine with whom Alison would spend the holidays otherwise. Alison had been raised by her father and an aunt, but they were never in evidence. Her mother had died of breast cancer. Her father had a younger family Alison sometimes bought presents for but never seemed to visit. As far as Alison was concerned, Rosemary was her family. Alison needed family; Melissa often felt she had rather too much of it.

Her top-floor room had a dormer window and a sloping ceiling on which she had already cracked her head twice.
Her
room: it felt less hers than the room she shared with Fern in the dorm, more like a hotel room where she was spending a few nights. The entire house felt that way, although Rosemary had brought in a decorator. The diningroom was blue,
the livingroom gold, the hallways a faded rose—all colonial colors, the decorator had told Rosemary, in keeping with the age of the building.

Melissa liked being up where she could hear pigeons cooing on the surrounding roofs, a soothing, sympathetic sound, as if they were trying to comfort each other. The room was drafty, so she slept under a feather quilt that had been kicking around the family since she could remember. Her room was a pale pink that made her feel as if she were in a nursery, while Merilee’s equally tiny room across the hall was pale gold. She wanted to imprint herself on it, but it seemed a waste of energy. How often would she be here? Still, she had to make it somewhat her own. She found a rocking chair under the eaves in what remained unfinished of the former attic and spray-painted it black. She would buy a black bedspread if she could find one, a relief from the colonial scheme in the house. She’d get posters. Blake would have ideas. She had not heard from him. He had his cell phone off, and the number of the Ackerman house had been busy every time she tried. She imagined him caught, slowly rotating at the vortex of the whirlpool of extended family, gradually drowning.

Her parents’ social life was hectic. That night they had three parties to attend. Between the second and third, her mother rushed in to change out of a pale green chiffon and then dashed out again in midnight blue silk. Rosemary’s porcelain complexion was rosy with haste and excitement. She liked parties. She viewed them in the same predatory way Emily did, but Em hoped to find a guy to hook up with and Rosemary was looking for contacts useful to Dick she could create or polish. When Melissa was younger, their affairs had seemed glamorous. Now she just wanted to stay out of sight. Her parents set her teeth on edge. They were a handsome couple with a dazzle to them that magnetized the eyes of everyone around. Dick looked hale and hearty, as if his skin were buffed like his shoes. Rosemary appeared fragile, aristocratic, all planes and angles. Together they gleamed like a new Mercedes. They looked ready to be photographed. Televised. They looked like winners.

Merilee was home for the holidays, mostly studying at the nearest library and sometimes going down to a law library she could use. Rose
mary was berating her for breaking up with Bruce. “He’s exactly the sort of boy you should be encouraging.”

“I don’t have time to encourage anybody. In law school, everything counts. Everything matters—except who I go out with, if I have time to go out with anybody.”

“There’s no more important decision than the man you marry—that will determine the parameters of the rest of your life.”

“I set my own parameters, Mother. I have no time for guys.”

Melissa was happy that Merilee was getting criticism for once. For years, everything Merilee had accomplished was held up to her as the way to go. Merilee was so feminine, so prissy, so proper, so well-behaved, with scarcely a hair out of place, just like their mother. She had never gotten in trouble in school, never been caught smoking in the john and getting shellacked and puking after a football game, all the things Melissa had done and been punished for. She had a little thrill of pleasure: Now Merilee was getting a bit of Rosemary’s Procrustean bed for her girl children. Let’s chop off that foot right there. Let’s pull on your spine a little. Don’t slump. Don’t stand like a flagpole. Don’t speak too loudly. Speak up, don’t mumble. You must excel in school, you must live up to your potential. Don’t take grades too seriously, they’re not the purpose of your existence. Smile: no one looks her best when she’s pouting. Don’t smile too freely at people who don’t matter, they will get the wrong idea.

Melissa watched her parents at the rare meal they shared around the almost unused diningroom table. She waited for the prickles of guilt because of what she had promised to do with that punk-haired dork Phil. They didn’t come. Phil and Blake and she were just kids playing at politics. Her parents were the real thing; anyone looking at them would see they were impervious. She tried to think of something to say from the little she had learned so far about Dick that would attract his attention, would impress him and cause him to turn to her, but her mind went blank and her mouth felt dry. Trying to influence him was only a daydream. She was just protecting herself, as she had always done when she eavesdropped on their conversations, arming herself against ambush, against
disappointment, against the worst thing, hope. Dick’s secretary, Audrey, who stayed with her mom when she was in Philadelphia, came by with a bunch of constituent requests. Rosemary handled most of them, yes to this, put that one off supersweetly, get Alec on this right away.

She had been home for four days and still Blake hadn’t called. She finally got through to his parents’ house, but whoever answered said Blake was out and they didn’t know where. Another time she got a woman, perhaps his mother, who said Blake was with some old friends from high school. She was furious with jealousy. An old girlfriend? She could hardly question his mother, if it was his mother. She could not sleep that night, imagining that she wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, brave enough, sexy enough to keep him interested. Finally, the day after Christmas, the day before she was to go to Emily’s in Connecticut, she got him. “Blake! Why haven’t you called me? Are you angry with me?”

“I didn’t think it was important to you. After all, you didn’t want your family to catch sight of your pet darky.”

“You said you were going to be very busy with family. That’s not fair.”

“Then what are you surprised about?”

“Blake, I have to see you. Please. You have me worried sick.”

“Are you sure? After all, someone might catch you with me. Then they would k-n-o-w you’ve hooked up with a Black boy.”

“Do you want to come over tonight? Is that what you want? I’ll introduce you.”

“I want you to want to.” Then, as if he’d lost interest in the argument, “So you want to meet for coffee? What’s near you?”

It was a storm blown over. She was still stunned. She felt hollow, emptied out. “There’s a coffee shop in the Barnes and Noble in Rittenhouse Square.”

“I’ll meet you there. I’ve a couple of errands to run. Say in an hour?”

He was late. She sat with a latte looking every three minutes at the Swatch watch Emily had given her. His anger had not blown over. He was still resentful and he would not appear. She had lost him. She grabbed a book to stare at.

Finally, forty minutes after she had arrived, she saw his leather jacket outside and he came striding in, graceful as ever, beaming as if there were not a problem in the world. He was so beautiful, she felt a pang. She could not deserve him, no matter what she did. “What happened? I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Train was late. And slow. Holiday schedules. Remember my bike is at school…. Now aren’t you glad you waited?” He leaned to kiss her on the forehead.

That was almost an apology, and she did not want to start an escalation of temper between them. “I missed you.”

“All of me or just part of me?” He gave her a crooked grin.

“You didn’t answer my e-mails, you didn’t answer my calls.”

“Never got a message. It’s been a madhouse there. I left my laptop at school. I knew I wouldn’t have time to work or check my e-mail.”

She didn’t believe him. He didn’t cross the street without his laptop, bound to him by an umbilical cord of habit, of need, of compulsion. But she had a choice to challenge or let it go by. “So what’s been happening?”

“Dad’s mounting a last-minute appeal for a death row inmate who got screwed by the so-called justice system. Mom is fighting for a lesbian mother to keep custody of her partner’s son—the partner died of one of those weird sudden heart attacks. Grandma is fighting city hall about mandatory drug testing in the schools. Great-grandma just broke her hip on a demonstration against the World Bank. My sister Sara is pregnant, and I went with her to the clinic two days before Christmas to get an abortion. My folks don’t know—”

“They wouldn’t go along with an abortion?”

“She’s embarrassed that she got pregnant—”

“She didn’t do it by herself, Blake—”

“She forgets to take the pill. Anyhow, I’m cool about it. I went with her and held her hand and she pretended to have the flu.”

“That’s why you didn’t call me?”

“I told you, it’s a madhouse. It’s like living in a pot where the water is always boiling and there’s always room for one more lobster.”

“You don’t sound unhappy about it.”

“They’re good people.” He rubbed his cheeks into his hands as if washing his face. “Tiring, though. So what’s up with your mishpokeh?”

“What does that mean?”

“Mishpokeh. Family. Group. Your folks.” He patted her hand. “I pick up a certain amount of Yiddish at home. It goes away at school. So what’s up?”

“Merilee broke up with her boyfriend—”

“No surprise there. She’s been really sarcastic about him to all the friends she e-mails.”

“Why are you reading her e-mail?”

“You got me interested in the ins and outs of your family life. It’s part of understanding you. But it’s like a political soap opera. I’m addicted. You want to see what I’m talking about?” He reached in his jacket and pulled out a page of printout.

Melissa put the printout down on the table. “I had no idea she had issues with Rosemary. Maybe I should try to talk with my sister.” He did have his laptop. Otherwise, how was he reading their e-mail?

“Be careful. Her issues are pretty precise, and most of the time, she adores them. So watch out.” He looked at his watch. “Time for us to head off to see some people my mother knows.”

“I was hoping you’d have time to help me pick out some posters for my room here. It’s so kind of bleak.”

“These are people you ought to meet. I’ve set it up where to find them. They don’t know who you are—they think you’re writing a piece for school.”

“So are they like celebrities?” She wondered if he was putting her on.

“Your father cut funding for the homeless. Leaving it up to the private sector. I thought you’d be interested in seeing what that means.”

She could hardly say she wasn’t interested, but she resented his volunteering her for something in which she had never expressed the slightest interest. She had hoped they would find some convenient place to make love, that they would talk intently as they did at school, that he would help her find stuff to fix up her room.

They took a bus through a part of the city strange to her that went on and on for miles, where everyone seemed to be African-American. Finally he stood and they got off in a run-down seedy area where there were lots of boarded-up storefronts and buildings. She was glad if she had to be dragged up here, north-central Philly, where nobody she knew ever went, that she wasn’t alone. She was glad too for Blake’s height and the air of tough bravado he put on with his leather jacket. She should think of this as an adventure; but she felt inconvenienced and disappointed. How could it not be a priority to him to make love? Unless he had been with someone else, that old girlfriend. She hoped he had forgotten she was going to Emily’s for her usual Christmas visit, so that he would be shocked to realize what he had missed.

The funny thing, she thought as she looked around, was that, architecturally, this neighborhood had a lot in common with Georgetown. Lots of Federal row houses, mostly stone here, but run down into serious slums. If this neighborhood ever gentrified, it would be pretty—if there were anything left.