The Third Child (18 page)

“Down here, Mother,” she called.

Blake looked frozen. She must have infected him with her fear. She tried to give him a reassuring glance, but his eyes were fixed on the doorway, waiting.

Rosemary tripped down, carrying her handbag and a package. The driver was helping Dick with the bags, and Alison was managing packages of whatever Rosemary had purchased. “I thought we’d better…” Her gaze swung to Blake and remained there. “Hello?” The tone was icy.

“Mother, this is Blake. He was in my writing class at school. We ran into each other this week, and we’re having supper together.”

“In the kitchen. How romantic.”

“Mrs. Dickinson, a pleasure to meet you.” His voice rose weirdly, but it was full and resonant. “It was nice to run into someone I know in Washington.”

“Are you here as a tourist?” Rosemary was still eyeing him.

“No, I’ve been in a language program. But it’s over. It finished today.”

“So you’re a student at Wesleyan.” Rosemary motioned them to follow her upstairs into the diningroom. “Goodness, what happened here?”

“I moved the furniture out of the livingroom. I’ve been doing an exercise routine every morning before I go to work. I’m trying to firm my tummy.”

“How commendable.” Rosemary cast a look over her shoulder at Alison, who was hovering in the doorway. “Could you take my things upstairs, Alison?”

“I’ll help you move the furniture back, Melissa,” Blake said. He was in control of his voice now. “Just show me where it goes.”

Rosemary sat at the foot of the diningroom table (she would never for a moment usurp Dick’s chair) watching them carefully. Melissa could feel her mother’s scrutiny walking like a long-legged spider over her arms and back.

“Got everything in. I let the driver go. How is—What’s going on here?” Dick paused in the French doors, watching Blake and Melissa haul chairs back into the livingroom.

“Melissa introduced her friend from school to me. Blake something. Blake, what’s your full name?”

“Blake Ackerman, Mrs. Dickinson.”

“Oh, yes,” she said with a nod of her well-coiffed blond head. Melissa could feel her mother categorizing Blake. What did they see? She looked at her lover, trying to imagine him through their eyes. His eyes like burning coals, intense, dark, radiant. His black hair, Indian looking, long on his neck. Tall, slender but strong in his build. His honey-colored skin. His shapely hands. “And what are you studying, Blake?”

He hesitated. “Well, I’m a freshman like Melissa, Mrs. Dickinson. I haven’t really picked a major. Maybe something toward science. Information theory. I don’t really know yet.”

“But you must be a devoted student to go to summer school, and in Washington.”

“I love languages. Sometimes I think of being a translator. Maybe one of those simultaneous translators like at the UN.”

“Fascinating. Thank you for helping Melissa move the furniture back. I’m wondering how she would have done it alone on Sunday.”

“I thought Billy could help me when you came home.”

“But how did you move it out by yourself?”

“Slowly,” she said. “A piece at a time.” At that moment she hated her mother. Probing, always probing. That sterling intelligence burning like a laser into her explanation. One of the only times her mother ever paid her first-class attention was when she had to lie, when she was in some kind of trouble, when she was making excuses.

“Well, your family must be expecting you—but you said they were in Philadelphia?”

“I’ve been staying with a friend of the family while my class was on. Tomorrow I’ll return. As I told you, my class ended today.” He picked up his backpack from the chair, where Dick was staring at it as if he could see into it through the coarse black fabric. “I’ll be getting back. They’ll be
expecting me. Bye, Melissa. Thanks for having me over. I’ll probably run into you at school.”

“Ackerman. Ackerman,” Dick was repeating. His mind was a vast Rolodex.

“Good night, sir.” Blake fled.

“I should have asked him if his father is related to that lawyer.” He turned to Melissa. “What does his father do?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. If I run into him again, I’ll ask him, if it matters to you.”

“Pesky fellow, that lawyer. He gets criminals off—or he tries to. We’ve had several tussles.”

Rosemary’s gaze was now fixed on Melissa. “Weren’t you afraid to invite him back to the house alone? How well do you know him?”

“We had the same writing class and we’ve studied together in the library. I’ve had lunch with him and other kids from the class. He’s a nice guy. No, I’m not afraid of him. I was glad to run into him. He’s very bright.”

“Jewish,” Dick said. “Looks Spanish. I wonder what his mother is.”

“I have no idea. Look, what difference does it make? I just had supper with him.”

“Why didn’t you eat in a restaurant?”

“You always call around seven. I didn’t want you to worry. Besides, takeout is cheaper.”

“Is he a scholarship student?” Dick asked. “A poor boy?”

“I don’t know! Really, how much am I expected to know about some guy from school just to eat supper with him? He’s always well dressed and going to some language school this summer instead of working, like I had to do, so I imagine his parents have money.” If she had any guts, she would tell them that he was her boyfriend; but she didn’t dare. Besides, Blake had not seemed to want that confrontation yet. Still, she felt as if she had betrayed him. She was proud of him, not ashamed. “Now I’m going upstairs!” She fled before she burst into tears, almost tripping over Alison, who was right outside the diningroom listening.

Her room smelled like sex to her. The bed was not made, and quickly
she sprayed air freshener all around and over the sheets, then made it. She wanted to air out her room, but opening the window to the hot humid Washington night would alert Rosemary that something was wrong. She ran around her room looking for signs of Blake’s presence. There! He had left a stud from his right ear on her night table. She dropped it into her padded jewelry box, where it would get lost among earrings and bracelets. She checked the bathroom. Shaving cream. His razor. She started to put them in her underwear drawer, then remembered that was where anyone would look first. Instead she put them in the back of her desk drawer. She would dispose of them next time she left the house. His deodorant. That went in the same desk drawer. Then she was satisfied nothing was left, except that she had to wash the basin clear of a sprinkle of black hair from shaving.

Creeping out of her room, she heard her parents’ voices downstairs, low, murmuring, and she could imagine what they were saying about her. About him. They were only suspicious, she told herself, because they had walked in on them, although of all the things they might have been doing, eating supper was the most unincriminating. But they did not like her bringing a boy into the house in their absence, and they did not like the looks of Blake. She would be in for direct and indirect interrogation, that was for sure. She stared into the mirror, assuming her blandest, blankest expression. She felt as if her real self was coiled within like a seedling in a peach pit. Hidden. Waiting.

M
elissa wished she could pull some other friends out of Washington to parade before her parents. She thought of girls she had not seen since Miss Porter’s, at least two in the area. She called them both. The first number, she got an answering machine and no one ever called back. The second number, she reached Jessica herself. They arranged to meet Sunday noon at a coffee shop in Georgetown. Jessica sounded surprised but agreed at once—probably bored silly to be home with her parents. Melissa mentioned the meeting casually as if she had been seeing Jessica all summer.

“Jessica—who’s she?”

“You met her at Miss Porter’s.” To a contemporary she would have described Jessica as a plump blond with butch hair and a talent for drinking quarts of beer without getting visibly drunk. To Rosemary, she said, “She’s the daughter of a career bureaucrat in the Department of the Interior. Forestry stuff. Her mother is from Virginia and also claims to be a collateral descendant of Robert E. Lee. We talked about it when she was my friend at Miss Porter’s.”

“I remember. Your father checked it out, and the claim is legitimate. She’s a distant relative. That’s the sort of connection you should be pursuing. You didn’t mention seeing her this summer.”

“You didn’t ask. What does it matter? We have a good time together.”

“As well you should. That’s the type of person with whom you have something in common.”

“I have more in common with that guy you didn’t seem to care for. We go to the same school. We had class together. We know some of the same people.”

“Then perhaps you should meet different people this year.”

She had a better time with Jessica than she expected. Since they were in different universities, each seemed to feel she could be frank. Jessica was doing a lot of Ecstasy and in trouble at school, having fallen in love with a townie she’d met at a rave. He had a Harley and an ex-wife with a kid. She had added a lip stud to her previous collection. Melissa told her a few things about Blake, including his Honda. They agreed that parents just couldn’t understand and promised to get together over Thanksgiving, provided they both were in Washington.

When Melissa returned, a video crew was occupying the first floor and the backyard, making a promo for the NRA featuring Rosemary, who had been a poster child for them previously. The NRA contributed heavily to Dick’s campaigns, and he strongly backed the freedom to pack. Rosemary was speaking to the camera in a forceful yet coy way about the need for women to be able to protect themselves and their families.

When taping was finally over, two hours later, Alison came in and picked up the rifle and the revolver Rosemary had put down as soon as she was done with them, as if they might burn her hands. Rosemary might sing the praises of firearms, but she secretly hated them. She disliked even touching them. Alison cleaned the guns, made sure they were in working order by firing them from time to time at a local range and watched Rosemary’s posturing with them to make sure it was convincing. Alison had grown up in the countryside of Pennsylvania in a hunting culture. She had made Dick and Rich more proficient at handling firearms. Rich enjoyed shooting. Melissa at one point had thought she might take it up, but Rosemary had not encouraged her interest. “You’d probably shoot Alison by accident or your own foot. Let the boys play.” Not that Melissa had ever wanted to shoot anything; she just liked the image of herself looking cool. After all, even Billy knew how to handle firearms: why not her?

MELISSA WAS
tremendously relieved to pack up and head back to school. Alison was driving her, as Dick had been invited to play golf with three
influential senators, Rosemary was buttering up Mrs. McCloskey in preparation for Congress’s return and Melissa had too much stuff to cart on the train. It was a strain to spend seven hours in the car with Alison, who felt impelled to make conversation. But Alison’s questions were easier to deflect than Rosemary’s, in part because Alison was not and never had been interested in her and lacked the vocation of a true inquisitor. She mainly ran on about Rosemary and her charm and what a wonderful wife and mother she was, how she personally thought Rosemary would make a great senator herself. “She is on top of every issue,” Alison declaimed. “She has an understanding of politics at least the equal of your father’s.”

Well, duh, Melissa thought. Who do you think tells Dick what his issues should be?

“College towns and campuses are always such a hodgepodge,” Alison said as they drove through the small downtown uphill to Wesleyan. “You’d think they’d try to keep things more uniform to be aesthetically pleasing.” Melissa didn’t answer, wanting to defend her school but also wanting to reveal as little of herself as possible to Alison. Finally she was delivered to her dormitory and Emily, whose parents were helping her settle in. Fern had moved into Open House, having finally decided to come out, and Melissa and Emily would be roommates. Emily’s mom and dad looked at each other when they learned that Melissa’s parents had not bothered to take her to school themselves. That look she had seen pass between them before, pitying and judgmental. Emily’s folks did not give hers high marks in the parenting department. Melissa rather enjoyed their mild pity, and she agreed with them about Dick and Rosemary. She imagined her mother ticking her off on a computer-generated list: get third child returned to college. A check beside it. Emily’s folks helped her settle in too. She enjoyed the attention, but she could not tell Emily what had happened until her parents left and finally they were alone.

“They just walked in? Without calling? Do you think somebody tipped them and they were trying to catch you bonking him?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not important enough for them to think it mattered to let me know they were returning early.” Melissa frowned.
“Although maybe they were suspicious. I asked Billy if they interrogated him, and he said they wanted to know if I was seeing anybody.”

“Did he tell them?”

“He couldn’t. I never confided in him.”

“Still, maybe they liked Blake. He’s gorgeous and smart—”

“And Jewish and dark-skinned, of obviously mixed race. Just what they’d order up for me, right? Never underestimate their prejudices.” She bounced across the room to hug Emily. “I’m so glad to see you, Em. I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am to be back here with you.”

“Hey, kid. We’re sophomores now. We’re not the new kids on the block—”

“I hated that group. Merilee used to listen to them—”

“They say nobody ever likes their older siblings’ music. I barely remember them. So, anyhow, your parents finally met Blake so now you can ooze into letting them know he’s your steady Freddy.”

“No hurry!” She set up her laptop. “So do you still have cooties or whatever? Are they contagious?”

“Only if we have sex. No, I got rid of them with crap from the drugstore. It stung but it did them in. What a scurvy skanky guy to give me bugs, Lissa.”

“You always like musicians.”

Emily shrugged. Her hair looked shinier. Melissa made a mental note to ask her what she was using on it. “It was something to do.”

Melissa logged on to get her messages. “Oh my god! Blake is expecting me to meet his parents tonight. At seven they’re going to pick me up—what time is it?”

“You have almost an hour to fuss about it.”

“What should I wear? Is my hair all right? Is my skin okay?”

She read his message again. He said, “I haven’t told my parents who your parents are, so let it be. Actually I told them you’re an orphan like me and you’re adopted by a family who lives in Washington. Your father’s in trucking.”

Now why did he do that? She’d have to remember the made-up part all evening. But in a way she was liberated from Dick and Rosemary, enjoy
ing an imaginary family instead. Often she had felt adopted; or like a changeling left in the cradle when the real perfect Dickinson baby had been abducted by aliens.

Blake was usually late and tonight was no exception. She sat in the lounge downstairs trying not to chew her nails, a habit she had broken while still at Miss Porter’s. Now she wanted so badly to bite her nails that she had to cross her arms. Then she started pulling at her hair. She radiated anxiety so strongly that a guy sitting near her moved to another seat. She wanted desperately for the Ackermans to like her, but why should they? They would disapprove. They wouldn’t be able to guess what Blake saw in her. What did he see in her? She was never quite sure herself. If only she knew, then she could be more that way, starting immediately.

Finally, at seven twenty-three, she saw him coming in the door accompanied by a wizened little man with a shock of white hair standing straight up as if electrified, an even shorter roly-poly woman with equally short white hair, and a pretty girl with spiked black hair, her buff midriff bare over tight pants, a swagger to her walk. That had to be the stepsister. They were introduced by Blake: “My father, Si Ackerman. My mother, Nadine Ackerman. My sister, Sara. This is my girlfriend, Melissa. Don’t bite her.”

Everyone greeted her, making no attempt to disguise their curiosity. They were all looking her over and examining her quite openly until she felt like hiding behind Blake. She was so nervous she didn’t even listen to where they were going. It turned out to be a Chinese restaurant where students often ate with parents.

“There’s a law that must be federal, since it applies in every state,” Si said as they looked at the menu. “No Chinese restaurant more than twenty miles from a major urban center can be trusted, and no good food can be served within two miles of any college or university.”

“So what are you studying, Melissa?”

“I think I’d like to go into journalism. Investigative journalism.”

“A dying field,” Si said glumly.

Blake squeezed her knee under the circular table. “Melissa has been
working with Phil, Roger’s son. Phil plans to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

“Good footsteps.” Si nodded at her. “I know Roger. I must have met Phil, but I don’t recall him.”

Nadine tilted her head to the side. “Is he the little guy who came to the house just after you got back from Washington? With funny red hair?”

Little guy, she thought. Nadine must be all of five two. Blake, Sara and she towered over his parents.

“So how’d you meet my bro?” Sara was playing with the chopsticks, arranging them in squares, Xs, outlines of houses.

“We had a writing class together our first semester.”

“You’re the first white girl Bro has gone out with,” Sara said. “Must be something about you.”

“His mother was white, Sara. And that girl Marietta was damned possessive. I was glad Blake cut her loose.” Si frowned at his daughter.

Marietta must be the girl who had visited him before they hooked up. How did Si know Blake’s mother was white? Blake had told her nothing was known about his blood parents. Maybe the hospital had recorded that much. Unknown white woman.

“So where do your parents live?” Nadine pursued.

“In Washington, D.C.”

His parents exchanged a look. “So much for the sudden interest in Russian.” Nadine grinned broadly. “It all becomes clear.”

“I wanted to learn Russian,” Blake said. “And I did damned well in that course. You saw my evaluation. I just didn’t see why I couldn’t do it in Washington and have fun with Melissa at the same time.”

“So how long have you been going out?” Si asked.

“Quite the interrogation you two have going,” Blake said. “Pity you can’t double-team like this in court.”

“Honey, we’re just interested. How could we not be curious and want to know as much as we can about your friend?” Nadine turned to Melissa. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“An older and younger brother and an older sister.”

She saw Blake dig Sara in the ribs. “Hey, I’m starving,” she said. “I’ll
pass out on the floor if we don’t order. Does anybody know if the Buddha’s Delight is edible here?”

Ordering was not like being in a restaurant with her parents. It was a fast hard negotiation. I won’t get the too-hot tempeh dish if you don’t get the peanut chicken I hate. “No, Sara, you can’t impose vegetarianism on us tonight,” Nadine said. “You did it at Thanksgiving, but not again. You don’t eat what you don’t want, but you can’t keep us from eating what we want. If it grosses you out, go sit in a booth by yourself.”

“But, Mom, Melissa hasn’t got to choose anything,” Blake complained. Somehow with his parents he was younger. His voice often rose closer to treble. She thought, Everybody stays a helpless kid with their parents. She certainly went on the defensive with hers. She should not be judgmental because the Blake who interacted with his adoptive parents was far less commanding and far less in charge than her Blake. Her Blake was the real Blake, escaped from his family, as this was the real Melissa, having gotten away from hers.

“I like most things,” she said. “What you’re ordering is fine with me.”

Everyone looked at her as if she had made a faux pas. Apparently insisting on something was what this family expected and admired, while the bland go-with-anything air her parents cultivated was dismissed as wishy-washy here. Well, she could recover. She could play their game. “I do really like mu shi pork…or chicken,” she added, remembering they were Jewish. “With pancakes.”

“Extra pancakes,” Sara said. “So what attracted you to my gangly brother? His bike?”

“Didn’t know he had one until I’d gone out with him.” She could hardly say that it was the feeling they both were outcasts. She kept watching for signs of his lower status in his family, but she could not find them. Perhaps the Ackermans were so different in manners, habits, decibel level from her parents that she read them poorly. “I liked the essays he wrote for class.” She thought that was a politic answer and the parents seemed to like it, although Sara shot her a look that said she knew bullshit when she heard it.

“Blake started out having trouble in school. But he’s become an exceptional student. Largely because he wanted to,” Si said.

“More because I got into computers. I hadn’t cared about school before that.”