The Third Child (24 page)

“How is it going?” she asked cautiously, moving the pizza box to perch on the edge of his bed.

“I’ve found all but two of the names on the list,” he said, his voice rough with lack of use. “I don’t think it’s worth trying to find out what happened with the last two. Maybe they got off on appeal, whatever.”

“But how many does that make, that you’ve verified were pardoned or paroled?”

“Eighteen. Now I’m trying to run down the contributors and see what their interest was. Sometimes it’s easy—a wife, a brother, a father, an uncle, a business partner. Sometimes it’s harder to dig up, but then I can ferret out the connection—business or financial. Some I can’t trace yet.”

“How many have you been able to connect?”

“I’m not sure.” He called up a new computer screen and counted out loud. “Thirteen.”

“That’s two thirds. Isn’t that enough to prove your case?” She stepped up beside him and read the screen. “Blackstone. I remember him. He actually came to dinner at the mansion.”

“For twenty thousand, I’d imagine Blackstone rated a dinner.”

“I remember him because I’d been reading a children’s book about a magician with the same name. Blackstone the magician. I asked him if he did magic tricks, and Rosemary looked annoyed, then said, You might say that he does have a talent for making things disappear. Then my father looked annoyed in his turn. He almost never gets angry at Rosemary, but
I think he was angry right then. Obviously she couldn’t resist a crack. Maybe she didn’t like what was going on.”

“Clearly, however, she had to have known about the scheme. Blackstone…. His brother was a lawyer who embezzled money and valuables from estates of his clients.”

“No wonder Rosemary thought my question was awkward.”

“After all, it wasn’t her money.” Blake leaned way back in his chair, his eyelids drooping. “So you actually saw him with them. He’s the earliest name on this list.”

“My father had only been governor for a year or so.”

“You know, I’m wiped. Totally. It just hit me. I’m hungry, I’m tired, I can’t think. My eyeballs feel boiled. I’ve downed so much black coffee, I don’t have a stomach lining.”

She put her arms around him, holding his head to her breasts. “Come lie down. Take a nap. You’ll feel better. Come on, baby.”

“I can’t sleep yet. I’ll take a shower. Then let’s get something decent to eat. Chicken. I think I want chicken. Real chicken.”

“Whatever you want. And change your clothes. Just stand them in the corner and let them air out.”

“I must be a little ripe.” Mischievously he rubbed his stubbled chin across her neck. “Let me clean up.”

They went off on his bike to find supper—not one of the fast-food places where they usually ate but what he defined as a real restaurant. He did in fact have chicken, roasted on a spit. He was happy and the wound was sealed.

“After college, do you want to live in Philadelphia?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’d kind of like to try the West Coast. The Bay Area or maybe Seattle. It’s early to make plans. I might have to go where jobs are.”

But she needed plans. She needed something concrete to believe in. “I’ve been to L.A. but I’ve never been in San Francisco. I love the idea of California.”

He was frowning. “I really would like to run down those last five names.”

“Seth on my floor comes from Orinda. He says it’s in the hills above
Berkeley. His web site has photos of his family’s house, and it looks, like, beautiful—all on a steep hill and with exotic trees.” She was on a coed floor this year.

“I’m going to check out possibilities—that maybe those guys died or something.”

When they had eaten and ridden around in the clear crisp night air for half an hour, they went back to his room and made love. He fell asleep immediately after. Careful not to wake him, she extricated herself from the tangle of his long limbs. She was tempted to stay, but she had an early class. Out she tiptoed, greatly relieved. Her Blake was sensitive and needed constant encouragement—and why not, didn’t she need the same thing? They were both insecure at the core, lonely. That was why they could understand each other so intensely.

To Emily she said, “I think I’m, like, a much more selfish person than Blake is. He cares about justice. He cares about the larger picture. I care about my own freedom and my own happiness. That’s a difference between us. But I can become a better person too, if I try.”

Emily just gazed at her, her chin down against her chest. Finally she said, “That’s just so much BS. You’re a good person. Blake’s not pure. He’s manipulative. He gets what he wants from you.”

“Not as often as he should. I mean to be really good for him. I do.”

“Let’s hope it’s mutual, Melissa.” Emily shook her head slowly. “I’m not always sure about him. He has a lot of agenda. Sometimes I trust him, and sometimes I really, really don’t.”

M
elissa and Blake were having a picnic on the floor of his dorm room. They had planned to take the bike up into the hills, but the weather had shut them down. The day was dank and cold, with a wet fierce wind that bashed the dead leaves against the buildings. He was on a chicken jag, so they ate take-out chicken, coleslaw and french fries on a blanket, sitting cross-legged with a new Khaled record blasting from his speakers.

“So how come you aren’t racist?” he asked her. “Everyone else in your family seems to be.”

She frowned. She did not want to answer off the top of her head. Finally she offered, tentatively, “I think it’s because of how hard it is to get in college these days. Like it isn’t enough to have the grades and the money. You have to rack up all these extracurricular activities and community service. I was volunteering in Hartford. People think like it’s all insurance companies and glass buildings. Sure, the suburbs are rich, but the city is a great big slum.”

“So that turned you off, or what?”

“I was working with these kids, an after-school program tutoring them. I liked them. About two thirds of them were African-American, and most of the rest were Latino. It wasn’t like I expected. They wanted the after-school stuff as long as I made it interesting, and they made it interesting for me. It was the first time in my life I ever dealt a lot with kids who weren’t white—this is going to make me to so sound like a simp—but I just liked being with them. I felt better with them than I did with the girls at Miss Porter’s. I liked myself when I was with them. We
laughed a lot. Oh, they would put me on. But I didn’t mind. It was, I guess, a big escape from my life.”

“So that changed your attitudes?”

“It made me think about them. Oh, in school, we talked about racism and I was against it, in theory, you know. But this wasn’t theory. They were real kids and I got to know a lot about them—tutoring them in English, having them write about their lives and their dreams.”

“I couldn’t hate whites because my mother was white and I loved her like crazy. Then the Ackermans took me in. I knew how hard Si tried to save my father. I’ll always love him for that, besides how good they are to me.”

“But you told me you felt like an outsider.”

“I
am.
I’m my father’s only son, his only child. I have a duty to him. I can never forget that. I’m not Si and Nadine’s kid, I’m Toussaint and Anne’s. I’m a Parker. I was born an outsider, and I became ten times more of an outsider the moment the cops broke in and busted my father. I’m the son of a man the state murdered—not because of anything bad he did, but because of his strength, because of the good he did. I never forget. If I ever forgot it, I would die inside. Everything that’s strong and real in me would dry up.”

“Maybe you should change your name back to Parker and we should both be Parker.”

“I couldn’t do that to Si and Nadine. It would be like slapping them down. And it would raise all the questions I’ve skirted around with the authorities about who I really am.” He leaned over to caress her cheek. “But it’s sweet of you to suggest that. Maybe someday I’ll take my father’s name back. When I’ve earned it. Then we can share it.”

A party was getting going on his floor. His friend Jamal came knocking on the door. “Time to shake it, bro. I got to run the music, so it will be loud and fat.”

At once Blake jumped to his feet, forgetting their conversation she had so wanted to continue. “Coming!”

She forgot her disappointment when they started to dance. She wasn’t
the world’s coolest dancer, but she did okay. At least she followed the music. Blake danced well, although there were far fancier steps being laid down. The hall was jammed with moving bodies, and she had to watch out not to get slammed or elbowed. She forgot to mind the interruption and lived in her body.

HE CAUGHT HER
after class the next afternoon. They sat on a bench facing across the green downhill into the town, much more visible now that the leaves had fallen. “Well, the shit hit the fan. Sara told Si and Nadine I had something important to spill. So Nadine called me last night with Si on the extension. So what’s up?” He imitated her way of speaking. “So what do you have to tell us?”

“What did you tell them?”

“I couldn’t see any reason to lie.”

“What did they say?”

He shrugged. “What you’d expect. Anyhow, they’re coming up Saturday, so we had better be prepared to defend ourselves.”

EMILY SAID,
“Two lawyers for in-laws. That could be brutal.” She was dressing slutty. Mitch had dumped her so she was on the prowl to hook up with someone new. “My hair looks like shit. Maybe I should go blond.”

“You look fine. Just brush it up the way you do, to give it some body. Whose party is this?”

“Some girl Ronnie knows. It’s a Halloween party.” She eased on a pair of fishnet stockings. “I’m going as a whore. I thought that would get attention.”

“But the kind you want?” Melissa thought she would never have the guts to wear something like that, with a huge midriff, a skirt more like a Band-Aid than a real piece of clothing.

“Exactly the kind I want.” Emily was applying makeup, including mas
cara and dark red lipstick, twice as heavily as usual. “Do you think Blake’s parents will try to get the marriage annulled?”

“I have to persuade them not to.” She must convince them they wanted to welcome her into their family. They would be fine protection. What she wanted more than anything else was to be free of her parents and safe from their interference. All her longing now was for the approval of the Ackermans. She would show them what a wonderful daughter-in-law she could be, if only she knew the rules of their game.

“How should I be with them?” she’d asked Blake.

“Be yourself.”

“What part of myself? Nobody’s ever themselves with another person, especially someone who has power over them.”

“Just be natural. Don’t be coy or afraid. Let them see you as you are.”

That was not useful advice. How was she? With Blake usually she wanted to get into bed. Often she felt she was nobody. The third Dickinson child. The younger, less pretty, less bright, less accomplished sister. Blake made her someone special. Blake loved her; and he had also fashioned her into a weapon against her own parents. Who was she, then? The young Mrs. Ackerman? Blake’s wife? She sought for herself, but she felt as if she were grasping at something slippery in running water. She was just a minnow evading her own grasp, escaping into vagueness as she so often had throughout her childhood and adolescence. Her favorite answer to Rosemary since she entered adolescence:
I don’t know
. Duh.

SI AND NADINE
said they would arrive at five thirty, and they were within five minutes—which impressed her, since they had driven from Philadelphia. She was waiting with Blake. He did not want to face them alone, he said; he wanted them to present a united front.

They went to the same Chinese restaurant, and all climbed into a booth, without Sara, who was in Austin with her bartender boyfriend.

Nadine leaned over the table toward Melissa, her eyes bright, almost beady with intent. “Are you pregnant, dearie?”

“No!” Melissa said loudly.

“Well, that’s good,” Nadine said, and Si rolled his eyes. “So why all the hurry? Are you planning to quit school?” She poked at her white hair absentmindedly until it stood out around her head like a lopsided Shasta daisy.

“Of course we aren’t,” Blake said. “That was part of the idea. Her parents were threatening to pull her out of school to keep her away from me.”

“What do they have against you?” Si asked. “Never mind, I can guess. We don’t have to run through the messy parts.” He rubbed his nose as if the thought embarrassed him.

“They didn’t like him the minute they saw him in Washington,” Melissa said. “But they first got really upset when they learned that you were the people who had adopted him. Then when they learned he was Toussaint Parker’s son, they exploded. They’re threatening to pull me out of school…. I don’t have any money of my own, except a little from my summer job.”

“You told them his parentage?” Si asked, head propped on chin, eyes resting on her from under his brows.

“No. They had one of their aides investigate.”

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

Instinctively she knew she shouldn’t let them know that she had been ignorant herself. “I tell them as little as possible. Whatever I really want to do, they disapprove of.”

“Give me an example.”

“Like seeing Blake. Like demonstrating with the African-American students against the firing of the only teacher who really knew about Africa. Like the research we’ve been doing on my father.”

“What sort of research?”

Both Blake and Melissa were silent. Si looked from one to the other. “Someone has been feeding information on Dickinson to a reporter at the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
The same reporter you mentioned when you told me that Melissa was working with his son? Unless I’m mistaken.”

“You’re not mistaken,” Blake said. “I don’t think we should talk about this.”

Both Si and Nadine put down their chopsticks and stared from one to the other. Nadine said, “This is something you’re doing together?”

“I don’t see any reason to talk about it,” Blake said. “It’s our project. It doesn’t involve you.”

“You’re getting the information on your father?” Si kept his gaze on her now.

She did not answer, letting Blake say whatever he chose to.

“Why?” Nadine asked, leaning so far forward her dress brushed her food. “Because you love Blake, you’re doing this? Because of his father?”

Now she had to answer. “Partly. Partly I feel my father is wrong. If I know and do nothing, I’m an accessory—aren’t I?”

“Interesting,” Si said. “And you’ve been applying your computer skills, I suspect.” He was talking to Blake now. “That could get you in legal trouble.”

“Melissa is the only witness to whatever I’ve done.”

“And she can’t be forced to testify because she’s your wife now. It all begins to make a certain insane sense.”

She wanted Blake to assure his parents they had not married for legal reasons, but he was silent. Maybe that was the kind of answer that made sense to them. Give a lawyer a legal reason. Still, she felt a little burned.

Blake sat back. “I don’t want to talk about this. We’re engaged in a project together. We’re not about to stop. We’re not about to turn back. We know a lot that had never been put together, and we have a way to use it. That’s all you need to know.”

Nadine said, “This could be dangerous for you both. Have you thought of that?”

“Dangerous, how?” Melissa asked. “You mean like we could get into legal trouble?”

“Things have happened to people who have gone up against your father. Don’t you know that?”

“I know my aunt was put in an institution for five years because she was doing the same thing we are.”

“I met her,” Blake said. “She’s a good person. Cool. She was Eve Kalman’s lover, if you remember her.”

“Sure I remember Eve,” Nadine said. “A fervent and very political woman. And she died in a plane crash some people said was arranged.”

“That’s a rumor without foundation,” Si said. “I don’t want to scare you unnecessarily.”

Blake snorted. “What’s our quotient of necessary scaring?”

Nadine patted Melissa’s hand. “I’m beginning to get the picture. Do your parents know you’re married?”

“My god, no,” Melissa said.

“Are you planning to let them know?”

“When I have to,” Melissa said firmly. “When we have to.”

“What do you think they’ll do?” Nadine was still holding her hand. Nadine’s hand was very warm.

“Call out the National Guard. I can’t imagine. But it will be loud and long.”

“I think you should tell them, but I understand your reluctance.” Nadine sighed. “They’re your parents. We won’t interfere. But when you tell them or they find out, I would like to know at once. I have to say we’re not thrilled at having them as in-laws, any more than this development is going to warm their cockles, whatever cockles are.”

“I think they mean valves,” Si said wearily. “Well, this isn’t what I expected in the way of the first marriage in the family. David is gay, Sara—Whoops, I forgot, she did marry that jackass. But it only lasted five weeks. I hardly think that should count. I hope you both understand the choice you’ve made.”

Blake said, “We’re committed to each other. We belong together.”

“Thousands would say differently,” Si intoned. “But what the hell, we wish you the best and we’ll do what we can to help out. But I don’t think you’ve chosen an easy road, nor one I would have picked out for you.”

“Do you remember a Yiddish word you taught me when I asked you about how you and Nadine got together?” Blake was working on Si to charm him; she knew the voice. “You said Nadine was your
bashert
. Your intended one. Your destiny. Well, I know that Melissa is my
bashert
.”

“I hope so,” Nadine said. “I hope, for both your sakes, it’s so.”

When they were leaving, Si drew Blake aside and they spoke
earnestly. Nadine was chatting with Melissa, and she had to answer and keep up her end, but she really wanted to overhear what they were saying to each other. Still, it had gone far, far better than she had imagined beforehand. They had accepted her. They had accepted the marriage. They were on her side now.

MELISSA SLEPT
in Blake’s room, in his narrow bed. She was too exhausted to make her way home, and she desperately needed to feel him beside her. This was one night she had to spend with him as the married couple they were supposed to be. The conversation with his parents had ended well, but it had shaken her. Everyone thought they were crazy. Everyone thought they had acted rashly. And had Blake really married her to protect himself because of how he had hacked into her mother’s and father’s computers? Maybe she would never know. Maybe it was better if she didn’t know. She had to believe he loved her; after all, it would be kind of drastic for him to marry her if he did not. He’d used that word,
bashert,
and more than once he had told her that they were each other’s destiny. She must believe. She asked him what Si had been saying to him so vehemently as they were leaving the restaurant.