The Third Child (27 page)

“But I don’t even know where he is. He could have told me.”

“He probably needed to feel he still has a life. The two of you spend so much time together, maybe he just had to take a breather.”

There was no way she could make Emily understand her anxiety, because she could not tell Emily what she had been doing with Blake. Things were closing in on them. How dangerous their project had turned out to be. She imagined Emily’s surprise when the police came to haul her away. Maybe the FBI? Then Emily would see she had not been frightened without cause. It came down to her wondering again if Blake really, truly loved her. Maybe someday she would be free from the underlying fear that he was conning her, using her, but when she was frightened, that old worry surfaced. Ultimately, could she trust him? Was he really
for
her, as well as with her?

She called Karen. “Go out to a pay phone and call me collect,” Karen said. “They could be tapping your phone.”

She felt more than ever like someone in a thriller, a film about spies and secret documents. She obeyed Karen and called her collect from the only working pay phone she could find on campus, in the student center. Most everybody used cell phones, so there were fewer and fewer pay
phones around. Blake had told her that cell phones were even less secure than regular phones, or she would have used hers.

Karen, like Emily, did not see it as terribly important that Blake had gone off without telling her where. “Guys will be guys, whether you marry them or not. Probably he’s just pushing against the bars. Wanting to prove to himself he’s still one of the pack and not always accountable.”

“But I’m afraid of getting busted for giving that information to the reporter.”

“Now
that’s
something to worry about. I don’t think you’re about to go to jail. It would be too much scandal for your father. More likely they’d get you committed for general nuttiness. But being married should be some help.”

“If he’s around.”

“Melissa, you trust him or you don’t. If you don’t trust him, you should never have married him. If you do trust him, stop climbing the walls. You have to assume he had some errand he didn’t think you needed to be involved in. Maybe he went to consult his father on the legal situation. Hasn’t he ever gone off without you?”

“When he was meeting hackers to get programs.”

“There you go. He’s probably trying to find a program to erase every trace of what you’ve been doing from both your computers.”

She thanked Karen profusely. That was the first thing anyone had said to her that made sense. “That must be it.”

“I bet he’ll be back Monday. Don’t get all worked up—it’s not fair to yourself or to him. This hysteria about him being gone overnight is not becoming. Put a lid on it.”

She nodded, even though Karen could not see her. “Okay. I will.”

She felt much better. She went back to her room and apologized to Emily for making a fuss. But she felt she could not sleep or draw a deep relaxed breath until Blake was back with her and she knew they were still together.

W
hen her cell phone rang Sunday at nine, Melissa was sure it was Blake.

Alison spoke earnestly. “I wanted to tell you, Melissa, that your mother is much relieved that you’ve stopped consorting with the son of that murderer. I have to say that you troubled Rosemary greatly. She’s a splendid person, Melissa, and you should be more careful in future. She was beside herself, such as I’ve seldom seen her.”

“Did Mother ask you to talk to me?”

“She doesn’t know about this call. I want you to understand how troubled you made her. Your mother is the most brilliant woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing. I would do anything for her, and I’d expect you to feel the same way. But you put her through a difficult time.”

Melissa felt like hanging up, but she suspected Rosemary might be listening on an extension. “Well, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry for upsetting her, but I need to live my own life too.”

“She gave you life….”

Melissa tuned out. She had always hated that phrase. She had always thought it meant, She gave you life and she could take it back. And Rosemary did try to take it back. Control.

“…make sure that you understand these are rocky times. I find it hard to see her so besieged. We all have to pull together. They’ve given you so much that it’s a small thing to ask that you do nothing to aggravate her further….”

“I think it’s wonderful how loyal you are to her,” Melissa said carefully.

“As you must be.”

“Shit,” Melissa said to Emily afterward. “Alison’s given up her life to Mother and she expects me to. She’s pitiful.”

“She probably thinks the same of you, not appreciating the great and glorious Rosemary.” Emily had just had a haircut at a local salon, and she kept fiddling with her suddenly very short very blond hair. “What did she want?”

“To continue the campaign. They think I’ve stopped seeing Blake, and they want it to stay that way. They don’t trust me.” And they shouldn’t.

BLAKE SHOWED UP
outside her eleven o’clock Public Opinion and Electoral Politics class on Monday as Melissa was leaving. “Lunch?” he greeted her.

“No, I’m not lunch. I’m your wife. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Yeah? Those rumors of man-eating lions on the Jersey Turnpike are not true, I can tell you. All the rest stops looked safe to me.”

“You were in Philadelphia?”

“The same dirty old town.” He slid his arm around her as they walked.

“Did you see Si and Nadine?”

“They give you their love.”

“I wish they would. I really like them.”

“You impressed them much more favorably last time. You’re winning that battle. What have you heard from your folks?”

“I managed to convince Rosemary I’ve stopped seeing you, and she has bigger problems now than me, or so she thinks.” She watched him to see if he would be angry and pull that bit about being ashamed of her pet darky, but he seemed not to take offense.

“Good, good. Now I am starving. I got back here late this morning, and I’ve had nothing to eat but a stale doughnut, so let’s mosey toward food.”

When they were seated in the student center with plates of tacos, she asked, “So what were you doing that was so important?”

“Just things I needed.”

“Programs from your hacker friends?”

“I wanted to talk with Si face-to-face. It seemed like a good idea.”

He hadn’t answered her about the programs. That was usually New York.

“Did you get a chance to stop in New York?”

“Not this time. God, am I tired. I’m going to sleep through my afternoon classes after missing my morning classes. Tonight I want to hit the sack early and pile up some z’s.”

“You don’t want to get together?”

“Sure I do.” He patted her hand. “Couldn’t do without it. But I’m going to throw you out by nine thirty.”

“That’s fine. I have a paper to write for sociology. That project I’m doing with Lindsey in the mall.”

“Sounds thrilling. If you were named Lindsey, we’d never have hooked up. That name gives me hives. I bet her family is loaded.”

“Good guess. But it thrills my mother to hear I am hanging with her. Merilee knows her brother Stu.”

“Then mall away. It should help keep Rosemary off our tracks.”

He was in an oddly jolly mood, although he kept rubbing his bloodshot eyes and yawning. Maybe Si had given him more hope than he had left with. But why wouldn’t he share any good news with her? She could use some cheering up.

That evening he was more forthcoming. “Si had me talk to a guy, without naming any names, somebody he got off who’s a flaming computer genius. He advised me to stop monitoring Rosemary’s e-mail. It’s possible if she brings somebody in who knows their shit they could find out what I’ve been doing. So, sadly, my girl, we’re going to have to forgo reading her communications. I’ll miss it and I know you will.”

“I don’t care, really. I know how she writes to each of us now. I know where I stand with her—down at the bottom of the list, the way I always thought.”

He rubbed his sore eyes. “When you go home at Thanksgiving, see if you can sneak in and get on her computer. I’ll give you her passwords.”

“I so don’t want to go back there Thanksgiving.”

“If you don’t, babes, she’ll be suspicious. Business as usual, that’s the way to go. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

“Suppose they don’t want to let me come back to Wesleyan?”

“You said she’d dropped that. She’s too worried about what’s going on with the exposé to worry about your love life. Just stick to the story that you’re not seeing me any longer, and talk up Lindsey the Mall Girl. Tell her nothing and keep your ears open and your eyes peeled for a chance to get into her stuff.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

“Don’t be so down. You might grab a break. They go out a lot, right?”

“Thanksgiving they have the multitudes in.” She sighed. “Will we ever, ever have a holiday together?”

“The rest of our lives. Every single holiday. Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Arbor Day, the works. We’re still in school, babes, and we have to not freak out the elder folks.”

SHE DEVELOPED
a stomachache the night before she was to leave, but she didn’t see how that would absolve her from going. Alison drove up to get her. “I could have taken the train, easy,” Melissa said. “How come she made you drive all this way?”

“We decided it was safer. Your parents are feeling quite vulnerable right now, and they want you protected. You said you aren’t well?”

“Just a stomach virus. Or something I ate in the food hall.”

“Right before Thanksgiving, that’s so sad.” Alison shook her head. “If you reach into the backseat and look in my bag, you’re find several remedies. Why don’t you try one of them, and if that doesn’t work, try another in an hour or so. We want you in fine shape for tomorrow’s feast.”

Melissa entertained the fantasy of staying in bed, then sneaking down later and helping herself to leftovers. But Blake had severely warned her to act normal at all times, and skipping Thanksgiving was not her usual behavior. Besides, Rosemary would never grill her in front of guests. She was probably safer at dinner. If she were alone, Rosemary might well come upstairs on the pretext of commiserating with her sick daughter and begin to ask all the questions that Melissa feared.

“Who’s coming?” she asked Alison.

“Let me see, Tony and Kurt, of course; then the Senator’s interns…”

“Did you ever notice,” Melissa said slyly, “that my father always has male interns?”

“Of course,” Alison said. “With all that’s gone on in Washington in recent years, the Senator wants to avoid even the possibility of impropriety. Rosemary vets them. We had one project manager in the Senator’s campaign who was gay, and he turned out to be a renegade. He stole papers from the office and tried to discredit your father. You must have seen something in the papers?”

“Yeah.” Melissa grimaced. “I think I saw something on TV.”

Alison cautiously approached the subject of Blake. “So are you still seeing that young man who so upset your mother?”

“I told her I wasn’t.” Literal truth.

“You broke off with him, then?”

“It wasn’t a big deal, until Mother made it one. He was just a guy I saw sometimes. I told him I had gotten involved with somebody else, and he believed me. I wasn’t his only interest either, so it was nothing to fuss over.”

“It was quite a bit to fuss over for us, believe me, Melissa. Even having contact with such a person is dangerous.”

“Bullshit! He’s just another student at Wesleyan. He doesn’t remember his father. The last time he saw him he was just five, so it’s a much bigger deal to you people than it ever was to him. The sins of the fathers. You were all paranoid.”

“Your parents were truly, truly disturbed. Causing them such worry is nothing you should take lightly. They’re important people, Melissa, good people, special people. We have to help them, not cause them distractions.”

Melissa turned on the radio. “Let’s get the news and weather. By the way, you never told me who else was coming to Thanksgiving.”

“Let’s see,” Alison said as if having to remember with difficulty, although Melissa knew perfectly well that Alison’s mind was organized and could call up any of her hundred current lists at will. “Rich, Laura, Merilee, Billy and some friend of his—”

“Male or female?”

“An exchange student on his hockey team—from Norway, I think? But Billy swears he speaks English.”

“And?”

“Senators Dawes and Nottingham and Mrs. N., Audrey and her little girl. Eric. The representative from District Eight, Angus Spears. He’s recently divorced, and your father has taken him under his wing. He’s quite good looking.”

“Does Rosemary intend him for Merilee or for me?”

“Rosemary is simply being nice to him…. It’s possible Merilee might like him, and he’s certainly both available and suitable.”

“Then he’s not for me.”

“Unless Merilee and he do not strike it off, and he and you do. You might try being a little forthcoming at table.”

“I’ll try.” Should she flirt with him outrageously to throw her mother off the scent? Could she pull that off? She had never been a practiced flirt. Neither Merilee nor she had picked up Rosemary’s almost professional skill.

IT FELT STRANGE
to be back in the house in Washington, where Blake and she had cohabited so merrily and pretended to be married. Now that was no longer pretense but fact, yet she felt less married to him now than she had those precious weeks of August. She did not want to be here, in the cement-hard bosom of her family. She could not escape a flush of guilt whenever she heard Rosemary discussing the
Inquirer
attacks. She repeated to herself the litany of Dick’s sins in office, but she still cringed. She began to study herself in mirrors, not from vanity but from fear of what her face might be giving away. Fortunately, the house was overrun with people, so that Alison and Rosemary were tied up with Thanksgiving plans—not only dinner but, on Sunday afternoon, a reception Melissa hoped she could avoid.

Merilee, in her last year of law school, was busy until that night when she arrived with a backpack at ten, tossing it down in the room they
shared. Merilee flung herself on her single bed—exactly like Melissa’s, with a matching Ralph Lauren spread—and closed her eyes.

“Wiped?”

“Totally.” Merilee did not open her eyes. “I hate law school and yet I wouldn’t be anyplace else. It’s absorbing—a constant challenge.”

“I hear that a recently divorced rep from Pennsylvania is being served to you at Thanksgiving.”

“Damn.” That was strong language for Merilee, who had never learned to swear. “Or am I being served to him?”

“You’re not interested?”

“It’s been lovely to have Mother off my case for a couple of months while they’ve been stewing about your déclassé boyfriend from the ’hood.”

“He’s not from the ’hood, Merilee. He was raised by two affluent lawyers.”

“The Ackermans. They’re both brilliant, by the way. I’ve read some of his appeals, and they are both ingenious and profound.”

Melissa tried to imagine what an ingenious and profound brief would be like. She had glanced through Merilee’s law books and had yet to find anything remotely interesting.

“Is that young man going into law?”

“No. He’s into computers.” She felt a stab of fear. Blake had carefully not mentioned that to her parents when they had walked in that night. She had carefully not mentioned it since.

But Merilee had lost interest. Her lids slowly lowered. “Um.”

ALISON HAD GONE
shopping and bought dresses for Merilee and Melissa at a boutique recommended by someone with taste Melissa found appalling. This was as bad as the thing she had worn at Rich and Laura’s wedding. Laura at any rate was allowed to wear something comfortable, a velvet maternity dress that made her look like an upholstered easy chair but had to be ten times gentler on the body than the blue sheath she had to struggle into. Merilee’s dress was black with spaghetti straps. Melissa
guessed it was supposed to make Merilee look older and more sophisticated, presumably to appeal to Angus. Her dress seemed designed to keep her from eating too much. She wondered if it might not simply pop open in the middle of dinner, spilling her out onto her plate.

She winced when she saw her father coming down the steps to the diningroom with Rosemary on his arm. He was so handsome it was unfair. He seemed to radiate confidence like heat. He looked presidential greeting everyone with a special smile, a special hand squeeze, that gaze into the eyes that seemed to shine with sincerity. He loved to work a roomful of people almost as much as he loved to work a crowd. Some politicians seemed to suffer the public gaze; he gathered it into himself and beamed it back, intensified. She had trouble meeting his eyes—if he knew what she had done, he would be so hurt and furious. She wanted to slink away and hide.

Since she could scarcely breathe in the dress, she did not talk much at table. Nobody seemed to notice, although Billy’s friend Torval tried to engage her. He spoke English quite well, with a charming accent, but the interchanges were awkward. Besides he was two years younger, so she wouldn’t have been interested even if she weren’t married. It would be wonderful when she was allowed to put on her ring. She usually wore it around her neck, but Blake had vetoed that idea for Washington. It would be too easy to notice and too hard to explain, he said. But she missed it. Usually it was right there between her breasts, making her new condition real to her with its slight metallic pressure.