The Third Child (3 page)

M
elissa felt superfluous, nothing new. Personally, if she ever did get married, she would just sneak off with the guy and do it on the sly. Quiet and personal was tasteful. This was like an awards ceremony. Rich had been sleeping with Laura since he graduated from Harvard Business School, so why couldn’t they just say, Hey, we’re a couple. Give us a toaster and call it even. But no, Rosemary and Laura’s mother, Mrs. Potts, had been planning this event for a year. Now it was hot as a Frialator in Washington and they all had to continuously change their clothes and run around dolled up like idiots. Every five minutes, there was a crisis about whether some senator or cabinet official or under-secretary of waste management or presidential advisor on office supplies was going to come. It was sickening! As if any of them liked each other. It was just head counting. How many advisors and undersecretaries can you cram into a church on a Saturday in June?

It was lucky Laura’s parents had money, because this was an incredible potlatch of the stuff. Laura’s father was a relatively new backer of Dick’s—had kicked in for his campaign for a second term as governor of Pennsylvania. Mr. Potts owned an interstate trucking firm, a corporation specializing in highway construction, a string of ice cream parlors and several steak and brew restaurants. Mr. Potts had the habit of talking as if over a windstorm, to make himself heard by the very deaf. Perhaps he was deaf himself, for he never seemed to hear half of what people said. He had been calling her Melinda and Marissa and Melody. She noticed he never got Merilee’s name wrong. If she had that bellowing man to deal with, she would buy earplugs, but Rich seemed to like Potts just fine. Rosemary was closeted with him half the morning. He wasn’t her usual type of flir
tation, but he was a backer and thus entitled to some attention. Plus the Pottses were paying a fortune for this wedding. Rosemary felt a lavish wedding might put a freshman senator like Dick on the Washington society map. So Mr. Potts was the focus of Rosemary’s charm, along with wives of men she wanted to attend.

When Rosemary wanted to pick the brains of some useful type, when she was buttering up a backer or a supporter or useful connection, she spoke differently than she did any other time. Her voice became soft and girlish. She was deferential and almost coy, but she never concealed her intelligence. That fine-pointed instrument was always available. She was absolutely loyal to her husband. Her world was built on Dick and his career. She did not have affairs. No, she had intense ladylike flirtations, usually knee to knee over coffee or tea or sherry.

Alison was frantically busy with the Wedding. Somewhere a gown as large as Idaho was being sewn by angels with gold thimbles. The Save the Date invitations had been sent out six months earlier, hand calligraphy by a weird woman built like an upended box of tissues who actually wore a pince-nez. Emily and she had giggled over that. The Pottses lived near Bryn Mawr, but they had taken a house in Washington for the year so that Laura and her mother could prepare. Mr. Potts usually stayed in Philadelphia, but occasionally he appeared to roar at them. Dick always made time for him, as did Rosemary. Laura was the only daughter in a family with two boys, one of whom was whispered to be gay. Her parents were putting their all and everybody else’s into this wedding.

“If you got married,” Melissa asked Alison, staggering by with a load of mail that would tax a healthy elephant, “would you want a big wedding like this?”

Alison looked at her blankly. “Married? Why would I marry?”

“Most women do.”

“I don’t have time for all that,” Alison said. She collapsed at her desk, shaking her head slightly, and began slitting open envelopes. “Your mother needs me. She calls me her right arm.”

Melissa was relieved when Emily finally came to visit, so she had somebody to vent to besides Billy, who was off every day with guys and
indifferent to the preparations. “So it keeps Rosemary off my back. Great. Besides, there’ll be champagne. I never got loaded on champagne. They say it’s a gigundo high.”

Emily and she lay on her bed listening to the bustle. The doorbell rang constantly. Deliverymen came and went. Alison rushed upstairs and then back down. Laura appeared in tears about jewelry. A popular ambassador who was supposed to come was recalled by his country and Rosemary fumed.

“I don’t see why Old Man Potts couldn’t just buy them a small country like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein. I don’t understand weddings. All that preparation—nonstop for twelve months—then one day and it’s over.”

“I don’t know,” Emily said dreamily. “You’re like the star. You get to wear an incredibly sexy dress if you want to and everybody has to look at you.”

“I’d rather have the money. I’d buy a horse and a convertible.”

“I’d rather have a ski chalet, like in the mountains.”

Melissa had been off of skiing since Jonah had taken her cherry on a ski weekend they had all gone on, Chandler and Emily, her and Jonah. Chandler was the guy Emily had gone out with the longest, a whole four months. Melissa had been so depressed afterward that she had just about given up skiing. Emily said that was silly. You didn’t have to fuck some jerk every time you put on a pair of skis. Melissa hadn’t felt she had a choice with Jonah, for they had been dating all year and she had just been blowing him and putting the whole thing off.

Em had been so cool about sex, giving her real pointers from the time she started making out with guys. “Don’t ever breathe through your mouth, no matter how excited you get. If you had onions even yesterday, if you mouth-breathe on him, he’ll be grossed out.” It had been a day like today, but in the dorm at Miss Porter’s. Em had spoken in a low voice, so the other girls would not overhear. “Use body English when you’re kissing.” Em wriggled her body. “It gets them excited. They think you’re hot. But never initiate the next step or they’ll label you a slut. From time to time, you have to say
don’t
or
no
but not like you really mean it. It’s pro forma, if you get what I mean.” Then when Melissa knew she had to suck
off Jonah, Emily showed her, using a roll-on deodorant that was about the right shape, demonstrating what to do with her lips and tongue. “Run your tongue around it. Like this.” Without Em, she would have freaked out or made some gross mistake. Emily kept her from making a fool of herself in the savage clumsy world of teenage dating. Emily knew what to do, although she seemed so tiny and demure, Rosemary never guessed what Em was really like.

“By the way, where’s Rich himself?” Em asked, leaning on an elbow.

Melissa suspected that Emily had a little bitty thing for her older brother. “He’s on a bachelor party weekend. They’ve gone to the Bahamas, about ten of them. He’ll be back Monday.” It would be a disaster if Emily really did fuck him, but Rich never paid attention to Emily. He liked tall women.

“Have you got your dress yet?”

“It’s being altered.”

“So what’s it like?”

“Mother calls it dupioni silk. But I have to wear yellow, and I totally hate yellow. Laura’s in white off the shoulder with gold touches. Her mother is in gold. Rosemary is in blue, and us bridesmaids are in shades of blue or yellow. The guys all get to wear black, naturally. The dress isn’t half bad, really, except for the color. Maybe afterward I’ll have it dyed. It’s kind of slinky.”

“Are yellow and blue Laura’s favorite colors or school colors or what?”

“It’s got something to do with the color of the walls where the reception is. Don’t ask me. I’d rather wear black. I look thinner in black. I look huge in yellow.”

“Melissa, don’t be an idiot. You’re not fat. You have a shape, that’s all.”

“Next to my mother and Merilee, I’m fat. They think I am.”

“Well, they’re wrong. You don’t look like a model, you look like a cute girl with boobs and a nice ass. So stop complaining. I wish I had your chest.” Emily had been overweight around puberty, when they had first become friends. She had started having sex because she was fat, she said, and that made up for it with guys. She had long since gone on one diet after another till she was pretty thin, but she never did like the way she
looked. They were the same that way. Emily had been invited; that was the only thing Melissa had gotten her way on. She had come a week early to stay the whole time in Melissa’s room. It made the wedding bearable. She had heard Rosemary say to Alison that having Emily there who was after all only a chiropractor’s daughter nonetheless kept Melissa from conspicuously sulking, so it was worth it. Billy liked Emily, calling her a hottie. He kept sauntering around the upstairs with his shirt off to show his tan—he had burnt himself lobster red on the Maryland shore last Sunday—and his muscles, which were all right, but only all right. Billy thought they were better than that. Emily paid no attention. Billy was two years younger and Emily couldn’t care less.

Emily was curious about Alison. “Does she have a life?”

“Not that I can tell. She has a couple of girlfriends she sees maybe once a month. She never dates. I’ve never heard her make a personal call.”

“God, Lissa, she’s like a servant in those nineteenth-century dramas on PBS—like a ladies’ maid.”

“But she’s a whiz with computers. If you get into trouble, she can disentangle you.”

“Computers are just modern housekeeping devices.” Emily dismissed computers with a wave of her hand, that had, for once, been manicured. They had been sent off to be worked on that morning. Now Melissa was afraid to wash her hands. The polish might come off or chip. Her nails were bright yellow. She was equally afraid to move her head too much or her hair would come undone. “Laura’s mom finally agreed we can sit together.” Melissa sighed. “Otherwise I’d die of boredom, with Laura’s cowsy friends and Merilee and the cousins. I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to.”

“We can dissect them all like frogs.”

“That’s something to look forward to.” Melissa stood up. “Show me what you’re going to wear to the rehearsal dinner. I have two dresses I could wear, and you have to help me choose.”

“LET ME SEE
how you’re dressed.” Rosemary charged out of her office. They had hoped to slip out unobserved, but they were ready. What Emily
called their slut clothes were in her backpack. Through torrid heat smashing off the brick sidewalks in spite of the shade of the trees and creeping under her camp shirt, they walked slowly to Georgetown Park, stores, cafés and restaurants in a Victorian building with a modern façade—a big hangout scene. They changed in the john. Melissa stuffed the stupid Bermuda shorts Rosemary favored into the backpack, put on real shorts and a tight little top and was ready to stroll around eyeing the local talent. They weren’t going to pick up guys—they had to be back at the house in two hours—but it felt so good to escape. They drank iced cappuccinos, then strolled along Wisconsin to an ice cream place. If Rosemary knew she was eating ice cream, she would be executed. She had chocolate fro yo instead. Eating yogurt always felt virtuous. Emily had real ice cream, but she’d probably make herself throw up afterward. She did that a lot.

“You’re lucky to live in such a cool place,” Em said, spooning in strawberry coconut.

“Cool!” Melissa giggled. “It must be ninety-nine in the shade.”

“Lyme is so, like, dull. Here you have these quaint little streets where everything is perfect and manicured and then you just go down to the end of the block and it’s teen heaven. Be even better if we could get fake ID and go into the bars. I love sidewalk cafés and those bars with no glass in the windows are so cool. Like you’re almost on the street but you’re inside drinking lime martinis. I would so love that.”

“So would I if I wasn’t here with my parents. That blows it for me.”

EVERYONE HAD GONE
to sleep, even Emily. Melissa didn’t understand why she couldn’t. It wasn’t as if she were excited about the wedding; it was a big bore, and starting tomorrow, she wouldn’t have a chance to do anything else except be swept along unwillingly and awkwardly. She had dozed off with Emily but then, an hour later, wakened. Now she crept quietly from her room. Maybe if she had warm milk or snitched some of her father’s scotch, she could sleep. As she eased down the stairs, she heard her parents’ voices. They were still in evening clothes, sitting exhausted in the livingroom. Soundlessly she approached. All her life, she
eavesdropped whenever she could, for some hint of the family secrets and business kept from her.

“I’ve kept hoping something would occur over the past year to end this,” Rosemary was saying.

“Be glad it didn’t,” her father said. His voice was his private one, less resonant, drier. “I need Potts. This binds him to us.”

“With his silly daughter. She isn’t the sort of wife Rich needs. Why can’t he see that?”

“Oh, Rosie, she’s all right. Pretty thing. She photographs well. She has manners and money.”

From her seat on the third step from the bottom, she could see her father but not her mother. He had loosened the top two buttons of his dress shirt and his tie and kicked off his shoes. Rosemary’s hands were visible rubbing the back of his neck and his shoulders. He yawned, then his tone changed abruptly. “Rosemary, you must never allow your opinion of Laura to register with her family. Do you understand?”

“None of them are the brightest, Dick—”

“Bright enough to be worth three hundred million, conservatively speaking. Laura’s all right. She’ll be a good mother and the constituents will like her.”

She could hear Rosemary sigh. “I hope you’re right—that she’ll do. At any rate, this is going to be one of the weddings of the year in Washington, and that can’t hurt you or Rich. The photos will look just wonderful.”

“And so will you.”

“And you.”

She could imagine the look that passed between them, for she had seen it enough times. Her parents admired and loved one another. They satisfied one another. There were vibes between them. Other kids had never been able to believe their parents had sex, but she had never doubted they did. Would anyone ever look at her that way? Her father moved out of her line of sight and she heard noises that probably meant they were kissing.