The Third Child (9 page)

“What’s a dresser?” he asked.

“She means the woman who picks out her wardrobe. Rosemary doesn’t have time to shop. She has a professional…. See how different mine is? I’m not neurotic. I’m not paranoid. I just know she thinks about me at the end of the list.”

“Like that’s the most important thing where you’re concerned,” he said. “I thought you were exaggerating, but this is cold by comparison. Is this the sort of thing you’ve been enduring all your life?”

“Exactly.”

“Doesn’t she know there’re no dining rooms in the dorms?” he asked. “And no sorority houses on this campus?”

“They’ve never been up here.”

“Well, I see what you mean about your family, babes. It’s not fair to you.” He put his arms around her. “She doesn’t give you affection, she monitors you. She puts up fence posts and strings barbed wire. She pays
so little attention, she doesn’t even know we don’t eat in the dorms and there are no sorority houses.”

She hugged him back, hard. “It means so much to me that you see it too. A lot of the times my friends would just think my mother was wonderful—so put together, so cool, so up on everything. They used to want to catch her attention. Maybe that’s why I hardly ever brought anyone home. I’d say there were events going on, but that wasn’t it.”

“Do you want to see what she wrote to your younger brother?”

“No. She’s always lecturing him too, threatening him with military school. She’ll write things like, They say every family has a black sheep, is that what you want to be? Is that what you want out of life? To be the silly embarrassing disgrace in a fine family?”

“She can get the digs in.”

“Absolutely. Blake, I can’t tell you what it means to me that you see, you really see.”

“Let’s do more than see.” He sat down at her computer. “Wouldn’t it be cool to send everybody’s mail to everybody else? Like those remarks about Merilee’s boyfriend and Rich’s wife.”

“Could you do that?”

“Sure. We’ll just send everything to everybody. She’ll think she pushed the wrong key.”

She kissed his cheeks, leaning forward, around one side and then the other. “Do it! Oh, please, do it for me.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “You can consider it done.” His fingers moved rapidly over her keyboard. “I like to see you get your own back. She doesn’t respect you. She doesn’t value you the way I do. Embarrassing her is a small step toward reparations, don’t you think?”

She grinned with amusement. Rosemary deserved it, she really did. Melissa never got the better of her mother, but with Blake’s help, she could for once.

After he had sent the messages, while they were in her bed, he caressed her body and drew back, looking at her. “Your mother’s crazy. You aren’t fat, you aren’t overweight. You got a body to die for, babes. Just what there ought to be where it ought to be. I don’t want to fuck a
skeleton. I worship your tits. I love your booty. I want you just the way you are, good and plenty and what a woman feels like—soft and adorable and warm and sleek. Don’t you let her get on your back about your weight. It’s just right for me, and I’m the one in bed with you.”

“You make me feel pretty.”

“God made you pretty. I’m just appreciating the view.”

M
elissa was delighted as they slowly learned their way into each other, what they shared, what was new to each of them, what little parts would remain private and odd to the other. They came together in a cocoon of music. They shared an interest in world music, but they often knew different aspects. He loved jazz and began teaching her to enjoy it with him. Making love to music felt special, as if it were a soundtrack to a gorgeous scene in a movie. Besides, it gave them more privacy, not to have to worry if the kid who lived in the next room could hear them. She hated the idea of being overheard, as if someone could steal a piece of their intimacy and carry it off. Her fierce zone of privacy had zoomed out to include Blake.

He was going to study computer science. She decided on political science. Thanksgiving came and they went off to their families, promising each other that soon they would finagle a vacation together, somewhere. She said nothing about Blake to anyone in her family. It was not that she was ashamed of him, as she explained at length to Emily, but that he was too important to let anyone in. They would despoil the precious intimacy. She could not trust even Billy to keep his mouth shut. He would enjoy goading Rosemary about Blake. Let Billy remain the troublesome one. Let Rosemary’s focus of anxiety remain fixed on him and not on herself.

Dick was preparing for Senate hearings on the trucking industry, one of his interests, and his staff was running in and out, on the phones, rushing back and forth from the Senate Office Building to the Capitol to the house carrying sheaves of files and memos. The committee was deciding whether to further limit the hours of drivers on interstates and whether to regulate those huge semis that dragged more than one loaded trailer.
Potts was not his only backer whose money came at least in part from interstate transportation. Dick was shaking hands and telling various men in suits, “You can count on me.”

Alison was wringing her hands because Rosemary was appearing on a platform with the Vice President’s wife at a fund-raiser Saturday and the Veep’s wife was going to wear blue, so Rosemary couldn’t—and Rosemary would now have to wear something different than they had planned. The Veep’s wife’s advance man said no blue and nothing that would clash, for the photo opportunity. Alison had planned the accessories; now everything must change.

Rosemary had a new “friend,” one of those men she charmed, flirted with, remained closeted with for hours—the ones Dick needed or whose brains she wanted to pick. This new catch was Frank Dawes, the senior senator from North Dakota, a bald-headed man slightly stooped but still six feet tall, a widower who was in his fourth term and no end in sight. He worked very hard, spending long hours in his office, had one of the best attendance records on Capitol Hill, but weekends he was on his own. He was a wealthy man, but Rosemary remarked that he lived like a student or a monk. Dick had fastened onto him. Dawes had a weathered face for a man whose last twenty years had been spent in Washington, but that probably stood him in good stead with his constituents. Rosemary joked that he must have a private wind tunnel he used to maintain his Great Plains farmer look. There was nothing of the hayseed about his mind, however, for he had written most of the farm legislation passed in recent decades. He was powerful and Rosemary pronounced him astute, one of her highest compliments. He had become a regular at weekend suppers and parties. Alison was compiling a list of his likes and dislikes in food and company.

“You’re an extraordinary woman,” Melissa heard Dawes say in his dry, penetrating voice. “Does the junior senator from Pennsylvania know how lucky he is? A wife like you is one in a million.”

Merilee’s new boyfriend was around. Rosemary liked him better than the last one, but Melissa couldn’t see much difference. They were both
tall thin guys, glasses, preppy types, moderately athletic, no word out of their mouth that would surprise. The last one at least knew something about food. They wore nothing that was not what others of their class and group wore, had no ideas not current with their peers, were true to their brand names and little else.

Laura had gained weight since the wedding. Alison told Melissa that Laura had gone to a spa to take off ten pounds. Rich had come up from Philadelphia for Thanksgiving, but would return Saturday for an important meeting. He kissed her cheek when he saw her, making a crack about hoping she wasn’t turning into one of those Wesleyan radicals; that was the extent of their interaction. Who needed Rich to pay her attention when she had Blake?

Merilee was more curious, which put Melissa on guard. “So how do you like Wesleyan?”

“Fine. I like it fine.”

“Are you rooming with that friend of yours? Emma.”

“Emily. No. We were assigned roommates. Mine is called Fern…”

“Very seventies. Have you made new friends?”

“A few. You know, Mother puts me through a debriefing every week, so you really don’t have to bother pretending to be interested.”

Merilee fluffed her shoulder-length blond hair. “Sorry for asking. I just thought you might have changed at college. Opened up a bit.”

“I think I’m a lot more open to things than you are.”

Merilee quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? What kinds of things?”

“Music, for instance.”

“Oh.” Merilee picked up her casebook. “Music.”

Five minutes later, Merilee put down her casebook again. “Did that time we all got each other’s e-mail upset you?”

Cautiously Melissa said, “Well, yeah, a bit. To see how differently she writes to each of us—”

“I just couldn’t believe her going on to Rich about my boyfriends. As if Rich is some paragon of partner selection. I mean, Laura has the intelligence of a nice dog—and the personality of one.”

Melissa giggled with as much surprise as amusement. She was unaccustomed to having her sister confide. “Some breeds of dogs are very good at learning tricks. Laura’s mastered her obedience training.”

“I don’t think Laura is as teachable as Mother would like her to be. But you met Jerry. He was my friend whose father owned a restaurant. There wasn’t anything wrong with him. He was brighter than she gave him credit for and he was a warm, funny guy when you got to know him. But he’s Italian—”

“Jerry Green?”

“Family name of Verdi. His grandfather changed it. Mother is a complete snob. Nobody’s really white unless they’re WASPs. I don’t like Bruce nearly as well, but Mother is pushing me at him. She thinks he’s a good catch.”

“Do you want to get married soon?”

“No! I want to be hired at a good law firm and get on the partnership track. Marriage would be a hindrance. For some reason, Mother can’t see that.”

“She wants you to be her.”

Merilee frowned. “She just can’t see that what I want is different. I don’t want to marry power. I want to have power.” Merilee sat forward, tugging on her straw-colored hair. “Mother’s trapped in an older model of women’s lives. I can’t make her understand I might not want to get married till I’m thirty-five—if ever. It looks like immolation to me.” Merilee picked up her casebook to indicate the conversation was over. It was still one of the most real exchanges Melissa had ever had with her older sister. Not that she really liked Merilee—she resented her too much—but it was interesting to catch a glimpse of how she saw their family. It was fascinating to realize that Merilee, contrary to Rosemary’s propaganda, did not always agree one hundred percent with her mother. It also confirmed Melissa’s fears about her mother finding out about Blake and interfering big time: if her mother objected to Jerry because he was Italian, what would she say about Blake? Melissa did not long to find out.

Blake and she e-mailed each other three times a day. That propped her
up, enabled her to blow off her family and remain calm. Rosemary made a remark about her pants getting too tight. Melissa then found a bestselling diet book on her pillow. She closed her eyes, imagined Blake telling her how womanly and attractive she was. The worst thing she could do was start fighting with them. It would call attention to her when she longed to slip effortlessly through the cracks of her family’s concerns and return to school without letting anything real slide from her tongue or be revealed by any change of habit or demeanor. She enjoyed her self-imposed attempt at invisibility. Instead of feeling last and lost in the family, the bottom feeder, she felt willfully aloof. It gave her a tiny bit of power. She even kept away from Billy, because she knew he was the person she was most tempted to tell about Blake. It was not hard to avoid intimate conversation with him, for he had a new girlfriend he was instant-messaging with for hours, and the rest of the time he was off with his friends playing some new video game. He ate Thanksgiving dinner with the family because he had to.

They had two of Dick’s interns; Loren, Dick’s appointments secretary and advance man, a brash young Texan from a large oil family whom Rosemary had taken in tow; his primary speechwriter, Eric, who stammered and blushed easily and just ate and ate, as if he were desperate, and whom Melissa rather liked because he could scarcely make conversation and seemed about to crawl under the table when addressed by anyone he thought important; plus Alison, who was always at Rosemary’s left elbow at family events. Her truest daughter, Melissa thought, even more faithful than Merilee. That was what Melissa should have become if she wanted Rosemary’s acceptance: her ever-helpful shadow, bending, twisting herself to please and provide whatever was needed. Audrey, Dick’s divorced correspondence secretary who had been with him since her daughter was four, and eleven-year-old Annette were there too. Audrey never said much but hovered over her daughter, making sure she behaved and ate well. They were sixteen at table, including Rich; a congressman named Parker from Pittsburgh who sat on Dick’s right, while Senator Dawes was on Rosemary’s right. Two homeless men were being fed in the kitchen, where Melissa had run into them earlier. Rosemary was to be inter-
viewed on local television Monday, to talk about how she shared her Thanksgiving dinner with homeless people, to stress Dick’s charitable and compassionate side. The dinner had been cooked by a woman from Martinique, Yolanda, who with her daughter Yvette, did all their smaller dinners. She mostly came in Thursday through Sunday. The other days Rosemary never sat down to eat, and Dick ate out at one of the restaurants preferred by senators or at his desk. The largest parties were catered.

The food was excellent, as always. It was a traditional dinner, the same things they had every year, including the creamed onions that Dick loved from his childhood and nobody else except Audrey ate. Melissa was seated between Alison and an intern. Alison asked her about college and she answered carefully. The intern had gone to Brown and was full of himself. He didn’t even bother to flirt with Melissa, a relief. Interns came and went. Dick was not easy to work with. He wanted things done perfectly but had never learned how to give precise directions. That made for dissatisfaction on his part and bruised feelings on the part of the interns. Melissa hated to be recruited for tasks during campaigns.

Senator Dawes was telling Rosemary all about his dead wife, their Thanksgivings together, the garden they had shared in North Dakota, how she had loved roses but most would not survive the winters there, so he had had a greenhouse built for her, not for tropical plants but for the roses and lilies she had loved growing up in Michigan. Melissa pitied him, a man so lonely he mistook Rosemary’s interest for friendship. She gathered he was filling the role of mentor to Dick that Uncle Tony had occupied for years.

She told everyone she had a lot of homework, not completely untrue. This was a good time to catch up and even try to get a little ahead on her reading.

The weekend crept. Rich and Dick and Rosemary were closeted. Sometimes Alison sat in with them, sometimes one of Dick’s aides, always Joe Czernowicz, Dick’s longtime chief of staff, now back from Thanksgiving with his Pennsylvania family. She could swear he had grown balder since September, his dome glistening with light sweat as he trotted out to grab a file. They were plotting Rich’s run for state rep. His career was all laid out like the street plan for a subdivision before the houses were built. But she remembered one of those subdivisions outside Youngstown, when she was little and they still visited Rosemary’s family. It was all overgrown fields and brambles, but the streets were paved and sidewalks ran alongside, their slabs cracked and tilted. Occasional fire hydrants were rusting
in the weeds. The subdivision had been plotted years before, but something had gone wrong—the mills had closed, people were laid off—and houses never were built. When she thought of that, she felt a little less pushed aside. Not all buildable lots got built. Not all subdivisions flourished. Not all careers coasted ahead on smoothly oiled rollers toward their destination. Did she like Rich? Not really. The most he had ever given her was a patronizing nod. He scarcely even bothered to tease her in recent years.

Merilee wasn’t around much, off with her study group, and then to George Washington for a meeting of the Law Review. Melissa was surprised to find she was a little disappointed. She had hoped that Merilee might open up again. She wouldn’t care if Wesleyan abolished vacations, so she didn’t have to leave Blake and Emily. Time passed here like one of those endless freight trains across a road, all that clatter and speed but nothing changed, you just sat there waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be over.