The Third Child Page 12

  He was flattering her. She resented it and she ate it up. “How come you started hanging with him? A junior.”

  “We met in Philadelphia last summer. My parents know his father.”

  “So maybe he’ll just put up with me because he likes you and he knows we’re knocking boots.” So far, in the two times they’d had lunch together, Phil had barely spoken to her.

  “You haven’t been open with him either. You just sit there staring at the tabletop.”

  “I’ll do better,” she promised. “You know I’m not real forward with people I don’t know.”

  “That’s got to vanish if you plan to be a journalist, babes.”

  “You’re right, of course.” She felt as if he were the only person she had ever known who saw what she needed and who pushed her to do what she ought to. Emily was on her side, but she didn’t put that much intelligence or forethought into daily life. Blake did. That made her fearful she would not live up to his expectations, that she would fail. She had been failing all her life, but at a game she had not agreed to, where she had been discounted before she began. She did not want to fail with Blake. She could just go along with Phil and Blake and keep her opinions to herself, just pick up pointers on doing research and that would be the extent of it. She would treat it like any other course, something unreal but necessary to pass through. And always, as Blake said, she would keep in mind her real goal: to become someone whose political opinions her father would respect, would listen to. It was a fantasy she could slip into easily. Instead of consulting only Rosemary, instead of closeting himself with Rich and leaving her out in the cold, he would be astonished by her insight. He would once again let her into his attention. Rosemary would be shocked, but she would prove herself. She could see herself in her father’s office, consulting with him on some bill he was trying to decide whether to support or argue against. Maybe it would never happen, but just maybe it could.

  She looked carefully at Phil when they sat down together the next week, just before Christmas break. He was as runty as she remembered, with hair the color of the poinsettias decorating the food court. His eyes were wary as he examined her in return. She suspected that Blake had been talking up each to the other, trying to persuade them to open up, to form an alliance through him. “Blake said you were doing a research project that I might be able to help with—so I’d learn something about how an investigative reporter works.”

  “I’m hip deep in the Big Muddy of a project, but I don’t know that you’d want to help out,” he said. He had a surprisingly deep voice for a little guy. She would bet that anyone he was speaking to for the first time on the phone would think he was tall and robust.

  She bridled. “Oh. Why is that?”

  “The subject of my investigation is some of Dick Dickinson’s activities as governor of Pennsylvania.”

  She felt as if she had been kicked. She had been set up. For a moment she said nothing at all but looked at Blake to ask him with her eyes, Why? But he was beaming at her as if he expected her to be overjoyed. She felt trapped. Blake obviously expected her to get involved in whatever project Phil was working on. Oh, she ought to have guessed, when she heard who Phil’s father was. Blake was saying, “But Lissa’s no fan of her father’s. She’s been fighting with him for years.”

  “Arguing about a pet or a curfew is one thing. Digging up the dirt—and there’s plenty—is something else again. How did you guys ever hook up?”

  “We have a class together,” Blake said dismissively. “What kind of dirt?”

  “What he’ll do for contributors, what he’s done for them. Especially around environmental issues. That’s my kick.”

  Roger Lippett had been trying to embarrass her father for years, with only intermittent success. Why did this stupid-looking kid think he could do better? She drew into herself, fearful that Blake could read her reaction. How could working with this nerd possibly bring her closer to her father and gain his respect? But she had to go along. Blake seemed to think it would do her good, both as a potential journalist and as a potential influence on Dick.

  Finally she said slowly, still looking down, “The truth is important to me.” That didn’t commit her to anything. Rosemary often said that reporters didn’t care about the truth, only about their bylines and the circulation of their papers.

  “In politics,” Blake said, “truth is a malleable thing. Depends on who’s telling it. Depends on who’s hearing it.”

  “I don’t agree,” Phil boomed. “The facts can be uncovered, discovered. People can have different opinions about values, but facts are rock-bottom.”

  “What do you think?” Blake turned to her. “Are facts like bricks? Or like clouds, that change while you watch them from a lion’s head to a running dog?”

  “I agree with Phil,” she said firmly but softly. “Interpretations differ. But facts if you can get at them are what you can rely on.”

  “So are you really going to help me get at some facts?”

  She might as well meet with Phil a couple of times and see if he had anything to teach her. He wasn’t about to uncover anything that would hurt her father. If Roger Lippett hadn’t managed to injure Dick for all his years of trying, his ridiculous son didn’t have a chance. She would humor Blake by pretending an interest, just as Emily had advised her. Plus she would learn more about her father’s political activities. “I don’t know how to do that, but I’m willing to learn. I am taking a full load of courses, so I don’t have lots of time.”

  “So am I. So am I. This is just a little project on the side, something we can all three fool around with,” Phil said.

  THE NEXT EVENING, Melissa asked Blake, “Do you really like Phil? ’Cause you kind of play with him.” She was sitting in his desk chair as he sprawled on his narrow bed, both of them studying for finals.

  “He’s not my bud, if that’s what you mean. What he’s trying to do is interesting, and he could teach you a lot. Liking is beside the point.”

  “Sometimes you can be very cold.”

  “Absolutely. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of how cold I can be, babes.” His voice was lazy but lined with hard metal. “You don’t want to know that.” He tousled her hair, almost too hard.

  “Well, I’m going to apprentice myself to him. I’ll learn what I can. Both method and facts…. To learn what I can about my father. I mean, wouldn’t you learn about your father if you could?”

  “I know all I need to know about my father.”

  “But you don’t know who—Oh, you mean your adopted father?”

  “Who else?” Abruptly he reached over and pulled her down to him on the bed. “I desperately need a break. Let’s tussle.”

  Sometimes he stopped a conversation that way, by starting to make love to her, but she didn’t mind. She would rather have sex than talk about Phil and his dirt-digging mission, for she didn’t want Blake to guess her lack of enthusiasm.

  CHRISTMAS VACATION loomed. All that time stuck at home. Emily suggested they spend a week together. Melissa would be in Philadelphia. Dick needed to be pressing the flesh with his constituency and backers. Mother wanted to spend time with Rich and Laura. Melissa was a little nervous about Blake. They would be in Philadelphia with their families, but she was in no hurry to introduce him.

  “There’ll be some family junk to get through, but we should have plenty of time to get together,” he said. “Show you my old haunts. We’re out in Mount Airy, not that far. Will you have wheels?”

  “Not a chance. But I can take a cab or public transport…. Do you want me to meet your family?”

  “Let’s see how the ground lies first. You’ll be in Connecticut part of vacation, right?”

  “I was going to. Emily and I usually visit during the holidays.”

  “I told you, there’ll be a lot of family stuff. My brother and sister, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, third cousins four times removed, grateful clients of both my parents, other lawyers from the Guild. The
place is like an airport with everybody coming and going and yelling at each other, and every five minutes we have a huge sit-down meal.”

  “It sounds wonderful!”

  “If you like that kind of thing.” He was noncommittal, but she didn’t believe his cool demeanor. She wished she could be a part of his family scene, but then she would have to introduce him to hers—and that would be a declaration of war. It was probably better if, for the time being, they got together without making a fuss—met someplace.

  “We can just avoid the family thing,” she said, “at least for now, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Don’t want me to meet your folks, do you?”

  “Well, do you want me to meet yours?”

  His eyebrow rose sardonically. “I’m trying to spare you bedlam. But I think you’re afraid for your parents to lay eyes on me. Who is that? What is that?”

  “I just don’t know if we want to fight that battle yet.”

  He sat up, glaring. “You’re ashamed of me.”

  “How could I be? You’re handsome and smart and wonderful.”

  “And not exactly white….” He was still glaring at her.

  “Do you want to meet them?”

  “When you’re really ready,” he said. “Time to douse it this evening. I’m leaving tomorrow on the early side and I still have to pack.”

  She was being punished. They hadn’t made love that evening and now they weren’t going to. She felt hollow as she strode across campus. Blake wasn’t fair to her. He’d been the one who wasn’t in a hurry to bring her home, before she let him know she wasn’t eager either. Now he was sulking because she hadn’t insisted. She didn’t want to court trouble with Rosemary and Dick. Blake was her secret. She had always hidden what really counted from them, what she cherished most, the same way she hid her diaries and finally destroyed them for fear they would be found. She could see herself throwing her diary into the Schuylkill River when she was sent away to boarding school, for fear Rosemary would read it. Not that she had much to hide, just secret dreams and resentments, her anger, her fantasies. She imagined herself heroic and daring, all the traits she had never possessed. She was the heroine of her own stories, saving villages, leading charges, a clever and dangerous spy. She could not have endured Rosemary or Merilee reading her stories or even the prosaic narratives in her diary about school, her crushes, her daydreams, her sense of being overlooked and undervalued.

  Even though it would mean not seeing Blake all vacation, not even seeing Emily, she wished she could just stay at school, the way she had during spring vacation when she was at boarding school when she was sixteen: then her parents had gone abroad. Her father was on a mission to increase exports from Pennsylvania, to secure lucrative overseas contacts and contracts, and of course Rosemary had gone with him. Melissa had felt a little sorry for herself, but only a little, because she could indulge in fantasies and reading and lying late in bed with no one to berate her for lack of ambition. But now, she must go to Philadelphia and just hope that she and Blake could hook up a few times and that she could keep him under wraps awhile longer.

  Emily said, “At least we’ll have a great week together. Maybe I’ll get to Philadelphia, if the folks approve. It doesn’t do to ask them beforehand. They’d say, Don’t you want to be home with us? But after I’m home for a week or two, they won’t care if I take off. Parents always like you better when you’re away, don’t you think?”

  “I’d have to be on Mars to get far enough away to make them miss me.” Melissa was trying to cram her laundry into her backpack along with the clothes she would need for parties and dates and dinners. It wasn’t working. She hated suitcases. They were so not cool. She would have to take her backpack filled with laundry and then a suitcase stuffed with clothes her parents would expect her to wear. She hated to drag all that stuff out of the dorm. Maybe no one would look at her. But Whitney and Ronnie and Carol would notice her, loaded down like a pack animal. It was too embarrassing, but at least it wasn’t as bad as Fern, who was walking out with a battered old imitation leather suitcase, like something from the fifties. Well, Whitney always had loads of luggage, so she should just relax.

  • CHAPTER ELEVEN •

  Melissa had spent little time in the town house in Philadelphia, purchased through Stan Wolverton, Rosemary’s financial advisor, to provide a legal residence in Pennsylvania. It was a deep narrow redbrick row house two stories tall, plus a converted attic, a few blocks from Rittenhouse Square. Many of the row houses had been rehabbed, but some hadn’t. There were lots of young professionals with babies on their block. Behind their row, a paved alley ran, but it had its own name, as if it were a real street. Most of the tiny backyards were taken up with makeshift garages, but theirs was just paved for parking. She liked the square with its cool places to eat and have coffee, but in the daytime it was full of people with dogs, mommies and nannies airing their babies. Next to Georgetown, this lacked excitement.

  She had her own room at the top of the house. Her parents did not require much staff on their visits, although Alison came along. Rosemary always needed her, and besides, Melissa could not imagine with whom Alison would spend the holidays otherwise. Alison had been raised by her father and an aunt, but they were never in evidence. Her mother had died of breast cancer. Her father had a younger family Alison sometimes bought presents for but never seemed to visit. As far as Alison was concerned, Rosemary was her family. Alison needed family; Melissa often felt she had rather too much of it.

  Her top-floor room had a dormer window and a sloping ceiling on which she had already cracked her head twice. Her room: it felt less hers than the room she shared with Fern in the dorm, more like a hotel room where she was spending a few nights. The entire house felt that way, although Rosemary had brought in a decorator. The diningroom was blue, the livingroom gold, the hallways a faded rose—all colonial colors, the decorator had told Rosemary, in keeping with the age of the building.

  Melissa liked being up where she could hear pigeons cooing on the surrounding roofs, a soothing, sympathetic sound, as if they were trying to comfort each other. The room was drafty, so she slept under a feather quilt that had been kicking around the family since she could remember. Her room was a pale pink that made her feel as if she were in a nursery, while Merilee’s equally tiny room across the hall was pale gold. She wanted to imprint herself on it, but it seemed a waste of energy. How often would she be here? Still, she had to make it somewhat her own. She found a rocking chair under the eaves in what remained unfinished of the former attic and spray-painted it black. She would buy a black bedspread if she could find one, a relief from the colonial scheme in the house. She’d get posters. Blake would have ideas. She had not heard from him. He had his cell phone off, and the number of the Ackerman house had been busy every time she tried. She imagined him caught, slowly rotating at the vortex of the whirlpool of extended family, gradually drowning.

  Her parents’ social life was hectic. That night they had three parties to attend. Between the second and third, her mother rushed in to change out of a pale green chiffon and then dashed out again in midnight blue silk. Rosemary’s porcelain complexion was rosy with haste and excitement. She liked parties. She viewed them in the same predatory way Emily did, but Em hoped to find a guy to hook up with and Rosemary was looking for contacts useful to Dick she could create or polish. When Melissa was younger, their affairs had seemed glamorous. Now she just wanted to stay out of sight. Her parents set her teeth on edge. They were a handsome couple with a dazzle to them that magnetized the eyes of everyone around. Dick looked hale and hearty, as if his skin were buffed like his shoes. Rosemary appeared fragile, aristocratic, all planes and angles. Together they gleamed like a new Mercedes. They looked ready to be photographed. Televised. They looked like winners.

  Merilee was home for the holidays, mostly studying at the nearest library and sometimes going down to a law library she could use. Rosemary was berating her for breaking up with Bruc
e. “He’s exactly the sort of boy you should be encouraging.”

  “I don’t have time to encourage anybody. In law school, everything counts. Everything matters—except who I go out with, if I have time to go out with anybody.”

  “There’s no more important decision than the man you marry—that will determine the parameters of the rest of your life.”

  “I set my own parameters, Mother. I have no time for guys.”

  Melissa was happy that Merilee was getting criticism for once. For years, everything Merilee had accomplished was held up to her as the way to go. Merilee was so feminine, so prissy, so proper, so well-behaved, with scarcely a hair out of place, just like their mother. She had never gotten in trouble in school, never been caught smoking in the john and getting shellacked and puking after a football game, all the things Melissa had done and been punished for. She had a little thrill of pleasure: Now Merilee was getting a bit of Rosemary’s Procrustean bed for her girl children. Let’s chop off that foot right there. Let’s pull on your spine a little. Don’t slump. Don’t stand like a flagpole. Don’t speak too loudly. Speak up, don’t mumble. You must excel in school, you must live up to your potential. Don’t take grades too seriously, they’re not the purpose of your existence. Smile: no one looks her best when she’s pouting. Don’t smile too freely at people who don’t matter, they will get the wrong idea.

  Melissa watched her parents at the rare meal they shared around the almost unused diningroom table. She waited for the prickles of guilt because of what she had promised to do with that punk-haired dork Phil. They didn’t come. Phil and Blake and she were just kids playing at politics. Her parents were the real thing; anyone looking at them would see they were impervious. She tried to think of something to say from the little she had learned so far about Dick that would attract his attention, would impress him and cause him to turn to her, but her mind went blank and her mouth felt dry. Trying to influence him was only a daydream. She was just protecting herself, as she had always done when she eavesdropped on their conversations, arming herself against ambush, against disappointment, against the worst thing, hope. Dick’s secretary, Audrey, who stayed with her mom when she was in Philadelphia, came by with a bunch of constituent requests. Rosemary handled most of them, yes to this, put that one off supersweetly, get Alec on this right away.