The Third Child Read online

  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, e
ven 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.

  “Do you think he’s coming?” Rosemary asked after a couple of minutes, when her father returned to his previous position and Rosemary’s hands once again appeared, massaging his shoulders. He in that tone of voice always meant the President.

  “He likes to keep his options open. He can always plead an emergency. But he owes me. I delivered Pennsylvania for him, just as I promised. I didn’t want a cabinet position—”

  “That surprised him.”

  “I was open about my plans to run for the Senate. Now I’m on his field. If he doesn’t come, it means he doesn’t think I’m going to be a player.”

  “Or it just may mean that he really is tied up.”

  She heard the rustle of Rosemary’s skirt and quietly crept up the stairway to her bed. Tomorrow the real razzle-dazzle started.

  DINNER WAS AT the Four Seasons. The video man was already taping, even Melissa’s stupid little speech that Alison had written and given her to memorize. How Rich had always been an outstanding example, an older brother she could truly admire, who looked out for her and helped her through the small disturbances of childhood and adolescence. And other whopping lies. Other than pulling her hair or her ear, she couldn’t remember Rich laying a hand on her. Occasionally teasing her to tears did not exactly stack up to brotherly love. His usual name for her had been Melon-head. Melon-belly. He had not been cruel or abusive, just uninterested. Mostly, she thought, they viewed each other as minor nuisances. Ships that passed on the stairs.

  Rich was even taller than their father, but more solid, more muscular. He worked out. Dad just watched his weight, playing golf and tennis. People often said Rich was a carbon copy of his father. The family resemblance was strong—as it wasn’t in her or Billy. He had a dark tan already from being on the boat the Pottses had brought down from the Chesapeake and from the bachelor weekend in the Bahamas. His eyes were blue like Dick’s and Billy’s, striking against his tan. He looked successful, that’s what it was with Rich. Before he had ever done anything, and really he had never done anything much—unlike Merilee, his grades and accomplishments were just average—but he looked like a winner. Big guy, handsome, dazzling smile, lots of the right friends. Those friends were telling stories about him now, a legend in the making.

  “I remember when Rich got the dean’s golf cart and put it on his roof!”

  “You should have seen him shooting three-pointers.”

  “I’m the one who introduced the happy couple. I knew they were going to click, but I had no idea that, three years later, they’d be marching down the aisle. We were all at the Westminster Dog Show that day. My mother’s trainer was showing her shar-pei and Laura’s mother had a chow in the show. I can’t even remember why Rich was there—to keep me company? I think we had something planned for that evening. That’s how it all started—going to the dogs. Neither of our dogs won, but we all went out together afterward—except the dogs, of course. If they’d won, we would have taken them to the restaurant too.”

  Actually Rich disliked animals, as Rosemary did. The family never had pets, even though Dick’s campaign manager had urged him to get a dog to improve his image. Then a backer had given them a cocker spaniel when Dick was running for governor the first time. It was a female who had become Melissa’s and she had named her Floppy. Floppy had been hers to walk and care for and brush until one day about two months after the election, Melissa had come home from school and Floppy was gone. Rosemary had given her away. Rosemary said she was living on a farm where she could run free, but Melissa had never seen her again and had always suspected something much worse. The excuse given the backer was that Rich was allergic to dogs.

  Now Alison had a tropical fish tank in her office, because she said the water sound soothed her: that was the closest to animal life that entered the family. The girls had been allowed to go horseback riding, one of the few enthusiasms Melissa shared with Merilee. Melissa loved animals: cats, dogs, horses, any creature at the petting zoo where she remembered Noreen taking them. Rosemary considered animals unsanitary. Anything that might shed was dangerous. Laura had grown up with dogs. Even if they were show dogs, they were real; they ran around the house and played and sat up and rolled over. If Melissa ever got rich, she would keep horses. A paddock with horses. Or at least one horse, a bay gelding, who would come and eat sugar cubes and apples and carrots from her hand. All right, that wasn’t going to happen soon, but eventually, eventually. Maybe she would move out west and own a ranch. That would be really far from her family and really different. She saw herself on horseback leading a line of tourists up a canyon. A rattlesnake rose before her. She reined in her horse, soothing it with her touch, drew her gun and shot. Actually she didn’t like to kill anything. Anyhow, when she finished college and moved into an apartment with Emily, she would at least have a dog. Her own, as she had always dreamed. Not a breed. She was sick of pedigrees. No, a mutt rescued from a shelter, who would be all and entirely hers. She could almost see, almost smell her dog. She had dreamed about dogs and horses hundreds of times. She sighed so loudly a woman turned and stared. Senator Frost’s new wife, thirty years his junior. Melissa felt herself blushing. She did not belong with these people. Tomorrow would be even worse.

  It was. She looked around the church as the guests filed in, before she was hustled off to the room where the wedding party was gathering. She felt more alone than usual in the spate of preparations and congratulations. Occasionally she recognized a face from TV, journalists who covered the White House or the Senate, senators, congressmen, bureaucrats. The secretary of the interior, whatever that meant. She wou
ld never let such a gilded ostentatious fuss be created around her, even if she ever did find somebody who would love her, her as she was. But once she escaped from her family, surely she could find a man who would care for her, not a user like Jonah but somebody with heart. She could love, she knew it. She could love with her whole being, if only she ever had the chance to prove it.

  The President did come, which meant secret service, as if things weren’t complicated enough. But Rosemary was ecstatic. She flirted with the President, who kissed her on the cheek. Melissa stared at him. She had seen him with her father a couple of times, but she had never been this close. There was something about famous men, they had a kind of gleam as if lights shone only on them. Sometimes Dick looked that way. Up close, they looked as if they were ads for themselves, shiny, no longer made of flesh.

  Finally, late but not too late, the ceremony started. Laura had a long train. The bridesmaids had smaller trains. They were, fortunately, detachable, or the dress would have been useless afterward. She felt huge in the yellow off-the-shoulder dress, teetering on yellow satin shoes. She hardly ever wore heels, and if she did, they were sturdy platforms or big clunky heels that made her even taller but were easy to walk on. These were little strappy contraptions designed to pinch the feet, raise her on stalks. Besides, pale yellow shoes were bound to get in trouble, and she already had some kind of stain on hers—as Rosemary, resplendent in blue, had pointed out. Rosemary could do anything on heels. She always wore them. Some of Melissa’s pleasanter memories were of her mother sprawled on the couch rubbing her sore feet after a long day, relaxed for once and watching CNN or a movie on the VCR. Rosemary could even run in heels: Melissa had seen her do that a hundred times. Melissa could barely get up and down a staircase in these torture devices. She was so tall she had never wanted to wear heels, fearing she might loom over any guy she was interested in.