The Third Child Read online

  “So at least he’s smart enough to like smart women.”

  It was clouding over. A chill wind had sprung up and she shivered. “I think the weather’s changing.”

  “We can only use this as our private place when it’s warm and it won’t be warm much longer. We’ll have to start using my room.” He stood up, extending a hand for her. She thought that he had a natural courtesy which was extremely unusual among guys. There was something princely about him. She was already spinning fantasies about his unknown and unknowable parentage. She had loved fairy tales when she was little. Emily had not been permitted to read fairy tales, for her parents thought they supported regressive values, but the nannies who had taken care of Billy and her had provided fairy tales along with daily vitamins. Blake was the son of a king, a prince in exile from some mythical golden kingdom. He was her prince who had wakened her not exactly with a kiss but in that general direction. “If we use your room, what about your roommate?”

  “Don’t have one. I did, but he bailed in the third week. College was too much for him. He was praying all the time, scared, out of his element. He went back to Oklahoma.”

  “Do you mind? I might be lonely in a single.”

  “I’m used to being alone. In one way, I’ve always been alone. Besides, you’ll see, I have a lot of valuable computer equipment I don’t want some wiseass monkeying with.”

  She wondered why he had not brought her to his room already, but then she answered her own question. He was intensely private and his impulse was to carry her away, to go off with her apart from other students, away from the college and classes and daily life.

  He mounted his bike and she climbed up behind him, clinging. The sky had turned a dark greenish grey and the wind was strong as he rode the curves down from the hill. She squinted her eyes shut and held tight. There was a scent on the wind that made her think of things dying as if it were bringing a frost, and the scent of what had already gone under blew in with it. She had become much more aware of weather and temperature, wind and rain since she had begun seeing Blake. She thought she was more aware of everything. All her senses were keener, quicker. Girls talked of losing baby fat; she had lost a baby sheathing on her nerves. She felt more alive, from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, where he often rested his hand—reminding her that, gangly as she had always felt, she was smaller than Blake, who must be six two.

  Sunday they studied together, their knees touching under a table in the library in a high room lit by tall windows the sun poured through from Andrus Field. Since she arrived, she had done just about everything with Emily. She felt a small nagging of guilt that she so much preferred being with Blake. Emily was her best friend. Em had that group from the mixer. She ate with them or with Fern or Ronnie when Melissa was eating with Blake. Emily liked the group, but only so-so. She had already run through what’s his name. Melissa wished Em would meet people she liked better, so that she wouldn’t feel she ought to be doing things with her or Fern, when she only wanted to be with Blake. She must be sure not to abandon her friend; that would be sleazy.

  She got an e-mail from Billy, all about breaking up with Cheryl because she was just too demanding, and about bruising his knee in hockey practice. She couldn’t decide whether to tell him about Blake. Finally she decided she would keep Blake to herself. It was almost superstitious, the feeling that if anyone in her family, even Billy, knew, it might weaken the new relationship, might alert her mother so that Rosemary would be galvanized into action to prevent something so “unsuitable.” Finally she wrote Billy the kind of answer she usually did, focused on him, minimal stuff about herself. He wouldn’t notice.

  Rosemary sent a kind of round-robin e-mail to all her children every Friday, bringing them up to date on Dick’s activities and accomplishments, the advice and help of his friends and allies, the dark plots of his enemies.

  Your father is going to cosponsor legislation with the senator from North Dakota to strengthen and increase the list of crimes to which the federal death penalty can apply in order to bring more stability to our country. He is thrilled that the President is hosting a brunch for the new Republican senators, and of course Dick will be meeting the President then in a more intimate setting. Naturally, when they met during the campaign, it was rather hurried, and while we were delighted he came to Rich’s wedding, it was hardly a face-to-face situation. This will be an opportunity for your father to demonstrate his unique charisma and his breadth of vision to the President.

  To each report, Rosemary would append comments and queries specific to that offspring.

  Are you making friends? Good contacts?

  For what?

  I am getting to know some very nice girls in the dorm and in my classes. Yes, I go to bed by eleven most nights.

  That was a lie, but so what? Nobody in the dorm went to bed that early. It was too noisy for one thing, with everybody’s TV or CD player booming, and they all had classwork. She caught up on sleep weekends.

  In general I have enough clothes.

  After all, she wasn’t a clotheshorse like Rosemary.

  What I really could use is a leather jacket. They’re very in this year.

  She wanted one as much like Blake’s as possible. She would love that.

  I think I’m doing well in my classes. I like most of them. No, I haven’t picked a major yet. My advisor says I have plenty of time. I don’t know when I might get to Washington.

  She could not even write the lying word home. I am still adjusting to college and think sticking around here and catching up on classwork is a better idea. I want to do well in school.

  It’s important to me to use my time well.

  She enjoyed lying to her mother. She had begun doing so around twelve, usually to shelter Billy from the consequences of something he had done or not done. With protecting herself, usually it was not so much a matter of avoiding punishment as of denying visibility. She protected her desires, her true interests, her feelings by pretending they didn’t exist. It was one of the ways she felt she was real: because she had secrets. Because she hid a picture of her most recent crush under the paper that lined her drawers. Because she hid sexy books Emily lent her. Other girls went around talking about their rock or movie stars, the hunks on TV they adored. She kept her fantasies to herself. Once in a while she had confided a little crush to Emily, who was blatant about her adorations. Emily had always kept lists: first it was, Men I would marry; then it was, Men I would lose my virginity with; then it was, Men I would go to bed with. Emily had really been into Chandler, who played in a local white rap band, for a couple of months. Melissa could barely call up Jonah’s face now. He seemed so callow and crude next to Blake. Still, it was good to have some kind of past, no matter how pitiful.

  Sometimes Melissa made such lists, but always she erased them at once, for fear someone might see them. It felt hot and dangerous even to write down who she really liked or desired. Perhaps the core of herself lay in secrets she tried to shelter, to nurture. Blake was her biggest secret now. Her parents would try to break them up the moment they saw Blake. Emily would never tell on her, for she had protected Em’s adventures from everyone—family, school—for years. That no one in her family could know about Blake made him even more her own. Except for Emily, this was the first time since Floppy disappeared that she had something of her own, a being she passionately cared for.

  • CHAPTER SIX •

  Melissa followed Blake into his room, at the end of the dormitory hall. His bed was covered with a southwestern print spread. His desk was laden with computer equipment—a desktop and a laptop, speakers, a scanner, two printers, various zip drives—that overflowed onto the stripped bed of his departed roommate, the top of his chest of drawers and a card table set up making an L with the desk. “You’re really into computers.”

  “They’re a tool,” he said defensively, placing his leather jacket over the back of his desk chair.

  “I wasn’t criticizing.” She want
ed to wander around his room examining everything, looking at his comb, his toothpaste, his clothes—put away far more neatly than hers, she noticed. The major mess was caused by connecting cables stretched here and there. She must be careful not to trip on them and bring down some delicate pricey computer thing.

  “I got tired of being called a nerd in high school. If you put time into your computer, you get results. You put time into people, the results are mixed.”

  “You’re not in a good mood.”

  “I’m in a fine mood. I’m just being honest.”

  She drifted over to his desk, crammed with machines. “What’s this?” She picked up a gadget.

  “Don’t touch that!”

  She snapped her hand back. “If you didn’t want me to touch anything, you shouldn’t have brought me up here.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have. Would you like me to go rummaging through your drawers?”

  “I wasn’t rummaging! But I can’t be in a place where I can’t touch anything. Blake, we kiss each other, we fuck all the time. We exchange bodily fluids. Isn’t that a little more intimate than looking at your computer equipment?”

  “I don’t think it is. One is just physical. The other is really personal.”

  “Oh, it isn’t personal to fuck? It is for me.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Of course it’s personal. I’m just not used to anyone else in my space.”

  “What’s with you? You invited me here. It’s cold outside now, and I have a roommate. If you didn’t mean it, you shouldn’t have brought me here.”

  “I just don’t like anybody else handling equipment. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I sure don’t know what I’m doing with you, the way you’re treating me.” She went to the door and opened it. “I can’t stay here like this. If you want me here, then decide you really do, and act accordingly.” She paused, but he didn’t look up at her. “See you in class!”

  She hoped he would come after her, but he didn’t. At the end of the corridor she stood waiting for him to appear, but after she had loitered there long enough for various occupants of the floor to pass and look her over, she ran down the stairs. She wasn’t sure if they had just broken up. She kept herself from bursting into tears on the way across to her dorm by biting the insides of her cheeks, by inhaling sharply. Then she stopped at Emily’s room and motioned her to come away. They went into the stairwell to talk, and at once, she started to cry.

  “I told you,” Emily said. “He’s just too weird.” She stroked Melissa’s hair and shoulder. “Don’t cry over him. He’s an asshole. We’re surrounded by men here. He isn’t your only choice.”

  “I screwed up, Emily. I screwed up my best chance. I fucked up a relationship with the most attractive man I’ve ever seen and the only man who ever made me feel anything. I love him, Em!”

  “You just met him!”

  “We’re soul mates. The way it’s supposed to be. And now I’ve lost him. Because I screw up everything in my life. My mother’s right about me.”

  An hour later, he called. “I apologize. I told you, I’m not used to being so close to anyone. I have to learn how.” When she was silent, unsure what to say, he went on, “Don’t you want to teach me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, but her voice was already softening. “You made me feel worthless today.”

  “You aren’t worthless to me. You’re precious. Don’t you know that?”

  “Not when you treat me that way.”

  “I said I’m sorry. I don’t want to push you away.”

  “Don’t you?” She knew she was already forgiving him, but she could not resist making him plead a little more. “You did a real good job.”

  “I want to bring you closer. But I need to learn how. I’m serious, Melissa. Will you teach me?”

  She stayed silent a minute, hoping that the suspense was building. “I’ll try.”

  “HE APOLOGIZED,” she told Emily. “He told me I’m precious to him.”

  “He should apologize. Are you going to see him again?”

  “Of course,” Melissa said. “Where would I ever again find a guy so sexy and he makes a fuss over me? Besides, if I break up with him, I’ll probably never have another orgasm in my life.”

  “I don’t know.” Emily was rubbing antiseptic ointment into her belly button, where her new ring had given her an infection. “I think it’s like riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it, your body remembers.”

  “I think it’s chemistry, Em.”

  “Yeah, then I’ve had chemistry with some real losers, believe me. Guys you wouldn’t want to spend an evening doing your laundry with.”

  Melissa was reading her botany assignment when her conscience began to pinch. Hadn’t she done the very thing to Billy, not to mention to Merilee and her mother, that had made her so angry with Blake? Hadn’t she laid down the law with Fern just last week about not touching her dresser? She was extremely private and possessive about her things. She could not endure having anyone casually poke through her desk or dresser top, even if there was nothing available that might embarrass or reveal her. She was fiercely protective of anything remotely personal. Why couldn’t she accept that in Blake? Because of the sex: after feeling so intimate, everything should be open to the other. But maybe in a real adult relationship, there were always off-limits areas.

  She had the urge to call him and apologize in turn, but she decided that would be way too neurotic. She would be extra nice to him tomorrow. Still, she felt better, for she understood and truly forgave him. They were more alike than she had realized. Knowing that turned a bad thing into a good thing. She hadn’t lost him after all. It was just a little bump in the road. He cared enough for her to apologize, prideful as he was.

  She lay in bed that night trying to decide what she should call him to herself—her boyfriend, her lover, her mate? What was her secret word for him? Blake was such a strange name. She must ask him about it. She didn’t think there was another Blake on campus, whereas there was even another Melissa in her government class. And another in this dorm. Emilys flourished by the dozen. She had always envied Merilee her name that nobody else had, even though to Emily she made fun of it as cobbled together from her mother’s name and her father’s middle name, Lee. He claimed to be a collateral descendant of the general. Dick’s father kept elaborate genealogies of the Dickinson family. If Dick said he was related to Robert E. Lee, no doubt he was. She had always detested the Civil War. It had far too many battles, and she had been dragged to various battlefields, where her father posed for photo opportunities with his children—herself in every picture on the far end, her more photogenic siblings flanking Dick. They hardly ever got to see much—just arrangements for the photo op, though sometimes when the photographer or the newsmen were setting up, she and Billy got to run around and jump in old trenches or climb embankments and run down.

  THAT WEEKEND Blake said he had to go to New York. “I’m seeing this dude who has a program I need.”

  They were in Mocon having breakfast. She had spent the night with him for the first time—in his room. He had insisted that happen to make up for how he had behaved.

  “Can’t he just send it to you?”

  “I need to see him to get it. It wouldn’t be cool for him to send it to me.”

  “Is it like a hacker thing?”

  “Something like. Want some more coffee?”

  “What does it do?”

  “What it’s supposed to, I hope.” He got himself more black coffee and hers regular, with skim milk and saccharin.

  She liked his remembering how she took her coffee, but she didn’t like not seeing him all weekend. “You aren’t going to tell me?”

  “It’s on a need-to-know basis, babes. When you need to know, I’ll show you. But I promise, you’ll like what it does.”

  “Blake, I like what you do. I’ll miss you. Can’t I go along?”

  “Not this time. This is kind of a delicate negotiation.�
�� He finished his coffee quickly. “Some other time we’ll go together.”

  She had the sense she might be pushing him too hard. He was a prickly guy, ready to pull back into his shell. After all, it was just one weekend, and it wasn’t like he was going to see another girl. At least she didn’t think so. “You said you wanted me to teach you to be close.”

  “Close, but not standing on my foot.”

  She had to back off. Sometimes she had the sense about him that she was out of her depth, that she didn’t have the skills and experience necessary to get her way with him. A more sophisticated girl would know what to do. But her experience with boys, even her years of dealing with Billy, was limited and useless in this context. Emily would have known how to handle Blake.

  He grinned suddenly. “Don’t look like I just killed your puppy. It’s only computer stuff. You know I’m into that. Aren’t there any computer junkies in your family?”

  “We all use them, but no. Rich—that’s my older brother, Richard Junior, while Dad is Dick and he’s Rich—he’s into politics. Merilee is into law. And Billy—he’s usually into trouble. Alison is my mother’s pet computer nerd.”

  “Alison? Another sister?”

  “She’s my mother’s assistant. Like secretary, scheduler, errand runner, spy on us kids, sycophant, yes-woman, whatever it takes.”

  “Your mom isn’t computer savvy?”

  “She uses one, sure. She gets about a hundred e-mail messages a day. But Alison puts programs on and takes them off and all that stuff. When something’s wrong, she can usually fix it.”

  “A hundred messages a day? You’re exaggerating.”

  “Not by much, believe me.”

  “Does she send you e-mail?”

  “Every Friday she e-mails us kids.”

  “Why don’t you show me? I’m curious. If it isn’t too personal.”