The Third Child Page 8

“There’s hardly anything personal about it, believe me. Sure, you can read one if you want to. I usually erase them after I answer them.”

  “That’s no problem. I can retrieve them. But next time, don’t.”

  “How come you’re so curious about my mother?”

  “I want to know everything about you. Your family’s been a big deal in your life. I want to understand them so I can understand you better. You’re a complex creature, babes. Did you know Melissa means ‘bee’?”

  “Yeah. I never thought it was sexy or anything. Like busy as a bee.”

  “Well, you stay busy while I’m gone. Be good.”

  “I have to be good. You’re the one going to New York.”

  “Business, little honeybee, a program I want, I need, I got to have.”

  “TWO STEPS FORWARD and one step back,” she said to Emily. “Looks like the movies for us this Saturday night.”

  “Why couldn’t he take you along?”

  “I don’t think he wanted to. He’s been a loner, you know. He hitchhiked all around Europe by himself.”

  “He’s a funny dude,” Emily said, but she sounded rather happy about the weekend. “We can go with the guys—” That was what Emily called the little group she had been hanging with. “I might be interested in Kurt.”

  “I thought he and Amy were an item.”

  “No longer. Her old boyfriend’s coming from Cornell next weekend. We’ll all go. It’ll be great.”

  Melissa didn’t think it would be so great, but she wasn’t going to say that and hurt Emily’s feelings. Emily had been out of sorts about the amount of time Melissa was spending with Blake, so she wanted to compensate. Melissa wasn’t crazy about “the guys,” but she could hardly complain if Emily had found people to hang with. She’d stop feeling guilty about Em and they’d have a good time together. After all, she’d existed for almost her whole life before she met Blake. But that was just existing. Now she was fully alive. She could handle the guys better than she had last time. She had her own boyfriend now. She felt more confident, and she knew she exuded something, because Ronnie had been friendlier of late—before she had treated Melissa as an appendage of Emily—and so had Carol, whom Emily always referred to as Queen of the Hall. Carol had won a beauty contest in high school and been homecoming queen. She was bucking for something here. Now she actually said “Hey” when they passed in the hall. Melissa had more confidence in herself, and it must show.

  She also put time aside for Fern, who had taken up serious Frisbee and was also playing soccer with other first-year women. “You know, Fern, it’s not like we’re trying to build résumés. In high school we all had to accumulate these lists of activities and accomplishments. So long as you keep your grades up, they won’t take your scholarship away.”

  “You told me to go out for sports to make friends.”

  She was embarrassed. She gave Fern advice freely and forgot it five minutes later. She had to be more careful with Fern—there was a fragility to her that contrasted with her athleticism and physical strength. Fern was thin but wiry. She exercised with free weights four mornings a week. “Is it working?”

  Fern bowed her long neck. “I think so….” She looked up after a moment. “Whitney doesn’t like me. She calls me Fern Bar and Weed.”

  “Buttercup? Ignore her, Fern. She’s an idiot.”

  “She’s been talking about you and Blake. I heard her. She doesn’t think enough of me to lower her voice when she’s being vicious. She says you’re slumming and that you couldn’t get a white boyfriend.”

  She wished Fern wouldn’t repeat the nasties she heard, but Fern was only doing it to show she was on Melissa’s side—and when had Melissa begun to have a side? Whitney could just choke on her own malice. “I have exactly the boyfriend I want, thank you very much. I think she’s jealous.”

  Buttercup had a nasty streak that reminded Melissa of girls who had picked on her in grade school, the vicious pretty girls who ran the cliques. They bullied her because she was too tall, too chunky. And because they could. She had been bitterly unhappy then. She would have done anything to be accepted by them, but nothing she did made a difference. God, how unhappy she had been for years. She had suffered a recurring dream where she had gone into the woods with her family, then got lost. Instead of searching for her and finding her, they left her there, as if they had forgotten she existed. They abandoned her like Hansel and Gretel; they left her in the woods and the rest of them returned home without her. She would wake frightened and cold. That nightmare had felt so real; in a way it was.

  • CHAPTER SEVEN •

  Melissa sat on his bed, with its spread imitated from a Navaho blanket. “Of course I missed you. I don’t see why I couldn’t go along.”

  “I don’t know how far I can trust you.” He was leaning on the edge of his desk, his hands clasped behind his head.

  “That’s an awful thing to say. Why wouldn’t you trust me?”

  “First, we haven’t known each other that long. Second, you’re the daughter of privilege and power. How do I know where your allegiance lies? With me or with them? Third, I doubt if you’ve ever chosen to break the law in your life, for a reason bigger than the pressure of your high school peer group to smoke a little dope or drink some beer.”

  Her eyes stung. “How can you say those things? How can you say I’m precious to you and then that you don’t trust me?”

  “Should I trust you?”

  “Yes, you should trust me. I care about you.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “You haven’t said you love me.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  She felt humiliated. How could she say she loved him when he hadn’t said it first? But he wouldn’t unless she did, she was sure of that. He was too proud. Suppose she said it, and then he said he didn’t. She would die. She would sink into the floor and keep sinking through the next floor and the basement into the mud beneath the dormitory.

  “Silence means you don’t.”

  She was sure that if she didn’t say that she loved him, she would lose him right then and there. It was a test. “Yes, I love you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She felt stymied. “What people mean. I’m in love with you.”

  “But I don’t know if it came to somebody else, say in your family, if you’d put me first. That’s what I mean by trust. That we’re a real couple with each other, bonded, mated. Then we mean that we’re real before all else to each other.”

  “Do you feel that way about me?”

  “Would I bother if I didn’t? I despise dating. I hate the way guys in this dorm talk about girls. Do they put out, don’t they. Are they like super-models or just dogs. It’s a sick game. I’m not playing.”

  “I know what you mean.” She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but she could not seem to move. “I don’t want that either. I never did. I feel like you’re something better, something purer and more intense and far more real than any of the guys here.”

  “From the first time we were together,” he said slowly, coming toward her now and placing his hands on either side of her face, “I’ve felt there was something special in you. That’s why I tell you you’re precious. I want us to love each other from our spines, from the core of our being.”

  “I want that too.” She had to convince him. “I never felt anything before you touched me the first time. I wasn’t alive. I wasn’t real.”

  He pulled her against him, hard against him, and just held her. When they were together, she felt as if she soared onto another level of being. Everything mundane and trivial filtered away. She did not worry about her classes, she did not worry if Rosemary was going to bug her about not having a major, she didn’t care if Merilee was smarter and prettier, she didn’t mind that Whitney said to her couldn’t she get someone to introduce her to a white boy? Even Ronnie said she understood that some girls just liked it down and dirty. None of that mattered. Only his intense fierc
e eyes focused on her, making her real, making her burn with a mix of desire and aching love for him. No one in her family had ever felt this way, she knew it. They had accommodations and successes and failures and agendas, but none of them ever knew passion that consumed them to a fine point of painful light. She grasped him back, and for moments that felt forever they just held each other hard and tight, clutching, bound together as if they were alone in a vast cold darkness, alone on an asteroid in the hostile night of space.

  EMILY WENT OUT Friday night with a guy from their French class instead of her usual crowd.

  “What are you going to see?”

  “I forgot to ask. Do I care? I just want to find somebody who’s worth hooking up with. Do you think he’s cute?”

  Actually, until he had stopped Emily after class, Melissa had never noticed him. He was pretty average in all ways, height, weight, with light brown hair and owl glasses. He did have a good French accent, but she couldn’t say she had ever thought about him twice. But loyally she said, “Really, yes.”

  Emily turned to look at her. “So Blake’s coming over here? How did you arrange that with Fern?”

  “Actually she has a game tonight. Soccer.”

  “How are you guys—Blake and you—getting on? Sometimes you come back glowing. Sometimes you come back with the gloom on you like black paint.”

  “He blows hot and cold. He drives me crazy. One day he’s passionate about me. The next, he’s testing me. Making me prove myself over and over. When will he believe I’m crazy about him?”

  “A power trip,” Em said, frowning. “Should I wear red or pink? I love my pink sweater, but somehow I don’t think I’m the pink type.”

  She had told Blake she would call him as soon as Fern left. He was going to come over to her room for the first time. She rushed around tidying, lest he think her a complete slob. His room was always neat, except for the clutter of computer stuff. She had the habit of discarding clothes on the floor or the chair. Fern had so little, the mess was just about all hers. She found tights missing for two weeks and a belt she thought she had lost. She found Emily’s Swatch watch. She found a coating of dust she wiped up with tissues, the remains of two apples and various cups of coffee and a postcard from Chandler that Emily had tossed at the wastebasket but missed. How little of Fern’s was scattered about. Like Blake, she was neat, yet she never complained about Melissa’s sloppiness. The only thing to be tidied of Fern’s was a crooked pile of books beside her bed.

  Blake arrived only twenty minutes late. Tomorrow they were going to a jazz concert at Westco he was interested in, but tonight they would enjoy the rare opportunity to have her room to themselves. They curled up together on her single bed, filling each other in on the fifty things that had happened since the evening before. “I feel as if I’m only half alive until you get here.”

  “We’re one being together. Each of us by ourselves is only half.”

  She liked that. It made her feel secure with him. How could you lose half of yourself?

  “I have a present for you tonight. A surprise.”

  She patted his pockets, teasing him with her hands. “What is it?”

  “First, did you get your regular e-mail from your mother today?”

  “Sure. Punctuality is next to cleanliness or whatever. She never keeps people waiting except to make a point—like, they aren’t important and she is.”

  “In photos she looks like a beautiful woman. Is she?”

  “Everyone says so. I thought so when I was little. Now I try to find something wrong, to make myself feel less clunky. But she’s perfect. Do you understand? Nothing ever out of place, no blemishes, nothing too big or too small. She’s always boasting that she’s the same size as she was when she married my father. She barely eats.”

  He took her face between his hands. “I know how insecure she makes you feel. Have you ever wondered what she says to your brothers and sister?”

  “Of course. I wonder every week.”

  “Maybe we can find out. Call up her last message for me on your computer.”

  She obeyed. He nudged her out of the seat then and faced her laptop. “DSL connection, so she’s on a network. Okay. Great. I can do it. Just give me some time.” He pulled a disc from his backpack and sat at the computer for half an hour, typing with his eyes locked on the screen. She picked up the book she was reading for French, a play of Sartre’s. There was a lot of slang and idiomatic French in it she had to look up or guess at. Emily and she had been working at it over supper, until Emily had to get dressed for her date. The French was hard and she almost forgot to watch him. They were expected to be able to translate a passage on demand in class Monday. When Em got home, she would give her the translation she was working on.

  “Okay, babes,” he said at last. “We’re in. But first I want to send all this to my computer so I can do it more easily for you next week.” The download onto a zip drive he had brought took a little more time, but he came and lay on the bed with her while the computer was talking to the zip drive. She loved the way he kissed, not in a hurry, not with his lips hard, not as if it was something to blast through to reach the real stuff, but almost an end in itself. That was part of what got her so excited with him, the kissing. She felt sometimes she could lie with him kissing for hours, for days. The first time had been so abrupt that it had been a pleasant surprise to find out how much he liked just plain kissing. They made love slowly these days, making it last.

  “Suppose you hadn’t gone to Wesleyan. Or suppose I’d gone to Penn like my sister, Merilee. Then we’d never have met.”

  “I believe we would have, sooner or later,” he said, brushing back her hair. “Okay, everything I need is downloaded.” He got up to disconnect his portable zip. Then he motioned her over. “Okay, truth time. Let’s see what she wrote to your brothers and your sister.”

  Dearest Rich, I’m so delighted that you are doing well with your developers, but it’s time to start lining up support for your first run. I suggest you attach yourself to Congressman Fuller’s reelection campaign. You can learn a lot and make some excellent contacts for your future. You can see what’s involved in a successful campaign, so that you won’t make some of the mistakes people running for office for the first time are prone to. Also you need to form relationships in your district, so that the right people know you. You have to persuade Laura to join important women’s organizations such as the Junior League. I’ll append a list of my suggestions, but it’s my fervent wish that she get going at once. Select a church carefully. I’ll give you three suggestions. Then a country club. Again I have two suggestions. Join as many business organizations as you can manage. In each of them, I don’t have to tell you, get to know everyone you can.

  You need to look around your district and decide what is going to be your issue when you are ready. Education is always a biggie, sweetheart. Property taxes, taxes in general. Control of schools. See what people get excited about. You can only do that by joining organizations and meeting as many future constituents as possible face-to-face. Even unimportant people can give you insight into your district and its hot-button issues. Start keeping lists of potential supporters and donors. Fortunately, it doesn’t cost a fortune to run for state representative. But you want to seek out and cultivate those who will later give you full support when you need it, when you are running for higher office.

  What did Laura think of Hallie? She should cultivate her, but be cautious, as she is a dreadful gossip. You must begin to school Laura in reticence. She is lovely and has the knack already for putting people at ease, but sometimes she is a little too much at ease herself. She must understand that whether she is with one person or five hundred, she is representing you. She cannot afford to make idle comments or offer opinions that might differ from those you are espousing. Of course, I have seldom heard Laura offer an opinion on public matters, so perhaps this warning is unnecessary. But she does tend to open up a little too much in conversation with other women.r />
  Merilee has finally stopped seeing that unsuitable Italian boy. I was terrified she might be serious about him. He may be good looking now, but in fifteen years, he’ll be potbellied and sunk in martini-land, about as exciting as an old leather chair.

  Here’s your father’s record this week. You should peruse it quickly, so that you stay abreast of his positions and don’t inadvertently contradict them. We must all stand together.

  Melissa rose and paced around the small room. “She never writes to me that way. She almost treats him as an equal. It isn’t fair. She takes him seriously, you can tell. Me, she just interrogates. What time did I go to bed? Am I eating properly? Am I getting enough exercise? Am I losing weight? That crap.”

  “Well, let’s see what she wrote to your sister—what’s her name?”

  “Merilee,” Melissa said shortly, leaning over his shoulder to see the screen.

  Dearest Merry One, I hope that this new young man works out better than the last. I know he adored you, but he simply wasn’t of your caliber. There is no worse mistake an intelligent and able young woman can make than that of marrying beneath herself—of not marrying up to at least her own potential, her background, her level of ambition. You want a winner, because that’s what you are. Bring Bruce to dinner Sunday and I’ll give you my candid impressions. Have him here by seven for cocktails first. You can deduce a certain amount from a man’s behavior over cocktails—sometimes more than he wants you to see. I promise to be friendly to him, but you have to permit me to form my own judgment, as I know you are still taking input toward forming your own.

  I am absolutely delighted you have made Law Review. I expected as much, and you have come through with flying colors. You want to stay in the top tenth percentile of your class. It isn’t that I am urging you to marry, but that when you are considering an involvement with a man, by this time he should be of a sort you could marry. The time for experimentation is over. You want people to be impressed by your escorts, not astounded or scandalized or, at worst, to pity you. It is important not to waste time with the unsuitable, when you have little time to waste. Rich’s Laura is certainly acceptable. Her family and connections are top drawer, but she lacks a certain inner drive I wish he had married. He needs someone to push him a bit, and I’m afraid Laura can’t or won’t take on that role. You need a couple of new suits. The jacket length is longer this year and you could use a few stylish blouses. If you like, I’ll have my dresser send them directly to you. We’re entertaining heavily Saturday. The Washington hostesses are far pickier than the Main Line ladies, and it is necessary to make the preparations impeccable. Alison is doing her best, which is always admirable, but if you have a little time to spare Thursday afternoon for final planning, I could use the help. I always know when I delegate to you, everything will be done on time and done well. This must be top drawer. We have the secretary of transportation and his wife coming, and two congressmen from our state.