The Third Child (32 page)

“I’ll write it down.” Melissa used her most sarcastic voice, but Alison just nodded and collected herself to leave.

“Good idea. Write it down.” Alison descended the narrow back stairs.

Dick was in an expansive mood at supper. “Everybody was congratulating me on the
Wall Street Journal
mention. Even Senator Whitehead called this morning and asked after you.” He was talking of course to Rosemary. “My visibility is increasing, and the fuss around those scurrilous pieces in the
Inquirer
has died down. We’re over the hump.” His bright blue eyes glinted like faceted stones. He winked merrily, cutting into his fillet of salmon. “Time to enjoy the holidays.” Suddenly he turned to Melissa. “You had us worried there for a while, my girl. I hope you learned a lesson about choosing your associates.” He leaned over to pat her hand. How warm his hands always were. “I know you meant well, but you didn’t behave with due thought for the consequences. But I hope my little girl is back on course. Now give us a smile.”

“I still think you both made a big fuss about nothing.”

“Letting someone that dangerous near you is something to pay attention to,” he said, taking more wild rice. “Even beside the possible risk to you, you’re a member of a highly visible family, and that makes everything you do a matter of public interest, if not now then down the pike.”

“When you’re running for President.”

Dick paused and his gaze grew intense. He could not seem to decide whether to take that as flattery or to be annoyed. In the end, he chose to ignore it. “Just learn to be more careful. What you do reflects on all of us. We must constantly watch appearances as well as realities. That whole nonsense in the
Inquirer
proves that—if nothing else. But we’re on track now, right?” He turned to smile at his wife. “These little storms come and go in public life.”

“Is supper satisfactory?” Rosemary asked him, leaning on her elbow and toying, as always, with her food.

“Delicious. As always you’ve done well with the arrangements.”

Dick, however, ate with a good appetite. He truly did not care much what he ate. He would eat hot dogs at a county fair or three rubber chickens in a row at functions with the same relish as he dined at the most expensive restaurants. It was not an act. He seemed to enjoy any food put in front of him so long as the occasion required eating it. He was looking healthy, gleaming. He carried himself with that air of invincibility and utter confidence that always cowed her. How could she and Blake ever have thought they could influence him or even slow him down? He was rolling along, and they were in danger. That was the way it always went with him. Troubles enveloped him, then dissipated like a cloud of steam. The accusations, the scandals, the revelations vanished, and he stood there taller than ever and stronger. He was who he was, a man made for the public, a man made for power. She did not want her supper. She never wanted to eat anything again. She felt sick and very small. What on earth had they imagined they were doing? She had been an idiot to go along with Blake. She should have just told him to stop when things started getting bad. They had failed, they had been foolish, they had brought the law down on themselves. Of course.

M
elissa escaped from the house on Monday. Rosemary, Alison and Dick had picked up their tempo, trying to get as much done as they could before the holiday, trying to cram a week’s work into two days. No one had extra energy to spend overseeing her. Billy was out most of the time. Their special closeness had eroded. She felt a void where her younger brother had always been. Merilee was off with a classmate studying. Melissa simply said she had last-minute shopping and slipped out. Blake picked her up with his bike on a corner of Rittenhouse Square.

“So where are we going?” She rested her cheek against the cold leather.

“A long way. Out to Mount Airy. Are you cold?”

“It’s not that cold today.” It was, and she was, but she didn’t care. It was such a relief to hold him. Such a relief to be out of the house, to be for a few hours who she really was, not who she was supposed to be. Still, her ears might drop off. She clutched him tight and wished they could ride off the edge of visibility, into a magical sunset beyond their families and their troubles.

“How has it been going?” he asked when he was stopped for a red light.

“Better than I expected. They haven’t had time to third-degree me.”

“So what exactly is happening with them?” The light changed.

His neighborhood was made up of mostly turn-of-the-century big rambling houses with a few newer ones interspersed, some clapboard, some brick, most of the grey stone she associated with rural eastern Pennsylvania, a sense here of space and comfort. Houses stood among bosomy trees, rolling lawns. Some of the kids she saw on the street were white,
some African-American, some other. It seemed to be an integrated neighborhood, a wonder in Philadelphia. It reminded her a bit of the suburb where they had lived before Dick was elected governor, but there everything was newer—the houses, the streets, the trees—and everybody was white. A lady in an SUV was unloading three boys with hockey gear. An African-American girl with a white boy just behind her whizzed past on their bikes in spite of the snow and ice. A portly man with a grey-streaked beard was knocking icicles off his gutter with a rake. Two little kids were building a snow fort on the corner lot while an older woman bundled up till she was round as a beach ball sat on the steps clutching herself and watching them. An aide helped an old lady down the steps to the street, where a van was waiting.

Si was at his office, but Nadine was home to greet her at the door and kiss her on both cheeks. “Don’t you look blooming. Cold weather must agree with you.”

Nadine was affectionate and friendly, but Melissa felt she was being judged. Blake would deny it if she said anything, but she knew they did not consider her quite worthy of him. We’ll put up with you cheerfully because we recognize a fait accompli, and because we are too smart to risk antagonizing Blake. But we will watch and wait. This too is likely to pass.

The house reminded her a little of Emily’s. It was big and well furnished, a turn-of-the-century grey-stone house with pillars on the porch and a sizable yard with its own stone garage. NPR had been on when she came in, but Nadine shut off the radio at once. A big bushy black cat lay on the sofa in a patch of wintry sun. An Egyptian-looking dark orange kitten perched on the mantelpiece with its oversize pinkish ears pricked toward her. Blake tossed his leather jacket over a chair and nobody rushed to hang it. He swooped up the black cat, who began purring loudly as he flung himself on the couch with the cat on his chest. “Hey, Rasputin, how’s it going?” Then to her, “From a shelter, but how he grew.” Yesterday’s
Philadelphia Inquirer
and
New York Times
were scattered around the livingroom. Here and there books lay open. The fireplace had recently been used, but nobody had swept out the ashes. They did not have a
Christmas tree, but a large bay tree stood in the diningroom in a Mexican earthenware pot.

The livingroom and diningroom had warm red-toned Oriental rugs on the floor and art on the walls in a variety of styles from abstract to landscape to African. Still, the house was not intended to be looked at, to serve as a backdrop. It was a place several people lived and left their activities scattered about like clothes they had dropped. It was not dirty, but it was not neat. She liked the feel of it. Her own home was always as perfect as Rosemary could manage to keep it. Nothing was left out for long. Everything had a proper placement in the scheme of things. Before she was ten, she had learned never to walk in and toss her coat or jacket over a chair. She had been trained to hang anything she removed at once. Maybe that was why she threw her clothes into vast multicolored drifts all over her dorm room and Blake tidily folded his.

She was surprised she was hungry enough to eat any of the lunch spread out on the diningroom table. Sara came down the stairs to join them, yawning. “Hi, kid. How’s the bride? My brother treating you right?”

“You came back for the holidays?”

“Dad got me a job. I gave up on my skanky boyfriend. I’m thinking of going back to school, but in the meantime…I need to make enough money for my own apartment. I am just too old to move back in.” She had grown out her hair since Melissa had seen her last. A wild combination of black and brown, most of it braided, it resembled a field partly burned over. Still, Sara was pretty enough to get away with the mess on her head.

Lunch was smoked fish, sliced tomatoes, sliced red onions, hardboiled eggs and rye bread. Melissa found the sturgeon and the nova fine, but the whitefish with their heads still attached made her queasy.

“So how are you holding up?” Nadine asked her. “Are you pregnant yet?”

“No!”

“Don’t be in a hurry. You want to finish school first, both of you.”

“I’m in no hurry. Although I want to have children before I’m too old.”

“What’s too old nowadays?” Nadine waved her fork. “Grandmothers
have babies. Not that I could have gone through that. It’s best to do it when you’re too young to have any idea what you’re getting into. But not yet! Not yet.”

“So are you glad to be back here, in Philadelphia?” Melissa asked Sara, frantic to change the subject.

“I have friends here, but I want to be in New York. Once I get the money together.”

“She has romantic notions about being poor in New York,” Nadine said. “This is our resident romantic.”

“I was in film school when I met Nick. We were going to shoot a film in Joshua Tree. That was the idea when we went west.”

“What happened to the film? Can I see it?”

“We never finished it…. Hell, we barely started it.” Suddenly a large tear rolled down Sara’s cheek.

“That’s too bad,” Melissa said hastily. “Do you want to go back to film school?”

“It was his fault. He smoked the money. He was a loser, just like Mother said. But he could be so sweet!” Now tears were trickling from both eyes. Her black eye makeup began to run.

Nadine patted her daughter’s shoulder. “Don’t cry, sweetie. He isn’t worth the tears.”

“But I loved him! You never understood. He had a horrible childhood with an alcoholic mother. He loved films and ice cream and just being outside in a pretty place and lying in the grass. He liked so many things.”

“A guy can be really likeable and still not be someone you want to hitch up with. I’ve known some really charming murderers and the sweetest bank robber you ever could meet.” Nadine took one of the whitefish and slit it neatly along the belly, separating the fine bones from the flesh.

Sara snorted. “He wasn’t a murderer or a bank robber.”

“Just a pothead,” Nadine said. “Is that how you want to spend your life?”

“Better than robbing banks, I guess.” But Sara had stopped crying. She scrubbed at her eyes, blew her nose and went back to her lunch. “Anyhow, it’s over and dead, so bury it.”

“Sweetie, I didn’t bring him up. I’m glad to drop the subject.”

Everybody had trouble with their parents, everybody. It was a law of nature. Even a nice warm mother like Nadine could stick her nose in it. Blake had kept quiet, but now he carefully changed the subject, asking Nadine about a client she was representing. Sara cast him a grateful look, but Nadine took the bait and launched into a description of her defense of a thief she was convinced the cops had framed.

After lunch, Nadine drove to her office, where she was meeting a new client. Sara looked at them. “I’m retiring to my room and turning on my music. So I won’t hear you and I don’t want to see you, and have a good time.”

“Thanks.” Blake kissed her on the cheek. “See you at supper.”

Blake’s room was on the second floor. It was twice the size of hers, well furnished with electronic gear plus state-of-the-art player and amps. “It’s soundproofed.” Blake waved at the room, papered with posters of rock stars and some old flyers about his father, declaring his innocence, calling for rallies in his defense. Melissa remembered the candlelight vigil outside the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg that Noreen had let them peek at, to Rosemary’s displeasure. She examined all the flyers and posters. “His case must have generated a lot of interest.”

Blake unfolded himself onto the bed, covered with a bright pieced quilt. “A lot of people believed in him. They knew he was innocent. The way I did.”

“Did that help? That others believed in him too?”

“I was a kid. Nothing helped. Maybe nothing ever will. I knew he was innocent, and I was powerless to save him.” Blake lay staring at the ceiling.

“At some point you have to let go of it. He’s dead, unfairly, yes, but your anger and pain can’t help him.” She wanted him to look at her, not the ceiling; she wanted to be able to reach him. “You have to get on with your life.”

“He couldn’t get on with his. We were robbed of him. My mother never got over it.”

“But you have to, Blake. For us to have a life together, you have to begin to let go of your anger and your desire for revenge. Otherwise it
will poison you. Otherwise it will destroy us. Your mother and your father are dead and you can’t help them, but you can help or hurt us.”

He lay staring, his anthracite eyes fixed on nothing. She took his limp hand in hers, perching on the bed’s edge. She felt like throwing herself on him to bring him back, but she did not want to make things worse by seeming to ignore his mood or by making a demand he pay attention to her. She simply held his hand and waited. It felt as if an hour passed without Blake responding, but she saw from her watch that only ten minutes went by.

Finally he sat up and squeezed her hand back. “Of course you’re right. The sensible thing to do is to let things go…. You said your parents were in high spirits?”

“Things are going well. He’s been getting good press. He’s viewed in his party as up-and-coming. He’s made friends with powerful senators. The legislation he’s pushing to loosen gun laws is popular in his party and stands a good chance of passing. Other senators have been signing on as sponsors. It eliminates the Brady Bill provisions, whatever they are.”

He shrugged. “It’s not that hard to get a gun now.” He was frowning into space again.

She wanted to ask him if that gun that had been in his room had been Jamal’s, but she did not dare admit she had looked through his things. It would remain a mystery until someday he told her. She was seventy-five percent convinced Blake had been keeping it for someone else, the way Jamal had kept Blake’s zip discs for him. He had never said anything about owning a gun, and as far as she knew, he had no more idea than she did what to do with one. Her father, Rich and Alison were the only people she knew besides bodyguards who would actually be able to use a gun successfully. Grandpa had kept a shotgun, to kill varmints, he said. She remembered it in the passageway between the kitchen and the barn. She had been forbidden to touch it. When he had been younger, Grandpa had gone hunting, but he had given that up by the time she was old enough to pay attention. Her father took part in duck or deer hunting on occasion as a political act, but she knew he found it boring, because she had heard him
confessing that to Rosemary. He had tried to talk his wife into going with him just once. It was one of the few times Melissa was aware of that Rosemary had disappointed Dick, but she said she wasn’t about to tramp around in the woods all day in a hideous orange outfit trying to blow holes in some animal she had no desire to eat. Dick agreed with her, but he had to keep up his credentials with hunters and the NRA. Hunting was big in Pennsylvania. She remembered mothers of friends complaining that it seemed to go on for months, making the roads unsafe to drive in the country.

Melissa had volunteered to go with him instead. She was thirteen, still trying to please. Dick had agreed, although when they arrived, she could tell the other men were annoyed. It had been horrible. They had tramped around for hours in the woods. She had to pee and kept trying to fall back to get behind a bush, but her father was afraid she would get lost and made her stay close. Finally her father and his press secretary Mac—he had not come to Washington with Dick—climbed onto a platform in a tree and the others made noises down the valley until they drove a deer toward the blind. The press secretary shot the deer. It died spurting blood near where she was standing uselessly. It had beautiful brown eyes that looked into hers. She had shamed Dick by crying and the men had called her Bambi. She knew she had screwed up, making her father sorry he had brought her. She was ashamed of disappointing him, yet that night and the next, whenever she thought of the beautiful deer bleeding to death, she cried again. Although Mac had shot the deer, the photo in the paper was of Dick standing over the carcass. She would never be able to attack a deer or any other animal, except maybe a mouse. Even mice were kind of cute. She wanted to be at peace with the animal kingdom. She wasn’t a vegetarian, but she wasn’t about to go out and start killing things either. She almost said something aloud to Blake but realized she was miles from his thoughts at the moment. She stared at him, wondering how to break through. This was not developing into one of their more intimate afternoons.

“Blake, I’ll have to go home about four. I don’t know when I can get away again.”