The Third Child

by Marge Piercy

  She had been home for four days and still Blake hadn’t called. She finally got through to his parents’ house, but whoever answered said Blake was out and they didn’t know where. Another time she got a woman, perhaps his mother, who said Blake was with some old friends from high school. She was furious with jealousy. An old girlfriend? She could hardly question his mother, if it was his mother. She could not sleep that night, imagining that she wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, brave enough, sexy enough to keep him interested. Finally, the day after Christmas, the day before she was to go to Emily’s in Connecticut, she got him. “Blake! Why haven’t you called me? Are you angry with me?”

  “I didn’t think it was important to you. After all, you didn’t want your family to catch sight of your pet darky.”

  “You said you were going to be very busy with family. That’s not fair.”

  “Then what are you surprised about?”

  “Blake, I have to see you. Please. You have me worried sick.”

  “Are you sure? After all, someone might catch you with me. Then they would k-n-o-w you’ve hooked up with a Black boy.”

  “Do you want to come over tonight? Is that what you want? I’ll introduce you.”

  “I want you to want to.” Then, as if he’d lost interest in the argument, “So you want to meet for coffee? What’s near you?”

  It was a storm blown over. She was still stunned. She felt hollow, emptied out. “There’s a coffee shop in the Barnes and Noble in Rittenhouse Square.”

  “I’ll meet you there. I’ve a couple of errands to run. Say in an hour?”

  He was late. She sat with a latte looking every three minutes at the Swatch watch Emily had given her. His anger had not blown over. He was still resentful and he would not appear. She had lost him. She grabbed a book to stare at.

  Finally, forty minutes after she had arrived, she saw his leather jacket outside and he came striding in, graceful as ever, beaming as if there were not a problem in the world. He was so beautiful, she felt a pang. She could not deserve him, no matter what she did. “What happened? I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “Train was late. And slow. Holiday schedules. Remember my bike is at school…. Now aren’t you glad you waited?” He leaned to kiss her on the forehead.

  That was almost an apology, and she did not want to start an escalation of temper between them. “I missed you.”

  “All of me or just part of me?” He gave her a crooked grin.

  “You didn’t answer my e-mails, you didn’t answer my calls.”

  “Never got a message. It’s been a madhouse there. I left my laptop at school. I knew I wouldn’t have time to work or check my e-mail.”

  She didn’t believe him. He didn’t cross the street without his laptop, bound to him by an umbilical cord of habit, of need, of compulsion. But she had a choice to challenge or let it go by. “So what’s been happening?”

  “Dad’s mounting a last-minute appeal for a death row inmate who got screwed by the so-called justice system. Mom is fighting for a lesbian mother to keep custody of her partner’s son—the partner died of one of those weird sudden heart attacks. Grandma is fighting city hall about mandatory drug testing in the schools. Great-grandma just broke her hip on a demonstration against the World Bank. My sister Sara is pregnant, and I went with her to the clinic two days before Christmas to get an abortion. My folks don’t know—”

  “They wouldn’t go along with an abortion?”

  “She’s embarrassed that she got pregnant—”

  “She didn’t do it by herself, Blake—”

  “She forgets to take the pill. Anyhow, I’m cool about it. I went with her and held her hand and she pretended to have the flu.”

  “That’s why you didn’t call me?”

  “I told you, it’s a madhouse. It’s like living in a pot where the water is always boiling and there’s always room for one more lobster.”

  “You don’t sound unhappy about it.”

  “They’re good people.” He rubbed his cheeks into his hands as if washing his face. “Tiring, though. So what’s up with your mishpokeh?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mishpokeh. Family. Group. Your folks.” He patted her hand. “I pick up a certain amount of Yiddish at home. It goes away at school. So what’s up?”

  “Merilee broke up with her boyfriend—”

  “No surprise there. She’s been really sarcastic about him to all the friends she e-mails.”

  “Why are you reading her e-mail?”

  “You got me interested in the ins and outs of your family life. It’s part of understanding you. But it’s like a political soap opera. I’m addicted. You want to see what I’m talking about?” He reached in his jacket and pulled out a page of printout.

  He is just the kind of dodo Mother adores: completely archaic. She is one of the most sexist people I think I’ve ever, ever met. It goes all the way to her bones. She simply believes that men are superior and that a woman should devote her life to propping one up, as she does Father. She keeps pushing me to get engaged by the time I get my degree, as if that’s the point of all this work in law school. I tell her I want to practice law, that I didn’t go after a law degree to kill time, and she says, of course, dear, but in the meantime, haven’t you met anyone suitable? She’s a wheeler-dealer as accomplished as any in Washington, believe me, but that’s all okay because she only does it for Father’s sake. I don’t think she has a real idea. She is viewed as a true Conservative, but if Daddy were Castro, she’d be a Communist, if you see what I mean. She has no ideas, only strategies and tactics. Sometimes she frightens me.

  Melissa put the printout down on the table. “I had no idea she had issues with Rosemary. Maybe I should try to talk with my sister.” He did have his laptop. Otherwise, how was he reading their e-mail?

  “Be careful. Her issues are pretty precise, and most of the time, she adores them. So watch out.” He looked at his watch. “Time for us to head off to see some people my mother knows.”

  “I was hoping you’d have time to help me pick out some posters for my room here. It’s so kind of bleak.”

  “These are people you ought to meet. I’ve set it up where to find them. They don’t know who you are—they think you’re writing a piece for school.”

  “So are they like celebrities?” She wondered if he was putting her on.

  “Your father cut funding for the homeless. Leaving it up to the private sector. I thought you’d be interested in seeing what that means.”

  She could hardly say she wasn’t interested, but she resented his volunteering her for something in which she had never expressed the slightest interest. She had hoped they would find some convenient place to make love, that they would talk intently as they did at school, that he would help her find stuff to fix up her room.

  They took a bus through a part of the city strange to her that went on and on for miles, where everyone seemed to be African-American. Finally he stood and they got off in a run-down seedy area where there were lots of boarded-up storefronts and buildings. She was glad if she had to be dragged up here, north-central Philly, where nobody she knew ever went, that she wasn’t alone. She was glad too for Blake’s height and the air of tough bravado he put on with his leather jacket. She should think of this as an adventure; but she felt inconvenienced and disappointed. How could it not be a priority to him to make love? Unless he had been with someone else, that old girlfriend. She hoped he had forgotten she was going to Emily’s for her usual Christmas visit, so that he would be shocked to realize what he had missed.

  The funny thing, she thought as she looked around, was that, architecturally, this neighborhood had a lot in common with Georgetown. Lots of Federal row houses, mostly stone here, but run down into serious slums. If this neighborhood ever gentrified, it would be pretty—if there were anything left.

  It was one of the boarded-up buildings he was heading for, around the back and down the steps into the dark, dank ce
llar. She hesitated to follow him, but she had seen tough-looking kids on the street, and she wasn’t about to stand out there in her best blue sweater and tight low-rider jeans while he disappeared. She inched down the broken stairs behind him.

  “Lacy,” he was calling. “Lacy, are you here?”

  A kid’s head dimly appeared upstairs. “Come on up here. We’re waiting.”

  She followed him up. A woman—maybe she was thirty? Maybe younger? Her hair was dirty and her clothes, shapeless, so it was hard to guess—was squatting wrapped in a torn blanket. They had a fire going in a garbage can in the middle of the floor, so the room reeked of smoke. Two children besides the boy who had yelled down to them were sharing another blanket, sitting on plastic milk delivery crates. Along one wall was a greenish couch with broken springs sticking out and a table covered with cigarette burns. In another corner was a stained mattress. The room was dim and smoky—no electricity, of course, no heat. They kind of smelled as she got close. The woman was Lacy, the kids Sammy, Gina and Terry. She couldn’t tell if Terry was a boy or a girl, the littlest kid mummified in a down jacket much too big, held together with a woman’s belt so that the child looked like a badly wrapped package. The woman was white, but the kids were mixed.

  “I brought you sandwiches from my mother,” Blake said. “This is my girlfriend, Melissa.”

  “You know each other from college?” Lacy asked. “I want my kids to go to college when they get old enough, so they never end up like me.” She took the bag of sandwiches Blake had pulled from under his jacket. Using an old jackknife, she cut a sandwich into quarters and gave a bit to each of her children. “You thank your mama for us. She’s a good woman.” She ate the last quarter.

  “How do you know Blake’s mother?” Melissa asked, watching the kids gulp down the sandwich sections.

  “She tried to help us when they were tearing down our building. She tried to keep a roof over our heads, bless her. But the law, they wouldn’t let us stay.”

  “Mama, give us some more,” Sammy said. “That wasn’t nothing.”

  “Anything. Wasn’t anything,” Lacy corrected him, and cut up another sandwich. “I was almost graduated from high school when I got pregnant with Sammy. I know my grammar.”

  Silently, seriously the children chewed, and when they had finished, Lacy ate the last quarter of the second sandwich. “Now that’s enough for now. We’ll have the rest for supper. So how are you doing? You got a girlfriend again, good for you. I bet your mama is proud of you.”

  “Are you living here?” Melissa asked. She couldn’t imagine camping in a building without heat or windows or plumbing or furniture. They might as well be in the alley.

  “For a month now. It’s a good place. But they’re going to tear it down too, pretty soon.”

  “Wouldn’t you be better off with the children in a shelter?” She had heard of homeless shelters.

  “We’re on two lists. But they say it will be at least another year.”

  “There’s a long waiting list for all the shelters,” Blake said. “Too many homeless, not enough funds. Governor Dickinson cut the funding.”

  “What I really want is for Sammy to be able to go to school. It hurts me that he can’t because we don’t live anyplace legal, you know?”

  As they finally left, she saw Blake hand Lacy something. “What did you give her?” she asked.

  “A twenty. I don’t have much cash. Fortunately, my parents don’t observe Christmas, so I don’t have to buy five hundred presents.”

  He had told her not to buy him anything. She had been very disappointed, because she had wanted to shop for him. She had felt it would make it all more real to her, that she had her lover to buy things for. She had wanted him to give her something, but he disdained the holidays, he made that clear. He wouldn’t let her celebrate his birthday either. She loved birthdays. “Why doesn’t Lacy get a job and move into an apartment?”

  “Are you insane? Who’d hire her, unwashed, in dirty clothes? And what would she do with her kids? She doesn’t have money for a deposit, to get electricity turned on, to pay rent. She’s screwed, and your father’s insistence when he was governor on cutting back social programs keeps her on the bottom. I just wanted you to see what one of these people he dismisses looks like—to make her a little bit real to you. Then, when the time comes, you have some material to use to change his mind about the homeless.”

  “Well, you did that.”

  She minded that all their time got used up educating her, giving her a social policy lesson. She was half glad she was leaving for Emily’s in the morning.

  SHE LOVED BEING at Emily’s with her laid-back parents. The dogs came bounding toward them the moment they entered the house that smelled of cinnamon and balsam and dog, filled with music bubbling out of the speakers, some kind of Baroque wind ensemble. Emily’s parents made an occasion of holidays, lavishing presents on each other. Emily was wearing a new cabled turtleneck cashmere in dark red that was just gorgeous. The presents Melissa got tended to the dull and preppy. She knew that Rosemary had no time to shop and little interest. Alison figured out what to get each of them and then wrapped the gifts impeccably, beautifully—just like a department store. There was nothing wrong with her presents except that they didn’t feel personal. She had a new jacket dress in navy, a Coach purse and shoes and belt, all matching as if anybody cared, a pale pink cashmere sweater set, cross-country skis, which she had mentioned at some point last year and promptly forgotten.

  The tree at Emily’s was fanciful, almost too big for their livingroom and hung with ornaments made of shells and dried flowers and old jewelry, besides the usual balls and glass creatures from Bloomingdale’s. One of the dogs ate part of a wreath and barfed in the hall while they were all sitting around the tree singing carols. Nobody got excited. Nobody freaked. Emily’s dad cleaned it up. If only the food wasn’t so weird and full of crusty grains that stuck in her teeth, she would think she was in heaven. They had a winter squash soufflé and a salad with seaweed. But there was a lot of wine, and nobody minded if she drank it. She did and got droopy by nine thirty. Emily’s bedroom had a view of a saltwater marsh, although it was too dark to see anything. Still, she liked knowing it was there. In summer when she visited, they opened the windows and she could smell its clean funkiness.

  “It’s a drag, having a beautiful mother,” Melissa confided. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind it if she just knitted afghans or raised Irish setters. It must be wonderful to have a mother you can hope to excel. I mean, your mother’s nice enough, but she isn’t Mrs. America. Everybody admires Rosemary. She does everything better. Everyone says, Oh, she’s so beautiful, oh, she’s so smart, she always knows the right thing to do. Can you imagine living with that? It drives me crazy. I was born fourth best, and I’ll feel that way my entire life.”

  “Nonsense. Your mother isn’t a musician, or a painter, or a great humanitarian like that guy who went to Africa, Schweitzer, whatever. She dresses pretty dull. She isn’t a great cook. She isn’t a famous athlete. She never flew to the South Pole or climbed Mount Everest or swam the English Channel or went around the world alone in a sailboat. She never starred in a porn movie or fucked a rock star. I bet she never fucked anybody but your father. She never got a dish named after her or had a horse at the Kentucky Derby. So she’s left you a lot of room, idiot. Take advantage of it. Be you, not a second-rate her.”

  “Em, sometimes you are so wise it gives me a bellyache.” Melissa knelt on the bed kowtowing to Emily. “I shall follow your words, O wise and righteous one. I will follow your path to total contentment.”

  “You should,” Emily said. “I wish we were allowed to have pets in the dorm. If we had a dog, we’d both be happier. Dogs make me much happier than guys. Want to hear something gross? I got herpes from that guy Winston I fucked at school. I went to a gynecologist two towns over so my parents won’t know. I hate VDs. They’re so personal, and they hurt where it counts…. So how’s your main man?” />
  “Trying to improve me,” Melissa said. “I suppose that’s a good sign? That he’s really interested?” She told Emily about Lacy.

  Emily shrugged. “It would be nicer if he showed it by giving you perfume or chocolates or a pretty bracelet, wouldn’t it? Who wants to be improved? Maybe computers. Not me, and I bet not you.”

  But Melissa was not sure. She remembered the woman that Blake had taken her to meet. Lacy’s concerns did not revolve around what was said about her on the evening news. Her father had sacrificed ten thousand and one Lacys in order to reduce the state budget and cut taxes, always popular with the voters until they experienced the impact on roads, schools, water and air quality, monitoring of safety in food and health care. But they never seemed to put that erosion of quality together with the lowering of taxes. Cutting taxes got her father reelected and elected to higher office. Lacy couldn’t vote, for she had no address. She didn’t count. So Melissa had to make her count, had to remember her, had to act on her behalf.

  Maybe if her father had met Lacy, he would change his mind. She wondered if Dick had ever actually met a homeless person. She imagined bringing her father down to meet Lacy, but she had no idea how to manage that. She could fantasize to her heart’s content about influencing a more humane policy on her father’s part, but secretly she doubted she could ever do it. She would have to explain how she had met Lacy. She would have to claim some of her father’s extremely busy time. He had things to do, always, people to meet, important legislation hanging fire, position papers to go over, reporters to see, TV programs to prepare for, fund-raisers to attend. He lived in a different world than Lacy did, and the two just didn’t overlap. Was it his fault? How could she imagine for a moment that he wasn’t more important? He was a senator. Blake just didn’t understand that her father couldn’t keep track of every citizen, every detail. Blake wasn’t fair to him, just as Dick wasn’t fair to Lacy. That was just how it was and how it had always been, after all. What could she do about it? Blake was an idealist and that was sweet and she loved him for it, but her father was a realist first and foremost—the way a man in power had to be, as she had grown up knowing. Power wasn’t left lying around in piles in the street. To get something done required a huge amount of politicking, she understood that far better than Blake did—or Phil, that know-it-all. There was a lot she knew, from growing up in her family, that other people just couldn’t understand. It took money, it took time, it took years and years of work to get anything done in government. She felt as if she had put things back in perspective.