The Third Child

by Marge Piercy

  Slam smoked incessantly. His body was like a half-melted icicle, thin but shapeless. She thought he was as dirty as his quarters. He wore the backwards baseball cap and baggy pants of the rapper wanna-be. Fortunately he was hardly ever there except to sleep and recharge his cell phone.

  Saturday afternoon, Blake told her to go shopping or to a museum. “Got to see my hacker friends. I bring anybody along, they’ll go bullshit. I need them a lot more than they need my couple of bucks.”

  “What is it you need?”

  “Just some programs. I’ll meet you back here at six and we’ll have supper in the Village. Then take a long walk all over and have a drink at an outdoor café. Maybe catch some jazz. I promise a great evening. But I have to see them now.” He swept from the apartment and she heard him forcing his bike through the hall and out. She knew he was bound for Williamsburg. She left immediately afterward, freaked by the cock-roaches that ran all over the kitchen and the bathroom. This was sordid. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to bring her before, while she had accused him mentally of infidelity or being ashamed of her. She ought to trust him more. No one thought more about her true well-being. She went to the Guggenheim, soothed by its ambience of clean lines and money. The last time she had been here had been with her aunt.

  Blake had an amazing number of acquaintances. She knew no one to stay with in New York—so maybe they could have been in a nice clean hotel—but Blake seemed to know people wherever he might be dropped. He got on with a wide assortment of types. He had a gift for sounding formal with the formal, casual with the casual, and streetwise with the streetwise. The very cadences of his voice would change when he spoke to Slam or to her. It was a chameleon gift he used without being conscious of it. When she called him on his changes, he looked at her blankly. It was just what he did, instinctively, unconsciously, but very well.

  She bought a sandwich and ate a late lunch on the concrete rim of the plaza of an office building, watching people go by and studying what the women were wearing. A dude tried to pick her up, but she got rid of him without having to move. She window-shopped, bought herself some nice underwear at Saks—Blake might enjoy the change from her utilitarian kit—then slowly made her way to Washington Square Park, where she sat for an hour near guys playing chess. Finally the shadows grew long and it was time to meet him. She took a cab. The subway was beyond her, puzzling and a little frightening. When she got to the apartment, Blake was there and so was Slam, arguing about whether raves were truly liberating. Blake disliked the chaos, she knew that. She always felt buffeted, invisible except when some creep glommed on. And if you didn’t do drugs, it felt pointless.

  THE END OF the semester was nearing, making her anxious. Her parents were not going to spend the summer in Philadelphia, although they would surely visit often enough for Dick to fuss over his constituency, pat their heads and tummies, stroke his supporters, milk them if he could. The rest of the summer except for two weeks in August, when they would visit a backer who had a summer house on an island in Maine, they were staying put in Washington. Rosemary had not worked all those years to get there in order to leave it so quickly. Next year, Melissa thought, she and Blake should enroll in some summer program rather than go home. Too bad Wesleyan had no summer semester.

  One morning, Blake e-mailed her. “I got it! It came through. I’ll be studying intensive Russian in Washington from June 15 to August 15—so we’ll be together. My father arranged for me to stay in the house of a lawyer colleague of his in Bethesda, so we won’t be that far apart.”

  “Bethesda? Isn’t that in Maryland?”

  “I keep forgetting you don’t know Washington that well. Look, you just go out Wisconsin, one block from your house, right? And keep going. Let’s celebrate! A guy on my floor is going to buy a bottle of champagne for us. Tomorrow night I’ll get takeout and we’ll hang one on. Now will you be happy? You should have faith I’ll manage for us.”

  Now the crisis with her family would loom. Still, she needed Blake, she needed to be with him. Rosemary would just have to eat it. After all, it wasn’t the same as when Merilee brought home some guy Rosemary deemed unsuitable; surely Rosemary didn’t expect Melissa to fetch a prize. She couldn’t keep them in the dark forever.

  Congress was still in session when she got home, well before Blake was to arrive. Alison had a summer job lined up for her as a glorified gofer at one of those organizations that shunted money to her father, Citizens for the Right Way. The Right Way was just an office on K, a reception area with a long counter, leather chairs and potted tropical plants, four executive offices, the harried secretaries of the pool, the mail room and her. Her desk was in a corner of the mail room. She was sent out for coffee, takeout, particular requests from the newsstand two blocks away, sent to deliver papers across town. She spent much time tracking FedEx and UPS packages and missives and taking deposits to the bank. She helped send out fund-raising mailings. Often she sat in the mail room reading. She tried to practice her scanty Spanish on the two guys who worked there, but that was pretty much a lost cause. She would spend five minutes piecing together a sentence. Then either they would look at her as if she were crazy or one would answer and she wouldn’t understand. It was irritating for them and boring for her. After the first week, they ignored one another.

  As she e-mailed Emily, she was marking time until Blake got there, hanging around the house so that her parents would grow bored with her and be glad when Blake arrived and she would be out more. In the last days of Congress, her father was pushing hard to get his maiden bill voted on, but the chances, she understood, were lessening every day. Rosemary was in high gear. She was mounting a campaign to woo the chairman of the committee that would vote the bill out to the full Senate or decide to let it die ignominiously. It was for Mr. Potts mostly, as far as Melissa could tell, and other backers in the trucking business. It had to do with tonnage. The bill itself was never discussed, only how to get it through. Apparently Rosemary had run into the chairman’s wife at some boutique and they’d lunched together. Rosemary was now her bosom pal. They had coffee, they had lunch, they shopped together regularly. Rosemary was working all the angles. Billy was at hockey camp. Merilee was interning for the summer in a law firm in New York. Rosemary was not pleased that her favorite daughter was away. Blake was still forwarding the family e-mail to Melissa. She had gotten accustomed to learning about all of them from Rosemary’s notes.

  Merilee wrote:

  I’m hardly alone. I have three roommates, I work in a windowless office with five other interns. I take the subway with millions of commuters morning and night five days a week. I go to Jones Beach with a million swimmers on the weekends. Alone? That would be heaven. I haven’t been alone outside the bathroom since I got here—and sometimes not there.

  What Rosemary could not object to was the caliber of the law firm. But Melissa knew that her mother did not like Merilee too far away. She worried about the unsuitable. She was afraid that Merilee would slip from her achieved perch on the glass mountain of unutterable perfection. Melissa knew that Rosemary would love to run up to New York and check out Merilee’s scene, interview her roommates and associates—but her duty to the Senator and his maiden bill prevented her from getting away even for a day. So she fretted via e-mail.

  Whom are you seeing out of the office? With whom do you associate in the office and after work? I wish you would give me more information about these roommates.

  Occasionally Rosemary’s eye-beam fixed on Melissa. “Have you made any friends at work?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Mother. The two guys in the mail room are Puerto Rican and they talk to each other in fast Spanish. The secretaries are years older than me. Nobody’s my age. The comptroller and the vice president are not about to hang out with me.”

  “How about other offices in the same building? I’m sure there are young women in the same situation as yourself working there during the summer.”

  “They keep me busy. I don’t have time to sc
ope out the other offices.”

  “There’s always time to make connections if they’re desirable. Use your lunch hours. I suppose you miss Emily, but you can’t rely on old contacts forever.”

  It occurred to her if she invented friends at work, she would have a cover for seeing Blake when he arrived. “I’ll try, Mother. I promise I’ll make an effort,” she said fervently. “I’ll use my lunch hours as you suggest. That’s a great idea.”

  Every day she communicated with Emily as well as Blake. Em had gone to New York with friends for a weekend, picked up a musician, and now she had body lice. She had to keep her parents from finding out, so she hid the medicine and tried hard not to scratch in front of them.

  How totally gross,

  Melissa typed.

  Are they big as cockroaches?

  Emily wrote back:

  No, they’re little, but they itch like elephants!

  That Thursday, Rosemary made her call in sick to work—as if they would miss her—to drag her off to a committee hearing. This was not a glamorous bill, so only minimal press was present, two photographers—one from some trade journal—and three reporters, sitting in a row on the floor against one wall of the paneled room. Dick was up there behind the long table with his aides hovering. He was questioning some old guy very gently about the needs of interstate trucking. Melissa thought she had seen him once with Joe, Dick’s chief of staff, who was present, perched in the audience but in and out of the room. Melissa must have dozed off, because Rosemary poked her sharply. “Sit up!”

  She had no idea why Rosemary had insisted on bringing her, but perhaps her mother considered this part of her education. Rosemary had dragged her to the Senate gallery twice before she left for college. The surprise was how few senators were on the floor at any given time. Those who were often were chatting or wandering around. Nobody seemed to be listening to the speeches. Most senators were holed up in their Cloak-room—which had nothing to do with cloaks or even coats but was a working hangout, Rosemary told her—in their offices or roaming the corridors looking for other senators to buttonhole on their pet projects. Today all the committee members apparently were present, but the hearings droned on and on until they broke for lunch.

  Dick came over. “No reason to hang around. They’re not taking a vote today and this afternoon will be abysmally technical.”

  “Do you have everything you need?” Rosemary asked nervously.

  He looked to Joe, who nodded, a sheaf of papers under his arm as usual. Then Joe took Dick by the arm and steered him off to a group waiting to speak with him. Rosemary and she left. What a wasted morning.

  Still, she was determined to prove to her father her new political interest and maturity, so the next time she could catch his attention, Saturday noon as they were picking at leftovers in the kitchen, she began, “I’ve been trying to understand globalization, Daddy—”

  “It’s just free markets, sweetheart. Bringing people closer together—”

  “But I’ve been reading about what it does to the poor people in those—”

  “If that’s what they teach you at Wesleyan, I want my money back.” He patted her shoulder. “Leave it to the economists. It’s complex, my girl.”

  The following Tuesday, Dick’s bill was voted out of committee, a first step and a victory for Rosemary’s diplomacy as well as his own. Now the game was to get the Senate to act on it before they recessed. Melissa was paying more attention to her parents’ political maneuvering since she had decided on investigative journalism and since Blake always asked so many questions. She found herself restive, itchy. Finally she realized with a shock that not only did she miss Blake but she missed sex. She masturbated—something she hadn’t done since arriving at Wesleyan—but it was not satisfying. She wanted his touch and the feel of his long supple body against her own. She wanted him inside her, not her finger. Sometimes, in spite of her restlessness, she simply quit out of boredom before she could reach orgasm.

  She almost hated to leave the house evenings or weekends, when it felt like everybody in Washington her age was out on a date in Georgetown. Everybody was having fun, everybody was arm in arm except her. Finally he arrived. He called her cell phone from his room in the lawyer’s house. “I’m getting unpacked. Can we get together tomorrow?”

  “With me at home and you at some guy’s house, how are we ever going to hook up?”

  “They go to the Eastern Shore every weekend. No problem. Plus, don’t your parents ever go away?”

  “Merilee’s in New York. Billy’s off at camp. Dick goes back and forth every week to Pennsylvania, to keep in touch. But Rosemary hasn’t budged yet. Potomac Fever. Maybe when Congress recesses, she’ll go with him to Philly.”

  The lawyer and his family did take off Friday night for the Eastern Shore, where they had a cottage and a boat. The house was brick, multileveled, the downstairs one huge wandering room surrounded by decks, all on a rather small lot. Blake’s room was a nondescript guest room filled with his computer equipment. They did not bother with supper but fell into bed, both mumbling how much they had missed each other before lapsing into incoherent sounds of desire and relief. Afterward they dozed. Then Blake went downstairs to order a pizza. Once they had eaten, they fell back into bed. By the time she got home, she was sore but relaxed. They were together again.

  A SATURDAY two weeks later, her parents went to Philadelphia overnight for some important function and media stuff. Alison actually scheduled dinner and a movie with a female friend. It was too good to be true. As soon as the house was clear, Melissa called Blake. In half an hour he was with her. Out of his backpack he pulled a Toblerone bar. “Got it for you yesterday. I know you love them.”

  She thought they would go up to her bedroom, but he wanted to look around. “So what’s downstairs?”

  “That’s my father’s study. Some staff offices. The kitchen.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “That’s Rosemary’s sitting room. Alison has the office beside her.”

  He tried the doors. “They’re all locked. They don’t trust you, do they?”

  “It’s just habit. So many people come through here. Aides, interns, speechwriters, his legislative assistants, drivers, caterers, the cook and her daughter, the cleaning service…. But if you want to see what the offices look like, I know where Rosemary keeps a set of keys.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s go.” He was right behind her, bounding up the steps.

  “She’s so organized, she has a second set for everything, and she keeps them in her underwear drawer.” Silk garments, wispy and smelling of Opium, the perfume Rosemary always wore. “Here.”

  He grabbed the keys and returned to the steps, almost flowing down them. Sometimes the way he moved made her catch her breath. Was it racist to think of big cats, of panthers, of jaguars, of leopards? She did not mind putting off making love for a bit. This was like the games she had played with Billy when they were younger, prowling the governor’s mansion, going through their parents’ things, finding her mother’s birth control pills and filmy negligees. She had no idea what they were looking for, but that only made it more of an adventure.

  “Let’s look over your father’s office first.”

  “Just remember, he has his primary office in the Senate Office Building and another in the Capitol itself. That’s where his interns and aides mostly work. What are you looking for? What’s the point?”

  “Just to see if I can hack in. Like Everest, it’s there. But also to understand him. Isn’t that something we need to do? It should give you insight into him—right?” He drew a disc and a portable hard drive out of his backpack. “It needs a password,” he announced.

  “Try ‘Senator’ or ‘Rosemary.’ Dick is not too imaginative.”

  “No luck. Any more suggestions before I start deriving it randomly?”

  “He calls her Pumpkin. Try that.”

  “We’re in.”

  She sat beside him as he rapid
ly typed in commands, scrolled through files. “Doesn’t empty his recycle bin, does he? Here we go.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Just exercising my god-given curiosity. Too bad he hasn’t had this computer longer. It’s only two years old.”

  “They change the system every two years. Alison does it all for them.” She tried to look over his shoulder, but he was scrolling too rapidly.

  “Still, somebody transferred a lot of old files for him. They’re on here, even though some of them he thought he erased. People always think when they hit delete that things actually go away. But they don’t. Computers have retentive memories. Everything is there somewhere if you know how to look for it.”

  “So, I repeat, what are you looking for?” She wanted him to pay at least a little attention to her, and she felt uneasy with him fooling with her father’s computer. What did Blake really want?

  As if he were reading her thoughts, he turned and kissed her. “A sense of who he is. What he wants. What’s important to him. Do you realize that you could go through just about everything on his computer and never know he had a family?”

  “You’d know he had Rosemary. Rich has the most contact with him. They can talk shop. He’s always been Daddy’s favorite. I was golden when I was little, but I grew out of whatever I had. He would make an occasional request—get Billy a haircut before Friday. But us kids were more props than intimates. There are hundreds of pictures of our big happy photogenic family, taken on days when that would be the only time we’d see him. I felt I’d just plain lost him somewhere along the line.” She felt blue just thinking about it.