by Marge Piercy
She and her parents were engaged in war, and the prize was her identity, her life as she wanted to live it. Merilee was back at George Washington law school for her last year, and Rosemary was again monitoring her social life. Merilee had given in and gone up to Maine. Melissa had not. She was stronger than her golden picture-perfect sister. She suspected that Merilee too wanted more autonomy and that was why she had taken the summer job in New York. Now she was back, and Melissa did not think her older sister would ever truly break free. But she would. No matter what the cost, she would be her own person and free.
A reply from Rosemary was waiting on her e-mail when she got back from class:
I think you are making a foolish mistake. I explained to you previously that the people you mix with in college, whether friends or simply acquaintances, form others’ judgment of you as well as your own accomplishments or lack of them. The young man you were dining with in our kitchen is obviously not of your kind. People seeing him with you would always notice, not favorably, and wonder why you had resorted to someone so different from yourself.
I ask you to reconsider your contact with this young man. No matter how innocuous he may appear to you, he may not appear so to others. A person may appeal because they are exotic, the very reason that a companion may prove to be completely unsuitable. I want you to know that your father has expressed his concern over your associations at Wesleyan. We both feel this connection could be quite damaging. He is extremely busy this week, or he would communicate with you himself—he is that concerned. However, he asked me to convey to you his desire that you stop seeing this young man at once. Any connection with Simon Ackerman is unacceptable to him—and to me—and should be to any loyal daughter.
Furious, she erased the message, hoping she had been quick enough so that Blake would not read it. It was so insulting, so condescending, so bigoted, she felt smeared with shame as if it were a sticky substance plastering her. How could Rosemary presume to judge Blake at first glance? How superficial could her mother be? It wasn’t superficiality: it was racism, blunt, pervasive and unashamed.
She asked Blake that evening as they were standing in line to see a Czech film, “Did Roger get the material on Dick’s use of contributions?”
“He liked it, but he’s checking into it. I hope he’s preparing an exposé.”
“I hope so,” she said bitterly. “I hope so more than anything else!”
“You’ve been having it out with your mother?”
“I can’t stand them!”
“At least they’re up front about their racism. Maybe that’s easier to deal with than someone who talks the talk and then does what he pleases. You know what you’re dealing with.”
Blake never talked during movies, so it was not until afterward when they stopped for ice cream in the student center that she could ask him, “Have you had fallout from your folks?”
“Not much. They trust me more than your people trust you. And I’m a guy. Parents tend to meddle less with guys.”
“Because you can’t get pregnant?”
“Maybe that’s at the core. Or just that men are expected to see a certain number of females when they’re younger. Si and Nadine are more laid-back with us kids. They’ve always given us a lot of rope. If my grades dipped, they’d sit up, but I have close to a four-point average.”
“Because you’re brilliant.”
“Long as you think so, I’ve got it made.” He stretched. Her fingers traced his biceps through his black tee. He liked to wear black, and he looked good in it. It brought out the warmth, the hidden sun in his skin.
ROGER’S FIRST ARTICLE appeared within a week. She did not hear from Rosemary with any pointed exhortations to dump Blake that week, and the Friday e-mail was marked by brevity:
The enemies of your father are up in arms against him. We will prevail, of course, and the dirt they are throwing at him will rebound on them. Still, it is a difficult time for all of us. I know your prayers are with us. I will let you know how the battle is going.
Melissa went online and checked the Philadelphia Inquirer web site. There was Roger’s piece with the information they had fed him through Phil and more besides he must have found himself. We did that, she thought, and felt a quiver of triumph. It was a strange new sensation. She was playing a chess game against Rosemary and, for once, she was winning. It was an extraordinary rush. This must be what power felt like, Rosemary and Dick’s true high, their vice. She had never understood it. What she had wanted was love, to be held in a shimmer of affection. She had that now, but not from them. Having love, for the first time she tasted power. She had the capacity to rivet their attention on something. She had the capacity to hurt them, as they had so often hurt her. She felt large and strong. She was becoming herself, not the weak, wobbly, sorry little girl she had been. She was turning into someone to be reckoned with. If she had to proceed in secrecy, well, Rosemary always worked behind the scenes. That was how things got done. But she was actually making things happen, and that was a new sensation, one she rather liked.
“You’ll never guess where we’re going this weekend,” Blake said over lunch, a private lunch for once outside on the grass. Now that they were sophomores, they could eat sometimes out of Mocon, could use one of the fast-food places in the student center.
“To New York?”
“Not nearly that far.”
“What’s closer than New York? Boston!”
“Not that far, and that’s the wrong direction.”
“Hartford? Why would we want to go to Hartford?”
“We wouldn’t. Ever.”
“New Haven? Like, Yale?”
“Nothing like Yale. Not New Haven.”
“Providence?” She had never been there, but she knew Brown was there.
“Wrong, again. You’re never going to win a prize this way. But you get one anyhow.”
“So where are we going?” She loved him teasing her, she loved the mystery. This was the kind of day they had first hooked up last year, a bright blue day when the sun made everything shimmer as if lit from within, the golden trees, the red vines. They had been together for a year and they were tighter than ever. She tossed her hair, feeling special, feeling attractive and joined. Maybe he meant he was taking her up to the ledge where they’d first made it.
“To Foxwoods.”
“The gambling place? What for?” Disappointment swamped her.
“We’re gambling that the guy we’re meeting will give us some good documentation.”
“But why there?”
“Hard to find a more anonymous place. Nobody is surprised when you go there. We’ll be among crowds of people who don’t know each other, aren’t interested in each other, never will see each other again. He suggested it.”
“Who is he?”
He took her face between his hands and smiled into her eyes, very pleased with himself. “A disgruntled ex-staffer of King Richard’s. Through some old connection, Karen told me about him—”
“When did you talk with Karen?”
“We talk maybe every couple weeks. I told you, I like her. She has good politics.”
She should be happy that Karen and Blake liked each other, but she felt left out. That was oftener than she talked with her aunt. “So what’s with this guy?”
“Might have information. We talked and finally set up a meet.”
“Why can’t we just go see him?”
“He’s afraid of your father. He doesn’t want any link to us or to Roger. He doesn’t know who you are, so don’t tip him. That would scare him off.”
“But maybe I know him.”
Blake shrugged, a graceful shiver of his shoulders. “I doubt it. He never met the family, far as I can tell, except for Rosemary. He doesn’t want trouble, but I suspect he wants payback.”
“And we’re his tool?” That made her feel queasy. She did not like the idea of being anybody’s shortcut to revenge against her father.
“He has information,
and we want to understand Dick. So Saturday, we go on a date to a casino. Don’t say I never take you anyplace.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll like it and become addicted gamblers and waste our lives.”
“I so don’t think that!”
“Me neither. We’re serious types, Lissa mine.” He radiated a beam of pure joy that made her happy against her will. But she still felt dubious about this ex-staffer who might actually recognize her. What kind of devious turd would turn against someone they worked for? She did not like that. It felt unclean. But then she quizzed herself. If any dirt on the place she worked last summer had come into her hands, would she have felt loyalty to them? Not likely. This guy had probably held down some menial job in her father’s organization. Someone incompetent who had a grudge because he didn’t feel his talents had been sufficiently recognized or recompensed. Rosemary and Dick were clever at using people, and their staff members were passionately loyal. Probably he had been far down the hierarchy and thus bereft of that eye-beam of approval that so enchanted most underlings. Loyalty was important to her parents, and generally they commanded it successfully. She did not look forward to meeting this little worm who had turned, but it would be fun to go off with Blake. She was still furious with Rosemary. Anything that happened served them right.
“Do you believe in loyalty to an employer?” she asked Fern and Emily over breakfast. They were sharing a table in Mocon, where the roar around them even this early would cover their conversation. Even though Melissa did not intend to tip anything about what she and Blake were doing, she felt safer if no one else listened.
“No!” Fern said immediately. “When I think of all the crappy jobs my mother has held down or that have held her down, I’d like to throttle her bosses. The restaurant she works in now, the guy is always juggling their hours and cutting back on help so she has to work more tables and then gets less tips because she can’t give as good service. It’s backbreaking work.”
Melissa was glad Tammy wasn’t along. She often skipped breakfast, providing Melissa an opportunity to see Fern without her. Melissa felt as if Tammy disapproved of her in some undefined way. She was a big girl, as tall as Fern but blockier, pretty features or maybe she should say handsome. When Tammy was around, Fern was paying attention to her and not to Melissa.
Emily, whose parents didn’t believe in her wasting time on menial jobs, just nodded at Fern. “My parents’ receptionists come and go every year. It isn’t like a relationship. It’s just a convenience on both sides.”
“But if you believed in what they were doing,” Melissa said tentatively.
Both of them looked at her blankly. “You mean, like believe in Italian food? I don’t get it, I hereby swear allegiance to overcooked lasagna.” Fern had more confidence these days. She stood straighter and her voice was firmer. She and Tammy had quickly moved into a relationship.
“I mean, I believe in chiropractic, if like your back is out,” Em said. “My parents get into fads, like this month it’s heat and next month it’s cold, and all sorts of extracts of bark and weird herbs, but if you’re in pain, they can help you, for sure. I don’t get where you’re going with this? Does this have something to do with Rosemary dumping on you?”
“Indirectly,” Melissa said. “Forget it. I wasn’t going anywhere with it.” But she was. To Foxwoods on Saturday. Even Emily felt some loyalty to her parents. As the day approached, she was increasingly nervous about what they were doing. It felt like a silly game, the way she used to play with Billy. It was all unreal, she told herself, but she remembered how real that article on the internet Inquirer site had felt. She no longer felt powerful; she felt out of her depth. She wished she could just tell Blake to cool it and forget about her parents. She wished she could just run away with him and come back in five years with two kids, say, and her parents would have to accept them. Somehow everything was tied into knots and she felt coerced and tangled. My bad, she thought, my bad and things are just getting worse.
• CHAPTER NINETEEN •
Now Melissa had a leather jacket she’d bought to break the wind as she clung to him on his Honda. The trip was along back roads. The leaves were beginning to turn. By the bank of a creek, aspens rustled golden, leaves like bright pirates’ coins. One lone red maple stood in a field of stubbled corn. The poison ivy and Virginia creeper twined scarlet. Big puffy clouds scudded over them. He braked abruptly as a flock of red-winged blackbirds stormed just a few feet above the road, thousands of them passing for two minutes going south. She was happy, a high plateau she had never before visited. They belonged together. They were a conspiracy, a good family of two. Her cheek rested against his shoulder, the engine roared into her, the sun beat on her head and arm in the cool whoosh of the wind of their riding. The machine thrummed up into her body. She did not really care where they were going and whether the mysterious contact was worth the bother. It was going off together that mattered, not their arrival anyplace. She had the sense as she clung to him that never again in her entire life would she, could she, be as happy. It was an uncanny nostalgia for something still occurring, as if she were in the moment and yet high above it, looking down and back and already missing the intensity and the joy. That pumped a vein of melancholy through the joy, making it even more intense.
She had seen the ads for the casino on TV—who in New England hadn’t?—but she considered that image an artist’s sketch. The reality was as much a fantasy as the ads, mammoth structures rising out of a forest. However, they did not go directly to the casino. “We’re not meeting our contact till four,” he said, chaining the bike.
“So why are we here at one? Like, you don’t expect me to gamble. Do you gamble?” She wondered suddenly if he had a secret vice. Ever since he had suggested going to Foxwoods, she had been a little apprehensive.
“This is the museum. Come on. State-of-the-art archeology.”
It was modern, sleek and very light, a pleasant, even elegant building, as opposed to the huge casino and hotel complex. He acted giddy as they roamed through the Ice Age past a giant beaver and an outsize wolf, both extinct but looking quite real, and cases of artifacts. “You like that wolf,” she said. “I didn’t know you were so interested in archeology.”
“I was really into paleontology when I was a kid. I loved dinosaurs. I had all these models and I could tell you everything known about each of them.”
“How come?” She’d never seen the appeal. Just big nasty lizards who would probably try to eat you.
“I guess because they were so big. I felt if I was a dino, nobody could bother me. I’d be able to defend anyone I loved. Kids like me dig those horny hides and scales and big teeth.”
They strolled into the 1600 village. All around the room were representative groups of figures in daily activities, while the sound boxes they’d picked up on the way in told them what they were looking at. If she wanted to know more about any of the exhibits, she simply pressed a button for details. The figures were well done, not as stiff as most mannequins and very individual. She commented on that to Blake.
“Yeah, they’re each modeled after someone in the tribe. I read that.”
“You think you might be part Native American?”
“Could be…. But isn’t it great? Imagine soaking all that money from gambling and setting up a museum. I love it.”
One of the figures in the village did look something like Blake. If she could see the guy it was modeled after, would he resemble Blake? She tried to decide how she would feel if Blake were Native American. Actually it would be kind of cool. A couple were setting up housekeeping together, building a wigwam. “Imagine, we could build something like that in the woods….”
“Doesn’t look that hard.” He slipped his arm around her waist. “Want to? The hell with dormitories.”
It looked cozy, just the round space and most time spent outside. The couple had been given blissful expressions. Instead of classes and grades and her parents ranting at her, there they’d be i
n the woods fishing and hunting and growing their food. “No housework. And I bet their weddings didn’t require making plans a year in advance and spending forty thousand dollars.”
“Is that what your brother’s wedding cost?”
“I just made up that number. The bride’s family paid.”
“Do you have fantasies about your wedding?”
“Only that it be over clean and quick, with just a couple of friends.”
“You know, my sister, Sara, she ran off with this guy and eloped. He was a client of my dad’s, a con man who was facing heavy charges. Dad got him off and he ran away with Sara. By the time my parents found her, in South Carolina, she was already sorry she’d done it. They had the marriage annulled. Dad was furious at the guy. Let’s see, Sara was eighteen. I was just thirteen when it all came down. Turned out he planned to use Sara in some scam that had to do with bilking older men. She always falls for these abysmal losers.”
They wandered through the museum holding hands, finding an occasional deserted corner where they could kiss. Finally it was three thirty and time to go.
He was less ecstatic when they entered the casino, where the air was heavy with smoke even in the elevators. It was jammed everywhere, the rows of stores, the gambling halls, the restaurants, the entertainment, the benches set up at regular intervals. Aunt Karen had described Las Vegas to her years before, flyers on whorehouses and call girls handed out on every corner. Here there were no visible hookers, although she assumed they must be around. Suburban people with kids in tow passed in droves. Everything was indoors, clean, neat, well tended, brightly lit. Buses disgorged the elderly with their fanny packs as Karen had described, but there were just as many kids on dates—like them. They didn’t stand out. Families ambled along as if in a mall, couples strolling past the huge rooms of intent gamblers parked at their machines. Even in the no-smoking casino, smoke hung heavy in the air, and there were ashtrays on the poker tables. Blake, who had asthma and suffered smoke badly, began to labor in his breathing. She hoped their contact, whoever he was, would be on time. Blake could get sick if they hung in here too long. He used his inhaler, but it wasn’t enough.