by Marge Piercy
Reprieve time! Alison came to the door of Rosemary’s office. “Millie Hay on the phone for you.”
Rosemary picked up at once, motioning them out. When she used what Melissa called her geisha voice, Melissa knew the woman must be important. Normally that coy girlish voice was reserved for notable men who might be useful to Dick. She hung around downstairs just long enough to hear Alison congratulating Rosemary and Rosemary gloating. A Supreme Court justice was going to attend a dinner Dick and Rosemary were invited to.
By her third day home, Melissa realized her mother had managed to keep the story quiet and satisfy the school. Senator Dickinson would give a speech for commencement. Melissa had often heard it said that her mother was the brains behind the Senator. She believed it. Billy was a star hockey player and a reasonable baseball player. Her only athletic achievement was tennis, which Aunt Karen had taught her to play. Everything physical was his gift—even the way he moved made her sigh with envy, wishing she had his natural grace. The only thing he couldn’t do was dance—he was tone-deaf, like her father. There was never music in the house unless she put it on. For years, she had given her mother and father CDs she loved, that promptly disappeared. She had thought music was one thing she could share with them, but she had been wrong. Neither was interested. For her, music was escape, another level of reality.
College meant liberation, motivating her to keep her grades up, to do every single pukey extracurricular activity from yearbook to French Club to Ecology Club to Young Republicans. Not that she intended to vote Republican when she was old enough. She’d vote Communist or Green or Vegetarian or anything at all that had nothing to do with her parents. She said that to Billy, who did not care, and her best friend, Emily, who thought it was cool. She’d tried that out on Jonah to make clever conversation, but he told her she was stupid.
She did community service to build up her résumé. Summers, she volunteered to take underprivileged kids on camping trips, to the zoo, to the park, whatever. Rosemary had been disturbed when she went to a movie with Mark, who was Korean and volunteering also. Suddenly Mark was moved to another program and she never ran into him again. Back at Miss Porter’s, she joined an after-school program in Hartford. Out where Miss Porter’s stood, everything was pretty, handsome houses, manicured countryside. Everybody thought of insurance when you said Hartford. In reality, the center of the city was depressed beyond what she could have imagined. Sometimes when she read the little essays she was teaching her kids to write, she cried. She wanted passionately to help them, but it was ladling out a river with a spoon. The level of misery and trouble and rough stuff in their lives was lacerating. She tried to talk with Rosemary about it, but Rosemary nodded and got that glazed look with a little smile. “Yes, dear, those are the people your father is trying to help.” Then her attention focused. “Should you be volunteering in such a dangerous neighborhood? Are there drugs around?”
At least she could share her feelings with Emily. She missed Emily on spring break and wished she could have gone home with her. Emily’s parents were easygoing chiropractors who lived in East Lyme—which Emily said had given its name to Lyme disease. Aside from always being on a different diet every time she visited—macrobiotic, microbiotic, high protein, fish and seaweed, high carbohydrate—they seemed jolly and laid-back, both playing recorders in a consort and with music always jingling in the house and not an excess of questioning. That was what Melissa called a real vacation. Emily’s home was like a soft airy cocoon with good music.
On the top floor in her dormered room, Melissa escaped to call Emily. “I am just so utterly bored, Em. I could just go up in smoke and drift away.”
“I bet if I was there, we’d have fun. It’s hot. Georgetown Park, that complex, it looks like a great place to pick up guys.” Emily could always hook up. She could walk into a mall and come out with a guy. “Maybe your sister knows someone. Have you heard from Jonah?”
“He’s such a pig, Em. I’m done with him. All he wants to do is knock boots. He’s barely nice to me anymore. And who would I ever meet here? Merilee’s seeing this other law student—” She knew deep down she wished Jonah would call or e-mail anyhow, just to make her feel better about herself, even if she was through with him. He made her feel used.
“Is he cute?”
“He’s a dork. He’s so straight he can’t bend over to tie his shoes. But Mother doesn’t like him. She doesn’t think he’s good enough.”
“So is Merilee fucking him?”
“Sure. She practically lives in his apartment.”
“Your mother doesn’t mind?”
“She’s so too busy with Daddy and Rich. Rich is getting married in June and it’s like a full-time career, Em. It’s this Major Event, like an election. Alison, Rosemary’s assistant, makes these endless lists and schedules and charts.”
“So it’s going to be a big society thingie? Can I go?”
“In my place! I was wondering if I couldn’t get out of it by developing some not too debilitating disease like a mysterious fever and maybe I could even waste away some.” She loved the idea of wasting away. If only she could lose ten pounds, she knew she would like herself better.
“Like Camille.” Emily hummed something. She knew all the operas from her parents.
Melissa had no idea who Camille was. “It just seems like forever till we get to college.” Melissa felt safe when she thought of going to Wesleyan with Emily. She would not be lonely, even if nobody else liked her. Emily did not care that her father was a senator, for she only got excited about movie stars and rock singers. “Emily, you’re the best!” she said suddenly. Em was the only person with whom she could be completely honest. They understood each other’s fears and anxieties and wishes. They knew each other’s secrets.
“Sure I am.” Emily giggled. “Best in show.” Emily barked into the phone, subsiding into giggles. Melissa hated to end the connection. She felt cut off as she sat on the bed with its new Ralph Lauren comforter. Maybe once she had lived someplace real. The governor’s mansion in Harrisburg had not been theirs. They just occupied it for two terms, and most of the downstairs held reception rooms and offices. This house too was a showplace for entertaining, with her mother’s office, Alison’s little office and an enormous livingroom and a diningroom formal enough to choke her on the parlor floor. Downstairs, in a sort of high basement called the subfloor, was a kitchen suitable for a restaurant with an antique of a dumbwaiter connecting it to the diningroom above, her father’s at-home office lined with books and military memorabilia, and two rooms used by whatever aides were around plus the drivers, when they were in the house. Her parents’ bedroom, dressing rooms and Alison’s room plus a guest room were on the second floor. Her parents’ room opened onto the roof of the downstairs extension, with a glass table, wicker chairs and potted plants. Upstairs under the mansard roof were her bedroom, Billy’s and storage. Nominally she was supposed to share her bedroom with Merilee, but her older sister was living in Foggy Bottom near George Washington U with two other law students. The row house in Philadelphia that maintained Dick Dickinson’s residence in his state was even less a home and didn’t even have the excitement of Georgetown—when she could escape Rosemary’s scrutiny.
Emily’s family lived in a real house, with a black Labrador and an Irish setter, with old food in the back of the refrigerator, with CDs on every table and seat, so you had to look before you sat down. On one couch the setter Finnegan would be snoozing on an old fisherman’s sweater. On the other, there would be newspapers and half-read books spread out. The Lab, Othello, had his special cushion by the fireplace. Melissa envied Emily her parents. She wanted warm fuzzy parents who would make her drink seaweed shakes, who played La Bohème at top volume and sang along with it while throwing sticks and rubber bones for the dogs to fetch. Emily, of course, resented her parents. She felt they were so into each other and their work that they couldn’t really see or understand her. They had no idea what she really did. Emily ha
d been sexually active since fourteen. Melissa admired Emily for her daring. Melissa always hung back, but Emily was always tugging her forward. She was always resolving to be bolder, like Em, to have the courage to take chances. Em had been on the pill for years.
A knock on her door. It opened before she spoke. Alison, in her thirties with a sleek cap of chopped-off auburn hair and thin as a broomstick, marched in. “You have an appointment at the J’ai Promis Spa in half an hour.”
“What for? I never made an appointment.” Guiltily Melissa took her feet off the new bedspread. Billy and she were convinced Alison reported every small transgression to their mother.
“Rosemary had me make it. Tonight is the first of the bridal showers—Laura’s aunt is giving it. Come on, you’ll enjoy looking smashing.” Alison sometimes affected British phrases. She came from northern Pennsylvania.
“I hate going to that place!” Lacquered ladies, fashionable ladies, debutantes, they would look at her and quietly sneer. They would be gossiping with the hairdressers, the manicurists, the masseuses about Beltway things she didn’t recognize. They would make her feel huge and ungainly. “I can’t go. I have homework. I have a paper to finish.”
“Finish it tomorrow,” Alison said. “You’ll feel great after a makeover. The Senator’s car is waiting.” Alison would never side with her. The assistant before had sometimes let slip a word of commiseration, but Alison was loyal to Rosemary to the death. Alison seemed to have no other ambition or desire than to please Rosemary and ease her through her days. Even the way she said “Rosemary” suggested that uttering it was a privilege she never took for granted.
That car reference rubbed it in. Melissa had been asking for a car for a year, but she wasn’t allowed to have one. Rosemary was terrified she’d get a ticket or cause an accident that would reflect on the Senator. “Aren’t I supposed to buy a present?” she asked as Alison hustled her downstairs. “I’ll shop after the salon.”
“You got them a lovely silver serving set.”
“Did you have to go shopping? I could have.” It might even have been fun, buying something stupid and expensive.
“It’s no effort, Melissa. The bridal register is on-line and I simply ordered something from Tiffany’s. Our presents are downstairs, wrapped and ready to go.”
She was relieved it was Ox driving—short for Oxford, his given name—not Smart Alec. Ox was middle-aged and Black and easygoing, although he also was security. Alec was just twenty-two and insisted on chatting her up. He was a gofer for Joe, Dick’s chief of staff, who had come to Washington with her father from Pennsylvania. Joe stood a head shorter than Dick, his grey hair receding from his forehead. Rosemary said it was from pulling his hair in frustration. Melissa hated him. She remembered the first time she had wanted to talk to her father and Joe had interfered. Since her father had run for governor, a fence of aides and assistants and secretaries had been erected between Dick and her. She wasn’t important enough. They had stolen her father from her.
Alison probably had two hundred gifts in her brain filed away and labeled. Bridal registers sounded dull. It was just as well she hadn’t had to buy the present. It was so unreal! Rich and Laura had been a couple for three years. Laura was pretty, soft-spoken, a sort of nothing in perfect clothing who was devoted to Rich and with few interests beyond pleasing him and both sets of parents. Laura had all the personality of a sofa pillow. Even when she was playing tennis or jogging, she was perfectly turned out. Rosemary ought to adore her, but didn’t. However, since the wedding had been planned for a year, she was going to be stuck with Laura as a daughter-in-law. Laura was the daughter of one of Dick Dickinson’s richest and most generous backers, so Rosemary could do little about the match. Melissa grinned to herself. Rich was getting what he wanted, a wife he could boss around—the opposite of his mother. Her father liked Laura just fine, for she flirted with him a little, just the right amount. Melissa could still remember when her father used to take her on his lap, but that had stopped when she was ten and began to sprout breasts, way ahead of the girls in her class. All of a sudden he wouldn’t hug her anymore. Rosemary never did.
The wedding, she decided, was really an advantage, because it kept Rosemary off her back. Up until age twelve or thirteen, Melissa would have done anything for a larger share of Rosemary’s time and affection. Then she had plotted to capture her mother by all-A report cards, by making gifts in arts and crafts for Rosemary’s birthday—bowls and scarves and pins that promptly disappeared—by writing supposedly brilliant essays, by attempting to paint or sculpt or make something out of clay she could bring home and show off, anything that would make her mother say, Why, Melissa, I never knew how talented you are! But something always went wrong. Her pot was crooked. Her essay did not follow what her mother considered the best line, her report card was marred by one B. Even when she got 1460 on her SATs, Rosemary remarked that those tests were dumbed down. Now Melissa just hoped to creep along under Rosemary’s radar. If she did well in college, maybe her father would appreciate her.
Rosemary, Dick and Joe were using the diningroom table to spread out résumés. Rosemary was saying, “But what does Babezi know about farms?”
Joe smirked. “He eats vegetables, doesn’t he?”
Dick nodded. “We’ll put him in for farm service agency director. Now the U.S. marshal…” They were making appointments again, the patronage Dick controlled as Senator. He complained it was much less than he’d had at his command as governor, but Rosemary always soothed him.
Melissa felt stunted in her family. Outside, she would blossom, she would grow into someone different from anybody in her family, someone admirable, someone strong and good and loved by others. She would meet people who would judge her not as the inferior child of superior parents, but as herself—alone, separate and visible. Finally she would stand out so powerfully that her mother would see how wrong she had been. We never knew, Rosemary would say, we never guessed. Melissa would do something important or write a wonderful book or make a discovery. It was only a matter of getting away from them finally, so she could show them and the world who she really was.
• CHAPTER TWO •
Melissa felt superfluous, nothing new. Personally, if she ever did get married, she would just sneak off with the guy and do it on the sly. Quiet and personal was tasteful. This was like an awards ceremony. Rich had been sleeping with Laura since he graduated from Harvard Business School, so why couldn’t they just say, Hey, we’re a couple. Give us a toaster and call it even. But no, Rosemary and Laura’s mother, Mrs. Potts, had been planning this event for a year. Now it was hot as a Frialator in Washington and they all had to continuously change their clothes and run around dolled up like idiots. Every five minutes, there was a crisis about whether some senator or cabinet official or under-secretary of waste management or presidential advisor on office supplies was going to come. It was sickening! As if any of them liked each other. It was just head counting. How many advisors and undersecretaries can you cram into a church on a Saturday in June?
It was lucky Laura’s parents had money, because this was an incredible potlatch of the stuff. Laura’s father was a relatively new backer of Dick’s—had kicked in for his campaign for a second term as governor of Pennsylvania. Mr. Potts owned an interstate trucking firm, a corporation specializing in highway construction, a string of ice cream parlors and several steak and brew restaurants. Mr. Potts had the habit of talking as if over a windstorm, to make himself heard by the very deaf. Perhaps he was deaf himself, for he never seemed to hear half of what people said. He had been calling her Melinda and Marissa and Melody. She noticed he never got Merilee’s name wrong. If she had that bellowing man to deal with, she would buy earplugs, but Rich seemed to like Potts just fine. Rosemary was closeted with him half the morning. He wasn’t her usual type of flirtation, but he was a backer and thus entitled to some attention. Plus the Pottses were paying a fortune for this wedding. Rosemary felt a lavish wedding might put a freshma
n senator like Dick on the Washington society map. So Mr. Potts was the focus of Rosemary’s charm, along with wives of men she wanted to attend.
When Rosemary wanted to pick the brains of some useful type, when she was buttering up a backer or a supporter or useful connection, she spoke differently than she did any other time. Her voice became soft and girlish. She was deferential and almost coy, but she never concealed her intelligence. That fine-pointed instrument was always available. She was absolutely loyal to her husband. Her world was built on Dick and his career. She did not have affairs. No, she had intense ladylike flirtations, usually knee to knee over coffee or tea or sherry.
Alison was frantically busy with the Wedding. Somewhere a gown as large as Idaho was being sewn by angels with gold thimbles. The Save the Date invitations had been sent out six months earlier, hand calligraphy by a weird woman built like an upended box of tissues who actually wore a pince-nez. Emily and she had giggled over that. The Pottses lived near Bryn Mawr, but they had taken a house in Washington for the year so that Laura and her mother could prepare. Mr. Potts usually stayed in Philadelphia, but occasionally he appeared to roar at them. Dick always made time for him, as did Rosemary. Laura was the only daughter in a family with two boys, one of whom was whispered to be gay. Her parents were putting their all and everybody else’s into this wedding.
“If you got married,” Melissa asked Alison, staggering by with a load of mail that would tax a healthy elephant, “would you want a big wedding like this?”
Alison looked at her blankly. “Married? Why would I marry?”
“Most women do.”
“I don’t have time for all that,” Alison said. She collapsed at her desk, shaking her head slightly, and began slitting open envelopes. “Your mother needs me. She calls me her right arm.”