The Third Child (14 page)

“Tell me what?”

“Laura’s pregnant. They’re delighted.”

“Already? If I was just married, I’d wait.”

“Rich wants a family ASAP. Looks good. He’s already running for state rep. A family man always looks better, as Father says.”

“Do you think you’ll ever run for anything?”

“No! I actually want to practice law. And I’d never, never want to run for anything, not even animal control officer.”

“But you did in school. You were class president twice and you were always running for something.”

“That’s the way I was in high school. Don’t hold it against me.” Merilee shook her pale hair. “I’m not running anymore.”

Finishing the carrots, Melissa decided to go out to the barn and see the cows and Billy. Grabbing her coat from the pile in the hall, she passed through the covered passageway to the barn. It wasn’t heated, but it kept the snow off. As she walked into the barn, she smelled hay and manure and cow urine and the sweet scent of smoke. The hired man, who was maybe twenty, was sitting with Billy on a pile of straw passing a joint back and forth. They both jumped. Billy said, “Hey, Sis. How are you doing? Want a hit?”

“Please.” She never smoked except with Billy. But with her family, she needed help. Merilee had beer, the adults had scotch and vodka martinis, and Billy, she and the hired man scooched down in the hay smoking. “This is Oscar,” Billy said. “He’s cool.”

“Now I’ll be out of a job. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the cows.”

“Everybody seems worried about them.” She imagined bringing one back to school for a pet. They weren’t allowed pets, not even goldfish. Rosemary hated the smell of cows, but Melissa rather liked it, even though after a while the barn made her sneeze.

THE VIEWING
on Friday was weird. Her grandfather was wearing a navy suit and a crisp shirt, instead of his usual costume of overalls, a woodsman’s buffalo plaid shirt and the muffler he wore knotted around his turkey neck except in the heat of summer. There was a steady line of people along the coffin saying the requisite things to the family. She was part of the receiving line. So was Karen, looking pale. Her reddish hair was streaked with grey and she had grown plump in the facility. She had always been a horsewoman and an athlete, playing tennis, golf, squash, anything she could excel at. Melissa was struck by a strong resemblance between Billy and Aunt Karen she had never recognized. It was not just that they both had that reddish blond hair that had skipped Melissa and Rich. They were—at least Karen had been—of the same full-bodied highly colored beauty, so different from Rosemary and Merilee. Melissa was glad to see her aunt, who was far less conventional than the rest of the family. She had never married. She had gone out for sports as was expected but too seriously. At one time she had been a professional tennis player, until an injury put a stop to her career. She had given tennis lessons for years, and Melissa played as well as she did because of her aunt.

It had been a wonderful treat to visit Karen alone, as she was allowed to do when she was eleven, taking the train to New York, where Karen was living in Chelsea. They went to Staten Island on the ferry and Radio City Music Hall and the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History, with its dinosaurs. She had even told herself a tale in which her aunt formally adopted her. It would be just the two of them having adventures, riding horses, taking planes, going to movies and musicals and amusement parks where Karen always hit the target and won the big fuzzy blue bear for her. They were both the third child in their generations.

How often had she thought of Karen since the sanitarium? She had seen her briefly two years before at Grandpa Dickinson’s seventy-fifth birthday, but Karen had only been let out for the day, and there had been little opportunity to talk. Since then, her own fraught social life or lack of it had filled Melissa’s consciousness. She tried to maneuver closer to
Karen in the receiving line. Finally she got Merilee to change places with her so she stood next to their aunt. “It’s great to see you.”

“It’s great to be seen. I’m waiting to find out what happens.”

“Can I come up to your room afterward?” Melissa whispered.

Karen nodded slightly and extended her hand to the next well-wisher. The line was mostly local people, but Vermont officials had shown up in honor of the Senator. Some were Democrats, but Melissa had figured out years before all politicians belonged to the same club. They had more in common with each other than with their constituents; the higher up they were, the truer that was.

Afterward, her parents invited the Republican officials back to the house for drinks, the combination of Washington and local gossip and intense partisan political discussion Dick thrived on. Merilee was studying in the kitchen. Billy had disappeared. Melissa crept off to Karen’s room. “Wasn’t this Grandpa’s room?” It was actually the biggest bedroom in the house, looking toward the mountains in the daytime. Like the rest of the house, it was cold and a little damp.

“Right. I don’t know if it’s to placate me, or if no one else wanted to sleep in his bed.”

“Karen, what happened to you? Did you like collapse or go on a bender and wake up like in Mexico sleeping with a toad?”

“How old are you now, Lissa?”

“Nineteen.”

“Do you have a lover?”

Melissa paused, but she had always trusted Karen. She nodded. “But nobody, nobody in the family knows about him.”

“Why? Is he Black or Jewish or something?”

“Both.”

“Oh my god, you’ve hit the jackpot. But he is a guy?”

“Yeah. He has a motorcycle. He goes to Wesleyan with me.”

Karen was sprawled in the bed in pajamas and an old woolen robe Melissa was sure had belonged to Grandpa. “Keep it to yourself as long as you can. They don’t react well to unusual choices. Mine wasn’t a guy at all.”

“It was a woman?”

“Much of one.” Karen blew out a perfect smoke ring. “Eve was not only a lesbian but a leftie and that did it. Dick got my dad to commit me to Mountain View Rehabilitation Center, a facility for misfits from wealthy families.”

“That’s horrible. Couldn’t you get a lawyer?”

“If I didn’t agree, they were going to get Eve. With a little help from your friendly FBI and state police, the IRS, you can get almost anyone for something. So I took the rest cure. I thought they’d let me out in six months, but they just parked me and forgot to open the gate. But I’m out now and I’m not, not, not going back. Ever!”

“You need a good lawyer. My boyfriend’s father is a famous lawyer in Philadelphia.”

“I might take you up on that.” Karen yawned. “Now it’s way past my bedtime, although it’s going to be weird trying to sleep without the nurse handing out the go-to-sleep-little-sheep tabs. I’ve been so overmedicated, it will be a year before the shit leaves my system…. You’re looking good, Lissa. You look human, unlike most of the rest of this bunch of cannibals.”

They had burned part of Karen away, Melissa could tell, but there was still enough left so she hoped that her aunt could manage to stay free. She would be an ally. She always had been.

The funeral was interminable. Dick was handsome in a finely tailored black suit he had worn at important funerals in Pennsylvania. Dick never put on a pound, any more than Rosemary did. She stood tiny but regal, resplendent in a long black dress, and everyone gazed at them. Dick gave a moving eulogy to his father that Rosemary had written that morning on her laptop in the kitchen. Melissa found it hard to believe that her mother had really liked Grandpa, because he certainly had been nasty to her for the first ten years of her marriage. He pretended he couldn’t remember Rosemary’s name, addressing her as Mary Rose, Rosalie, Rosamund. He’d introduce his son to local people and pointedly refuse to introduce the wife. But Rosemary believed in breeding, in blood, in all the things that Grandpa too believed in. He was a man prone to dismissing most eth
nic groups as the scum of the earth. She had heard Grandpa use the phrase fifty times. Finally after Rosemary had produced a governor out of his son, he must have forgiven her the undistinguished Baptist family from Youngstown, Ohio, and considered her an honorary member of WASP nobility. Rosemary had never been less than respectful and affectionate with him. He was the patriarch, and Rosemary believed in the natural superiority of men. That had nothing to do with intelligence or ability, except for the ability to rule.

Dick liked his father well enough, but Melissa would never have described them as close. She doubted they had ever had a personal conversation except for perhaps the time when Dick announced he was marrying Rosemary and Grandpa exploded in contempt. Yet they seemed to think each other fine. Many times, she had tried to imagine what went on inside Grandpa: all she could come up with was a large cold empty room with a clock on the wall ticking furiously and a calendar on one white wall with a picture of a cow.

Sunday Grandpa’s lawyer called them all into the parlor for a reading of Grandpa’s will. “To my beloved son Richard Tertius, of whose career I am rightfully satisfied, I hereby bequeath all my personal papers, the family photos including the historical treasures of our legacy, the silver that I received from my own father, any of my personal items he may desire and my horse Legerdemain, as every gentleman should possess a horse. I also bequeath to him the pair of dueling pistols I inherited from my own father, which belonged to my Great-grandfather Lucas Dickinson. Also my silver duck-headed cane. I leave him the contents of my checking account at First National Bank of Montpelier so he may act as executor and carry out the provisions of this will.

“To my beloved grandson Richard IV, I bequeath the sword our Great-great-grandfather wore as an officer in the Union army, along with a copy of the book he wrote about his exploits. I also bequeath to him the pastel of our Great-great-grandmother Malvina, who was a cousin to Robert E. Lee.

“To my granddaughters and younger grandson, they may select some
thing from the house that pleases them, providing that it is not an item desired by their father or needed by the owner of the house.

“To my daughter, Karen Bernice, I bequeath the house and land, the cows and my gelding Lancelot and the mare Guinevere. I ask that she spare the cows the butcher’s block and keep them in good health on the land until they may die a natural death. I also leave her the contents of my savings account at First National Bank of Montpelier, so she may be able to pay the expenses of the farm until she is self-sufficient again. I also leave her my stocks, of which my lawyer has a list. They should provide some income. All of the bequeathals to my daughter, Karen, are provisional upon her promise never to see Eve Kalman again so long as she may live.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Karen said dryly. “Eve died piloting her plane three years ago. You all wouldn’t let me go to the funeral.”

Afterward, the family went out to Sunday dinner without Karen or the local people. Karen was busy trying to inventory the house and go over the books. Merilee had left early, to be back for her makeup exam. “Well, I’m a bit surprised,” Dick said, sipping a predinner martini. “The old man had a soft spot for Karen.”

“What would we do with the farm, besides sell it? I doubt it’s worth much. I did hope he’d leave us the stock,” Rosemary said.

“He had to provide for Karen. He’d taken her out of circulation for five years,” Rich said. “That or we’d have to pay for Mountain View. I for one would really object to that.”

“But really, to leave Rich a rusty old sword and an ill-painted portrait,” Laura said. “What could he be thinking of? Personally I wonder if we couldn’t have redone the place into a nice summer home.”

Rosemary shot Laura a warning look. “Rich can’t spend summers in Vermont, Laura. Be sensible. He has a lot of preparation. I’m sure Karen would be pleased to have you come up occasionally once your child is born.”

Melissa had picked out a doorstop in the shape of a horse, coveted since she was little. Karen gave her a gold locket she said had been her own mother’s, with a dried flower inside. That was more than Melissa
had expected from her grandfather, but she could tell, as she looked around the table, that everyone else was tasting a sour disappointment. “What are you going to do with your horse?” she asked her father. Maybe he’d give the horse to her, and she could stable it near Wesleyan. Did Blake ride? She’d ask him. She saw herself riding weekends.

“Still little Miss Muffet, worried about horses and spiders and everything living.” He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, giving her the full benefit of his radiant smile, eyes locked with hers. “We’ll leave him here, in his home. Don’t worry about the cows or horses. Karen is sentimental about animals too. They’ll be fine. You’re a sweetheart to care. I remember when you wanted to be a veterinarian. And you loved that spaniel, didn’t you?”

“Good idea,” Rosemary said. “Karen can feed the horse. After all, she got the stocks. I’m told that in the checking account there is only twenty-two hundred. There has to be more in the savings. He was a frugal man.”

Rich and Laura planned to depart from the restaurant and drop her at Wesleyan. Tonight she would sleep in her own bunk, instead of that drafty room in the creaky cold house in a bed that sagged like a hammock. She would see Blake. She would see Emily and Fern, whom she vaguely remembered had wanted to talk to her about something. She would be back in her own life again.

M
elissa was sitting curled in Blake’s arm on his bed.

“So you told your aunt about me?” He sounded pleased.

“I thought she was the least likely to go ripshit. She’s very accepting, and besides, I just learned she had a lesbian affair with another woman who may have been a Communist.”

“Most lesbian affairs are with women, babes.” He tousled her hair. “Let’s go see her one of these weekends. It sounds as if she could use the help.”

“Really? Would you do that?”

“Providing nobody announces an exam for Monday or a paper due, we could get out of here on a Friday afternoon. Weather permitting, because I want to take my bike out for a good long run.”

“Blake, that would make me really happy. She’s always been my favorite aunt, but I hadn’t seen her for years!”

“Didn’t you ever go visit her?”

She shrugged. “It all sounded so depressing. I thought maybe she’d blown it.”

“Still, you should have investigated for yourself.” He looked disappointed in her. “Taking your family’s word for it was the lazy way. You let her down.”

That evening she got an e-mail from Phil, Blake’s nerdy friend, reminding her that she was going to work with him on some research. She had hoped he and Blake had forgotten. He offered her a grid of possible times to get together, so that she couldn’t just fuzz out. Phil was going to teach her the rudiments of researching someone—in this case, most likely her father. She felt a little clammy when she thought of actually going
through with what she had promised. She knew it was the correct thing for her to do, but she couldn’t quite believe that emotionally. It felt sleazy. But it wasn’t real. She had to keep that in mind. Investigating her father was just a time waster, and she would turn it to advantage by using it to help her father change into someone with more conscience, more empathy, more soul. That was her duty. It was her way to make an impact on her family and win her father back. Even Blake could not guess how much she wanted her father’s attention, her father’s approval. All this investigative stuff was just fodder for her plan.

Blake was so pleased when she told him she had an appointment with Phil that she couldn’t allow him to know how little she wanted to go through with it. She would learn what Phil could teach her; after all, they were just kids, just students, so it was all pretend anyhow. Roger Lippett had tried for years to smear her father and never succeeded, so why did she imagine some computer nerd could possibly damage him? This way she could keep an eye on Phil.

Phil was engaged in amassing long lists of contributors to Dick’s campaigns and to organizations supporting him—the Clean Government Forum, Taxpayers’ Rights for Dickinson, a host of others. Some names she could identify, but he wanted more than descriptions. They were looking for interlocking directorates of corporations and institutions to identify the interests of the men—and it was eighty percent men—who had given and given again, whose pockets were deep for Dick. They were looking for men with positions in institutions or corporations or large holdings in them, in the library and on the computer searching databases, annual reports,
Who’s Who,
stock market reports. Progress was slow. It was more boring than she had anticipated, but she would keep at it, since it meant something to Blake. Most Saturday afternoons for the next month she would give Phil a couple of hours, identifying the interests of big contributors. It was boring and disappointing. What in this could possibly help her reach her father, communicate with him? Hey, Dad, guess what, I noticed that GE and Du Pont gave you a lot of money, huh? Way to start a great conversation.

With all that was going on with her family and with Blake, Melissa for
got that Fern had said she wanted to talk with her. It wasn’t until Fern had been giving her reproachful looks for days that finally Melissa remembered. “You wanted to talk with me? I’ve been trying to be less of a slob.”

“I feel like I have to talk about this. Because maybe you won’t want to room with me?”

“Did I do something?”

“Oh, no.” Melissa kept thinking Fern was going to slide off her bed and land on the floor, she held herself so bolt upright on the extreme edge. “It’s me. Not you. I mean I think it’s me.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It’s what I think I am.”

“Fern, you’re making me feel really really dense. Like a raving idiot. What are you talking about?”

“I think I might be a lesbian…”

“Oh.” Melissa sat upright herself. “Do you mean—like you’re attracted to me?”

“God, no. I’m attracted to a woman on my soccer team. It’s always in sports. Like you look at each other’s bodies and she’s so buff and fine.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“I haven’t had the nerve. I could screw everything up for myself.” Fern wrung her hands, twisting, miserable. “And I don’t know how to be a lesbian. I’ve never known any, I mean that I knew for sure. I don’t have a clue how you meet women and what you say…”

“I’m no expert, but Open House has parties. I think you should go.” It was one of the houses that, after freshman year, students could go and live in, in this case to identify as gay or lesbian. There were houses for African-American students, students who were into politics, into service, into the arts, whatever.

“I’ve been nervous about that. I mean, I was afraid I would be just too naïve and clumsy and make a fool of myself.”

“I mean, if I was gay, I’d think that was cute—like you were innocent and I’d want to show you. Don’t you think that might happen?”

“You don’t want to move out because I told you this?”

Melissa shook her head. She was not about to say it, but the first thing
that had gone through her head was that Fern wouldn’t be interested in Blake then, since they were not infrequently thrown together. “It’s cool. I hope you can get more comfortable with yourself. I think this is a great place to come out. Really! Besides, my favorite aunt is gay.”

When she told Emily—Fern had sworn her to secrecy, but she never felt that included Emily—Em said, “You know, I kind of wondered. She never seems to look at hot guys or want to go to parties or mixers or anything.”

“I just thought she was shy.”

“Well, obviously she is. But now it all makes sense. We have to be careful to keep Whitney and Ronnie from finding out. They won’t be down with it.” Em smiled slightly. “I wonder what it’s like with a woman?”

“I don’t think Fern knows any more than you do.”

THE SECOND WEEKEND
in April was mild. In Middletown and even on the surrounding hills and ledges, the snow had melted. Daffodils were blooming in gardens as they swept out of town. She was excited—this was their first trip together, the longest time on his motorcycle, and she was introducing him to her aunt, a tentative connection beyond the couple. But above all, it was spring. That morning she’d heard geese passing over as she trotted to class. Now she was gripping his back and holding tight and they were rushing north. She was sure she had felt nothing in her life as fully as she felt being with Blake. She was a different person now, her nerves, her body, her heart, her brain all forced into flower like a branch of forsythia brought into the house before the buds had begun to open on their own. From bare dead-looking branches, Alison persuaded flowers to open to adorn Rosemary’s desk. Blake had opened her into full bloom.

She wished they were going south on 91 into fuller spring, instead of north. As time and the miles passed, the season regressed. It grew chillier. Her thighs ached from gripping. Her kidneys hurt. Her discomfort grew but her joy remained. They could not talk on the bike, but she felt as if
they were in strong and perfect communication, pressed together and riding the wind, as he called it.

They stopped for a late lunch in Brattleboro, not far across the Vermont line. It was a town that still had something of a hippie milieu, so nobody paid attention as they sat in a booth eating hamburgers and home fries. He beamed into her eyes, as happy as she felt. “This is a good thing,” he said. “We’re moving along together. Is that what you want?” He waited for her emphatic nod. “Because that’s what I want. To be blended together. To be one.”

She did not know what he meant. It sounded romantic, but they were so different their oneness was hard to imagine. She took it as a pledge of love. Her Blake was a romantic, and that was sweet. She passionately hoped things would go well with Karen, because she just knew he would be bruised if the weekend went badly. Of all her relatives, she trusted Karen most to be up to the situation, not to embarrass or humiliate her. If only they could live their whole lives the way they did at school, invisible to their families and their families irrelevant. That was paradise enough. That was freedom from the intolerable burden of being her parents’ third and least-favored child.

They reached the farm by three thirty. The sky was blue, but shadows of the mountains were creeping over the pastures. Snow still clung to the sides of the road, although south-facing slopes were clear. It was full mud season. They bucked and splashed up the road to the columned farmhouse. When Melissa jumped off the bike, her knees buckled. Blake caught her with a grin. “Takes some getting used to. You’ll straighten out in a minute or two.”

Karen had been out in the barn. She was wearing old green corduroy pants and one of Grandpa’s plaid shirts, her red-grey hair loose and her skin wind-reddened. Everybody shook hands awkwardly. Melissa felt like running, fleeing down the steep road. Why had she engineered this? It was going to be stupid and clumsy all weekend. She scarcely knew her aunt after five years, and why should Blake care?

Melissa was surprised to see Liz come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a denim apron. She said, “I’m glad to see you.”

“Your aunt kept me on.”

“I haven’t seen a stove in a decade. I’d starve to death on frozen suppers.” Karen gestured toward the kitchen, the one warm room in the house. “Come have coffee or tea or whatever. Beer? Liz’s husband brews it.”

“Nasty stuff,” Liz said. “I won’t touch it. But Karen likes it. Or she’s too polite to say.”

“I drink it, don’t I? I’m off the wagon, but only for beer. After all these years dry, I’m a cheap drunk. One bottle is my limit.”

“Coffee, if you don’t mind,” Blake said. “We’re both chilled.”

Liz perked coffee and put out a crumb cake. “I have supper in the oven. Just take it out when you’re ready to eat. I’m off. The old man and I are stepping out tonight, over to White River.”

“Have fun,” Karen said, walking Liz to the door. Things had changed. They were on a first-name basis and seemed relaxed with each other. Only the cows had ever been at ease with Grandpa. When Melissa was little, he had scared her. When she was a teenager, she fled as fast as she could on horseback up the mountain and stayed away from him. Looking in the refrigerator for milk to put in her coffee, she noticed the buff wheels of cheese always filling half of it had disappeared. Karen too must have disliked the huge gum erasers.

“You got rid of the cheese?”

“First thing. The crows ate it. And the raccoons.”

“You’re keeping Liz on indefinitely, then?” Melissa asked. “It seems like you two get on well.”

“Liz didn’t always stay here. She took off and lived on the edge for years. Hard drinking. Dancing in bars. Up and down the East Coast all the way to the Keys and then out to Texas. Got really sick, went into rehab, then came back here. We understand each other. Couple of retired hard cases.”

“Are you going to stay up here and run the farm?” Blake asked. “You seem more of a city person.”

“Used to think I’d shrivel if I got farther up the Hudson than Nyack.
But as I’m sure Melissa explained, I’ve been incarcerated the last five years. That’s like they cut a hunk out of you.”

Blake stared at her, sitting down backward on a kitchen chair. “Yeah. I can imagine. Even though I don’t guess it was a hard-time place.”

“Very genteel. Very dull. Five whole years wasted in the equivalent of high school study hall. It’s an old-fashioned sort of redbrick storage device for the sons and daughters and wives of the Establishment who bug their families too much. Alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, addicts of various sorts, cross-dressers, misbehaving wives with too many assets to divorce, the broken and abused—few of the abusers. A real mental institution that depends on state funding or insurance, they kick you out in a week, but there are people from wealthy families there who have been locked up for forty years. They couldn’t cross the road by themselves after all this time.”

Blake rested his chin on his arms folded over the back of the straight chair. “All because you had a girlfriend?”

“It was who she was.”

“Rosemary said she was a Communist,” Melissa cut in.

“Not even. Actually she was a believer in democracy. But they thought she was trouble, and she tried to be. She was passionate about the environment. They called her an ecoterrorist, but she never terrorized anybody but Dick and Rosemary’s imagination.”

“Did you love her?” Melissa asked. “Do you have a photo?”

“I had lots of them, but I suspect they went into the fireplace when I went into Mountain View. They wanted to erase her from the face of the earth.”

Blake tilted back and forth in his chair, frowning. “Do you think her death was really an accident?”

“I don’t think once I was tucked away that Dick or Rosemary had a motive. Anyhow, they wouldn’t go that far. Discredit her, yes. Start rumors, sure. Use their pets in the press, why not. Cook up some legal or financial trouble, sure thing. But what do you think, they went out in the woods with a missile launcher?”

“You can’t dismiss the possibility someone was out to eliminate her.”

“She liked risk. She loved flying. She had an instrument rating, but often she flew when it made me nervous. Yes, I can believe she went down in a thunderstorm over Illinois. I do believe that.”

Melissa was leaning on the big old stove. “You didn’t answer me, if you loved her.”

“With all my heart, with all my strength. The funny thing about being committed was, I hadn’t been drinking so much with her. I started drinking too much after I gave up on tennis. After I met Eve, I didn’t need the bottle.”