The Third Child (31 page)

M
elissa found the household in a very different mood than they had exhibited at Thanksgiving. Dick and Rosemary were upbeat. “I think we’ve weathered this little storm,” Rosemary said. “The leak has been stopped and the attacks staved off.” She was sitting in her office, at a small desk with a bouquet of Persian lilies to her left. She was wearing a pale blue suit and her hair was slightly lighter than usual. Nobody seemed to be around, not even Alison. The office was crowded with two desks, one for Rosemary and one for Dick, but his real office in Philadelphia was downtown, where his local staff worked.

“Did they catch anyone?” Melissa stood before her mother wondering if she should take a seat or stay prepared for a hasty retreat.

“We don’t feel it behooves us to look over the shoulders of the police and the FBI. They’re holding that homosexual campaign worker who stole and altered papers. I imagine he’ll go to prison eventually. These things take time, and that’s just as well. The longer the process takes, the more the situation is defused.”

“So they’re proceeding against the reporter from the
Inquirer
and the campaign worker.” Melissa noted that, even with contempt edging her voice, Rosemary would say “homosexual” and never “fag” or “queer.” She did not use slur words she considered vulgar. “Did they catch anybody else?”

“They are still looking for the conduit between that man and Roger. I think they have someone likely, but as I said, I have been letting them do their work. I’m expecting to be brought up-to-date shortly after Christmas.”

That’s when the shit would likely hit the fan. Melissa tried to keep a blandly interested expression on her face. “So you’re feeling better?”

“Your father has been getting some good press lately. The
Washington Times
ran a piece calling him one of the rising stars of the Senate. Someone who has quickly established his presence and is being mentored by powerful senators. We also had a small but favorable mention in the
Wall Street Journal
last week.”

“Great. So how’s everyone else?”

“We fired Yolanda in Georgetown. We caught her taking home food—”

“Leftovers?”

“More than that.” Rosemary’s mouth thinned. “I can’t abide thievery. We have to be able to trust anyone who comes into the house here or in Washington. Too many sensitive things. Besides, someone who steals a steak one day might help themselves to the silverware tomorrow and a watch the day after that.”

Melissa sighed. “But she sure was a good cook.”

“Cooks are plentiful. Honesty is what I value above all. Loyalty.”

“So how’s Alison? I haven’t seen her today.”

“She’s at the doctor’s.”

“Is something wrong with her?” Melissa felt she should pretend an interest in Alison she had never actually experienced. Yolanda made the kitchen smell like paradise. Alison was just a busy extension of Rosemary.

“We had a scare.” Rosemary steepled her fingers on the ebony surface. “She had a bad Pap smear. Her results came back with a possible problem this November, right after Thanksgiving.”

“What kind of a problem?”

“There seemed a possibility of cervical cancer—not often fatal these days. Still, cancer is cancer, and we were very concerned.” Rosemary sighed, her forehead creasing. “Fortunately, she had her ultrasound Wednesday, and everything is normal. A great relief! I couldn’t do without my Alison.”

Melissa felt a pang of jealousy. Rosemary had actually been worried
about Alison. She cared about Alison, she really did. “You’ve had other assistants.”

“But never one so loyal, so devoted. And bright. She’s almost perfect, Melissa. She does the job of a secretary, an administrative assistant, a general all-around helper, a researcher, a computer person. No one has ever taken such good care of me.”

Enough of that. “Is Billy home yet? Merilee? The house feels empty.”

“You arrived at an off time. Alison should return in forty-five minutes, depending on traffic. Merilee is still in Foggy Bottom, but she’ll arrive tomorrow. Billy got in last night, but he’s off ice-skating.”

“And how are Rich and Laura and little Dickey doing?”

“Fine.” Rosemary’s gaze flickered.

Something wrong there. Something off. “The baby’s all right?”

“Spectacular,” Rosemary said, beaming now. “Cutest little boy. He’s going to be big, you can tell already. Laura is a first-rate mother, I will give her that.”

“Is Rich’s campaign going well?”

“He’s gathering support.” The phone rang. Rosemary looked at her caller ID and picked up at once. “Frank!” It was her geisha voice, and she waved Melissa out. Frank was Senator Dawes. He seemed to call daily. Melissa supposed he was lonely and probably bored back in North Dakota: she would be, she was sure.

Melissa could not help but wonder what was wrong in the Rich sector, where any trouble that would attract Rosemary’s attention and divert it from her could only be helpful. She would keep her ears open and listen at doors. Usually she had to acquire information by stealth—one reason she used to go snooping, long before she met Blake. It was time to go upstairs and use her temporary privacy to call him.

Her room here she had actually come to prefer to her larger room in Washington. It was too small to share with Merilee. Up at the top of the house, she had a measure of privacy. Here, Alison was the only staff on a regular basis. Meals in were catered, but the caterers brought the food in and, after setting up the meal, departed, a discreet service that required little contact. A cleaning service appeared twice a week for the down-
stairs. They stormed through the upstairs every Friday, so Melissa was forewarned to clear out. Almost as many people came through the downstairs as in Washington, but she could generally keep out of their way. The town house had a narrow back stairway, probably intended for servants who had lived up in the attic, where she had her room. She could slip down and out without interference. Blake suggested she get herself out to the Ackerman house in Mount Airy, and she planned to do that once she figured out the holiday schedule. Emily expected her on the twenty-ninth, but she would just have to see how things went and when the best window of opportunity might open to approach Rosemary and Dick about Blake.

The next morning, she could hear from the thump of rap music from the floor below that Billy was in. Maybe she could feel out her younger brother to see if he would ally himself with her. Down the back stairs she went to knock on his door. At first there was no response. She banged again and yelled, “Billy! It’s me, Lissa.” She tried to open the door but it was locked.

After maybe three minutes, she heard the lock turning over and he opened the door, looking tousled and a little wary. “If you don’t want them to know you’ve been smoking, open the window. It reeks,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

“Window’s stuck.”

“Let’s see if we can get it open together.” Using the end of a hanger, she picked at the sill. The window had been painted shut. Finally they pried it open.

She sat on his desk chair, wondering if he had grown since Thanksgiving or if he just looked taller in the small room. All the upstairs rooms were small. He had a room on the second floor, as did her parents and Alison. Alison’s room was just a daybed in her office. Her mother and father shared an office downstairs, where otherwise the ground floor had been opened up into one large living-diningroom beside the narrow kitchen, running from the street to the tiny yard paved over for parking. “How has it been going for you? I heard your hockey team only lost one game so far.”

“We’re doing okay. Think we might take our division.”

“You’ve made a lot of friends at school.” This was not a question.

He shrugged. “Mom said you were dating a Black dude.”

“Yeah. Sort of Black.”

“You can’t be sort of Black.”

“He is. His adopted parents are white.”

“I thought they were Jewish.”

“So’s he.”

“Shit, Lissa, were you just trying to stir them up? See how mad you could make them?” He grimaced at her, sitting on his bed’s edge. A magazine was sticking out from under the rumpled bedspread. Probably
Penthouse.
He was always hiding girlie ’zines from Rosemary.

“I like him. He’s bright, he’s buff, he’s good looking and really sweet to me. He rides a Honda motorcycle. You’d like him.”

“Lissa, you just can’t do that. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that we do best hanging with our own type people. It works out better. You can communicate. You just know the same things.” He was talking to her with grim seriousness, explaining the world to his ditzy sister.

“Why would I want to go out with somebody who knows exactly what I know? Sounds dull to me.” She drew herself up, feeling suddenly chilly. Was this her old coconspirator? “Getting more conservative, are we?”

“Just realistic. I’ve been with Black girls a couple of times, whores, just for the hell of it with some of the other guys. It’s no big deal.” He raked his hand through his strawberry blond hair, making it stand up in the cowlick he always tried to control. “But I wouldn’t date one of them. Obviously.”

“Blake gets better grades than I do, and he has more money, frankly.”

“Those shysters are probably rolling in it.”

“How can you assume what he is? I’m ashamed of you, Billy. I thought you’d want to meet him and see for yourself. All of a sudden you’re on their side?”

“You sound like you’re still hooked up with him.”

“And if I am?”

“You better dump him fast. Or you’ll be in real trouble.”

“You going to tell on me?”

“No way. You’re deluded on this one, but I don’t want all the yelling. It’ll fuck up the holidays if they find out.”

“Good. Keep quiet about it and I won’t tell on you.”

“Tell what?”

“Smoking.
Penthouse.
And a few other things.” She smiled, trying to give the impression she knew far more than she was saying. “Let’s just help each other through this so-called vacation.”

“Everybody smokes.”

“Then why aren’t you smoking downstairs?”

“Besides, why should I tell them about your Black boy? I don’t want any trouble, Lissa. I got a problem you don’t want to know about. Let’s just keep cool and stay under their radar.”

“Fine with me.” She found she had nothing more to say to Billy. Nothing at all.

IT WAS ALISON
who told her what was up with Rich and Laura. “I know your mother was planning to tell you, or I wouldn’t say anything. She wanted to fill you in, so you wouldn’t put your foot in it.”

“What am I not supposed to put my foot in?” She did not like Alison in her room, but she was too curious to try to ease her out.

“Rich is having an affair with one of his campaign workers. A divorcée five years older than Rich, a publicist who’s been helping him. I’m sure Rich got in deeper than he intended, but it could really hurt him.”

“Does Laura know?”

“She doesn’t have a clue, and that condition should remain intact.” Alison touched her own cheek with her fingertips, a gesture she had borrowed from Rosemary—a flick of the wrist, the hand remaining in the air for a moment, gracefully.

“Nobody thinks she should know what’s going on?”

They both understood that
nobody
really encompassed only Rosemary.
“It would be best for her marriage if she didn’t find out…. After all, she’s so involved with her baby that she’s been practically ignoring Rich. It’s partly her fault if he’s strayed. She isn’t giving him what he needs.”

This sounded very like what Rosemary would say. She was a husband-first sort of wife, and that was the marriage she wanted for Rich. Perhaps what Rich himself wanted. “That seems a little harsh. She’s just being a good mother.”

“And an inadequate wife.” Alison, who had never, as far as Melissa knew, had a boyfriend, pursed her lips in scorn. “She knew what she was getting into, marrying a politician. She has to put Rich first or things like this will happen.”

“That’s rather Rich’s responsibility, isn’t it? He wanted a son.”

“Of course. But he’s thrown in the way of temptation constantly. That’s how it is with powerful men.”

“But not my father.”

“Every man experiences temptation, Melissa. You’re too young to understand how it is with men. But your mother gives him what he needs from a wife, and they love each other. She’s kept that alive between them, no small undertaking. Your mother is very wise, and you could do a lot worse than to study her and learn from her.”

Learn to play geisha? Learn to flatter and charm and dangle? Learn to manipulate and sacrifice others? “Well, I want to thank you for filling me in…. I’m kind of surprised.”

“Your mother feels it’s time for you to pull your weight in the family. You made a serious mistake this year. They’ve forgiven you, but you need to prove you can behave responsibly. Your mother’s giving you a chance to show your loyalty to the family. She may want you to distract Laura so she can have a conversation with Rich. He’s been keeping himself unavailable, but he’ll be here during the holidays. She plans to corner him and set him straight before there’s a bigger problem.”

“I understand.” Rich’s affair would seem microscopic when she made her announcements. Her hands grew cold just thinking of what she had to do.

“So if required, you will occupy Laura?” Alison was watching her carefully, her eyes almost beady. “You agree to do that if I signal you?”

“Sure…. Uh, I hardly know her. What does she care about?”

“Her baby. If you get her started on him, she’ll go on for hours. Got that?”

Melissa nodded. Alison really thought she was stupid. Repeat instructions three times, because Melissa is a dim bulb. Rosemary had always underrated her, and she supposed that Alison picked up attitudes straight from her idol’s mouth.

“Now the signal,” Alison said, “will be if I say, ‘I wonder if the weather is going to improve tomorrow.’ Whenever I say that, you go into action.”

“Weather improving tomorrow. Got it.”

Alison looked a little dubious. “You won’t forget.”