by Marge Piercy
Sometimes she imagined they were married. When she dared to tentatively share that with him, he began to play too. It did not scare him. She was astonished and delighted. They played the Mr. and Mrs. game at supper, when they were loading the dishwasher, when they were doing laundry, when they were shopping. He was Mr. Timothy Flapdoodle. She was Mrs. Gina Flapdoodle. They had two children: Annette was precocious and a ballerina; Edgar was a math genius and a champion chess player. They had three dogs and three cats, a parrot and an iguana. The names of the pets changed almost daily, as did their breeds, or lack of them. The Flapdoodle family expanded or contracted at will. They had a second son, Harley, who played soccer and got in trouble at school; then they dropped him. He was too much like Billy for her to enjoy.
“Everybody needs a future,” Blake said. “Even if it only extends to the end of the week.”
“But we can have a real future, if we’re strong with each other,” she said. He was too fatalistic. It went along with his invocation of destiny in their meeting. She didn’t believe anything was fated. If Jonah had been a nicer person, she might have followed him to William and Mary instead of going to Wesleyan with Emily. Then she would never have met Blake. But she didn’t argue. He was a romantic, and she appreciated that. She was the pragmatist in their couple. “There’s no way I’m going to let my parents break us up. I can swear that.”
“We’ll see” was all he would say. But he promised, “In the fall, when they come up to visit me at school, you can meet my folks. We can get that started.”
“Does that mean you want to meet my parents this summer while you’re in D.C.?” Her stomach clenched hard on itself.
“I’ll be leaving the Sunday they’re getting back. No, we’ll fight that battle down the pike. Let’s deal with mine and get them nice and acquiescent and cuddly before we start on yours.”
She had an equally great desire to meet his family and to keep hers at bay. She was too afraid of Rosemary to look forward to the scenes that would surely follow any introduction. She could not imagine a happier time than playing house with Blake. Every weekday morning, she went off to work. He hung around the house until his first class, and then he was home when she got back. She had given him one of the keys that hung downstairs for staff, in Dick’s office. She rushed back as fast as she could. He usually picked up takeout on his way from class. She was loving the intimacy, the silences as well as the intense conversations in bed late at night, over supper, on the weekends. Her mother called every two days, always around seven—while it was cocktail hour at Colonel and Mrs. Workman’s domicile with its view of the tiny rock-strewn harbor. Her mother would walk down from the verandah with her cell phone clasped to her ear. Sometimes Melissa could hear the clank of rigging hitting against the mast of a sailboat, hear the seagulls’ raucous cries and warning mews. At moments, she missed the ocean. Then she thought of herself there with her parents; Rich and his pregnant wife, who had joined them; Merilee, who was obediently onboard; Billy, who would be hanging with the grandson, and she shuddered with relief for her freedom, her precious time with Blake. She would rather be in hell with Blake than in heaven with her parents.
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN •
Melissa found actually sleeping with Blake, eating with him, living with him full-time except for her work and his class exhilarating, although not without its occasional abrasions. He had a tendency to drag the covers off her. He liked the bedroom ice-cold. He ate faster than she did. Of course he ate more—he was after all bigger—but if she did not hastily grab what she wanted, he would consume it before she got round to selecting a second helping. He wasted a lot of time downloading stuff from the house computers onto his laptop, an obsession fortunately he did not demand she share. When she asked him what he was doing, he usually had a simple answer: downloading material on how her father was going to vote on various issues, actual bills, and why. If she asked further, he would explain the issues to her at length, sometimes at stupefyingly great length. But that left ninety percent bliss. She had to dig for something to complain about. She felt loved. He brought her little presents, silly things: a statuette of a beagle (“because your mother won’t let you have a live dog”), a barrette in the form of a blue beaded butterfly from Bali, a book of computer cartoons. He got her favorite cookie dough ice cream, even if he ate more than half. They took long bubble baths together, then had to mop up the flooded bathroom. The neighborhood was their playground, to run out and mingle with other couples on the sidewalks, in restaurants and ice cream parlors and coffeehouses and hangouts. This was what marriage would be like.
Phil wanted to come to the house, but she refused. “I could never explain him. My parents hate his father. They really see him as a demon from hell.” She felt strong drawing that line. It showed that she had scruples, that Blake could not push her around, that she was still protecting her parents.
This was Phil’s second trip to Washington. She was not overjoyed, but Blake continued to be fascinated with Phil: beauty and the nerd. Blake was enamored of anything to do with computers and any weird hairy guy who dealt seriously with them. Everybody had hobbies. Her father collected memorabilia about Winston Churchill, displayed in his office along all of one wall in a glass case—everything from first editions to a shaving mug in the form of his head. He also collected World War II paraphernalia, and an assortment of guns, shotguns and rifles that Alison kept in good condition, displayed in a large glass case. Rosemary collected important men. Perhaps there was something wrong with her that she had no hobbies. Maybe when Blake and she were married, she would develop a hobby. She could collect dogs—live ones. None of her dogs would be pedigreed. They would all be mutts who were lonely, deserted and needing a home. Blake liked animals. She felt as if a man who liked animals (unlike her father; unlike Rich) should be trusted.
She learned all about his preferences, his dislikes and weaknesses. Pollution could make him sick. He had asthma, and on bad days he relied heavily on an inhaler he carried with him. He avoided smoky places because they could cause an attack. The nights they went to that club, he was sick the next day.
Her mother’s phone calls were unrelievedly annoying. “Have you been taking the trash out to the curb? What have you been eating? I hope the sink isn’t full of encrusted dishes and burnt pans. Use only your own phone. We are retrieving the messages daily from the other phone. It can’t be tied up.”
Melissa did not mention that they too were checking the answering machine daily. Everything about her parents interested Blake. Still, he was disappointed in the phone messages. She had to explain that almost everyone who mattered was out of Washington for the summer, on vacation or in their home districts. Anyone who knew her parents would call them in Maine.
Rosemary was still interrogating her. “Are you lonely? I hope you’re not doing anything foolish. You could still come up here.”
“Remember, you’ve never given me a car.”
“You could fly into Bar Harbor. We’d pick you up.”
“I’m still working this week, Mother. I can’t suddenly quit. I’m doing just fine. I’m finding out what it’s like to be on my own. But I really would like a car.”
“I suppose it’s not worth it now. We’ll be back Sunday. I hope you aren’t playing your music too loudly. You don’t want to annoy the neighbors. That’s a very nice neighborhood.”
She had a momentary qualm, because they were playing music loudly, but then she remembered that the neighbors who shared the walls on either side of the row house were out of Washington too. “Of course I’m not.”
“I hope you aren’t forgetting to turn the air-conditioning down when you leave for work.”
“Yes, Mother.” Yes, she was forgetting. Blake stayed in the house after she left for work, before his first class. They almost always forgot to turn down the air-conditioning. His classes were only half a day.
“Be careful what you put down the garbage disposal. You can’t—”
“Moth
er, you left five pages of instructions. It isn’t necessary to repeat them on the phone. I haven’t had a problem with the garbage disposal, the washer, the dryer, the dishwasher, the air-conditioning, the TV, the music system, the doorbell, the plumbing…”
Rosemary was ominously silent for a moment. “There’s no need for sarcasm. I hope to find things as I left them.”
BLAKE CAME BACK from meeting Phil in a state of excitement. “We’re finally on to something.” They were sitting in the livingroom on the long overstuffed couch, facing each other, legs up and entangled between them.
“What are you talking about?”
“The problem is that general corruption is just taken for granted. The banks that run credit cards give big contributions and senators vote to make bankrupt people pay off their credit cards no matter what, before child support, before anything. Insurance companies give big contributions and stop health care programs that would cover everyone. Tobacco companies give big contributions and the senators vote that the FDA can’t treat tobacco like any other addictive drug. It goes on and on and nobody cares but a few cranks.”
“I don’t see how any of this is going to help me. And where did you get all this information?”
“To be able to get to him—to demand his attention, to get him to communicate with us—we need something that breaks the rules of the private club he’s in. Nowadays that includes sex—it never used to, or half the founding fathers and almost all of the presidents would have gone down. But you don’t think King Richard strays.”
“He and Rosemary are absolutely bonded. Maybe you’d find some affairs in his college days, but so what? Nobody would care. He can always say he repented. I don’t think he has much motivation to stray. They have a pretty active sex life, as near as I can tell. They’re faithful because they’re totally focused on the same things.”
“Pages? Interns? Assistants?”
“Mostly they’re guys or homely or both. Rosemary vets them. And she’s in and out of his office all the time. I don’t see it.”
“So much for sex. Drugs? Again, we’ve found no sign of it.”
“He froths at the mouth at the mention of drugs. Once he walked into the room when Billy and I had been smoking dope. He sniffed and said, ‘What’s that funny smell?’ He really didn’t know. I don’t think he ever smoked. They drink a lot, but no more than anybody else in Washington. He has an amazing tolerance for liquor, I’ve heard his aides say. He knows exactly how much he has in him. I’ve never, ever seen him drunk.”
“Okay, that leaves us with money. Now there are certain accounts I’ve turned up that look iffy.”
“Accounts? What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been checking expenditures, instead of only donations. He pays a lot of expenses that are politically motivated—like eating at those expensive restaurants Senator McCloskey frequents—out of an account that seems reserved for that. The money into that account may have been transferred from his war chest in part or come straight from contributions. If so, he’s playing fast and loose. You can’t use campaign contributions for personal expenses. While he may consider those big restaurant tabs political, it’s not legal to use contributions for dining out. It’s the first hard little pebble of factoid we’ve found that might actually do some damage.”
He was massaging her foot, sending her into sensual bliss. She jerked her foot away. “I don’t like this financial stuff. He’d be furious if that’s what you’ve been downloading. I thought you were trying to find out how he’s going to vote on stuff like foreign aid and welfare.”
“I’m trying to understand the whole picture. What makes him tick. How he makes his decisions. What he does to implement those decisions. That’s the heart of the matter, babes. You’ve never taken the trouble to understand how he operates, so you have no chance to influence him. We’re trying to set you up to have some impact.” He took her foot back in his hands and slowly massaged his way up her leg.
“So what do we do now?” She moved her other foot up to his crotch and slowly circled it over the growing bulge. He was trying to help her, even though she didn’t like him fooling around with the computers so much. He just couldn’t keep his hands off computers. It was like Em coming into a room where there was a dog—even if she was trying to flirt with some guy, she’d forget him and go straight to the dog and start baby-talking it and rubbing its ears.
“Right now, we go upstairs.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Pleasure before business. That’s us.”
If only they could just stay on here together. She had longed to be back at school, but now she just wanted their little sojourn to last weeks, months, years. Their bodies fit so well into each other. She kept the air-conditioning low in her room so that they could rub glistening skin on skin without goose bumps. When it was time to sleep, she turned it arctic, the way he liked it at night.
Now they coiled round each other through the gentle mild air, now her on top, now him. Sometimes she felt as if they were rooting, digging through each other’s bodies trying to sink deeper and deeper within, as if they were trying to crawl into each other. She was seldom jealous now. Of course, she scarcely saw him with anyone else. They rushed to the house and each other after work, after classes. Three or four times in the neighborhood, they ran into people they knew and chatted, had coffee, but they did not ask them over, saving that precious time for each other.
Friday was the happy day when they faced a whole weekend together, a little tinged with sadness because Blake would have to go back to the lawyer’s house Sunday noon, get his stuff together, then return to Philadelphia that night. She would do a quick runaround and make sure everything was in place. They had kept things pretty tidied up, for fear some hireling might come by to check on the house and her. She would be alone when her parents arrived Sunday.
“Si and Nadine wanted to know why I couldn’t come back Saturday, but I gave them some BS about a class party.” Blake communicated with his parents by e-mail, so he didn’t face the problem of having to be near the phone to take calls from them. They assumed he was safely tucked into their friend’s house in Bethesda, where he passed by once a day so that they would not think he had disappeared.
She smiled at him. “I think we covered all bases pretty well.”
“Like professionals.” He high-fived her and they beamed at each other. They were eating Thai takeout tonight.
“I think we’ve done better than most couples at sharing space, don’t you agree?” She watched his face for a reaction.
“Naturally. It’s been how it should be.” He beamed at her.
Other girls in the dorm told her that if they made noises about commitment, their boyfriends froze up or took off. Blake wasn’t like that. She had a confidence in him that she had never had in anyone, not even Billy when he was still all hers. She had imagined being this desired, this cherished, but never truly believed she would achieve it. She would do anything to hold on to him. She would make herself be brave and tough and smart. Their closeness grew out of their need, that they both felt ultimately alone and as if they didn’t belong, although she sometimes wondered why he felt that way, since his adopted family seemed to be more satisfied with him than her natural parents could ever be with her. But his folks might be a bunch of perfectionists. Something made him needy, for which she was grateful, since what he seemed to need most was her.
They were sitting at the kitchen table across the ruins of supper, gazing at each other and going over the minute details of their days, one of those marriagelike moments she reveled in. She could have told anybody except Emily about her day in two sentences. With Emily, there would be dissection and discussion. With Blake too, everything was mulled over. He was fascinated by the differences between Russian and English sentence structure and grammar and the differences between Romance languages and Russian. Russian was his first Slavic language, and in spite of all the distractions, he had done well in the cour
se. He always took time to practice with his language tapes. She liked the sound of him speaking a language she had no clue about, although by osmosis she had picked up hello, good-bye, thank you, I am called, what is your name and other standard phrases.
Afterward she would think again and again how grateful she was that they had lingered at the table that evening. His course was finished and he was showing off his Russian to her. He taught her to say “I love you,” and “I want to go to bed with you” and “You are the handsomest man I have ever seen.” They were in weekend mood, chilling, just enjoying each other and free time. They were being silly and she was asking him how to say outlandish things. “My dog wears blue pants.” “My telephone speaks only Chinese.”
They were leaning back in their chairs drinking Chardonnay from the cellar with the remains of supper littering the kitchen table between them when she heard something. They both turned. It came from the parlor floor.
“Melissa! Melissa! Are you here? We’re home.”
It was Rosemary’s voice: her family voice of command, not her geisha voice. Melissa froze. Then she jumped up, grabbed the half-empty bottle of wine and shoved it under the sink. She emptied and rinsed their glasses while Blake rose, glancing toward the outside door to the street—the way she used when she sneaked out to meet him. But he had left his backpack with his laptop and a change of clothes upstairs in the livingroom. They looked at each other grimly. He remained standing at attention and jerked at his clothes, while she patted her hair.
“Down here, Mother,” she called.
Blake looked frozen. She must have infected him with her fear. She tried to give him a reassuring glance, but his eyes were fixed on the doorway, waiting.
Rosemary tripped down, carrying her handbag and a package. The driver was helping Dick with the bags, and Alison was managing packages of whatever Rosemary had purchased. “I thought we’d better…” Her gaze swung to Blake and remained there. “Hello?” The tone was icy.
