Free The Third Child by Marge Piercy Page B

around the governor’s mansion into places we weren’t supposed to go and we’d move papers around or read things. We’d pretend to be taking pictures from our tiny wrist cameras of sensitive documents. It felt scary sometimes. Because we really were where we weren’t supposed to be.”
    “It sounds as if it would still be fun.” He placed his hand on her belly. “Where do you imagine living, if you could choose anyplace?”
    “Not Washington. California, maybe. Seattle. Or London. We allwent to England and France and Italy and Spain when Merilee graduated from Penn. Once we went with my father to Tokyo on a trade mission. Have you ever gone out of the country?”
    “Sure. I hitched around Europe last summer. I wrote about it for class. You know, an event that made you understand yourself better. A travel piece.”
    “You mean, you just went on your own? Your parents let you?”
    “Well, I’d been before. And they were in France. My father talks about the death penalty—he’s an opponent—”
    “So am I.”
    “I’m glad to hear that. Thought I might have to tussle with you about it, being as your daddy is so hot and heavy into executions.”
    “It’s sickening. I don’t agree with him.”
    “I’m surprised your parents didn’t travel more. Your father comes from money.”
    “He comes from old money, but they spent it before he was born. His father lives on a farm up in Vermont and raises cows. Honest.” She wasn’t about to describe Rosemary’s clever investing. Rosemary had her own financial advisor, Stan Wolverton, who had been coaching her for the last fifteen years. Rosemary considered him her real father and doted on him. He was a red-faced man who looked like an ex-athlete, but Melissa had never heard one thing about his past. Yet in the time she had seen him coming to closet himself with Rosemary, he had gone through three wives and was working on number four.
    “What about your mother’s family?”
    “Just lower middle class. Baptists from Youngstown, Ohio. I like them, actually, much better than my other grandfather, but we hardly see them anymore. They embarrass Rosemary. And I think they’re scared of her.”
    “How come?”
    “My mother is very smart. Much smarter than my father. They’re both insanely ambitious—you shouldn’t imagine she pushed him into politics or anything. I think he recognized right away that she could really help him.”
    “So at least he’s smart enough to like smart women.”
    It was clouding over. A chill wind had sprung up and she shivered. “I think the weather’s changing.”
    “We can only use this as our private place when it’s warm and it won’t be warm much longer. We’ll have to start using my room.” He stood up, extending a hand for her. She thought that he had a natural courtesy which was extremely unusual among guys. There was something princely about him. She was already spinning fantasies about his unknown and unknowable parentage. She had loved fairy tales when she was little. Emily had not been permitted to read fairy tales, for her parents thought they supported regressive values, but the nannies who had taken care of Billy and her had provided fairy tales along with daily vitamins. Blake was the son of a king, a prince in exile from some mythical golden kingdom. He was her prince who had wakened her not exactly with a kiss but in that general direction. “If we use your room, what about your roommate?”
    “Don’t have one. I did, but he bailed in the third week. College was too much for him. He was praying all the time, scared, out of his element. He went back to Oklahoma.”
    “Do you mind? I might be lonely in a single.”
    “I’m used to being alone. In one way, I’ve always been alone. Besides, you’ll see, I have a lot of valuable computer equipment I don’t want some wiseass monkeying with.”
    She wondered why he had not brought her to his room already, but then she answered her own question. He was