Under her mother's constant scrutiny and lost in the shadow of her famous senator father, Melissa is the third child in the politically prominent Dickenson family, where ambition comes first and Melissa often comes last. In college, she meets Blake, a man of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage. His adoptive parents are lawyers whose defense of death-row cases in the past brought them head-to-head with Melissa's father when he was the governor of Pennsylvania. While Melissa and Blake's attraction is immediate and fiery, a dangerous secret lurks beneath their relationship -- one that could destroy them ... and their families. Provocative and beautifully written, and dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity, and the consequences of ambition, The Third Child is a remarkable page-turner.

Marge Piercy is the author of fifteen novels, including Gone to Soldiers, The Longings of Women, and Woman on the Edge of Time, as well as fifteen books of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day, The Moon Is Always Female, and Circle on the Water. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, Ira Wood, the novelist and publisher of Leapfrog Press

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The Third Child
A Novel

Chapter One

"Your father is an important man." Rosemary placed her smalldelicate handsfirmly on the ebony surface of her desk, the deskthat had followed her through the governor's mansion to theWashington house the Senator had rented at what Rosemary said was anexorbitant price. She had called Melissa and Billy into her office at theback. "You have to learn to behave accordingly. If this gets into the papers, it could damage your father."

Billy was trying to look remorseful, but Melissa worried he was notsucceeding. The windows were open onto the narrow yard, where something exotic was in bloom. It was spring vacation and much warmer inD.C. than at Miss Porter's School in Connecticut where Melissa was inher last year. In her father's family, the Dickinsons, the women alwaysattended Miss Porter's -- even her, no matter how far down the familyhierarchy she was rated. The garden was her favorite part of this newhouse in Georgetown on a street called P in the block off Wisconsinwhere her parents had moved after the election. She and Billy sat outthere last night smoking dope under a magnolia whose big flowers werejust browning and falling on them. A tree with pink flowers was opening, a tree as feminine as if it wore a prom dress. In the twilight after Billywent in, she had lain under that tree imagining a lover -- not real sex, withits brutal disappointment, but with a soft dissolve, romantic, like perfectkissing. Her grandmother Susie, whom she never saw anymore, wouldknow the name of that tree. When she was little, she had wanted to belike Grandma Susie -- growing tomatoes and peonies, beans and zinnias inthe yard in Youngstown. She had started a garden on the grounds of thegovernor's mansion in Harrisburg, but when Rosemary discovered it, the gardener pulled her plants up and restored it the way it had been. Melissawas supposed to want to be a lawyer or something better, whatever thatmight be. Her father wanted to be President, and her mother was determined to get him there. Billy had bought the pot on M Street. M and Wisconsin were a different world from the staid block of old houses mostlyflush to the sidewalk and always swarming with workers painting, gardening, tuck-pointing the bricks, primping the houses -- on Wisconsin and onM it was a world of the young, alive and noisy, racially mixed and of allclasses. This house was Second Empire, which sounded sinister, and onlya hundred twenty-five years old;Rosemary had wanted a federal house ofred brick two hundred years old, but those were even more expensive.

"It was just pot, Mother," Billy said. His forelock had fallen over hiseyes. She fought the impulse to push it back. His hair in the sun beamingthrough the window was that light red gold called strawberry blond, different from anybody in the family -- not blond like Father and Merilee. Not ordinary light brown hair like Rich Junior and herself. Mother's hairhad been blond for years now; it went with her porcelain skin.

"You're just fifteen. Are you trying to get expelled again?" Rosemaryshook her head in annoyance.

He gave Melissa one of those Here-we-go-again looks. Actually Billydid not uch care if he got expelled, as he'd said to her when he waswaiting to be called on the carpet -- the two of them sprawled on her bedas always talking in utters and whispers. He had friends at prep school, but he made friends easily and one school was like another to him. Thiswas his third. They always let him get away with a lot before they tossedhim because he was the Senator's son, and because he was good at everysport he bothered to try.

"I was just going along with the other guys."

Melissa said, "In high school, most guys smoke pot sometimes, Mother. Be glad he's not on Ecstasy or heroin. Let's have some perspective." She always tried to make peace between her mother and heryounger brother -- if only Billy could manage to seem truly sorry, but hecouldn't fake it successfully. He had never taken their mother's reprimands as intensely as she had. She had been a puppyish fool, wagging her tail, fetching slippers, trying, always trying to be someone Rosemary wanted for a daughter. Now her aim with her mother was to be cool. Shewas an undercover agent playing the dutiful daughter, but they would see. They had no idea who she really was, her deadly skills and her hidden brilliance as she played the part of a too tall, too busty, hardworking highschool senior. But under that drab exterior, she was something else, something that would astonish them. Oh, sure.

Rosemary ignored her. "Everything you do is visible, Billy. Everythingany of us does can come back to haunt your father."

Melissa sighed and slumped into a chair. It was a weird curvy chair, which she supposed went with the house, upholstered in nubby blue silk. Her father 's importance. She could not remember when it did not exist. In retrospect, it gilded even the snapshot of him from his Dartmouthdays, holding an oar aloft like a captured trophy -- a shot always accompanied by the caption saying that he had gone to the 1968 Olympics with hissculling team. She had learned only two years ago that he had not actuallycompeted -- her aunt Karen told her. Karen cultivated the unusual habitin the Dickinson family of telling the truth, not a trait valued by the restof the family -- except Billy and her, the two young misfits. Actually Billywas too handsome to be a real misfit ...

Excerpted from The Third Child: A Novel by Marge Piercy
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