"Then perhaps you should meet different people this year."

She had a better time with Jessica than she expected. Since they were in different universities, each seemed to feel she could be frank. Jessica was doing a lot of Ecstasy and in trouble at school, having fallen in love with a townie she'd met at a rave. He had a Harley and an ex-wife with a kid. She had added a lip stud to her previous collection. Melissa told her a few things about Blake, including his Honda. They agreed that parents just couldn't understand and promised to get together over Thanksgiving, provided they both were in Washington.

When Melissa returned, a video crew was occupying the first floor and the backyard, making a promo for the NRA featuring Rosemary, who had been a poster child for them previously. The NRA contributed heavily to Dick's campaigns, and he strongly backed the freedom to pack. Rosemary was speaking to the camera in a forceful yet coy way about the need for women to be able to protect themselves and their families.

When taping was finally over, two hours later, Alison came in and picked up the rifle and the revolver Rosemary had put down as soon as she was done with them, as if they might burn her hands. Rosemary might sing the praises of firearms, but she secretly hated them. She disliked even touching them. Alison cleaned the guns, made sure they were in working order by firing them from time to time at a local range and watched Rosemary's posturing with them to make sure it was convincing. Alison had grown up in the countryside of Pennsylvania in a hunting culture. She had made Dick and Rich more proficient at handling firearms. Rich enjoyed shooting. Melissa at one point had thought she might take it up, but Rosemary had not encouraged her interest. "You'd probably shoot Alison by accident or your own foot. Let the boys play." Not that Melissa had ever wanted to shoot anything; she just liked the image of herself looking cool. After all, even Billy knew how to handle firearms: why not her?

MELISSA WAS tremendously relieved to pack up and head back to school. Alison was driving her, as Dick had been invited to play golf with three influential senators, Rosemary was buttering up Mrs. McCloskey in preparation for Congress's return and Melissa had too much stuff to cart on the train. It was a strain to spend seven hours in the car with Alison, who felt impelled to make conversation. But Alison's questions were easier to deflect than Rosemary's, in part because Alison was not and never had been interested in her and lacked the vocation of a true inquisitor. She mainly ran on about Rosemary and her charm and what a wonderful wife and mother she was, how she personally thought Rosemary would make a great senator herself. "She is on top of every issue," Alison declaimed. "She has an understanding of politics at least the equal of your father's."

Well, duh, Melissa thought. Who do you think tells Dick what his issues should be?

"College towns and campuses are always such a hodgepodge," Alison said as they drove through the small downtown uphill to Wesleyan. "You'd think they'd try to keep things more uniform to be aesthetically pleasing." Melissa didn't answer, wanting to defend her school but also wanting to reveal as little of herself as possible to Alison. Finally she was delivered to her dormitory and Emily, whose parents were helping her settle in. Fern had moved into Open House, having finally decided to come out, and Melissa and Emily would be roommates. Emily's mom and dad looked at each other when they learned that Melissa's parents had not bothered to take her to school themselves. That look she had seen pass between them before, pitying and judgmental. Emily's folks did not give hers high marks in the parenting department. Melissa rather enjoyed their mild pity, and she agreed with them about Dick and Rosemary. She imagined her mother ticking her off on a computer-generated list: get third child returned to college. A check beside it. Emily's folks helped her settle in too. She enjoyed the attention, but she could not tell Emily what had happened until her parents left and finally they were alone.

"They just walked in? Without calling? Do you think somebody tipped them and they were trying to catch you bonking him?"

"I don't think so. I'm not important enough for them to think it mattered to let me know they were returning early." Melissa frowned. "Although maybe they were suspicious. I asked Billy if they interrogated him, and he said they wanted to know if I was seeing anybody."

"Did he tell them?"

"He couldn't. I never confided in him."

"Still, maybe they liked Blake. He's gorgeous and smart-"

"And Jewish and dark-skinned, of obviously mixed race. Just what they'd order up for me, right? Never underestimate their prejudices." She bounced across the room to hug Emily. "I'm so glad to see you, Em. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to be back here with you."

"Hey, kid. We're sophomores now. We're not the new kids on the block-"

"I hated that group. Merilee used to listen to them-"

"They say nobody ever likes their older siblings' music. I barely remember them. So, anyhow, your parents finally met Blake so now you can ooze into letting them know he's your steady Freddy."

"No hurry!" She set up her laptop. "So do you still have cooties or whatever? Are they contagious?"

"Only if we have sex. No, I got rid of them with crap from the drugstore. It stung but it did them in. What a scurvy skanky guy to give me bugs, Lissa."

"You always like musicians."

Emily shrugged. Her hair looked shinier. Melissa made a mental note to ask her what she was using on it. "It was something to do."

Melissa logged on to get her messages. "Oh my god! Blake is expecting me to meet his parents tonight. At seven they're going to pick me up-what time is it?"

"You have almost an hour to fuss about it."

"What should I wear? Is my hair all right? Is my skin okay?"

She read his message again. He said, "I haven't told my parents who your parents are, so let it be. Actually I told them you're an orphan like me and you're adopted by a family who lives in Washington. Your father's in trucking."

Now why did he do that? She'd have to remember the made-up part all evening. But in a way she was liberated from Dick and Rosemary, enjoying an imaginary family instead. Often she had felt adopted; or like a changeling left in the cradle when the real perfect Dickinson baby had been abducted by aliens.

Blake was usually late and tonight was no exception. She sat in the lounge downstairs trying not to chew her nails, a habit she had broken while still at Miss Porter's. Now she wanted so badly to bite her nails that she had to cross her arms. Then she started pulling at her hair. She radiated anxiety so strongly that a guy sitting near her moved to another seat. She wanted desperately for the Ackermans to like her, but why should they? They would disapprove. They wouldn't be able to guess what Blake saw in her. What did he see in her? She was never quite sure herself. If only she knew, then she could be more that way, starting immediately.

Finally, at seven twenty-three, she saw him coming in the door accompanied by a wizened little man with a shock of white hair standing straight up as if electrified, an even shorter roly-poly woman with equally short white hair, and a pretty girl with spiked black hair, her buff midriff bare over tight pants, a swagger to her walk. That had to be the stepsister. They were introduced by Blake: "My father, Si Ackerman. My mother, Nadine Ackerman. My sister, Sara. This is my girlfriend, Melissa. Don't bite her."

Everyone greeted her, making no attempt to disguise their curiosity. They were all looking her over and examining her quite openly until she felt like hiding behind Blake. She was so nervous she didn't even listen to where they were going. It turned out to be a Chinese restaurant where students often ate with parents.

"There's a law that must be federal, since it applies in every state," Si said as they looked at the menu. "No Chinese restaurant more than twenty miles from a major urban center can be trusted, and no good food can be served within two miles of any college or university."

"So what are you studying, Melissa?"

"I think I'd like to go into journalism. Investigative journalism."

"A dying field," Si said glumly.

Blake squeezed her knee under the circular table. "Melissa has been working with Phil, Roger's son. Phil plans to follow in his father's footsteps."

"Good footsteps." Si nodded at her. "I know Roger. I must have met Phil, but I don't recall him."

Nadine tilted her head to the side. "Is he the little guy who came to the house just after you got back from Washington? With funny red hair?"

Little guy, she thought. Nadine must be all of five two. Blake, Sara and she towered over his parents.

"So how'd you meet my bro?" Sara was playing with the chopsticks, arranging them in squares, Xs, outlines of houses.

"We had a writing class together our first semester."

"You're the first white girl Bro has gone out with," Sara said. "Must be something about you."

"His mother was white, Sara. And that girl Marietta was damned possessive. I was glad Blake cut her loose." Si frowned at his daughter.

Marietta must be the girl who had visited him before they hooked up. How did Si know Blake's mother was white? Blake had told her nothing was known about his blood parents. Maybe the hospital had recorded that much. Unknown white woman.

"So where do your parents live?" Nadine pursued.

"In Washington, D.C."

His parents exchanged a look. "So much for the sudden interest in Russian." Nadine grinned broadly. "It all becomes clear."

"I wanted to learn Russian," Blake said. "And I did damned well in that course. You saw my evaluation. I just didn't see why I couldn't do it in Washington and have fun with Melissa at the same time."

"So how long have you been going out?" Si asked.

"Quite the interrogation you two have going," Blake said. "Pity you can't double-team like this in court."

"Honey, we're just interested. How could we not be curious and want to know as much as we can about your friend?" Nadine turned to Melissa. "Do you have brothers and sisters?"

"An older and younger brother and an older sister."

She saw Blake dig Sara in the ribs. "Hey, I'm starving," she said. "I'll pass out on the floor if we don't order. Does anybody know if the Buddha's Delight is edible here?"

Ordering was not like being in a restaurant with her parents. It was a fast hard negotiation. I won't get the too-hot tempeh dish if you don't get the peanut chicken I hate. "No, Sara, you can't impose vegetarianism on us tonight," Nadine said. "You did it at Thanksgiving, but not again. You don't eat what you don't want, but you can't keep us from eating what we want. If it grosses you out, go sit in a booth by yourself."

"But, Mom, Melissa hasn't got to choose anything," Blake complained. Somehow with his parents he was younger. His voice often rose closer to treble. She thought, Everybody stays a helpless kid with their parents. She certainly went on the defensive with hers. She should not be judgmental because the Blake who interacted with his adoptive parents was far less commanding and far less in charge than her Blake. Her Blake was the real Blake, escaped from his family, as this was the real Melissa, having gotten away from hers.

"I like most things," she said. "What you're ordering is fine with me."

Everyone looked at her as if she had made a faux pas. Apparently insisting on something was what this family expected and admired, while the bland go-with-anything air her parents cultivated was dismissed as wishy-washy here. Well, she could recover. She could play their game. "I do really like mu shi pork...or chicken," she added, remembering they were Jewish. "With pancakes."

"Extra pancakes," Sara said. "So what attracted you to my gangly brother? His bike?"

"Didn't know he had one until I'd gone out with him." She could hardly say that it was the feeling they both were outcasts. She kept watching for signs of his lower status in his family, but she could not find them. Perhaps the Ackermans were so different in manners, habits, decibel level from her parents that she read them poorly. "I liked the essays he wrote for class." She thought that was a politic answer and the parents seemed to like it, although Sara shot her a look that said she knew bullshit when she heard it.

"Blake started out having trouble in school. But he's become an exceptional student. Largely because he wanted to," Si said.

"More because I got into computers. I hadn't cared about school before that."

"How did you happen to name him Blake? Is it a family name?"

"Oh, he was named that by his father," Nadine said. "I think it was in honor of the poet Blake and his stand against superstition and oppression."

How did they know about his father? She was very confused, but she did not want to make a point of questioning them in front of Blake, who had immediately changed the subject to what he was hoping to get out of his classes this fall. If both his parents were unknown, as he had told her, how come they knew his mother was white and his father admired Blake, the English poet? "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night...." That was the one. She had been reading him at Miss Porter's for a paper. She shivered suddenly.

"Somebody walked over your grave," Sara said. They were sitting side by side in the booth and Sara had felt her reaction. "That's what my bubba always says."

"The air-conditioning is a little high," Melissa said defensively.

"I hate air-conditioning," Nadine said. "My body's thermostat is set too low and I'm always chilly. I'm the only woman I ever knew who enjoyed her hot flashes."

"Mother!" Sara said. "Don't be gross. Who wants the last dumpling?"

Melissa didn't think she was scoring high with them. If only she could think of something brilliant to say that would win them over. But startling statements were not her forte. She was a plodder, excelling, when she did, by simple stubborn persistence and remembering to cross every t and dot every i.

"So what does your father do?" Si asked.

The question she had dreaded. She did not see how, when asked directly, she could lie. "He's in the government," she said softly.

"What does he do in the government?" Nadine persisted.

Blake threw her a warning look, but what good could it do to lie now, when they would surely find out. "He's a senator."

"Dickinson," Nadine said. "Oh my god, your father is Dick Dickinson?"

She nodded.

Everyone looked at her and at Blake.

"My old enemy," Si said. "Well, this is a surprise."

"She didn't ask for him to be her father," Blake said. "She's a good person. You can't hold her father against her."

"But don't you see?" Nadine said. "It's the Capulets and the Montagues. You can't hope that who your families are won't enter into it."

Sara was grinning as if she had known all along. Had Blake told her? Was that why she had come along? To see the fireworks.

"I'd prefer, I'd really very much prefer that you don't talk about her father until you know Melissa better. Then we can discuss him."

"Why didn't you warn us?" Nadine laid her chopsticks in an X across her plate as if to forbid herself to eat more.

"Exactly because of how you're reacting. I didn't want her father to be the focus. I didn't want her to end up having to defend him just because he's her father when she doesn't agree with him ninety percent of the time. I wanted-I still want-you to get to know Melissa for herself. I won't even discuss her father now and I won't let her discuss him." Blake half rose in his seat.

Sara pushed him down. "Let's not go there. Enough with the Actors Studio scene. So you guys don't like her father. Blake's not fucking the Senator. Let's cool it. I like Melissa-what I've seen of her-and Blake's crazy about her. Why not give him credit for knowing her better than we do?"

No, Melissa decided, Sara had come along because Blake had asked her to. She was on his side. Whatever might be his real position in the Ackerman family, he had a loyal supporter, and that he had never told her. Maybe he just took his adopted sister's support for granted. Melissa was confused by the family dynamics. They were warmer than her own family, more argumentative. She could not say she felt comfortable with them. She could not tell herself she had won them over. She didn't understand Blake's relationship with the older Ackermans, with his sister, with this entire densely populated and very involved clan. She had dozens of questions to ask him, and a queasy suspicion that he wasn't going to answer them readily. That he would, when she began to question him, pull that number of starting an argument and scaring her into apologies. He knew where her buttons were, and he knew how to push them. But she had to be proud that he had finally introduced her to his family; and maybe the worst was over on that front. Maybe the worst was over.

* CHAPTER EIGHTEEN *.

Melissa decided that on the whole Blake's parents had behaved better than hers. They had stopped their interrogation when Blake demanded they do so. He must wield a little more power in his family than she did in hers. They hadn't made a scene about her not being Jewish. Further, Blake's parents knew they were involved, whereas her parents had made all that fuss about someone who as far as they knew was just an acquaintance from school. Yes, in the congeniality contest, his parents won hands down, although the evening had been tense.

She waited to see if there would be any negative reaction in Blake's attitude toward her, but instead he complimented her on not losing her cool under questioning. "They're not happy, but they're prepared to act civilized. They'll tell each other it's just a passing thing, and they'll wait for it to pass."

"I wanted them to like me. I wanted that so bad."

"Sara liked you."

"Yeah, but she's in Texas. A lot of good that does us."

"Oh, she can make her opinions felt, don't doubt that. Besides, I think she'll break up with her boyfriend and come back. She's getting tired of his fuck-ups. He went out to L.A. with the grand scheme of being a screenwriter, but he's a bartender in a sleazy bar in Austin."

She frowned, sitting on his bed against the wall with a pillow behind her. "I know your parents are supposed to be crack lawyers, but I have trouble imagining that. Especially Nadine."

He grinned at her, shaking his head. "Many a prosecutor has thought the same and gone down in flames. She comes on grandmotherly. She charms the jury. Then she goes for the jugular, always with an air of just cleaning things up. Don't let the little pigeon body and sweet smiles fool you. She has a serrated mind. And Si is one of the top ten in the country at what he does. Criminal cases and a lot of appeals."

An e-mail message was waiting for her from Rosemary that evening, although it wasn't Friday, only Wednesday.

That rather strange young man whom you brought into the house while we were in Maine turns out to be the son of Simon Ackerman. As you may recall, Ackerman and your father were at odds for years over the trial, conviction and execution of a man who killed a Philadelphia policeman, Toussaint Parker. Ackerman was a real thorn in your father's side. They also clashed around another less publicized case involving a convicted felon, Atticus Jones. Ackerman openly supported your father's opponent in both gubernatorial and the recent senatorial elections. I feel that his son is not the best companion for you, and we certainly do not welcome him into our home. Please keep this in mind. You must choose your companions less unwisely. I have often told you that people judge you as much for the company you keep as on what you yourself may do or say.

College in some ways is preparation for life, but in other ways, it is your life. Your father made friends in college who are his backers to this day. While in some ways the college environment is protected and not quite real, the friends and acquaintances, the enemies, the contacts you make there can help you or haunt you long after you have been graduated.

Blake would also be reading this message, since he monitored Rosemary's e-mail. She was furious. How dare they essentially forbid her to bring a friend into the house because of what his father had done in previous elections? Was she supposed to befriend only descendants of people who had laid money on Dick?

A message came from Blake almost immediately: Don't answer in anger. Let it stew for two days. Then we'll compose an answer together.