Punishment with Kisses (14 page)

By the time Father phoned, inviting me to the house for dinner over the weekend, I had already called in sick twice and avoided Shane a full week. I spent the rest of my time reading Ash’s journals and viewing her sex videos. The latest was probably the most shocking to date, and featured a scene I couldn’t quite shake.

In it, Ash was wearing a black flapper dress with pearls and what I could only describe as Victorian hooker boots, even though such a thing probably never existed. A black mask completely covered her eyes. A tall, thin, and beautiful woman I’d never seen before held Ash’s hand and led her into a room with a mattress on the floor in between four metal posts that looked like modern horseshoe crooks. There were candles everywhere, from the floors to the windowsills.

Inside the room, there were a bunch of other women all partially naked and wearing macabre black and white masks that looked like bird beaks on a yin yang symbol. Some women had gold chains around their waists that linked to rings in their noses or ran down and disappeared in their crotches. Others had pink leather paddles or cat-o’-nine-tails with handles woven in white and pink buckskin. Still others wore ridiculously large dildos, giant ebony cocks larger than anything I’d ever seen in real life. The production values on the film were far inferior, but otherwise the video struck me as a cross between
Eyes Wide Shut
and
Lair of the White Worm.

Except there were so many women. Every configuration of woman seemed to have joined Ash in that room: young, old, fat, thin, black, white, brown, yellow, butch, femme. Although some looked vaguely familiar, the masks successfully obscured their faces. I only knew Shane’s body well enough to identify in a naked lineup, and thankfully, she wasn’t among the women in the room.

A pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs strapped Ash’s wrists to one set of posts and her knees inched up to her chest before two women pulled her legs, forcing them down and using another pair of fuzzy cuffs to strap her ankles down at the end of the bed.

Within moments each woman was taking turns doing rather unspeakable things to Ash, their meaty paws tearing the straps off her dress, pulling the top down to expose her breasts while pushing the rest up above her waist. She was wearing a gold chain around her waist too but no panties. Was this an initiation? It looked almost like a ritual, but I couldn’t tell how much of it was fantasy orchestrated by Ashley and how much was for the pleasure of the other women. Or was this more amateur porn from Pookie Michaels?

There was so much I didn’t know about my sister, and watching her fuck half of Portland was only confusing me more. In her homemade videos, Ash could appear submissive but still somehow seemed, usually, to be in charge of her own degradation. I could never tell for sure if she was asking to be violated—to be spanked by that fancy shredded whip while one woman thrust her fist in and out of her at a rapid-fire pace—and how much was Ash ceding control. If she confused pain with pleasure, which was this?

If the scene didn’t involve my sister, I could maybe find it arousing, this lesbian version of
Behind the Green Door
or all-female
Story of O,
but with my dead sister the center of the erotic attention, I found my body and emotions a jumble of contradictory responses.

The ringing phone broke my concentration, and I felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Finding Father on the other end immediately shifted my feelings again, ratcheting up the disturbed dial.

“Megan, your mother would like to see you this weekend,” he announced, calling Tabitha my
mother,
though she never curried to the title herself. “Please come to the house for dinner tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” I said wondering why he said she was
mine.
Was I somehow responsible for her? If someone had to own her, why wasn’t it him? Why didn’t he call her his wife? “I’m working this weekend. Sorry.”

Expecting him to accept work as a perfectly reasonable excuse and quickly hang up, I was surprised when he hemmed and hawed for a moment before blurting, “Well, listen, young lady, I need to speak with you.” Oh no, the young lady bit. It must be serious.

“Okay.” I waited for the rebuke.

“I understand you’ve been seeing this Shane person who was your sister’s, um
acquaintance.
”

Ah, acquaintance. His language made me pine for the days when the euphemism was
friend
or
roommate.
Acquaintance was even less intimate, suggesting even less of a relationship between the two parties.

“And how do you know that?” I wondered if he stumbled onto a blog while searching for porn. I wanted to scream at him, insist Shane was my
acquaintance
first, but even I knew that wasn’t true. Everyone and everything in my life somehow belonged to Ash first.

“It’s been all over the news. We’ve fielded quite a few media calls at the firm. There seems to be a great deal of interest in your, uh, illicit relationship with this Shane character.”

Father couldn’t bring himself to say “woman” because that would be admitting his daughter, both of his daughters, were big ol’ dykes. Still, the way he hissed “Shane character” made me cringe.

“I don’t think who I see is your business, Father. I am twenty-four, remember?”

“Listen, kitten, your behavior reflects poorly on me, our family, and my business. And since Shane is an actual suspect in Ash’s murder, you could be playing Russian roulette with your life. You need to stop seeing her immediately. Out of respect for your sister, and for me. I won’t lose another daughter that way.”

He spat out the last line with a vengeance.

What way was that?
Did he mean he wouldn’t lose another daughter to murder or to lesbianism? At this point I wasn’t sure. I tried to suss out his motivation. I couldn’t tell if he was convinced that Shane was Ash’s killer, despite the lack of any proof or motive, or if he only cared about appearances, and as long as a cloud of suspicion hovered over Shane, he didn’t want me to go out with her, not even with an umbrella.

“Father,” I stammered.

“No, I said drop it. You’ll do as I say and end this now.” And with that final pronouncement, he was gone. I laid there, stunned at his misdirected admonitions and the sheer irony of watching a filthy sexcapade on screen starring my dead sister while Father warned me to dump my girlfriend for fear Shane would ruin or corrupt me in some indefinable way. If anyone was corrupting me, it was Ash. She hadn’t let something as minor as being dead and buried keep her from exposing me to the dirty truth. Father probably just wanted to prevent another scandal, or maybe he was even trying to protect me in his brusque and paternalistic manner. Was this his way of saying, “Megan, I love you”?

I hardly wanted to give my father the satisfaction of doing what he’d ordered me to do. But then again, if Father wanted to express his concern for me, shouldn’t I take advantage of it? I couldn’t imagine it happening again anytime soon.

I debated the idea for a few minutes and decided that I would indeed go to the estate this weekend. I wanted to find out if Father knew something I didn’t about Shane’s guilt. Maybe he had some kind of proof. I mean, I couldn’t believe Shane had actually killed Ash, but I’d always felt she wasn’t being entirely honest with me about that night. Shane was always angry and cagey when Ash was brought up. Maybe she did have something to hide and I let lust blind me to the fact.

When I arrived at the house, it was Tabitha who looked excited to see me. She was subdued, still beautiful, but definitely unmade, much of her usual artifice stripped away.

“Welcome home! Are you staying for the weekend?” She was speaking in a high voice. I didn’t realize I was so badly missed out here at Casa Caulfield. More often than not, the only greeting I got was from Maria.

“Yes, Father insisted I visit so I decided to make a weekend of it. How are you?” I asked politely.

“As good as can be expected I guess,” Tabitha said cryptically. “I have something for you.” Tabitha ran to the library and came back with a small framed text. As I read I realized it was a weathered copy of George Eliot’s poem “Two Lovers” with a scrawl across the bottom.

“Wow, Tabitha, I…”

“You know this was your sister’s favorite poem.” I didn’t know my sister read poetry at all. I thought I was the only literature buff in the family. I assumed Ash was all TV and tabloids, never venturing beyond twentieth-century pop culture. I should have known, reading her journals, how literary she was. I felt sad at the umpteenth reminder that I didn’t bother to know my sister at all.

“I had a scout looking for an autographed copy of the poem over a year ago. You know it’s really rare, and well, he called me last week and asked if I still wanted it, and I thought that maybe you would enjoy it as much as Ashley would have.”

I smiled not just at the gift but at Tabitha’s habit of calling my sister by her birth name instead of her nickname. Suddenly, it was endearing more than annoying. The one positive thing I’d discovered after my sister’s death was how lovely a person Tabitha was. I could never see her as my mother, but now, in the wake of all this misery, I could see her for the woman she was. This was probably what Ash saw, too.

“I love it, Tabitha. Thank you.” It was ironic how, in the wake of my sister’s death, I no longer hated her hand-me-downs. Or Tabitha.

After some small talk, I ventured off to my room, adorned as it always was, and pulled out one of Ash’s journals for a quick read before the family dinner. Reading about sex in Father’s home now felt beyond perverse.

*

March 21

I try to explain it to Cynthia tonight, the meaning of punishment with kisses, and she doesn’t get it, how I first said it to Father after he spanked me so hard my butt blistered and Mother sent me to stay at Grandma’s house for a week, but by the time I came back Mom was already dead, the cancer so swift and sudden it took her from us almost overnight.

That night of the spanking, oh how I wished for an alternative, something more loving than the belt. I finally got it. I didn’t know then that kisses could be punishment, so it’s all the more ironic now that I see they can be. But simple, stupid Cynthia didn’t get it either, and I don’t have all the time in the world to explain life to her. She’s with me constantly, always trying to touch me, to hold me, to own me. I tell her again and again, I don’t want her like that. I just want a friend, but she whimpers and whines so much I relent and I spread my legs and let her have a piece of me, the piece I’ve shared so often and so easily it seems unfair to not let Cynthia have it too. After all, I do so want a friend, someone to confide in. But before I even finish, I stare at her big silly grin and her wide eyes, and I wonder why on earth I let her do that again.

The worst part is when she comes up to kiss me, smelling like musk and pussy and desire and I’m reminded that a moment ago I was making a shopping list while pretending to come just so the poor sod would be happy. If she were my friend, she wouldn’t need me that way. She’d help me be happy without diving into my cunt every time she came over. As it is, we do this over and over again, and I always hate her afterward. I get annoyed and I make her leave and she storms off until the next time, when we repeat the cycle all over again. I’m just afraid now that Cynthia will upset all of my plans with The One. I’ll do almost anything to get The One back, including leave all of Daddy-O’s money behind. Cynthia is probably the only one who knows, so if it all goes awry, I’ll have doe-eyed Cynthia to blame. Poor sod.

I’d always known that Cynthia and Ash were close, and I’d obviously caught them having sex together, but now I was seeing just how close the two of them were. I needed to talk with Cynthia. She probably knew Ash better than anyone. Certainly better than me.

Tracking Cynthia down wasn’t hard. She still lived in the same house in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood that was listed in Ash’s address book, and when I called she was eager to see me. Which, given the circumstances, I could sort of understand. After all, she’d been Ash’s best friend and we’d hardly spoken since the funeral. She was probably looking for closure. Maybe she wanted an update on the case. Still, even taking that into account, Cynthia seemed oddly eager to reconnect. I wondered what kind of ulterior motive she might have up her sleeve.

“Hi, kiddo.” Cynthia met me at the door. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean Megan. What are you now? Twenty-five?”

She didn’t give me a chance to answer.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure kiddo is no longer appropriate. It’s just that—old habits die hard. It’s good to see you,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length, and looking me up and down. “You look fantastic!”

I wondered if Cynthia was just saying that because she recognized the clothes I was wearing as Ash’s.

“Did you do something different with your hair?”

I blushed, happy she noticed, but a little nervous that Cynthia might confuse my getting my hair done by Ash’s stylist as an effort to look more like my dead sister. That was hardly the case. I mean, he obviously did great work, and I had every right to pamper myself once in a while.

And my appearance couldn’t have changed more in the last eighteen months than Cynthia’s had. Far from the feminine artifice I recalled, Cynthia was now clean and fresh faced, not a hint of makeup on her. Either this was her I’m-not-going-to-see-anyone-so-why-dress-up casual wear or Cynthia had butched it up a bit too, wearing Carharts and Chuck Taylor sneakers. From the soil ground into her pants, smeared on her face, and sprinkled in her hair, it was clear Cynthia had just been out rolling around in the dirt. Or possibly toiling in the garden I could see out back.