Punishment with Kisses (9 page)

“Megan, I’m not sure you could understand the nuances of my marriage.” She looked faint and stricken. Perhaps I touched a nerve. “It’s hard to explain why we do the things we do, but you must know I’m not some simple ninny pining away for a cold and distant workaholic husband.”

I wanted to be frank with her, too. “Well, that’s certainly how it looks from the outside sometimes.”

“You of all people should know looks can be deceiving.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I felt confrontational and defensive.

“Nothing, dear, I just mean, what you see isn’t all there is in any situation.”

As soon as we arrived home I rushed straight to the pool house to talk with Ash about this strange conversation. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Shane’s bike and immediately felt flush with anticipation. Being with Shane would make this whole night so much more palatable. I hastened toward the bike to find her first. She was probably waiting by the pool for me, I figured. But when I couldn’t find her there I continued on to the pool house in case she was chatting with Ash.

I didn’t even stop to knock in my rush of excitement, but I’ll forever wish that I did. Inside, Ash lay supine, her undulating legs wrapped around Cynthia’s neck, while Shane was nuzzled up against Ash. It’s hard to say which is worse: finding your girlfriend making it with your sister or finding your girlfriend in a threesome. But certainly finding both of those things at once when you spent the whole night dreaming about the bitch is among life’s worst moments.

I was instantly enraged and violently nauseous, and while Cynthia barely recognized my presence, Ash sat up and said, “Come in, little sister,” in her most flirtatious tone.

The whole sight of it made me sick to my stomach. I stood there, an exclamation barely forcing its way up my throat and out my mouth, as I registered real disbelief.

“Wait, Megan, I can explain,” Shane began as I shook my head violently.

At that moment I didn’t know whether to be angry or disgusted, and if it was anger I should feel, who deserved my wrath the most. Was my sister right all along? Was this her fucked-up way of showing me that Shane was just using me to get to her? Or did Ash declare war, seducing Shane just to hurt me? What had I ever done to deserve this?

The moment seemed frozen in time, but silent admonition turned to pure bile.

“I hate you. I hate all of you!” I cried as Shane rushed toward me. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again! And you, you…” I pointed at Ash, who seemed too drugged up to even care that I was yelling at her. God, what was wrong with her? What a horrible human being. “I wish I could be like you, Ashley—all tits and ass and cold and dead inside. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re toxic. I don’t want anything to do with either of you ever again. You deserve each other.”

As I ran out the door I could hear Ash say something but couldn’t decipher it. For all I know she was laughing.

I spent the next two weeks inside the house where tensions seemed to escalate as well. My father and Tabitha seemed to be yelling at each other constantly, both of them drunk off their asses. The air around the whole estate felt pregnant with disaster. I didn’t know what was going to happen, I just had that terribly foreboding sense that something had to give. I just hoped I would be okay in the wake of whatever storm was brewing.

Tabitha and Father lived in different rooms now, the three of us eating solo in the kitchen by turn. Maria had learned to make my favorite comfort foods: grilled cheese, mac and cheese, cheesecake. Without Shane, I turned into a pudgy cheese-freak. We hadn’t talked since that horrible night in the pool house. She never called me again, not even an attempt at an apology. Even worse, I’d seen her out at the pool with Ash and Cynthia. The three of them, skanking around like whores.

I couldn’t bear to watch it anymore. I kept my shades drawn at all times, squirreling myself away in my novels, reading one after another, cramming my head full of words and other people’s lives so I wouldn’t have even a second to dwell on my own miserable one.

I desperately needed to get out of this place. Maybe I’d go to grad school or spend a year backpacking across Europe like my college roommate. I didn’t know, maybe getting a job and moving to the city would be good. I just wanted to do something to get away from my whole family. They were all nuts.

The only problem with the options I came up with was that they all required some kind of planning. And I couldn’t find the energy to do any of it—not searching job ads, not filling out graduate school admission applications, not even shopping for backpacking gear. I felt tired all the time; I ached all over; I burst into tears every few minutes.

Maybe I should just go on vacation somewhere far away, somewhere like Florida or the Cayman Islands, somewhere with frozen tropical drinks that could help me forget—everything. Somewhere I could get my head together and figure out what to do with my life. If only I could get Daddy dearest to loosen the purse strings so I could book a flight immediately.

In all these years I’d never even had a credit card in my own name. I wasn’t an adult. I was a child. A foolish, gullible child so desperate for love she couldn’t even tell when she was being used. I thought Tabitha was stupid, but at least she seemed to know exactly what she was exchanging for what.

The putter of a small engine pulled me from my thoughts. I envisioned Shane’s motorcycle coming up our drive, and I couldn’t help but reminisce about her touch on me, her whole effect on me. Shane was my first real lover—not just those college kids and the few tumbles in dorm room beds. She was the first person I’d ever said the L-word to. But now I couldn’t stop imagining Ash and Shane together. Every time we were together, was Shane imagining I was Ash? Ash was probably right. It was better to use people than to be used by them.

I was going to change my life. I was never going to let someone get that close to me again. I resolved to begin my new sentimentality-free life in the morning. I dozed off fantasizing about how great it would be to be aloof and in control.

Although I was never much of a television junkie, my secret vice was falling asleep to the sound of crime shows playing in the background.
Law & Order,
CSI,
if it had cops, I could fall asleep to it. I’m not sure what it said about me that nothing lulled me to sleep like the noise of sirens, running feet, and gunfire. I think I can blame it on Mother, who used to read Edgar Allan Poe aloud as bedtime stories: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum.” I don’t know why. I guess there’s something twisted in our genes.

So it didn’t shock me when I heard the scream. I assumed it was the television, that the sleep timer hadn’t clicked in and turned it off yet, but then, just before I closed my eyes again, I realized that the room was dark. Pitch black. There was no telltale glow from the television. I looked up and discovered the set wasn’t on. Something was wrong.

I jumped up and something pulled me to the sliding glass doors that led to my balcony. I shoved aside the heavy curtains just in time to witness some sort of flash of light. Was that someone disappearing into the trees? Was that a scream, or maybe just a gunning engine? My heart jumped at the thought of Shane’s motorcycle, and as pathetic as it was, I immediately searched for her bike. It wasn’t there.

Could she have left that quickly? Was I wrong in thinking I’d heard the distinct sound of a motorcycle? I stood on the balcony for a moment, sweeping my eyes across the estate, seeking anything that might have caused the noise. I found nothing. Maybe Ash had her TV turned up really loud. I listened intently for the sound to repeat. It didn’t. There was no backfiring car, no late night foray on a golf cart, no landscaper firing up a chainsaw for midnight pruning, nothing.

I realized that everything had gone still. Even the crickets had stopped chirping and fallen silent. I looked down at the pool house, checking for the flashing lights of Ash’s television, but it was dark. I couldn’t tell if there was a problem, but an ominous sense of foreboding washed over me. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with the night air. It was too quiet.

And then it wasn’t. I heard yelling, doors slamming, feet pounding hard against the ground, people running this way—toward the pool house. Toward Ash. Something was very wrong. Flashlights bobbed closer and the voices resolved and I heard Father’s husky voice howling out Ash’s name.

I almost jumped. I almost dove right off the balcony because that would have been the fastest way down, the quickest method to reach the ground.
Oh, my God—Ash!
I didn’t pause to speculate on what was wrong, I didn’t waste any time stitching together my darkest fears. In that moment I didn’t remember any of the terrible things Ash had done lately, the things that had made me hate her, not even what she had done with Shane—none of it. In that instant all of that was gone. I just ran. I flew out of my room without even bothering to throw on a robe or slippers.

I took the stairs three at a time, landing hard on a bent ankle and not even flinching at the pain. The front door stood open. The sinking feeling in my stomach plummeted with all the force of an out of control elevator plunging a hundred floors.

There was something incredibly disturbing about the sight of a home’s front doors gaping wide open. There was almost a perversity to it, and I wanted to look away, to shield my eyes from the obscenity.

I thought of Ash. The image of her face in my mind was enough to block out the doors as I sprinted through them and down the path. The ground was cold and damp under my bare feet. I’ve always had sensitive feet, and normally I couldn’t stand to go barefoot unless I was walking in weathered beach sand. When forced to, I’d have to hobble slowly along, grimacing at every step, as though I were walking over hot coals. But that night I didn’t even slow down.

As soon as I hit the ground I could see that the French doors to the pool house were wide open and all the lights turned on. I could hear someone wailing, or was it a dog howling? It didn’t seem real, didn’t seem possible that the sound I was hearing could be coming from a person. Silhouetted against harsh lights of the exposed pool house, I could see figures hunched and bent over. As I got closer, I could see there was something heaped on the floor in front of them, a pile of some kind.

I ran faster. I could hear the sound of the surf pounding in my ears. Was that my pulse? I ran. One of the figures swept the pile into their arms and stood up. The heap unfolded into the shape of a person.

I froze. The shape didn’t stand up on its own. Its feet didn’t touch the ground. It just hung there in the air as limp as a rag doll. I heard someone scream, “No!” and the sound echoed off the canyons in my ears. It wasn’t until Gualterio called my name that I realized I was the one shrieking. As though released from a spell, I started forward again. Just as I did, I sent a prayer Heavenward. I begged the man upstairs for something I will always be ashamed of.
Please God,
I thought,
don’t let it be Shane.

Almost immediately I knew my prayer had been answered. I could make everyone out. Tabitha was wailing, holding Ash’s limp, bloody body in her arms. Maria was sobbing and crossing herself while Gualterio and Father were huddled together as though conferring. Father was shouting something I couldn’t decipher. A distant police siren rang out in the background.

I stepped into the light of the pool house. I stood arm’s length from the lifeless body of my dear sister. And then I saw it. The bloody knife. An antique silver knife from Grandma’s set, passed down from four generations, now bloodied, discarded on the ground next to my dead sister’s body.

My dead sister’s body. My sister was dead. Is dead. Slashed to death in our very own home. It was all so horrible to imagine, I fell to my knees and vomited all over the hardwood floor, my refuse seeping into Ash’s blood as Tabitha continued to wail.

I bent and set my bouquet down, adding it to the pile of roses already blocking the inscription on Ash’s gravestone. A year after she was buried and someone still cared enough to bring her flowers. I didn’t need to push aside the thorns to see the epitaph. Father had chosen a simple
Beloved Daughter.
It perfectly matched the stone just to the left, with the short descriptor
Beloved Mother.
I sensed a theme. If I passed into that dark night before my father, I’d be buried on the other side of Ash, no doubt spending eternity resting under my
Beloved Sister
stone. When Father joined us he’d be on the far left, the head of the Caulfield clan. I bet his epitaph was stipulated in his last will and testament or something. The tombstones were stark testimony to the truth of our family. We only existed in relation to Ash. I had never been my own person. I had always been my sister’s sister. I wondered if that would change now that she was gone.

Looking at half my family resting side by side, and my own waiting grave, I couldn’t help but wonder what was supposed to happen to Tabitha. Did Father plan to have her buried underneath him in the same plot? Or maybe she was just supposed to throw herself in on top of his casket like women were expected to do in India not too long ago?

Cemeteries had always brought out my morbid sense of humor. That was one of the reasons I had chosen to come here alone, even though I knew I’d raised Father’s ire by failing to join the official pilgrimage earlier in the day.