Punishment with Kisses Read online

  Tabitha sulked and drank until Father came home. As usual, the two of them fought like cats and dogs, leaving me sitting alone at the family dinner table. I wanted to wait for them that night and ask about Ash, but I gave in to the coercion of my stomach and ate without them. I finished dessert and retired to my room. They were still locked in combat behind closed doors.

  I stayed up late, waiting for Father to berate me for eating without him, but he never came upstairs. I was still awake when I noticed lights go on in the pool house. I was surprised by the intensity of the relief I felt that Ash was home again. I rushed to the balcony, only then realizing how worried I’d been about her unexplained absence.

  *

  The next morning Ash was gone again. She returned around noon, stayed for a few hours, and then slipped out again. At first I didn’t even notice she’d left again until it struck me that there was something off with the way her friends were scattered around the pool. The configuration was all wrong. There were none of the clumping patterns that seemed to happen around Ash, like when you apply a magnet to the underside of a paper sprinkled with metal shavings. When Ash was by the pool, her admirers were equally drawn to her and they clustered around her, vying for her attention.

  Over the next few days I confirmed that my deduction proved a fairly reliable indicator of Ash’s presence or absence. I’d occasionally get it wrong, and Ash would emerge from the pool house after what I imagined was a quick shower or slow fuck. But mostly, my observations indicated that Ash was spending less and less time on the estate.

  Following on the footsteps of Father’s equally enigmatic disappearances, it was almost creepy. What was going to happen next? Was Tabitha going to start wandering off too? Where the hell were they going?

  And what was up with Ash’s friends? Did she give them permission to hang out when she wasn’t there? Would Ash care to learn some of her suitors seemed to be coupling up when she wasn’t around? What did they do behind the closed doors of the cabana? I mean, someone could damage or steal things. Just because Ash didn’t care about anything didn’t mean I should just let strangers come in and tear up the place. There could be heirlooms in there. The responsible thing, I decided, would be to check the place out and make sure nothing was missing or destroyed. Or perhaps I just wanted to snoop and any excuse would suffice.

  Once I was inside the pool house I realized that I wouldn’t be able to tell if anything was out of place. Nothing was the way I remembered it from the last time I was in there, when it actually served as a guesthouse for weekend visitors. Worse, I immediately felt like I was trespassing, like I’d broken the lock off Ash’s diary, which I would never do. Well, maybe I’d have taken a peek if I stumbled onto one of the journals I had seen her writing over the years. You never know, they might have held the key to Ash’s undeniable charm.

  But I didn’t find any journals that morning. I found a lot of empty alcohol bottles, sandwich baggies with a few leafless green sticks, expended whipped cream canisters, cigarette butts, and a sampling of lingerie strewn around the cottage. I looked for signs of foul play, but fifteen minutes ticked by like hours and I didn’t find a pool of blood, deadly weapon, or dead body. There were no strange muddy footprints, broken lamps, or other signs of a struggle.

  I was starting to worry about being caught red-handed. Things didn’t turn out that well for me the last time Ash busted me for sneaking into her room. As the younger sibling I’d gotten stuck wearing a bunch of Ash’s hand-me-downs. Tabitha insisted that Ash’s clothing was far too expensive to discard when it was only “gently worn.” It had to spend a season on my gangly frame before it was suitable for the Goodwill bin.

  Ash and I were hardly the same size, so squeezing into her discarded and out-of-date fashions was a chore. I hated the clothing in my closet, the way it was two sizes too small and three years out of style. Just once I wanted to know what I’d look like in brand spanking new garments just in from Milan.

  One time after Tabitha and Ash came home from shopping the haute couture of Portland’s downtown boutiques—a trip I wasn’t invited on—I snuck into Ash’s room and pulled things out of her closet. Dresses that still had tags on them, shoes whose leather had never known the touch of soles, bags that were still packed with tissue. I piled them on the bed around me like wads of cash. I tried on her high heels and teetered around the room.

  Then I spied the most beautiful black and white Chanel dress and had to try it on. I never had the bravery to be my sister, but I hoped somehow, maybe through fashion osmosis, that donning her chic outfits would make me just a little bit like her. I wanted to be as unassailable as she seemed. But I was also shorter and stockier than Ash, and as soon as I had the dress over my head I knew I was in trouble. I heard a seam start to tear and I was angling desperately to get out of the thing when I stood on one end, yanked the other, and found myself upside down on the floor, naked except for the gown covering my head.

  “Ashley, did you—” Tabitha had come through the door, absentmindedly it seemed, before she realized that I was ass up on the carpet being suffocated by my sister’s fancy new dress. “Oh dear God, Megan! What on earth are you doing?”

  Did Tabitha think I had chosen to get myself caught up like that? I stumbled and stammered as she helped unhinge the dress from my head.

  “Megan, I’m very disappointed in you.”

  I was always the kid who borrowed Ash’s things, and I usually broke them. I never meant to. I just seemed to be far clumsier, more consuming than Ash was as a kid. It didn’t matter. Neither Tabitha nor Ash ever let me live the episode down, and many times throughout our teens Ash would accuse me of wanting to be her. The worst part is, I could never deny that. But that didn’t stop me from trying. Back then it felt like it would be a fate worse than death to have Ash know how desperately I wanted to be in her shoes. I was the ugly duckling, but I never woke up to be a beautiful swan.

  Just before I sneaked out of the cabana I looked up at the tree-shrouded, vine-covered balcony that jutted out from my room. I got this creepy feeling like I was being watched. A wave of guilt washed over me. I wondered if this was how I’d made Ash feel. She must have known I’d been watching her all summer, living vicariously through her. I told myself it didn’t matter. She probably didn’t even mind. In fact, I bet she got a secret kick out of it. I got the feeling she liked having an audience. I definitely did not.

  I slinked back to my room. I couldn’t help but feel jealous that Ash could disappear at will, while I was stuck here with Mr. and Mrs. Angry-at-all-hours, my binocular sunglasses, and a constant fear that nobody would ever love me the way everyone loved my sister.

  *

  I was bored and restless and tired of spending endless hours just waiting for Ash to come home so I could spend endless more spying at her and observing her world from my balcony. I knew I didn’t have to be there, watching her, but I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to see what it was like close-up. But every time I went down there and even attempted to talk with Ash, she dismissed me like some twelve-year-old hanger on. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from trying again that morning. Since I could already see she was home, already in the pool half straddling an inner tube while floating in placid waters, I hoped the time was right for a heart-to-heart talk.

  “Hiya, little sis,” Ash crooned, sounding as flirty with me as she was with everyone else. “Coming down for a dip?”

  I was caught off guard by how friendly and accommodating Ash sounded. It was as if she was never absent, as if we had never fought, as if Tabitha and Father weren’t on the edge of divorce.

  “I, yeah, why not. I’d love to just hang out and chat.”

  “Sure thing, Magpie.”

  Ash calling me by my childhood nickname threw me. Neither she nor Father had called me that since eighth grade. Clearly Ash was stoned or drunk or in therapy or something.

  “I’ve been worried about you.” Demanding to know where Ash had been was probably not the best tac
tic. “Where do you keep disappearing to?”

  Ash looked taken aback. “I didn’t know you cared, little sis.” She smiled.

  “Ashley, of course I care about you. Why can’t we be like normal sisters, Ash? I feel like everyone wants to be with you, everyone is wrapped around your fingers, even Father and Tabitha.”

  A rather ominous chortle came from deep inside Ash. She sounded almost maniacal, and I couldn’t tell if I was reading between the lines or if her cackle really was tinged with sadness.

  “Magpie, you don’t want my life. I’ve seen way too much. I’ve experienced way too much. I don’t want this for you.”

  “What the fuck, Ash? Don’t give me that seen too much bullshit! We’re rich and spoiled and you’re the queen of the castle here. You didn’t even leave for college. You’ve spent your entire life in the state of Oregon. So don’t act like you just spent six months fighting Vietcong or something.”

  “A minor in women’s studies and the worst experience you could think of was war in Vietnam?” Ash laughed again, this time dismissively.

  “You know what I mean.” I had to smile myself, but I was still annoyed. Only Ash could be self-centered enough to think that even though she’d been the golden child, the spoiled one, Daddy’s little girl, she’d had some kind of hard knock life. For God sakes, aside from her being the light of Father’s eye and me going away to college, we’d had the same family, the same life, virtually the same everything, so how could she act like she had essentially been through more?

  Ash smiled and pushed a swell of water up in the pool to splash me playfully. “It’s too late for me to be the sister you deserve, Meg. I just don’t have it in me. I am what I am and I don’t think that’ll be changing.”

  If I hadn’t heard a bit of sorrow in her voice, I would have laughed at the Popeye-ness of her statement. Instead, it made me feel a little sad for Ash, if she was already resigned to the way things were at twenty-six. That didn’t leave much room for growth. This was the first time we had spoken earnestly with each other, in a very, very long time, though, so I didn’t want to challenge her too much. I just wanted to soak in the sun and my sister’s luminosity and wish that things would stay between us exactly as they were at that very moment.

  Chapter Four

  They say nature abhors static conditions, so it’s no surprise that nothing stays the same. Still, my prayers didn’t go entirely unanswered. In the days that followed our conversation, it seemed like I’d had some kind of breakthrough with Ash and she’d remembered I was her kid sister, not some vile hanger on. She actually started inviting me down to the pool house, and she encouraged me to come hang out even when she was off on one of her wild adventures, the details of which she didn’t divulge, but probably revolved around Ash and a bevy of female lovers pleasure fucking their way through Portland.

  So there I was one night, sitting on the pool house’s Ikea couch, watching Ash and Cynthia getting ready to go out, trying on dress after dress, throwing the discarded ones onto a growing pile of clothing scattered around the floor. Ash probably expected someone else to pick up after her. Maybe someone did. Looking around, I could see that the beer bottles and discarded drug paraphernalia I observed on one of my earlier visits were now nowhere to be found. I wondered if Ash had figured out a way to smuggle one of the maids in to clean the pool house or if one of her would-be lovers did that kind of dirty work. It puzzled me how we could have been raised in the same house and Ash had rich girl entitlement syndrome when I didn’t. Or maybe she just didn’t care. Maybe Ash was willing to live in squalor if no one else picked things up. I certainly didn’t get it. But even as I felt annoyed by Ash’s behavior, I wished somehow I could be included in even more of her world.

  In that moment, she and Cynthia looked so happy and carefree, and I knew they were going out someplace exciting. I wanted so much to do something fun for a change, I asked if I could tag along.

  “Oh, girl, you wouldn’t last a minute with our crowd.” Ash laughed.

  “What do you mean?” I responded. “I’ve been hanging out with your friends for days.”

  “That’s not the crowd I’m talking about,” Ash snorted. “Besides, you could never keep up with us. You’re still wearing a training bra, aren’t you?”

  My face burned and my witty retort died in my throat. The taunt felt needlessly cruel.

  I couldn’t keep up with Ash. She was four years older, had a faster engine under the hood, and was probably jacked up with nitrous oxide or whatever the sideshow crowd was pimping their rides with. In comparison, I was an old clunker running on the power of two horses.

  If my darling sister hadn’t always tried to hold me back and keep me from having any friends or sharing any fucking experiences, leaving me trapped at home with two people who had come to hate each other, then maybe things could have been different. Maybe I wouldn’t always have come up short. Being held in comparison to Ash was kind of like using the same yardstick for Judy Blume and V. C. Andrews.

  I was trapped in this second-class life and secondhand body and Ash didn’t give a shit. She could have totally changed my life, just taking me with her one night and introducing me to the cool people. I’d seen plenty of uncool kids become totally hip just by extension of their cool siblings. I went to school with this one really unattractive chick who all the guys mooned over because somehow her class status made her pretty. Why couldn’t Ash lend me a little of her mojo? Why didn’t she want to spend time with me? How could she be simultaneously full of self-confidence and then act like she was embarrassed to even be seen with me? Could I drag her down by my very presence?

  Why did I bother coming home for the summer? I’d deluded myself into thinking we’d spend time together. Why did I imagine a miraculous change to our relationship? After ten years in the cold, what ever made me think Ash would invite me back in? Instead, we’d managed about fifty words since the beginning of the holidays, and that required battling Ash’s fan club just to get close enough to speak.

  “I’m not one of your minions, bitch.” I muttered the insult under my breath and stomped off before Ash could see my lower lip trembling and my eye twitching, sure signs I’d be sobbing in a moment. No doubt she and Cynthia would get a laugh out of that.

  Unable to reach my room before the dam burst, I stepped into one of our forgotten rooms and flopped down on the shrouded couch, full out sobbing. By the time my sobs had faded into sputtering hiccups, it finally dawned on me that Ash would always see me as a kid. It didn’t matter that I was an adult, that I’d graduated college, that I was past the drinking age and had voted in my first elections. It didn’t matter that I’d had lovers just like her, even though there hadn’t been nearly as many and even though the world didn’t fall at my feet, Ash would never see me as the grown woman I was.

  An hour later, when I was all cried out, I slipped out of the room and was on my way to my room when I ran into Tabitha. She seemed so miserable it pulled me from my own dumps, and I actually tried being nice to her by striking up a friendly conversation about the Junior League, a frivolous topic that usually piqued her interest. But not tonight. She cut me off, shut me down.

  My efforts to please others continued to go unnoticed. Why did I even bother? If I couldn’t even get a woman I disliked to notice me, had I hit bottom? When would I stop needing others’ approval? What would it take for me to feel like I’m enough just the way I am? Right as I was about to wallow in my own sense of failure, Tabitha offered me a tantalizing morsel.

  “Your father’s moving his stuff into one of the guest rooms.” She pointed vaguely toward the west wing of the house.

  I wondered what she had done to finally push Father to the point of leaving her. But why would he leave, instead of merely tossing her aside like he usually did with people who disappointed him?

  Tabitha was teary eyed but sounded more resolved than I had ever heard, and I noticed a new sense of determination about her.

  I wondered if I h
ad misjudged her all these years. I loved Father, but even I could admit that he could be a bit of a chauvinist pig. I was making so much about being an adult, a grown woman, but wasn’t part of that stepping out from under Father’s shadow, being my own person and not just one of Father’s lackeys? If I tried to step outside of myself and look at this objectively, didn’t I have to acknowledge that Father had never seemed entirely kind or charitable to Tabitha? In fact, it was almost as though he had pitted her and Ash against each other in competition—for attention, affection, and just plain one-upmanship—for his own amusement. I could never stand the men who enjoyed dog fights, and I could see now that Father must have been a bastard to live with.

  That summer I had been spying non-stop, not just on Ash and her ilk, but on Tabitha and Father, too. Their arguments were vociferous but never logical. I could never grasp what it was they were arguing about. “What happened?” I prodded, sure that Tabitha wouldn’t tell me a thing.

  “Megan, I’m not sure I could explain to you what’s going on. More importantly, I think it’s best you not know. Do know I’m not going anywhere.”

  What the hell? I was flummoxed by an admission that whatever had transpired was so complex it must be kept secret.

  “Is Father leaving?”

  “No. Nobody is going anywhere. Now I need to go speak with Ashley.”

  Of course she did. I’d noticed that Tabitha preferred to wait until I left before she joined Ash by the pool, bringing her cocktails and drugstore paperbacks like one of her flunky followers. It sickened me to see everyone so excited by Ash, even our parents. But then again, why wouldn’t Tabitha, a woman Ash’s age, want to hang out with Ash and her friends just as much as I did? There was something intoxicating about their endless party world. No doubt Tabitha gleaned from those meandering days that she had married too young, had given up too much of herself, had traded in the fun life for a man who was relatively distant, for life with a family that couldn’t ever allow for the fun in dysfunctional. Maybe now she was going to have her quarter-life crisis and divorce Father.