Old-Fashioned Values (22 page)

He brought the cane down one final time. Rachel only gave a moaning whimper and whispered, “Twelve.”

“Sally, please take her up to our room,” John said. “You’ll find some arnica lotion on the dresser, and that will take some of the sting away and help those welts heal.”

Then he himself raised Rachel from the sofa and held her close. “I love you,” he said. “You’re a good girl, and we’re going to be very, very happy together.”

“I love you, too,” Rachel sobbed against his shoulder. “Thank you for caning me.”

At that spontaneous expression of gratitude he squeezed her tighter. “I’m so sorry I had to,” he murmured.

“I know,” she whispered back, “and that’s why I’m so grateful.”

* * *

That night, John made dinner: beef burgundy, the perfect dish for a cold February night. Rachel had a pillow to sit on, and though she winced from time to time and John knew she would be sore for at least several days, she seemed wonderfully cheerful and affectionate with him, constantly running up while he was cooking and hugging him from behind until John turned and kissed her.

“Sir,” she said one of those times, “am I crazy for thinking I’m a better girl now that I’ve been caned?”

John laughed. “No, not at all. That’s what loving discipline is all about.”

Before they could sit down to eat, though, while Sally and Rachel were setting the table, Sally’s phone went off. Sally let it go to voicemail and, when the table was set, she listened to the message.

“Oh, shit,” she said very distinctly, as she held her phone to her ear. John watched Mark take in the truly distressed look on his girlfriend’s face, and decide not to say anything about the word ‘shit.’ Sally’s eyes found Mark’s. “It’s my mom,” she said. “She and my dad came to Mendon to surprise me and take me to dinner. Oh, f-… Oh, no. Oh, God—oh, God—oh, God.”

Mark rushed to her and took her in his arms. “Shh. It’ll be okay.”

Now Sally had started to cry. “No it won’t. Cassandra told them where I am.”

“You didn’t tell them?” John said sharply.

“No,” Sally said. “I said I’d be studying all weekend.”

Mark said, “We discussed it. It seems stupid now, I realize, but since we would all be together I thought it would be alright. Sally, don’t worry.”

“But what if Cassandra told them… I mean, about how you and I are, together?”

“Your parents are really enlightened, right? They’ll have to understand, won’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Sally said doubtfully. “I have to call them back so they know I’m not dead, at least.” She started to dial.

Mark took hold of her hand. “Wait,” he said. “Let’s figure out what you’re going to say, first.”

Sally hesitated, then started to dial again.

“Sally,” Mark said with a flash of anger.

“Let me just tell them I’m okay, and I’ll call them later.”

Mark took the phone from her hand, and then turned her around with his arm about her waist to give her a sharp spank on her jean-covered bottom. “Hold. On,” he said sternly. John busied himself with plating the beef. He saw Rachel standing across the room with her mouth open.

“Mark!” Sally said, struggling against him. “You can’t! They’re my parents!”

He spanked her again. “I can. You’ll call them in a few moments, but we have to talk first.”

“Alright,” she said, glaring at him. “Talk.”

Mark spanked her hard, three times. “Are you going to respect me, Sally?” When she didn’t reply, he gave her three more spanks. Then he said, “Answer me, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Sally finally said. Mark turned her around again and hugged her. “I’m sorry. I know you’re right, but they’re
worried
about me.”

“I know, sweetheart, but I know that you don’t want to make things worse.”

“Alright, what if I say that I’m fine and we can talk tomorrow? We can stop there on our way back to Mendon.”

“That sounds fine,” Mark said.

Sally dialed. “Hi, mom,” she said eventually. “Yes, I’m fine… No, I’m so sorry… Mom, can we talk about it tomorrow? Mark and I can stop at home on our way back.” John watched tears come back into her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry, mom. I know. I know. I’m so sorry… Can we
please
talk about it tomorrow?… I don’t see why you have to say that… Oh,
mom.
” Then she looked at the phone. “She hung up,” she sobbed.

Mark took Sally into his arms and hugged her tightly. “It’ll be okay,” he murmured.

“Let’s eat,” John said. “Food will do everyone good, I think.” He brought the first plates of beef to the table, saying, “Sally, I’m so sorry—I’ve known a lot of so-called enlightened people who can’t see how much loving discipline helps those of us who practice it. But—and this is a very, very big but—you know what it’s done for you, and what it promises to do for you in the future. Everybody has to leave his or her family and make his or her own life. I think this is just going to be the time you need to do it.”

“What if… what if they don’t want me to see Mark anymore?” she asked from Rachel’s arms; she had gone to her when Mark had responded to John’s call to the table by going to help with serving the beef.

As he brought the other plates to the table, Mark said, “Sal, I’ll prove myself however they need me to prove myself.”

They sat down to dinner and John said, “I’d like to say grace, if you don’t mind. Let’s join hands.”

They joined their hands around the table: John to Rachel to Mark to Sally and back to John. He let a companionable, if slightly tense, silence fall. The grandfather clock in the living room ticked and the surf boomed on the beach.

John said, “Lord in heaven, look upon us, we ask you. We thank you for bringing us here in fellowship and in love. We thank you for one another, and for the gifts of this meal. Watch over us tonight and always, and shine your grace especially upon Sally and Mark as they come to a time of testing. All this we ask for the sake of your tender love. Amen.”

“Amen,” the others replied.

John looked at Sally, who had tears in her eyes. “Thanks, John,” she said. “I’m so lucky—we’re all so lucky to know you.”

Rachel laughed and winced. “Most of the time.”

John chuckled in response. “Alright,” he said, “dig in, please. And let’s talk about how you two are going to meet this challenge. I have a few advice-y kinds of thoughts, and I hope you’ll be persuaded by the beef to let me lay them out.” He watched with satisfaction as they got started on their plates.

“First,” he said, “I want to make sure all three of you know that I think what we’ve got here is pretty special. It happened at a time that’s going to pose problems for Sally and Rachel, because they’re still just starting school.”

“Hey,” Rachel said. “I mean, hey, sir… but we have one highly successful semester under our belts, don’t we?”

John nodded. “Yes, and that’s what makes me think I’m not being premature in saying that the four of us make a team that could well go very interesting places in the years to come. And I mean that both literally and figuratively, because travel is one of the most important educational experiences you can have, in my book. Once we’re past whatever difficulties are going to arise with the girls’ parents, one of the things I can see us doing is taking trips twice a year to places like China and Africa.”

“Really?” Sally said. The prospect seemed to cheer her up a little.

“Really,” John said, and finally managed to take a bite of his own beef. “Thing is,” he said, having swallowed the savory morsel. “I think we’re going to change the world. I’ve had a suspicion about Mark here for a while, and now that the two of you are together, and you have Rachel and me for back-up, well… one of Mendon’s longest-serving town councilors is about to retire.”

“Seriously?” Mark asked. “Me?” John could tell that the prospect was a very welcome one indeed: it wasn’t that Mark was feigning surprise, but rather that he was surprised John had thought he might be capable of doing what represented one of his fondest dreams.

“Seriously,” John replied. “Enough on that for now—that’s just the future that I want to help get us toward. So, second. For that to work, Sally, you and Mark are going to have to look very, very shiny. By that I mean that you can’t have your parents telling people that your husband abuses you.”

“I know,” Sally said glumly. Thankfully, it seemed that John’s visions of the future had attracted her greatly—the despair had vanished from her tone.

“So it may be necessary for you to prove your love for Mark by the two of you having some kind of enforced separation.”

Mark drew a deep breath and frowned. Then he nodded. “I see what you’re saying,” he said.

“You do?” Sally said plaintively.

“I think you do, too,” Mark said gently. “I think it would make a lot of sense for us to tell your parents that we plan to do that—to put it out there proactively.”

John nodded. “That’s just what I think might work.” He looked at Rachel. “You’re going to have to call your parents tomorrow too. I think you know that.”

It was Rachel’s turn to nod. “I’m just hoping the Lanchesters haven’t already called them.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Lanchesters had indeed called the Lowensteins. Sally and Rachel talked nearly all the way home, on their cell phones, car to car, while Mark and John drove. Rachel had also, of course, failed to tell her parents that she was going away for the weekend. She only talked to them once a week, on Sunday nights, and she had planned to be back in time even if for some reason the cell reception had been a problem on the Vineyard.

“I just talked to my mom,” Rachel said at the other end of the phone, as Mark and Sally drove through the outskirts of Providence, down I-95. “She wasn’t screaming, at least.”

“Well, that’s good,” Sally said.

“But I think we’re going to have to do what you and Mark are going to, and stop seeing each other for a while,” Rachel’s voice had a sobbing quality, even over the phone and the noise of both cars. Sally’s heart broke for her, and then it broke anew for herself. She didn’t think anything could suck worse than what her parents’ enlightened ignorance was about to do.

“Why?” she asked Rachel. “Why should you and John have to break up?”

“My mom said that she had looked John up online, and told me to tell him that unless he stopped seeing me he could expect to lose at least one client.”

“Who?”

“She didn’t say, but John thinks she’s not bluffing. My parents are well-connected in New York. He says it would make sense for us to do the same separation you guys are, so that my parents can see his intentions are honorable, and I really do love him.”

* * *

The conversation with George and Rowena Lanchester went as well as anyone could reasonably have hoped, Sally supposed. It was her parents’ first time meeting Mark, and he acquitted himself admirably. If only Sally’s parents hadn’t known about the spanking, they would probably have been blown away by his manners and his intellect, and the age difference might have even been a benefit. As it was, though, Sally nearly cried at the forced politeness they showed him.

After Sally had hugged her parents, and they had shaken hands with Mark stiffly, Rowena said, “Sally, I’d like to talk to you by yourself, please.” Sally looked at Mark, and Mark nodded. Rowena’s face grew furious at the way her daughter had checked with her boyfriend and she gave George an angry glare, but she turned without speaking and led Sally to the kitchen.

Sally heard from Mark later that his conversation with George wasn’t a terrible ordeal, although it was clear that Sally’s father had no idea what to make of the younger man. Mark said, “To respect your natural apprehensions, Mr. Lanchester, Sally and I are going to stop seeing each other for a while, even though we love each other very much.”

George simply said, “It sounds like that might be best,” and then asked what Mark planned to do after he graduated.

Sally’s conversation with her mother at the kitchen table was another matter entirely.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through?” Rowena said.

“Yes,” Sally said, sunk instantly into misery by her distance from Mark and her mother’s full-on guilt-giving tone.

“I’m not sure you do. To have to be told by that little idiot Cassandra that you are… I don’t even know what to call it. I know about kink, Sally. Kink is fine. But dishonoring your intellect and your abilities by—what?—let’s call it
‘devoting’
yourself to some flashy, handsome, older man…” Rowena laughed ruefully. “I just don’t know. I feel like everything I thought about you, about your promise, was just wrong. How could this have happened?” She started to cry. “And then you… you don’t even tell me, when over and over I told you that sex is okay when you’re thoughtful, careful, and honest. It’s the dishonesty that gets me, Sally. How could you? How could you?”

Sally cried with her. “Mom, I know you can’t understand. I’m so, so sorry that you can’t understand. But even if I didn’t love him as much as I do, Mark would still be someone whose opinion I would want to respect more than almost anyone else’s on earth. Maybe that’s a part you can understand. And maybe you can understand that for whatever reason, I’m made this way. I’m not like you—I don’t want to fight for my independence that way. I’m so very lucky that you gave me that gift.”

“What are you talking about?” Rowena said angrily, her eyes shining both with fury and with grief. “You’re spitting on that gift right here, saying that you want to do anything but put that boy behind you forever.”

“No, I’m not, mom.” Sally took her lower lip in her teeth and tried desperately to think clearly, stop her weeping, and push back the crushing guilt. “I’m positive—absolutely positive—that if you hadn’t taught me that I’m just as smart, just as strong, and just as good as every other person on the planet, woman or man, I don’t think I could ever have been able to be
happy
submitting to Mark.”

Rowena’s eyes grew very, very wide at the word ‘submitting.’ “You actually say that,” she said, her voice rising into a shout now. “You actually say that you submit to him. Jesus Christ.”