Punish Me with Kisses (3 page)

"Hey. Hey.
Hey
." His voice, soft, hushed, even softer, more hushed than her father's encouraged her. "Hey—you're beautiful, babe. Really beautiful. Really good." He'd unbuttoned her shirt after he'd kissed her. Now they were on the ground, she lying on her back, her knees bent, he sitting beside her, lightly tracing his finger upon her breasts. "Feels good, doesn't it? Yeah—I could tell."

"What?"

"You'd like to be touched."

"How'?"

"How did I know that?" He laughed. "I
knew
."

There was no clumsiness about him, no desperate grappling. She felt like a treasured harp which he plucked and strummed.

"You like that."

"—yes."

"I knew you would. I knew."

"Oh, God—"

Seagulls were circling above. A single cloud, full yet lightly spun, hung magically in the sky.

"Sun feels good, doesn't it?"

"Uh-huh."

He bent down. She poised herself. She knew he was going to kiss her again. She placed her hands on his cheeks, felt the roughness of them, then probed with outspread fingers into the thickness of his hair. And then she was lost, lost as he whispered to her, encouraged her to open up, to yield. His whispering was like a spell, and all her control weakened, ebbed away as he undressed her, touched her, kissed her, stroked her, and came inside her while she lay back and stared up at the sun.

She'd never felt anything like it before. She was melting, melting away. If she sometimes became heady when she read, now she was intoxicated, giving herself to his dark hard body, gripping, feeling something deep within her erupting in pants and sighs.

"Don't stop—"

She was shaking, moaning and she didn't care. Pinned down by him, writhing beneath him, she felt the power of his sex and a counterforce within herself rising with a fury that made her blind.

"Babe—"

"Oh,
yes
—"

Later, bicycling back to the house, she couldn't quite believe what she'd done. He was a stranger, an utter stranger, they'd barely talked, she had no notion of who he was. And yet she'd given herself to him, with hardly a word spoken, had lain naked beneath the sun while this strange strong dark young man lay upon her. They'd ground themselves against each other, wriggled, cried out, let go. They'd met and parted like wild animals in the forest. There'd been tenderness between them, but also something so lustful, direct, unguarded and shameless she could hardly believe that she herself had been involved.

At home, she inspected herself in the mirror, looking for
evidence on her body. She could find nothing, no marks or other hints of what had taken place. Perhaps she'd dreamt it all. That was the sort of thing that happened, she knew, with repressed and lonely girls who lived in worlds of books and dreams. Still there was something faint on her, a trace of something male, a smell perhaps, that same essence that had made her reel and feel weak when he'd linked his hands behind her neck. She wasn't sure. It seemed to come and go. She caught it, sniffed hard, then lost it again. Finally, reluctantly, she bathed.

That night, ensconced in her rocking chair, in her nightgown and her robe, peering down at the
poolhouse
waiting for Suzie's latest lover to arrive, she didn't feel envious at all. She could be like that, too, now, she knew—stroke skin, taste flesh, requite desire.

S
he made love with him a second time in the forest and twice on successive rainy afternoons in the little room he shared with another actor in a boarding house in town. The last time they'd smoked pot and everything had been slow and strange. Afterwards they'd collapsed together, spent limp bodies welded with a seal of sweat.

He called her "babe," and she liked that a lot—it made her feel sexy, like a girl in a popular song. So did the rides they took on his motorcycle, zooming along the winding roads of the resort, her arms clasped around him, her head pressed against his back. Vibrations coursed through her as she shut her eyes and squeezed his chest. She thought of herself as the subject of an impassioned ballad sung by a wild-haired rock singer to a huge raucous audience in the night.

He didn't tell her much about himself, only that he'd been in the Marines, that he was twenty-four years old, that he'd appeared in a few TV commercials and acted in what he called "some third-rate independent films." He joined the Bar Harbor summer theater company to get out of New York during the heat. He was ambitious, he told her, to hone his craft and to play important roles.

She didn't care about his past; she preferred him as a stranger, dark and sensitive, who caressed her with powerful hands until she moaned. She'd always dreamed of a lover, someone fierce-looking but gentle, who would come upon her like the lion sniffing at the sleeping shepherd in the painting by Rousseau. Now she'd found this actor who rode a roaring motorcycle and shouted out poems against the sea. He was a gift to her, someone she'd stumbled upon in time to save her from despair.

On the fifth day she invited him to the house to play tennis. That was a mistake.

"Oh, Pen—he's
gorgeous
."

"Eat your heart out, Gin," Suzie said.

"You just found him there, on the rocks?" Cynthia wet her lips. "
God
—I don't believe it.
God
—he just makes you want to
drool
."

Suzie and Cynthia were supposed to be off sailing that afternoon. But they'd been bored by the boys they'd gone with and came back home referring to them contemptuously as "duds."

"Where've you been hiding him?"

"Come on, Gin—leave her alone."

"Let us know when you're finished with him, Pen. Let us know soon as he's up for
grabs
."

Suzie took her aside, told her not to pay any attention to Cynthia. "She couldn't take him away from you if you tried. He
is
gorgeous, though." She touched Penny on the cheek. "Congratulations, Child. Thought I'd scoured this joint. Never thought of that theater crowd myself."

H
er father flew up in early August to stay on through Labor Day. There was a local painter who came by in the mornings to work on his portrait, a larger than life-size thing which would adorn the Chapman boardroom in New York. The painting was to show him on his sailboat, waves behind, wind-filled sails, the boat heeling as he tacked, but he posed in his study at a helm that had been transported to the house, standing erect and grave as if he were really wrestling the elements, his hair artfully brushed so that it looked windswept. She paused in the doorway one day and watched the scene, the painter, intent on a successful completion of his commission, dabbing seriously at the canvas. When her father caught her eye, he laughed. "Well, kiddo," he said, "now you know what a fake I am."

One night at dinner her mother sat bored and listless as he described how he was taking over an armor-plate company in Detroit. His plan was intricate, involved an exacting use of pressure, a careful wielding of power. Suzie was excited by the details. Her eyes shined brightly as he explained his manipulation, his squeeze-play, his final offer, the bluff they'd never call. "You sure know how to break balls, Daddy-O," she said at the end. Then she flung down her napkin and strode out of the house.

"She's running wild," her mother announced after they heard the whirl of tires in the drive.

"She'll come around. Just a stage."

"I wish she didn't hang around with Cynthia. I don't think Cynthia's very nice."

"Well, who is nice?" her father asked. "I'm not nice, nor,
in my experience, are very many people in the world. No one's nice around this house except maybe kiddo, here."

"Oh, no," said Penny. "I'm not nice. Not at all."

"Well, there you are," he said and grinned. "No one's nice. No one in this family, anyway. So—what else is new?"

Her mother glared down at the remnants of her cheese.

I
t was never a question, Penny was certain, of her sister trying to steal Jared away. It just didn't happen like that, although later many people would say it had. She knew it had been her fault—not Suzie's, not Jared's, her own. She wasn't sufficiently sexy, she thought, probably just a "D minus" in the sack. She'd been selfish, had been too passive, hadn't asked him enough questions about acting and the theater, who he was and what he dreamed. Then everything had been inevitable.
Suzie'd
been there, Jared had seen her, and that had been enough. Suzie was so vivid, so striking, so purely physical, she knew that by comparison she must seem pale and flat. Jared was sweet to her as he slipped away, tried hard not to hurt her feelings, but when he turned up at the pool it was clear whom he'd come to see. She watched, angry at first, jealous as he fell under Suzie's spell. Then, feeling helpless, diminished, aching but refusing to blame anyone but herself, she was grateful that at least she'd tasted a little crust of life, and she turned back sadly to her books.

"C
ome on, Child, down to the pool. He's been waiting now an hour."

"I'm busy."

"Why don't you just put down that book?"

"It's
Ethan
Frome
."

"Well,
hoopty
-doo."

They stared at each other for a while. Then Penny turned the book over on her lap. "He's not here to see me anyway, so what difference does it make?"

"You
know, you're really silly, brooding, staying up here all the time, feeling sorry for yourself. Come on down now, OK? You'd really make me happy if you would."

"I don't see the point—"

"Look—do I have to beg? Is that it?
Huh
?"

"Of course not—"

"Then get your ass in gear for shit's sakes. Before Cynthia gets her disgusting mitts on him.
OK
?"

Suzie was staring at her the way she stared at boys when she sized them up. Penny looked up at her again.

"He's not all that interested in me anymore, and I'm not all that interested in him."

"Well, he's sure as hell not going to get
re-interested
if you hide yourself up here in this lousy room."

That made her mad. "You know what I wish, Suzie?"

"Tell me, Child. Tell me what you wish."

"I wish I were a free-spirited totally liberated good-time sexpot bitch just like you, someone who could fuck everyone I wanted, every tits-and-ass man in the whole Ivy League if I felt like it, and never feel a qualm. But since I'm not like that, I'm really not, I wish you'd just leave me alone."

She squeezed her eyes shut to push back her tears while Suzie stood very still, then finally cleared her throat.

"That's pretty tough talk, Child, as I'm sure you know."

"Yes. I know." She met Suzie's eyes head-on.

"OK. I'll see you later then." She paused at the door. Penny prayed she'd go before she saw her cry. "Maybe you'll change your mind and come down a little later on. I hope you do.
OK
?"

That was the closest they ever came to a confrontation. She had spoken harshly, had said things she regretted the moment Suzie left the room. Afterwards there were no opportunities to take them back. Suzie avoided her, and then an almost palpable tension began to build up in the house.

Her mother's hands shook all the time. When she ate, her silverware shivered against the china plates. Her father, closeted mornings with the painter, went off sailing by himself in the afternoons. Suzie, with Cynthia French, continued to entertain callers around the tennis court and pool. Jared was among them now, panting around Suzie like the others, different only in that he was darker and older and not going back to college in the fall.

Penny, starting a new Jane Austen, found it difficult to concentrate. There were too many clashing thoughts, anger and resignation, emotions that didn't cancel out. Sometimes when her confinement became oppressive she'd get on her bicycle and ride toward the sea, then along the same path above the cliffs where she'd discovered Jared the first time. He seemed like a figure in a romantic dream to her—a vague personage who'd appeared out of nowhere, had entered her life for several days, then had gone his own way, leaving little trace except the memory of a scent and a sadness she now savored even as she hurt.