Punishment with Kisses (5 page)

“I know. I’ve told Ash that myself, but she won’t listen.” She tightened the belt around her silk kimono and walked to the French doors, peering out over the pool house and gardens. “Megan, do you love your sister?”

I turned, half expecting a lecture, when I saw tears streaming down Tabitha’s face. My God, what the hell was going on here? “Of course I do. Why do you ask?”

She was mum again, her reasoning apparently snuffed out by emotion.

“Tabitha, is there something you want to tell me?” Had Father thrown Ash out? Had Ash moved without telling me? Was Ash in jail? My mind was racing at this point, all with disastrous things that could have happened to my sister. As much as I envied her and competed with her, even at twenty-two, Ash was still my life, the person who completed me. Yes, she could still make me feel like a fourteen-year-old—hell, they all could, being home reduced me from a college grad to a sniveling teen all over again—but I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if something had happened to her.

Her ash blond hair fell in front of her face as Tabitha dropped her head and sank down into a rouge leather armchair. Her lip looked like it was quivering, but there was no sound coming out, not even a breath.

“Tabitha? Did something happen to Ash?” I demanded, a bit louder this time. She was freaking me out.

“No, no, no,” she said quietly. “I just wanted to, I just, oh, never mind. Everything’s going to be fine.” With that, she wiped her tears, pushed her hair back, and rose to her feet. The fragile flower I saw moments ago was gone, in its place the woman formerly known as my stepmonster, the bitchy beacon of suburban perfection.

I was stunned into silence. I couldn’t help but feel torn at the display of emotion. It was as if I was seeing Tabitha—the inner Tabitha—for the first time, and the whole scene left me feeling…conflicted, I guess you could say. At a loss for words, I turned and went back to my room, where I spent the next several hours vacillating between reading—always my safe haven—and e-mailing my college friends. I was hoping a word from people who knew me as an adult would do more than just cheer me; it would add some buoyancy to my day-to-day existence. I wasn’t sure why being home made me revert back to some self-doubting but petulant kid, but it did every time. Father wanted me here now and made it so I was trapped here until I could access my trust fund on my birthday. Who makes an inheritance due at twenty-three? All my friends got their money at twenty-one, or even eighteen. Still, the safety of what I knew and the security of Father’s money trumped any desire I had to venture out on my own without a support system. As soon as my inheritance was accessible, though, I could leave this place and feel whole again.

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 tactic. “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.

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.