Punish Me with Kisses

by William Bayer

  One morning, a week after their crazy high-speed journey to Maine, she and Jared had another argument. It started over something trivial—she asked him to turn down the radio so she could read the Times in peace. But soon it escalated and then she called him lazy, and he accused her of being selfish and acting more like Suzie every day.

  "Sorry," she told him, "you'll just have to take me as I am."

  "I love you as you are. It's what you're turning into I can't stand." She stood up, placed her hands on her hips, gave him a mocking look. "That's just what I mean," he said.

  "What?"

  "The way you're looking at me now. Your stance. Everything."

  She laughed at him, put on her running shoes, and went out to Central Park to jog alone. It was pleasant to run by herself for a change, to get out of that claustrophobic apartment, away from Jared too. They were spending too much time together. They never saw anybody else. They never did anything. He just sat around and made feeble efforts to get a job. She at least had a career. He was jealous of her for that, and over her interest in Suzie, too. He couldn't stand the way she studied the diary, her questions about Suzie and everything she'd done. It was important, she realized, for her to get away from him, preserve some privacy for herself. From now on, she decided, she'd run alone, find her own pace, use the time to think things over and unwind.

  She started getting up earlier, going out without him, when the track around the reservoir was still uncrowded and the dawn had barely come. There were fewer runners then; the cold air and late autumn sunrises had chased many of them out of Central Park. She liked the solitude, the sense of freedom, and also the chance to look at other people, meet their eyes.

  She'd never done that before; she had been too shy, had always looked down at the ground when she passed someone, afraid she'd be recognized, afraid of people's stares. But now she welcomed these encounters, so fast, intense, these mutual inspections of faces and bodies, these rapid comings-together and drawings-apart, these momentary intimacies when she could hear the person's breathing, smell his sweat.

  Seeing a male runner coming from the opposite direction, she'd scrutinize him closely, examine his face, perhaps even smile just a moment before they passed. Meeting him again she'd smile more broadly, and sometimes, at the last moment, subtly lower her eyes. Spotting a bulge if his running pants were tight, she'd turn after he'd passed, admire him from behind. Sometimes he'd turn, too, and then both of them would laugh. I'm becoming a crotch-watcher, she thought. I'm cruising guys. I like it; it's harmless and it's fun!

  Then the same thing started happening to her in the subways, waiting in the stations or standing in the cars. She'd find herself examining men, wondering about them, what it would be like to touch them, how they'd look undressed. It was the sort of thing Suzie used to do, looking at men as if they were hunks of meat. She remembered the way Suzie used to do it, the expression on her face, the way she'd hold her body, the cool appraising stare in her eyes. She could sense men responding to these inspections, too. That made her feel powerfu1. "Think sexy," Suzie'd always advised. Now, thinking sexy, she felt sexy and confident.

  As the days passed her new-found interest in male bodies spread from the jogging track and the subway into office hours, too. Looking at the Puerto Rican boys who handled interoffice mail at B&A she wondered what they'd be like as lovers, how big, how long, how hard, how rough they'd be, whether Suzie would have liked them, whether they'd be better than the Ivy League boys she'd had. And she started looking at the editors, MacAllister especially. What lay beneath his black leather jacket and black turtleneck? Was he hairy or smooth? A stud or a washout? What, she wondered, would Mac be like in bed?

  She'd always felt herself drawn to him. Now, suddenly, she'd look at him and begin to fantasize. There was something so attractive about his maturity, the authority in his manner, his decisiveness. His voice was strong, his intellect was powerful, and he radiated sexual power, too. She tried not to fantasize too much—it made dealing with him too complicated, made it difficult to concentrate at editorial meetings, think about books, do her job. But she couldn't help herself, and then she felt guilty, as if somehow she were being disloyal to Jared, betraying him by having fantasies about Mac and other men. Suzie, of course, would never have felt guilty.

  Why, she wondered, couldn't she be like that? She realized she still had lots to learn. In a funny way, she thought, Suzie would teach her—through the diary. The diary could be the key to many things.

  I've been injured, bruised. My psyche is agog. I'm obsessed and miserable and self-hating and heading for the gutter. If only the gutter were really pleasurable. If only orgasms were enough.

  Thinking more and more lately of getting away from here—the city, Jamie, all the crap, the threesomes and the dildos, the S&M. I need the kind of men whose sweat smells good, muscled Nordic meat, brainless, faceless —the storm trooper look, thick blond fuzz on their legs and thighs, the kind of men who, when they go down on you, you don't have to look at grease.

  If only he knew how promiscuous I've become, and also how depraved. Would love to ram it in his face. Got an idea about that. Make an arena and act. ACT! Engender great anxiety. Flaunt it madly. Fuck away till something pops or breaks—

  For months she'd been postponing a visit to Greenwich. She dreaded it, suspecting that things were getting worse there and that if she went home she'd have an awful time. It was hard to imagine how things could get worse; the last time she'd gone, before the summer, the tension had been terrible, the mood so cold it had made her shake. She'd decided then not to visit her mother unless her father was away.

  She chose a chilly sparkling Sunday afternoon in early December when he was on a business trip (Seoul and Taipei; some sort of textile deal), and went out carrying Suzie's diary to read and relieve the boredom of the train. She caught a taxi at Greenwich station. The town looked forlorn to her, the expensive little shops so chic and yet so empty of anything of value, decorated already with Christmas things, pine cones and miniature Santas and red bunting, which depressed her as Christmas always did. When the taxi entered the estate area, passing the stone walls and gates to long, curving drives, she caught glimpses through the bare trees of big houses set behind, and it occurred to her how false the architecture was—fake Palladian villas and pseudo Norman chateaux, great rambling Tudor monstrosities with leaded glass windows and crenelated towers. She passed a group of girls on horseback. They were in their early teens, dressed in handsome riding habits, shiny black boots, protective bowler hats, carrying crops that made them look arrogant, though she suspected they really weren't, and she thought: This is how the American aristocracy lives; this is the veneer.

  At first approach her own house was impressive. One passed through gates, then up a long drive of white pebbles which meandered through the landscape. But when the slate-roofed house came into sight, she was struck as always by its ugliness. It was huge, luxurious, and out-of-scale, too large and dominant for its property. It always looked to her as though it had been dropped there gratuitously from the sky. It spoke to her of her father's willfulness and his need for heraldry.

  She paid the taxi, walked up the steps, tried the door, and found it locked. How strange, she thought, pressing the bell, to have to ring to get inside. An unfamiliar woman let her in. She introduced herself as Mrs. McIver as if that were enough—she was a nurse or paid companion or whatever the current euphemism was. Penny had met many such women. They were always middle-aged and rather strongly built, they had kind eyes, and they didn't seem to last too long—got fired by her father, or quit out of boredom, or left because her mother wearied of them and ordered them dismissed.

  Mrs. McIver led her into the living room, then went to tell her mother she'd arrived. Penny looked at the Oriental rugs, the furniture upholstered in English chintz, the phony coat of arms carved in stone above the fireplace, and wondered at how her father's taste had changed, how the appetite for this huge pretentious house, whi
ch he'd bought with such pride because it symbolized landed gentrydom and wealth, had given way over the past fifteen years to the taste represented by his offices, austere and hushed modernity, glass and steel.

  "Oh, Penny dear—" Her mother seemed almost to be scooting toward her, arms outstretched, ready to clasp her to her breast. "Dear, dear—it's just been ages—" The embrace was firm, and her mother looked good, she thought, her skin pink and fresh, her eyes alert, her gray hair glossy and alive. As they kissed and hugged Penny noticed Mrs. McIver watching them from the door. She smiled and nodded, then disappeared. "But you're so skinny, dear—almost like a boy."

  "It's the running, mother."

  "Yes, the jogging. I forgot. Everyone's doing it these days. I see them around, old men sometimes, in those funny pajama suits. I always pray they won't have heart attacks."

  She turned to the fireplace. "I told them to light the fire, dear—I wanted the room to be all cozy and warm when you arrived. Well, no matter. I have a little project for us this afternoon. I thought we might get out the Christmas things, dust them off together and chat some while we work."

  It seemed a nice enough idea, better than sitting on the sofa while the talk wound down to silence. Penny let her mother lead her up the staircase, grand, carved, imperial, and to the attic where the Christmas decorations were stored.

  "So many rooms, Penny—so many unused rooms up here. This house was built for a dozen servants. Costs a fortune to keep it heated now, but your father won't hear of moving to a smaller place—"

  They walked down a hallway, past extra servants' bedrooms with dormer windows, then into the real attic where the beams showed, the walls were dark and unfinished and the lighting came only from a few bare ceiling bulbs. Penny had been scared of this part of the house when she was little, and Suzie, knowing she was scared, had often hidden in it during their games of hide-and-seek.

  "He was quite upset, you know, dear."

  "What, mother? I mean—who are you talking about?"

  "Your father, dear. He was really quite upset. Tucker called him, and he was very irritated about what you'd done."

  "Tucker?"

  "Yes." She turned, looked straight at Penny. "I don't know why you're pretending you don't know what I'm speaking about."

  "My trip to Maine?"

  "Yes. Of course. Tucker was quite put out, you see. At least that's what your father said. 'Quite put out'—I believe those were his very words, though they don't much sound like Tucker's vocabulary, do they?" She glanced at Penny again. "I doubt he'd use an expression like that, don't you?"

  "And daddy was angry?"

  "Did I say that? I don't believe I did. I believe I said he was irritated and upset. You should have checked with him first before you went up there, he said. He'd given Tucker instructions about not letting anybody in, and then you turned up and intimidated the poor old man—I think that was the gist of it—and then Tucker got scared, thought he'd better call down here and let your father know. After all, he'd disobeyed his orders, he didn't want to be sacked. I guess he wanted to be the one to tell your father, rather than risk his hearing it from someone else."

  That made Penny smile, the thought that she'd intimidated the "poor old man."

  "Yes, dear, I'd say your father was quite concerned."

  "If he was so concerned, mother," she said—they were bending over, both of them, picking up cardboard boxes labeled "Xmas Decorations Fragile"—"why didn't he call me up and bawl me out? I never knew I wasn't supposed to go up there?"

  Mrs. Berring smiled, and it was then, because of something in her smile, that Penny first began to suspect she wasn't as healthy as she appeared.

  "That's not your father's way, to bawl you out. You should know that by now. It's not a question, dear, of your not being allowed to go up there. You must never think a thing like that. It's just that he wants to be kept informed, so he can tell Tucker to have things ready for you when you arrive."

  "I was there exactly fifteen minutes."

  Her mother nodded as if she already knew.

  "Maybe the reason," she suddenly whispered in a tone that changed the whole tenor of the conversation, "maybe the real reason he was so concerned was that he couldn't figure out what you'd gone up there for." Yes, it was as if there was suddenly a conspiracy between them, as if her mother knew more than she was saying, and the two of them were now allied. But then, how could she know about the diary? she asked herself.

  "Do you know why I went up there?"

  "No, dear, I don't. And I don't want to know. But I do know one thing, and that's that your father was upset. " She laughed a little, looked at Penny. "So maybe he knows, or he suspects. You can never be sure with him."

  Penny decided to let the matter drop; her mother seemed content to do the same. They had the boxes open and were looking at various types of lights and bulbs, discussing which ones they should use on the tree this year. Her mother seemed immersed in the problem, was chattering about what a lovely Christmas they were all going to have while Penny was thinking about how dreadful it was going to be and how much she'd rather spend the holiday with Jared instead.

  Her mother produced some dust rags and they settled down to pulling delicate glass balls out of boxes, dusting them off, then carefully replacing them when they were clean. "I imagine a very simple Christmas," her mother said wistfully. "Just the three of us. We never see anyone, never have any friends to the house anymore. Just a family thing, and Mrs. McIver of course."

  "She seems nice, mother."

  "Oh? Do you really think she does?"

  "Well, I hope she is."

  "She isn't, dear. She isn't nice at all."

  "Why? What's the matter with her?"

  "She's in it with the rest of them."

  "In it? What do you mean?"

  "She's in your father's pay, my dear. A person in another person's pay is loyal to that person, not to the person she's pretending to be loyal to."

  "Is she really disloyal? She's not mean, is she?"

  "Of course not. She wouldn't dare be mean."

  "Then what's the matter, mother? Tell me, for God's sake. Tell me what's going on."

  The conspiratorial whisper again: "They're trying to get me to sign papers. Stock proxies. All sorts of things. And I won't do it." She giggled. "I simply won't do it. And your father's furious, but of course he doesn't show that he is. He's got some trick now, some way he's going to get me to sign, surrounding me with all these people he pays, like her, and then—well, we'll just see if I sign or if I don't."

  She'd been rummaging through another carton full of objects for the crèche, when suddenly her hands seemed to freeze. Penny looked into the box, saw their old Christmas stockings, the stockings with their names stitched on, which they used to hang in front of the fireplace and which were always stuffed with little gifts on Christmas day.

  "Here's yours, dear, here's his—" She held up her father's stocking as if she wanted to keep it as far away from her body as she could, "—here's mine, and here is hers." Penny looked and felt a needle press against her heart. It was Suzie's stocking. The name Susan had been beautifully stitched onto it in a script she recognized as coming from her mother's hand. "Poor thing, poor dear," her mother sighed. "We shouldn't keep this any longer I suppose. We really should dispose of all her things, once and for all, don't you think?"

  She stuffed Suzie's stocking into a pocket of her dress, and then it seemed as if everything became sane again—they chose a star for the top of the tree, and Mrs. Berring talked about Christmas cookies and Christmas punch, and how she thought she could handle a cup or two of that, and maybe even some eggnog, though she knew she really shouldn't drink.

  "Of course, mother." Penny put her arm around her shoulders. "Of course you can handle an eggnog or two, or you could have a virgin eggnog, like a Virgin Mary—how about that?"

  "Oh, Penny, you're the only one."

  The only one who trusted her, or who was nice to her, o
r who wasn't in her father's pay? Penny wasn't sure what she meant exactly, but she guessed all three, and then she felt as though she might begin to cry and wanted to run away.

  "I'll tell Mrs. McIver to have one of the men bring these things down when the tree arrives. Come." She stood up. "We have something now to do ourselves." Penny followed as they left the attic, retraced their way down the hail, down two flights of stairs to the main floor, then through the kitchen and down the cellar stairs. She couldn't imagine what they were going to do down in the cellar, but she followed meekly, sad and curious, and anxious, too.

  "See that?" Mrs. Berring pointed at the wine cellar. "He's got it padlocked. Afraid I'll get my hands on some of his precious Burgundies. Afraid I'll drink them to the dregs." There was a new note in her voice now. Anger had replaced the confidential whispering of the attic, and Penny became worried for she saw they were moving toward the furnace room.

  "Your father's a dangerous man, Penny. Take care of yourself. Beware." And then, as they entered the furnace room where two old-fashioned coal furnaces blazed away, her mother began her tirade.

  "Dangerous. Very dangerous. And slippery, too. Imagine—trying to get me to turn over control. He's got control anyway, he runs the damn company like he owns it, even if he doesn't, you know. I called a lawyer. He told me: 'Don't sign anything. Don't give up anything.' 'But what if they force me?' I asked. He said they couldn't, it'd be invalid, that they couldn't get me to sign over anything unless I was represented by counsel, so that was that. I told your father, told him to his face. You should have seen him. He turned purple. Then he started to whisper the way he always does when he gets mad. 'How dare you call a lawyer?' he demanded to know. Dare! Dare! What the hell did he mean—how did I dare? 'It's mine,' I told him. 'My father left the shares to me. How easily you've forgotten. Howard Chapman was my father. 'But what if something happens to me? The shares would go to you, of course, and then they'd be after you—you'd be their victim, because all he wants is power. He's not content just to run everything. He has to own it, all of it. God damn!"