Punishment with Kisses.

Diane Anderson-Minshall.

Home from college, Megan spends her days in her east-wing room of her parents' palatial estate overlooking the pool house where her sister has taken up residence. Her sister Ashley spends her days wildly bucking convention, bringing home a bevy of female lovers, each one more dangerous than the last, and making love to them by the pool-in plain view of her sister, their conservative parents, and their bewildered staff. Ashley stays out all hours, goes places that she doesn't tell anyone about, and keeps secrets that only she knows. Then one night, Ashley is murdered, and when the case grows cold, Megan immerses herself in her sister's underground life in order to find out who killed her and why. She starts by finding Ashley's diary and begins a s.e.xual odyssey of her own. Will she find the answers she seeks, or will her growing relationship with one of Ash's exes blind her to the real truth?.

Chapter One.

I thought that summer was all about my sister's murder, but looking back I realize it was all about me. It has always been all about me. I just didn't realize it back then. When I was driving home from Tulane, I had no idea of the journey I was about to embark on. And while that voyage would take place internally, it was still far more arduous than my meandering return from college, when I was crisscrossing state lines and binge eating at truck stops and fantasizing about being ravished by lady truckers, all as a sort of psycho-celebration of my four years of fruition that came with my English degree. Back then, I was a brand spankin' new graduate with a cascading sense of self that seemed to dissolve and reappear at inappropriate times, like when I was naked or hitting on high school boys just to toy with them. I knew nothing.

Standing on Father's property five years later, knee deep in a colorful pile of leaves, the final vestiges of fall clinging to bare branches of the trees overhead, my days of college partying are distant memories. And the concerns I had then I now realize were utterly trivial. How selfish and immature I was that summer. As the final days of my sister's life trickled away, I allowed my own insecurities and petty sibling rivalry to keep me from sharing those days with her.

If I had only taken the time then to get to know her, I might have prevented her murder. I certainly would never have needed to descend into the darkness myself, spelunking like a cave explorer into my sister's secret life, and nearly getting trapped in the dank and shadowy fissures I stumbled into in search of her murderer. The truth is, I lost my way in that labyrinth and I might have lost my very soul if I hadn't discovered the one thing I least expected-true love.

Now, as I peered inside the pool house, my eyes p.r.i.c.kled with the sting of tears. Though it's been unused since the night Ash was killed-and any trace of her has long since been removed-it still looks exactly as it did before she died. The fluid lines of the antique Queen Anne table were an ironic juxtaposition next to the Ikea Tylosand couch-the combo my sister used to jokingly call my stepmother Tabitha's Swedish-Amish-Americana design style.

In those days, I was so caught up in my own jealous anxiety I failed to notice that even while she was still alive Ash never seemed to be a part of her surroundings. It was as if she were floating atop them, moving through everything-furniture, people, life-as if she were a mere ghostly apparition. And yet, while she was living on the surface, never embracing us, it was as though life couldn't help but absorb her. Everyone she met seemed to be changed somehow by the experience, by her very presence.

Though it's drained for the oncoming winter and littered with piles of withered crimson and gold leaves, the pool still reminds me of Ash, too. One squint of my eyes and I can still imagine her next to it, sprawled on a lounge chair, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil, the scent of evaporating coconut wafting through the air, admirers and margaritas by her side. She was all coy smiles and forced laughter, swimming in a sea of s.e.x, sun, and pulchritude. No one, least of all me, seemed to notice she was drowning.

I was tempted to dip my hand in the pool, to scoop up a handful of damp leaves, no doubt coated on the underside with a fine mist of sludge, and play a modern version of "loves me not." Except I'd replace love with forgive. In the last five years, I've thought of nothing more than whether my sister would forgive me for failing her in her final days. I was so green, like the delicate buds that emerge from the tree limbs in the warm days of spring. I was so fresh from college and so riddled with my own baggage that I could never see Ash for who she was, only who I imagined her to be. Even now, I don't know that I understand entirely what happened, or why. How culpable was I in her death? I don't know that I will ever know for certain. I don't know if I want to.

What I do know is that I've spent the last half decade mourning a sister I was too selfish to really know and feeling nothing but regret about how I treated her. This shame and guilt was a logjam in my life, stalling my personal relationships and my career. I had p.i.s.sed off employers and lovers with equal casualness, and until I hit my stride in therapy it looked like I was going to die an angry, two-timing coffee jockey instead of becoming the person I am.

Closure. It's a mythical word. And almost impossible to find.

"Megan!" Our housekeeper Maria woke me from my reverie. She must have spied me through the greenhouse doors. "I didn't know you'd be home today. Are you here for the weekend? Come inside. Do you need help with your bags?" Maria gushed with questions, lobbing each out rapid fire like a dart on a barroom wall before I even had a chance to open my mouth. She didn't know the full story. How could she? I was barely able to understand it myself. I do know, like many tragedies, it all started with s.e.x-which meant different things to Ash and me.

That summer I came home, I wasn't a virgin, but I certainly wasn't the woman around town my sister Ash was. I'd spent most of college with my nose in a book, save for those few nights with Terra Moscowitz, which began innocently enough with us in her dorm room dry humping each other after a Take Back the Night rally that devolved into so much more. I'm not sure what it was about anti-rape rallies, but they certainly seemed to make Terra h.o.r.n.y. Sadly, her girlfriend was around half the time, which meant I got leftover, hand-me-down s.e.x-but I was happy to have it.

s.e.x with Terra was fast and brash and all consuming, the kind that popular culture tells us women don't like to have. She could wield a strap-on like it was an extension of her body, and I guess in Terra's case, with the frequency with which she wielded it, it probably was.

Terra was one of only three lovers I had while away at college. Terra, Andrea, and Mark. Andrea wore heavy kohl eyeliner and black turtlenecks year round. She regularly drank bathtub gin, forgot her bipolar meds daily, and frequently told me, in flagrante, that when it came to lovemaking, I would never please another woman. Since I could never please her during our brief, clumsy encounters, I began to suspect she was right. Why were women so hard to please?

That question, of course, led me to Mark, the hairy pre-med student who wasn't hard to please at all. After a few minutes of kissing, when he'd shove his tongue down my throat until I choked, I'd pop off my bra-because his thick fingers seemed too clumsy to handle the small clasps-and well, Mark would pop off too. I think he made it inside me only once during our frequent attempts. The rest of the time he left the field before I even got to the game. It was nice being wanted-and more than that, being so exciting to a partner that he couldn't even wait for the main act-after Terra's unavailability and Andrea's unkind endors.e.m.e.nts-but even when Mark was there for me, there was no thrill in the moment.

His facial hair hurt everything it touched, particularly my nether regions where it seemed to attach to-and rip away from-my personal undergrowth as though it were Velcro. His knowledge of female anatomy was alarming, especially for someone planning to become a doctor. The last time he went down on me, giving my nappy dugout sloppy circular kisses that missed the mark every single repet.i.tion-G.o.d, why couldn't he find my c.l.i.toris? -he gave up, breathless and exhausted before I'd begun to feel even a twinge of desire. I gyrated my hips left and right and yanked him into position by his hair, but nothing seemed to work.

Which led me back to Terra's embrace and her sloppy strap-on seconds. It was enough to drive me to the brink of ecstasy each time, even though she shoved me out of bed the minute we finished so I'd escape before her girlfriend returned. I think it was a thrill for Terra, the fear of getting caught, but it would've been nice, just once, to lie there for a moment after we finished, basking in the rush of blood to my head, the sweat pooling between us, gazing at her flushed face and sticky smile.

Alas, with graduation upon us, Terra went east and I went west, and the next time I heard from her was alongside a wedding announcement, heralding the Ma.s.sachusetts nuptials of her and the girlfriend. Why is it that the biggest cheaters are the quickest to jump on the wedding bandwagon? Is there excitement in the challenge of commitment? Is it even more thrilling to cheat after you've said I do?

My journey to love took a lot longer than Terra's. My long, circuitous drive home to Lake Oswego offered a psychic buffer, the spiritual cleansing I needed before submitting to an entire summer in close proximity with a family I considered toxic. Against all evidence to the contrary, I still hoped that maybe this would be the summer my sister Ash and I rekindled the relationship we'd had years ago, when we were both pre-teens. Back when our mother was still alive. Back before Father took a child bride and Ash was a college dropout, before all our paths diverged in such nuanced ways.

Little did I know then the twists and turns my personal, psychological journey would take-around dangerous curves, over treacherous roads, down dark alleys and dead-end streets-or that by the time I reached my destination, my relationship with myself, my s.e.xuality, and my family would be forever altered.

"I don't f.u.c.king care what you think!" Ash yelled, her top completely naked, the bottom of her bikini riding up around her a.s.s. She flaunted her body just to hurt me, to remind me that compared to her ample bosoms and perfectly proportioned bottom, I had the body of an ogre.

Ashley always was the beautiful one, a woman every man wanted. Every woman wanted her too, I was sure, though they were probably more cautious about admitting it. Ash-as I'd called her since we were kids-seemed to sense early on what power her allure would hold over others. As soon as she hit p.u.b.erty, Ash was wielding her s.e.xuality like a modern-day Lolita. I envied her confidence. I was always zit faced and fatter than the other kids, developing love handles before I got b.o.o.bs, and even then there was a pudgy roundness about me that still looked unformed well into my college years. But Ash sprang from sixth grade a full-fledged woman, a s.e.xual Pied Piper with a legion of fans who would gladly do her bidding merely for a chance to be near her.

Ash seemed to have no shame when it came to displaying her body. She had no qualms about being nearly nude, save for a tiny black bikini thong, even when standing in the kitchen, with the cook and our maid Maria and the gardener whose name I didn't know then. Worse, Ash seemed equally comfortable exposed in front of me and our father and his wife Tabitha-who I then thought of as the stepmonster-who was no longer a child bride but, at twenty-eight, was still just two years older than Ash. Father was absolutely enraged by each and every spectacle involving his exhibitionist nymph of a daughter.

Indeed, at this moment, our father, Bradford Caulfield, a man usually so rigid and silent we hardly noticed his appearance, had beads of perspiration rolling down the sides of his contorted face, one thin blue vein bulging below his collar, hidden mostly by the formal shirtsleeves he was wearing. His fists were balled up at his sides.

"If you continue down this path of moral bankruptcy, Ashley Spencer Caulfield, you will regret it."

The threat could be taken as nothing but that. Except pigheaded Ash couldn't have cared less. As Father raged on, threatening her rather malevolently, Ash started fighting back, almost berating him like an ex-lover, while Tabitha, usually so flighty and flirty, stared on doe-eyed and aghast.

It was just another day in Casa de Caulfield. But maybe this time Ash had crossed the line.

"Listen, Daddy-O, my s.e.xuality is my own d.a.m.n business. It's not yours to control." Ash said each word in a constrained manner. Too much weed, probably, slowing down her reflexes.

"This is my house and I won't have you swimming naked in front of the help and whoring around with an endless parade of misfits and freaks. For f.u.c.k's sake, Ashley, what are you thinking? This will be all over town and then you'll never get in the Junior League."

Ash doubled over laughing. It was maniacal the way she responded to Father's reprimand. The coercion that would make me back down always emboldened Ash. Today was no different.

"Oh yes, must not upset the frigid b.i.t.c.hes of the society pages-" Ash began. She clearly didn't care about the Junior League, and I was surprised that Father hadn't already surmised it.

He cut her off. "That's it. You're out of the house. If you're going to behave like a pig, you can move into the pool house. Let's see how you like living in eight hundred square feet with no one to serve you." Father made the p.r.o.nouncement as though sentencing Ash to the confines of a small shed, not a vacation cabana with its own Olympic-size swimming pool. That's the way things worked when you were the golden child. If these were criminal proceedings, Ashley Caulfield would have just been sent to a ritzy, resort-like white-collar minimum security prison. If the shoe was on the other foot, and it was me in that position, I'm certain the ruling would be completely different. I'd be sent straight to Sing Sing.

Ash stared at him for a minute, as though pausing to catch up with what he was saying, or simply planning out her summer of fun. Then she turned and left, casting one last snide comment over her shoulder. "Oh, Father, don't be silly. I won't have any problem finding someone to service me."

The next day half a dozen people arrived and began moving Ash's belongings into the pool house. I was still p.i.s.sed off at Ash for ruining my homecoming and for putting a kibosh on any chance of the two of us bonding before I headed to grad school or out into the real world-I wasn't exactly sure yet which course I was going to take. Ash's acts of selfish defiance also effectively eliminated any chance I could have the summer I'd dreamt of, lounging by the pool myself.

With her banishment to the cabana Father established a no-fly zone, a walled East Berlin in the center of our property. To cross the border between our house and the pool would now be seen by Father as an act of treason, an announcement of my alliance with his sworn enemy. The retaliation would be swift and severe. And with the pool house already occupied by his favorite child, G.o.d knows what would happen to me. I imagined being kicked to the curb, sent away in a cab, never allowed to return.

It was too dangerous to risk, even for a summer of deep tanning and refreshing dips in the cool blue-green water. But I was still p.i.s.sed. This was my last summer at home and now I was stuck spending it all indoors, trapped inside with a p.i.s.sed-off father and Tabitha, the stepmonster, who I'd never managed to get close to, even though we're not that far apart in age.

Within hours of Ash's dramatic departure from the main house, there was a wild party raging by the pool. From the balcony of my second-floor room, I could not help but see all the beautiful people wandering in and out of the pool house, some drinking, others just sunning themselves. I didn't need to find Ash in the crowd to know there would be people bunched around her, toadying all over her.

I stepped back into my room and shut the sliding doors. Ash could have her little tantrums. I was going to ignore her and her escalating war with Father by thrusting myself into all the novels I'd brought home with me. Dorothy Allison, Jewel Gomez, and Mich.e.l.le Tea. These authors were like good friends I could call on for all-night gab sessions. Their words gave me the kind of excitement I wasn't finding at home and reminded me why I loved to be immersed in fiction instead of real life. A good novel is like a current that sweeps you up and carries you away from the real world to a magical land where you get to let yourself go and delve into the lives of people far more interesting than you.

With Mich.e.l.le Tea's Valencia in hand, I stretched out across my four-poster bed, nestled in the down comforter that should be too hot for this time of year, but somehow felt cool beneath me, and let the story pull me into a fantasy world. For the first two days home I was so engrossed that I barely moved-occasionally rolling from my back to my stomach to prevent bedsores, and rising only for bathroom breaks or to go downstairs for the requisite meals.

Loud voices and laughter wafting up from the pool house interrupted my reverie. I tried to ignore the noise, but I couldn't shake my curiosity. Who was out there and what were they doing? It wouldn't hurt to stretch my legs.

Not wanting to damage the book's spine, I carefully slid a piece of paper in to hold my place and set it on my bedside table. My legs were spongy with sleep, and when I put my weight down they caved under me. I grabbed on to one of the smooth, hand-carved posts and managed to stay upright. I used the furniture as crutches while I stumbled across the room, going from bed to desk and outside to the railing of the balcony.

Fortunately, my land legs returned, because the minute I stepped outside I was blinded by the light and instinctively raised a hand to shield my pupils from the excruciating brilliance of the midday sun. When my eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, I was not surprised to see Ash wearing nothing but bikini bottoms, floating on a giant inflatable bed in the middle of our pool. She wasn't alone. A man wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and a woman with an old-fashioned one-piece suit were taking turns stroking Ash in the guise of applying sunscreen. Their movements rocked the raft and splashed water onto Ash, who shrieked theatrically. I looked around to see who was playing audience to her show. Our gardener, whose name I still couldn't p.r.o.nounce, was skulking behind the hedges, pretending to trim them while peering over at Ash and her strange friends floating in the aquamarine water. She was probably trying to give the old guy a heart attack.

I was appalled at her complete lack of decorum, and angry with myself for falling for Ash's exhibitionism. She was probably out there laughing louder and louder, calculating what decibel would bring Father or me to a window. Ash was like a child having a tantrum, stamping her foot and yelling, "Look at me, look at me," to get attention.

To h.e.l.l with her. Valencia was waiting, full of the kind of clever prose I loved to read in literature cla.s.ses but had never yet managed to write myself. Tea's words saturated my mind like rain falling through slats on a barn roof. Sometimes I read lines aloud, letting the words linger on my tongue, rolling them around my mouth, tasting them with the different sensors-sweet, sour, salty. I adored her words, and I turned them over and over in my head as the day began to slip into evening, oblivious to the party still going on.

A scream interrupted me. I spit out Tea's words and tossed her book aside before racing out to the balcony again. Ash was out of the water but standing by the pool, now with a different duo: the woman from earlier today and a new man. I wanted to stare, to see what the h.e.l.l they were up to that elicited the shriek I'd just heard. But I was afraid Ash would catch me at it, and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she'd gotten my attention again. And knowing her, Ash would just call me a pervert and tell Father I was spying on her, just to get me in trouble.

She was always doing things like that when we were younger. I remember one time when we were kids and Ash was in trouble for something-I don't remember what, since usually it seemed like she could do no wrong. But I do remember Ash had been sent to her room alone. Even back then Ash couldn't stand to be alone. She cracked open her door and stood there whispering my name until I came to see what the fuss was.

Then Ash looked me right in the eyes and slammed her hand in the door. On purpose. She broke two of her fingers and had to go to the hospital. But her plaintive wails brought Father running and her lies convinced him I'd been responsible. Ash was released from solitary and I took her place in the doghouse, so it was a win-win situation all around for her.

I didn't want to give her that kind of satisfaction now, so instead I grabbed the pair of odd binocular-like sungla.s.ses that were an expensive good-bye gift from Mark, who somehow thought bird watching might bring me solace in his post-graduation absence. I'd never watched a bird in my life, and I didn't intend to start, but I had realized that the spectacles appeared to others as simply a pair of peculiar looking sungla.s.ses. No one would notice me people watching from my room, though with these telescoping super-strength lenses I could practically see every pore, every hair on each person's body.

I could stoically relax on my balcony, sit in my reclining redwood patio lounge holding my novel, and peer over the pages at Ash and what I was beginning to suspect was a constant parade of lovers. I felt simultaneously intrigued and repelled by the sight of so many of them fawning over my sister like she was an adorable but doomed SPCA puppy begging for a home. What did Ash offer that turned normally independent people into simpering fools? If I paid close attention, would I catch a glimpse of her secret ingredient? Was it something intrinsic to her soul or could I apply it like a glossy lipstick? Could it magically transform me externally, the way Tea's words did in my mind?

Ash had always enchanted other people. When we were young girls being trotted out at Father's c.o.c.ktail parties for show and tell, the partygoers would always gather around sweet, pig-tailed Ash. At one of Father's office holiday parties, when Ash was maybe eight or nine, she got on stage while the band was on a break and announced that she had a special treat for the audience. She was dressed in a little red velvet pantsuit with white fur trim that my mother must have helped her pick out. I was still too terrified to speak to people unless forced, and so I stood there, slack jawed, as enamored of my sister as the rest of the audience. She was everything I wanted to be, back then and still now. Beautiful, smart, charming, and truly unafraid of anything. At the party, I kept hiding below the buffet table, stuffing my face and wondering how soon I could get out of there while Ash was charming the pants off of Father's colleagues.

Soon all eyes were on Ash as a band member handed her a microphone and she started belting out a perfect rendition of "Santa Baby." We'd been singing Christmas carols in front of the mirror in our underwear for weeks, karaoke style, so we both knew every single word. But watching Ash up there, I realized that she brought something to the song I never could. We weren't even teenagers yet, but there was something faintly womanly about Ash, like a twenty-year-old trapped in a nine-year-old's body. All eyes were on her as she winked and smiled and sang in a Betty Boop tone. When she finished, the crowd applauded and gushed and Father beamed with pride.

For years afterward, I would think of that party, of how Ash could walk into any situation and charm people. She would sometimes take me under her wing, telling me how to make an entrance like she did, but just as often she'd mock me or push me aside when others were around. Always, we seemed to be competing for Father's affection, and always, Ash won.

Even in our family, I seemed to be on the outside of Ash's world, looking on as everyone fluttered around her, flitting about and marveling.

So that summer I pretended to be a birdwatcher looking for that endangered species. I pretended I was an anthropologist observing a foreign culture, longing to learn the sacred rituals of a society I could never truly enter.

Chapter Two.

Hours of spying slipped into days, and I soon decided I was getting far more from observing Ash than I would ever garner from my novels and their make-believe worlds. I started bringing a notepad out to the balcony with me, jotting down random things I noticed, hoping somehow a pattern would emerge and I could unravel the secrets of this alien world. If nothing else, I told myself, this would enliven my own writing, help me infuse an element of realness that my English professors had always complained was lacking from my characters, which they criticized as being more caricatures than living, breathing, believable individuals.

Watching Ash was like viewing my own private reality dating program. Each new day brought another surprising revelation. Father, an archconservative Republican, must have been having a fit, knowing what she was doing out there, and yet he never said anything to that effect, he never went out and shut her party down. Maybe he was able to pretend it wasn't happening. Maybe going down there would have confronted him with the vulgar truth, that his little girl wasn't a little girl any longer, that she was very much an adult, a s.e.xually aggressive woman who was hanging around the pool with all manner of riffraff, drinking and smoking pot, lighting up casually, and pa.s.sing spliffs as if they were simply sharing cigarettes.

There were colorful drinks strewn about, drinks that could pa.s.s for punch, but I could tell from the way the girls giggled and t.i.ttered that there was booze in them for certain. Each new day, Ash seemed to ratchet up the poolside debauchery, as though challenging Father to step in, pushing his limits to see when he would break. Even I was surprised by his restraint. He seemed to be combating her by fighting a cold war, trying to freeze her out by utterly ignoring Ash's increasing decadence. It couldn't continue indefinitely. Eventually Ash would push him too far and Father would explode, raging as white hot as any atomic bomb. I couldn't help but wonder how many people would end up getting hurt, casualties in their little war. Would it be worth it in the end? What did she hope to prove?

I couldn't see everything that was happening down there by the pool, but over the next few weeks I saw enough. c.o.c.ktails drunk, joints smoked, drugs pa.s.sed, and pills popped, right there, directly under Father's nose. The only solace was that Father's increasing absences prevented him from witnessing every immoral spectacle. Somehow my homecoming and Ash's hedonistic explosion had coincided with Father's sudden disappearance. He was no longer home for dinner every night. In fact, some nights he didn't come home at all.

The stepmonster explained Father was staying overnight in town because of his work, and maybe that was true or maybe it was an excuse. What did I know? Father wasn't talking to me. His phone calls were relayed secondhand through an untrustworthy conductor. Tabitha could have reason to lie. Maybe Father was cheating on her. Maybe now that Tabitha was closing in on thirty she had lost her appeal and he was trading her in for a younger model. Maybe he wasn't that different from Ash after all. Maybe he was staying out late drinking or shacking up with another, younger version of Tabitha.

Our place in Lake Oswego was less than an hour outside Portland, but Father kept an apartment in the city, a condo in the Pearl District for nights he had to work late. I'd never been there, but he used to stay there a lot before Mother died. That all changed when he married Tabitha. Maybe it was because she was just nineteen and he didn't want to leave her alone, or didn't dare. Maybe he thought someone else-a neighbor, the pool boy, the UPS guy-would catch her eye if he wasn't there to keep her company. Whatever the cause, in the years since Mother's death, Father had come home nearly every single night. I guess that's what happens when middle-aged men marry teenagers, they have to watch their women a lot harder to make sure no Fabio-wannabe tennis instructor steals them away. It was also probably why Father hired our gardener, whose name I'd finally learned was Gualterio, even though Father insisted we call him Bob. He was about sixty years old, in the U.S. without papers, and probably poor as dirt, which I guess made Father feel comfortable Tabitha wouldn't run away with him.

Poor Bob, though, because he had to put up with Father's racist condescension and Ash's Caligula-style partying while he was just trying to keep the lawn mowed and shrubbery trimmed. Only that summer, I noticed that the gra.s.s seemed a little longer than usual and the topiary wasn't maintaining its customary definition. And every time I peeked out at Ash's wild poolside parties, I could see Bob lingering in the shadows, watching. I wondered what he was getting out of it, staring at all those young, supple bodies, watching the depraved debauchery playing out in the summer heat. I hoped he had someone to go home and share his hard-on with and he didn't just have to resort to beating off alone in the tool shed.

I stole another peek at the boys by the pool and noticed something surprising. The guys who'd been hanging around Ash all week weren't guys at all. They were women. Very masculine gals, to be sure, but girls, nonetheless. Having grown up in the Northwest, where even the straight women were utilitarian and capable of tossing eighty-pound bales of hay one-handed, it said a lot if someone's masculinity so overshadowed all visual cues to the contrary that I couldn't tell they were female-bodied.

But there they were, young women sporting swim trunks and T-shirts and the occasional ball cap. Of course, there were more feminine girls too, girls like Ash and a retro Bettie Page girl wearing a one piece, and a girl with gla.s.ses who wore surf shorts and stayed out of the water, lounging poolside with a fruity c.o.c.ktail. Another girl wore a different color thong bikini every day, and a short girl with piercings in her lip, nose, belly b.u.t.ton, and G.o.d knows where else, seemed to like having the details of her many tattoos slowly outlined by Ash's stray fingers.

Just like the men who preceded them, these women seemed to fawn over Ash, vying with each other to be the one to touch her, even casually. I watched the way their fingers brushed Ash's when they handed her a drink, the way they hoisted her on their shoulders for a game of chicken, or took their time rubbing sunscreen lotion on her legs, chest, belly.

It was odd to watch them compete for her attention. Ash seemed to choose a winner after a while, allowing only one girl to bring her drinks, pour sun-warmed pool water over her bronzed body, or light her cigarettes. But her fancy never lasted long. A few hours and the games began again, the compet.i.tion for Ash's favor. Some brought her gifts. Others did dangerous dives, risking head injury in shallow water, or picked fights with each other. It was like watching Wild Kingdom during rutting season when the young bucks crashed their antlers together in a display of virility and an effort to court single does. Were humans driven by the same base instincts? Were the tens of thousands of years of evolution, the accomplishments of brilliant minds like Socrates and Shakespeare and Madame Curie thrown out the window when it came to s.e.xual impulses and dating rituals?

A few of Ash's suitors seemed to rise above and differentiate themselves from the ma.s.ses. One girl brought along a guitar and serenaded Ash with songs. I couldn't make out the words from my balcony, and I've never mastered lip reading, but it was pretty clear the singer was professing her undying love. Ash looked bemused. She received each of her subjects' pathetic adorations like her Royal Highness, sitting on her throne, deigning to bestow the slightest smirk to those that pleased her with their antics.

The first time I witnessed it, the sheer shock of Ash f.u.c.king another girl in broad daylight threw me off my chair. My disgust was tangible. It made my skin crawl. Why was my sister so vulgar, so cra.s.s? For G.o.d sake! How come Ash never learned decorum like the rest of us?

That wasn't really fair. I knew she had been taught the rules of polite society. I'd seen Mother in action. So what drove Ash to violate all the tenets of good manners? It was revolting. But I couldn't turn away. It was like I had to watch. I had to pay silent witness to each surrender, see each woman throw her head back or bite her lip or cry out for more. I'd never made a lover respond with such enthusiasm. I'd never even experienced that kind of pa.s.sion myself, let alone had that kind of s.e.xual power, to bring a lover to their knees, to have them scream my name or beg for me not to stop.

I almost wished I could see more through my Peeping Tom gla.s.ses. I wanted to know what it was that Ash was actually doing, how her tongue flicked across that woman's c.l.i.t, or how her fingers moved inside this other woman, to elicit such joyful responses. I wanted to be closer, to hear the words the women screamed in their moment of ecstasy. I imagined them as vivid verses, poetry that rivaled the love poems whispered by Sappho.

Watching Ash seemed to evoke the kind of stirring in my loins my college lovers never did. When I realized this, for a moment I was overcome with disgust at myself. What kind of pervert was I? That was my sister, for G.o.d sake! I suddenly saw Ash standing before me naked, and the image sapped the s.e.xual arousal I'd been feeling. I threw down the sungla.s.ses and vowed never, ever to watch again. I retreated to my room and my books. I decided to go cold turkey.

On my second day of detox, I started to feel like there was a physical struggle going on. I had to fight this force that drew me to the sliding gla.s.s door that led out to the balcony. I put all my muscles into it, sweating and straining, but my feet were being pulled out from under me. The balcony was a black hole and I was caught in the gravitational pull. I refused to give in. I vowed to ride this all the way through the pain of withdrawal even if it got as bad as Trainspotting. I had to conquer my addiction.

I realized I wasn't some kind of incestuous freak. When I watched Ash seduce those women I wasn't putting myself in their shoes. I didn't want to do Ash, I wanted to be Ash. When I watched, it was like I was the one down there by the pool, taking those women. I was no longer shy, bookish Megan. I was pleasing those women myself, wielding s.e.xual prowess at seven feet deep. Freed of my moral dilemma, I gave myself permission to retrieve my binoculars and return to my post.

I realize, from an explicitly psychoa.n.a.lytic viewpoint, that my voyeurism was a little like scopophilia, and there was something I lost by being a watcher instead of an actor. So it's not surprising that I eventually was drawn into the fray myself.

But back then I convinced myself that watching my sister wasn't that bad of a vice. After all, I wasn't drinking and driving, or doing drugs, or involving anyone else in my perversion. That made me feel morally superior to Ash and, at that point in my life, I'd do an awful lot to feel superior to Ash in any way. So I told myself I wasn't doing anything wrong. In fact, I convinced myself I was taking control of my s.e.xuality. I was just imagining my way to erotic power, teaching myself s.e.xual fluency, burrowing out of a prison of frigidity.

Sometimes I looked down at the naked bodies by the pool and discovered it wasn't just Ash making love with another woman. There was a whole group of them. Sometimes they were entwined into a ball of indistinguishable limbs, or they would take turns going one-on-one, with Ash kissing and stroking them, lying on the gra.s.s, or leading them back into the pool, clutching the sides of the deep end so that the pa.s.sion wouldn't pull them under. I watched Ash's hands wander below the surface and the girls she was with, nay, the women, throw their heads back and open their mouths with silent moans or audible wails, or the same pleading sound that escaped my own lips and caught me off guard.

I don't know if Ash knew I was spying on her. She certainly never said so, not that we had a lot of conversations. Every once in a while I thought she was looking right at me, or I imagined she was winking at me, mid coitus, but most of the time I was pretty sure she was too caught up in the moment to be thinking about her twenty-two-year-old kid sister.

And I tried hard to remain un.o.btrusive, even more so after Cynthia began spending all of her time by our pool. Cynthia Newkirk was Ash's best friend, a lithe blonde with long hair and beautiful b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I'd first met her several summers earlier. Now I was discovering that Cynthia had a penchant for being topless nearly as often as Ash. Occasionally, Tabitha asked me to take mail from our main house out to the pool house for Ash, and I overheard her and Cynthia talking conquests, comparing s.e.xual notes about their respective prowess.

It was pretty clear that Ash was the winner in any carnal compet.i.tion, but I suspect Cynthia was trying to please her by offering as much t.i.tillation as possible, while secretly hoping to have Ash hanging on her every word just once, the way Cynthia and everyone else did whenever Ash opened her naturally perfect mouth. I had been forced to wear braces for three years, whereas Ash's forever-white teeth were straight from the moment they broke through her gums.

When Ash wasn't looking at Cynthia, I saw the way Cynthia's demeanor changed, the way she mooned over Ash like everyone else, absorbing every inch of Ash's body. Her longing glances lingered and her eyes flashed with jealousy whenever Ash paid attention to anyone else but her.

Cynthia's desire was so conspicuous I can still feel the weight of it after all this time. It lurks there like an unfulfilled ghost doomed to wander the grounds until its hunger is satiated. It still lingers in the air around the pool house like a poisonous gas that, heavier than the air around it, clings to the ground years after it was released. When you step through the gaseous cloud, a sickly sweet aroma settles in the back of your gullet and makes you gag. You choke and claw at your throat as the gas robs you of oxygen and knocks you to your knees.

Poolside, each and every day seemed like Cancun's spring break, but back inside the main house, things couldn't have been more different. I could see almost the entire estate from my balcony on the second floor of the east wing. The pool to the left, the gardens to the right, and straight back between two carefully manicured hedges was Ash's pool house. I could even see inside the pool house as it was only shielded by two large, unenc.u.mbered French windowed doors.

As the summer pa.s.sed by, I spent most of it in my bedroom, only emerging for a few hours in the morning and evening when I was required to join Father and the stepmonster in the dining room. Relations between Tabitha and me were as chilly as ever. At least she'd never tried to take Mother's place. But there had been a time, years ago, when Tabitha had tried to develop a relationship with me. She had grown up an only child and had these Pollyanna fantasies about what it'd be like to have sisters. I think that's why she wanted to be our friend.

Tabitha and Ash seemed to bond right away. Maybe I was a little jealous. Or maybe it was that way siblings have to differentiate themselves from each other, like if Ash was going to be best friends with Tabitha, then I sure as h.e.l.l wasn't. I'm not sure what it was, but I hadn't wanted a relationship with Tabitha back then, and my utter rejection of her overtures created a sort of permafrost between us and prevented any potential affection from taking root.

With Ash banished to the pool house and Father staying at the office longer and longer hours, it seemed as though all the warmth had drained from the house. Stepping in from outside was like walking into an industrial grade freezer.

The house was ridiculously large for four people and their servants, and without Ash, it seemed cavernous and empty. I was always tempted to holler yodels down the long halls and time how long it took for the echoes to return, but it would have required a calendar instead of a stopwatch. I think there's some kind of mathematical equation for determining the expanse of an estate with echo technology, like the way you calculate the distance of lightning from the time between a strike and the sound of thunder.

I'll never understand why Father moved us out there in the first place. Maybe it was his way of grieving or a desire to protect us girls after Mother died, that had him relocate us to this huge estate in Lake Oswego, a Portland suburb with neither the color nor the potential dangers of the city. Even when all of us were home, most of the rooms in the palatial house remained empty, save for unused furniture shrouded in those protective sheets that make a place particularly haunted and frightening when you're a tween.

I remember Ash not being much help in that department. She thought it was hilarious to torment me, and she'd often disappear for hours at a time and then claim she'd been abducted by the ghosts of former residents who were all killed in a bloodbath murder-suicide perpetrated by an insane patriarch.

Even now, the rooms we used sporadically or merely pa.s.sed through, like the sitting room, parlor, and formal dining room, remained untouched for weeks or months at a time-except by the maid staff, who were expected to clean every room at least once a week. My room was the size of a small apartment, and I had my own television set and refrigerator. For lunch all I had to do was call down and ask the cook to whip me up a sandwich. Mandated "family dinners"-how can it be a family dinner when Ash wasn't joining us?-at Casa Caulfield were quiet affairs.

Father seemed filled with rage when he was home, angrier than I'd ever seen him. Yet he never went out to the pool house and shut Ash down. I don't think he even attempted to talk with her once after kicking her out of the house. Ash could be annoying, but I don't understand why he didn't put his foot down, stop her debauchery, and bring her back inside. It was like he was waiting for her to change completely before he'd even acknowledge she still existed. They were both stubborn as mules and neither was willing to give an inch until the other gave a mile. I didn't realize it then, but she was begging for structure, not rebelling against it. I'll never understand why he didn't provide it.