Punish Me with Kisses

by William Bayer

  He paused in the middle of the lawn, turned and scanned the main house. She rocked back in her chair, braced her feet, held her breath. He couldn't see her; she was sitting in darkness. But still she wondered: might he have caught a glimmer of movement, have noticed a reflection, some clue to her presence there? Suddenly he was revealed, etched out, his dark hair highlighted by a beam. Then, just as quickly, he was lost again in the gloom. She was startled for a second until she realized what had happened, that there'd been a break in the clouds passing before the moon, a gap just large enough to admit a momentary shaft of light.

  That vision of him, short as it was, stayed with her, even as she saw him turn toward the poolhouse again. It was as if the moonlight had frozen him for an instant the way a flashlight beam can catch and freeze a prowling deer, and in those few seconds of illumination she thought she'd seen something on his face—indecision, perhaps, or worry, or something else, something attentive and alert, as if he felt himself in danger, as if he knew he was being watched.

  Voices, then—she strained to listen. They were greeting one another. She heard a laugh. The ritual she knew so well began: the old Dylan tunes, vague movements beyond the windows—little flashes of clothing, flesh, the suggestion of a dance. She couldn't see much, the moon was cut off again by the clouds, and the Maine night fog hung like thick black smoke just above the grass. She closed her eyes, imagined the two of them moving, swaying, a vacant smile on Suzie's face, a smoldering, a hunger distending his. They wouldn't touch, though they would come unbearably close. She imagined herself, then, in Suzie's place, synchronizing, matching her movements to his, feeling him, too, his aura, that dizzying essence that came off his body when he was eager, warm and close. He'd raised his hands now—she was sure of that, could feel them as they came down upon her shoulders. She'd reach out with her own hands, placed them lightly on his hips. They'd be barely dancing now, just moving back and forth, creating a slow, wonderful, agonizing tempo, rolling in unison, swaying with desire.

  Her rocking chair creaked back and forth as she dreamt of all of this, and then of Jared taking her in his arms.

  Had she slept? She shook her head, peered out again, tried to penetrate the darkness, the fog. There was no sign of anything, no sounds, though the lights in the poolhouse still were on. Far in the distance she could hear the roar of the sea, then something coming from the trees, the sound of an owl perhaps, then silence.

  They were smoking now—she was sure of it; that was the pattern, Suzie and her boyfriends made love, then smoked, then made love again. Were they tangled up with each other, naked limbs entwined, sharing a reefer now from Suzie's stash of dope? Perhaps she should go outside, creep around to one of the windows of the poolhouse and check. But that was crazy. She closed her eyes again and tried to recapture what it had been like, resting beside Jared that final time three weeks before when they'd made love in his room in town.

  He'd kissed her many times, and she remembered whispering to him as he did: "Yes, yes, I love you. Yes, I love you. Yes—"

  Suzie was right—she really was a child. Out of all her reading, her novels, her fantasies she'd spun a fabric of illusions. Thinking back made her flush with shame. She'd tried to turn a rough carnal exchange into a romance. She'd been a fool.

  Tears suddenly pulsed up to her eyes. The banality of her predicament—the lonely, neurotic, unsexy sibling who'd lost a boyfriend to her popular extroverted sister—made her want to cry. It was so stupid, such a stupid, dreary, tedious cliché. What was she doing now, staring down at the poolhouse, imagining herself with Jared, imagining him holding her, kissing her, then feeling so miserably sorry for herself? He'd been nice but shallow. She'd been nothing to him but an audience before whom he could rehearse his act, the sensitive primitive in need of a muse as he declaimed poetry to the sea. Suzie was right—it was better to use people than to be used. She, too, now would have to start dealing with the world as it was. She would find lovers, and enjoy them, and when she was done with them, when they bored her, when the magic was gone, she would send them away without a pang. She would harden herself, make herself strong and ruthless. Maybe that was the lesson of the summer, something valuable she could extract from all the pain.

  She squeezed her eyes shut again. She wanted to wring out every remnant of her tears. She was done with feeling sorry for herself. She would change her life, rid herself of her illusions. Suzie would help her, tell her what clothes to buy, show her how to redo her hair. Most important she'd teach her not to care, how to think only of herself.

  But then she cried again—she couldn't help it. It was too awful if life came down to that, if everyone was cold and hard and selfish and if love was found only in books. The tears now were streaming down her face. Oh, God, she thought, do I have to be a bitch?

  Sounds. Something was happening. She wiped her eyes and peered outside again. The underwater pool lights were on. She heard laughter, then a splash. She strained to see, but her tears obscured her view. Then she recognized Suzie's voice jeering in the night. She was standing naked beside the pool. She threw something at the water, then placed her hands on her hips and laughed. "That's it, fetch—"

  More motion. Jared swam to her. Penny could just make him out, kicking with his legs, causing the water to ripple and catch the turquoise light from underneath.

  Suzie reached down. Jared seemed to have something in his mouth. Suzie took it, patted him on the head, stepped back, threw it out again. It hit the water and bobbed, something white, some sort of ball.

  Penny saw Jared turn, then lost sight of him. He was probably swimming under water, she thought. Suddenly he emerged with the ball again. Suzie clapped her hands and laughed. Penny felt sick and looked away.

  So—Suzie had turned him into a dog. Now he swam for her, and fetched, and she patted him on his head as a reward. What degrading games her sister liked to play. She was really sick, and now Jared was like all the others—foolish, pathetic, weak.

  "What's the matter, loverboy? Tired already? Bored?"

  There was something too derisive in Suzie's tone, something too taunting, too full of scorn, contempt. She was going too far. No one acted like that. She was overplaying. Why?

  All that summer she had carried on in what had seemed impossibly over-heated ways. Just what was the point of this exhibition with Jared? Does she know I'm watching, listening? she wondered. Is she doing all this for me?

  Suzie went back to the porch of the poolhouse, turned off the pool lights, and disappeared inside. Penny heard a splash as if Jared was still in the water floundering around; then there was silence except for the wind rustling in the pines.

  Later she wasn't sure how long she slept, or even if she really had. She remembered closing her eyes, wanting to sleep, wanting to shut off her mind and her misery, wanting to stop thinking, to forget, and she had, or at least she'd dozed for a while in her rocking chair until she'd heard the noise. It wasn't loud, only a moan, a faint one, agonized enough to nudge her into wakefulness but hardly intense enough to jar her wide awake. She blinked a little, turned her head, then heard it again, more piteous this time, more agonized, something like the weakening helpless whimper of an injured animal in pain.

  She looked out the window. Everything was dark. Suddenly she heard a slamming sound and a shout, then a thud. She saw a flash of light, so quick she barely caught it, the sweep of a hand-held light. Someone rushed from the poolhouse, then paused just in front. Penny blinked and in that moment the figure disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

  Everything was quiet for a moment. She remembered feeling confused. Then the screaming began, a series of short, sharp, shrill terrifying cries, and then the dogs began to yelp, and she heard people moving in the house, talking, calling, running around. Someone switched on the floodlights mounted on the roof. All the grounds, the tennis court, the garden and the pool, were set ablaze, and the burglar alarm siren began to screech. As she watched the scene with a growing terror, Jared st
umbled out of the poolhouse, and her parents, the gardener and his wife, and the dogs converged around him on the lawn.

  The floodlights must have blinded him, for as he stood there, naked, screaming at them for help, awkward and unbalanced, his body wet and spattered with blood, he raised one hand to shield his eyes. In his other he held the shears, their long, glistening, pointed blades hanging open by his side.

  Afterward Penny would have no memory of her flight down the stairs, her own mad rush out onto the lawn. But she would never forget the sight that met her at the poolhouse door. While Jared stood behind her shaking, and her mother's incoherent sobs were lost in the siren still screaming from the house, she looked in at Suzie lying torn and dead upon the slashed waterbed. Her thick red blood was still gushing from the deep wounds in her breasts and stomach and cheeks, spreading into the surrounding flood, staining it an ever-thinning pink.

  Turning, she saw Jared drop the bloody shears onto the tiles. Then she lunged, knelt, and vomited into the pool.

  Chapter Two

  I sometimes wonder if Child will ever get her shit together. I sure hope so. Otherwise she's doomed. I know she's watching me all the time now, sad-eyed, hurt. I think she's trying to figure me out (Well, best of luck, Child!) I guess she thinks I'm crazy, and maybe I am. Maybe someday, too, I'll be able to explain it to her. In the meantime I have to do what I have to do—

  She hated being recognized.

  Once she was sitting alone in one of those New York pub-type restaurants with track lights and bare brick walls and hanging plants and out-of-work actors serving steaks to convivial foursomes when she heard someone talking at another table, heard "Maine" and "sisters" and "shears." They'd seen her, recognized her, begun to talk about the case. She called for her check and left.

  Another time she was window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, staring at a pair of expensive Italian shoes, when a well-dressed young woman with an intent expression on her face came up to her and said: "Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but weren't you involved in something a few years back?" She recoiled and walked away as fast as she could.

  Still another time she was jogging around the reservoir in Central Park early in the morning. The sky was blue, and the buildings were reflected in the water, and she was feeling wonderful, feeling as if she could run on and on and even merge with the wind, when a young man running toward her began to stare and scan her face, and then he said, "I know who you are!" and then he grinned. She felt like she was a freak or something who had to live out the rest of her life as this character in the Suzie Berring Murder Case, and then she ran all the harder, but the joy of it was gone, and she ended up in front of the Metropolitan Museum, panting and sweating and depressed, and, worst of all, remembering, reliving that awful time.

  Robinson had terrified her. Schrader said he wasn't a class-A trial lawyer, but he had scared her anyway. Tall and grim, he reminded her of a cruel gym teacher who browbeats awkward students for the amusement of the class. He was politically ambitious, a small-town prosecutor hungry for a conviction in a once-in-a-lifetime murder case.

  "You say it was foggy?" he asked her the second day of his cross-examination.

  "Yes."

  "And you were sleepy?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you heard something?"

  "Yes."

  "And you opened your eyes and saw this person running out, and then he disappeared?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you describe him, Miss Berring? Was he short or tall? Fat or thin?"

  "I couldn't see."

  "You couldn't see?"

  "I couldn't tell."

  "You're sure you saw someone?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I'm glad you're sure about that." There was snickering then, a little ripple of snickers across the courtroom. She looked at the jury: Schrader had told her to do that whenever there was a pause. Some of them were smiling, the two lobstermen and the pharmacist. The postmistress was as inscrutable as ever. The farmer's wife, who worked summers as a maid, stared off into space.

  "Now tell us, so we can all understand—just how did your eyes adjust so quickly to the light?"

  "There wasn't any light."

  "Really?"

  "I caught a glimpse—"

  "Ah! A glimpse! Earlier you told us you opened your eyes suddenly. Do you suppose you might have blinked?"

  "Maybe."

  "You did blink, didn't you, Miss Berring?"

  "I don't remember—" She had the feeling that he was setting her up.

  "Think back. You dozed off, and then you heard a noise, and then you opened your eyes, and you had to adjust to seeing in the dark. Now, to make that adjustment, didn't you have to blink?"

  "I guess I blinked. I think anyone would."

  "I think so, too. And that brings us to an interesting point—the miraculous disappearance of this 'intruder' who, according to your testimony, was standing there one moment and was gone the next. But now, couldn't this person have been standing there, and then, when you blinked, just stepped back inside?"

  So, that was the trap. "That's not what happened," she said. "That's not what I saw at all."

  "But you didn't see anything. You just told us you blinked."

  "You're twisting my words."

  "No. I think you really did see someone—the defendant."

  "I didn't see him!"

  "How can you be so sure? You can't describe him."

  "I would have recognized Jared."

  "Oh?"

  "I knew his shape, his build."

  "Yes," Robinson laughed. "I'm sure you knew his body very well, Miss Berring. We're quite prepared to stipulate to that."

  There were more snickers then, many more than before. She looked at the jury, injured, confused. Schrader stood up. "I think Mr. Robinson can spare us his sarcasm."

  But they were still snickering. The reporters were smirking and the artists who were sketching her were smiling as they drew. Robinson nodded to the judge and then turned back to her, that awful grin, the gym teacher's grin, still on his lips.

  He started in on the flashlight beam and tried to befuddle her with that, but, shaken as she was, she knew that she was on firm ground, knew that she'd seen the beam and that matched Jared's story of an intruder who'd shined a flashlight in his eyes. So she stood up to him. Schrader told her later that Robinson had made a mistake—he shouldn't have given her that chance to regain her confidence. Robinson must have realized his blunder because he turned savage at the end. "Isn't it a fact, Miss Berring," he demanded, "that you hated your sister because she stole your boyfriend away? Isn't it a fact that you're perjuring yourself now because you still love the defendant and would do anything to help him, including lie to this court, if you thought that would get him off?"

  Schrader objected. The judge instructed the jury to ignore the question. Robinson turned away, satisfied he'd made his point. But she was angry then, so angry she answered anyway. "No, those aren't facts, Mr. Robinson," she said. And then in a level voice: "Just cheap shots from a bully. That's all they are."

  She couldn't believe she said it even when people started to applaud. Schrader beamed. Jared shook his head in victorious disbelief. Robinson turned, stared at her confused. Her father, who'd been sitting grim-faced in the first row like Charles Lindbergh at the Hauptmann trial, smiled at her and winked. The judge pounded his gavel as reporters rushed out to file stories. That night she saw drawings of herself on network TV, her face twisted, creased with rage.

  "A dramatic turn of events at the Berring murder trial," the commentator said.

  That had been her single heroic moment. Even now she looked back on it with pride. It made up, she thought, for all the awful things, the headlines that had brought her to tears (SLAIN HEIRESS'S FATHER GRIM AS UGLY DUCKLING SISTER TESTIFIES), the terrifying chases by the camera crews as they tried to outrun her to her car. The savage unsigned letters, the ghoulish stories in the national newsprint weeklies, the lurid ones about Jare
d and Suzie and herself, the one which speculated that she was the killer and Jared was sacrificing himself to save her from prison—even these, somehow, seemed balanced off by that time she'd stood up to Robinson.

  It had been a turning point. Her father had acknowledged it. "You're doing good, kiddo," he told her. "I still think that boy's guilty as hell but I like the way you handled yourself today."

  She hated the crowds, the stares, the flashbulbs popping in her eyes, the hyped-up press reports that played upon the wealth and status of her family, the sordid gossip about a "deal"—her testimony in return for Schrader's promise not to expose Susan Berring's "nymphomania."

  It was one of those cases, people agreed, the ones that catch the country's imagination every several years. "A fancy-schmancy murder trial," Schrader called it, though to her it seemed more like a carnival in which she played the geek. People were fascinated by her position: sister of the victim acting as witness for the boy who everyone was certain had stabbed Suzie with the shears.

  "Does defense counsel really expect us to believe," asked Robinson in his summation, "that the defendant, having engaged in numerous sexual acts with Susan Berring, and then heavily drugged, asleep out on the diving board, suddenly was awakened by her cries for help, swam to the poolhouse, burst in upon an 'intruder' in the act of stabbing her, and then simply stood there while this 'intruder' blinded him with a flashlight, threw him to the floor, and then just" —he flung out his hands—"disappeared? Does he expect us to believe this corny intruder-with-the-flashlight story even though the police found no trace of any 'intruder'—not a footprint, a fingerprint, a sign of a break-in, any sign at all—and when the defendant was himself seen by at least five other people stumbling out of the murder room with the murder weapon in his hand?

  "No, Mr. Schrader wouldn't dare ask us to believe a word of this if it weren't for the so-called 'corroborating testimony' of Penny Berring. It's her testimony that's at the crux of this case. The question is: Can we believe Penny Berring? I submit that there are at least five good reasons why we cannot."