No Place Like Home

by April Hill

  I opened the back door and went out onto the little flagstone patio wearing nothing but the hugely oversized UCLA tee shirt I usually wore to bed, and then sat on the warm edge of the pool with my legs dangling in the water. Like everything else here, the pool was tiny. It consumed virtually every inch of the handkerchief-sized "backyard, except for a narrow pathway that allowed the pool guy to move around, scooping up the occasional leaf or twig from the shimmering turquoise water. The entire blue Pacific a few miles away, I thought, and I’m stuck each day in a pool the size of a litter box. Another day in my fucking Petite Paradise. I kicked the inflated alligator (which probably belonged to Dopey), across the teeny-weeny pool with one mean-spirited kick. It must be nice to be rich.

  Pretty soon, I heard Hank in the house, talking to my new friend, Officer Farnum, and a few minutes later, I heard Farnum drive away. Hank came out onto the patio looking very tired, and for several moments he said nothing, just stood there with his hands on his hips looking like he was about to drop from exhaustion. At first, it seemed I might escape with nothing more than a lecture.

  No such luck.

  "Aside from the fact that you lied to me and sneaked out again, I’ve been trying to call you all day," he said calmly. "Where’s the cell phone I gave you?"

  "Maybe in Mona’s car?" I suggested. "Okay, so I don’t remember exactly. Was it valuable?"

  Hank cracked.

  "Are you working at driving me crazy, or does this just come naturally?" he yelled.

  "Geez, Hank! Don’t take it personally," I yelled back. "I don’t like cell phones!"

  "And how would you know that?" he bellowed. "So far, you’ve never used one! And I don’t give a damn what you like or don’t like. I told you to keep it with you all the time."

  I stood up, faced him eye to eye, (well, more like eye to chest), and shouted right back. "Would you like to know what you can do with your fucking cell phone? "

  Hank grabbed me by both arms and dumped me face down across the foot of the lounge, then flung up the tail of the giant T-shirt to expose my wantonly naked rear end. Sprawled in this enchanting position, with my head dangling over the end and my nose maybe an inch from the flagstone, I was in no position to try an appeal to his reasonable side, let alone his erotic one. My hopes of escaping retribution were dashed when I heard him rip off a couple of switches from Snow White’s beautifully tended miniature shrubbery. A second later, he laced into my butt with what I, for one, regarded as an excess of enthusiasm.

  I should point out this juncture that Hank’s sense of humor is the best (okay, maybe the second best) thing about Hank. But, alas, when he loses this great sense of humor, he tends to do so in a very big way. Like, now, for instance. After he’d swatted just about everything within reach, he re-positioned me over the inflatable alligator and started over. The result of this was that the switches found their way into several places that do not customarily get a lot of attention— or sunshine. I preferred to believe this wasn’t strictly intentional, but with the opposite sex, when they’re out to prove who’s "boss," one never knows, does one?

  At that point, he seemed to occur to him that my screeching (which included a variety of Anglo-Saxon expletives) could be overheard by the nice folks in the "big house." He pulled me up and tossed the switches into the bushes, and shoved me back inside the house, encouraging me to move with a couple of stinging barehanded swats. Silly me, of course, thought the show was over, but it was more like a brief intermission. Once we were safely (and privately) in the tiny kitchen, Hank fished a big wooden spoon from the pile of dirty dishes in the cutesy little sink, and finished the matinee with me bent shrieking and bouncing over the kitchen counter. In an attempt to defend my already well-thatched behind, I grabbed a potholder, but found that a six inch square of quilted blue gingham was no match for a cooking utensil the size of a saucer.

  I was still facedown over the sink, staring at my dirty dishes, when Hank finally landed the last agonizing thwack, splitting the handle of the spoon, and eliciting a wail from me that was probably heard three blocks away. I was aflame from mid-butt to mid thigh, but I was still ready for a fight.

  "That hurt, you son- of-a-bitch!" I screamed, though I harbored no doubt at all that he knew perfectly well how much it hurt. "And it wasn’t fair! All I did was..."

  Hank slammed his cell phone down on the counter next to my ear. "Keep the damned phone on you, every goddamned minute! Do— you— understand?" When he started whacking again, punctuating the probably rhetorical question with his bare hand, I picked up the phone and screamed into it.

  "YES, GODDAMNIT! I understand!"

  Suddenly, Hank broke up laughing. He reached down and clicked the phone off.

  "You’re hopeless. Put some clothes on and I’ll send someone out to get dinner." He tossed the broken spoon back in the sink and wandered into the adjoining living room, with me trailing behind. Since my rear end still felt scalded, I elected to stay miffed. "I’m not hungry," I pouted.

  "Suit yourself. I’ll finish last night’s pizza."

  "I ate it," I snapped. "Some people never get out of their damned playhouses for lunch, like some other people. Tell me something. Do you really expect me to just stay trapped here, locked up like a snarling, cage-maddened rat, never able to leave?"

  "Pretty much," Hank said mildly, flipping through the TV guide.

  "And what, exactly, makes you think I’m going to put up with that?" I asked incredulously.

  Hank smiled. "Well, for one thing, there's a drawer full of spatulas and wooden spoons in that kitchen. And there’s your hairbrush, of course, and don’t forget the Japanese fish. I brought it along, just in case. Besides," he added, leaning back and patting the couch next to him. "This should all be over soon. We’ve got our eye on a guy right now who fits the bill, and we’re going to pick him up tomorrow. "

  "You promise?" I asked dubiously, seating my still tender rear end next to him.

  Hank shook his head. "No promises, but it looks good. Just give me a couple of days."

  "An then what?"

  "And then, I’ll spring you. You can scamper up and down Hollywood Boulevard with Mona and shop for sex toys to your heart’s content."

  "You know," I observed, reaching down to touch my smarting butt with extreme care. "This Spanking Creep only did this once. You’re averaging twice a day, after today."

  "Ah, yes," he said with a grin, "But I'm doing it for your own good."

  I made a face. "Funny how my ass can’t tell the difference."

  After what I will henceforth refer to as "Flagellation Friday," it was my firm intention to do nothing else to bring on another spanking, since I felt the effects of that day’s events well into the second or third day, and could even see the results in the mirror. I accomplished this by standing on the toilet seat and looking back over my shoulder into the itsy-bitsy mirror in the teeny-weeny bathroom. Pretty tacky, but my excuse is that I’ve always taken a scientific interest in a lot of very peculiar things. I once spent two weeks studying the relative benefits of the various ways of drowning, on the theory that such research might come in useful some day. It’s not the kind of thing you can leave until the last minute. Studying the effects of a large wooden spoon on bare skin is the same thing, really, and in case you’re interested, this specific spoon, being oval in shape, left marks that looked like colored Easter eggs —pink, lavender, and red, of course. I could have just taken the spanking and gotten nothing educational out of it, but hey, that’s not my style.

  It didn’t even take a week, however, before I brought on yet another walloping, this time for leaving the door(s) unlocked. Hank came home late that night, walked in the front door without having to use his keys, and got very bent out of shape when he found the back door wide open—to catch a breeze.

  Educational Footnote: A leather belt leaves no festive holiday shapes on the female bottom, but merely a series of painfully raised pink and purplish stripes and blotches. Yes, things aroun
d Snow White’s place were getting very tense.

  They got a lot tenser that night, when Hank arrived home looking grimmer than usual, and asked me to sit down so he could talk to me. My stomach tightened.

  "Do you remember a guy named Dwight Lawrence?" he asked, his face drawn.

  I was dumbfounded. "Dwight? Where on Earth did you hear about him? I haven’t thought about poor old Dwight in years.”

  "Where did he stand, in the list of husbands?" he asked.

  I thought back. "Mom never actually married Dwight. She was going to, but something happened, and she called it off. He came a few years after Billy, and had one of the shortest runs of any of Mom’s conquests. I was just finishing high school, and she brought Dwight to the house for dinner. She was obviously smitten. It had been a long time between men, for Mom, anyway, and Dwight was one of these take-charge types, and a successful businessman. Perfect for her. He was a big, bluff guy, and good natured, and he laughed a lot. He used to slap Mom on the behind, and she’d blush and giggle like a teenager. All that corny stuff irritated me, though, since I’d just entered my sophisticated intellectual phase, and I’m afraid I was really nasty to him. Corrected his English and his grammar, stuff light that. God, if any of Mom’s husbands had a right to smack my rude little butt, it should have been poor Dwight. But he seemed to like me, in spite of my personality disorder, and I could tell that he was crazy about Mom, so he put up with me. He started hanging around a lot, just helping out, making a couple of little repairs on the house, even working on that dumb broken fireplace, and then, just like that, he goes away. Mom never talked about it, but I know it nearly killed her. I heard he closed his business and retired to Wyoming, or someplace."

  "Denver," Hank said quietly. "He died two years ago. He’d gone bankrupt a couple of times, and was living on disability."

  "Oh, God! I’m sorry to hear that. How do you.…"

  Hank took a deep breath, and dropped a bomb. "Dwight Lawrence’s widow says you accused him of sexually molesting you."

  I stared for a moment before responding. "What?"

  "You didn’t?" Hank asked. "He didn’t?"

  "Neither one," I explained, still dumbfounded. "Why would he say such a thing?"

  Hank reached inside his jacket and pulled out several tattered papers. "Did you write these?"

  I took the papers and glanced at them. Each was typewritten on lined three-ring notebook paper, like we all used in high school. At the bottom of each folded page was what certainly looked like my signature.

  The letters were short, and to the point. Mostly threats. If he ever spoke to me or my mother again, or tried to contact either of us, I would tell her about the many times he had molested me, and the one time he had raped me— and then I would go to the police.

  "But it’s not true!" I repeated, astonished at the letter’s vile accusations. "He never so much as touched me! And this does look like my writing, then, but I sure as hell didn’t write it. What’s going on, Hank?"

  Hank shook his head. "I think we need to talk to your mother."

  I called Mom early the next morning.

  Hank and I sat in Mom’s white and gold French-provincial living room, while he did his best to get her to talk, but for the first hour, she refused to budge. She didn’t know what we were talking about, she insisted. Finally, I told Hank to show her the letters.

  Mom’s eyes clouded. "Then it was true," she said softly. "I hoped..."

  "No, Mom," I interrupted. "It wasn't true. I never wrote those letters. Any of them."

  It took another half hour of cajoling before Mom gave up the story. It seems she had received —some letters, too—not from, but about Dwight.

  "There were two, "she explained, wiping her eyes. "One from a woman he had lived with a while back, and another from his parole officer? Is that what they call it, a parole officer?" Hank nodded.

  "The woman wrote that she had a daughter about the same age as you were then," Mom went on, "and she said she writing to warn me about Dwight. It was a terrible letter. She said her daughter had never been the same since...since the awful things Dwight did to her. The other letter, from the police officer, was more like an official form, with a list of the times Dwight had been arrested for...for things like that. I wrote him one last letter to tell him that I never wanted to see him again, and not to call. He did phone me—just once— and I screamed at him that I was going to call the police and have him arrested. After that, I never heard from him again."

  "My God," I breathed. "He must have thought we were both insane. But why wouldn’t he have tried to straighten it out, get the truth out, or something?"

  "That kind of lie is hard to fight, Karen,” Hank explained. “Especially back then. Just the accusation could ruin someone, and not many mothers would take the chance on a man, anyway, after what your Mom was told. He was probably scared shitless...Sorry, Mrs....?"

  "Jaworski," Mom said. "It’s Mrs. Leo Jaworski, now."

  "In any case, it’s pretty clear that none of these accusations was true," Hank said. "I checked the records very thoroughly, Mrs. Jaworski. There’s no record of any complaint, charge, or even an investigation against the man, in this state, or any other that I can find. Someone set this thing up very well. Someone who wanted to ruin Dwight Lawrence—or keep him away from you and your daughter."

  Mom just sort of sat there, looking very small, and older than I’d seen her in years. While Hank went through her letters again, I asked a few of my own questions.

  "Do you have any pictures, Mom, of the house when we were still living there? Or of you and I with any of...of the husbands?" All right. I couldn’t think of another way to put it. Mom just sighed, went to the bedroom, and came back with several photo albums. I took the books, kissed her good-bye, and we left. As we drove away, I could see Mom watching us out the front window. I felt worse for her than I had in years.

  When Hank and I got home, I couldn’t get poor Dwight out of my mind. I remembered so little about him, but it was impossible to imagine why anyone we knew would have wanted to hurt him, or slander him. We went to bed, and I lay awake for hours, turning everything over in my head. I needed to get into that garage, even if I got beaten senseless for it. I also needed to figure out what it was that had bothered me about the house itself, and I sure as hell couldn’t do it here, in Snow White’s cottage.

  About two in the morning, after trying to fall asleep for three hours, I left Hank sleeping peacefully, and went to look through the photo albums, again.

  There were a lot of pictures of me performing for the camera. Me, posed with several of the Husbands. Me, dressed in a variety of overly frilly dresses. Curiously enough, as I got older in the photographs, the Husbands seemed to get younger. There were a couple of me as a baby and then a toddler, with my father, but most of them were of Anson and I. Smiling Anson, in those tortoise-shell eyeglass frames with their ugly, thick lenses, and all those damned dolls! I hadn’t really thought about the dolls for years, but Anson had a real thing about dolls He showered me with them, apparently hoping I’d turn into a ladylike little princess instead of the constantly grubby, unkempt tomboy I was. Here I was in the fabulous Teddy Bear chair, when both Teddy and I were a lot newer. I was holding a tall, beautiful Victorian bisque doll that I still remembered vaguely. Her name was Isabelle, and she had long, yellow hair and blue glass eyes that opened and closed, with real eyelashes. She was almost as tall as I was, and a hell of a lot better looking.

  In the faded photos, the White Rancho looked like it always had. White, squat, and ugly. Oddly misshapen, somehow. The next photo stopped me cold, though. It was marked "Christmas, 1980." Mom was there, standing in the driveway and beaming widely, preening for the camera in a ratty-looking long fur coat of very dark fur. Beaver, maybe, but definitely cheap. Behind her, I was crawling around on a neatly stacked pile of fireplace logs, so the picture had to have been taken when the fireplace still worked. But the surprising thing about the photo was that it
showed a large picture window at the front of the house— a living room window.

  Anson's work, I realized with a small laugh. Mom had always said he wasn’t much of a carpenter, despite his good intentions, and I had to agree. Nobody with an design sense would have thought removing a window from the White Rancho was an improvement.

  I fell asleep looking through the albums, and Hank shook me gently awake before he left for work. I spent the morning trying to write, but thinking, instead, of how to get back to the house—without being caught, of course. Not getting caught wasn’t something I’d shown much talent for, so this time, I’d need a better plan.

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Life at Snow White’s Cottage was unbelievably boring, and with the late fall heat receding, I was stuck inside a lot of the time. Winter was coming, and in Southern California, that doesn’t mean crisp days and frost on the pumpkin. It means rain. And more rain. Then the mud starts to slide, houses slip merrily down hillsides, and you know that Christmas can’t be far off. Ho, ho, ho!