Part 7 (2/2)

But she did go too far at some point, didn't she? Something must have gone seriously wrong because Ash was dead and I was in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a s.e.x club talking about abuse allegations with a woman with pierced nipples, b.u.t.tless chaps, and a belly harness.

”I have to go,” I gasped before sprinting up the stairs and out into the night air, choking back tears and swallowing oxygen like I'd been underwater or buried alive. I couldn't breathe.

Was Ash really s.e.xually abused? Who could have done such a thing to her? All our uncles were old men now, our church elders all the same old men that we had as kids. n.o.body sprang to mind. That was the disturbing thing about pedophiles, how easily they blended into society. But why had it never come out over all these years? And who would have dared harm the favorite daughter of Bradford Thomas Caulfield? Surely whoever did such a thing must not have known Father, because if they had they would have known they were risking their very lives by touching Ash. I had absolutely no doubt that if my father had found someone even looking at Ash that way when she was just a child, he would have literally choked the life out of them.

I didn't recall any of our family friends going missing, or any male relatives dying in suspicious circ.u.mstances. Wasn't that proof that it didn't happen?

That night I fell into bed without a word to Shane, exhausted from a day of revelations and debauchery. Was this how Ash felt? s.e.xually stimulated one moment, embarra.s.sed and mortified the next? It left me with both a terrible sense of shame and a burning desire to return as soon as possible.

Chapter Thirteen.

It was the fifth round of a knock-down, drag-out match between Shane and me.

In the weeks since the s.e.x club fiasco I'd been back at least half a dozen times, usually for research but sometimes for more personal reasons. I didn't tell Shane, but she sensed something was up. The girlfriend usually knows. I almost told Tabitha once, too. I ached to tell someone about my s.e.xual odyssey, but the fear Father would find out was too great to make that leap.

Pat had taken me under his wing, introducing me to the other clubs in the city, sending me off alone or with his other friends to the girls-only affairs by the college, instructing me on going incognito to the city's rarified mixed-gender bathhouse, even accompanying me to the couples swing parties where a girl like Ash-or me-could bounce from room to room only accepting pleasure if she were so inclined.

Pat liked to swing, with girls, with boys, and even though Ash mostly liked women, I could see why she put out for Pat, too. He was all about pleasure, pure hedonism. It was thrilling, living only for that moment, not just that o.r.g.a.s.m, or the flush on skin when someone touched me, not even for the sheer joy of having a roomful of people l.u.s.t after you, if only for a night. It was the moment, being surrounded in that moment by nothing but s.e.xuality. It might be vacuous, living among these denizens of the night, planning nothing beyond my next trick. But I found my new world wholly intoxicating. I was no longer Megan Caulfield, bookworm and little sister. Here I was Queen Christina, Helen of Troy, Xaviera Hollander, Erica Jong. I was the happy hooker, the coffee, tea, or me girl, every erotic icon I had ever read about in literature, and I couldn't get enough of it.

There was an emptiness inside me that hadn't been filled, couldn't be filled until all of me was filled, and believe me, in these darkened nameless s.e.x clubs, I was finally getting my fill-in every sense of the word.

Unfortunately, there was little room for Shane in my new life and she seemed fully aware of it. She never once asked to join me in these adventures, and though she used to complain about my dullness in the sack, now she couldn't wait to have me scale things back s.e.xually.

”You're spending too much time in these s.e.x clubs, Megan,” she yelled. ”You're so far into that world that you're becoming just like your sister. Do you want to end up like her too?”

”My G.o.d, Shane, I would think you would care more about me than to threaten me like that.” I was livid. How dare she try to suppress my s.e.xual exploration with scare tactics!

”Babe, I'm not threatening you. I'm worried about you. You go out every night, you stay out all hours, I never know what you're doing out there. I feel like you're not just trying to find out what happened to Ash, you're trying to become Ash.”

Maybe I was. Maybe I liked the feeling. The truth was, I was enjoying the s.e.xual explorations more than I wanted to admit. But Shane, well f.u.c.k, Shane was the one who was bored with our old s.e.x life, so I'd think she'd be happy about these changes, maybe even proud of my s.e.xual expansion.

I was enraged that she wanted to thwart everything now that it was no longer convenient for her. I didn't want to be under her thumb, but she was determined to keep me there. It was like living with Father again, and the whole thing made me scream and cry all at once.

”You know, Shane, this is all rather rich coming from the woman who trolled around my sister like a tabby in heat for weeks on end. If you loathed Ash so much, why did you spend every waking moment hanging on her?”

Shane stared, full of bitterness and rage, but clearly mulling her words carefully. ”Megan, your sister was a wh.o.r.e. I hung around for the same reason everyone else hung around. Probably the same reason people hang around you nowadays. Feel better?” With that carefully metered yet bitter retort, Shane just turned and marched off, slamming the bedroom door behind her and then the front door, as she left the house. I heard the engine gun and I knew she and her stupid motorcycle were gone for the night, if not forever, and I threw myself on the bed crying like I had the day we buried my sister. It was a long, tortured night.

I was sitting at Father's office, the gnarled oak desk a rather foreboding presence there. I didn't know why he commanded my company, but I was there, the ever-dutiful daughter, sitting in the room I was usually banished from. In the very few times in my life that he had asked me to come here, I never noticed before how large and imposing the desk was. I was tempted to make an a.n.a.logy about my father and this beast of office furniture as my mind was doing its best to not focus on why I had been summoned by the man I so rarely had contact with.

So instead, I wondered why the CEO of a lumber corporation didn't even have a computer. Did his secretary do all his typing? What about monitoring the stock market or something? It was baffling. Combined with his charcoal leather executive chair-also about three times larger than the visitor chair I was seated in-the giant desk and dark wood walls made me feel like I was tiny and insignificant and powerless, like a third grader in the princ.i.p.al's office. I supposed this worked for Father, making his visitors and employees feel powerless and malleable, but it made me wonder about his confidence, his virility, even his desire to appear the authority at work and home.

Father was always so powerful, so foreboding, that I never dared cross him. After my mother's death, he detached himself from the family, sending Ash and me to boarding school for a time, and removing every indication of Mom from the home. I didn't even know where all her stuff went-maybe to the Junior League thrift store-but a lot of our childhood memories went with it. The dinosaur drawings, the Popsicle stick pot holder, that stupid clay ashtray, the family photos from the Grand Canyon-all of them were gone when we came back from that winter at Hollingsworth Academy.

We never once spoke about her after she was gone. Father wasn't an emotional guy. No, sc.r.a.p that. He was a clinical guy, and stern pragmatist, so I figured his aloofness made it so he was insensitive to a fault. He married almost immediately after Mom's death, when Tabitha was nineteen. It was the first time Father did anything that the country club set might frown upon, but I learned early on that at least half of his peers-the male half-were more than just okay with it, they were envious.

My best friend that year told me Father was having a midlife crisis, but he certainly never talked to us about it. Maybe he was. Maybe my mother's death jolted him awake and he decided to bank on the youth and beauty of a woman only two years older than his daughter. But the truth was, he remained an enigma to me, and honestly, to everyone around us. If he had a breakdown and turned to v.i.a.g.r.a and teen p.u.s.s.y as the cure-all for watching my mother die, I'd never know it. For us, she died, we were sent away, he got a new wife, we came home. n.o.body in our home ever discussed emotions after my mother died, least of all him.

When we did have talks with Father, they felt much like they did today, with me sitting in his office, surrounded by the trappings of masculinity, waiting to find out exactly what he or Tabitha thought I had done wrong this time.

”Your mother isn't happy about the shenanigans.” He didn't bother filling in the gaps, knowing that with a little information I'd hang myself.

”I've asked you not to call Tabitha my mother,” I retorted. The woman graduated high school the same year I arrived there, for f.u.c.k's sake. Why did he have to push this all the time? ”And I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.”

”I know about your visit to the pool house, Megan. You're certainly welcome to visit our house any time you like, but it's not appropriate for you to be breaking in, in the middle of the night, with some hooligan in tow. I want to know what the h.e.l.l you think you were doing?” He was trying to sound reserved, but I could sense a darkness underscoring his words. It was my house, too, until last year, and now it was their house and if I didn't plan to come to Sunday dinner I was somehow breaking in. Well, in this case I did, but still, it was the principle of the matter.

”f.u.c.k. I did not break in!” I protested a bit too loudly.

”Megan,” Father exclaimed in an odd monotone whisper. The yell whisper I liked to call it. ”We're in a professional setting here. I don't know what your workplace is like, but that's not appropriate language at my company.”

”I'm sorry. It's just frustrating. I didn't break in. I had the key and I let myself in. Is Tabitha upset, or are you upset?” He ignored my questions.

”And what were you doing there? Why did your friend need to be there?” Father said friend like it was an insult, a word that should be spat out in certain circ.u.mstances. I wondered what he envisioned when he imagined Shane. Did he simply see the woman corrupting his daughter, or something far more sinister? Did every mention of her and me lead him back to s.e.x? Another irony, given that so few things lead us to s.e.x nowadays.

The conversation continued on for what seemed like hours but must have only been a few minutes given Father's tight schedule. I managed to stave him off with a confession that I was missing Ash and wanted to feel close to her again-which wasn't untrue-and I promised not do it again. If I came to the house again I'd have to come alone and plan to stay for dinner per Tabitha's request. By the time I got back to my apartment, all I wanted to do was throw myself in a hot tub, pop in some schmaltzy meditation CD, and wash away the whole episode. Someone had other plans.

I didn't pay heed to the unlocked door. It was not uncommon for either Shane or me to walk out without locking it. It was Portland, after all, not Mexico City. In fact, I was slightly thrilled at the discovery, because it could mean that Shane had been back. But as I raced through the unlocked door, not even thinking about whether I should take her back after the way she spoke to me, my foot snagged something and I fell headfirst onto the gla.s.s coffee table. As I lay there, moaning, I glanced around, focusing, realizing that someone had torn the place apart. I couldn't tell if anything was missing, but everything was tattered like a scene from an old detective movie.

Except I wasn't fis.h.i.+ng some dead hooker out of a reservoir and following Whitey back to the smoking gun. I was just a chick with a girlfriend who hated me and a dead sister and an apartment that generally looked like Ikea furnished it completely. Today the whole place was...annihilated. Every drawer upturned, clothes, CDs, tchotchkes everywhere. The pillows and sofa cus.h.i.+ons had been slashed so violently I couldn't help think about Ash, the knife, her body, that night. Was this a sign of rage, or was I reading into it? Were those cus.h.i.+ons supposed to be me?

I didn't even race to the bathroom to vomit. I just knelt there, bewildered and frightened and throwing up on an area rug that once looked like a Lichtenstein painting and now felt like an eerie reminder of how unsafe I was.

Did Shane do this? Why would she come in and do this? When I could finally control my sobbing, I called her, not the police, which I know was the mark of a hysterical woman. I just couldn't believe she could hate me this much. Within twenty minutes Shane was by my side, calling the police and holding me as I rocked back and forth on the carpet, still sitting next to a pool of my own filth. She sounded genuinely concerned when I called, though I didn't recall even stringing together more than a few sentences before sobbing again. My gut instincts were right...well, to a point. Shane had been there that morning and packed her few meager belongings in a duffel she was planning to return. She swore to me that she didn't molest the apartment. That must have been left to a burglar, but why on earth they picked me I had no idea.

As Shane and I made our way through each corner and drawer of the few rooms, we tried cataloguing all that could've been worthwhile to an ordinary thief-DVD player, stereo, laptop, iPod, Gucci bags. s.h.i.+t, thieves have been known to take Calphalon pans and faux jewelry, but none of that was gone, not even the diamond ring I got for my high school graduation gift or a giant Louis Vuitton suitcase that belonged to Ash. In fact, nothing was missing. Nothing at all, except two of Ash's tattered old diaries that were sitting on my nightstand (next to a pricey Jonathan Adler lamp, even).

The horror of what might really have been going on hit me: Ash's killer knew I was on to her. Or him. The killer knew I was getting close. h.e.l.l, I didn't even know I was getting close until this very moment when I realized that my home was burglarized, torn apart piece by piece, all in search of Ash's diaries.

”Oh, my G.o.d!” I heard myself shout as I darted to the vanity. Ash's other diaries, including the one I dubbed The Real s.e.x Diary, were hidden along with her home movies and the camera. Usually they were all stored in a cubby, hidden in the wall behind a two-way mirror in front of the bed. But one day I got worried and I had Shane fas.h.i.+on a new hiding place in the bottom of the vanity. The bottom drawer had a false front so when you pulled it out, you only saw the usual cosmetics, but behind the drawer was another door that opened into an attached cubicle fas.h.i.+oned into the brick and drywall behind the cabinet. It was ingenious. I thought so when Shane built it, and now as I was pulling the drawer apart and jamming my hand inside the opening, feeling around for all that was left of Ash, I was convinced that Shane was telling the truth.

Even if she had been there, she knew exactly where everything was-including those diaries and DVDs. If she wanted to get rid of them, she could have done so a long time ago. Since they were still there, that exonerated Shane. So if the burglar was after these diaries, they only got two of them because they didn't know where the rest were hidden. So just who, then, didn't know?

The real s.e.x diary of Ashley Caulfield, July 4 Last night I transcended it all. I feel like things are changing for me from the inside out. I'm getting to the point where I can demand that The One give me everything I need. I'll offer it too. I've taken this to the point of no return. There's no turning back for us now. Last night I was at another play party strapped into a PVC jacket that held my arms close to my chest, while women took turns lapping at my c.u.n.t, juices running down the sides of their faces like e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e from me. It made me delirious and I came like rockets watching them on all fours begging me for more. Sure, pleasure me, b.i.t.c.hes. But at the end, something did click, something did change, because they opened up the jacket and released my arms, and for the first time in a long time I felt a bit free myself. I know I'm going to walk away from this life and I'm taking The One with me. I'm resolved. It's going to happen. I won't let anyone stop us.

Though Shane wasn't responsible for the break-in, she was still insistent on the breakup. It hardly mattered to me, though, because all I wanted to do was absorb myself in Ash's diaries-the ones the burglar didn't discover. I was worse than I was that summer I returned home. At least then I would stop to eat or stare at Ash's beautiful friends from the balcony. But now I was a woman possessed. The first few days I called in sick, but soon my boss insisted I take a personal leave, never once asking me to set a date for my return. I couldn't. I was busy spending every waking moment poring through Ash's entries over and over again trying to understand her all-too-cryptic pa.s.sages. She must have been serious about her privacy to go to these lengths-hiding diaries, making acronyms and pseudonyms for so many people and places. But what was my sister hiding, and from whom? I felt like the pa.s.sages in her journals were trying to say something, she was trying to speak to me, as cliched as it sounds, and I just couldn't wrap my d.a.m.n head around it.

I had to read and reread and then go to the Internet and scour online groups to unlock each reference. Was Double Down a bar? A person? An action? Who were the s.l.u.ts and Squares? When I did discover the answers-that s.l.u.ts and Squares was a dance night with queer burlesque performers, for instance, or that the Double Down was a lesbian party or that Bruce was a local drag king or that Persephone was a s.e.xy fire dancer at Rose City Vaudeville-it didn't lead me to any real keys to unlocking the mysteries of my dead sister. Everything seemed rather ordinary by the time I unlocked it. So why then all the subterfuge? Maybe she was just too high to make sense? Or maybe drugs made her paranoid?

Even more frustrating were the clues that were entirely indecipherable. Was MILF truly the American Pie definition-that is, a ”Mom I'd Like to f.u.c.k”-or some other obscure Portland underground reference? m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic Inters.e.x Lesbian Femme? Married Illiterate Lesbian Friend? Often times I had to skip an entry altogether as I had no clue what it was really about. Who f.u.c.king knows? And until a moment ago I was wondering, who f.u.c.king knows if any of it even had anything to do with why she died.

And then it struck me. One pa.s.sage that left me shaking my head not with frustration but with sudden awareness.

The real s.e.x diary of Ashley Caulfield, October 31 The One isn't a MILF. Or is a MILF? DDO's MILF, but not my MILF. Hard to gauge what anyone feels inside, though. I know that from how much I want to turn myself inside out, cut a scar from throat to c.u.n.t and just turn it all inside out so the whole world can know what I'm feeling, the pain of hiding, of wanting, of holding back, of keeping it all in for so long feels today like way too much. But what would He say? What would they all say? The Junior League. Chaste little kiddo with her nose in a book so long she's lost touch with how I hurt, how I bleed, just like her. Or does she remember? Does she already know? She looks like she knows something. Oh, Mother May I tell? Tell her, tell him, tell them all you're the one offering me a punishment with kisses now?

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