The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (11 page)

‘Pippa, are you in school?' asked Renee.

‘I'm studying at home,' I said.

‘I never even graduated,' she said.

‘When did you … start –'

‘Oh, this?' she said, raising her bound wrists, the chain tinkling. ‘Um … we were both just kids, and one day we were making out in Miles's garage and he tied me up and we just really liked it!' Renee smiled, and deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She was so wholesome. Miles returned with a bottle of Dr Pepper and handed it to Renee, thanking Jim as he took back the leash.

‘That's Stan and Lisa,' Renee said to me, indicating the spotlit pair in the center of the room. ‘They are so cute, he always says he loves her after their show is over.'

I surveyed the crowd clustered around Stan and Lisa. Among them, a very young, light-haired girl, about six months pregnant, had a collar and leash around her neck, but she was holding the handle of the leash herself. She had an intent look on her luminous face as she watched Stan, who was now flicking a cat-o'-nine-tails onto the expanse of Lisa's flesh, leaving little red stripes on her white skin. I couldn't take my eyes off the pregnant girl. What was she doing here? Why was she holding her own leash?

A stern ‘Sit!' from Miles drew my attention away. To my surprise, Shelly and shackled Renee were now kissing! Miles let them make out for a few seconds, Renee half-standing to get a better purchase on Shelly, then he jerked back on her leash, forcing her to sit. Then it started up again.

‘I don't think Trish would be too happy about you seeing this,' said Jim.

‘Oh, this is where you draw the line?' I asked. ‘Some chaperone.'

He smiled widely, and I could see he was missing a number of teeth on the side of his mouth. Miles checked his watch and stood up, leading Renee from her seat. She complimented me on my sundress, indenting her dimples with a smile. As they left, I saw that Kat had her boot on the prone, shackled man's sooty head and was resting it there, conquering, immobile, like a Victorian hunter posing for a daguerreotype with his foot on a dead lion. Shelly, alone now, watched from her chair. The dead-eyed look those women gave each other intrigued and frightened me. Jim took my arm. I glanced back at the pregnant girl, but she was gone; Stan and Lisa had vanished. When I looked to Kat again, her eyes were clamped on me with an impersonal, scrutinizing stare. I returned her gaze too long, I knew – too long to be right, too long for Aunt Trish.

That night, in the dark, awake under the covers on the lumpy couch in Kat's room, I lay in wait for memories of my Mr Brown: his long, pale fingers, the rough tweed of his worn jacket that smelled of pipe tobacco when I pressed my nose in it, the round toes of his brogans, the dull rose gold of his wedding band as it glinted in the half-light. He was so dear, so kind, my Mr Brown. He always caressed me with tender longing, as if saying goodbye. He taught my hands and my mouth with a solemn air, an educator even in his pleasure. Once, he drove me all the way to the shore during Easter break, our only foray outside the world of his little study. It was a warm, cloudy day in April. There were three people on the pebbly beach: a heavy man in khaki shorts and a windbreaker; a small woman with frizzy, brown hair; and a tubby kid with a kite that wouldn't quite lift off the ground, though it kept making little, hopeful hops into the air.

Mr Brown and I pulled off our clothes. We both had on our bathing suits underneath. His was baggy green nylon. His legs
were thin, the hair on them reddish. I was in my shiny blue swim team Speedo suit, the only one I owned. It made my chest look flat, which I resented. But Mr Brown knew better. We hobbled along for a while, the stones bruising our tender feet, until we came to a cluster of rocks, about fifty yards from where the people were. We sat and watched the gulls, creamy white, gliding against the ice-gray sky. He turned to me and said, ‘You know that sand is just very finely ground rock.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘That must take forever.'

‘Millions of years,' he said, letting some sand sift through his long, curled fingers. I put my forefinger in the elastic band of his swim trunks and watched his eyes glaze over, as they always did when desire infused him. He was sitting with his back to the beach. No one could see. I firmly stroked those nylon swim trunks until he closed his eyes in rapture. Oh, heaven.

And when our days of tenderness were over, Mr Brown left me a virgin. Yes, after all that fuss, I lay on the couch in Aunt Trish's apartment as whole as the day I was born. I had tried to make it otherwise. I was desperate for Mr Brown to fuck me, but he said that was a step too far. I wanted to marry him. I had it all worked out: we would live in a little house in Massachusetts, or someplace else in the liberal far north; he would get a job at one of the fancy boarding schools up there, and I would spend the day getting myself ready for him, softening my skin, brushing my hair, plucking my eyebrows. Every night, my beloved would return to me, and come close to dying of pleasure. Mr Brown chuckled sadly when I recounted my fantasy, lowering his eyelids so I could see the veins through the papery skin, and said, ‘Oh, my girl, no, you're made for better things.' That statement always made me feel lonely, because it implied an end to our affair but also because it hinted at some promise inside me that I was unaware of, like a tumor embedded in my flesh, making ready to bloom. I felt frightened of the future then, and huddled up against my lover's hard chest, seeking some hint of feminine softness, some
extra bit of flesh to hang on to. But there was none. Mr Brown's body was stiff as a tree.

Still wakeful on the night of the whips and chains, I mulled over my life so far. I was a botch. I could see no future. I had no plans. I saw no example I wished to follow. I didn't want to be a nurse, or a stewardess, or a secretary; I didn't want to work in the meatpacking district or be a housewife. I just wanted to prowl around. I walked the streets endlessly. Watching people. I had a ravening mind; I wanted I wanted I wanted. I wanted into people's lives. I followed couples as they scurried down the street, carrying groceries and bunches of flowers, children tugging on their arms. I followed businessmen on their way from work. I followed elegantly dressed women who marched resolutely down the street and raised their hands for taxis. They were all bustling, all running, all rushing. Everyone in New York City seemed to have a purpose, except for me. I was driven by a need with no end, no goal. I was looking for love, I think, though that's not what it felt like at the time. At the time I felt hard and cold as a knife in the snow.

One time I followed this guy. His hair was a tangled web of blond curls that fell to hunched, narrow shoulders. He made me think of a cattail reed. It was wickedly cold, but all he was wearing was a pin-striped suit and a cashmere scarf. Sneakers. I walked out of work, saw him pass me by, and followed him all the way from Orchard Street to Twenty-third and First. He ducked into a coffee shop. I walked in behind him. He sat at the counter. I sat beside him. He ordered pea soup. I asked for hot chocolate. I looked at his face. He was older than I thought. At least twenty-five. His nose was red. He felt my stare, turned. His face was pale, with a high forehead and Nordic features, like a knight, it seemed to me. He looked right at me and shivered. ‘Freezing,' he said, blowing into his cupped hands.

‘You're not wearing enough,' I said.

‘I thought I'd be straight in a cab,' he said. ‘I always forget they change shifts this time of day.' His eyes passed over my body. ‘You're all bundled up.'

‘I always walk home from work,' I said.

His soup came, then my cocoa. We ignored each other for a few moments.

‘What's your job?' he asked. ‘If you don't mind –'

‘I wait tables,' I said.

‘That's a tough job.'

‘Have you ever –?'

‘No.'

I knew we would walk to his place. I wasn't thinking about making love; he was going to be my boyfriend, that was all. I was already imagining our apartment. It would have those
round, paper globe shades on all the lights, and shelves filled with books. He was clearly a reader. So, after he finished his soup, said goodbye politely, and walked out, my cheeks burned with humiliation and loss.

I knew Kat was no good for Aunt Trish, I saw she was playing her, but I was drawn to her in spite of myself. I guess I figured she was bad like me. Good people like Aunt Trish filled me with anxiety because I knew one day they would see I was just a destructive little fucker. Kat bought me clothes, tight jeans and floaty tops, platform shoes and huge hoop earrings. I was flattered by her attention. When Aunt Trish saw me in my new getups, she would click her tongue and blush, but she wouldn't say a word against Kat. All she'd say was ‘You better not wear that when you go back home to visit.' That was her way of saying I better visit. My father called every few days to see how I was doing, and then Suky would get on the line. I missed her terribly, but when I heard that drug in her voice, I felt violence rising up in me. My voice went dead; I was abrupt, rude, horrible to her. Then I would hang up and cry, sob into my pillow, ‘I was mean, I was mean,' and Trish would stroke my head until I fell asleep.

Kat always looked unrecognizable when she went to work in a cheap skirt suit and pumps, her thick hair teased to high heaven, lips slippery with gloss, eyelids iridescent blue. She looked like she was in drag. But one morning, after Trish left, as I washed the breakfast dishes, sponged down the table, swept the floor, Kat stood observing me in her dressing robe, her arms folded. I felt self-conscious and a little alarmed. Ever since the night at the club, when she had set her foot on that shackled man's head and stared at Shelly, I had known she was a little bit dangerous. That novel she was writing – I had read it, of course. It was full of sex. That's pretty much all it was. It was
a book about a young woman named Kitty, and her adventures with other women. Kitty went prowling around hunting for pleasure. When she saw a girl she liked, she pounced. It didn't matter if her prey was a married woman of fifty or a child of twelve. Kitty always got her girl. I read the latest installment every night when I went to bed. It made such an impression on me that I committed one passage of her prose to heart:

Kat made sense to me once I started reading her novel. I had seen part of a porn film once; two of my brothers, the Dim Twins, took me into New Haven to buy Christmas presents for the rest of the family. We each had our savings in our pockets – in our godly family, you were expected to save your allowance all year to buy presents for your siblings. Once we stepped off the train, Rob and Griffin, both thirteen, took me by the hand and said we were watching a movie and
then
buying the presents. I was eight. We got into the theater only because we were short enough to creep by the booth without the ticket collector seeing us. My brothers had bought me a lollipop to keep me occupied, and I, in my innocence, sat licking the thing as the opening credits came up.

In the first scene, a woman was lying on a couch in a silk nightie. There was a knock on the door. She opened it. It was the TV repairman. Within twenty seconds, the two of them were in a clump on the couch, jerking around. Griffin, the brother to my right, had his hand in his pants at this point, and I whacked him on the side of the head. The tussle that
ensued, with the three of us clamped onto one another, arms flailing like some crazy octopus, me scratching and biting the twins and they spitting into my face and head-butting me, attracted an usher, who led us out fast, cursing. I came away from that incident with a bloody nose, and the certainty that you had to get to the point fast in dirty movies. And Kat sure did that. Her alter ego, Kitty, didn't waste a second. No sooner did she arrive at the ornate country mansion than she was feeling up the parlor maid and pressing up against her hostess.

At first, I thought I was reading the manuscript behind Kat's back. But I think she must have noticed that it changed location, because after that first time, she made sure she left it in a neat pile right by my bed. Every morning during breakfast, she would look at me and wink. Poor Aunt Trish. I don't know how much she knew about Kat. Yet how could she not have known? There was Kat's obscene friend Shelly, the ‘actress,' who, despite being ‘based in San Francisco,' was in and out of the apartment every few weeks; there was the hypersexy, slightly spastic way Kat moved and spoke – not to mention what she was writing … Well, I guess the thing was, Trish loved Kat, and she wanted to believe she was loved in return.

That morning, as I knelt under the table, sweeping up the crumbs from under her seat, Kat contemplated me silently for a long time. And then finally she said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?' I sat back on my haunches, looked up at her, and shrugged.

‘Well,' she said, ‘what are you good at?' The thought of Mr Brown closing his eyes at the beach, astonishment on his face as I touched him slowly and deliberately, came into my mind.

‘Nothing,' I said.

‘You have to have some kind of talent.'

I shrugged. ‘Not everybody has talent.'

‘People who don't have talent are usually nice,' said Kat. ‘Are you nice?'

I saw Suky, slumped on the side of Trish's couch as though she had been shot. I shook my head.

‘Well then, you'd better have talent,' said Kat.

‘What are you on my case for?' I asked.

‘I believe in you, kid,' she said. And then she went into the bathroom to turn herself into someone's secretary. When she came back, she pretended to have an idea on the spot. She needed some dirty pictures to illustrate her novel. She wanted me to be her Kitty. I thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I'll pay you, too, if the book gets published.'

‘Okay,' I said.

Getting naked was the easy part. It was the outfits I balked at. Kat had been hoarding them in the closet of her office in a big, cardboard box marked ‘Kitchen Supplies.' There were riding breeches with the crotch cut out, a stewardess dress with snap-on boob covers, a rubber cat suit. It was absurd. I couldn't stop laughing. Especially since Suky had basically been doing this to me since infancy: I was dressed up as Mae West at three, Jayne Mansfield at seven. Suky kept all my dress-up duds in a wooden box we called the ‘fun box.' Even now that Suky has left me – having politely, obligingly, and without fuss stopped breathing one foggy evening – even now I believe those bizarre and slightly creepy albums are stored somewhere in Chester's basement. The pages may be disintegrating, eaten out by the acid in the cheap paper, but if you were to open one of those leatherette volumes, you would be surprised to find not pictures of four boys and a girl, a healthy, happy family of the local pastor, but the likeness of only one child, a blonde, sloe-eyed girl in a skimpy dress and feather boa, staring the camera down. Pippa at one, at two, at three and five, at seven to fourteen, her expressions moving, as the years went by, from innocent cheer to a knowing, sullen stare, and finally to full-fledged hatred. So, I was a natural. Kat couldn't believe it. I had no shyness at all in front of the camera. I looked at it as if it were a person I knew and didn't like. That's what
she said, anyway. She said it was ‘pure Kitty.' Kitty, she explained, was every woman's wild side. She was fearless.

‘Don't you wish
you
were fearless?' she asked as she reloaded her battered Canon.

‘I guess so,' I said.

‘You act hard, but you're a marshmallow. If you were fearless you wouldn't cry every time you hang up the phone after talking to your mother. You would forget the past. You would look ahead.'

‘Is that what you do?'

‘Oh, baby. I'm the girl from Pluto. I'm the scary thing.'

‘How did you ever get hooked up with Aunt Trish?'

‘I know, right? But she loves me. She's my Momma. Not everything has to make sense, Chicklet.'

The next morning she came bouncing out of the bathroom in her sweats, shadowboxing. No work today; she'd called in sick. The doorbell rang. Shelly burst in, her naturally amplified voice bouncing around her spacious rib cage. She let out a Texan ‘Whoop!' then started pawing through Aunt Trish's record collection, derisively holding up a Carole King album.

‘Don't even bother,' said Kat, producing a cardboard box from under the electric piano. ‘Check mine out.' They put on ‘Knock on Wood' and danced to Otis Redding singing ‘I better knock – on wood, yeah …' Shelly's dance was obscene, her thick pelvis thrusting forward again and again, an ugly frown on her face, her arms in the air, big, hard breasts stretching her sweater. ‘Let's get this show on the road!' she bellowed. Kat oozed to the downbeat, her eyes hooded, glazed, private. She touched my wrist very lightly, drawing me in. I began to move to the music, aware, somehow, of turning my back on good Aunt Trish and entering a poisonous, glimmering circle. I felt a sharp, defiant joy at my recklessness.

Shelly had been cast in the part of Mrs Washington, the wealthy woman whom Kitty seduces in her country mansion. So this
session was going to involve a certain amount of
reenactment
. In a trance of creativity, wearing a new, self-important face, Kat placed the lights, chose the costumes, set the scene: I am dressed in a pair of large white girls' underwear, a pointy black bra, and high-heeled, black fetish shoes. I am stealing Mrs Washington's pearls. Mrs Washington walks in, dressed in her riding clothes. She looks imperious. Infuriated by my crime, she decides I am in need of a beating. This was a still photo we were posing for, yet Kat directed us as though it were a scene in a film. Shelly got herself so worked up when she discovered me that she actually wept with rage. Kat was over the moon about her performance.

But now, having so utterly nailed this preamble, our director was confounded by a technical dilemma: when Mrs Washington gave me my lashes, how were we to make the scene seem real without hurting me? Kat suggested that Shelly grab the rubber paddle conveniently stowed on the mantelpiece and bring it down to just above the skin of my buttocks, so it looked like she was spanking me. Shelly tried, but her aim was off, you might say. She brought the thing down so hard I let out a yelp. A little red welt rose up on my butt; I craned my neck to see it. At first, Kat rushed toward me, to see if I was hurt. But something in my astonished expression must have told her I was feeling all right. ‘Shall we try that again?' she asked quietly. I nodded.

So we took a little detour from illustrating Kat's book. At first, I couldn't believe it was happening. I mean, don't get me wrong; if I cut my finger, I say ‘ow,' like everyone else. But there was something about the circumstances here, the setup, the elaborate way I was tied to the table or the bed or the radiator. The pain was different from stubbing my toe. If it went on long enough, if I was spanked or whipped or slapped long enough, my skin went cold and tingling, I was able to bust through the pain, leaving the reality of the moment, into another place where I couldn't really see anything in focus. The feeling I had there
was serene, silent, empty, euphoric. My Feeling reminds me of the happiest born-agains, ones I've seen on TV, when their eyes roll back in their heads and they raise their arms, out of their minds on bliss. This particular ecstasy was limited to those few weeks with Kat and Shelly. I have never been able to pass through pain that way again. Or haven't allowed myself to.