Kathryn's Question Ch. 04

Next day at the LA airport, I got there early (as usual) for my flight back to Boston and was wandering around the terminal building killing time until my flight.

Suddenly, I looked up...and there she was, walking towards me.

Kathryn Miller.

I was rooted to the spot and she was barely ten feet away when she finally spotted me.

The week before, I'd shaved off the beard I'd grown after Ellen died, or Kathryn would probably have walked right by me.

She stopped, stared, then said, "Robert? Is that really you?"

"Kathryn. Or should I say Dr. Kathryn?"

"I understand you're Dr. Robert too," she said as she moved forward to kiss my cheek. "How fantastic to bump into you like this."

The years had healed or at least scabbed over the old wounds enough so I could honestly say, "It's nice to see you."

"Where are you off to? I saw you were the keynote speaker at a conference this weekend. Congrats on the prize, too. Well deserved, I understand from my colleagues at the school."

"You know about that?"

"I've kept track of you over the years. You've done great things."

I actually blushed. Too often I'd hid my light under a bushel, even to myself.

"I'm going back to Boston," I said, turning the subject aside.

It turned out we were on the same flight. She was going to Boston as part of the promotional tour for her latest bestseller, Couples in Sexual Crisis.

Kathryn was sensitive enough to mention it and then let the subject drop.

We went to sit in the departure lounge. The conversation was pretty general at first and I had a lot of time to study her. TV did not do her justice and at 40 she was still quite youthful looking and very, very beautiful.

After we got past the safety of general conversational topics, we fell silent. I could tell she was as uneasy as I.

It crossed my mind that I could always kiss her cheek, tell her it had been nice to see her, and excuse myself to look over some work I'd brought with me, but I hesitated.

I don't know what I wanted, why I'd done that. Perhaps I wanted an apology, an explanation of what had happened all those years before.

"I heard about your wife," she said. "You must have been devastated."

"You did? How?"

"Didn't you know our mothers became very good friends? That gap in the back hedge is still there, but it's been them that have been keeping it open all these years." She smiled. "Whenever I was home, I secretly hoped you'd come through it too."

The moment was here, and I didn't shrink away. "You hurt me very deeply, Kathryn, very deeply."

She looked down at her hands in her lap. "Yes. I know. I've often thought about it. Is it too late for me to say how sorry I am?"

I didn't know how to respond so I said nothing.

She looked up and right into my eyes in that direct way I remembered so well. "There was an explanation, though."

"I don't think I want to hear it."

They began calling our flight and I started to get up. Kathryn reached out and put her hand on my arm. Her face was very strained.

"Please, Robert. For years I've thought about actually looking you up, coming to see you to tell you some things. You've said you don't want to hear them, and that is certainly your right."

"Yes, it is," I answered and rose to my feet as did she.

"Once we had something very special—"

"Yes, we did," I interrupted angrily, "and you threw it all away!"

Several other passengers turned to look at us, but I didn't care. I heard one nearby woman say, "Look, honey, it's that sex doctor and the man who was at your conference."

The comment distracted me for a moment and Kathryn moved close.

"Please," Robert, "please, please, please! I need to talk to you, tell you things, and you need to hear them. I fear this is my only chance. Sit with me on the flight. Let me talk to you after all these years. Please!"

She looked to very on the verge of tears and I've always been a sucker for crying women.

"Okay, Kathryn. We'll talk, but do you think a plane is the place for something so, ah, confidential?"

Smiling grimly, she said, "It will have to do. Wait here."

She went up to the counter and spoke for a moment to the airline person there. This woman smiled and nodded, and I couldn't believe it when she passed Kathryn a piece of paper to autograph.

Kathryn came back to me and said, "I gave up my seat in first class and we can sit in the back seats of the plane. It isn't very full and we'll have at least two rows of buffer. She's going to ask the stewardesses to keep people away from us. Is that okay?"

I nodded. "Let's go."

The airline personnel were as good as their word and kept people away from us -- excepting when they needed to use the washrooms. With the rumble of the plane nobody could hear what Kathryn was telling me.

As the plane got ready to take off, she sat there with her eyes closed, so I had time to study her.

The years had been kind and she'd obviously spent time to keep herself fit. Her face had some lines around the eyes. Her body, from what I could see through her skirt and blouse, did not seem as rounded as I'd remembered it. She'd maybe lost 15 or 20 pounds and seemed quite willowy. I was happy to see that she hadn't had her breasts enlarged like so many women would have in her position. Her left hand had no wedding ring, but what that meant I didn't know.

I wondered what she saw looking at me.

I had changed a lot over the years. At one point, I'd been a good 50 pounds heavier. That was right after Ellen had passed away and I'd had to fend for myself for eating, falling back on restaurants since I'd never been much good with anything but a barbecue. The pounds had piled up until I'd gotten back from my year off and the doctor had read me the riot act.

With nothing much to do in the evenings, I'd taken to working out at the company gym until it had become a habit. Within a year, I'd dropped the extra 50, and another 10 for good measure, until I was lean and fit to the point where I'd had to buy a new wardrobe and actually weighed five pounds less than I had when I graduated high school.

Once we were airborne, Kathryn opened her eyes and looked at me nervously. "For years I've practiced what I was going to say to you if our paths ever crossed, and now that I actually have the chance, my mind is in such a jumble, I can't put two thoughts together. If I were counseling someone, I'd have to be very stern with them at this point.

"So be stern with yourself, doctor," I said, but I also grinned in an attempt to take a little of the pressure off. "I can't really get away, now, can I?"

"Okay. Here goes..."

But she sat there for another two minutes with a helpless expression on her face.

I patted her hand which gripped the chair arm between us. "The last thing you ever said to me before today was that you could explain, that it wasn't like that."

Kathryn focused her eyes on the seat back in front of her. "My sister was a very sick individual."

"Was?"

She nodded. "No one in the family has heard from her in nearly ten years. She's probably dead -- or worse. If there's time, I'll tell you about all her problems later, but suffice it to say that she was mostly behind what happened on that dreadful day."

"Would it surprise you to know that a few days earlier she'd come on to me?"

"No," Kathryn sighed, then turned to look at me. "I suppose you turned her down."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because if you did, it would explain a lot of things."

"Then, yes, I did turn her down."

"I knew you would."

I told Kathryn about finding Melanie naked and open in the basement that afternoon so long ago. "She begged me to take her. I found out she'd been spying on us. Did you know about that?"

Kathryn squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, yes. She took her pound of flesh over that one."

"What do you mean?"

"That was the reason she was around the house so much that summer. She spied on us practically from the time she got home."

"But the 'pound of flesh' comment?"

"She blackmailed me. When she confronted me and said I had to do what she told me to do, I laughed at her, knowing that it would be my word against hers. She wiped that smile off my face in short order when she produced audio tapes and photos of us doing all kinds of things."

"How did she manage that?"

"My dad had an old tape machine and she had microphones hidden in the basement. She would be hiding in his tool room whenever we were down there playing. She also had a college friend who was into photography and loaned her a camera and some special very low-light film. She could have been a photographer. They were very, very good. She even had shots of that night you took my virginity. Mel had followed us from home having eavesdropped on what we were up to."

"I saw her that night, or at least, I saw a dark form under the trees. At the time, I figured it was my mind playing tricks on me."

"That was Mel."

"So what did you do?"

"Whatever she told me to. I had no choice. I have no idea what my father would have done to me if he'd seen those photos or heard the tapes. And I had no doubt Melanie would have showed him somehow, without letting on it was her supplying them."

"And what things did she make you do?"

"You saw her crowning achievement on that horrible afternoon." A tear trickled down her cheek. "I'm sorry to get so emotional. I've never talked about this to anyone and it's amazing how much it still bothers me."

"You don't have to tell me, you know."

"Yes, I do!" she said fiercely.

I patted her hand again, then took it in my own.

Kathryn looked down and smiled. "At first, it was pretty harmless stuff, but still hard for me to do. The first day she made me strip and then parade around in front of her while she made nasty comments. I was already self-conscious enough about my body. It moved on to me diddling myself in front of her, then diddling her. Eventually, it moved on to oral sex. You name it, she made me do it."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What could you have done? She would have cooked your goose, too. I tried desperately to keep her away from you.

"Eventually, cucumbers named Robby weren't good enough for her. She wanted the real thing. I think that's when she made her move on you. When you turned her down, she set out to punish both of us. I'd say she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, wouldn't you?"

"Why didn't you tell me this later?"

"Because you left for school, and because I was ashamed of myself."

"I would have understood if you'd told me all this. You weren't to blame."

"You didn't see the expression on your face that day. It was pure hate and loathing." She covered my hand with her other one. "There's also another thing you need to know. In a way, I sort of enjoyed it. You know how I was in those days: curious, ready to try practically anything. Yes, Melanie forced me or I wouldn't have done those things, but I would be a complete liar if I didn't say that in a perverse way, I also got off on it a little."

"Even with Clem and Joe?"

She must have heard the disgust in my voice because she jerked her hand away as if burned.

"That was rape, pure and simple. I was despondent because two guys from school had come to see me the day before at the library. They told me what they swore you told them and it was disgusting. They said you were getting tired of me and that once you were away at school you'd find a way to dump me. They said you told them they could use me any way they wanted because I was such a slut for sex. I believed them, I guess, because I was insecure. I had been worried about just that. Melanie fed on that insecurity, built on it, until it, well, sounded like the truth. She admitted years later that she'd put them up to that. She also told Joe and Clem what to say. She got me drunk. She told me that letting those two slim balls fuck me would be the last thing she'd ever ask me to do, that we'd be even."

"She probably knew I'd come looking for you that night."

Kathryn nodded. "My sister was sick, but she wasn't stupid. She set up her trap very, very well, and we fell into it."

"Why did she do it?"

"I don't know. Control, her own insecurity, maybe. She had a cruel streak a mile wide. You remember when we were kids how she'd hit me. She also broke my toys or hid them. It wasn't until I got bigger than her and started knocking her down that she backed off."

"You could have written a letter, explaining all this."

"Would you have read it? I could never be sure. Then when I worked up the nerve to tell you, I found out you had a serious girlfriend and that put paid to everything. The LAST thing I wanted to do was to come between you and her."

The stewardess appeared with the drink cart and I ordered a stiff one and a white wine for Kathryn. We didn't toast.

"I'm glad you kept your distance, Kathryn. It made everything a lot easier once I began to get over the hurt and betrayal."

"Ouch."

"It was pretty tough."

She nodded. "I know and I am truly, truly sorry. Can you forgive me? It would mean a lot."

I considered for a moment. "Based on what you've told me, there really is nothing to forgive. We were young, we didn't handle things the way we would now and everything got all mixed up. It's amazing how that one event seems to have hung over both our lives all these years."

"Yes, that's very true. It's my one big regret." She leaned over and squeezed my arm. "Thanks for being so understanding, but then, you always were. That's one of the things about you that I found so attractive."

Just then a guy came out of the washrooms behind us and stared down at Kathryn. "You're that Sex Doctor, aren't you?"

She smiled up, but it had an edge to it. "Yes, I am."

"You're going to Boston."

"Looks like I am since I'm on this plane."

"Do you have any plans for tonight?"

I was sure she could handle the situation herself, but I couldn't stop myself blurting out, "She's having dinner with me, Mac. Got that?"

He shot me a nasty look and stomped off down the aisle. I was aware of Kathryn looking at me curiously.

"Boy, you've developed a hard edge over the years. The Robert I knew in high school never would have talked to anyone like that."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I developed that hard edge the last night I saw you."

"Ouch again." She smiled. "But thanks anyway. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Every Studly Hungwell wants to try me on. They think because I make my living in the sexuality business that I must want to fuck everyone I meet. It gets pretty wearing, but it goes with the territory, I guess. One time at a party, some jerk got drunk and pulled his pants down right in front of me to show me his pecker. It was hilarious."

"I can imagine."

"So were you serious about taking me out to dinner, or were you just saying that to get rid of him?"

"I suppose so, unless you have something on. You're on a book tour, don't you have to go to some swish party or other, flog those volumes?"

"That starts up tomorrow morning. When these things start, I like to have an evening to myself, sort of get revved up for the onslaught, you know?"

"Then lets go out to dinner."

"Robert," she said, then stopped. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but if you're game, I'd like to cook dinner for you. I eat in restaurants all the time and I hardly ever get to cook for anyone."

"Don't you have a steady guy?"

She looked down at her left hand. "There's nobody right now. I tend not to have long-term relationships. There was a professor when I was an undergrad. I lived with him for four years. He taught me a lot. Since then, guys come and go. I like my independence. And you?"

"It's taken me a long time to get over Ellen's death and it's only lately that I've felt, well, like I'm waking up again."

"You've taken good care of yourself. I'll bet you're pretty buff under that suit. You look good."

"So do you."

"Okay, dinner then at your place?"

"Sounds great. We'll have to stop for provisions, though. I survive on cereal, cold cuts and frozen dinners. They know me by name at every deli counter in the city."

Kathryn smiled and it was warm and friendly. I wondered where all this was going and whether I wanted it to.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The weather was colder than I'd expected, so I had a nice fire going when we retired to my living room after a terrific dinner of seafood linguini, salad and a good bottle of red wine.

"Would you like some cognac?" I asked as Kathryn kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa.

"Mmm, yes. That would be heavenly. You have a very nice house, Robert."

"It was all Ellen's doing. She loved decorating, must have had a subscription to every magazine on the subject. I've just kept it all the way she left it."

"You must miss her very much."

"It was horrible at first. I felt completely alone. Friends would invite me over dinner, but it was just too painful. It was as if Ellen's ghost was sitting at the table with us. Everyone felt it. She was terrific company. Finally, I just had to bugger off for a year to get my head clear. I still have dark moments, but they're less frequent as time pases."

"It's always difficult when you lose someone."

We chatted some more about my work, the things I'd done, but gradually that slowed and stopped, and we found ourselves silently watching the fire crackle and hiss. I think it felt strange for both of us to be sitting together like that after so many years.

Kathryn took a last sip of her cognac and put her snifter down on the coffee table. I could feel her eyes on me as I stared at the fire.

"So, Robby, do you ever masturbate?"