The Sisterhood

"Wait...why wasn't Marcie shattered? Didn't they send the pictures to her husband too?"

She paused. "Marcie...poor Marcie. She kept me together that first day. She took me to her house. Ben and Marcie had been...well, Marcie was a Friend with Benefits since college. Matt and Ben were both kind nebbishes and they just clicked. So we socialized with them a lot. Heck, they moved into the same neighborhood. They were walking distance away."

"We went to her house and there was a huge pile of mail all nicely sorted. There on the top was the mailer with the pictures of Marcie screwing around. We were both screwing four of the upper managers in our company and one of them was my husband's supervisor. He had Matt running around a lot on travel so we could meet. Quinn, Duncan, Frank and Ralph. One or another or all on a Saturday. I know...we were shameless."

"But there is the mailer open and Ben obviously saw them, and yet, when he came home, he seemed fine. More then fine. He cooked us dinner and served us like a waiter."

"She'd taken a very imperious tone with him in the house and he just complied, though he kept shooting her these looks. But it was always 'yes dear' this and 'yes dear' that. She told him to unpack me, and arrange to get my stuff at the storage bin the next day. She demanded that all my stuff be put away and ironed. The looks he was giving her were more and more pointed and I felt embarrassed for him and appalled by her attitude. Finally, when things were getting a bit tense, she told him to get to his 'special place'."

"We drank for a while and then...well," she blushed deep red. "I mentioned that we were friends with benefits. She...well, she pressed herself on me. I was feeling like my dog died and here my best friend was pushing me to have sex with her in their master bedroom while her husband was who knows where. I was incredibly uncomfortable! Don't get me wrong. I'd shared things with her before but..."

Rebecca cleared her throat uncomfortably, looking like she was getting ready to interrupt.

Brenda forestalled her. "This has some bearing on your question. I'm sorry. You wanted to know what happened to Marcie."

"So...we were intimate. You know how it is. You go along because they feel bad, or it's easier to get things over with, or you think maybe something like that might make you feel better, though normally it doesn't. Sometimes it's easier to put out." Rebecca nodded.

Brenda's eyes started to dart around, not looking at the housewife. "And after we were finished...Marcie said 'you can come out now' and HER NAKED HUSBAND got out of the closet where he was obviously masturbating. I was mortified! I mean, I'd had group sex before. I'd performed for my lovers. I'd acted things out. You know...stuff to get things a little hotter. But that was consensual! I felt...a little betrayed because she never asked if I wanted to be a show! I knew Marcie had a weird relationship with her husband, but this! He looked a bit put out too, but he just held a towel to his crotch and slunk to his room."

"I really didn't know how to deal with any of that. Marcie explained at breakfast that Ben was a submissive. He got off on seeing her have sex with others and being ordered around, but she generally didn't let her partners know he watched to protect his pride and reputation. But since it was me, she thought it was okay. Didn't every man want to watch a couple of girls get it on? I had a few hard words to her about getting my approval first next time."

"The weekend dragged by. We reviewed the paperwork and Marcie found me a lawyer. Obviously she and Ben weren't breaking up since he seemed fully aware of what was going on in her life, though both of Ben and I were uncomfortable around each other. Marcie wanted me to stay and I had nowhere else to go."

"Monday we were told to quit and they'd give us a good reference and a small severance package. The reference was a bit weak, but I couldn't blame them. The four managers we were whoring ourselves out to were all fired. From what I heard, their marriages didn't survive either. So we were up to 6 divorces so far including Zack."

"The Sisterhood sued. They wanted the 26 of us to pay $50,000 each in breach of contract. Janet Lawson met me just before I went to trial. She said 'Brenda, you broke your word. Just pay up and let's make this go away. Don't be stupid like the other girls. The Sisters are really pissed!' She looked worn out and tired. She kept glaring at me for some reason that I couldn't fathom. I mean, we all liked Matt, but to get this worked up over a personal matter like a divorce? It wasn't like I cheated on her. "

"I got angry at her and told my lawyer to fight it tooth and nail. The judge agreed with us. Some outdated morals contract by a sorority? Being worth $50,000? Seriously? He told her that the Sisterhood could expel or keep who it wanted but he wasn't about to inflict such a large financial burden on a newly grieving divorcee."

"I brought Marcie with me, and that proved to be a big mistake. After we got the case thrown out, we approached Janet. She was looking grim. 'You should have settled. This was a big mistake' she told us."

"'Our mistake was getting caught. We had perfectly fine careers before you ruined them for us. And we'll be perfectly fine after." Marcie shot at her."

"'You think so?' was what Janet said. She said 'I've seen your type before. You think you invented sex and can just redefine how men and women react. That's why we set up the Sisterhood the way we did. We'd get the itch between our legs scratched while it didn't matter, and then go on to have nice wonderful husbands who we could spend the rest of our lives with. But you think that doesn't apply to you, that you can have it all without cost. Guess again. Now I get to deal with the fallout.' "

"What fallout?" Becky jumped in and asked.

Brenda looked sad. "Matt...my husband got me good. He not only kept his share of the assets, but also took most of my secret account. But there were the three husbands of Amy, Beth and Marie who had been left out in the cold. Their wives took almost everything. They knew they were taken for a ride by their wives since Matt told them. Matt had the emails discussing the conspiracy. So Jim Thompson, Amy's ex, asked him for any relevant information to help him reopen his case. You know, to show that there was a breach of contract from the start of the marriage to get the assets re-divided. And my poor simple Matt did that. He sent him everything discussing the conspiracy...including a copy of the Sisterhood archive with all the names, addresses and email addresses of every Sister out there."

Rebecca started to go pale. She didn't see exactly where this was going, but the tone made it ominous. "What happened?" she said in a whisper.

"The Sisterhood was going to try to make things right with these guys. Janet was going to take their case and maybe sweeten the pot with a little extra cash and some fervent apologies. But you know how sometimes women go slowly and try to find the exact right way to do or word things? Well, guys get focused and mad and do something quick, pointed, hurtful and incredibly stupid. He sent out a packet to every single Sisters' husband telling them exactly what the Sisterhood was, what they did, how they planned on divorcing them by stealing their assets. He gave names, court cases, and copies of the emails. He wanted blood. Not just the Secret Sisters. ALL the Sisters!"

"Oh...My...GOD!"

"Yes..." she said dryly. "Marcie and I started to get very nasty phone calls from girls we'd known for years and I didn't understand why until I called Janet. She explained things to me in very clipped tones. And she said 'As a personal aside, my husband, the man I had three children with, the one I interned for creepy Old Man Ferguson with the grabby hands and the halitosis so I could pay for part of his education, the man I've been married to for 20 FUCKING years. I've caught him going through my credit card slips and phone records and I dare not say a thing because of your group!' I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. I knew...I knew then that things would get very, very bad."

"I asked her about Matt. After all, he was involved by sending that info. She was quiet on the phone for a while and said 'There might be hope for you yet. We aren't going after Matt. He wasn't responsible. Your group was.' Then she hung up on me."

"Now, this was a couple of months later. My divorce was over...my...divorce was over. I was now back to being Miss Brenda Cuthbert, ex wife, ex Sister, ex rising star, ex well, I'd like to say 'ex whore' but I wasn't done yet. I hadn't quite learned my lesson. But I had teachers, oh MY how I had teachers!"

"Did you get over the divorce?"

Brenda was silent for a long moment. "I can't eat blueberry pancakes."

"Excuse me?"

"It was a stupid little couple thing." Her tone attempted to be dismissive, but there was a brittleness to it. "Back when we were dating and intimate, Matt once made me blueberry pancakes from scratch. They were okay but I said 'Mmm. My favorite!' I mean, it's a throw away pleasantry. No one with a smidgeon of social skill takes them at face value, but damn if I shouldn't have bought stock in blueberry futures! He would have fed them to me morning, noon and night. And you can't just tell a guy that you were lying or didn't mean it or to chill out without risking his ego. He eventually calmed down, but every so often, he'd make a batch and he'd lift every pancake and put butter on every slice and dab my favorite syrup so every bite tasted perfect and..." she cut off abruptly as she put her head down and her shoulders shook. Rebecca silently handed her a box of tissues which she used gratefully.

Sensing they needed to change the subject, Rebecca asked. "What happened? What teachers?"

"Marcie and I got a different job. Still together, joined at the hip" she said ironically. "And we worked hard! We were getting the 'lay of the land'. If you're going to try to sleep with someone to try to further your career, you need to pick the right person. He has to be discrete and grateful and married. These were some of the tactics the Secret Sisters discussed. If you get Joe Gland, he's going to pump and dump without doing a thing for you."

"But I'd been burned so I was VERY careful. I thought I had a good guy lined up and started to discretely flirt and had only slept with one hard sale when I got called into human resources. A co-worker accused me of creating a hostile work environment and they were giving me my walking papers."

"I caught her name at the bottom of the piece of paper and after I left, I stormed away to have a 'chat' with this little bitch! My supervisor got demoted and I'd blown an account because of this bitch. I got to her cubicle and there she was, packing her stuff in boxes."

"I asked her how she could do this to me and she said 'You slept with that account and were flirting with your supervisor. I did nothing.'"

"I gestured to her boxes and asked where the hell she was going if she already got me fired. 'I got a job at Morgan Stanley,' she smirked. Now, this girl was a frigging secretary. She didn't have the mental heft to be working where she was, much less at Morgan Stanley. She gave me this worldly smirk and said 'It's nice to have Sisters.' Then she walked away."

"She wasn't a Sister. I knew most of them by sight. I felt their fingers in this, but I needed to make sure. So I went to my stored computer at Marcie's to check who worked where. All my files were gone! Matt had erased them. I couldn't be sure who worked for who anymore!"

"I put out resumes to a lot of the larger companies and I never got an interview despite almost 10 years of great work history. I wrote the names down of every company I remembered a Sister working at and started to avoid them. But one HR guy who had his nose buried in my cleavage during an interview told me that they'd gotten an email list from another highly regarded company with a list of 26 unreliables and mine was one of them. I was on a 'no hire' list. That still didn't stop the bastard from asking me for a date, but it certainly kept him from giving me a job."

"I remember one job that I had...within a week, all the women in the office were looking at me funny. I suddenly got asked out on a lot of dates from half the men. The other half treated me like a leper. Finally I asked around and it seems that my entire sordid past had been passed around the office water cooler. Management wasn't amused and kept a very close eye on me. After missing the third promotion I deserved, I got the message and quit. I was in quite a bind. I could use sex appeal to land a job, but if I did, then I'd open myself up to all kinds of allegations and ruin my job."

"What about Marcie?"

"Marcie got it worse."

"HOW?"

"I was there when it happened. Ben came home late from work without calling. Marcie, giggling, was thinking of some punishment to inflict on him like she normally did. I mean, he KNEW he'd be punished if he broke the rules so he had to be okay with it, right? All it took was a phone call to avoid it so it must have been mutual."

"So we're sitting there, waiting for him to come home and apologize and cook us dinner like he should. He was a great cook and we loved his meals. Well, he came in and without looking at us and without a word, he went upstairs, despite Marcie calling to him, ordering him into the kitchen. She chased after him and he'd gone to his room and locked the door. Marcie pounded on the door for a while, calling to him in low and increasingly aggressive tones, I think threatening him. She was still in her Dom/Sub game mode, thinking he was upping the ante. She finally came downstairs with an odd look in her eye. 'Something is wrong'"

"We waited and could hear him moving and throwing stuff around and then he came down with two suitcases. He still wouldn't meet her eye. She ran in front of him and commanded him into the kitchen, breathing hard."

"He finally looked her in the eye and said 'It's over'. "What do you mean it's over?' she demanded. 'I mean, the men at work have seen...have seen...' He broke down and handed her a few photos. She gave a cry and turned white as a sheet. It was a picture of him wearing only an apron with her paddling his ass and that was the mildest of them."

""This doesn't mean anything!' She screamed at him. 'We can move! We can be happy elsewhere! A place where people don't know! Don't do this!' She was getting more and more agitated."

"He told her that he couldn't do this anymore. He thought she loved him and would protect his dignity. But now that people knew, he couldn't see their relationship without seeing what he was from the outside. He was almost crying. It was bad enough that she'd included me in their fun and games without checking with him, but when they sent a picture to his father...He said he'd give her all the money since she already took everything else, but she screamed she didn't want the fucking money; she wanted him. She lost it when he left. Worse then me."

Brenda paused. "That was one of the most horrible things I'd seen so far. Marcie had been my rock. The sensible one. The defiant one. She forgot that submissives have to CHOOSE to submit and he changed his mind. They both loved each other deeply but it wasn't enough. She thought she was untouchable and now she's a shivering wreck, trying desperately to get back together with Ben, the only man who trusted her to be herself. But the secrecy that allowed them to be together...it's gone. Their relationship was permanently changed."

"I helped her get back on her feet, keeping her fed, getting her to her psychiatrist. But I knew as soon as she could stand up on her own, I needed to cut her out. I needed to cut a lot out of my life."

"What about you? Have you remarried?"

"There was Daniel. He was good and kind and exactly my type of person; the kind the Sisterhood would have fixed me up with back in the day. He'd been divorced and I didn't ask him any questions about that, at least at first. I didn't have the right to be judgemental. I went slowly. I mean, I was trying to learn my lesson. We were trying to be friends and I didn't want to scare him away. We'd been intimate a couple of times. I never had trouble finding men willing to fuck me. But to rub my back and watch a chick flick with me? One who told me I wasn't fat in a way I'd believe? I thought I was getting there with Daniel and then that fucking Fed Ex mailer arrived. It outlined my entire history and then Daniel became a part of it." She sighed. "It's very tough to date when in the beginning of the relationship, you need to mention that you are an ex-cheating gold digging tramp. That takes the bloom off the rose very quickly."

"Didn't you try to do anything?"

"How? Networks work both ways, for the good and the bad. I called Janet and threatened her with a defamation of character lawsuit and she laughed at me, saying that first my lawyer would have to prove I had any character to defame and then to prove they were lying about me. The truth defeats that kind of lawsuit. I asked her if she was going to get revenge on me forever and she said 'only until you get it'."

"Did you ever see Matt again?"

"Once at the divorce and once after. I was in Burlington Illinois and I saw him at a restaurant with a pair of little girls and a very pregnant Sister. He...he looked happy. That was a blow but I was very worried. What would a Sister be doing with my...with Matt? Maybe it was just coincidence but I had to make sure he was okay."

"I called Janet back. I begged for her to leave Matt out of this. He'd been heartbroken enough by us; why drag him into my bad behavior? If they wanted to blame anyone, blame us and Jim, not Matt."

"How did she respond?"

"She said 'The Sisterhood takes care of its own and Matt is one of us. We have a new ample supply of suddenly single Sisters thanks to your crew. We'd been around since the 60s with one divorce and now we have 76. Karen needed someone and so did Matt.' I was doing the math. There were only 30 Secret Sisters and even if we all were divorced...that was a LOT. I was appalled!"

"Then Janet told me that Karen was ecstatic with Matt. They were happy together. 'If that was a nerd, then find me one!' was what she said. Didn't I realize that half of marriage was helping to repair the flaws in the other? Even a normal Sister with high standards seemed pleased with him. Pleased enough to marry him and give him a..." She pressed her hands to her stomach.

"It was then that I finally got it. Everything. You see, Matt didn't demand I go back to my maiden name. I did. I used the Sisterhood and Matt to help me get a life. I stole that life and effort from them with a lie. So I just cut it all away. I dropped my name, dropped my friend Marcie, and started from zero, with a college degree and a 12 year employment gap. I had to give up everything they gave me to finally get a life I'd earned."

"I had just finished getting the paperwork finalized when Janet offered me a job."

"I never heard about any of this in the news. You'd think that if some huge conspiracy like that existed, I'd hear it in the news." Rebecca asked.

"Well, the Sisterhood did a lot of damage control. There were a lot of journalism majors on the rolls. They got a few calls. Some friends of friends kept things quite with a couple of editorial boards. Lawyers threatened lawsuits. And all the husbands and wives had a big emergency meeting where the leadership discussed exactly what happened, who was involved with names and pictures, and implored them to seriously reconsider acting hastily. It worked, mostly. There were still enough marriages weak enough that we...they had an epidemic of divorce. But there were a few articles in some local papers."