The Guardianship
Part Six
by Jack Lennox

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6

The sound of water running, splattering ...dripping -- a white noise of wetness amplified by porcelain, muffled by glass -- warm and soothing on her pale skin, she sought relief from the stress of the day. It was another hot one outside and she needed a long shower. The office had closed down early for the July Fourth, Independence Day weekend. Nina had wondered what her co-workers might think if they knew the real reason why she was so happy about not having to sit at her desk all day. Hair pinned up, she allowed the spray to caress her slender neck and narrow shoulders before bathing. She thought of Dan. He was down in Colorado Springs again and would not be back until late.

Soap slick on her wet, naked body, she was aware of another kind of tension within -- vague, but she knew would soon demand a resolution. There had been numerous last-minute tasks to complete at work, and the traffic had been hectic both coming and going. She had not had much time to think about herself ...her new self. She placed the bar of soap in its holder after working up a healthy lather. She reached behind and applied the soap to her buttocks and upper thighs. With a light touch, she bathed and rinsed her sit spot, still tender from the previous day's fervid drama ...if the lesson is to be learned, bad girls need these little reminders that they have been punished.

She emerged from her shower, dripping wet but with a compulsion. Rather than toweling herself off, she used the towel, instead, to wipe the condensation off the bathroom mirror and stood with her back to it. Twisting as if she were evaluating her lithe body in a new tight-fitting dress, she examined again with a morbid fascination the blood-red discoloration that painted the crowns of her cheeks - the matching pair of bull's-eyes that stared back at her were, indeed, a reflection. The floor was wet at her feet; a dampness was forming where she lived. The memory came in a flood.

It had been a fateful summer afternoon. She was twelve, her thirteenth birthday only a month away. The Anderssons had moved to a nicer neighborhood by then. The previous year she had noticed a boy a few grades ahead of her. He was a bit small for his age, but Nina thought he had to be the cutest guy she had ever seen. All her notebooks for school, typically filled with her impassioned doodling, proclaimed "I Love Justin". It was a warded secret she wanted to shout to the entire world. She knew he lived one street over from her house, and she always made sure to take a route home from school that led past a possible encounter that scared her as much as it thrilled her. Her memories were a little disjointed and incomplete, but somehow she found herself at Justin's house that day spending all of an afternoon in a cloud of euphoria and self-consciousness, the object of her painful crush treating her with a kindness she rarely saw from her peers. He would be starting high school in the fall, and she was in awe that he would want to hang out with a dorky middle-schooler.

In the late afternoon, he was showing her a funny new video game that you could play on a home computer when they were interrupted by the doorbell. One of the kids who lived up the street from Nina informed her that everybody was out looking for her. It was thought she had gone missing. The blood in her veins became ice. She feigned a calm goodbye to her new friend and heartthrob; he would never know of the panic that gripped her.

Her lungs without air, she ran without breathing. She did not look left or right, up or down, forward or back ...but to only the fear to lead her home.

Her father was livid. She was to have been home hours ago, had caused her family to be sick with worry. They had made phone calls, but nobody knew where she was. The whole neighborhood had been canvassed, police about to be called. Perhaps other kids her age could wander off as they pleased, but that was not going to be tolerated in the Andersson home. The words were wasted on her; the tone of his voice was telling her everything she didn't want to know. It had been a long time, and she had been holding to a faint hope that she was finally too old for this. She remembered he grabbed her arm to take her to her room, and that she had a strange spasm between her legs when she noticed the little paddle sticking out from the back pocket of the pants he often wore around the house.

She would realize later that he never asked where she had been -- perhaps a tiny nod to justice, because she paid a heavy enough price for her sweet afternoon.

Her daddy had always left his mark on her, too... similar enough to what she saw in the cloudy mirror on Clairmont Avenue that it had triggered something that had been buried. The sight was powerfully erotic. The marks seemed to her like some kind of badge -- of shame, perhaps ...or an emblem ...maybe a merit for taking her medicine. Mostly, though, she saw it as evidence of a very deliberate and focused assault on her bottom ...her sex. For the first time in her life, she began to recognize where lie her emotional and physiological connections to the eroticism of spanking. Her understanding of it was necessarily shallow, but she had gained a little insight, could see the significance of her childhood experiences and how she could be drawn so strongly to male authority figures.

Only two men had ever impressed such a rigid authority on her - the two most important men in her life. She recognized, however, that the marks of her Guardian represented a very different kind of discipline. He had not spanked her in anger. He had not spanked her for hurting him; he had spanked her for hurting herself. She wondered if it was also a different kind of love. She wasn't sure but knew that there was something missing -- something vital -- something that she needed to be whole, to be complete. She felt that what he had done to her was an archetypal masculine act that made him even sexier and more powerful. Somehow it made her feel essentially feminine. She wasn't thinking about a daddy's love; she needed to be loved like a woman.

* * * * * * *

She stood at the garden window in the kitchen looking out into the backyard on Clairmont Avenue. Her face was bathed in midday light, her hair ignited with a golden fire. Sipping her coffee, she enjoyed the crisp colors framed for her. It had been a wet enough spring and everything was alive and blooming; a pleasing arrangement of nature was drowning in hot yellow sunlight and casting short hard shadows. The maple was dripping with a green hotter than the cool green of the immaculate lawn, delicate purple lilacs enshrouded the weathered wooden fence, and cherries drooped in glistening clusters. She saw flowers of red, white, pink, and yellow in their smart planter boxes, and bark and rock ground coverings made interesting patterns of rust and gray. She could only wonder about the man who called this his home.

She knew him, but so little about him. In six months, two of them exchanging emails, she had only caught snippets of information about his life and his past. His parents lived in Connecticut within an easy drive to New York City; he talked with them on the phone regularly. He, like her, was an only child. She assumed that he must have held the same kind of job back east working in biotech. He never talked about his work. She wasn't sure exactly what it entailed, but he was a Director of Regulatory Affairs for a small company called CardioGen that developed drugs for heart disease. She knew he had a science degree of some kind. He had been engaged to be married but, once he moved to Denver, had not dated. When they were out she saw the way women looked at him. It was definitely his choice. He lived away from his family, didn't seem to have much enthusiasm about his career, and had no romance in his life ...and he thinks my life is unfulfilling.

After meeting and, ultimately, moving in with Dan that March, the first several weeks had been pretty strange. It was not an easy adjustment, and they had felt somewhat awkward around each other. The feeling changed the night he took her out. It was kind of like a date, but without the tensions associated with unfamiliarity and what might or might not happen afterwards. They ate at an Asian grill downtown and then went to a club to hear a local jazz group. She learned a bit about cuisine and contemporary music; she told him where to get the best ribs in town and about her favorite bands of the eighties and nineties. The conversation was warm and easy as they shared, not only common interests, but values. What struck her, though, was how he was really the first man to ever show a genuine interest in her as a person. With all that surrounded them that night, he had eyes only for her, made her feel special. He said he wanted to take her to see an artist she liked and, one weekend in April, had surprised her with a trip to Los Angeles for a Sarah McLachlan concert. Their hotel rooms were within walking distance of the L.A. County Museum of Art, and they saw Old Masters and Impressionists before taking the two-hour flight back home. It was on that trip that she realized her feelings for him ran much deeper than could be accommodated by their cursed agreement. If she thought that he could be interested in her as more than just a friend, she certainly would not have allowed it to stand in her way.

She felt she knew something about the man who existed today, but did not know where he came from or where he was going. That hot summer afternoon, she thought she may be able to find another piece of the puzzle. While trying to fall asleep the previous night, a germ of an idea took hold. She had seen something without taking notice of it at the time but on recollection thought it might be significant. It would mean going back into his office ...invading his privacy again. That idea pained her, but she had to know.

She was seated at Dan's desk in front of his computer. She had no intention to use the computer, and it was not only because she was sitting a little gingerly due to that very transgression. During the previous day's search for a floppy diskette, the little stack of newspaper clippings in his drawer had barely caught her attention but had registered, nevertheless. They were still where she had seen them slightly scattered. Opening the full newspaper page partially enfolding the rest, she glanced at the clip on top, and immediately recognized the face pictured: a typical publicity photo pose. She read:

Daniel Foster
Bright New Actor Getting Rave Reviews
Talented, sexy, and intelligent - three words that best describe Daniel Foster, who launched his acting career in the theatre as a New York stage actor. The 35-year-old Foster, currently starring as Frankie Vick in Peasant's Garden, is beginning to receive the accolades many of his peers have been predicting.
Foster, who was raised in Philadelphia, decided at the age of 9 that he wanted to be an actor. "My mother took me to see 'The Odd Couple', and as we were leaving the theatre I told her, 'That's what I'm going to be when I grow up."

She scanned the clipping, came to a review...

"Daniel Foster gives a breakthrough performance...his handsome matinee idol looks and boyish grin...as Frankie, is tough, smart, and funny: a faceted character whose plight thus becomes even more poignant." - Geoff Sanders, New York Times.

The information was nothing Nina had intuited. She could not imagine why he would have kept his former profession a secret. She quickly thumbed through a few more articles, but it was the front page of the New York newspaper that finally caught her attention. A side column read:
GUNMAN SHOOTS FIVE AT CLINIC IN MANHATTAN
NEW YORK -- A noted antiabortion protester opened fire with a shotgun outside a women's clinic today, killing two and wounding three others, police said.

Authorities arrested James Harris, a local leader of the radical antiabortion group Justifiable Deterrence. He was charged with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. Harris told an arresting officer, "No innocent babies are going to be killed here today," police said. Three people, including Megan Chambers, a clinic physician, were taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center, where they were listed in serious to critical condition. A local area doctor and an unidentified 68-year-old man died at Metropolitan Hospital from gunshot wounds to the head, authorities said. Dr. Anabella Moretti, 33, an associate of Dr. Chambers, but not directly connected with the Upper East Women's Medical Services clinic, was killed by sprayed shotgun fire. National abortion rights leaders expressed anger at the attack...

Oh, my gawd! The black and white photo of the victim was tiny, but she recognized the face. Despite the fact that she had half-suspected to find some kind of tragedy, Nina put her hand over her mouth. Saint Ann. She felt both a sadness and a pang of guilt. Poor Dan.

She left me. She knew that loved ones left behind often thought of it that way. She was a doctor...she loved children. She had begun to suspect that he was not merely speaking in the past tense of memories past. His moods, his devotion, now made more sense. Saint Ann... Nina felt ashamed of her jealousies, but knew then that she had been, and still would be, competing with a ghost...and a sacred one at that.

After scanning through the remaining articles, she folded up and replaced what she had found, then shut again the drawer on Dan's secret past. She still had so many questions, but was not sure how she was going to go about getting the answers. What she knew was that her love for him had only grown stronger.