The Immaculate Deception

by Sherry Silver

  Driving home from church, I finally had a peaceful feeling wash over me. God bless Reverend McFeely. I wished I could carry a tune, it would be nice to join the choir. Something to fill my Wednesday nights, choir practice. Oh well. I really should find some sort of volunteer work to immerse myself in. I needed to get a life. Oh who was I fooling? If I hadn’t made anything of myself by age forty-two, I wasn’t ever going to.

  I stopped for a nice sit-down lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Reston Town Center. Normally I’d bring a book or newspaper so I didn’t feel awkward eating alone. But since I didn’t have one, I savored my sweet lime chicken and corn cake. Corn cockle… One of the poisons my dream man showed Officer Dick. What was up with that?

  I eavesdropped on the booth behind me. It sounded like a mother and two children. Girls. She kept fussing at them to color and share the crayons. Well, that wouldn’t be useful to inspire my romance writing.

  I signed the credit card slip, took my copy and popped the mint in my mouth. As I left the restaurant, I noticed that lady detective on the way out. Fawn Fiddler. She was at the buffet.

  The rain sloshed down as I emerged onto the sidewalk. I hesitated and decided to go back inside and use the ladies room. Perhaps the rain would let up some in the meantime. As I passed within ten feet of the buffet, the lady cop’s head snapped up and she stared at me.

  I smiled and mouthed, “Hey.”

  She carried her terracotta plate in one hand, squeezed her lapel microphone with the other. She mumbled something and then walked up to me.

  I smiled. “Hello, Officer. They’ve got great food here. Are you dining on duty? Is your partner with you?” I scanned the lunch crowd but couldn’t locate another uniform. Well yes, there were two chubby middle-aged ladies dressed in scrubs that sported a dog and cat motif but no cops.

  She ignored my attempt at small talk and cut to the chase. “You’ve been in contact with Officer Dick Fiddler. Why didn’t you report it to me?”

  How did she know Officer Dick had shown up on my deck? Or did she? Was this a fishing expedition? I had a really bad distaste for this woman now. Not that I could put my finger on it but something about her mannerism was too suspicious and arrogant for me. Fine. I could be distasteful, suspicious and arrogant too. “Officer Dick Fiddler? Hmm…nope. I’ve peeked at his house now and then and there are no signs he’s home.

  I’m going to bake him a nice blueberry pie when he returns. The neighbors will all get together and have a block party. We had one in February when Stevie Collins came back from Iraq. Everyone chipped in for the food and the community association provided a disc jockey and heated tents. What a soiree.”

  The lady cop’s lapel crackled and she hurried to her table, grabbing the green cloth napkin and silverware. She scurried out of the restaurant carrying her lunch.

  I shook my head. I’ll bet she doesn’t return that plate, napkin and silverware. And she certainly didn’t pay the tab and leave a tip. Cops. I hated how they got away with crap like this.

  I decided to forgo the ladies room and follow the flatfoot. The woman that had been seated in the booth adjacent to mine was leaving. I tried to be patient as she allowed her “big girl” to open the door. The big girl could barely reach the handle. By the time I emerged, it was still pouring down and there was no sign of the lady cop.

  I drove home and took a nice long soak in a hot bathtub. I used liquid hand soap in lieu of bubble bath because it didn’t leave a ring around the tub and didn’t irritate my sensitive skin.

  As I lay back, I pondered Reverend McFeely’s sermon. Loyalty was today’s theme. No matter what our friends and loved ones do, no matter how wrong they are, we should defend them with all of our might. I blinked a few times and tried to place my family into this theme.

  All right, I was going start with my beloved brother Perry. Hmm… Well, he accused my mother of murdering our father. I was going to be loyal and in his defense say Daddy would have wanted him to. He was just continuing in the master manipulator Dr. Nathan Payne’s footsteps, stirring the pot and trying to divide and conquer the family, just to keep things interesting.

  Next to defend, Tammy, for…cremating Daddy. She was only trying to get this whole sad thing over with so we could all move on with our lives. Besides, with no grave to visit, I wouldn’t feel guilty for not going. Okay, this blind loyalty thing wasn’t so bad.

  I realized I was bored. Which was a good thing actually, after all I’d been through. And when I was bored, I played spider solitaire on the computer. I always played the hard level, which I knew I would never win. But it passed the time. I drained the water from the tub, dried and dressed and went downstairs to my computer.

  I turned the television on the movie channel and half watched the Hitchcock marathon as I concentrated on spider solitaire and obsessively checked my email. Nothing new came. My mind wandered to my novel. I needed to come up with a really great villain. Or villainess. Maybe a pair. I could model them on Perry and Tammy. Oh right. I forgot. They were good people and their actions were justified. Yeah right.

  I’d heard from other writers not to worry about modeling your characters on real people because odds were they wouldn’t recognize themselves. Nobody saw themselves as others did.

  ~*~

  I awoke Monday morning refreshed. I had slept through the night. No dreams that I could recall. I didn’t even get up to pee.

  The cab was already in front of Little Mount Vernon when I arrived at eight forty-six a.m. Uncle Howie was perched on the brick-retaining wall. He adjusted his California-chic sunglasses as I parked the old gold Chrysler and hurried up the steps.

  “Hello, Oh-Donna.”

  “I’m sorry you had to wait. At least it stopped raining. Yesterday it poured. How was your flight?”

  “Slept just fine. We arrived twenty minutes early.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear. How is Auntie Roxanne?”

  “Still working at the lab. She retired once but they couldn’t do without her.”

  “It must be nice to be needed.”

  We ducked under the gutter and walked up to the front door. He was carrying a cooler. I tried the knob before I dug Momma’s keys out. It turned.

  “You’re selling the house?” he asked.

  “Not really… But Perry seems to be.”

  “We have computerized lockboxes in California. Each real estate agent has a unique code. Everything is recorded electronically and they can track who entered and exited the premises and when.”

  “I guess Carla Calamari’s agency isn’t quite up to the times with their old-fashioned lockbox.”

  “Somebody is actually named Calamari?”

  “Apparently. And it fits her.” I smirked.

  I didn’t bother calling out for Momma this time. We just descended the steps into the basement. I opened the wide door to the walk-in closet and pulled the brown shoestring. “His files are back in here. The deep freezer is at the end of the hall.”

  I rounded the corner inside the closet and heaved one of the boxes off the heap in the back. I turned to hand it to Uncle Howie. He wasn’t there. I carried it out to the rec room. “Uncle Howie?”

  He was replacing the lid on the Tupperware container. Dr. Howard Payne removed the lid from his cooler and white vapor wafted out. Dry ice. He carefully placed the organ on the bottom of his cooler and locked the lid on tight.

  I called down the hall. “Here you go, this is labeled ‘Research 1960–1965’. Is this the one you want or—”

  “I’ll take that.” He hurried up the hall and snatched it from me, placing the cooler on top. “Thank you. When will your mother be back from her trip?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  He stared down at the bundle in his arms, lost in thoughts. “It’s a damned shame Chloe had to do that.”

  I now knew Perry had gotten to Uncle Howie too. He had told him lies about Momma murdering Daddy. I seethed. “Do what?” I demanded.

  “If only sh
e had had intercourse with Jack Kennedy before he died, everything would have been all right,” he mumbled to himself, hurrying up the steps. “Nathan never forgave her for that. But he raised the other man’s kid anyway. He put up with you.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “My mother would never sleep with another woman’s husband. She is a good girl.” What a creepy thing to say. Uncle Howie was just as cruel as Daddy had been. I followed him up the steps and out the door.

  I caught up with him in front of the taxi. “What did you say just now? Jack Kennedy? Other man’s kid? Momma would never do anything like that.” I wouldn’t let him play mind games with me like Daddy had done. Never again.

  Uncle Howie raised himself out of his trance, a look of guilt passing over his timeworn features.

  “I didn’t say anything, dear. You must have misheard. Happens to me all the time.” He nearly jumped into the backseat of the taxi with Miss Pippin’s ovary and Daddy’s data. He didn’t even say goodbye or thank you or go to hell. Couldn’t get away fast enough.

  As I drove home, I tried to make sense of what had transpired. I didn’t believe Uncle Howie for a second. I knew what I’d heard. Apparently Daddy had wanted Momma to be impregnated by the President. But she had slept with someone else. According to that, I was not Dr. Nathan Payne’s biological child. Surprisingly, that didn’t shock me a bit. I smiled. I had always wanted to find out I was adopted. At least then I didn’t come from the evil Payne DNA. Well then, who was my father if not Daddy? Bill Blandings, the pirate? No…the timeframe was wrong. He had to have been deceased before Daddy married his widow Vera and produced Perry. Perry was ten years older than I was.

  President Kennedy? No, Uncle Howie ruled him out. Bobby Kennedy? I remembered Momma climbing into the limo with him and his brother. No, Bobby was very married to Ethel then. Like I told Uncle Howie, Momma was a good girl. She would never have slept with another woman’s husband.

  Sinatra? I saw them together at the Fontainebleau in 1963, the year I was conceived. She had said something to him about “Make Believe Island…one more time” and huffed out when the band played The Four Seasons’ “Big Girls Don’t Cry”. Could I have been Frank Sinatra’s love child? Was he married at the time? No, don’t even go there, Donna. Frank’s kids were professional singers. At least Nancy and Frank Jr. were. I wasn’t sure about Tina. I couldn’t carry a tune. It was highly unlikely that the legendary chairman of the board as he was known could have been my father.

  Hey, and of course I shouldn’t forget that according to Daddy, Momma wasn’t my real mother either but Marilyn Monroe was. So let’s see. Daddy wasn’t my father, Momma wasn’t my mother and I was probably hatched on a big hot rock. Hmm, so then my biological parents were President Kennedy and MM…

  I laughed and laughed until tears came out. Daddy and Uncle Howie were just trying to mess around with my mind. Okay, Donna. At least you recognize what’s going on. That’s the first step. Don’t let them blow your mind.

  I drove to Reston Town Center again and walked around the outdoor mall. After taking in the matinee, an animated children’s adventure that left me guffawing louder than the rest of the audience, I had lunch at the Mexican restaurant. It felt good to engage in normal activity.

  At home, I caught up on my laundry and laid my work clothes out for the next day. I really didn’t want to return to the paper mine but since I was under the early retirement age, I had no choice.

  I lay on the couch all evening, watching the science, history and nature documentaries. I couldn’t help playing around with the idea that Uncle Howie had planted in my head. What if Daddy hadn’t been my father? I alternated feeling elated at the possibility I was not Nathan’s biological daughter to wondering who my real father could be and if he would have regarded me better.

  At least that would explain why Daddy had treated me so cruelly at times… He didn’t want me.

  I wasn’t the baby he had intended to raise. He resented Momma for not sleeping with whom he’d chosen for her. That was so bizarre. And so in character for Daddy. He was always manipulating everyone into doing his bidding. And most of the time, no one but him understood his motives. Why would he have wanted Momma to give birth to a Kennedy? Why wouldn’t he want her to have his baby?

  My head was throbbing from juggling around all the impossible theories. Even if Uncle Howie wasn’t lying and the story about Momma and Kennedy was true, what good would it do to me? I still had to face Cynthia in the morning. And for that, I needed all my strength and a full night’s sleep. I switched off the TV and stumbled upstairs, falling into my bed like the big hot rock I must have been hatched upon.

  ~*~

  I slept dreamless again and, boy, did Tuesday morning come much too fast. I smacked the snooze alarm button twice and then forced myself up and into the shower in the hall bathroom. I kept replaying some of my special dreams as I went through the motions of personal hygiene. So Momma had been in Miami Beach in the forties when I had seen her in the hospital with Daddy and that bearded guy. And again/still in the sixties. But she’d been to Palm Springs too. With the President. The man who, according to Uncle Howie, Daddy had wanted her to have sex with. I sighed. No, I wasn’t going to go down that route today. Already thinking about it made my head throb again. Still, I wished I could’ve known President Kennedy and Bobby. I was born in the wrong era. Not fair. How come Momma had the great career and I got a stupid peon union job? Not fair at all. Shoot, there I went again, feeling sorry for myself. Momma never stood for that. And she was right. I made my bed, she made her bed, we both had to float in the ocean of sheets we each leaped into.

  As I lathered up my legs, I kept thinking about the pool of men Momma was surrounded with. Wow. And out of all the boys in the world, she picked Nathan Payne. What, was she blind or something? How in the world would any girl in her right mind choose him? Daddy had not been an attractive man and oh had he been overbearing and manipulative. He had been a great storyteller, embellished so well that you couldn’t tell if it really happened or if he made it all up. And no matter what he said, I had to go through and analyze it, to see what lesson he wanted to get across in his fable.

  He’d meant well for the most part but he was too controlling, manipulating the whole family into doing what was best for us…as he perceived it. Through his thick Coke-bottle cataract glasses. He wasn’t so bad before he lost his vision and his career. Or? If I believed Dr. Howard Payne, my father had tried to force Momma into sleeping with another woman’s husband even before he’d had to retire… I’d always thought that things went sour after his retirement, when he lost his calling, when he had to find a new outlet for his genius. But no…that reasoning no longer worked. Nathan Payne was a cold, calculating sociopath from the get-go. My whole impression of him had been much too naïve. Face it, Donna. You were raised by a sociopath. No wonder you’re so screwed up. And think of poor Momma who had been married to him. What had all those decades of dirty rotten tricks done to her? Oh Momma, where are you?

  I shaved my legs, underarms and bikini line. As if anyone would ever see my bikini line. Should’ve taken Officer Dick up on his date offer. A concert would be great. Wonder what kind of music he liked. I had a flashback of his polka-dotted Harrys. Oh yeah. I now remembered why I didn’t want to date him.

  Poor guy. Left him out on my deck. Hey, he had his own deck. He could go home. Or maybe he couldn’t? I felt bad in the pit of my stomach for not helping him out. He helped me after all. Shoot. And my dream man scared him, showing him his father’s poison plants.

  I dried off and stepped on the scale. One hundred thirty and a half pounds. I was gettin’ there. I slipped on some gray slacks and a black three-quarter-length-sleeved sweater. Ugly tie-up black shoes completed the outfit. After dabbing a bit of gel in my hair, I ran a plastic brush through my curly wet locks. The red lipstick I favored broke off and fell on the floor. I tossed it in the trash and settled on the fuchsia. Momma always wore fuchsia. And I fi
nally realized it was my color as well. Got over the “but it’s an old lady color” prejudice I fought for decades. Little pearl earrings and a matching necklace completed the outfit. No belt today, the sweater would cover my waistband.

  I deftly made my bed and then shot downstairs to brew a quick cup of tea to fill my commuter mug. Dashing out the door, I stopped on the stoop. Staring at Officer Dick’s

  house across the street. It looked so lonely and helpless. I inhaled and shuffled over. I rang the doorbell. What time was it? Seven fifteen? Maybe it was too early. But that was about when I bugged him last time. Please be wearing pants. Please be wearing pants. No answer. I knocked. No answer. I hurried around back to see if he was on the deck. Nope.

  I yanked a yellow sticky pad out of my purse and wrote him an “I’ll help—Donna” message. I opened his fence and shoved past the jungle of exotic plants. Just like in his father’s greenhouse in his dream that I barged in on. I trotted up the deck stairs, smacking the paper on his French door. I smoothed the gluey area and then trotted back down, closed the gate and drove to work.

  I was carrying a side order of bacon and a cup of tea from the cafeteria, juggling them in one hand and punching my timecard in front of Cynthia’s glass-walled glaring booth. As I passed by, I expected some remark. Not welcome back, not I’m glad you’re all right, not the place fell apart without you but something. Nope. Nada. She took a drag from a cigarette and looked right through me.

  The early arriving staff lined the tables down the center aisle as they sat and dreaded another day in the file room. I did get lovely smiles and hugs and We were so worried’s from my peers. I thanked them for the fruit. The fruit. I guess that was still at Momma’s house. No wait. I remembered Bubba and Farts had been peeling oranges as I stomped out of the sham wake. Well, at least it didn’t go to waste.

  As I expected, my work was waiting for me. I couldn’t resist counting. Seventy-one baskets of Place-In-Files. And two baskets full of requests for files to be pulled. Oy vay, another day of shvitzing and sweating as Mrs. Meddlestein would say. Make that two weeks. Just to catch up.