The Immaculate Deception

by Sherry Silver

“Well, come along.” He nudged my elbow.

  “What? Are you crazy? Suppose she can see me now since I’ve been born?”

  “Don’t worry. I told you I won’t let her see you.”

  “You’re right. I don’t wanna scare her. At least I found her. Well, not exactly. Where are we?”

  “Washington. 1964.”

  “Hey, listen. I stopped crying.”

  We watched as Momma placed baby me gently into the stroller and pushed off into the direction she came from. Mr. Jones wrapped his arms around me again and brushed my hair away from my neck. The heat of his breath intoxicated grown-up me.

  Chapter Twelve

  I inhaled the city summer night. Roses at the park entrance, wafting through with exhaust fumes. Leaded gas. The good old days. Like Daddy’s car ran on. But I didn’t wanna think about that now. Mr. Jones guided my mind off the night and redirected my focus to my neck. I concentrated on the blood pulsing in my carotid artery. He wrapped his long strong fingers around the back of my neck and gently tickled my throat. Next came his whiskers, a rough but pleasurable sensation, as his lips brushed my earlobe. His tongue darted gently inside, ever so slightly. I wanted to stay in this era. A simpler time when the most important thing was the love of a good man. My good man. And what a skilled tongue he had. I placed my hand on his chest and felt his heart beating. I never wanted this moment to end. Shoot. I heard the “Donna” song.

  ~*~

  The phone was ringing. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and glanced around my living room but I didn’t budge. The answering machine kicked in. “Hello, no one is able to come to the phone. Please leave your message after the tone.”

  “Oh-Donna. Pick up. Pick up, Oh-Donna. It’s Tammy. Are you all right, honey? We need to talk. It’s about Perry. He’s up to no good and I need to give you a heads up. Let me give you a couple of numbers you can call me at—”

  I stepped into the powder room and turned on the stink fan. The varoom blasted out pretty little Tammy’s sickly sweet voice.

  Yeah, of course Perry was up to no good. What newsflash was that? But what’s your angle, sister dear? How come you want to throw in with the retard?

  I flushed and stomped into the kitchen and discovered Tammy’s blinking message. Blinkin’ all right. My stomach growled. Barked like a seal actually. I really needed to start eating more often. Well, there was nothing much in the refrigerator other than a little bit of shaved domestic Swiss and some generic bottled water. I heard thunder rumbling in the night. What time was it anyhow? The clock on the microwave glowed alien green, nine fourteen p.m. Well, I wasn’t going out now.

  I fished around in the junk drawer under the phone. Yes. I found a coupon for Chinese food. I erased Miss Tammy’s clandestine whisper and called Little Tai Pai. There was a ten-dollar minimum for delivery so I ordered vegetable lo mein and General Tso’s chicken.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t watered my deck garden since, hmm… No idea. I turned the outside light on and peeked out the French doors. Oh the sunflowers and morning glories had fainted. I filled two big sixty-four-ounce convenience store soda cups up with tap water. I snuggled one between my chest and left arm and placed the other in my left hand. I opened the door, stepped out and closed the door. The thunderbolt was thrashing like a marksman’s whip. What in the devil was I doing out watering plants in an electrical storm? Sniper shots of rain commenced splattering the pressure-treated decking boards.

  My plants had flourished in the potting soil I amended with Epsom salts and plant food every other week. They’d spilled over the edges and ranged in height from vine to six feet. The rain generally didn’t penetrate down through the jungle to the root-bound soil. I went ahead and emptied the two cups in the three-foot-long green plastic planter to my right. All right, the skies opened up on me. I sprinted to the door and twisted the…locked knob. I threw my head back and growled. A quarter-sized water dollop hit me in the right eye. “Ow!” Barefooted, I descended the wooden steps.

  I hid underneath. The rain spilled through the slats between the decking above but it was better than the full brunt of the storm. I knocked on the French door to my basement. Yeah, it was my house and I knew my roommate was somewhere in Canada at the mo but hey, it was worth a shot at her opening up. Of course, she didn’t. I tried the knob. Locked. I snorted and stood with my back against the muttons separating the nine-paned glass door. Okay, Dummy Donna. What to do now? Think, think, think. A vision of Winnie the Pooh, the cute cuddly yellow cartoon bear with the red sweater, entertained my thoughts. I could picture him thumping his head thinking. What would Pooh do in this situation? Why, find a honey pot for sure. Honey pot… I glanced to the stack of round plastic nursery containers stacked next to the shed. I had been too lazy to get the key to it to stash them away. And too lazy to wash the residual dirt out as well. Hey, my little metal gardening trowel was inside the top pot. Hey, now…I could use that to pry the hinge pins out of the door like Officer Dick did. Feeling clever, I snatched the trowel. A snake sprang out of the pot, wrapping around my wrist. I let out a primordial howl. I dropped the trowel and flailed my arm wildly, finally catching the middle of the thick black snake around one of the support posts. He coiled onto it. I evacuated.

  Out the six-foot privacy fence gate, around the side of my townhouse and up the stoop. I heard the electrical transformer blow. In total darkness, I desperately tried to open my front door. Locked. Drenched and terrified, I remembered the garage. Sliding my hand down the black wrought iron railing, I took the brown brick stairs two at a time. I slammed into the eight-foot-wide garage door. Holding my hand over my eyes, trying to guess the numbers on the keypad, I punched in the code. Nothing. Again, nothing. Right. The power was out.

  Standing in the shelter of a small overhang, I threw my back up against the fortress I called home. The whole Spyglass Street was blacked out. Spooky. A flicker in an upstairs window across the street caught my notice. I stared for a while, making sure I did see something. Candlelight flickered behind the shades. I observed a silhouette.

  I scrambled across the street and up Dick’s red brick steps. I lay on the doorbell, ringing frantically. He didn’t answer. Oh God, he must be pissed at me. Couldn’t say I blamed him. Wait a minute, no electricity, so no doorbell. With a tinge of relief, I knocked.

  I huffed at myself and leaned backward against his black wrought iron railing. I grabbed the wet bar with both hands and arched my back. Yep, I could still see the silhouette. Hey, it looked like he was doing hand puppets. Let’s see, what was that, a rabbit? No, more like a carrot. A long carrot, with a mushroom head. Oh silly me. That was no carrot. Naughty officer. The shadow danced around. And grew. I could see the outline of someone else. Definitely a woman. Very nicely stacked. While I enjoyed a bit of wicked voyeurism, the pelting hail got the better of me. I trotted back to my place and leaned up against my garage door, trying to flatten myself out so that the overhang afforded some elemental protection.

  I heard the rumbling roar and saw the flash. The transformer was trying to restart. Yes. The streetlights illuminated. I punched the garage code and jerked back as it wheezed and grunted upward. Hooray.

  I remembered the snake and kept a scared eye out for it, didn’t want it slithering in. Any vipers den in a storm and such.

  I untwisted the half-empty bag of potting soil and shoved my hand inside, midway up my wrist. The vermiculite fluffed under my fingernails. I felt the hard stick and yanked out my spare house key. I held the bag in the air and spun it and then tucked the top down underneath, returning it to the metal shelf.

  Hey, the rain stopped. As I punched the code in to close the garage door, I heard giggling. Turning around, I watched Officer Dick, dressed in his signature boxer shorts, holding a car door open. A woman patted his fly and eased into the car. I caught a glimpse of her face. Well, well, well. If it ain’t the proper business-like Officer Estrogen who questioned me as to his whereabouts. So Fawn Fiddler definitely couldn’t be Dick’s sist
er. She must be his ex-wife. It certainly looked like an amicable divorce. She must live close by because I saw her at the Mexican restaurant the other day. Why did they bother divorcing? Oh who knew? Who cared?

  Oops, Dick spotted me. So I waved and smiled. He turned his attention back to his lover. I unlocked my front door and gratefully stepped over the threshold.

  I shoved the door until it clicked and threw the locks on. Hey, where in the devil was the Chinese delivery guy? What time was it anyhow? I returned to the kitchen. You’ve got to be kiddin’ me. It had only been eleven minutes since my thunderous snakey shadow dancing in the deluge began. Seemed like all night.

  “Oh for sh—” I muttered as I realized I’d tracked mud and grass and rain through the foyer, down the hall and into the kitchen. I yanked the paper towel roll and ripped four off. Under the sink, I opened the cabinet door and grabbed the disinfectant wipes. I flipped the top open with my thumb and played tug of war, ultimately winning one moist cloth.

  Crawling and wiping back from whence I came, I smiled as I reached the front door. Murky headlights pulled into my driveway. I trotted back to the laundry room, shoved the soiled towels inside the trashcan, wiped my damp hands on my soaked sweater and returned to the foyer where I grabbed a ten and three ones out of my purse.

  “Aura Lee” went the doorbell. I turned the portico light on and peeked through the peeky hole. One small Asian man, holding one small bag. I unlocked the door and opened it.

  He smiled as I said, “Hi.” As he handed me the bag, I offered him the small wad of cash. He nodded and said “Thank you” without counting it. I closed the door, pushed on it until I heard the click and then threw the locks on. I gave him time to get down the steps and then turned the porch light out.

  The air conditioning kicked on. I shivered as I passed the thermostat in the living room. I punched the button up to eighty but now I had to wait for it to cycle off.

  Gosh darn it, I was too cold to eat. I tossed the food in the refrigerator and went upstairs to take a hot bath.

  Of course I filled the tub with the hot water tap only, seeing how shivery I was. It was wonderful, for about three minutes, when my body temperature returned to ninety-eight six and then I was uncomfortably flushed. I let all that expensive hot water down the drain while I dried off and slipped into some pink shorty summer pajamas. I caught a glimpse in the vanity mirror. What a mess my hair was. I sprayed some detangler in and tried separating and reviving the curls. It’d be Medusa’s nest in the morning. My pulse reacted as I remembered the snake. Of all the creatures in the world, snakes were my terror. I could deal with spiders and rats but not anything that slithered. Oh God, I needed to think about something else.

  I crawled into bed and flipped on the TV. The three local stations were all broadcasting the sports segment of the nightly news. I was not a sportsy kinda girl. Football made me yawn. I did like watching baseball for a couple of years until Cal Ripken retired. He was a phenomenal player. I always meant to go and watch a Baltimore Orioles home game. Too late now. Man, did that guy have some sparkly blue eyes. Nice rear too. Must be something about sprinting that sculpted the glutes. Baseball players always seemed to have great home plates.

  I flipped through the channels, briefly watching the latest amazing all-in-one cooker. The spokesperson touted that it would roast a whole turkey, steam green beans, bake potatoes, corn bread and pumpkin pie, all in the same pot, all in ten minutes. Yeah. Uh-huh. Flip. Oh yeah. I loved the makeup magic. The dowdy old lady picked randomly from the audience and turned them into beautiful swans right before your eyes. Makeup ladies. Tammy. I’d bet Tammy could do anything these wizards did. She was really good at it.

  I felt sadness in my tummy. Tammy and I never did each other’s hair and nails and makeup when we were growing up. She never had time for me. Tammy Payne. The sister I always wanted but who never wanted me back.

  Flip. A black and white movie. Doom-doom music. No, don’t do it, girl, don’t go up the stairs! Hey, that was Vera. Perry’s momma. She’d been an actress. This must be Mother May I, the movie she debuted in back in 1945. Vera Blandings sure was beautiful with her tall willowy figure and screen goddess face. Perry got his features from Daddy’s side. Poor guy. Daddy wasn’t very handsome. I clicked the TV off. The snake and the storm were bad enough. I didn’t want to watch the movie that Alfred Hitchcock said scared even him. No sir-ree Bob. Bob’s your uncle. I smiled, thinking about Mr. Jones, my dream mate.

  Well, I was wide awake now. What to do, what to do when your foot is stuck in the glue? I padded down the stairs, flicking every light switch along the way.

  I sat at my cubby desk in the living room. I stretched and turned the surge protector on with my big toe. Toe-bidextrous, I was. Momma too. That was about the only familial trait we shared. Momma, where are you?

  Well, I wasn’t filing a missing person’s report. For all I knew, with Perry’s power of suggestion, they probably had an all-points bulletin out for her arrest. For a murder that never happened.

  Momma was probably on the lam. And she knew how to take care of herself, assimilating into the locals. Yeah, she was eighty-three years old now but not on the inside. Contrary to Perry and Daddy’s salacious lies. Those two old farts used to enjoy sitting around in the dark, making up wild twisted tales about whatever family member wasn’t present at the mo. And it was like “Here’s the secret, pass it on…” where the rumor got more outlandish with each participant. Except they didn’t need any more than their own two disgusting imaginations.

  I hated them. Perry and Daddy. I absolutely hated them. And I felt very guilty about it. Momma taught me to overlook weaknesses and see the good in everyone. The thing that really confused me was why Perry and Daddy treated me and Momma so bad, yet they were charming to everyone else, especially Tammy. And they were also very good citizens, who had contributed so much good to the world through their professions. To the outside world, Judge Perry Payne and Doctor Nathan Payne were pillars of the community. To be fair, they had achieved many great honors and earned them. It was just they had slacked off in the family relations part of their lives.

  There used to be a tiny little piece of heart tissue inside of me that knew my daddy loved me. Some day I had hoped to understand why he treated me so differently to Perry and Tammy. But thanks to Uncle Howie, I now understood that Daddy had not loved me at all. Well, no, I could never know what was truly in his heart. But at least I finally knew why he treated Perry and Tammy with preference. They were his biological children. I wasn’t.

  I didn’t know why I suddenly believed Uncle Howie. But I knew now, deep inside, that Daddy hadn’t been my real father. Perhaps I had always known on some level. But what about the other things Uncle Howie had mumbled? That Momma was supposed to have slept with Kennedy. That still didn’t make sense. Unless… Flashes of Daddy discussing ovary implants with Miss Pippin darted through my brain. He’d told MM he needed someone with a healthy uterus who had lost her ovaries. Another flash shot through me. Daddy telling Momma he had to remove her right ovary and fallopian tube. Momma and MM… MM and the President… What sick experiment had Daddy planned? No way! Momma would never have agreed to be a guinea pig for Daddy. Plus, Uncle Howie said that she hadn’t slept with Kennedy. Of course not! Things like these happened in Frankenstein movies but not to boring Oh-Donna. Shouldn’t have peeked into Vera’s horror movie. Just over-stimulating my writer’s imagination. And I wasn’t into writing horror.

  My computer booted up. I decided to Google Vera Blandings. I typed “Vera Blandings” into the Google search box. It found seventy-one thousand nine hundred results in point twenty-four seconds. I clicked the top link. It was broken. I pushed the back button and clicked the second link. It carried me to an eBay auction of a used Mother May I DVD. I clicked back again to the Google page.

  The next link took me to Our Cats Let It All Hang Out Of The Bag tabloid tidbit sight. I scrolled down the table of contents and clicked Vera Blandings Murder
. The screen popped up.

  Actress Vera Blandings, age 54, was found dead in her modest Beverly Hills bungalow on October 31, 1970. Her ex-husband, Dr. Nathan Payne, prominent Washington, DC gynecologist, discovered the body. The two had one son and remained close friends. Miss Blandings had been asphyxiated in the bathtub. An uncut sheet of hundred-dollar bills was affixed to her back. The police found signs of forced entry.

  To counter any suspicion, Dr. Payne voluntarily submitted to a lie detector test, which he passed. Miss Blandings had a sixteen-year-old son with Dr. Payne and two grown daughters from her previous marriage to Bill Blandings. During her fairy-tale life, Miss Blandings was the personal secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She left that position when Alfred Hitchcock cast her opposite Cary Grant in Mother May I. She went on to make seven more films between 1945 and 1954, when she retired to become a housewife. The case is still open.

  My stomach churned. An uncut sheet of hundred-dollar bills. Like Perry had behind his couch. Perry… Tammy had said that Perry was up to no good and that she needed to talk to me. I closed the browser and shut the computer down.

  I hurried over to the foyer closet and tugged my big navy blue handbag off the shelf. It was weightless. I turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing. What happened to the bundle of uncut hundred-dollar bills that I obtained from behind the couch in Perry’s office? I clasped a hand over my mouth as I bit my lip. I began hyperventilating. I’d been robbed. No, burglarized. Robbed was when someone pointed a gun at you and said, “Stick ‘em up.”

  Think, Donna, think. Call the police. No, imbecile. What are you gonna say? I want to report a burglary, someone stole counterfeit money that I stole from a judge? Oh was my gut churning up acid. I kept swallowing. I couldn’t stay here, not when someone had invaded my privacy. I grabbed my fanny pack with my wallet and keys in it. I shoved it inside my big blue tote bag, along with Momma’s purse. I strode outside, slammed the door and zoomed down to the garage.