The Immaculate Deception (20 page)

~♥~

Red swirls. White sparkles. Blue thunder. Air Force One, the military airplane the President traveled on. My dream man was standing at the top of the steps to the plane. He looked really cute in uniform. An Air Force uniform.

I said, “Hey you, Colonel Jones. Come on down here and give me a great big kiss.”

“
No time for that, Cinderella. Where’ve you been? We need to get going.”

“
Sweet. Where to?” I climbed the stairs.

He ushered me into the cockpit and strapped me into the jump seat behind the pilot’s seat. The co-pilot, or navigator, or whatever the second guy in the cockpit was called, had his nose in a bunch of maps. I tried to clear my throat and get his attention but he was listening too intently into some big old earphones. My mate gave me a teasing little kiss, just barely fluttering his full lips on mine.

He said, “Here, something to read. Keep quiet.”

He placed a magazine onto my lap, taking the liberty of copping a touch of leg, before assuming his place at the controls.

I glanced down, marveling at my pink skirt. Wool, but not itchy. My gaze fell down to my legs. Oh much improved stockings. Nylons. Pink pumps. Not too pinchy at the toes. My eyes traveled up to a matching suit jacket. I gazed at my hands. White gloves. Cotton. I patted my hair with my left hand, it felt stiff. Lacquered and teased. Wait a minute, I was wearing a hat too.

When I felt the plane leave the ground, I closed my eyes and said a little silent prayer. Dear God and Jesus in Heaven, please rest my daddy’s soul. Please help me find my momma, safe and happy. Please help Tammy and Perry, for they know not their sins. And thanks for my dream boy. Amen.

Feeling the forward, upward thrust as we ascended into the wild blue yonder, I opened my eyes and smiled. I looked around the tiny compartment, at all the gadgets and gizamabobs. I was so impressed that my mate knew how to fly an airplane. Hey, the President’s plane, no less. Sweet.

After a while, I pulled my gloves off. Hmm…what should I do with them? I removed my hat and shoved them inside and then popped it back on top of my helmet hair. I grinned, feeling like Abe Lincoln. History had it that he used to hide notes to himself in his tall top hat.

I perused the magazine on my lap.
Life Magazine
. August 1963. I started thumbing through, it looked like a new edition. Hmm…August 1963. The year before I was born. I was conceived that year. Sometime in July or August. Must’ve been a very good year, when Momma and Daddy were in the throes of young love. Well, they weren’t all that young then but they must’ve had passion. Eww…never mind. Didn’t want that visual.

Lost in the advertisements, loving the Ivory Soap ad of yore, I felt the plane bumping down on the runway. It came to a stop. Mr. Jones slid out of his seat and unbuckled me.

“
Come on, Cinderella. Lots to see and do.”

I accepted his arm and he led me down the steps, onto the tarmac. Hey, it was finally sunny in this dream. Several military people were scurrying about on the ground, they looked as if they had a job to do. My man led me away. We sauntered into the airport through the baggage area and then into the main concourse and outside to a waiting car. Convertible. White. Huge. Six seats. He opened the passenger’s door. I stepped in femininely.

Palm trees. I spotted palm trees. I said, “Where are we?”

My man grinned. “Midway between Mercury and Mars.”

I remembered my last dream. We were in a rowboat in the Atlantic Ocean. “Palm Springs?”

“
Exactly.”

“
Wow.” I settled into the big comfy tan-leather upholstered seat.

We drove a circle around the airport. My gaze zeroed back in on Air Force One. Two men, in black suits and sunglasses, trotted down the steps. Next came a woman, also in sunglasses but dressed in a black skirt suit. No, maybe it was a sleeveless dress with a matching coat. “Hey, she’s a redhead. Like Momma. Hey, it is Momma!”

I watched as she stopped at the bottom of the stairs. A guy without sunglasses came down next. Brown hair. Toothy squint into the sun. His trousers were a little short. White socks with black shoes. My stomach fluttered. Holy history. “Is that? Is that?”

My man asked, “Is that who?”

Feeling a bit guilty, trying to squash my historical pheromones in front of my dream man, I composed myself. “Is that the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy?”

“
Looks like Bobby.”

We watched as Bobby entered a black limousine, followed by my mother. The President joined them. The door closed. The little American flags on each side of the car hood flapped in a patriotic wave.

I sighed back into my seat. “Wow, Momma got to work with Bobby Kennedy.”

My mate shot me a sly smile as he shifted into drive. “Sounds like somebody has her knickers in a lather.”

“
What? No. Of course not. I just admire his work. All the inroads he made for desegregation…and he is the one that got the warning labels posted on cigarettes. So there.”

“
So there? So there what?”

I said, “Huh?”

My man shook his head and steered onto a freeway. He muttered, “Um…she also got to work with President Kennedy, you know.”

“
Huh? Oh yes, of course she did. She was a Secret Service agent. Bodyguarded four U.S. Presidents and their wives. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Oh the stories she used to tell about LBJ,
the SOB
—”

“
Hey, that’s a very unpatriotic statement. What was wrong with President Lyndon Baines Johnson?” my mate asked.

I squirmed a little. The vision of Bobby lingered in my brain. “Oh it wasn’t anything
professional
that Momma had against President Johnson. He was her boss and of course she did her duty to the letter. It was just, he was…well…uncouth. A big Texan good ol’ boy. Whenever she was on duty and the first time that day the President noticed her, he’d walk up and grin. LBJ would shake her hand and say, ‘Chloe Sue, it’s so good to see you’.”

My man said, “And what’s wrong with that? She didn’t like being addressed in a familiar way?”

“
What she didn’t like was the wadded-up chewing gum wrapper with previously enjoyed gum inside that he’d leave in her hand.”

My dream man laughed.

I clicked the radio on. Smoothing my pink skirt, I asked him, “So where are we off to tonight?” As soon as I got those words out, the “Donna” song started playing on the radio. I sighed and tried to lean over to peck his cheek. Alas, the wind picked up.

Chapter Nine

R
ubbing my cold bare arms, I opened my eyes. The grandfather clock in the rec room chimed seven times. I’d spent another night in the closet. Saturday morning. Another day closer to eternity. Another day Momma had been missing. She had been released on Thursday. So where was she?

As I stared at the walnut paneling, I squirmed around, trying to get comfy, curled up on top of the steamer trunk. No use. I stood up. Momma had such an exciting career. To be around the leaders of the free world. I tried imagining the aura that their power fields must have glistened with. Momma bathed in this pool of might. And she was respected. Wow. Chloe Lambert Payne, Secret Service agent. One of the first females.

Wonder what had happened in the sixties to make her take an early out. Surely she could’ve put up with President Johnson’s shenanigans. Just made for a colorful workaday in my humble opinion.

It probably would’ve been fun to be his secretary. Well, not exactly the head secretary or whatever that position was called. But a girl in the typing pool or something. Just close enough to bear witness to history. Participate in living history. Maybe change the course of the world?
Okay, Donna, now you’ve gone to the other extreme. Feeling sorry for yourself is one sin. But now entertaining the notion that little insignificant you could actually impact the axis of the free world, well, that’s the other end of the sin spectrum.

That made me think about Reverend Martin Luther King. He’d changed the course of the world. But aside from a street in virtually every city renamed for him, what did I know of the man? Not much. He gave a great speech.
I have a dream too, Martin. That one day, all God’s children will be treated equally. And all of Chloe and Nathan’s children will be treated equally.
There I went again, Miss Pity Party.

Nichols Avenue in the District of Columbia was renamed M. L. King Avenue. Momma mentioned a time or two that she used to live in a boarding house there. Back when she first came to Washington, after college. Chloe Lambert rode a Greyhound bus from Shrew, North Carolina. She had a degree in home economics but followed her patriotic duty to step into the shoes of one of our boys at war. Washington needed good girls during World War Two.

I was so proud of Momma. Wish I was more like her. Well, her pioneering spirit anyhow. Where did the old girl go? Didn’t look like she came home. And if she did, what must she think? Would she know that her husband was dead? And just how did she feel about that? Other than that his Social Security disability pension would cease. I wondered if she ever loved him. What an odd couple. Opposites to the extreme. Or were they so much alike that they only enhanced each other’s bad qualities?

I heard footsteps above me. Someone had come in the front door. I heard the heels on the slate landing. And the steps to the living room were squeaking.
Momma.
It had to be Momma. Finally. I bolted from the closet and charged up the carpeted stairs. Wish I had long enough legs and more coordination to take them two at a time, like Tammy and Perry did.

I rounded the corner on the landing. I saw her. “Who are you?”

“
Hello. I’m sorry, the door was ajar. I-I was just stopping by to…”

“
To what?” I disappointedly asked the elegant African American lady.

“
I think I lost an earring here.”

“
When were you here?” I squinted at her accusingly. Maybe she was a real estate agent or client.

“
I was here at Dr. Payne’s wake.”

Yeah, that was right. Mrs. Meddlestein interrogated her. I remembered. She had come in later than the other mourners and she had been the only stranger to me. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t in such a good mindset that day. I’m Donna. Dr. Payne’s youngest child.”

The woman warmly smiled and stroked my hair. She gazed into my eyes. “Yes, I know. He spoke so highly of you.”

“
Really? He never mentioned you. Were you a patient?”

The woman blinked a tear out of her eye. “We were friends,” she sort of choked out.

I recognized her voice. Oh my God. It was coming back to me now. She was the young waitress at the White House. Katherine with the cheese platter. The same girl my Dad had groped on the train. She was Daddy’s girlfriend. Oh my God. I took a step backward. All these years. Momma was right. I thought she had imagined the whole girlfriend thing. The infamous salad bowl incident. She was the one who had my momma’s salad bowl.

“
You are the one that stole my momma’s salad bowl!”

She stepped back too.

“
Dear, I don’t know what you mean.”

“
What is your name, madam?”

“
Miss Lagossee.”

“
Whole name.”

“
Miss Katherine Lagossee.”

“
Get out.”

“
I was only looking for my earring. It’s Black River Gold, in the shape of a leaf—”

“
If we find it, we’ll…keep it for our momma. Only fair. Since you have her salad bowl.”

The woman looked a bit shaken. She probably thought I was a nut. I didn’t care if I was a nut. I wanted this interloper out of my momma’s home. Damn Daddy’s hide.

Miss Katherine Lagossee said, “Now just calm down, dear. I don’t know anything about no salad bowl. Like I said, I was a good friend of your father’s.”

“
I imagine you were. Eww! Now get out!”

“
I don’t like the tone of what you are insinuating, young lady. You respect my age and gender now, you hear?”

“
I will not respect Daddy’s…Daddy’s—”

“
Don’t you dare. You hush up your mouth, child.”

“
Make me,” I goaded.

“
Little Tammy never sassed me like this. You are
your momma’s child
.”

“
What—”

“
Little Tammy always respected me. ‘Yes, ma’am, Mommy Kay’, she’d say—”

So this was my sister’s special babysitter. Oh my God.

“
Mommy Kay? Katherine Lagossee,
you are Mommy Kay
? Get out!” I yanked the sleeve of the woman’s champagne silk blouse, ushering her toward the steps. She indignantly strutted. As badly as I wanted to shove her down the stairs, I wouldn’t do that to an old lady. She departed. I bolted the door.

Oh I couldn’t wait to be done with all of this. Once Momma was back home, everything would be worked out. No, it wouldn’t. How could it be? I hoped Momma never had to come home to this sad mausoleum. And I hoped she never had to know what her children had done to her. Tammy and Perry that was. But where was she?
Oh my God, I hope she’s not wandering the streets like a bag lady.
A wave of nausea nearly overtook me. No. I refused to let that image linger. Momma was no bag lady. She was a smart, savvy, experienced woman. She could take care of herself. She must’ve done it many times when she was in the counterfeiting division of the Secret Service. Deep undercover. So cool. Secret agent Momma. I’ll bet those criminals didn’t know what pummeled them. I smiled.