The Immaculate Deception (24 page)

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 she 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 finally 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.

I gobbled two slices of bacon, wiped my fingers on a napkin and then used some hand sanitizer from my purse. The tea was still too hot to drink, so I vented the lid and set it in what I hoped would be a non-spill area of my table. The nasty old industrial clock on the wall at the end of the windowless dungeon indicated there were still four minutes before starting time. I went ahead and began to work on pulling the files.

Oh did my muscles tell me I was doing something they didn’t like. All the up, down, turn around, pull another file. Up, down, turn around, shove it in a tan plastic basket.

My androgynous colleague Angel stuck his/her head in my aisle at morning break time but I didn’t want anything. I still had the tea on my desk, so I slipped over, took three big swallows and got back to work. I finished all the pulling and schlepped the thirty-pound baskets over to the cart to go out. I was careful to bend my knees each time. Work smarter, not harder and all that workaday wisdom.

I had run four files over to the investigative unit that morning. Thank goodness the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. I picked up a basket of PIF’s, emptied the papers into the crook of my left arm and tossed the basket onto the floor. I kicked my three-wheeled stool over to the Ta’s, climbed up and began. Zigzagging my way from top to bottom of each bookshelf, I started working in a rhythm. The cadence started a little guitar strumming in my brain. Bobby Vinton’s “Take Good Care Of My Baby”. Yeah. That was the song.

Oops. I stood up too fast from that last squat. I hated when I did that. Momentary blindness. As the hallway swirled, the music played louder. The forward momentum was too fast this time. I didn’t like it. I tried sticking both arms out to grab hold of something in the tunnel. No luck. I fell on my face.

~♥~

I felt arms under mine, from behind. Grabbing my breasts actually and pulling me to my feet.

“
Cinderella, are you all right?”

I caught my breath. “Yeah, but I didn’t like that ride. It was bad. Hey, good to see you again. I’m sorry about barging in on someone else’s dream.”

“
Me too. I wished you didn’t have to see that.”

“
Why were you roughing up Officer Dick?”

“
To try to stop him from continuing in his father’s murderous footsteps.”

“
Officer Dick? He’s not the type. He’s a good guy, a cop.”

“
Killers usually are good guys to the rest of the world. But not to the ones they murder.”

“
Killers? Whom has Dick killed? You’re freaking me out.”

“
Exactly why I wished you hadn’t interrupted us. Hopefully he’s seen the error of his ways. Watch out for him but please don’t go around living your life paranoid. I don’t think he means harm to anyone anymore. He was very young and he was having mother issues. Dick’s mother had quite a hold over him.”