3 Revenge of the Crafty Corpse (6 page)

five

The moment I entered
the house, I kicked off my sandals, leaving them where they landed askew on the foyer floor. A definite do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do moment, but I was too tired to care. Besides, the boys weren’t home. I’d pick up my sandals and move them to my closet way before Alex and Nick ever discover their mother’s transgression.

“Mama?” I called as I headed for the kitchen.

“Downstairs, dear.”

Uh-oh
. As much as I’d appreciate some help around the house, the last time Mama did laundry, she’d tossed a red T-shirt in with the white wash. Alex and Nick swore they’d sooner go commando than wear pink jockey shorts, and who could blame them? They’d never survive gym class.

The interior temperature of my home was only slightly cooler than the Saharan temps of outside. Air conditioning only works up to a certain point. Once the mercury soars above that point, the AC unit can chug nonstop without producing further benefits. I anticipated an electric bill in the triple digits for inside air not much below triple digits. Still, it was better than nothing. We’d all die of heat prostration without the minimal relief the unit provided. May it continue to chug for years to come.

I’d just filled a glass with ice water and was holding it against my forehead, my eyes closed, when I heard Mama climbing up the basement stairs. “Where have you been all day, Anastasia?”

“Working.”

“On a Saturday?”

“I’ll tell you all about it in a few minutes.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re home, dear. How can you work with such dangerous tools?”

My eyes sprang open. Mama looked like she’d walked into an enormous cobweb. Strings of glue clung to her hands and arms and hung from her chin. A large glob covered the top of her left Ferragamo. Good thing she wasn’t wearing sandals. I grabbed the
glue gun from her hand and began de-stringing her. “Did you burn
yourself ?”

“Only every finger.”

“What were you doing?”

“Fixing your father.”

Harold Periwinkle, my father, had drowned while SCUBA diving seventeen years ago. I sent up a silent prayer to the God of Dementia, begging him to keep his stinking mitts off my mother. “Mama, Daddy’s dead.”

“Well of course he is, dear! I was there, you know.”

“But you just said—”

“Honestly, Anastasia! I was dusting my Dear Departeds when that
Satanic communist mongrel startled me and I knocked Harold off the shelf. He spilled onto the dining room floor, and the porcelain band around his urn broke. I was trying to glue it back in place.”

Flora Sudberry Periwinkle Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O’Keefe had outlived each of her five husbands plus Lou Beaumont, her recently murdered fiancé. All except Lou now resided in a row of bronze urns on a shelf in my dining room. By some miracle, Ricardo had overlooked the urns when he trashed my house five months ago. Or maybe they’d spooked him enough that he’d left them undisturbed. I suppose even Mafia loan sharks have their share of superstitions.

As for Lou, still too upset over his deceit, Mama had relegated him to a shelf in the basement when she couldn’t pawn his remains off on any of his ex-wives. I called the dining room shelf Flora’s Dead Husbands’ Shrine. Mama called the urns her Dear Departeds. “Where’s Daddy now?” I asked.

She pointed to the far corner of the kitchen floor where a green plastic dustpan held the ashy remains of my father. “I wanted to fix the urn before I poured him back into his resting place.”

“I’ll fix the urn. You pick up Daddy before Catherine the Great uses him for a litter box.”

“She wouldn’t dare! She’s too well trained.”

Right
. As if on cue, Catherine the Great sauntered into the kitchen, looked around, then headed straight for Daddy. I grabbed the dustpan just as she was about to paw what remained of my father. “Let’s not tempt her. Pour Daddy into a plastic bag until I fix his urn.”

“You’ll do it right away, won’t you, dear? The thought of my darling Harold sealed up in a plastic bag is more than I can bear.”

She preferred Daddy sitting in a dustpan? “After I get rid of this headache.”

I collapsed into a kitchen chair and placed the now tepid glass of water back on my forehead. A second later the doorbell rang. I contemplated ignoring it, except that one of the boys may have forgotten his key. So I took a quick sip of the water and dragged my exhausted butt back to the foyer while Mama carefully spooned Daddy into a Ziploc.

On my way through the living room, I glanced out the window and found a gray minivan parked at the curb in front of my house. Before opening the door, I checked the peephole. A tall, thin man with a head of shaggy brown hair in need of a trim stood on my stoop. He wore a pair of wrinkled khaki trousers and an equally wrinkled blue and white pencil-striped, short-sleeved sports shirt. Something about him struck me as vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

“Is this the home of Lucille Pollack?” he asked when I opened the door.

I checked his hands before answering. No envelope. Hopefully, that meant he wasn’t a process server. Lucille had keyed a Beemer prior to her stroke. The owner threatened to sue her. Not that she had anything besides her monthly social security check and a meager pension from her days as the editor of
The Worker’s Herald
, the weekly newspaper of the American Communist Party. “Yes, but she’s not here.”

“Are you Anastasia Pollack?”

“I am.” The Beemer owner couldn’t sue me, could he? “And you are?”

He held out his hand. “Ira Pollack. Your half-brother. I’m so very happy to meet you.”

I stared at his extended hand, then his face. Finally, it hit me. Give the man a haircut, add a few years and a dozen pounds or so, and Ira Pollack could be a not-so-dead ringer for Dead Louse of a Spouse. How could I not have noticed immediately? “I believe you’ve made a mistake,” I said.

“Isidore Pollack was your father, wasn’t he?”

“Of course Isidore Pollack wasn’t her father!” Mama strode across the living room to join me. “I should know who fathered my only child.”

Ira stared at Mama, a look of total confusion spreading across his face. “
You’re
Lucille Pollack?”

“I should say not!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I—”

I grabbed Ira Pollack’s still extended hand, his sweaty palm making me immediately regret my action. “As I was about to say, I’m not Lucille’s daughter. I’m her daughter-in-law, and this,” I nodded toward Mama, “is my mother, not Lucille. My mother-in-law recently had surgery and is currently in a rehab facility.”

“That’s too bad. I would have liked to speak with her.”

I doubted Lucille would feel likewise. “Maybe once she returns home.”

“I have a half-brother, then?” asked Ira. “I guess that makes you my half-sister-in-law.” His sweaty palm still gripping my hand, he vigorously pumped my arm. “I’m so very happy to meet you, and I can’t wait to meet your husband. Is he home?”

“Perhaps you should come in.” I slipped my hand from his and led him into the living room. With my left hand I motioned him toward one of the two overstuffed easy chairs that flanked the bay window while I surreptitiously swiped my right hand dry across my denim skirt. “Would you like a cold drink?”

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of ice water if it’s no trouble. Kind of brutal outside today.”

“No trouble at all.” I turned to Mama. “Would you mind getting Mr. Pollack—”

“Ira,” he interjected. “After all, we’re family.”

Were we? He certainly looked like Karl, although younger. Karl had claimed Isidore Pollack walked out on Lucille shortly after she became pregnant with him. The way my mother-in-law tells it, J. Edgar Hoover abducted Isidore. She also believed the feds disposed of his body under the goalposts at Giants stadium. If I had money to bet, I’d go with Karl’s more plausible explanation. How could I take seriously a woman who confused her husband with Jimmy Hoffa?

I revised my request. “Mama, would you mind getting Ira a glass of water?”

“Of course not, dear, but don’t you dare continue this conversation until I get back. I certainly don’t want to miss anything juicy.”

Mama returned with Ira’s water. While he guzzled down the entire glass, she nestled herself into the opposite corner of the sofa from where I sat. Catherine the Great jumped onto Mama’s lap and hunkered down.

Ira placed the empty glass on the floor by his feet, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, and said, “I suppose I should start from the beginning.”

“Always a good place, young man,” said Mama. “Take your time,
and don’t leave anything out.”

“Isidore Pollack was my father,” he began.

“Was?” I asked.

“He passed away recently.”

Mama and I both murmured the requisite
so sorry to hear that
.

“After he died,” continued Ira, “I discovered a secret from his past while sorting through his possessions.”

“That he’d had a child before you?” I prompted.

Ira nodded. “I don’t even think my mother ever knew. If she did, she never let on. At least not to me. She passed away three years ago.”

Once again Mama and I murmured an
I’m sorry
.

“What did you find?” I asked.

He pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. “Dad owned a huge collection of 45s from the fifties and sixties. This was squirreled away in the dust sleeve of Little Richard’s
Lucille
.”

The envelope was addressed to a Mrs. Edith Pollack at an
address in Queens. Underneath the address, an additional note stated, “Please forward to Isidore Pollack.”

“Read it,” said Ira.

I pulled the one sheet of thick pale lavender stationery from the envelope and unfolded it. A small deckle-edged black and white photo of a young man and a woman dropped onto my lap. I recognized the hard set of the woman’s mouth. The man looked very much like Karl at that age. I handed Mama the yellowed snapshot.

She turned the photo over and read the inscription written on the back. “
Louise Trachtenburg and Isidore Pollack, Ban the Bomb rally. Greenwich Village 1957
.”

“Several years before Karl was born,” I said. “Maybe the photo was taken shortly after they met.”

“Read the letter,” said Mama.

I scanned the text. “Oh, dear.”

Mama scooted closer to me. “What does it say? Read it out loud, for heaven’s sake, Anastasia.”

_____

Dear Isidore,

I hope this letter eventually reaches you. The return name and address are obviously fictitious, and I took a bus to New Jersey to mail it. I even spent good money on some decadent perfumed stationery to complete the ruse, hoping your mother would believe the letter came from an old high school or college flame. I know she’d trash any letter from me, the “evil pinko” she believes nearly corrupted you.

I won’t apologize for who I am or what I believe in. You once said that was what first attracted you to me, that you loved my passion for a cause I believed in more than anything or anyone. And you once shared that passion, or so you claimed.

The suburban home with the white picket fence is Madison Avenue propaganda. That life will suck everything that’s good and unique and special out of you and turn you into a mindless machine. You’ve been brainwashed by your parents and others like them. I cannot in good conscience subject any child of mine to that numbing way of life.

I have complete faith that you will eventually realize your mistake. I await your return. Lucille

_____

The letter only raised more questions about Lucille’s past. For one thing, I never knew her maiden name, and I’m not sure Karl did, either.

“She doesn’t mention the photo,” said Mama, “and the handwriting on the photo doesn’t match the handwriting on the letter.”

“The photo may have belonged to my father,” said Ira. “I have no way of knowing whether it was sent with the letter or not.”

“Probably his,” I said. “Lucille’s not the sentimental type. To my knowledge, she’s never kept any family photos.”

I glanced at the envelope. “This letter isn’t dated, and the postmark is too smudged to read. Lucille doesn’t say she’s pregnant with Isidore’s child. She could be referring to any future children they might have together. How did you make the huge leap from this letter and photo to my doorstep?”

“Through a bit of unbelievable coincidence,” said Ira. “Three weeks ago I saw a news story about a group of elderly women protesters blocking an intersection in Westfield. The reporter interviewed the ring leader, one Lucille Pollack. The news clip also showed footage of you arriving home and refusing to speak to the press. I’d discovered the letter and photo about a week earlier.”

“I would imagine there’s more than one Lucille Pollack in the world. What made you think you’d discovered the right Lucille? The photo gives her maiden name.”

“From the background information mentioned by the reporter. I knew Dad briefly flirted with communism in his youth and that for a short time he worked as a stringer for
The Worker’s Herald
,
the same paper where your mother-in-law worked. And the age fit.
When I compared the snapshot to the news footage, I was con
vinced I had the right woman. That’s why I was so confused by your mother a few minutes ago.”

“Why did you wait so long to contact us?” I asked.

Ira ran his fingers through his hair, then took a deep breath and slowly released it. “I needed time to work up the courage. At first I wasn’t sure I should intrude and possibly dig up a past that your mother-in-law might want to keep buried. However, the pull of connecting with a sibling won out. I never had any brothers or sisters.”

I understood Ira’s dilemma. As an only child, I had often wished
for a brother or sister. At times I still do. “If your father knew about the baby, he walked out on Lucille while she was pregnant.”