Close Encounters (6 page)

And did he really have such a terrible life? The private schools, the summer vacations in Geneva, the Lamborghini for his sixteenth birthday? He should be happy I didn't meddle in his life like some psycho queenie. The only wire hanger I ever waved at him was when he got that heroin addict from Sarah Lawrence knocked up—no grandchild of mine will be spawned by a Sarah Lawrence grad.

So Audrey, I decided, would be America's daughter. Photo-ops, please: Diana Spriggs and her assistant Audrey at soup kitchens, ladling Campbell's soup into Styrofoam bowls. Diana and Audrey combing scraggly mutts at the SPCA, handing out sun visors at the race for MS.

“She's like the daughter I never had,” I told
Daily People
at the breast cancer awareness walk. “Audrey has helped me to not only be America's housewife, but America's Mom as well.”

I never should have said that last bit. It's hard enough getting dates being just America's housewife. Yes, I have needs. And Audrey was like family—her family is my family. I can't count how many excruciating autograph and photo sessions I have engaged in when stuck at Audrey's mother's house in Kansas, trapped among women who wear every one of my brooch and earring and necklace sets from Homeshopping America and look none the better for it. If I had to share the pain of an extended blue-collar family with Audrey, then she could share the cream of her life with me.

Such as her dashing young stud, Carl, a sailing instructor and frequent visitor to the Sprigg compound. It wasn't something I went into with the worst intentions. In fact, I was able to get my rocks off in a purely voyeuristic fashion for some time, courtesy of the Sprigg compound security cameras. I discovered one night while making a surprise inspection of the security room (I always suspected our night watchman was a drunk who slept on the job), that Carl and Audrey had conjugal relations at about one o'clock on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. I mean, it was my right to make sure Audrey wasn't doing anything unwholesome in her apartment, like smoking crack or pilfering Diana Sprigg collectable items for sale on Internet auction, right?

Carl had a kielbasa. And he knew where to stuff it. A pure specimen, it inspired in me hundreds of Eastern European sausage recipes for my next cookbook. How I loved to watch it bounce on the security camera. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, when I was at home I sat with a container of gingerbread Spriggs and a high ball and watched Adonis come to black and white, grainy life. I even had my tech guru send me a live feed to my laptop on those nights I wasn't home, all in the interest of compound security.

“Why
wouldn't
terrorists threaten Diana Sprigg, America's housewife?” I pondered aloud to his skeptical, smug face. I waited until Ramadan to fire him. Then something extraordinary happened. Carl, conniving little con man he was, became aware of the security camera. Instead of the outrage I expected, its existence seemed to bring out the exhibitionist in Carl. He made sure to position himself in front of the camera, adjusting the bedroom lights so that the gleaming sweat of his chest seemed to dribble from the monitor into my highball. He waved it around before ramming it into the half moons of Audrey's behind. He was a little porn star. My little porn star. He began to wink at me as we passed in the house, out by the pool, riding horses. I winked back. We were family, right? I had given Audrey so much, so much more than her little clean-face Midwestern upbringing could ever afford her, and besides, Carl was a little leech, a star-fucker.

In other words, my kind of guy. Audrey found us in the sauna halfway through the Kama Sutra. It was a very quiet incident; we settled with Carl to keep it out of the tabloids, a mere 45 grand once my lawyers presented him with evidence of his previous arrest record for sleeping with a minor. As for Audrey, I convinced her that the whole incident was for the greater good. Surely Carl would have mistreated her. I was only looking out for her. I am such the martyr for all of you.

Once Audrey demanded the security cameras be removed from her apartment, I began to feel a little empty. I began to feel that part of Audrey was taken away from me, and not just my ability to know what conditioner she used in the shower. Fearing mutiny, I raised her salary. I sent her family tickets to see the Rockettes and
Phantom of the Opera
. I let her snot-crusted nieces and nephews ride my Shetland ponies. I sent the whole clan to Disneyworld.

Audrey stayed on. But I worried about her, nonetheless. When she was on her cell phone, was she really ordering my French brie truffles, or was she lining up a job with America's craft lady, Betsy Boodie? Was she confirming my appointment with my past-life analyst or booking a one-way flight to Prague?

I began to have night terrors. What would I do without Audrey, Audrey who updated my Blackberry and bought that cheap, non-organic bubble bath I like from the discount store, who repaired my broken heels and scraped the excess cream cheese from my bagels in green room?

It was a temporary arrangement. Audrey was to sleep in my bed with me until I fell asleep. Bobo and Shnitzy didn't like it, but what had they done for me lately, except shit in my Italian stilettos? She was to sleep in my bed at home, and we had adjoining hotel rooms on the road. And, she was only to use her cell phone from the Sprigg compound so that all calls could be monitored. This arrangement seemed to ward off the nightmares for awhile. That and the supple back massages I had Audrey give me. But what if she took off in the middle of the night, one black suitcase and a heart full of secrets?

My publicist had begun to notice little blurbs about me in the tabloids. None of which were true, of course, but it meant the sharks were close. After that, Audrey was not authorized to have contact with anyone I didn't personally know; all media contacts were cleared through me. I gave Audrey her messages at the end of the day, after I had thoroughly screened them, even if I created more work for myself. After all, she was certainly understanding about my fears of media preying on her vulnerable, wholesome mind. There was nothing I wouldn't do for my precious Audrey.

But a stronger message needed to be sent, I felt, about the importance of loyalty.
The National Daily
would begin floating six-figure checks for just a “tidbit” about my sexual escapades or my bitchiness or the way I told that stewardess where she could stick her implants, and the next thing you know, Audrey could sent those unfertilized eggs in her ovaries to college without ever having to give me another manicure on a flight to Paris.

So I decided on the macaw. Who the hell likes birds, anyway? Audrey's macaw, Wilma, drove me absolutely nuts. It stank, it talked constantly, and the feathered fucker would outlive me by twenty years or more, probably. I let Wilma out of her cage to graze on all manner of plants poisonous to parakeets in my atrium before she finally dropped dead in the exercise room. I scooped her up and dumped her back in her cage.

I wish I had turned off the cameras in the atrium. Some disloyal employee must have snitched to Audrey about my grand plan. I tried to explain to Audrey that I felt sorry for Wilma, all caged up like that and everything, feigning ignorance of our conversation when Audrey moved in regarding Wilma's need to remain caged at all times for her safety. I have a busy life, I pleaded to her, how am I supposed to remember what's best for Wilma, for Christ's sake? I impressed upon Audrey the fact that I had been so, so distracted by the re-emergence of my name in the tabloids—when I am distracted by such rumors, wherever they may come from, accidents tend to happen, understand Audrey?

I offered to buy her a new bird, but Audrey began acting strangely. One morning during our appearance at the local animal shelter, she went ballistic and publicly accused me of killing Wilma, insisting that I was no friend to animals. After whisking her away to the Spriggs limo and heading back to the compound, I asked her why she wanted to ruin me over a simple mistake, when I had done so much for her, for her family?

I was not prepared for what happened next. Audrey grabbed Snitzy, just returned from his daily brushing, and began snipping off his beautiful Shitzu coif. After calming his delicate sensitivies with some Russian caviar, I set out to give Audrey her walking papers.

But she was gone. I had security comb her usual haunts, to no avail. Her family would not take my phone calls; my offers of increasing her salary were rebuffed. It was rumored that she was in therapy three times a week at some inpatient clinic in upstate New York.

That seemed plausible. Clearly, Audrey was unstable. How she got past my exhaustive interview process is a mystery, but I have been assured by my human resources consultant that more stringent screening will be used in the future to weed out whackos like Audrey. Besides, Tiara Brooks has come crawling back to me for half her salary, after some ill-advised appearances on reality TV shows.

But I still have her followed. Audrey, that is. Never mind that once she got out of the clinic she did little more than rent books on tape from the library and cry at public parks. I know one day when she's homeless and needing money from the Dara Robinsons of
Entertainment Today TV
or the editors of
Daily People
that I'll be there. And I'll offer her the job back, at half salary. After all, being the assistant of Diana Spriggs, America's housewife, should be reward enough, right? And I do offer dental.

ALGORITHM

MY MOTHER USED TO DRESS IN RED SHOES and yellow socks, or vice versa; not only that, but my father and I had to wear them as well. Otherwise, my sister Tara would have no idea who we were. She was born with some kind of brain damage that affected her vision—she could see people, but not tell them apart. She also had trouble with depth perception, things like stairs and grasping objects, and also with motion. In her mind, our dog Pepper would be at the gate of our yard and, in another instant, at the back door, with no in-between. And Tara only saw yellow and red really well and preferred feet, hence the emphasis on shoes.

Of course, we tried some experimentation so that people wouldn't think we were total freaks—red shoelaces and mustard socks were as normal as we could get. It was strange to go, for instance, to the Baltimore Zoo or Eddie's Market and watch Tara walk around, her head down, a curtain of light blonde hair falling forward about her face, as she followed Mom's shoes from one place to another.

My parents tried to send Tara to a normal school, but it was just too hard. She couldn't make any friends because she could never tell them apart, and she bumped into things and tripped and turned her head to the right to use her left eye mostly. So she wound up, when she was eight, going to Kennedy Krieger, where kids with learning disabilities went. My mom dropped her off every day and then picked her up and drove her back to our house on Charles Street.

Mom was worried about living in the city—she was always worried about Tara getting hit by a car—but she and my dad loved our three-story brownstone and so did I. Dad worked downtown as the head of psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and my mom saw patients in the parlor on the first floor of our house. So, aside from Tara, everything was normal, and even Tara was normal, even if she couldn't tell me from my friend Joshua when we had our shoes off, which was kind of fun. But, once you tricked somebody like that, somebody who was just so defenseless, you really couldn't do it again. Even if she was being an annoying little sister. And she was like every other little sister in that regard.

And then she was gone.

I always rode with Mom when I got home from school to pick Tara up at Kennedy Krieger. I liked going over to the dangerous, east side of town near Hopkins, where the people dressed loudly and talked loudly and ate things that smelled loud—fried chicken, cheesesteaks, ribs—stuff we never had at our house, unless it was Fourth of July or something. Anyway, my mom drove a canary yellow Volvo with tan leather seats—she traded in the green one after Tara's condition became apparent—and she listened to NPR. She put her straw-colored hair up loosely in a clip and wore big plastic sunglasses, even when it was cloudy. She said that her eyes were sensitive to light; I'd always wondered whether Tara's eye problems were inherited from my mother.

Anyway, it was strange that day to see my calm, harmless mother run frantically from the school without Tara.

“Paul!” She yanked my door open. “Tara's missing.”

With that, she pulled me out of the car.

“You check the playground over there and meet me inside.” Although I'd always loved coming to this area, I had no desire to actually experience it outside the cushy leather seats of the Volvo. I rolled up my pants slightly so that the gold of my socks poked out from my red chucks and slowly entered the playground, where a bunch of kids ran and tumbled about. I looked for a thin girl with jeans and a purple sweater with pink hearts among the strange faces, realizing that the strange faces were strange to Tara every day, no matter how many times she saw them. My heart felt tight in my chest as I thought of Tara lost in the world; would she even realize it? I looked for Tara's Ronald McDonald sneakers among the Nikes and Keds and Adidas. I looked at the ground so long I didn't see my mother come up beside me.

When I looked up from her yellow Reeboks to her face, I realized she was crying.

“I've called your father.” She took my hand. At thirteen, I was much too old for this protection, but I guess she wasn't taking any chances.

No one knows exactly what happened to Tara. Sometime between her occupational therapy class and waiting to get picked up, she went to the bathroom. And no one saw her again.

It made all the news stations—2, 11, and 13—and Kennedy Krieger came out looking really bad, especially in light of my parent's lawsuit. Some speculated that maybe custodial staff or someone else, who knew of my sister's history took her and did things my parents didn't want to discuss with me, but it could never be proven. But we made up posters—hundreds of them on gold paper—and plastered them all over the Hopkins campus, Northeast Market, and the surrounding Upper Fells Point community. Tara was even on the milk cartons for awhile. And
Baltimore Magazine
wanted to do a story, but my parents refused. Hundreds of children went missing every year, they explained to the reporters. Don't focus on our family because of Tara's special circumstances.