My nightmare starts with me glancing up at a huge clock on the wall; it’s six o’clock, the second hand ticking. I’m sitting, bent forward–my head ready to drop into my lap–on a hard-wooden chair, exhausted. I’d snuck into my house—about an hour ago—and am in need sleep, bad. I’m about to be grilled by the FBI, CIA, and my wife—all now hovering over me, wife pissed, cops stern-faced. 
The room is dark except for a bright bare light shining in my face, so hot I can feel the heat.
I take a deep breath, knowing I have to figure a way to get out of this, unscathed, or at least with minimal damage. I wonder if the past two years of witnessing the chicanery of the present US president will benefit me. It’s my only hope.
Ok, I’m ready. I can do this, I tell myself. I start building my confidence by convincing myself that I’m a very, very, extremely intelligent person; in fact, the very smartest person in the universe–in spite of my college transcripts–and that I know more than anyone else about everything.
Now, I attend to my body language by folding my arms tightly across my chest, tuck my hands under my arm pits, press my lips firmly shut. I glimpse down and see that I’m wearing a long red tie—power tie. Due to my rather short stature, it dangles to the floor and puddles there. All right! I’m ready for the onslaught of questions—fake investigation, clearly a hoax!
Wow, I’m really starting to feel my power, now, the red tie has clinched it. My wife is the first to speak:
Wife: “I heard you sneak in the back door.”
Me: “What?” I wrinkle my nose, tip my head, appear confused–like a dog not understanding what is being asked.
Wife: “Where did you go, last night? I’ve been worried.” She has her hands on her hips.
She doesn’t look worried to me, she looks pissed.
FBI man: “When,” he interrupts before I can answer my wife, “did you leave the house?” He has piercing eyes and is the spitting image of Robert Mueller.
Me: “I didn’t go anywhere. I was here all night.” My eyes wide with innocence, while I give them a solid alternative fact.
My denial is very strong and powerful—therefore it’s so.
Wife: “Yes you did. You weren’t in bed with me when I woke up around five a.m. You were not in the house. I looked everywhere for you…And,” she now has the I-got-you smirk on her face to go along with her anger, “I heard the door close when you came in this morning.”
FBI’s Robert Mueller look-alike: “How do you know it was five a.m., ma’am?”
Wife: “I always pee at that time. It’s my second pee of the night.”
CIA man: “And your first pee, ma’am?” He blushes, lowers his eyes to his shoes.
Wife: “Around 2, 2:30, 3-ish. Depends on my water intake that day.”
“Was she,” FBI Mueller-man says to my wife, pointing at me, “in bed when you executed your, uh, first trip to the bathroom?”
“Umm,” my wife’s brow furrows, “I’m not certain…really, couldn’t say for sure.”
I knew she wouldn’t know, she never remembers much of anything when she pees the first time, she’s barely awake.
FBI Mueller-man: “But, you know for sure she wasn’t in bed at five a.m. Right?”
Wife: “Right. I searched the house, no Jody.”
Me: “Fake memory! Fake memory!”
FBI Mueller-man: Glares at me. “Your wife didn’t remember, so it’s not a memory at all.”
Me: “Well then, fake no-memory. No collusion. Alternative facts. It’s a disgrace, I was home all night…” I ramble on and on, covering a lot of ground, unrelated, tangling their minds. FBI man ponders, confused by my incoherent word salad. By the time I finished, Mueller guy doesn’t seem to have a comeback. My wife and CIA man are slack-jawed.
Me: “Did you check in the downstairs bedroom? Huh?” I stare into her eyes, straight on, and continue, “Because that’s where I was and that’s where I just came up from when you mistakenly thought I’d come in the back door.”
Wife: “Uh, no…why would you go down there? You don’t like the basement anymore than I do. You told me you’d never sleep down there.”
Me: “I’ve never said that, fake memory, fake accusation!” I lower my voice, sweeten my tone, “I mean, honey, are you having one of those times?” I shake my head, like I’m living with the woman I love, watching her losing her marbles.
I realized I needed to settle down, look innocent, become the victim. I give my wife a look of pity, one that implies she’s often misconstruing things, in other words, losing it. I hope to convey to the cops that although I lost it for a moment–given my weariness in caring for her, I’m generally a compassionate and loving person when it comes to her frequent misunderstanding of reality…Luckily, I was right in assuming my wife wouldn’t check out the basement bedroom if she were to go looking for me. She doesn’t like going down the the basement, and she wouldn’t suspect I’d go there, either. We both hate spiders…
I notice the FBI and CIA gazing at each other with puzzling expressions on their faces. Then Mueller man finally turns to me and says, “So you claim you were in the basement bedroom and just came up from there this morning, and you never left the house last night. Is that right?” He rubs his chin as though he had a goatee.
Me: “Yes, to the best of my memory.” I say in a very firm, strong, and powerful, very powerful manner. “I woke up, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to bother my wife with my tossing and turning, so I went down to the basement bedroom.”
CIA man: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes, to the best of my memory, I slept downstairs last night.”
I can tell my wife is trying to sift through her memory but I’ve successfully confused her with my strength and powerful denial and alternative facts. Studying the two cops, I believe I’ve successfully established that I could have been in the bedroom below–since my wife didn’t look there–and not have left the house at all.
Me: “I didn’t leave the house, honey. You know how much I hate the cold and fear the dark.” I lean forward, gently pat her leg, staying on my subtle message that she’s not quite the woman I married, mentally; and yet, how concerned and loving I am with her.
Wife: “Are you sure?” she says.
She’s almost where I want her but not quite. I’ve learned that repetition will help make it so.
Me: “Would I lie to you?” Before she can think about her response, I offer her the answer, “Of course, I wouldn’t. I didn’t leave the house last night. I was in the downstairs’ bedroom. I was right here in this house.” That was a powerful declaration, emphatic, heartfelt. I repeat it several times.
I realize I‘ll have to pay some hush money as well as threaten the person I know who saw me last night. However, I’ll distance myself from the payment by finding a thug who specializes in such things to take care of that.
I glance around at FBI man, CIA man, and my wife. The men seem to be starting to question my wife’s reality; I’m not sure about my wife, but she’s almost where I want her but needs to be reminded—and the cops need to hear another example of how she misremembers things.
Me: “Remember, you thought I ate your ice cream chocolate cookie the other day? Then you finally realized that you must have eaten it yourself and had just forgotten about it.”
I’d actually eaten it, it was hers, but I didn’t want to appear greedy so I convinced her she’d snacked on it the night before.
Wife: “I’m not fully awake,” she says, her voice thin and ragged “without my morning coffee and my mind must be fuzzy, maybe Jody was here all night.” She fidgets with the tie on her yellow terrycloth bathrobe.
“Why are you here, anyway,” I ask the FBI man, feeling empowered and ready to throw a little trash at them. “You’re wasting precious time, you could be going after crooks. And you’re wasting taxpayer money on a fake investigation, fake charges, a fishing investigation! Surely my wife’s being confused as to where I was isn’t a case for the authorities. You’re harassing me.”
I glance over at my wife who is brushing her fingers around the sides of her lips, gazing at me, like when we are at a restaurant and something is on my face and needs to be wiped off. An automatic response of hers to my frequent messy mouth.
Damn.
FBI man: “I’m here because the Dreamy Ice Cream & Cookie Parlor was broken into last night, and we followed the tracks from there straight back to this house.”
I glance down at my shoes, muddy. I lower my head so the men can’t see me stick out my tongue and lick all around my mouth.
Shit, they must have seen it too. Now, I’m going to have to change my alibi, come up with new alternative facts, a new defense that creates another plausible deniability to my having been out last night.
“Well,” I say, still tasting the remnants of the wonderful chocolate flavor, “to the best of my memory—unless I was sleep walking—I was in the downstairs bedroom…”
I haven’t really lied, more like I misspoke, and misspeaking is a common, acceptable and a forgivable thing…
Everyone is looking at me, making me worry, so I add an addendum to my account: “Oh, I’ve just thought of something else. Before I came upstairs, I remembered my shoes were outside where I left them when I came in the house yesterday. This morning I fetched them and put them on. That must be why my wife thought that I had just come in this morning because she heard me open and close the door on my way upstairs. So,” I continue, “it must have been that someone stole my shoes, last night, went to the ice cream parlor, took the ice cream cookies, and then walked back here and left the shoes where they found them.” I glance around, checking how my new version is going over.
Are they buying my revision? Damn, I don’t like the expressions on their faces. Not only that, I just realize that I’ve majorly fucked up by mentioning that the ice cream cookies were what was taken from the store. The problem for me is, neither the FBI nor the CIA man had stated what was missing from the parlor…But I just did! Damn. Damn. Damn. I wonder if they’ll buy that I misspoke, again…Can’t chance it. I need to shift gears, again, and fast…
“Do you recall, honey,” I say to my wife in my most loving tone, “when I was sleep walking last month and I ate the ice cream cookie? I was fully asleep, not knowing what I was doing,” I emphasize the, “not knowing what I was doing.”
I’m trying to establish that though I might have taken ice cream cookies from the Dreamy Ice Cream & Cookie parlor last night, since I was sleep walking, I didn’t have criminal intent.
I don’t sleep walk but surely my wife won’t rat on me. I’ve let my wife hear my story so she can parrot it back to the cops. I don’t tell her directly she’s to say that, but she knows me and she knows what I want her to say–so it’s not like I’m trying to influence her answers. Then again, she probably knows that if she goes along with my sleepwalking defense, she becomes a coconspirator. That would put her in jail, too…Hmm, unless of course, she thinks only of herself and cooperates, rats me out, so she’ll won’t get prison time…
Let me think, I wonder if I can turn this whole thing around and accuse her, imply that she was probably the person who was wearing my shoes while she broke into the ice cream place…
Before I can spin my new version, she says, wrinkling her brow, “So, you did eat my ice cream cookie last month, after all.”
Leave it to my wife to still be stuck on that minor misdeed. I’ve told her before that hanging on to anger isn’t good for her.
Me: “Forget about that, right now, tell them that I sleep walk, honey, remember.” I say, desperately.
My wife: “You know me, dear, I can’t count on my memory of anything,” my vengeful wife says.
I’m sweating…I’m going to jail.
The FBI man walks over to the freezer, opens it, pulls out the evidence, turns and nods to the CIA guy.
“Oh no, oh no…” I’m yelling, “I don’t even like ice cream cookies, those aren’t my cookies, someone else had to have put them there. I’ve been set up. Fake charges! Fake charges! Fake charges! A witch-hunt! You’re conducting a witch-hunt!…no one to pardon me…”
The CIA man taps me and then grabs me by my shoulder.
This isn’t how this is supposed to go…
Or is it!
——————————————————————————————————————–
“Wake up, honey… Jody, wake up, you’re yelling, you’re having a horrible nightmare!” My wife is shaking my shoulder…
I find waking up from my night terror only sends me into my day terror, the one that started with the moment I woke up to trump being elected President.
PS: I know a surname is capitalized, I just can’t bring myself to do it for this president.
Visit me on Facebook at: JodyValley/Author
For More, scroll down to: “Stories Are Us.”