The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (10 page)

When Caroline got Ava diagnosed at age nine, she flung herself into trying to fix her. She quit teaching preschool in order to devote herself full-time to the cause. There were the no-wheat no-dairy diets that the family endured for only a month before Caroline called it quits, then the vitamin and mineral supplements, physical therapy, occupational therapy, Relationship Development Intervention, HANDLE neurological therapy, chelation—removal of toxic heavy metals that might be making things worse—tutoring, counseling, support groups, psychiatrists, etc., etc., etc. The trouble was that all these so-called therapies were very expensive, and they never had any measurable results. Caroline could never tell what worked and what didn’t work, because they did many things at once. They had to. They couldn’t afford to waste any time.

And Ava did seem to get better, leaving some of her bigger, more obvious problems behind her—such as public temper tantrums and huge social gaffes—but that could have been due to growing up as much as to any treatment.

Otis, when he was about five, was also diagnosed, but in a pro forma way. Caroline and Vic saw the signs early on—the stiffness, clumsiness, intolerance of change, lack of desire for physical contact, precocious verbal development. But by this time Caroline was so exhausted by her efforts with Ava, and she was so depressed about Otis having the same problems, that she couldn’t bring herself to try every new treatment that came down the pike on Otis—and there were new theories and treatments popping up on the Asperger’s Web sites every week. As a result, Otis had no special therapies whatsoever, nothing but what he got in school, and it was hard to see that he was any worse off, or better off, than Ava. The awful truth: she had the energy to try and fix only one of them.

Suzi turned out to be their comfort child. Caroline and Vic watched baby Suzi fixedly, and when they saw no signs of autism they were so relieved they couldn’t even speak of their joy, and the guilt they felt about their joy. Caroline would carry Suzi around, reveling in her affection and attentiveness, and then some kind of internal alarm would go off and she’d shove Suzi aside and go running back to Ava, whom, she thought, really needed her.

Caroline, because of all this intense activity, had come to depend on Ava’s disability to give her life focus. For years she’d been quietly anxious at the thought of Ava moving out on her own, but that ended once she got the idea of sending Ava to Rhodes College. Now it made her panicky when she considered the possibility of Ava flunking algebra for the second time, of her not having the grades to transfer from Tallahassee Community College to Rhodes College in Memphis, where she’d decided that Ava had to go, because—although she hadn’t told anyone except her best friend, Billie—she planned on moving to Memphis with Ava and living in an apartment in midtown while Ava lived in a dorm and went to college.

Ava would need her to be close by, she’d tell Vic. And you and Suzi and Otis are doing fine here. What would she do about her father? Vic shouldn’t, couldn’t take care of Wilson. She could hire someone. Maybe Nance! Or maybe the two of them would realize that they still loved each other and get married again. Everything would all work out. It
had
to work out. Of course, Ava could stay here and go to FSU, but it was such a
huge
school, so big that she wouldn’t make friends and her professors wouldn’t know her and she’d flounder, whereas Rhodes was small, had small classes, and the professors wouldn’t let her slip through the cracks. The kids would be nicer, more motivated, more accepting. And the thing was—if Ava stayed here, then Caroline wouldn’t have an excuse to leave herself.

Caroline had no idea, until she visited Memphis last December, how tired she was of the whole kit and caboodle at home. Trying to
keep everything running smoothly. Anticipating everyone’s needs. Nodding and pretending to be interested while her husband droned on and on about portfolio scoring. Driving the same routes over and over again, passing the same Tire Kingdom and BP station and the Melting Pot fondue restaurant where a customer’s hair and face had once caught on fire—every time she drove by she felt compelled to imagine it—and the Christian School with the electronic billboard informing you that All Roads Lead to Jesus! where the parents picking up their saintly children pulled out right in front of her or rode her bumper. Forcing herself to smile at the same competitive soccer moms who forced themselves to smile back. Measuring everything she said in the Asperger’s support group so as not to seem to be one-upping or condescending to the mothers whose kids were either more or less affected than Otis and Ava. Fixing the same unappreciated lunches; sorting the same mounds of vile sour clothes; nagging people to do their chores.

How wonderful to be in someplace totally different from Tallahassee, someplace gritty and urban and mysterious and where she wouldn’t run into
anyone
she knew! Her father had been the youngest of four children, but his older siblings had already passed away. None of her cousins still lived in Memphis. She had no obligations to visit anyone there. And how cool to discover that, when she and Ava visited, she actually
liked
the city of Memphis, found it fascinating, when she’d never appreciated it before. The wonderful old buildings downtown. The civil rights history. The place where the blues and rock and roll took off. The place where her parents had lived together for a year, and where her mother had come, as a young girl, to seek her fortune. A whole new old world lay before Caroline, waiting to be explored. She loved being a stranger in her own hometown. Because Memphis
was
her hometown, even though she’d lived there only until she was two.

She simply had to live in Memphis for a while. Had to.

Caroline was standing there, in Ava’s doorway, on the verge of screaming at her daughter once again, when she heard a voice behind her.

“Does she like the book?” Nance asked.

Caroline hadn’t heard the woman approach, wondered what she was doing at this end of the house.

“I was looking for the little girls’ room,” Nance said, laying a hand on her elbow. “Your daddy fell asleep.”

Ava, hearing a voice other than her mother’s bothersome one, glanced up and smiled her brilliant smile.

Caroline felt something inside her settle a little. All she wanted was for Ava to be happy. And to have her own place in the world. Well, that wasn’t all she wanted. She herself wanted to wander free in Memphis, tethered, only lightly, to Ava.

“Thanks for the book,” Ava said to Nance.

“It was very nice of you,” Caroline said to Nance. Then she turned to Ava. “But right now you need to put it down and study for your algebra test.”

“Just let me finish this,” Ava said.

It was one thing to be ignored when she was alone, and another to be ignored in front of an audience. She wanted her could-be mother to see that she’d become a good parent in spite of being abandoned as a baby. “You need to do it now,” Caroline told Ava in her stern voice.

“Okay!” Ava hurled the book across the room. It slammed into her bookcase and landed, open and pages folded, on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline said to Nance. She walked over to the book, picked it up, smoothed the pages, wanting to howl and gnash her teeth and laugh at the same time. “Ava doesn’t like math. Her tutor is on vacation.”

“It doesn’t make any sense!” Ava said. “Who cares what X equals?”

Caroline agreed but knew better than to say so.

“I used to teach algebra,” Nance said from the doorway. “Many moons ago. How about if I help you study?”

Ava didn’t say anything, but her relaxed face told Caroline what she needed to know.

Caroline sat down on the carpet, clutching the Elvis book, which was shaped like a phonograph album. It was a bit strange that Nance would volunteer to tutor Ava—unless Ava actually was her long-lost grandchild. Either way, if it made things easier on Ava—and Caroline—and if it helped Ava pass algebra so she could get into Rhodes, then why would she say no? She’d see that they studied here, so how much trouble could they get in? “We’d pay you what we pay Laura,” Caroline said.

“Oh, no,” Nance said. “Just leave us alone for an hour and I double-dog guarantee she’ll do fine on that exam.”

“It’s only a couple of days away,” Ava said, sliding to the edge of her bed.

“Let’s not get our hopes up too high,” Caroline said, but for the second time that morning Nance—Mrs. Archer, Mary, Mom, whoever she was—had caused her to feel lighter, less burdened; and as she sat there cross-legged on the floor, she could almost feel herself levitating, like those transcendental meditation people in Fairfield, Iowa, who claimed they could fly.

* * *

On the following Saturday, Caroline and her father and Nance worked in the yard. Caroline and Vic’s property had been landscaped and well tended by the previous owner, so all Caroline’s family had to do was maintain it. The backyard didn’t take much work, being mostly ferns and monkey grass and English ivy shaded by live oak trees, so they usually focused on the front yard.

Nance, dressed in bleach-spattered Bermuda shorts and a big
straw hat, waded into the English ivy and commenced weeding the Nandina, a nasty exotic bamboo that tried to take over, and Caroline’s dad, covered from head to toe to prevent skin cancer and bug bites, got to work near Nance, planting some bulbs near the prickly holly bushes in front of the house. The bulbs, which Nance had brought with her, were daffodil bulbs and wouldn’t survive in Florida, she informed Caroline, unless Caroline dug them up every winter and stored them in the freezer until spring, which she wasn’t about to do, though she didn’t say so.

Caroline supposed that what Nance might’ve wanted when she’d invited herself over today was to spend time with Wilson, try to get him to remember her. It was odd, but Nance didn’t seem particularly interested in getting acquainted with Caroline, her long-lost child. Surely she must care about Caroline, the way she’d talked wistfully about missing her only daughter. But maybe Nance could focus on only one person at a time, and she’d decided to start with Wilson. Caroline told herself she was fine with that. She could wait until Nance was ready to be honest with her. That is, if the woman even was her mother and she wasn’t just having paranoid delusions.

Right now she wanted to lose herself in yard work, which gave her immediate gratification. She forgot about Wilson and Nance while she mowed the front lawn. The cycle of summer soakings had recently started up again, and the lawn, newly fertilized, had turned a lush dark green—no brown spots or orange fungus yet. After the lawn she edged and blew the brick walk and driveway off with the leaf blower—tasks she’d recently taken over from Vic because he was always off at Suzi’s soccer games on the weekends. And just like with running, she could get some of her frustration out this way.

When she was up on a ladder with Vic’s electric trimmer, attacking the front hedge—Florida anise—inhaling the rich licorice scent, someone snuck up behind her and grabbed her calf. “Boo!”

The ladder swayed and Caroline’s stomach lurched. She turned the trimmer off. “My God,” she said, shaking free of Nance’s gloved talon. “Be careful. This thing could slice us up.”

Nance tipped her straw hat back on her head. Her face was coated with a sunscreen containing zinc oxide which turned her complexion chalky white. She looked like she’d escaped from
The Mikado
. She gazed up at Caroline. “I believe I’m done weeding for now,” she said. “You have a hand trimmer in that little shed back there?”

Caroline explained that the shed had once been used to store tools, but they’d bequeathed it to Otis after they got tired of his blowing things up in the house. He was working on something in there now that had to do with smoke detectors. “I think he tells his granddad what he’s doing but not me. He doesn’t want any of us to go in that shed until he’s ready.” The hedge trimmer was getting heavy, and she was itching to turn it on again. She was itching, period. Biting things were nibbling on her legs. She swiped her forehead with her T-shirt sleeve. “Well, back to work,” she said.

But Nance leaned on the ladder. “Aren’t you proud of that Suzi?” she asked. “She’s such a dynamo.”

“I am,” Caroline said.

“And Ava could be a model. Truly. You know that show,
America’s Next Top Model
? She could win that.”

“Never seen it.”

“The winner gets scads of money!” Nance said. “And, believe me, she’s got what it takes.”

“Don’t tell her that,” Caroline protested. She had a horror of her daughters being caught up in the cultural obsession with looks and youthfulness, perhaps because she was fighting her own battle with it. “But you’re very nice to say so.”

“I’m not nice!” Nance protested. “That child is gorgeous! Just like her mother.”

Caroline smiled. She and Ava looked like entirely different animals. “Where’s my dad?”

“Weeding over in the side yard. I’m going on home now, hon. I’m just pooped.” Nance waved good-bye and set out for home, walking quickly for somebody who claimed to be pooped.

Caroline finished clipping the hedge, which took another fifteen minutes, and then turned the trimmer off. She glanced around the front yard, a rectangle enclosed by white picket fencing on the short sides, their one-story yellow brick house on one long side and, on the other long side, next to the street, a wire fence hidden in the hedge Caroline had just trimmed. The metal swing, where Wilson liked to sit, dangled empty from the limb of the live oak tree in the center of the yard. Parson roasted in a spot of sunlight on the front porch.

She climbed down the ladder, wondering if maybe he’d gone inside. She didn’t think her father would’ve wandered off anywhere, but with his memory getting worse, who knew?

She set down her clippers, and started calling “Dad!” like he was a missing dog. He wasn’t visible in the side yard. She strode back through the front yard and into the house, tromping down the hall in her dirty sneakers, shedding flakes of dirt and grass on the hardwood floors that she’d have to clean up later, calling for her father as she went, her actual dog, Parson Brown, on her heels. But the house—upstairs and down—was silent, and Wilson wasn’t there.