The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (34 page)

He discussed the problem of his gun not firing with Granddad, who suggested that in this situation one might slow the neutrons down using a filter of water and tritium, which could be obtained from night-vision gunsights. Otis looked them up online and discovered that night-vision gunsights cost more than a thousand dollars apiece. For two days after this discovery he wandered about in a daze, and one evening, when everyone else was all worked up about some new revelation in the Buff case—a fifth girl, one from Buff’s old church, had just come forward—Otis just walked into his parents’ room and took his father’s credit card from his wallet and ordered three gunsights to be sent to him FedEx overnight.

When the box arrived he took it with shaking hands to his shed. He carefully pried the sights open, and when he realized that he could extract the tritium, a waxy substance, and reassemble the gunsights with no evidence that they’d been pried open, he decided to scrape the tritium off all three of them, using coffee stirrers he’d lifted from Wendy’s, and then return the gunsights to the company, claiming they were defective. That way, as long as his father didn’t check his credit card balance until after the sights had been returned, he’d get away with it. A brilliant plan, if he did say so himself.

August 12, 2006. He stepped outside onto the back deck. Another coolish, airy day, sunny but not hot, scuddy white clouds blowing across the sky. A great day to complete his project. Wanting to give Rusty one more chance to be there when he made history, he stopped outside his shed and called her cell phone again. This time she answered. She didn’t sound happy to hear from him. She sounded sullen and snippy, like the old Rusty used to before he got to know her. Remembering that she usually slept late, he apologized for calling at eight thirty in the morning, but she said she was already up, had been up, and what did he want already?

Otis ignored her bratty tone and asked where she’d been, why she hadn’t called him back; and she acted annoyed, as if he were merely pestering her. “Why do you think?” she said. “Duh. Anyway, I don’t live in your neighborhood anymore. I don’t live in Tallytown anymore.” She told him that she and her mother and Angel were staying down in Lloyd, twenty miles away, with her mother’s parents. Then she added that her mother was divorcing her father, whom she would henceforth refer to as the demon seed.

Otis told her he was sorry, but he didn’t know if that was the right response to her parents’ getting a divorce.

“Seriously, don’t be,” she said. “It’s a big relief, right? Now I don’t have to lock my door.”

Otis felt a chill, even though it was plenty hot in his backyard.

“I meant I’m sorry about all of it,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened.”

There was a sniffling sound. Was she crying? He hadn’t meant to make her cry, so he started talking, quickly relating the trial-and-error process he’d been through in the past few days, the gunsight scam, shoplifting the batteries, and how today was the day he was assembling the entire thing and how he knew, just knew, it was going to work.

He heard the sniffling again, which puzzled him, but then he realized she was laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. You. You’re so … I don’t know. Earnest.”

“Okay.” Otis didn’t know why that was funny, but he realized he was smiling, too. “I wish you were here,” he said.

“Me, too. Good luck with your whatsit. I’ll be there in spirit, cheering you on.”

“When are you coming back?”

She sighed. “Nothing’s been decided. I won’t be living in Canterbury Hills again, that’s for sure.”

“You’ll visit, though. You’ll come see me. I could drive down to Lloyd.”

“Uhmm. Don’t think my mom would be too glad to see anyone from your family right now.”

Otis protested that he hadn’t had anything to do with the “scandal” and that it wasn’t fair to blame him, and Rusty agreed and said it wasn’t fair but that nothing was and that she had to go now and please don’t call for a while. “I took one of your radium paint chips,” she told him. “For my medicine bag.”

“Don’t!” Otis said. “Don’t put it in your bag. Throw it away.” Why was he getting so upset?

“Sheesh,” said Rusty. “Okay, spaceman.” She hung up.

So, on the big day, Otis went into his shed alone and, feeling something of a letdown, after he’d put on his lead apron and mask and plastic gloves, he wrapped the uranium powder and beryllium in little foil cubes and arranged them around a block of carbon inside the lead gun, then wrapped the thorium ash in foil packets and distributed them around the outside layer of the gun, next to the packets of uranium and beryllium. Then he wrapped the whole thing up with duct tape and weighed it. It weighed two pounds. He set it down and left the shed, locking the door behind him. The deed was done.

* * *

Although everything had changed for Otis, he didn’t feel it was the right time to break the news about his invention. Not until he knew
for sure it was working, he told himself. For the next couple of days, three times a day, he checked the level of radiation in his shed with his Geiger counter, recording his findings in his logbook. Every time the reading was higher, until finally the needle went to the top of the dial, which meant at least 50 mrems. He hadn’t decided how and when to reveal to the world what he’d made, and he wished he could talk to Rusty about it. He didn’t want to announce his accomplishment until he’d made good and sure it was working.

One day he decided to measure the levels outside his shed, and he picked up radiation all over the backyard. How much was too much? He’d never cared enough to find this out. But when he saw Parson sniffing around in the yard, right where he’d been picking up radiation, he grew uneasy. He scooped her up and brought her inside.

That night he visited his grandfather in his den and posed that question. How much was too much?

For once his grandfather looked at him straight on. “Why are you asking, son?”

Otis, settling himself into the chair, was startled. His grandfather had never directly questioned him like this.

When Otis didn’t respond, his grandfather, who was staring at him, said, “You aren’t actually thinking of making one of those things, are you? Because that would be very foolish.”

Otis felt himself flushing.

“You don’t want to endanger people’s lives. Make them sick.”

Otis nodded, but he thought of Rusty and Parson Brown, and he himself felt sick inside. Did this mean his grandfather would not be proud of his accomplishment? If his grandfather wasn’t proud, would anybody be proud? He didn’t intend to endanger lives. He wanted to prove that it could be done, and done safely.

“You worked with radioactive materials and it didn’t hurt you,” Otis said. “You said it was a lot safer than people realized.”

His grandfather turned back to the TV set, to the news hour that
he watched every evening. “Bad business about your sisters,” Granddad said. “Terrible. Your mother just told me. I knew something was wrong around here. Why did she feel she had to protect me? I’m their grandfather!”

“I don’t know,” Otis said. Had the news about his sisters jarred something loose in Granddad? He seemed more with-it than he had in a long while. He pictured Granddad’s head full of marbles, shaking and clacking.

The man on the news hour—the old guy with the bags under his eyes—was going on about Hurricane Grayson, which had made landfall again over Naples and was moving northeast across south Florida, flooding everything and drowning people. There was nothing about the war in Iraq, but lots of interesting facts about the hurricane.

“Areas in Florida have already received up to twenty-five inches of rain, causing serious flooding. Alligators were seen in flooded neighborhoods after high water forced them from their habitat. Hundreds of homes were flooded in Brevard and St. Lucie counties; some locations were inundated with up to five feet of standing water. Early estimates from Brevard County show ten to twelve million dollars in damages to homes and infrastructure. Hurricane Grayson had caused the drowning of one person swimming off Neptune Beach and another swimmer in Duval County. Three people were killed in traffic accidents. A twenty-eight-year-old kite surfer was critically injured in Fort Lauderdale when winds associated with Hurricane Grayson slammed him face-first into the ground and then dragged him through streets until he hit a building.”

Otis got caught up listening to the report and when his grandfather said something to him again, he’d almost forgotten what they were talking about.

“I was involved in a research study, a long time ago,” his grandfather said. “We thought we were doing the right thing, but we weren’t.
We hurt lots of innocent people. Caused deaths. I don’t want you to ever take those chances.”

“I won’t,” Otis said in a matter-of-fact voice, but his ears were humming and he couldn’t concentrate on either his granddad or the news show.

“How ’bout a game of checkers?” Granddad asked him.

Otis told him maybe later. He got up and walked out of the room and through the empty house—everyone was gone these days—out the back door and down to his shed. There was a full moon, and the sky was unusually clear, smattered with stars. He got his Geiger counter from the shed, turned it on, and began sweeping it around the backyard. The dial on the Geiger counter glowed in the dark, and Otis saw that the radiation levels in the yard were now up to the top of the dial, just like in the shed. But all this meant was that if he stood there beside the reactor for fifteen minutes he’d be absorbing 50 milligrams of radiation. A dental X-ray was equal to 150 milligrams, and that was way safe! The only thing was that this particular Geiger counter didn’t measure levels higher than 50. It was a piece of crap. So he actually had no idea of the true level being emitted.

His insufficient instrument registered top of the dial radioactivity three houses away.

There was always the Marines. A good option, if it weren’t for the Iraq war.

Anne Frank was her go-to girl. Suzi stayed in her room as much as they’d let her, rereading Anne Frank’s diary for the millionth time so that she wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. After all, all that had happened to Suzi was that 1. She’d hurt her knee playing soccer and had missed Olympic soccer camp; and 2. She’d given a grown man a blow job. Big deal. It wasn’t like he’d raped her or she’d been forced to hide in an attic for years. And she hadn’t done it to protect Ava, as she’d told her mother. That idea had occurred to her only after the fact—that she’d been protecting Ava.

She
was
glad that it had happened to her and not to Ava, because Ava had already had enough counseling and attention and hand-wringing focused on her. Now it was Suzi’s turn. She’d always thought of Ava as the weaker one of the two of them, but she was thinking differently now. Now she admired the way Ava had told Buff to buzz off. Ava had had no problem telling Buff to forget it. That boded well for Ava in the future, she’d heard her mother saying to her father one night in the kitchen. (This was another good side effect of the “crisis”—her father was no longer working late every night.) But what did
her
behavior say about
her
future?

The fact that her parents thought that Buff had forced her to do it, or talked her into doing it, made Suzi feel bad, because, actually, as
she’d told Nance and Ava, it wasn’t that way at all. She’d seen an opportunity, and she’d taken it.

Suzi’d decided not to try and correct her parents’ version of the events, because she had the feeling that they would see Suzi as the innocent party no matter what. And she didn’t want them to think she was some kind of oversexed slut. She’d thought Buff was attractive, and the truth was that she was just curious to see how far he’d go, and what
it
would be like with an experienced guy. She was curious! Did that make her a slut? Were sluts just curious?
Slut
wasn’t a word she’d ever imagined applying to herself, but then most sluts probably didn’t think of themselves that way either. She hadn’t wanted to do anything much with her ex-boyfriend Davis or any boys her own age. They were so goofy and clueless and easily embarrassed and self-centered and insensitive and would’ve blabbed all over school. Buff never would’ve told a soul. It was her fault it had all come out in the open. If only she hadn’t told Ava. But she had to tell somebody besides Nance, who’d been horrified but had tried to hide it. And Ava was the only person she knew who wouldn’t judge her, who would listen and ask for details, but in a nonjudgmental way. She hadn’t told Ava the whole truth, though. She hadn’t taken off her clothes and posed for Buff. The blow job was the only thing that actually happened.

And now four other girls from the church, girls she didn’t know, had come forward and told on Buff. He did this all this time, apparently, which made Suzi feel as special as a booger. How’d he even have time to write sermons when he was so busy pushing his penis on people?

Now she wished, wished so much that she hadn’t done it, because the more she thought about it, the more unnecessary the whole thing seemed. She could’ve happily gone her whole life without smelling that oniony rubbery thing which was like a persistent thin-skinned animal trying to slide down her throat. And she could’ve happily gone her whole life without enduring Buff’s treatment of her. He hadn’t hugged
or kissed her or even looked her in the eyes. He hadn’t removed any of her clothing or his. Didn’t turn off his office light. Just unzipped his pants, pushed her down until she was sitting on his desk and then got down to business. He hadn’t even acted like he enjoyed it. It was more like he was performing some grim duty, encouraging himself with nasty words, which made Suzi feel really icky. And then afterward, there was his refusal to even pretend it meant something to him. He’d driven her home without saying a word, and she was so stunned by his behavior, and hers, that she didn’t speak either.