The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (42 page)

From the next bed Wilson began to sing, in a warbling, cracking tenor: “ ‘I will tell all the world / Of my young Southern girl, … /I love you, Mary Lou Brown.’ ”

“Very interesting,” Marylou said. “But stupid.”

“Ain’t it?”

“You can’t remember my last name. But I like the young Southern girl part.”

Then she paused and stretched, her old bones cracking and creaking, the elastic waist on her linen pants sliding up. Even though they’d spent nine hours in the car today and then toured the hospital, walked around downtown Memphis, her ankle and hip ached only a little. A four, on a pain scale of one to ten. “Have you ever seen the movie
Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman
?” Marylou asked Wilson.

“Don’t think I have. But I am losing my memory.”

“Well, shoot,” she said. “Come over here and I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

When she and Wilson dropped by her house on Evergreen Street around noon, she saw Caroline’s minivan in the driveway. And Vic’s Volvo. The jig was up, whatever the hell that meant.

When she and Wilson went inside, she was expecting to be yelled at, castigated, attacked even. It was a stupid thing she’d done. No doubt about that. One of many stupid things. She hadn’t thought they’d come after her, though, and it was jolting to see them—Caroline, Vic, Ava, Otis, and Suzi, sitting in her Memphis living room. Parson Brown herself was sprawled out in Marylou’s favorite leather chair. Buster lay in front of the sooty cold fireplace, possibly dreaming of Christmases of yore and hoping for a yuletide blaze.

“Your hair looks darling now that I’m getting used to it,” Marylou said to Caroline, which wasn’t the right thing to say, she realized as soon as she’d said it.

Caroline ignored her. “Dad!” Caroline said, all goggle-eyed, and rushed forward to hug him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly fine. I’m having a good time, in fact.”

“I’ve got your medications here.”

It was only then that Caroline looked at Marylou, glared really. Anyone could see that Caroline longed to flail at Marylou, claw her eyes out, but before she could Suzi came over to Marylou and hugged her. Then, after some fumbling and awkwardness, they all sat down, Wilson and Marylou side by side on the couch, with Suzi next to Marylou.

“Things are bad at home,” Vic told them, running his hand through his wild-looking hair. He sat in the padded rocking chair wearing lime green swimming trunks and a wrinkled, too-tight cotton oxford shirt and looked like he’d been driving all night with the windows down. Nobody had gotten enough sleep, and they had all, Wilson and Marylou included, been in the same clothes for a while, since none of them had packed for this crazy trip to Memphis.

“What’s the storm damage like?” Marylou asked him. “How’s Canterbury Hills?”

“The pond’s flooded,” Vic said. “Lots of trees down. Power outages all over the city. We went through some bad stretches coming back from the beach, didn’t we, Ava.”

“Scary,” Ava agreed. She sat in a straight-backed chair nearest the door.

“But when we finally got home,” Vic said, “that’s when we heard. The EPA came and got Otis’s shed.”

Vic told them how, even though the storm was in full swing, their neighbor John Kane saw their car pull up and came over and told them what had happened while he and Ava had been down at the beach and Caroline, Suzi, and Otis were on their way to Memphis. Earlier that afternoon, before the storm hit, a flatbed truck and a van had pulled in the Witherspoons’ drive and a handful of people got out of the van and donned white astronaut suits like something straight out of a science fiction movie.

Mr. Kane watched with some other neighbors as two spacemen went into their side yard and removed refuse from the old shed, dust billowing up around them. A burned, chemical smell hung in the air, making the bystanders choke. Three other spacemen wrestled a huge industrial-size vacuum cleaner over the Witherspoons’ front lawn. Mr. Kane finally got up his nerve and approached one, who he realized from looking through its plastic face mask was a woman wearing purple lipstick. She said, through an intercom device, that they were from the Environmental Protection Agency. No, there was nobody in the house. No, she couldn’t tell him anything. Nothing. Sir. Please. Step away. Keep back. Sir. The two vacuumers stopped their vacuuming and stared at him menacingly until he retreated to the sidelines.

The astronauts, John Kane said, must’ve vacuumed up every speck of dust and debris on every blade of grass and shrubbery, trampling the
flower beds and smashing all the azalea bushes. Then they dumped the shed remains and whatever they’d vacuumed up into black steel drums. They loaded the black drums onto the flatbed truck and roared off for parts unknown.

“What was in that shed?” John Kane had asked Vic, and Vic could tell that John was scared to death but trying to be nice.

Vic told them he didn’t know. Technically, that was the truth.

But when Vic and Ava arrived in Memphis and told Otis what had happened, Otis had finally come clean and explained to his parents and siblings what he’d been up to.

“You were actually
building
a model reactor,” Wilson said now. “You actually followed my directions? I never thought you’d …” he trailed off, and Marylou knew that he was going to say, I never thought you’d be so stupid, but he didn’t, and she was glad he didn’t say it.

“You told him how to do it?” Caroline asked her father. She and Otis shared the love seat, but at opposite ends.

Wilson admitted that, sure, he’d answered Otis’s many questions about how to construct a breeder reactor—but he’d thought it was all theoretical!

“I did it, Granddad!” Otis said, clenching his fists on his thighs. “I got all the parts myself, and figured out how to put them together and it worked. It actually worked!”

“That’s quite an accomplishment,” Wilson said. “No doubt about that. You’re a genius, son. You really are.” There was pride in his voice as well as bafflement.

Otis rocked back and forth, a smile on his face, and it was similar to the way Ava paced when she was happy or excited. This was what he’d been wanting. His grandfather’s praise.

“Otis didn’t protect himself,” Vic told Wilson. “He only used a paper mask and gardening gloves. You failed to impress upon him how dangerous those elements are.”

“But I did!” Wilson said. “I told him that real radioactive research is
done in full protector gear, in sealed chambers with lead-lined gloves!” Then he paused and his tone changed. “At least I think I did. No, I know I did.”

“You did,” Otis said cheerfully, still not, Marylou thought, grasping the enormity of what he’d done.

“It’s our fault, Vic,” Caroline said, “for not paying attention. We should’ve been monitoring what he was doing.” Even so, she couldn’t help making excuses for Otis. Arguing his case. While she talked, Marylou watched Otis, wondering how he felt being dissected like a specimen in front of his family. His blank, handsome face revealed nothing.

Caroline said she’d been talking to him about the consequences of what he’d done, and she realized that being on the autism spectrum had prevented him from thinking things through, from evaluating the possible consequences. He’d gotten caught up in the scientific possibilities, in doing something nobody had ever done before. It wasn’t because he lacked empathy. He just had a one-track mind. All he could focus on was the attention he’d get if he succeeded and the glory that would be heaped upon him, the thrill of being crowned a young scientific genius. Heck, she said, probably most of the scientists working on the atomic bomb had an autism spectrum disorder. What else would explain their lack of foresight?

“You’re in good company, son,” Wilson said.

“That’s hardly relevant,” Vic snapped.

“Well, at least the shed’s gone,” Marylou said. “Hopefully the EPA got it all.”

“You put that deadly stuff in our yard,” Vic said. “Next to our house.”

“That’s bad,” Wilson agreed.

“Ohhhhh,” Ava howled.

Suzi started crying. “We won’t ever be able to live there again.”

Marylou patted her hand.

“We haven’t seen the EPA report yet,” Otis said. “The levels might
be in the safe range. The federal government says that people can get up to five thousand mrems of safe exposure per year. There was only fifty last I checked. I think there was only fifty.”

“We won’t go back unless we
know
it’s safe,” Vic put in.

“How will we
really
know?” Suzi said, wiping her eyes.

“We won’t,” Caroline said.

“I’m sorry,” Marylou told Vic and Caroline. “I suspected for a while that he was messing with radiation, but by then it was too late. Course, it doesn’t scare me, ’cause I’m already radioactive.” She’d meant to lighten the mood, but it didn’t work.

“There’s more bad news,” Caroline said. She stood up, scooped Parson up into her arms, and held her like a flopped-eared baby. And Marylou had thought Buster was spoiled.

“We just got a call,” Ava added, round-eyed with all the drama. “Buff is dead.”

“What?” Marylou grabbed Wilson’s hand and squeezed. He squeezed back. “How?” was all she could manage to say.

“Somebody came into his house while he was asleep,” Vic said. “Smashed his head with a baseball bat.”

“Oh my God,” Wilson muttered.

“That’s horrible.” Marylou sagged with relief. Not that he was dead, but that she hadn’t been the one who killed him. She tried not to picture Buff’s head being smashed with a baseball bat, and mostly succeeded in not picturing it.

“Who?” Wilson said.

“They don’t know,” Caroline said. “But there are plenty of people with a reason to kill him.”

Marylou glanced over at Vic, who was gazing back at her. She couldn’t read his expression.

“It wasn’t me.” Vic ran his fingers through his stiff, windblown hair. “Although I did think about it.”

Parson struggled out of Caroline’s arms, righted herself on the floor, shook her ears, and sauntered over to curl up next to Buster, who merely opened an eye and closed it again.

“Well,” Marylou said, squeezing Wilson’s hand. “You can all stay here as long as you want. Take a little breather.”

“I should get back to work,” Vic said. “We’ll have to find a place to stay. For who knows how long. Jesus.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “I can’t even think about it.”

“I’ll stay here for a while,” Caroline said. “Rest up before I wade back in. Just the thought of everything we’ll have to do exhausts me.” But she didn’t sound exhausted. She sounded exhilarated by the prospect of staying in Memphis. Caroline had been miserable at home, and the whole family had known it, even though they might not have realized they’d known it.

Marylou decided it was time for good news, or at least what she considered to be good news. “Wilson and I have decided to get married,” she announced.

Silence. Someone gasped.

Then, bless her heart, Suzi leaned over and hugged Marylou, planting a kiss on her forehead.

Caroline shrieked, “Dad! Are you crazy?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point.” Wilson fixed Marylou with puppy dog eyes. The goofball.

“And we’re ready now,” Marylou added. “We want to do it right away. We don’t have time to diddle around.”

“Get married at Graceland! At the chapel!” Ava said, jumping up and doing her pacing thing, the skirt of her coral dress swishing back and forth. “Please? That would be so marvelous.”

“I’ll vote for marvelous,” Wilson said. “Long as there aren’t any Elvis impersonators, except me singing ‘Mary Lou Brown’ to my bride.”

“You want to get married at Graceland?” Caroline asked with irritated
disbelief. “This is insane.” She glared at Marylou. “My father has dementia. Are you prepared to take care of him? He doesn’t have money, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Marylou decided not to rise to the bait. “I’m aware of all that,” she said calmly. “We’ll take care of each other.” She sounded like a different person talking. Donna Reed, maybe. Where was the Radioactive Lady? Still there, shaking her head incredulously. Cue the birdies and the violins. Disgusting. Marylou was glad she hadn’t disappeared altogether. Take a chill pill, Nance.

The Witherspoon family sat there staring at her and Wilson, waiting for them to say more. Wilson squeezed her hand but didn’t speak, so Marylou plunged in. “I know it’s not like a young couple getting married,” she told them, “but it’s something to celebrate, don’t you think? We want you all there with us.”

“I don’t really feel like celebrating,” Otis said. “I feel bad about our house. And I feel bad for Rusty.”

“And for Angel,” Suzi added.

They were silent for a minute, all of them thinking about Rusty and Angel, trying to imagine how they must be feeling but knowing they couldn’t really know how bad it must be. The air conditioner cut off, and Marylou’s old Bakelite clock on the side table, in the corner, tick-tocked away. The room needed a good cleaning, which wasn’t surprising. That graduate student couple, who couldn’t even clean their own eyeglasses, wouldn’t have noticed dust if it had reared up and bit ’em. But it was so good to be back in her old house.

Finally Vic broke the silence. He leaned forward, clasping his big hands on his knees. “We’ll be at your wedding,” he said. So Vic did have an earnest side. Who would’ve thunk it? “It’s great you found each other,” he went on. “It’s a miracle, under the circumstances. We do need to celebrate. Congratulations, both of you.” But he didn’t sound happy. He sounded wistful and a little sad, and Marylou knew that he was sad about the state of his own marriage.

Caroline forced a smile. “Well, right after the wedding Suzi and Otis and Ava need to get back to Tallahassee. School starts next week.”

“And soccer.” Suzi lay her head on Marylou’s shoulder. Dear Suzi. Now she’d be her real granddaughter.

“Wilson and I will take you kids back to Tallahassee,” Marylou offered. “You can stay at my house. Your mother and father should stay here and have a little vacation together.”

Vic and Caroline glanced across the room at each other, their expressions tentative and hopeful. Marylou had never seen this kind of interaction between them. They usually faced off from their corners, entrenched in their positions, ready to defend themselves. Now they appeared vulnerable. It was hard to watch. What if one rebuffed the other one?