The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [26]
“She’s still out of her mind, if she’s showing up and pretending to be someone else.”
And now she’d shown up again! It was an opportunity for a do-over. During Nance’s earlier visit, Caroline had gotten more and more addle-brained when she began to suspect Nance of being her mother. She had acted rashly, pretending to have forgotten Nance’s name and called her Mary. Nance had seemed startled, but really, who wouldn’t have been if they’d been called Mary out of the blue? Right now Caroline had no proof of anything, there were only some odd coincidences and her own intuition. Today she would remain calm. She would strive for detached curiosity. Not an easy state for her to achieve these days, but she’d try.
She led Nance back into the little sitting room where her father hung out. Each time she entered that oppressive room she was struck again by the old man smell. Sometimes she felt like everyone in her house was trying to take it over, take up all the air and space and sound waves until there was nothing left for her. The big old farmhouse she and Vic had rented in Iowa haunted her. The quiet. The space. And they’d been so eager to fill it up with kids! What the hell were they thinking?
Her father, the old man who smelled, sat in his favorite chair near the TV, the nubby chair with the permanent imprint of his butt in the cushion. They’d have to throw it away when he died. Not that she ever thought about that.
“You must be Dr. Spriggs!” Nance gushed. “So good to finally meet you.” She glanced around the room and then arranged herself on the love seat across from him, settling in among the pages of the newspaper.
Her father stared at Nance in bewilderment.
If this woman was his long-lost wife, wouldn’t he recognize her? True, it would have been forty-eight years ago that she left him, and his mind was going. But maybe he was only pretending not to recognize her.
Nance kept staring at him, looking him slowly up and down.
Wilson Spriggs was a commanding presence, even in his old age. If you saw him working in the yard, you might think, if you were a certain age yourself: why it’s Cary Grant’s look-alike! The old Cary Grant, when he wore those cool black glasses. And if you were to stop and talk to him, you’d think that he must be a paid advertisement for Geritol. Clear-eyed and friendly but not overfamiliar. If you talked to him only briefly, you would never suspect that his mind was slipping. Wilson still radiated that doctor vibe: I’m important! Pay heed! The man had been married three times, the last two times to adoring nurses. But now he was unshaven, wearing his hideous brown bathrobe. If Caroline had known that Nance was coming over, she might’ve insisted that her father get dressed and shave. She felt like a matchmaker.
Nance didn’t appear to be smitten. She now gazed at him with a stony expression that contradicted her earlier gushiness. “Finally,” Nance muttered. “Wilson Spriggs, in the flesh. As I live and breathe.” And then, in a louder voice, “Yep, still living and breathing here, Wilson Spriggs!”
“Me, too,” Wilson said in a jovial way.
“So I see. Dr. Spriggs.” Nancy Archer, or Mary Conner, seemed to be harboring resentment toward Wilson. How could she resent him if she didn’t know him? Interesting.
“Nancy Archer is our new neighbor.” Caroline had to speak loudly, because her father wouldn’t wear his hearing aid. She was speaking too loudly, but she didn’t care. “She brought Ava an Elvis book.”
“Good morning,” he said to Nance, and smiled like his old charming self.
Nance refused coffee, and glanced at Caroline expectantly. Entertain me, is what her expression said. Christ, another person who wanted to be taken care of. If this woman was her mother, had she come expecting Caroline to nurse her in her twilight years? Was she looking for a handout? Nance had claimed to have plenty of money,