The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [27]
Back in Iowa City, when Caroline was in junior high school, Wilson had told her what he knew about her mother, which was disappointingly little. The two of them had known each other only two months before they got married, Wilson explained, and they got married only because Mary was expecting a baby. Mary was eighteen at the time, a country girl from Arkansas who’d come up to the city to seek her fortune. Wilson claimed he knew nothing about her family or exactly where she’d grown up. How could you not know those things? Caroline had always wondered.
Later on, when Caroline was in high school and Wilson was married to wife number three, he revealed to Caroline what had happened the day Mary disappeared back in 1959. He’d dropped Mary and baby Caroline at his mother’s house in suburban Memphis and had gone off to do some errands downtown. When he returned a couple of hours later, Mary was gone. What did he mean, gone? She wasn’t there. She’d left. Didn’t he ask his mother what had happened? Sure, but his mother swore to her dying day that she didn’t see Mary leave and didn’t know why or where she’d gone. Didn’t he try to find her? Sure he did. He checked with all their friends, visited all their old hangouts, like the Arcade and the Tick Tock. He even put an ad in the paper. No, she never asked for any of her things. Oddly enough, Wilson said, his mother’s precious grand piano also disappeared a few days after Mary did, and his mother claimed that she’d just felt like selling it. Wilson immediately suspected that his mother, who’d never liked Mary, had offered to give her the piano if she’d disappear, but he didn’t voice his suspicions to his mother, who would’ve denied it. So had Mary been a music lover? Had she ever taken piano lessons or expressed an interest in playing piano? No, Mary had never shown much interest in any kind of music. But what kind of person would swap an object they didn’t care about for their own baby? Mary, apparently. What kind of person would deprive a child of her mother? The child’s grandmother, evidently. Why would you suspect your own mother of secretly bribing your wife to leave and then lying about it? He did, and he couldn’t explain why. The whole thing was too vexing to think about.
Caroline had long since given up expecting her mother to show up on her birthdays or to call, even send a card. Maybe that’s why she’d always hated her birthday. So what had prompted her might-be mother to return now?
Keep quiet until you’re sure, Caroline told herself. She sat down at the other end of the love seat, picked up the paper, shook it, and read, too loudly, “Six-letter word for animus.”
“Romulus and Remus,” said Nance in a singsong voice.
Okay. Caroline took a sip of her cooling coffee. “Dad? Animus.”
He shook his head slowly. “Do we know any letters?”
“No! I told you that.”
“Hate,” he said.
“Six! Letters!”
“Betty Bordney fairy sway,” Nance said, and snorted with laughter.
Her father laughed, too, a startling sound. Caroline hadn’t heard her father laugh in ages. The crossword puzzle segment of their morning was usually done in a businesslike manner, because it was one of the things the doctor had said they needed to do to help keep Wilson’s memory intact. Caroline had suspected that her father didn’t enjoy it much either.
“Who is Betty Bordney?” Wilson asked Nance.
“A lady I knew. In Memphis. A nurse. Betty Bordney fairy sway. That’s what we used to call her. Or was it Betty fairy Bordner sway?”
“Did you hate her?” Wilson asked. “Was there animus between you?”
“Oh, no. The opposite. She and I had a lesbian affair.”
Wilson blanched, uncomfortable about such things being said boldly aloud.
Was her mother a lesbian? Was that why she left? Caroline felt hysterical laughter bubbling up and tried to swallow it.
“Just playing with ya,” Nance said. “I’m not a lesbian.”
“Betty Bordney sounds like a cow,” Wilson said.
“And fairy sway sounds like a dairy dessert.”
“Moo,” Wilson