The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (32 page)

“It’s Wednesday night. They’re at church.”

Caroline forced herself to take a breath. “Then I’m going to church. Now. To tell him I know.”

“Can I come with you? I’d like to help any way I can.”

Caroline punched the off button on the phone and wished she had one of those old-fashioned phones that you could hang up by slamming
the receiver down, making a point. Fuck you, was the point she wanted to make.

* * *

By the time she got to the Genesis Church, the service was more than half over. She stood in the foyer, with the gleaming terra-cotta tile floors, and peered through a round window in the door that opened into the sanctuary.
Sanctuary
didn’t feel like the right word for that room.
Arena
. There was a band set up on the stage, but the spotlight wasn’t on them—it was on some man, evidently the minister, who was up there on the stage preaching, and people in the audience were shouting out “Praise Jesus” and “Amen” and waving their hands in the air. The minister’s voice rose and dipped, rose and dipped. It was mesmerizing. She couldn’t see Buff anywhere. What was his real name? She refused to think of him by that harmless, cuddly nickname. Honey, don’t you trust old Buff?

“Hey there,” said a quiet voice at her elbow. A dark-haired woman, very slight, wearing a long skirt and no shoes, stood beside her. “You’re welcome to go in,” she said. “Lay your troubles on the Lord.”

“Don’t have any troubles.”

The woman smiled and held up her bare foot, bony and supple. “God doesn’t care how you’re dressed.”

Caroline had no idea what she was wearing, so she checked. A tank shirt and an old pair of holey shorts with green deck paint on them. So what. She imagined herself bursting into the sanctuary and making a big scene, but that would be too melodramatic. They’d throw her out and she wouldn’t get to say all she had to say.

“Is Buff in there?” she asked.

“First row on the right.” She pointed. There he was, sitting in a row of men, staring up at the minister but probably planning his next sexual encounter with a minor. Smug bastard.

“What’s his real name?” Caroline asked the woman.

The woman frowned. “Why, Buff is his real name, far as I know.” She flapped her hand, bye-bye, and slipped into the arena.

Caroline stepped back and paced around the foyer, glancing into the Sunday school rooms that opened up off to the side. All these rooms had stages in them as well, miniature versions of the big stage in the big room. In the KidZone she spotted Paula Coffey, Buff’s wife, up front with a guitar, leading a bunch of preschoolers in a song.

Caroline took her phone out and called Vic again and got no answer. This time she left a message, explaining, in a flat, terse voice, what had happened and where she was and why.

Church finally ended with a wild burst of singing and clapping, and then people started filing out. Caroline sat down in a big plush armchair in the corner of the lobby. She’d wait for Buff to come out and she’d surprise him. She imagined the look on his face and squeezed her knees together to keep from flying apart. The smell of popcorn and coffee was making her feel queasy. She wished she had a weapon. Anything sharp would do. Or hard. She imagined smashing a hymnal into his face. She suddenly remembered the face of the teenage boy who lived next door to her family in Iowa City. Artie Finnegan. She’d been only five or six. Had he done something to her? She’d gone into his house with him once but couldn’t remember a thing about it.

She couldn’t sit there any longer. The surge of people leaving had slowed to a trickle and she got up. She walked over and looked through the door and saw Buff standing with his wife, Paula, up front near the stage. How’d Paula get in there? Paula was holding a squirming blond toddler. Angel. Another young couple stood there, talking to them, laughing. Behind them, the band was packing up their instruments. Caroline felt paralyzed for a minute, imagining how Paula was going to feel, but the self-satisfied look on Buff’s face sent her forward, propelled her up the aisle. She stood behind him, her teeth chattering.

She finally had to say, “Excuse me.”

All four adults and the toddler turned to look at her. Everything was happening in slow motion, like the time her car spun off the icy road in Iowa and landed in a ditch. She couldn’t stop that and she couldn’t stop this.

Buff smiled quizzically. Paula just smiled. The toddler stared.

“I’m Suzi Witherspoon’s mother,” she said. “Remember me? Remember Suzi?”

Buff’s mouth opened.

“Soo-see. Soo-see Widderpoon!” Angel said.

“Suzi’s such a great girl,” Paula gushed.

“Yes, she is!” Caroline said heartily, idiotically. Her ears were ringing. She’d never been this angry in her life. “What’s your name?” she asked Buff. “I don’t mean Buff. I mean your real name. Not your nickname.”

“Ah, it’s Buffington. Buffington Coffey.”

“Buffington Coffey! Buffington Coffey!” said Angel.

“Well, Buffington Coffey,” Caroline repeated and then let loose with a string of foul language and accusations and threats that scared the hell out of her.

Paula cowered and she and Angel backed away, and the other couple stepped back, too. Only Buff stood his ground, listening, as if she were reciting Bible verses.

“There’s been some mistake,” he said when she stopped. “Would you like to come back with me to my office? We can talk in private.” Then he addressed his wife. “There’s nothing to this. Suzi’s got some problems.”

“She does now!” Caroline yelled. “After what you did to her.” She went on and on, saying that there was no way in hell she’d go back to his office and did he want to take nasty photos of her and get her to suck his dick, too?

There was quiet after this last outburst, and then she heard a rumbling behind her. It was Vic, growling like a bear, running up the aisle. He tackled Buff, like the football player he’d been in high school, and then started whaling on him, beating the tar out of him, and Caroline was glad, very glad.

Buff didn’t fight back but lay there like he deserved it.

She hadn’t been to Mission San Luis since elementary school, and what she mostly remembered was the long climb uphill to get there. Otis had dropped her off at the bottom of the hill and zoomed off to God knows where, refusing to wait, even when Ava promised she’d just be a few minutes. He was off on some Otis errand of mysterious importance. But actually she was glad that he’d gone, glad to be left alone and entirely free of her family.

It was late afternoon. On top of the hill the live oaks shaded the paths and buildings. She followed the path to the right, past the friary and the huge thatched-roof church, seeing no one until she noticed a few people gathered in front of a cottage across the field. She had no idea what sort of craft or trade Travis demonstrated—had no idea whether or not Travis was even working today. But she needed to talk to him. Talking to someone she didn’t know well on the phone made her nervous, and he wasn’t on MySpace, so she’d taken a chance and come here. She’d taken a chance! She didn’t usually take chances.

A gaggle of little boys in baseball caps raced past her, going the opposite way, red-faced and shouting. She approached the cottage. There were gardens around it and a small bonfire in a clearing. The smell of meat cooking wafted up from an iron kettle in the fire. A costumed woman was holding forth near the fire, while an earnest middle-aged
couple in matching T-shirts and shorts, with big smiles plastered on their faces, looked on.

The talking lady, who wore an ivory linen mantilla and silver earrings and an ivory linen bustled dress, turned to include Ava as part of her audience, and Ava felt obliged to stand and listen.

“That’s my cook,” the talking lady said, pointing to a darker, younger woman sitting on a log nearby, sewing. “She’s fixing our stew for dinner. I have to keep an eye on her so she doesn’t burn it.”

The young woman, also in costume—a much simpler one—didn’t even look up.

“I’ve just been at the church, saying my rosary,” the talking lady went on, as if they’d asked. “My older brother is the friar here, and another brother is the merchant trader. He has three ships anchored down at St. Marks. He takes the things we make here in the village and trades them in Havana for things from Europe, like playing cards and tools and olive oil. There’s his stand.” She gestured at a little thatched-roof stand across the path, where animal skins hung on a line.

“Is there anyone working there now?” Ava jumped in.

“My brother has just set off down the Wakulla River with some Indians in canoes, headed for St. Marks, carrying more of our products to trade. I’ve been praying for their safe return.”

Ava guessed that this meant that Travis wasn’t acting as the merchant trader today. She stood there, swatting gnats away from her eyes, wishing she could swish her ponytail like a horse’s tail.

The talking lady gazed quizzically up at the sky. “Oh dear. Looks like rain.”

Actually, it didn’t. But it was cooler today than it usually was in August, or so everyone was saying. Only in the mid-eighties, with low humidity. It could be because Hurricane Grayson had gone back out into the Gulf. And then, who knew what it would do?

“Heavens, I need to bring in my children’s beds before it rains!”
said the lady. “I set them out to air this morning. My husband and I and our ten children live in that cottage.”

A black rooster and some speckled hens darted past, weaving this way and that.

The man listening asked the talking lady if the hens were hers.

She couldn’t give a straight answer, it seemed. “I lost three hens to hawks last week.” She went on and on, in her phony antiquated English, when Spanish would’ve been more accurate. Ava listened as long as she could stand it. Finally she interrupted and asked her if Travis was working there today.

“He’s a soldier, down at the fort,” she told Ava. “Would you like to see inside my cottage?” she asked her group. The nice couple followed her and Ava turned and hurried off toward the fort.

She wanted to talk to Travis about everything that had been going on at home. Things had been bad, very bad. Travis might not be glad to see her at all, since Rev. Buff was his mother’s brother, and his uncle, but this was another chance she had to take. The red dust on the paved path got between her flip-flops and her feet, and she wished she’d worn sneakers. She didn’t have much tolerance for the physical irritations that most people could just ignore, but if she banged her head hard on something it didn’t seem to hurt her as much as it would most people. Most people. She got tired of most people. Travis wasn’t like most people, either.

A log stockade enclosed the white stucco fort. Inside, Travis was talking to the group of sweaty little boys. He wore the same white collarless shirt and breeches with the braided belt and felt hat that he’d been wearing at church, the same brown knee sock thingies and leather shoe boots. “Ava!” he said, and she could tell he was really glad to see her. He held up his finger, meaning, wait a minute. So she did.

A set of military spears with wooden handles and wicked-looking blades hung on the wall behind him, and he explained the differences
among them to the boys. They were different kinds of pole arms, he said. One was for fighting on horseback, another type had different-shaped blades to demonstrate rank. The boys made sounds of approval.

Then he showed them the matchlock and flintlock muskets hanging on another wall and some swords lying on a shelf right at the boys’ eye level.

The boys crowded close to the swords, itching to pick them up. They weren’t even listening to Travis, she could tell. Each one wanted to snatch up a sword and stab something.

Finally Ava couldn’t stand it anymore. “You boys need to get out of here,” she said. “Time’s up. Move along.”

There were four of them, and they all looked at her with varying degrees of surprise and annoyance on their faces. Then one of the boys said, “Vamoose,” and they all took off together out of the fort like a school of little fishes.

“Is there anyone else in here?” Ava asked him, and Travis said no.

“When are you going to be on
America’s Next Top Model
?” He leaned back against the clay shelf that was built into the wall. “I’ve been watching it every week.”

Was that all he cared about? She leaned against the shelf next to him. She told him she wasn’t interested in being on that show anymore.

“Good,” he said. “It’s really lame.”

That made her feel better. “You didn’t come to support group yesterday.”

He shrugged, lifting his tricorne back off his forehead. There was a slight indentation in his forehead and Ava longed to touch it the way the boys had longed to touch the swords.

“I don’t need to go to that group,” he said. “I don’t have Asperger’s.”

“What
do
you have, then?”

“You mean like what disorder? I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m just going to live my life. Screw all that disorder and syndrome shit.”

“Tough talk,” Ava said. She knew she would think of herself as someone with Asperger’s syndrome for the rest of her life, and it felt like a huge, unfair burden. If she ever voiced this sentiment, someone would point out that everyone had burdens of one kind or another. That was the Christian way to look at it, but she wasn’t a Christian, so did she have to look at it that way? It sucked. Period. But at least she could read about Asperger’s and make sense of herself, and how many people could say that?