Free The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

kept resurfacing—what had her father done to run her mother off? The answer to this question had never been obvious. Caroline had never seen him drink more than the occasional glass of wine, and there was no evidence that he’d spent money wildly—but he hadn’t clutched at it in a miserly way either. He’d lavished love and attention on the two wives—one nice, one mean—that he’d had after Mary Conner. He’d never shown signs of being a philanderer. But her mother wouldn’t have left behind a nine-month-old baby girl unless Wilson had done
something
to force her away. He’d never been willing to talk much about it, not while Caroline was growing up and not now. He didn’t talk much about anything anymore. On her worst days it seemed like he was simply there in her house to remind her of her mother, to give her more work to do, and then to die where she’d be the one to find him.
    She was tired of being awful to the people she loved, but since she couldn’t stop being awful, the only alternative was to get away from all of them. Leave them far behind so as not to expose them to her anger. Maybe this was how her own mother had felt—that her family would be better off without her. But her mother had left a tiny baby! And never came back! Caroline would only be taking a sabbatical from grown and half-grown people who either resented her or took her for granted, or both—not leaving for good, just until she stopped wanting to slap them all silly. Suzi dismissed her. Otis patronized her. Being around Vic the way he was now—middle-aged—frightened her, because when she really noticed him, she was reminded of who they used to be and never would be again. Two people who’d backpacked in New Mexico on their honeymoon. Who’d howled with wolves froma canoe in northern Minnesota. Who, when they couldn’t afford cable TV, watched Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights so they could dance to Myron Floren’s accordion. Then the kids came along, and everything was different but always a new adventure. Now she felt like they were waiting for it all to be over. She couldn’t wait anymore. She wouldn’t. Next! But what was next? Leaving was next. It was the only option she could come up with, because she was losing her mind.
    The truth was, Caroline had been losing it for a while. But she didn’t want to go down without a fight.
    Three years ago, when she turned forty-five, after having spent most of her life laughing at the suckers who’d buy such things, she started hemorrhaging money on expensive face creams with pseudoscientific names that promised miracles. She would apply each cream hopefully and study herself in the mirror, asking her husband periodically if she looked any different, and every time he said, “Yeah, sure,” until she stopped believing him. Around this time she started wearing T-shirts with skeletons and rhinestones on them and, with her already-tattooed friend Billie, she went downtown and got the names of her three kids tattooed on her left shoulder. Her family was horrified, which pleased her.
    But after a while all this age-fending-off behavior started feeling like wasted energy, a finger in the dike. The sure prospect of old age and death hits different people at different ages. For Caroline, forty-eight was the magic year. She turned forty-eight on May 2, 2006.
    The day after her forty-eighth birthday, that dreadful birthday when she couldn’t get out of bed, Caroline dumped all her expensive face creams in the trash and gave all her rock T-shirts to Ava, since Suzi tended more toward stripes and Nike swooshes. That’s when she started in with the boxer shorts and tank shirts and the little ponytails and the simmering anger and longing to run away, the same shameful longing that her mother must’ve felt, and then Mrs. So-called NancyArcher appeared in her living room, the first time when Suzi invited her, the second time when she dropped by with a book about Elvis—one of those huge