Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [36]
Without makeup, her face was fresh as dew, he told her. She was his elf, She was loveliness, he said. After a while, Nicole got the impression that he was just like her and could hardly comprehend what was happening. The feeling of something beautiful next to you all the time.
Then, just before he was ready to leave, he would get up and lock himself in the bathroom for twenty minutes. Nicole supposed he combed his hair and did his thing. Afterward, they'd spend five minutes at the front door, and she would watch from there while he got in the car. A lot of times he'd have trouble starting it. Sometimes, after slipping on her Levi's, she'd come out to push. Sometimes he would have to take her car. It was dependent on which Mustang had the most gas. They got pretty broke sometimes.
She didn't regret, however, quitting her job. After the day she played hooky from the sewing factory to have a picnic with Sue, she knew she wasn't going to keep working. She needed time to think. It was hard to stay serious about a sewing machine when you wanted to dream all the time about your man. Besides, they had his paycheck, and her welfare, and Gary was just as happy if she quit.
While he was away, she'd piddle around, clean the house, feed the kids. She'd work in the garden a lot, and drink coffee. Sometimes she would sit and drink coffee for a couple of hours and think about Gary. Sit there and smile to herself. She felt so nice she couldn't believe some of the things she felt. A lot of times she would drive over with his lunch just to be with him, and he'd come sit in the car.
She began to visit her mother a lot because Kathryne's house wasn't far from where he worked, and Nicole could have coffee with Kathryne, then leave the kids, and be alone with Gary. She really enjoyed such time. She'd go back to her mother's for an hour or so, then back to Spanish Fork to straighten out the house and wait. It was the first time in her life she felt like a lady of leisure.
One Sunday while she was digging away in her garden, Gary carved their names on the apple tree. He did it with a pocket knife, real nice, really neat: GARY LOVES NICOLE. Nobody had ever done that before.
Next day she had a lot of things to do, and kept wanting to get back. When she finally reached home, she cleaned his car out first, then climbed up the tree to a place above where he had done it, and carved out: NICOLE LOVES GARY. Then she went into the house just in time to meet him.
He came out in the backyard with a beer and she told him to look at the apple tree. He didn't see anything and she finally had to point it out to him. Then he was happy as a kid, and said she had done hers better than his. Told her it was a beautiful heart she had carved around the names.
Maybe a week after Gary came to live with her, she found a big yellow folder in his stuff with a bunch of papers about a dispute he had with a prison dentist. The arguments were all typed up in prison language and seemed so funny she just sat there and laughed. All those big words about a set of false teeth. When she told Gary, however, he got upset. He had never mentioned he had false teeth. Bothered the hell out of him that she found out.
Of course it wasn't new to her. She had discovered it the first night. She had lived before with a guy who had a plate and knew how they felt. You could always tell when kissing a man because they never wanted you to put your tongue in their mouth, whereas they were always putting their tongue in yours. She went so far as to tease him about the chompers, but he took