Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [38]
In the morning she sat down and wrote a letter to say how much she loved him, and that she didn't want to stop. It was just a short letter and she left it out there by his vitamins. He didn't reply when he read it, but a night or two later they were walking by the same church off Center Street, and saw a falling star. They both made a wish. He asked what hers could be, but she wasn't going to tell him. Then she confessed having wished that her love for him be constant and forever. He told her that he hoped no unnecessary tragedies would ever befall them. She had a rush of memories then like falling down in a dream.
Chapter 5
NICOLE AND UNCLE LEE
Once, when Gary asked her if she remembered the first time she fucked somebody, Nicole paused in her reply and said, "Vaguely."
" 'Vaguely?' " Gary asked. "What do you mean, 'vaguely'?"
"It wasn't that big of a deal," said Nicole. "I was only 11 or 12."
Of course, she didn't tell him all her stories at once. She told him cute things first like the one about the pet raccoon when she was 6. She used to walk to school with it on her shoulder and think she was hot stuff.
She used, she told him, to play hooky a lot. Sometimes she would just drift on up the hill above the school, sit in the middle of the pine trees and look down on all those little idiots in class. One time Nicole was being smart-ass and instead of keeping to the woods, went walking back by the road. Just then her mother drove around the corner. There Nicole was. She could remember her mother saying, "All right, girl. Get in the car."
Or the time her mother cut her hair so short you could see the skin behind her ears. People used to think she was a boy. One time some kids in the playground said so, and she proved to them she wasn't.
Gary laughed. That sped things up.
She remembered, when she was 10 or 11 writing a pornographic letter to a very nasty little boy who had a very dirty mouth.
Now she didn't know why she wrote it, just that when she finished, she took one look, and tore it up. Kathryne fished it out of the garbage and taped it together. Then her mother told her how horrible she was. Especially since she had written: Okay, you talk about it so much, let's do it.
There came moments when Nicole thought her mother was very intelligent, for Kathryne could pick up on what other people were thinking. Nicole never believed Kathryne listened much to her own soul, but she could sure hone in on others. If you lived around her long enough, you didn't have to think about something before her mother would mention it. That sure gave her a way of bending you out of shape. Kathryne was a tiny woman, but she would tell her big handsome husband with his beautiful black mustache that he was nothing but a slob. Tell him to go fuck the lady he had just been with. When Charley came home from work, which was usually late, because he'd stopped off to have a few at a bar, it wasn't that he walked drunk, or his speech was slurred, but he'd have a half smile on his face like Clark Gable, and Nicole could tell he was feeling good. Then Kathryne would start to fix his mood. She wasn't about to forgive him for a lot.
One time, Kathryne actually caught him coming down the stairs in some motel. He had a girl on the second floor. Kathryne had his service pistol and threatened to shoot him. But she didn't. In turn, Nicole's father would always accuse Kathryne of adultery, her mother!-Charley Baker was the first man she had, and she never had another one. Didn't stop her father. Once he got home late and nobody was there, and he thought Kathryne'd left forever with the kids and a man. Instead she had just taken the kids to a drive-in movie. When they got home, Charley wouldn't believe it. The kids had to run out of the house and climb in the car, and when Mom leaped in to drive away, Charles tried to jump on as they were all pulling out, and broke his leg. That was when Nicole was around 7 and her father was