Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [40]
With the lights out, she never really knew if it was touching, or what he was asking her to kiss. After a while, it didn't even seem that unusual, she would answer him politely when he asked, Does that feel good? She would say, Yes.
Nicole was 12 before she told him that he couldn't make her do it anymore. She was sleeping next to April when Lee woke her up. Nicole thought April was awake anyway, so she told him no. Then, Lee said he had caught her in the bathroom. Went into detail how he had seen a little masturbating. Said, You're such a free spirit, you can do it with me. She said, I don't care what you saw, you tell the world. A little while after, he went to Nam and was killed. It made Nicole wonder if she had left a curse, cause she had enough evil thoughts about Lee.
She never told anyone in the family what he had done. She was afraid they might not believe it. Yet, now, they seemed to know. Maybe the nice lady who sent her to the nuthouse got around to telling them.
Gary was silent for a long time. "Your old man," he said, "ought to be shot."
"Are you sure you want to hear all of it?" she asked.
"I want to hear it," he nodded.
So she started to tell him about the nuthouse and her first marriage. And she didn't hide it about the orgy in between. Otherwise, it would have been too confusing to explain that she met her second husband before her first.
It was really only half a nuthouse and half a Reform School. Kind of a youth home. It wasn't all that bad, except Nicole felt crazy all the time because it was ridiculous that she was locked up. Why are they keeping me here, she would ask herself, when I'm not nuts? It would get quiet in the night, and she would feel lonely when somebody would scream.
The first time they let her home for a visit she got to stay at her grandmother's and some dudes next door asked if she wanted to party a little bit. She slipped off to the next house with them for a few days, and got in trouble overstaying her leave. They kept such a watch on her when she went back to the hospital that it took six months before she could go AWOL again.
One time, a real dopy old lady was on guard at the door and Nicole was able to get past her. She took off down the field, climbed two fences, went through a few backyards, found a good-sized road and hitchhiked over to Rikki and Sue's house where she hung around for a few days, and started to go with the guy who became her first husband, Jim Hampton. He claimed to be in love and wanted to marry her from the first date on. She thought he was a big immature clunk. Yet every day she was AWOL, Nicole was with him. She felt very conceited about being superior to him.
Then her father found out where she was, and came over. He wasn't mad or nothing. Thought it was kind of neat she'd run away from the nuthouse. Suggested she get married.
Nicole always felt Mack-trucked into that one. There was a saying they used up in the nuthouse for when you got pushed into a marriage by parties larger than yourself. Mack-trucked. It was obvious to Nicole that her parents wanted her off their hands.
On the other hand, even if she didn't like Hampton's personality, or couldn't be impressed much with his intelligence, she thought he was awfully good looking. Moreover, her dad kept telling her she didn't have to go back to the loonies if she was married. Then Hampton asked Charley for permission, and her father just said, "Let's go." Never did ask Nicole.
He got in the car with Jim Hampton like they were old buddies-her dad wasn't even thirty and Jim was over twenty-put her in the back seat, and the car took off. Nicole knew damn well she wasn't gaining any freedom by marrying Jim Hampton. They drove along, drinking it up in front, and Nicole told herself she'd gotten