Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [465]
He had said goodbye to her with a great big smile, had told her he'd be around the next day, and she should take it easy and feel right, but he could feel how surprised she was that he was leaving her alone this first night away from the hospital, alone, that is, with her mother and kids. He said, "Hey, you're your own person. If I see you tomorrow, fine. If you don't want to see me tomorrow, nothing lost." That was what he said, but he had never been so scared as on that ride home.
In fact, he couldn't hold out till he got back. Two-thirds of the way to Beverly Hills, he stopped and called, pretending he had just gotten in, "Want to let you know I'm home safely," he said in a voice that couldn't sell ice cream, but, of course, had to hear her voice to be sure she hadn't packed it in.
Nicole did open the box that night. Gary had left her a Meerschaum pipe which Nicole didn't know was of value. She thought it looked great for blowing soap bubbles. Then there was the watch Gary had broken at the estimated time of execution. She thought it was neat of him to do it. After all, what would it mean if she'd just been handed a watch? Then there was a Bible in the box. Gary wrote he had been sent enough Bibles to open a holy store, but this one arrived on the day he had attempted to take his life the second time.
She read through newspaper stories he had left her on Gary and Nicole, and looked at a picture of Amber Jim, who was a ten-year-old girl prizefighter who had written to Gary. Plus a bunch of letters from Amber Jim. Nicole actually got jealous reading them, even though Amber Jim was just a little girl. It also made her feel like crying. It was the first thing that brought Nicole close to the reality of all those people besides herself who had been thinking of Gary as the time of his execution came near.
Then, she saw a picture of Richard Gibbs. Underneath it, Gary had written, "Undercover agent and a rat. Stool pigeon. He really fooled me." A lot of pictures of Nicole and her family at various ages were in the box, and letters sent to Gary from a lot of people. A St. Michael's medal. A navy blue sweat shirt was the best. It didn't stink, but it did smell of him. Smelled nice. It was just a great sweat shirt, and she didn't want to wash it. She wore it that night and wore it a few times after, and never wanted to wash it, but after a while, it got funky and she had to.
Schiller didn't start the first interview for a week. Then it was a problem where to get privacy to do them. The house at Malibu had three bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen, dining room and living room on the main floor, and on the lower level, by the beach, a playroom. Her mother slept in one bedroom, the Baker kids in another, and Nicole was planning to share a big, king-sized bed with Sunny and Jeremy, but she preferred to shack out on her cold, windy porch in the late January and early February winter sunshine of Malibu. It was cold and windy, but she chose it. Virtually moved out there. All her books were on the porch.
They ended up having interviews in all kinds of places. Now that she was out of the hospital, Nicole hated to be confined to a room, so Schiller would, start his tape recorder in restaurants, or take her for drives and talk in the car. After some days of that, he came to discover that she was going to give him more than he'd ever hoped for, more in fact than Gary ever did or maybe could.
She seemed to have a commitment to the interviews as deep as the beating of her heart. It was as if she had to tell him the story as once she had told it to Gary, and tell it all, tell it not to satisfy her guilt (and sometimes he thought she felt very guilty), no, tell for some deeper reason. Schiller was profoundly confused why she was so concerned to give it all forth and explain what had happened in the very best way she could ever understand it. Why she was as fair, he decided, to a true description of everything that was not good between Gary and herself as to everything that had been good, until Schiller began to wonder