It would be an apparently innocent question, part of their conversation. Like: “Do you think it’s all right for teen-agers to make out?” He would act casual and ask her to define making out and she would say: “You know, parked somewhere.”
“Well, if you’re just parked, listening to the radio—”
“Of course I mean if they’re in love, or if they feel at least a strong physical attraction.”
“You wonder if it’s all right for them to do a little smooching?”
“Uh-huh, not necessarily going all the way or sexing around too much, but maybe frenching and letting him touch you, you know, here.”
Then the timing. Just as he said, “Well—” she would look at her watch and say, “Oh my gosh, I’d better get in!” And with a thanks-a-lot, slam the door in his face.
Then the next time steer the conversation or wait to see if he steered it to making out—or smooching or necking, as he called it. If he didn’t she would move in quickly and zap him again.
“But why are boys always, you know, so anxious?”
“It’s just the way they are physiologically. I suppose psychologically too.”
Innocently, a sincere girl in search of knowledge: “Are older men that way?”
“Sure older men are. Not too old but older.”
“I’ve wondered about that. Like young girls who marry older men.”
“Well, if they’re too old—”
“There was a movie star recently—I can’t think of his name—he’s fifty and the girl I think is twenty-two. That’s, gosh, twenty-eight years difference!”
“If they get along, have mutual interests, a rapport, then why not?”
“Uh-huh. I guess so. If they love each other.”
Now watch the serious, rationalizing father turning it over in his mind in the dark car with the dash lights and the radio low and her tan legs in the short shorts. “What are you, seventeen? That would be only eighteen years difference between us,” he would say, knocking anywhere from three to six years from his age. “Could you imagine—say in a couple of years, and if I weren’t married—could you imagine you and I going together?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“But it could happen, couldn’t it?”
“Gee, I guess it could.”
Within one December to April season, six after-the-party, half-in-the-bag fathers, who lived within a mile of one another but were not acquainted (she made sure of that), had reached the verge and realized the clear possibility that cute little Nancy Hayes with the cute little figure could be more to them than a babysitter. Three escaped: they did nothing about it; they seemed interested in her; they liked talking to her; they teased themselves with the possibility of her; but they did nothing about it.
Three did not escape.
One of them, taking Nancy home, turned off the road before reaching her street and rolled dead-engine into the willows that grew along a deserted stretch of canal. He pulled her to him across the console-glovebox between the bucket seats, with the faint sound of Sinatra coming from the instrument panel, and with a sad, aching look in his eyes kissed her gently, lingeringly on the mouth. When they parted, Nancy nestled close and put her head on his shoulder.
The second one happened to run into Nancy late one afternoon at the Ocean Mile Shopping Center, at the paperback rack in the drugstore, and asked her if she’d like a lift home; then, because it was such a terrific afternoon, asked if she’d like to drive over to Bahia Mar and watch the fishing boats come in. They stopped at Bahia Mar long enough to buy a sixpack and drove up the beach, almost to Pompano, where a row of new condominium apartments were under construction, empty concrete shells in the 5:30 sunlight, rising out of the cleared land. They parked in the close shadow of what would soon be the east wing of The Castile and the father drank three of the beers, giving her sips, bigger and bigger sips, telling her it was funny how much easier it was to talk to her than to his wife, how she seemed to understand him better. He was gentle when he put his arm around her and raised her chin gently but studied as he kissed her, his palm against her cheek. Her head tilted to his shoulder, her eyes warm and holding.
The third one came home from golf in the early afternoon to find his wife in Miami shopping and Nancy babysitting: Nancy in a dry two-piece white bathing suit watching the four-year-old at the shallow end of the pool. She could go now, but he asked her to stay awhile, to put the youngster in bed for his nap while he changed. The father had three gimlets and swam one length of the pool while Nancy watched from a lounge chair. He came out to stand over her dripping, sucking in his stomach as he rubbed a towel over his body. He said, hey, haven’t you been in yet? Nancy said she had to go. The father said come on, don’t be chicken. He pulled her up. Nancy fought him just enough, laughing, and felt him sneak a feel as he threw her in the pool. When she went into the house, he followed her, stopping in the kitchen to make another gimlet. Nancy went to the guest room, where she had changed. She closed the door, took off the top of her bathing suit and began drying her hair. She didn’t have long to wait. He said, “Are you decent?” opening the door as he said it. Nancy squealed and turned away from him. In the dresser mirror she watched him come up behind her. She felt his hands on her hips, then slide around her waist. She let her head sink back to rest on his shoulder.
And to each of the three who did not escape, close to them, her head on their shoulders, she said, “Do you know what I’m going to do?”
Each one of the three whispered. “No. What are you going to do?”
And she answered, “I’m going to write to your wife and tell her you were seen taking advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl, that’s what.”
She did, too.
* * *
Ray Ritchie, father number two, the one who had taken Nancy for the ride up toward Pompano, looked at the note and said to his wife, “I like girls, you know that. But I draw the line.” That would serve as his statement. Ray Ritchie almost always had something going on the side, from out-of-town weekends to downtown year-rounders, and he knew his wife wasn’t going to make a case out of this one. He was busy, he traveled a lot, he had interests in several companies in addition to Ritchie Foods; his wife had a $150,000 home, live-in help, clubs, charge accounts, their one child in a good school and she could believe whatever she liked.
Nancy didn’t see Ray Ritchie again until the next season. She wasn’t babysitting anymore, she was working in a casual shop at Ocean Mile. This time when Ray Ritchie ran into her, he didn’t take her to Bahia Mar or up toward Pompano. He took her to the Lucayan Beach Hotel on Grand Bahama for the weekend, Saturday through Tuesday.
The following 4th of July, Nancy was Miss Perky Pickle; she wore a dark green bathing suit and dark green high heels and rode through Geneva Beach behind the Holden Consolidated Marching Band, waving to everybody from the top of Ray Ritchie’s Continental. In August she wrote to her mother to say she was taking a job in Ritchie Foods’ P.R. department. She wrote the letter from her $400-a-month apartment overlooking the Detroit River.
As Miss Perky Pickle, she attended conventions, promotional parties, and store openings. She went to Cleveland, Chicago, and Minneapolis with Ray. She posed with Ritchie Foods’ displays and passed out samples. She waited in hotel suites for Ray. She raced to airports with Ray. She sat with Ray and his group at bunny clubs and key clubs, usually the only girl at the table. She listened to the radio or record player all day when she was in the apartment. She switched her allegiance from the Hermits to the Loving Spoonful to the Blues Magoos and the Mamas and the Papas. She read Vogue, Bazaar, and ‘Teen. She walked around the apartment and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked out the window, at the winter stillness of the Detroit River, at the factory warehouse skyline of Windsor, Ontario. She fooled around with an account rep from Ritchie Foods’ ad agency who pretended to be relaxed but kept looking toward the door. She sat alone weekends when Ray was in Fort Lauderdale with his family. She was t
hinking of going down herself, to see what old Mom was doing, when Ray asked if she wanted to spend the summer at the beach house—he’d be up quite a bit and it would be cooler than Detroit.
There was sunlight in the windows and on the pale blue carpeting, an afternoon in late May, quiet in the apartment because Ray had turned off the radio when he came in. He had ten minutes to change and pack an overnight bag for Chicago; forty minutes to get to the airport. She had fixed him a Scotch and soda and now sat on the couch while he changed his clothes, came out of the bedroom several times with the drink in his hand, took two phone calls and made a call, and finally stopped long enough to mention the beach house.
“What about your wife, doesn’t she go up?”
“A couple of times, maybe. She stays home and plays golf. She plays golf every morning and drinks gin and tonic in the afternoon.”
“What do I do when she comes?”
“You go to the hunting lodge. Or come back here if you want.”
“Slip out the back door as she comes in the front.”
“If you don’t like the way it is,” Ray Ritchie said, “I’ll have somebody drive you to the airport.”
“It’s nice to know you can’t live without me.”
“Did I make any promises to you? We’re square right now aren’t we, if you want to take off? Do I owe you anything?”
“The businessman.”
“Right, a deal. Have I said it was anything else?”
“You’ve never said what it was.”
“You’re a cute kid, Nancy,” Ray Ritchie told her. “If I had to replace you, it would probably take me a week.”
She remained on the couch after he had gone, aware of the afternoon stillness and aware of herself alone. She sat quietly while Ray and his group whipped off to Chicago to attend the dumb meeting or look at the dumb plant and make big important decisions about their dumb business.
Wow. And she sat here waiting for him.
He would call tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon, and show up about seven with one or two of his group. She would broil steaks as they continued making big important observations and decisions until about eleven. Then she and Ray would be alone and the corporate executive turned lover would say something unbelievable like, “Come here, doll. Miss me?” God. And the big passion scene would get under way. She would give him a look with her hair slanted across one eye, then go around turning off lights and taking glasses into the kitchen and by the time she got to the bedroom, he would be waiting with his one-button Italian-cut suit on the floor, his stomach sucked in, and Scotch and Lea & Perrins on his breath.
Unbelievable.
And he can replace you in a week, she thought. Did you know that?
Okay. She could pack her clothes right now and walk out.
She could smash the lamps, the glasses, and the dishes and then walk out.
She could have Ivory Brothers come in the morning and move out all the furniture and put it in storage.
But she didn’t. She got up and turned the radio on and started thinking about the beach house, wondering if she would like it and if there would be enough to do. After a year with Ray Ritchie the severence pay would have to be more than furniture and a few clothes. You bet your ass it would, Raymond.
During the first part of June she was content to lie in the sun by the pool and work on her tan; but by the end of the month there had to be more to do than lie around or play house with Ray when he came up.
The target pistol was fun for about a week. It was a long-barreled .22 Woodsman she had bought in Florida because she liked the look of it or just to have, to know she had a gun; maybe that was it. Her first target was the window of a grocery store way out the Shore Road. She would remember driving by in the early evening, then turning around and coming back about forty miles an hour, seeing it on the left side of the road, closed but with a light on, coming up on it and holding the gun extended in her left hand, arm resting on the door sill, not sighting but pointing in the general direction. She fired three times and heard the plate glass shatter as she sailed past, flooring the accelerator to get out of there. The game was to see if she could knock out a window without really aiming, with the right or left hand, at cottages, storefronts, signs, going by at speeds up to seventy: a shooting gallery in reverse. She had tried boats, firing at them from the trees or vacant frontage, but the boats were usually too far out and it was hard to tell when she scored a hit. Officially Nancy went shooting only four times in June, but it was enough to make front-page “Phantom Sniper” stories, with pictures of broken windows, in the Geneva Beach and Holden papers. She looked through the Detroit papers but never found a single mention.
Once, she had almost told Bob Jr. about it but at the last moment decided not to. He wouldn’t have got it. He would have frowned and said something dumb. It had been fun though, in the beginning, turning him on.
While Bob Jr. worked on the new stairway down to the beach, putting in the support posts and nailing on the side rails and steps, Nancy sunbathed on the beach. It took him a week, though she was sure he could have finished the job in a few days. Nancy would lie on a straw mat in her faded light blue bikini and every once in a while look up at him: Bob Rogers Jr. bare to the waist with his cowboy hat and his apron full of nails. His body was dark reddish brown and the hair on his chest and arms glistened in the sun. He wasn’t bad-looking at all, very animal, though his stomach was beginning to hang over his belt and in a few years he’d be a slob.
The afternoon of the third day Nancy didn’t go down to the beach. But about three o’clock she stood on the crest of the slope with a bottle of beer in one hand and a good crystal glass in the other, standing in sort of a slouch with her legs apart. He came up and they went over by the pool while he drank the beer and they talked. Nancy fooling around drawing things with her toe and then looking up at him and smiling, once almost losing her balance on the edge of the pool and reaching out to grab his arm and feeling him tighten his muscle. The jerk. He smoked two cigarettes and took little sips of the beer, making it last.
Bob Jr. was wearing a clean sport shirt when he came back the next afternoon. He had mislaid his level and wondered if he’d left it here.
After a trip down and up the stairs, acting it out, looking over the rail along the slope, he said, nope, it must be in the truck and he just didn’t see it. But since he was here would she like to go for a ride or something?
“Where?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t know. Down the beach.”
“Why not stay here?” Nancy said and added, looking up at him with the bedroom brown eyes, “No one’s home.”
“You talked me into it.” Bob Jr. grinned.
She wasn’t sure at this point what she wanted him to do. Still, she brought him along, serving him beer on the patio and giving him the basic treatment: the down-under look with dark hair slanting across one eye, putting her foot on the edge of his chair near his leg, leaning over to fool with her sandal strap and letting him look down the front of her blouse. He was on his third beer when he happened to say something about his kids. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Of course he was married; thirty-two or three, living in Geneva Beach all his life, what else would he do?
“Is your wife from Geneva Beach?”
“No, she’s a Holden girl.”
“But you went to school together.”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“And you’ve been married about—ten years?”
“Nine.”
“Let’s see, three children.”
“Two, a boy eight and a boy six.”
“Are you their big buddy? Take them fishing and camping?”
“We go out, well, once in a while. I got this boat a couple years ago, eighteen footer with a big ninety-five-horse Merc on it.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“We can go way out with it. I mean way out.”
“And do what?”
“Fish. Whatever you want.?
?? He was staring at her. “I’ll have to take you out sometime,” Bob Jr. said.
“When?” Nancy asked. Like that, nailing it down.
After the first time, when he had to come in close because she didn’t know his boat, Nancy swam from the beach and Bob Jr. let the boat drift in to meet her, watching her nice easy strokes, then pulled her glistening out of the water, his stomach tightening and his shoulder muscles popping out.
Then heading out full throttle, Bob Jr. sat sideways at the wheel under the canvas top and Nancy stretched out in a plastic chair back in the deckwell by the 95-horse Merc, giving him something to think about when he was home with his wife from Holden and the boy eight and the boy six.
The third time out she gave him something to think about the rest of his life. While he was looking forward, watching the bow take the lake swells, Nancy took off the bra of her bikini and sat back again closing her eyes.
She would love to see his reaction when he looked around, but that wasn’t the way to do it. This was the way: eyes closed, very casual, a kind of natural innocence. Finally the motor was shut off and she could feel the boat drifting and his weight on the deck.