The Big Bounce

were boring. Florida or family rooms had possibilities only. But bedrooms were always fun.

Nancy never found anything really startling, like letters from a married man under the woman’s underwear or dirty pictures in her husband’s drawer. The closest she came to that was a copy of a nudist magazine beneath three layers of starched white shirts and-one other time-a revolver in with the socks and handkerchiefs. But the revolver wasn’t loaded and there weren’t any bullets in the drawer. It was usually that kind of letdown, expecting to find something and not finding it. Still, the actual looking was fun, the anticipation that she might, one of these evenings, discover something good.

Another thing Nancy liked to do was break things. She would drop a glass or a plate in the kitchen every once in a while, but the real bounce was breaking something expensive, a lamp or figurine or mirror. Though it couldn’t be two houses in the same neighborhood or more than once in the same house-or at all if the child she was taking care of was old enough to talk. The best way was to sit on the living room floor rolling a ball to the two- or three- year-old, then pick the ball up and throw it at a lamp. If she missed, she would keep trying. Eventually she would shatter the lamp and little Greg would be blamed. (“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Peterson, he was pulling on the cord and before I could get to him-“) Gosh, she was sorry.

Another thing that was fun she did with the fathers when they drove her home. She didn’t always do it, or with all the fathers. To qualify, the father had to be in his thirties or early forties, a sharp dresser, good-looking in a middle-aged way and at least half in the bag each time he drove her home. To do it right required care and patience over a period of months, during a dozen or so rides home. The first time she would be very nice, her book in her lap, and not speak unless asked a direct question. If asked a question, it was usually about the book or how’s school. Somehow, then, in answering-telling her grade in school or describing the book, which seemed pretty deep for a young girl-she would let him know she was going on seventeen. During the next several rides home she would be increasingly more at ease, friendly, outgoing, sincere; she would come off as a serious reader, a bright girl interested in what was going on in the world, especially the teenage world with its changing fads and attitudes. Sometimes the discussion was so interesting they would arrive at Nancy’s house and, parked in the drive, continue talking for another ten or fifteen minutes. Sooner or later then, usually between the fifth and eighth ride home, talking as they pulled into the drive, she would zap him.

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