“He was sitting in the sand and he was crying. I circled around. I know he didn’t know I’d come back. The crying wasn’t faked. He was slamming his fist down into a little pile of shells the tide had left, hammering the shells with a terrible force so his hand was bloody. When I spoke to him he froze. It scared me. Have you ever seen a face with no expression on it at all? I knew there was something terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I’d pushed him over some kind of edge. I knew I’d nearly destroyed him, and I had to see if I could undo the harm. I knew I had to make him talk to me. And I sensed for the first time that there was a real person, actually a scared person, hiding under all that poise and muscle.
“It took a long time to get him to talk. I didn’t get all of it that night, or the next night, or the next week. But finally he was able to break through all the inhibitions and tell me what it was that was eating him.
“I won’t go into detail, Kat. It’s a lousy lonely home for those kids. There’s no love in that house. Sally Ann is a domineering bitch. Burt is a dull, withdrawn man. The kids do as they please. Anyway, when Jigger was fourteen, he got drawn into a little group set up by a practicing homosexual teaching in the junior high. I gather that the man didn’t actually mess with the kids until he’d made sure of them, and he took a long time making sure. Months passed before he got around to Jigger. The poor kid didn’t know how to cope. He was fifteen when it happened. It shocked him, scared him and revolted him. He never went back to that house, and he never told anyone. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, remembering it. He carried all that guilt and shame locked up inside him. He went around with it like a dog with a rotting chicken tied around its neck. He began to believe he was queer. He began to get the idea people could tell it by looking at him. He worried about the way he walked and about his tone of voice. He thought the man had ruined the rest of his life. When it all came out — apparently there was a considerable scandal — Jigger knew his name would come into it, and he began to plan how to kill himself. When he’d made up his mind how to do it, he wrote a farewell note and put it on his pillow and swam out into the Gulf. He left in the early morning. He swam out until he was exhausted, until the shore line was just a little shadow he could see whenever he was on the crest of a swell. He tried to let himself drown, but he couldn’t make himself go under and inhale water. He would go under, but he always came back up for air. Those Lesser kids were practically raised in the water. He doesn’t know how long he was out there before he gave up and started swimming back. He was so completely spent he doesn’t remember very much about coming back. He had to float often and rest. He came ashore a mile below the Pavilion. It was dusk. He said he fell down several times while walking home. His family was out. His bed wasn’t made. The note was on his pillow, just as he had left it.
“Early this year he decided he would ‘cure’ himself by making love to a girl. He selected a little slut in his class who was reported to be ready to oblige anybody. He went to her house. She was alone. She kissed him hello, locked the front door, took him directly to her room, stepped out of her shorts, shucked off her blouse and bra and spread herself out on the bed and said, ‘Hurry up, tiger!’ Poor Jigger ran like a gazelle. He paused a block away to throw up, and kept running. The girl spread it all over school. By then if he hadn’t already learned he couldn’t kill himself, he would have tried again. It pushed him a little further from reality, that’s all.
“Then I came along. I had two advantages, I guess. One, I hadn’t had a chance to hear any of the talk about him. I wouldn’t know, unless I suspected by just looking at him, which is ridiculous, of course. Two, I’m scrawny, not all big bazoom and fatty hips, which apparently the experimental girl had more than her fair share of, and he felt they had put him off. I guess you could say I had three advantages. He didn’t want me to expect anything of him. Can you imagine what the poor thing wanted of me?”
“Just... maybe to be seen with you.”
“Exactly! You’re very wise, Kat. He wanted to have a girl to go on dates with, so the world would know he was dating a girl. He sensed I didn’t want to get involved in any way, certainly not with a kid of seventeen. Actually, if he could have bought a robot girl, that would have been perfect, as long as everybody thought she was real. He wanted me to like him. He wanted to talk nicely to me so I would want to be with him. And I guess he wanted to practice being with a girl, walking with her and talking with her, so that he could be more at ease. He wanted a status he thought he didn’t have, and I was to be the symbol. He really talked very nicely on our walk up the beach, but it was a little bit strained. I think he’d sort of memorized a conversational line he thought would keep me amused. I thought he was tense because he was working up to a pass. And then I stumbled and he grabbed at me in the dark when I half fell against him, and his big dear innocent paw clapped right over my left breast as if he’d planned it that way. And it was such a horrible moment, he froze. The very last thing he wanted to do was make a pass at me.
“It took a long time to get that out of him. He’s terribly sensitive. And he’s brighter than you’d think. I knew he was not homosexual. But how can you convince anybody who’s gotten themselves tied up in such knots they can’t listen to reason?” She lit another cigarette, shook the match out too violently. “I don’t put much value on myself. Not after last year. When somebody takes everything from you, and decides it isn’t enough. And you crawl and beg and humble yourself, and they laugh and walk out of your life, it doesn’t leave you a hell of a lot to hold dear, does it?”
“Natalie!”
“I’m as much a woman as I’ll ever be. You see, I felt involved in Jigger’s problem. And maybe in some sick little way it made me feel better, because here was somebody messed up a little worse than I was. There’s a kind of rare justice in it, Kat. I seduced that big scared kid. I took the risk I could seduce him, because if it hadn’t worked, I don’t know what would have happened to him. On that same beach, the first time, because it seemed to have to be something that happened by accident, almost. If he’d known I wanted it to happen, he’d have become impotent out of fright. Hours, it took. And all kinds of sneaky tricks. God, I was so tender and cautious. When it finally began to happen, I felt ten thousand years old, the mother of all, holding that great trembling scared lummox, that sweet whimpering ox. But he needed more assurance than that. So we’ve had a couple of motel dates. Are you shocked?”