Nancy

Nancy Austin was a pretty girl, shy and sweet. Her strawberry blonde hair was cropped at her chin, and her wide eyes and perfect skin made her look like a porcelain doll. She dressed in pastel colors, and had a beautiful smile. Still, she didn’t have many friends. There was always something distant about her, like she didn’t belong.

Nancy was fifteen in the fall of 1949, the start of her sophomore year of high school. She was starting new, this time at George Washington High in Boise. Her freshman year, she’d lived in Miami with her family. Before that, Duluth, Minnesota. Before that, Cleveland, Ohio. Houston, Texas. Phoenix, Arizona. And Denver, Colorado. Nancy had never known a time when they hadn’t moved. Six schools in six years. That was part of being an Army brat, and maybe, part of the reason she didn't want to make friends. Because eventually, she’d have to leave them all behind.

So when she caught the handsome boy staring in history class, she didn’t pay it much mind. She wanted to do well in school, and while she was getting to the age where boys were starting to pay attention to her, if she couldn't risk having friends, then she definitely couldn’t risk boys.

The teacher was an old man who spoke slowly, and no matter how hard Nancy tried to listen to him talk about the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and how it led to World War I, she kept nodding off.

The boy was still staring too, and there was something about him that made her want to stare back. The weather was still warm, and while most of the boys wore short sleeves, this one wore a long sleeve shirt, one that seemed to hang tightly at his wrists, almost as if it was too small for him. But it was more than that. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but Nancy felt drawn to him.

That was when she noticed a note on her desk. She opened it.

“With this, who needs The Ed Sullivan Show?”

She looked back at the boy, who gave her a smile. Nancy pursed her lips as she thought about what to write back.

“I’ve never been more interested in the history of the first World War than I am now.” She felt her hands shake as she slipped him the note.

“What class do you have next?” He wrote back.

“English.”

“Mind if I walk you?”

“I’d like that.” It was as she was handing him back the note that she felt the teacher’s eyes on both of them.

“Jay Whitman,” he snapped.

The boy, Jay, sat straight up.

“Would you like to bring me that note?”

Jay knew he didn’t have a choice and obliged.

It was embarrassing, having their notes read aloud for the rest of the class to hear. Nancy buried her face in her arms the whole time. When it was done, the teacher threw it in the garbage and told the class if he caught anyone doing it again it would be automatic detention. He resumed the lecture.

After the bell rang, Nancy saw Jay lingering at her desk.

“Can I walk you to English?” He asked.

She saw the teacher looking at them. Almost as an act of defiance, she nodded yes.

---

In the hall, they properly introduced themselves to each other. Nancy mentioned that she was new to Boise, that her family moved around a lot. He said he lived with his mother and stepfather.

Nancy wondered what had happened to his father, but she didn’t want to ask now. She could have talked to Jay for hours, but the walk to English class was only a few minutes.

For a moment, they lingered at the door, moving out of the way of students streaming into class. She didn’t want him to leave, and it seemed like he didn’t want to either.

“See you tomorrow?” He said. She could have sworn that he was blushing

---

It was after class on the second day that he asked her to the movies. They ended up meeting at the theater, since neither had their license yet, even though Jay was learning how to drive. Nancy arrived early, and waited for Jay beside the poster of The Red Shoes, the film they’d decided to see. She waited patiently, and just as she was starting to have doubts about whether he was going to show up at all, a car pulled up and he got out.

A few minutes before it was due to start, a car pulled up and he got out. A blonde woman in the driver’s seat gave Jay a loving look and waved towards Nancy before Jay got out of the car. Nancy assumed it was his mother, but she seemed young.

“Hello,” Nancy said.

“Hi,” Jay replied.

“Was that your mom?”

Jay nodded.

“She seems nice,” Nancy remarked.

“Mhmm,” said Jay, but it didn’t go much further than that. They stood in line to buy their tickets, and they went inside.

The movie was in color, about a young dancer who becomes obsessed with her craft. It was romantic, unsettling and sad all at the same time. Jay held her hand all throughout.

It was autumn, and still a warm night. Afterwards, they stood for a moment under the marquee. “I actually…” Nancy started.

“What?” Jay responded with a smile.

“I’ve actually thought about trying out for the talent show,” Nancy said. “But I’m nervous.” She confessed that she was a singer, and Jay said he wanted to hear her sometime.

“You should try,” he said. “What do you have to lose?”

That was when Jay noticed his mother was already there.

She was young, but very beautiful. She turned to Nancy first, and extended her hand.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Jay’s mother. Mrs. Flynn.”

“Nancy Austin,” Nancy replied, accepting the handshake.

Nancy knew Jay’s last name was Whitman, but she also remembered he had something about a stepfather. Maybe, if Jay trusted her enough, he would tell her what exactly was going on with his family. Maybe his father had died, and she didn’t want to be insensitive.

That was when she noticed her own father. They said goodbye with the understanding that they would see each other again.

---

It didn’t long for them to go steady after that. Jay seemed enamored of her, and of how she’d lived in so many different places. And when Nancy said that she would like to stay in one place for once, Jay mentioned her life seemed freeing.

Her parents liked Jay. He was always polite, bringing flowers for Nancy’s mother, but they mentioned he seemed quiet and shy. But that was exactly the reason that they matched. Her, always drifting. Him, his mind clearly in a time and place far from now.

At his urging, she ended up trying out for the talent show, singing a soft, angelic rendition of Cheek to Cheek, and ended up being accepted.

Once, they were in her room and she had her head on his shoulder. Rehearsals for the talent show were due to start the week after, and they wouldn’t be able to spend as much time together.

Nancy realized that even though she and Jay were spending almost every day together after school, she’d never been to Jay’s house. They always went to hers, even though his mother had seemed nice when they had briefly met at the movie. Nancy had assumed maybe he was poor and ashamed of it, which would have explained why his shirts never seemed to fit. But she’d uncovered a short time earlier that he lived in Mount Vernon, one of the nicest and most expensive neighborhoods in the city.

“I don’t want to be there,” he said flatly. “You don’t want to be there.”

“What about it is so bad?” Nancy asked.

“Everything.”

Jay told her about how things had been good when it had just been him and his mother and his stepfather, Richard had ruined everything. He was unpleasant normally, but when he drank, which was often, he became a monster..

He unrolled one of his shirt sleeves and Nancy immediately understood why he’d always kept them buttoned at the wrist before.

He pointed to one bruise that was still black and blue. “This is from one time he thought I talked back to him.”

He pointed to another mark on his arm. “He likes to use me to put out his cigarettes.” After a while, he added, almost inaudibly, “he hurts my mother too.”

As Nancy listened to this, her heart was pounding. She got angry with her parents sometimes, but they never did anything like this. “Why doesn’t your mother do anything?”

“Because,” said Jay, “as soon as he stops drinking, he tells her he’s so sorry and he’s going to change and to forgive him… of course, he never does, but she always goes back to him.”

Nancy said nothing.

“I’ve thought about killing him,” Jay said, so nonchalantly that Nancy wasn’t sure how to respond. “Putting poison in his drink. He’d never notice. And the doctors would say he drank himself to death. And my mom and me, we’d be free.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide as she realized he was serious. “That’s not a way to solve anything.”

He took a deep breath, almost like he was thinking about it. “One day, I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to travel the world, and take my mother with me,” he said. “I’ve only actually been out of Idaho once.”

“And when was that?” Nancy asked.

“When I was nine, we went camping in the Grand Canyon. Have you ever been before?”

Nancy shook her head.

“You lived in Phoenix and you never went to the Grand Canyon?”

“I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, but never camping.”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” said Jay. “It’s something everyone should experience.”

Nancy smiled at him.

“Maybe we’ll go together one day.”

“That sounds nice,” Nancy said, feeling herself blush.

“I love you,” he said. The hairs on the back of Nancy’s neck raised just before he kissed her. They kept kissing and everything was okay until she felt him tug at her shirt. She realized what he wanted and shrunk back. There was a part of her that wanted it, but she knew it wasn’t right. Even if her mother was downstairs, not here, not now, not until she was married.

“Jay, we can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“We’re not ready,” Nancy explained.

Jay sat back, rolled up his shirt sleeve, and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” Jay said quietly.

“Come on,” Nancy said.

He walked out the door, and Nancy followed him downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. She looked up. “Everything okay?”

“Just going home,” said Jay.

“Do you have a ride?” Her mother asked, concerned.

“I’ll walk.”

That was when Nancy’s mother insisted that she would drive him. So she got her keys and Jay followed her out. Nancy waited in the kitchen for her to return and started to cry, scared by how quickly Jay’s mood had shifted and what he’d said about killing his stepfather and the bruises he’d shown her.

When she heard her mother’s car pull back up a short time later, she tried to dry her tears, but it was no use.

“What’s wrong?” her mother asked.

Nancy was too embarrassed to tell her what Jay had tried to do. “Things are just moving so fast,” Nancy said quietly. She liked Jay a lot, but wasn’t sure that she could give him what he wanted. Besides, soon she was going to be involved with the talent show and they wouldn’t have time to see him anyway. And for all she knew, she could come home any day for her father to tell her that they were moving again.

She barely slept that night. But the next morning, she went to school with her mind made up to break up with Jay.

She told him after history.

“If this is about yesterday, I’m sorry…” he said quietly.

Nancy nodded. “You’re going to make a girl really happy someday, but I think you and I are better as friends.” She tried to be as kind as possible, but wondered if she had said the right thing. She hugged him, and he only barely hugged her back. Then, he disappeared down the hallway without another word.

Maybe he had accepted it. History class was uncomfortable, but she spent her time doing what she could to make the period go faster. He seemed to ignore her existence and maybe, Nancy thought, he’d move on.

Except he hadn’t.

A few weeks later, she found a single red rose stuck in her locker, alongside a note. She opened it, recognizing Jay’s handwriting.

“One day when I'm old, I want some lovely young girl to say to me, "Tell me, where in your long life, Mr. Whitman, were you most happy?"

And I shall say, 'Well, my dear, I never knew the exact place. It was somewhere in Idaho. I was with Nancy Austin."

"What?" she will say. "Do you mean the famous singer?"

I will nod. "Yes, my dear, I do. Then she was quite young, comparatively unspoiled. We were, I remember, very much in love."

Nancy pursed her lips and put the rose and the paper in her bag. She recognized the quote from The Red Shoes, retrofitted to be about them rather than the characters in the movie.

Nancy couldn’t bring herself to throw either away, but she simply ignored it. She remembered how lovely the movie had been, how much she wanted to love Jay in the way he seemed to want and need. When she got home that day, she put the rose in a vase and stuck the note at the bottom of one of her drawers.

There was a part of her that worried for him, about his stepfather. But he still showed up to school every day, so maybe everything was okay. The notes at her locker kept coming. Before long, it had made her uncomfortable and she had to catch him in the hall and tell him to stop.

“I’ll never love anyone the way I love you,” Jay said. “Please give me another chance.”

“We were steady for a few weeks,” Nancy replied. While she liked Jay a lot, love? She was fifteen years old. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was, not yet.

He took her hand, and she let him. “I don’t know what I did to make you not want me.”

Nancy sighed. “It’s nothing you did,” she said. That may have been a lie, at least partially, but she didn’t want to hurt Jay’s feelings even more than she already had. “My family, we could move again. And that’s not fair to you.”

“Then I’ll come with,” Jay said. “Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”

“That’s very sweet…” Nancy trailed off. She looked into Jay’s eyes, thinking he seemed almost like a sad puppy. But her heart wasn’t in the relationship anymore.

“I know you’re going to be the best one in the talent show,” he remarked. Then, he let go of her hand and walked away.

She didn’t really see him again after that. The next day, he and another student had switched seats in history class, meaning he now sat in the opposite end of the room. Sometimes, she caught him staring in her direction, but it never went further than that.

Nancy wondered in those weeks, if she’d been too harsh, or if she’d made the right choice in breaking up with him. But she knew she had to live her life and he had to live his.

The talent show was bittersweet, since he was the one who encouraged her to audition in the first place. She was terrified he might show up, but he didn’t.

In spite of everything that had happened with Jay, Nancy felt she was starting to fit in Boise. She was making friends, and in the spring, she started dating another student named Bobby. He was a year above them and played the trumpet in the school’s band.

So Nancy was thrilled when, at the end of sophomore year, her parents announced they’d stay in Boise for at least another year.

The next year, she saw Jay sometimes, smoking cigarettes with a group of boys who wore leather jackets who she was pretty sure weren’t in high school. The relationship with Bobby fizzled out, and sometime that year, Jay stopped showing up to class. She heard he’d been caught robbing a convenience store and would spend the next two years in juvenile hall.

It was disturbing, to think the man she’d spent so many hours with, who had said he loved her, was a criminal. But he’d made his choices in life, and she had to forget about him.

And for a long time, she did. They spent her senior year in Portland. It was there that she’d end up staying, marrying shortly after high school and having a family of her own.

Nancy occasionally thought of Jay, hoping things had turned out alright for him, that spending time in juvenile hall would steer him on the right course. How wrong she was. Like everyone else, she’d heard it on the news in that summer of 1971.

He’d had a wife, and a son, and that had ended. And then he’d gone crazy. Or maybe had always had been.

His ex-wife seemed eager to talk to the press, and said that none of it surprised her.

It took a few months before the reporters started calling Nancy too. Wanting to know what he was like, and why she’d broken his heart and set him on a horrid course. Maybe she could have done more to help, but how could she have known what he was capable of? In the beginning he was sweet and sensitive and kind and trusted her enough to bear his heart. The intensity had scared her. Maybe she could have handled things in a different way, but it didn’t seem fair to imply that she was complicit in his actions twenty years later. It seemed like, looking back, Jay had wanted Nancy to rescue him. And there was no way she could have done that, and especially not as a fifteen year old.

Nancy thought often of the girls, and how they’d fallen under his spell, and how she’d been swept up by his attention too, all those years ago.

She was sad that this was the path he’d chosen in life when he could have gone down a different one. But now, he had to face what he did.