NORBERT KEENE OWNER & MANAGER 26 page

“That man is beating on that woman! Go down there and put a stop to it!”

“No, ma’am,” I said. My voice was unsteady. I thought of adding I won’t come between a man and his wife, but that would have been a lie. The truth was that I wouldn’t do anything that might disturb the future.

“You coward,” she said.

Call the cops, I almost said, but bit it back just in time. If it wasn’t in the old lady’s head and I put it there, that could also change the course of the future. Did the cops come? Ever? Al’s notebook didn’t say. All I knew was that Oswald would never be jugged for spousal abuse. I suppose in that time and that place, few men were.

He was dragging her up the front walk with one hand and yanking the stroller with the other. The old woman gave me a final withering glance, then clumped back into her house. The other spectators were doing the same. Show over.

From my living room, I trained my binoculars on the redbrick monstrosity catercorner from me. Two hours later, just as I was about to give up the surveillance, Marina emerged with the small pink suitcase in one hand and the blanket-wrapped baby in the other. She had changed the offending skirt for slacks and what appeared to be two sweaters—the day had turned cold. She hurried down the street, several times looking back over her shoulder for Lee. When I was sure he wasn’t going to follow her, I did.

She went as far as Mister Car Wash four blocks down West Davis, and used the pay telephone there. I sat across the street at the bus stop with a newspaper spread out in front of me. Twenty minutes later, trusty old George Bouhe showed up. She spoke to him earnestly. He led her around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her. She smiled and pecked him on the corner of the mouth. I’m sure he treasured both. Then he got in behind the wheel and they drove away.

That night there was another argument in front of the Elsbeth Street house, and once again most of the immediate neighborhood turned out to watch. Feeling there was safety in numbers, I joined them.

Someone—almost certainly Bouhe—had sent George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt to get the rest of Marina’s things. Bouhe probably figured they were the only ones who’d be able to get in without physical restraints being imposed on Lee.

“Be damned if I’ll hand anything over!” Lee shouted, oblivious of the rapt neighbors taking in every word. Cords stood out on his neck; his face was once more a bright, steaming red. How he must have hated that tendency to blush like a little girl who’s been caught passing love-notes.

De Mohrenschildt took the reasonable approach. “Think, my friend. This way there’s still a chance. If she sends the police . . .” He gave a shrug and lifted his hands to the sky.

“Give me an hour, then,” Lee said. He was showing teeth, but that expression was the farthest thing in the world from a smile. “It’ll give me a chance to put a knife through ever one of her dresses and break ever one of the toys those fatcats sent to buy my daughter.”

“What’s going on?” a young man asked me. He was about twenty, and had pulled up on a Schwinn.

“Domestic argument, I guess.”

“Osmont, or whatever his name is, right? Russian lady left him? About time, I’d say. That guy there’s crazy. He’s a commie, you know it?”

“I think I heard something about that.”

Lee was marching up the porch steps with his head back and his spine straight—Napoleon retreating from Moscow—when Jeanne de Mohrenschildt called to him sharply. “Stop it, you stupidnik!”

Lee turned to her, his eyes wide, unbelieving . . . and hurt. He looked at de Mohrenschildt, his expression saying can’t you control your wife, but de Mohrenschildt said nothing. He looked amused. Like a jaded theatergoer watching a play that’s actually not too bad. Not great, not Shakespeare, but a perfectly acceptable time-passer.

Jeanne: “If you love your wife, Lee, for God’s sake stop acting like a spoiled brat. Behave.”

“You can’t talk to me like that.” Under stress, his Southern accent grew stronger. Can’t became cain’t; like that became like-at.

“I can, I will, I do,” she said. “Let us get her things, or I’ll call the police myself.”

Lee said, “Tell her to shut up and mind her business, George.”

De Mohrenschildt laughed cheerily. “Today you are our business, Lee.” Then he grew serious. “I am losing respect for you, Comrade. Let us in now. If you value my friendship as I value yours, let us in now.”

Lee’s shoulders slumped and he stood aside. Jeanne marched up the steps, not even sparing him a glance. But de Mohrenschildt stopped and enveloped Lee, who was now painfully thin, in a powerful embrace. After a moment or two, Oswald hugged him back. I realized (with a mixture of pity and revulsion) that the boy—that was all he was, really—had begun weeping.

“What are they,” the young man with the bike asked, “couple of queers?”

“They’re queer, all right,” I said. “Just not the way you mean.”

Later that month, I returned from one of my weekends with Sadie to discover Marina and June back in residence at the shithole on Elsbeth Street. For a little while, the family seemed at peace. Lee went to work—now creating photographic enlargements instead of aluminum screen doors—and came home, sometimes with flowers. Marina greeted him with kisses. Once she showed him the front lawn, where she had picked up all the garbage, and he applauded her. That made her laugh, and when she did, I saw that her teeth had been fixed. I don’t know how much George Bouhe had to do with that, but my guess is plenty.

I watched this scene from the corner, and was once more startled by the rusty voice of the old lady with the walker. “It won’t last, you know.”

“You could be right,” I said.

“He’s probably goan kill her. I seen it before.” Below her electric hair, her eyes surveyed me with cold contempt. “And you won’t step in to do nothing, will you, Sonny Biscuit?”

“I will,” I told her. “If things get bad enough, I will step in.”

That was a promise I meant to keep, although not on Marina’s behalf.

The day after Sadie’s Boxing Day dinner, there was a note from Oswald in my mailbox, although it was signed A. Hidell. This alias was in Al’s notes. The A stood for Alek, Marina’s pet name for him during their Minsk days.

The communication didn’t disturb me, since everyone on the street seemed to have gotten one just like it. The flyers had been printed on hot-pink paper (probably filched from Oswald’s current place of employment), and I saw a dozen or more flapping up the gutters. The residents of Dallas’s Oak Cliff neighborhood were not known for putting litter in its place.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 594