Chapter 18 #2
Lee asked what his prospective landlord intended to do about the holes in the walls.
There was no indignation in the query, no sarcasm, but no subservience, either, in spite of the sir appended to every sentence.
It was a respectful yet flat mode of address he had probably learned in the Marines.
Colorless was the best word for him. He had the face and voice of a man who was good at sliding through the cracks.
In public, at least. It was Marina who saw his other face and heard his other voice.
Snakeskin Boots made vague promises, and absolutely guaranteed a new mattress for the big bedroom, on account of how “that last bunch had gone and stole” the one that had been in there.
He reiterated that if Lee didn’t want the place someone else would (as if it hadn’t been standing vacant all year), then invited the brothers to inspect the bedrooms. I wondered how they would enjoy Rosette’s artistic efforts.
I lost their voices, then got them again as they toured the kitchen area. I was happy to see them pass the Leaning Lamp of Pisa without a glance.
“—basement?” Robert asked.
“No basement!” Snakeskin Boots replied, booming it, as if the lack of a basement were an advantage.
Apparently he thought it was. “Neighborhood like this, all they do is ship water. And the damp, law!” Here I lost the vocal track again as he opened the rear door to show them the backyard.
Which was not a yard at all but an empty field.
Five minutes later they were out front again. This time it was Robert, the elder brother, who tried to dicker. He had no more success than Lee had.
“Will you give us a minute?” Robert asked.
Snakeskin Boots looked at his clunky chromed-up watch, and allowed as how he could do that. “But I got a ’pointment over on Church Street, so you fellas need to hurry on n make up your minds.”
Robert and Lee walked to the rear of Robert’s Bel Air, and although they pitched their voices low to keep Snakeskin Boots from hearing, when I tilted the bowl in their direction, I got most of it.
Robert was in favor of looking at some more places.
Lee said he wanted this one. It would do fine for a start.
“Lee, it’s a hole,” Robert said. “It’s throwin your…” Money away, probably.
Lee said something I couldn’t make out. Robert sighed and raised his hands in surrender.
They went back to Snakeskin Boots, who gave Lee’s hand a brief pump and praised the wisdom of his choice.
He launched into the Landlord Scripture: first month, last month, damage deposit.
Robert stepped in then, saying there would be no damage deposit until the walls were fixed and the new mattress was installed.
“New mattress, sure,” Snakeskin Boots said. “And I’ll see that step fixed so the little woman don’t turn her ankle. But if’n I fix them walls right off, I’d have to boost the rent by five a month.”
I knew from Al’s notes that Lee was going to take the place, and still I expected him to walk away from this outrage.
Instead, he took a limp wallet out of his back pocket and removed a thin sheaf of bills.
He counted most of them into his new landlord’s outstretched hand while Robert walked back to his car, shaking his head in disgust. His eyes turned briefly to my house across the street, then passed on, disinterested.
Snakeskin Boots flogged Lee’s hand again, then jumped into his Chrysler and drove off fast, leaving a scrunch of dust behind.
One of the jump-rope girls came barreling up on a rusty scooter. “You movin into Rosette’s house, mister?” she asked Robert.
“No, he is,” Robert said, and cocked a thumb at his brother.
She pushed her scooter to Lee and asked the man who was going to blow off the right side of Jack Kennedy’s head if he had any kids.
“I’ve got a little girl,” Lee said. He put his hands on his knees so he could get down to her level.
“She purty?”
“Not as pretty as you, nor as big.”
“Can she jump rope?”
“Honey, she can’t even walk yet.” Can’t came out cain’t.
“Well bullpucky on her.” She scooted away in the direction of Winscott Road.
The two brothers turned toward the house. This muffled them a little, but when I cranked the volume, I could still make out most of what they were saying.
“This… pig in a poke,” Robert told him. “When Marina sees it, she’ll be on you like flies on a dog-turd.”
“I’ll… Rina,” Lee said. “But brother, if I don’t… from Ma and out of that little apartment, I’m apt to kill her.”
“She can be a… but… loves you, Lee.” Robert walked a few steps toward the street. Lee joined him, and their voices came through clear as a bell.
“I know it, but she can’t help herself. The other night when me n Rina’s goin at it, she hollers at us from the foldout. She’s sleeping in the livin room, you know. ‘Take it easy on that, you two,’ she hollers, ‘it’s too soon for another one. Wait until you can pay for the one you’ve got.’ ”
“I know it. She can be hard.”
“She keeps buyin things, brother. Says they’re for Rina, but shoves em up into my face.” Lee laughed and walked back to the Bel Air. This time it was his eyes that skated across 2706, and it took all I had to hold still behind the drapes. And to hold the bowl still, too.
Robert joined him. They leaned on the back bumper, two men in clean blue shirts and workingmen’s pants. Lee wore a tie, which he now pulled down.
“Listen to this. Ma goes to Leonard Brothers and comes back with all these clothes for Rina. She drags out a pair of shorts that are as long as bloomers, only paisley. ‘Look, Reenie, aren’t they purty?’ she says.” Lee’s imitation of his mother’s accent was savage.
“What’d Rina say?” Robert was smiling.
“She says, ‘No, Mamochka, no, I thank but I no like, I no like. I like this way.’ Then she puts her hand on her leg.” Lee put the side of his hand on his own, about halfway up the thigh.
Robert’s smile widened to a grin. “Bet Ma liked that.”
“She says, ‘Marina, shorts like that are for young girls who parade themselves on the streets looking for boyfriends, not for married women.’ You’re not to tell her where we are, brother. You are not. We got that straight?”
Robert didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
Perhaps he was remembering a cold day in November of 1960.
His mama trotting after him along West Seventh, calling out, “Stop, Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you!
” And although Al’s notes said nothing on the subject, I doubted if she was done with Lee, either.
After all, Lee was the son she really cared about.
The baby of the family. The one who slept in the same bed with her until he was eleven.
The one who needed regular checking to see if he’d started getting hair around his balls yet.
Those things were in Al’s notes. Next to them, in the margin, were two words you’d not ordinarily expect from a short-order cook: hysterical fixation.
“We got it straight, Lee, but this ain’t a big town. She’ll find you.”
“I’ll send her packing if she does. You can count on that.”
They got into the Bel Air and drove away. The FOR RENT sign was gone from the porch railing. Lee and Marina’s new landlord had taken it with him when he went.
I walked to the hardware store, bought a roll of friction tape, and covered the Tupperware bowl with it, outside and inside. On the whole, I thought it had been a good day, but I had entered the danger zone. And I knew it.
4
On August 10, around five in the afternoon, the Bel Air reappeared, this time pulling a small wooden trailer.
It took Lee and Robert less than ten minutes to carry all of the Oswalds’ worldly goods into the new manse (being careful to avoid the loose porch board, which had still not been fixed).
During the moving-in process, Marina stood on the crabgrassy lawn with June in her arms, looking at her new home with an expression of dismay that needed no translation.
This time all three of the jump-rope girls appeared, two walking, the other pushing her scooter. They demanded to see the baby, and Marina complied with a smile.
“What’s her name?” one of the girls asked.
“June,” Marina said.
Then they all jumped in. “How old is she? Can she talk? Why don’t she laugh? Does she have a dolly?”
Marina shook her head. She was still smiling. “Sorry, I no spik.”
The three girls pelted off, yelling “I no spik, I no spik!” One of the surviving Mercedes Street chickens flew out of their way, squawking. Marina watched them go, her smile fading.
Lee came out on the lawn to join her. He was stripped to the waist, sweating hard.
His skin was fishbelly white. His arms were thin and slack.
He put an arm around her waist, then bent and kissed June.
I thought Marina might point at the house and say no like, I no like—she had that much English down—but she only handed Lee the baby and climbed to the porch, tottering for a moment on the loose step, then catching her balance.
It occurred to me that Sadie probably would have gone sprawling, then limped on a swollen ankle for the next ten days.
It also occurred to me that Marina was as anxious to get away from Marguerite as her husband was.
5
The tenth was a Friday. On Monday, about two hours after Lee had left for another day of putting together aluminum screen doors, a mud-colored station wagon pulled up to the curb in front of 2703.
Marguerite Oswald was out on the passenger side almost before it stopped rolling.
Today the red kerchief had been replaced by a white one with black polka dots, but the nurse’s shoes were the same, and so was the look of dissatisfied pugnacity.
She had found them, just as Robert had said she would.
Hound of heaven, I thought. Hound of heaven.
I was looking out through the crack between the drapes, but saw no point in powering up the mike. This was a story that needed no soundtrack.