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“‘Mrs. Sykes,’ I said, ‘you’re not the only one who needs the phone, so I’d thank you to keep your
calls short. And if you won’t do it on your own, I may have to call a representative of the telephone
company to make you do it.’ That’s what I said. So you call me, Rob. You know I need to hear from
Lee.”
Here came the bus. As it pulled up, he raised his voice to be heard over the chuff of the air-brakes.
“He’s a damn Commie, Ma, and he’s not coming home. Get used to it.”
“You call me!” she shrilled. Her grim little face was set. She stood with her feet planted apart, like
a boxer ready to absorb a blow. Any blow. Every blow. Her eyes glared from behind black-rimmed
harlequin glasses. Her kerchief was double-knotted beneath her chin. The rain had begun to fall now,
but she paid it no mind. She drew in breath and raised her voice to something just short of a scream.
“I need to hear from my good boy, you hear?”
Robert Oswald bolted up the steps and into the bus without replying. It pulled away in a chuff of
blue exhaust. And as it did, a smile lit her face. It did something of which I would have thought a
smile incapable: it made her simultaneously younger and uglier.
A workman passed her. He didn’t bump or even brush her, as far as I could see, but she snapped:
“Watch where you’re going! You don’t own the sidewalk!”
Marguerite Oswald started back toward her apartment. When she turned away from me, she was
still smiling.
I drove back to Jodie that afternoon, shaken and thoughtful. I wouldn’t see Lee Oswald for another
year and a half, and I remained determined to stop him, but I already felt more sympathy for him
than I ever had for Frank Dunning.