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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