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“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.”
7
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.