11/22/63 полностью

“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.

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.