“You better,” she said, getting up to fetch dessert. “Because I’m kind of out on a limb here.”
I stayed at the window. A car came rolling slowly down the street-an oldie but a goodie, as the jocks on K-Life said-and I felt that harmonic chime again. But I was always feeling it now, and sometimes it meant nothing. One of Christy’s AA slogans came to my mind: FEAR, standing for false evidence appearing real.
This time a click of association came, though. The car was a white-over-red Plymouth Fury, like the one I’d seen in the parking lot of the Worumbo mill, not far from the drying shed where the rabbit-hole into 1958 came out. I remembered touching the trunk to make sure it was real. This one had an Arkansas plate instead of a Maine one, but still… that chime. That harmonic chime. Sometimes I felt that if I knew what that chime meant, I’d know everything. Probably stupid, but true.
The Yellow Card Man knew, I thought. He knew and it killed him.
My latest harmonic signaled left, turned at the stop sign, and disappeared toward Main Street.
“Come eat dessert, you,” Sadie said from behind me, and I jumped.
The AAs say FEAR stands for something else, as well: Fuck everything and run.
When I got back to Neely Street that night, I put on the earphones and listened to the latest recording. I expected nothing but Russian, but this time I got English as well. And splashing sounds. Marina: (Speaks Russian.) Lee: “I can’t, Mama, I’m in the tub with Junie!” (More splashing, and laughter-Lee’s and the baby’s high chortle.) Lee: “Mama, we got water on the floor! Junie splash! Bad girl!” Marina: “Mop it up! I beezy! Beezy! ” (But she is also laughing.) Lee: “I can’t, you want the baby to…” (Russian.) Marina: (Speaks Russian-scolding and laughing at the same time.) (More splashing. Marina is humming some pop song from KLIF. It sounds sweet.) Lee: “Mama, bring us our toys!” Marina: “ Da, da, always you must have the toys.” (Splashing, loud. The door to the bathroom must be all the way open now.) Marina: (Speaks Russian.) Lee (pouty little boy’s voice): “Mama, you forgot our rubber ball.” (Big splash-the baby screams with delight.) Marina: “There, all toys for preence and preencessa.” (Laughter from all three-their joy turns me cold.) Lee: “Mama, bring us a (Russian word). We have water on our ear.” Marina (laughing): “Oh my God, what next?”
I lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the three of them. Happy for once, and why not? 214 West Neely wasn’t much, but it was still a step up. Maybe they were even sleeping in the same bed, June for once happy instead of scared to death.
And now a fourth in the bed, as well. The one growing in Marina’s belly.
Things began to move faster, as they had in Derry, only now time’s arrow was flying toward April 10 instead of Halloween. Al’s notes, which I had depended on to get me this far, became less helpful. Leading up to the attempt on Walker’s life, they concentrated almost solely on Lee’s actions and movements, and that winter there was a lot more to their lives, Marina’s in particular.
For one thing, she had finally made a friend-not a sugar daddy wannabe like George Bouhe, but a woman friend. Her name was Ruth Paine, and she was a Quaker lady. Russian speaker, Al had noted in a laconic style not much like his earlier notes. Met at party, 2( ??)/63. Marina separated from Lee and living with the Paine woman at the time of the Kennedy assassination. And then, as if it were no more than an afterthought: Lee stored M-C in Paine garage. Wrapped in blanket.
By M-C, he meant the mail-order Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with which Lee planned to kill General Walker.
I don’t know who threw the party where Lee and Marina met the Paines. I don’t know who introduced them. De Mohrenschildt? Bouhe? Probably one or the other, because by then the rest of the emigres were giving the Oswalds a wide berth. Hubby was a sneering know-it-all, wifey a punching bag who’d passed up God knew how many chances to leave him for good.
What I do know is Marina Oswald’s potential escape-hatch arrived behind the wheel of a Chevrolet station wagon-white over red-on a rainy day in the middle of March. She parked at the curb and looked around dubiously, as if not sure she had come to the right address. Ruth Paine was tall (although not as tall as Sadie) and painfully thin. Her brownish hair was banged over a huge expanse of forehead in front and flipped in back, a style that did not flatter her. She wore rimless glasses on a nose splashed with freckles. To me, peering through a crack in the curtains, she looked like the kind of woman who steered clear of meat and marched in Ban the Bomb demonstrations… and that was pretty much who Ruth Paine was, I think, a woman who was New Age before New Age was cool.
