“He who has taken wife and child has
given hostages to fortune.”
—Henry David Thoreau, 1841
“Mr. Brewer? Come look at this, will you?”
John Calvin Brewer, the youthful manager of a prominent shoe store on Jefferson Street, hurried over to the twin front windows. He had, like most everyone else in Dallas, been riveted to the radio all day. During the noon hour gleeful broadcasts of the presidential motorcade kept his staff and their clients spellbound. Then, horror intruded. Shots were fired. The president, wounded in the head, had been rushed to Parkland hospital.
Some people in the store screamed. Others wept. A few fell silent, unable to digest such inconceivable information.
“What is it, Alice?”
Sirens whirred as police cars tore by, headed for the spot where Tenth intersected with Dalton. From there, a few blocks down from the shoe store, more gunfire had been heard. Rumors from people stepping in from the street had it that a policeman, apprehending a suspect, lay dying on the concrete.
“Look!”
The alert sales-person had noticed a slender young man, appearing anxious for himself rather than concerned for others, hurrying west on Jefferson. As the two police cars whizzed past, the young man, acting differently than anyone else, darted into the extended entry-way to the shoe-store, turning his face away.
“Something’s not right here.”
“Mr. Brewer, what should we do?”
Some of the other horrified people in the store had come up behind them to get a look at whatever suspicious actions were taking place. Suddenly a makeshift community, they watched as this man, brow furrowed with anxiety, continued along the street, twisting and turning his way through waves of zombie-like citizens.
Brewer observed as the man approached the Texas Theatre. He did not buy a ticket, slipping in alongside other patrons.
“You’re in charge, Alice, until I return.”
“Mr. Brewer, where are you going?”
“Stay calm.” With that, he left the building, following the route Oswald had taken. Moments later Brewer stood in front of the theatre, explaining to a stunned cashier in the glass booth what had occurred. Without hesitation, the girl reached for her phone and called the police. While waiting for their arrival, Brewer glanced up at the marquee. A pair of World War II action films, Cry of Battle and War is Hell!, were double-billed.
“Of course, it may turn out to be nothing, Miss.”
“Let’s hope so. But you were right to let me know.”
Then one patrol car after another came tearing around the corner, screeching to a halt. More than a dozen men in blue poured out. People on the street gathered, sensing something big about to happen. The policemen quickly closed off every exit.
“Mr. Brewer? I’m patrolman McDonald. Would you be able to identify the suspect?”
“Absolutely.”
“Alright, then. Come with me.”
They proceeded down an alleyway adjacent to the theatre and approached the rear exit. As they entered, the theatre lights brightened. Detective Paul L. Bentley had rushed up into the balcony and instructed the projectionist to do this. Moviegoers couldn’t grasp what might be going on.
The film continued to roll as Brewer and MacDonald stepped onstage, dwarfed by the larger than life image of Van Heflin and James MacArthur battling over Rita Moreno. For a moment, viewers couldn’t tell where the show left off and reality began.
“That’s him,” Brewer affirmed, indicating a man off to his left, seated a few rows down from the lobby. “He’s the one.”
From all directions, uniformed and undercover policemen swarmed over Oswald. They awaited McDonald who, followed by Brewer, swiftly proceeded from the stage to this man’s spot.
“Hey, fellas,” Lee said, sneering. “Will you please back off and leave me alone? At least until the film finishes up?”
*
On October 15, Lee stepped off the bus that had carried him back from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas, at the Customs Shed. There all would be subject to search before proceeding over the border. This was a notably different person than the one who had crossed southward on September 26. Quiet, sober and humbled, he hurried to a pay phone and called the home of Ruth Paine.
“Marina doesn’t want to speak with you, Lee.”
“Ruth, this is important. Everything will be different—”
“How many times have you told the poor girl that?”
“This time, I mean it. Forever.”
A long silence. Then: “I’ll check with her. That’s all I can do.” Lee thanked Ruth profusely and waited. Five minutes later, she came back. “I tried. Marina can‘t take any more.”
“Tell her Lee said ‘everything will be the way she wants it. Not the way I think she wants it. I’m a changed man.’”
Yet when he arrived in Dallas, Lee did not immediately make the trip to Irving. Though he would have been welcome to stay overnight at the Paines’ house, Lee checked in to a YMCA. The following morning he searched for an apartment, locating a room at a house on North Marsalis, in Oak Cliff. That afternoon he lined up at the Texas Employment Commission in hopes of scoring a job. Lee applied for a position as a typesetter, failing to mention his dyslexia, which might well have disqualified him.
Then he stepped alongside the highway, stuck out a thumb, and hitched up to Irving. When he appeared at the screen door Marina happened to be passing by. Lee’s presence, so unexpected, this coupled with her even then thinking about him, caused Marina to gasp. Ruth and her estranged husband Michael, hearing voices, approached, saw them together, then made some flimsy excuse to go out for an evening drive. Marina hesitantly let Lee in.
“First, I want to see June.”
“Later. She’s sleeping.”
“Alright, then. Let’s you and I have it out.”
“We said it all in New Orleans.”
“Everything’s different now. This is ‘the new Lee.’”
“Oh? What happened to Jesus Christ, off to save the world?”
“Never again. I have only one mission, now and forever.”
“And what, may I ask, is that?”
“To be the best husband I can to you. The best father to baby June. And our child yet to be born.”
“From the Second Coming, then, to Norman Normal?”
“Marina, I think that deep down that’s what I’ve always wanted most. Now, I truly believe I can have it.”
Lee then proceeded to explain. He had left her believing he’d found his great purpose in life and traveled to Mexico City, despite Marina’s objections, to achieve his mission. While there, and on the bus trip back, he came to understand that all he’d ever believed to be frivolous turned out to be what really mattered. Conversely, all Lee had held important? Utterly worthless.
“Make me believe you. Lee, I so want to.”
*
“United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders,” Castro said, “they themselves will not be safe.” Lee gasped at the words, spoken over a worldwide radio connection from Havana. When asked what might be his response, Castro growled: any such attempts would be “answered in kind.” Still in New Orleans, already convinced he must personally do something to diffuse the heightening tension in the world, Lee took this as Castro’s direct threat to JFK.
Not the CIA, who had for years employed operatives like Lee himself to try and debilitate, then murder Castro. Kennedy!
I must get down there at once. Somehow reach Fidel. Explain that Kennedy and the Company are now entirely at odds.
Me! I’ll help Kennedy and Castro set the past aside.
Castro’s ultimatum hadn’t received a direct response from the White House, JFK not wishing to dignify it. Nonetheless, JFK had Bobby and Gen. Maxwell Taylor call together a committee of a special group within the National Security Council. They convened at the Department of State on September 12, at 2:30 P.M., to initiate future positions on Cuba and the Company.
“We must reach a conclusion and do so today,” Bobby began.
Were the CIA to attempt even once more to take Castro’s life, there existed “a strong likelihood that Castro would retaliate in some way.” Most likely this would constitute only a “low level” response. Still, it would be unwise to assume that something considerably bigger couldn’t possibly occur.
“So what do we do?” Taylor asked. “I for one don’t believe that we can simply sit back and let events take their course.”
“Most certainly not,” Bobby answered. “Here’s one thought. Some time ago in Florida, I met an extremely dedicated agent. He was with the CIA at the time, but appears, from our sources, to have experienced an alteration of position not unlike the one we here today are mutually expressing.”
“Might he make the connection with Castro for us?”
“Possibly. Though we can’t sneak him into Cuba without arousing suspicions. The man would have to, if this were to work, proceed to Mexico, there to legally enter Cuba.”
“At every turn, the CIA would create resistance.”
“Yes. While, I’d guess, trying to convince this agent that they are doing all they could to help him.”
“Do you believe such an approach could succeed?”
“I believe the odds are against it. Formidably! Also, that we have absolutely nothing to lose in trying.”
“Except, possibly, the agent’s life.”
*
On September 25 Lee had boarded a Continental Trailways bus at Nuevo Laredo, crossing over into Mexico. He happened to be seated next to a surgeon from England, John Bryan McFarland. That man innocently asked Oswald why he was heading south.
“Actually, to try and arrange travel to Cuba.”
“Oh,” McFarland responded. “Why go there?”
“To see Castro,” Oswald said, flashing his signature sneer.
Lee disembarked at the main Mexico City bus terminal at ten a.m., September 27. He walked to the nearby Hotel Comercial, a dump at which he could pick up a room for slightly more than a dollar a day. After washing and shaving, he hurried over to the Cuban Embassy. There Lee explained his desire to visit Cuba (if not his specific plan) to a hostess. She arranged a meeting with the consul, Silvia Tirado de Duran. Lee presented that surprised official with a brochure of newspaper clippings about his heady involvement with Fair Play, introducing himself as one of those “righteous” and “enlightened” U.S. citizens.
Nobody’s fool, de Duran put two and two together, guessing that this grinning character had some sort of a hidden agenda.
“I will try and hurry this through at once,” she lied.
“Thank you for that,” Lee sincerely replied.
As he supposedly hoped to travel to Cuba so that there he could make plans to relocate himself and his wife and children in Russia, she told Lee to have photographs of himself taken.
“When you return with them, the process can begin.”
Lee shuffled off whistling, assuming things were going his way. Senora Duran reached for her phone and began placing high level phone calls, the first to her contact at the Mexico City Soviet consulate, explaining the situation. That consul in turn placed calls to Russia while she did the same to Cuba.
An hour later they spoke again.
“It is possible that Oswald is what he claims to be,” the Soviet consul said. “More likely, he’s a double or even triple agent, with an agenda so complex it defies description.”
“In that case, my strategy will be: stall, stall, stall.”
Everyone treated Lee with the utmost politeness. But other than extending sweetly insincere smiles and offering their best wishes, Lee quickly realized he had run into a brick wall that he could not crash through. When he returned, in great spirits, at the Cuban Embassy with the photos, de Duran explained she had contacted the local Soviets in hopes of speeding things along.
The embassy there had informed her that as Lee didn’t already have an entry visa to Russia, achieving one that would allow him to travel from Cuba to that country might take months.
“That’s alright,” he, gathering his wits, replied. “I’ll go to Cuba and wait there.” That was, after all, his chief plan. Returning to Minsk was back-up for him, Marina, and the children.
“But, as it turns out,” she continued, pursing her lips, “that too will be more involved than I originally believed.”
She then began to list a series of small, ridiculous issues that the woman spoke as if by rote. As she did, Lee felt one of his rages overcoming mind and body. He insisted that she stop talking and bring him to her superior. She led Lee down one more of those lengthy couriers he had spent so many minutes of his life passing through on his way to confront people of importance.
The chief consul, Eusebio Azque, formally accepted Lee into his office. Despite (perhaps because of) the tirade to follow, he insisted that while Lee certainly had the right to request a visa, and that he and Senora Duran would be “willing” (he did not say ”happy,” Lee noted) to initiate the process, nothing in the New Orleans portfolio warranted any “special consideration” for a speeded-up visa. Nor could he assure this panicky-looking man that he would receive a visa to Cuba, much less Russia.
“In addition to your own portfolio,” E. Azque concluded, retrieving a manila folder from his drawer and shoving it across the desk toward Oswald, “we have to consider these.”
Knowing what was coming, Lee inspected the contents. Here he found one after another report about his activities in the anti-Castro movement, including evidence that Oswald had been one of three CIA agents who in 1961 attempted to kill Castro.
“Yes, yes,” Lee sighed, pushing them back across the desk. “But I’ve undergone a radical change. Now—”
“Perhaps, Mr. Oswald, you like a pendulum shift back and forth so often that no one can ever know your true position?”
Unable to form coherent words, Lee shouted something about Azque being a narrow-minded fool. He roared out of the building, hurrying back to his sordid hotel room, collapsing in confusion on the stale-smelling bed.
On a visit to the Soviet Embassy Lee fared no better. For three days he lay on the rumpled sheets of his cot-like bed, sweating, waiting, thinking. He’d brought a book along, Kafka’s The Trial, which he’d attempted to read when Johnny Rosselli had handed him a James Bond book at the resort-like ’hospital.’
That feels like a lifetime ago now! How appropriate Ian Fleming had been for reading material there. Apparently I’ve come full circle. Kafka’s right on target today, particularly the tale of poor K., put on trial in some surreal version of our world for a supposed crime no one will even reveal to him.
That’s me. Not James Bond. I’m the underground man. I started that way. I’ll end that way. A face in the crowd.
Still, the phone did not ring. On the fourth day, at his wits end, Lee barged back into the Cuban embassy. He confronted Duran again, with no success. At her suggestion he ran back across the way to the Soviet embassy where he fared no better.
I’m trying to save the world and no one will help. George would of course know my every move. He may be working against me. Putting up road-blocks at every corner I reach. Forcing me back to Dallas to do his dirty work: kill Kennedy.
Alright, then. Two can play that game. But I’ll checkmate him. Go to Dallas but not see the assassination through.
*
Having finished The Trial, and with no time to pick up anything else to read, Lee spent the return bus trip rolling over the situation in his mind. He was certainly not going to kill JFK for the CIA, the Mob, whoever else might be in on that deal now. Nor had he been able to create the Kennedy-Castro link he had a week earlier believed himself born for.
What now, then?
Marina. I see her face so clearly. Recall the things she said when I let her leave New Orleans. All she wanted was a normal life. With me! Our little girl and the child to be.
Let’s follow that trail. Go back, back, back to time long before I ever came to believe I might be worthy of greatness.
What was it I most wanted then?
To be ... normal. The very thing I’d been denied. They didn’t let me in the scouts. I didn’t have a girlfriend in junior high, not even a homely one, much less a pretty girl.
Now? I’ve got everything I want. The package. How could I not have seen it? Perhaps as it was so close before my eyes.
“One more chance,” Lee begged Marina.
“The little boy no longer wants to play hero?”
“Please don’t be sarcastic.”
“How else can I respond? All your grandiose dreams—”
“Turned to dust.”
“So now you are a man without a purpose in life?”
Weeping, Lee approached her. “But I do have a purpose. You and the babies. Being the best husband and father I can be.”
She allowed him to gently press his hand against her tummy, feeling the life readying to burst forth. “Someday the call will come again from George. When it does, you will—”
“No! I swear. George seems a great Satan to me now.”
Now it was Marina’s turn to cry. “I wish I could believe you.” She gripped him tightly, both her hands clawing at Lee’s shoulders. “I want so little today, as compared to the brat who was too beautiful for her own good.”
He cradled her, firmly but gently. “You, me, and the kids. That’s all. But ... That’s everything! When you’ve been denied normalcy all your life, it turns out to be what you want the most. We can have that. One more chance, Marina?”
“Of course, Alik. I cannot say no.”
He breathed in deeply. “Not Alik, though. Ozzie.”
“Your Marine nickname?”
“Yes. But also ‘Ozzie’ on TV. You’ve seen The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet since living in America?”
“Yes, of course. Everyone watches it.”
“When I was a child, I hated it. Because I thought that was only an absurd dream of the way things are supposed to be.”
“And now?”
“I know better. From now on, we’ll enjoy The Adventures of Ozzie and Marina. With our own two children to raise.”
“You used to want to be James Bond in a spy movie.”
He laughed. “Now? The guy next door on a TV show.”
They left the living room, proceeded along to her bedroom. Alternately weeping, laughing and kissing, they spent the night in each other’s arms. Owing to her condition they did not engage in sex. Still, Lee and Marina made love, if in a spiritual sense.
*
All that Ozzie needed now to complete his transition to domestic normality was a decent job. Magically, one appeared.
Lee hadn’t received that typesetting position. The employers, running a routine check, became aware of his previous communist ties. Any bitterness dissipated when what certainly seemed like serendipity occurred. Through a friend of a friend of a friend, Ruth Paine learned that a Mr. Truly, manager of the book depository, needed to fill a slot. She passed this on to Lee during one of his weekend visits. Continuing the pattern of his youth, Lee had changed addresses, now living at a rooming house temporarily managed by Earlene Roberts on North Beckley. Ruth offered to let Lee move in now that things were normalized between him and Marina. But Lee insisted this would be too much of an imposition.
As soon as he found work and put a little money aside, he’d rent a place where his family could truly become a family, creating the beginning of an American Dream come true.
“You’re a former marine? I do like to support servicemen.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m a family man; my wife is about to have our second child. I can guarantee you an honest day’s work.”
“Do understand, essentially you’ll be a shipping clerk.”
“Sir, just give a chance. You won’t be disappointed.”
Truly rose from behind his desk even as Lee, sensing that the interview was concluded, did so as well. “Can you start at eight a.m. sharp next Monday morning?”
Lee excitedly called Marina with the good news. She wept. Everything appeared to be falling into place, as Truly mentioned one of Lee’s co-workers often drove over to Irving after work.
“He’s offered to give me a lift on Fridays, bring me back early Monday morning. I won’t even have to hitch-hike.”
“Everything’s turning out ... perfect.”
But the world, as I’ve learned, abhors perfection even as space does a vacuum. There’s got to be a catch somewhere...
Yet things kept getting better. When he arrived at the Paines' house on Friday, October 18, with three days work behind him, he—wondering if in all the confusion anyone would recall this was his 24th birthday—knocked on the Paine’s door at seven p.m.
“Surprise!” Marina, cradling June in her arms, appearing ready to burst with child, cried out. She, the Paines and their children had readied a birthday celebration. They wore silly paper hats, threw confetti in the air, blew on plastic whistles and proffered inexpensive, wonderful little presents: a cheap tie, a plastic shoe-horn, a bottle of Old Spice shave lotion.
“I’ve never had such a fabulous birthday. Not ever!”
Maybe it’s going to be alright now. He seems so sincere in his desire to conform. That’s what every non-conformist most wants. He took the other route only because no one gave him the chance to fit in. Now, he’s finally been allowed that ...
As if for a final gift, Marina felt her first pangs of labor on mid-afternoon, Sunday. As Lee still could not drive, Ruth took Marina to Parkland Hospital while Lee remained behind, watching over her two children and June. On Monday morning at six, minutes before Wesley Frazier swung by to pick Lee up, Ruth called to say that Marina had given birth to another girl.
“Oh, Mama. You’re wonderful!” Lee cooed later that day, visiting his wife and new child in the hospital.
“Lee,” Marina giggled. “You never called me that before.”
”Well, that’s who you are from now on. Mama!”
Oh, God! Please don’t let him confuse me with Marguerite.
They decided to name the baby Audrey Marina Rachel, but always they called her ‘Rachel.’ People at the book depository noticed that their fellow worker not only did his job diligently but excelled as if hoping for an eventual promotion. Mr. Truly held Lee up as a model of responsibility.
He’s good. So very good. Which is fine. Still, something’s not quite right. He’s better than good. It’s as if the perfect worker showed up. Could he be too good to be true?
Lee arrived early for work and left late, though no extra pay compensated him for that beyond the rigid $1.25 an hour for filling textbook orders. Arriving at the Paines’ each Friday, he would hug his wife, cuddle June and Rachel, then get down on the floor and play with little plastic cowboys and Indians beside the Paines’ boy Chris, in a way Michael failed to do. If Michael Paine felt uncomfortable with domestic duties, Lee reveled in them.
On Sunday afternoons, Lee stretched out on the carpet of the Paines’ living room and watched football. Michael Paine, visiting his estranged wife, had to literally step over Lee.
“I never thought I’d see a radical spend a full day in front of the TV grooving on sports,” he said sarcastically.
Momentarily, Lee grew sullen. “That side of me is gone.”
One Saturday evening, Lee said to Marina: “Let’s take in a movie.” They headed for the drive in, the children in the car with them. There, they feasted on fresh popcorn and stale hot dogs, watching a ridiculous piece of junk called Cuban Rebel Girls, enjoying every minute of their time together.
Lee seems quite taken with the blonde girl playing the lead. She is very pretty. He has always been fascinated, obsessed even, by beautiful women. Particularly blondes.
Now, though, he’s riveted by her in a way I’ve never seen before. As if there’s a personal connection ...
How like a man! We women notice everything. Particularly when it concerns our husbands and other women ...
“That girl, Marina? She almost got to play ’Lolita.’”
“Really? But, Lee. How would you know that?”
“Oh! Uh ... I ... read it in a magazine.”
By the time they reached the Paines’ home, whatever had consumed her husband had passed, he ‘the new Lee’ again.
*
“Hello, Lee.”
“Hello, yourself. Who’s this?”
A stunned silence at the other end, followed by: “George.”
Shit! I had willed him out of my mind, so completely and intensely wanting him gone that I allowed myself to forget that he even exists.
I pretended that if I forgot him, then he would forget me too. But it doesn’t work that way. Except in a mind as strange in its strategies as my own. Now, reality again intrudes ...
“Oh!”
“Lee? Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes. Of course. Forgive me. I ... got confused.”
“That’s understandable. How many times have we shifted your ‘legend’ in the past two years? Anyone would.”
“Something must be important or you wouldn’t call me here.”
Lee was at his rooming house. He’d finished work, eaten dinner at a simple cafeteria, and was preparing to call Marina, as he did every evening at around seven. L.H.O.: Norman Normal.
“Lee! 11/22/63. Right?”
“Oh, yeah. Right, right.”
“Man! I can’t believe how easy it was to get you set up at the Book Depository. The motorcade will have to come close to stopping in front of your building. Should be an easy shot.”
Everything is clear to me now. I’m working at the book depository not because I made it happen, or destiny did the job. I’m there because George moved his pawn across the chess-board.
In my idiotic way—what did Marina call it once, my inconceivable innocence?—I believed if I simply failed to show up and do the killing that day, then it wouldn’t happen.
“Of course,” Lee mumbled, barely aware he still spoke to George, half-believing he was only thinking out loud. “The president’s motorcade will approach the building as it comes down Houston. Then there’s that sharp left onto Elm.”
“It’s important you do the job from the sixth floor.”
“I work on the second and third. Take lunch on the first.”
“The sixth, Lee. That’s imperative.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Lee, it sounds as if you’d forgotten all about this.”
“No. Not really. I just had another baby. Or Marina did—”
“I’m very much aware of that. Congratulations.”
“A little disoriented, that’s all.”
“From this moment, you must focus on the shooting. Nothing else can matter. Nothing. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good boy. Be assured, we’ve got you covered. It’s best if we don’t talk again until that day. There will be a support system to spirit you out of town moments after the shots are fired. Don’t worry. All will go like clockwork.”
They hung up. Lee, shivering and sweating worse than ever in his life, could not bring himself to call Marina. Nor did he go into the lounge and watch television. He lay still as he could on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as he’d done many times before.
Everything will be alright. I’ll simply not show up. The motorcade will pass as it’s supposed to. The shot will not be fired. It’s possible that George may haunt me for the rest of my life after I fail to pull the trigger. What do I do about that?
I’ve got it! I’ll write a tell-all journal, drop it off at some safe place. The FBI! That’ll be perfect, as they hate the CIA. I’ll label it ’to be opened only in the case of my death.’
Then, immediately after the Motorcade passes by without incident, I’ll call George, tell him I’m out. But that he had better not go after me in any way, or ever try to harm JFK again, as that journal is in FBI hands now.
I’ll swear to keep my mouth shut, so long as the Company leaves me and my family alone ... What can he do about that?
The President will not die by my hand. He’ll live by it.
A normal life for me at last. God knows, I’ve earned it!
*
In the wee small hours of the morning, Lee woke with a start. The nightmares had returned, even as they did to Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate. He sat up in bed, panicky.
Wait a minute. What did George say earlier? ‘We’ll have you covered.’ As with the team when I flew down to kill Castro.
Not just me. Two other gunmen as well.
That’s George’s ‘way’: The triple-shot. Then and now.
‘Shots fired.’ That’s what he said. Not ’shot.’ ’Shots‘!
What else? ‘The entire team’ will be rescued before anyone can get their hands on us. Of course. I was to be his pawn, but not George’s only one. There will be many.
Part of his great game-plan. Or so George thinks ...
*
On Thursday, November 21, Lee Harvey Oswald left work and met Wesley Frazier at five after five on Elm Street where that co-worker parked his car. Earlier, Lee had asked if he might drive up to Irving with him that evening. Frazier said ‘sure.’ That blue-collar worker had been surprised, however, as Lee never made the trip on a weekday. Only weekends. Except for the past one, when Lee mentioned he’d stay in Dallas, get stuff done.
“Anything special going on tonight, Lee?”
“Every time I see Marina is special.”
“That’s nice. I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Lee’s voice sounded so harsh Wes did not pursue the issue further. To his surprise, Lee, so eager to listen to hot hits on the radio and talk, talk, talk about work, sports, and TV shows and such, remained stonily silent.
“Hello, stranger,” Marina said caustically as Lee stepped out of the car, Frazier driving off. His wife had been watering the grass in front of the Paine home. She wore cut-off blue-jeans and a red shirt, knotted at the waist. Her hair was set in pigtails. Marina looked like the girl next door. No one would guess she’d recently given birth. Her trim figure had returned.
Everything I ever wanted, though of course, I did not realize I wanted that ...
“Hello, yourself.” He knew why Marina appeared disturbed. Up until a week earlier he had called her twice a day, during his lunch break from the pay phone, again in the evening after he returned to the rooming house. For ten days, she had not heard from him. Nor had he arrived the past Friday as usual.
“So, on Sunday night, I saw baby June playing with the phone. That gave me an idea. ‘Let’s call Daddy!’ I said. June giggled, seeming to understand. When the landlady answered I asked for you. She said ‘no one lives here by that name.’”
Cautiously, Lee stepped closer. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. I’m registered there under my old alias, O.H. Lee.”
“So it’s as I feared? Starting your old foolishness again. The little boy who wants to play at being James Bond?”
“This isn’t what you think, Marina.” Desperately, Lee tried to approach her, hold his wife close. She turned, though not before he witnessed an ugly expression cross her face as Marina stepped inside. “Please believe me,” he called out, following.
“I made the mistake of believing you when you returned from Mexico. Remember? ‘It’ll never happen again, Marina. I swear!’”
Though she slammed the screen door behind her with terrible finality, Lee opened it and followed doggedly in her path. “I meant what I said then, and I mean it now.”
Scooping Rachel up from her crib, even as June came rushing out with a goofy ear to ear grin smeared across her little face, Marina swiveled around, eyes dark, unforgiving. “What movie are we living in now? Don’t expect me to guess. Tell me for once.”
“I told you: no more movies.”
“Yes, you did. You also said: Ozzie and Harriet now.”
“Yes! Exactly.”
She laughed to keep from crying. “Movies. TV. Lee, listen! Just once, couldn’t we live in the real world? As others do?”
“Yes. After tomorrow. And forever. If ...” His voice trailed off. His eyes fell to the floor.
“If,” Marina gasped, all at once sensing that something huge was happening here, “what?”
“If,” he continued with difficulty, “I’m still alive.”
*
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to watch the rest of the show,” Officer McDonald told Lee, still seated.
“What kind of a country do I live in, when a man can’t mind his own business and catch a movie?”
“I’ll need to have you stand, sir, while I search you.”
Suddenly, Lee threw a punch, sending the police officer down hard. Other officers rushed to reinforce their fallen colleague. McDonald leaped up, returning the punch.
“Oooooooh!” Oswald screeched, reaching into his pants and belt for the pistol he’d shoved there, bringing it up quickly.
“He’s got a gun!” someone shouted. People screamed. Some felt frozen in their seats. Others leaped up and ran. As they did, up there onscreen—though the house-lights were turned up, the film continued to run—Van Heflin and James MacArthur fired round after round at invading Japanese soldiers.
Moviegoers weren’t sure if the shots were real or pretend.
Kill ‘em all, guys. Mow ‘em down. Just like John Wayne in Back to Bataan. And, back in 1941, some real-life Americans taking on whoever was the enemy then. The faces change, the nationalities.
Always, though, there’s ‘The Enemy.’
If, today, for the first time, it comes from inside.
This is too much! So it ends, as it began, with a movie?
“Well, it’s all over now,” Lee cursed as they took him away.