Oswald leaned close to her and said something that wiped the smile off her face. She looked up at him warily. He said something else, poking her shoulder with one finger as he did so. I remembered Al’s story, and wondered if Oswald was saying the same thing to his wife now: pokhoda, cyka — walk, bitch.
But no. it was the swaddling that had upset him. He tore it away — first from the arms, then the legs — and flung the diapers at Marina, who caught them clumsily. Then she looked around to see if they were being watched.
Vada came back and touched Lee’s arm. He paid no attention to her, just unwrapped the makeshift cotton scarf from around baby June’s neck and flung that at Marina. it fell to the terminal floor. She bent and picked it up without speaking.
Robert joined them and gave his brother a friendly punch on the shoulder. The terminal had almost entirely cleared out now — the last of the deplaning passengers had passed the Oswald family — and I heard what he said clearly. “Give her a break, she just got here. She doesn’t even know where here is yet.”
“Look at this kid,” Lee said, and raised June for inspection. At that, she finally began to cry. “She’s got her wrapped up like a damn Egyptian mummy. Because that’s the way they do it back home. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Staryj baba! Old woman.” He turned back to Marina with the bawling baby in his arms. She looked at him fearfully. “Staryj baba!”
She tried to smile, the way people do when they know the joke is on them, but not why. I thought fleetingly of Lennie, in Of Mice and Men. Then a grin, cocky and a little sideways, lit Oswald’s face. it made him almost handsome. He kissed his wife gently, first on one cheek, then the other.
“USA!” he said, and kissed her again. “USA, Rina! Land of the free and home of the turds!”
Her smile became radiant. He began to speak to her in Russian, handing back the baby as he did so. He put his arm around her waist as she soothed June. She was still smiling as they left my field of vision, and shifted the baby to her shoulder so she could take his hand.
I went home — if I could call Mercedes Street home — and tried to take a nap. I couldn’t get under, so I lay there with my hands behind my head, listening to the uneasy street noises and speaking with Al Templeton. This was a thing I found myself doing quite often, now that I was on my own. For a dead man, he always had a lot to say.
“I was stupid to come Fort Worth,” I told him. “If I try to hook up that bug to the tape recorder, someone’s apt to see me. Oswald himself might see me, and that would change everything. He’s already paranoid, you said so in your notes. He knew the KGB and MVD were watching him in Minsk, and he’s going to be afraid that the FBI and the CIA are watching him here. And the FBI actually will be, at least some of the time.”
“Yes, you’ll have to be careful,” Al agreed. “It won’t be easy, but I trust you, buddy. it’s why I called you in the first place.”
“I don’t even want to get near him. Just seeing him in the airport gave me a class-A case of the willies.”
“I know you don’t, but you’ll have to. As someone who spent damn near his whole life cooking meals, I can tell you that no omelet was ever made without breaking eggs. And it would be a mistake to overestimate this guy. He’s no super-criminal. Also, he’s going to be distracted, mostly by his batshit mother. How good is he going to be at anything for awhile except shouting at his wife and knocking her around when he gets too pissed off for shouting to be enough?”
“I think he cares for her, Al. At least a little, and maybe a lot. in spite of the shouting.”