"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald by Douglas Brode Read Free Book Online Page B

Purchased not to consume, necessary if he were to be allowed to remain undisturbed. Always too there were The Movies.
    Not first-run houses, frequented by couples and families. When Lee wanted to catch a flick, he’d head for some second-run theatre, likely in disrepair. Their forlorn appearances vividly reflected the way this patron felt about himself.
    In such a run-down enclave Lee could drop into a torn seat for several hours of oblivion. The equivalent, in whatever town he happened to inhabit, of 42 nd Street in Manhattan, where crowds of derelicts, hipsters, and kids who wanted to perform forbidden acts in the smoke and semi-darkness conjoined: where last week’s wanna-be hits were now relegated to today’s also-rans, and the 1948 Western epic Red River with John Wayne played forever.
    At such downtrodden bijous Lee found himself swept off to dream worlds, more true for him in their drab-noir black-and-white or glossy Technicolor than unrewarding everyday life.
    Even in such a sordid place, the clientele composed of out-of-mainstream types similar to if not as extreme as he, Lee would make it a point upon entering to check out the crowd, then locate a seat as geometrically far from all the others as possible. That way, he could be alone in the crowd.
    True, he hated being by himself. Far worse though was being with other people. What Lee most hated was being alive. The central question of his life had always been: Why was I born?
    Always, when in the south, he would veer to his left and sit in the section reserved for colored people. Though his skin might be white, Lee alone appreciated how alien they must feel as a minority group. He himself constituted a minority of one.
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    I could use a movie. Maybe there’s a theatre around here. If I happen upon one, I’ll go in. No matter what’s playing. I’ll catch a movie and I’ll feel better. Or at least less bad.
    When the going gets tough, businessman Joseph Kennedy once claimed, the tough get going. The weak? They head for the nearest movie. Hoping for oblivion. The smart ones on some level sense that what movies offer is less an escape from reality than a means of comprehending it. Filled with iconic visions that alter, perhaps without our realizing it, the way we see, act, and live once we’ve drifted back out of the theatre, onto the street; changed, if in ways we do not always comprehend.
    Lee had always been one of ‘the weak.’ Today, his stress felt more impossible to bear than ever. The pain began with the arrival of the morning mail. Ordinarily, Lee did not bother to fetch it. Marguerite would do that when she returned. There was never anything for Lee, anyway. Who would write to him?
    Suddenly, he felt an uncontrollable instinct to retrieve whatever had been dropped off in the rusty metal box out front.
    Minutes later, as Lee dropped bills, form letters and a Life magazine down on the table, he recognized John’s writing on an envelope. The letter was addressed to Marguerite. John so rarely wrote her. On some occasions, they might receive a note from Lee’s older brother Robert Jr. Not John. Lee's half-brother hated to write, would go to the expense of calling long distance if he wanted or needed to confer with Marguerite.
    Though Lee harbored the greatest respect for a person's privacy, he found himself giving in to temptation. First, Lee tried to ease the envelope open, sliding a knife under the seal, planning to re-seal it so Marguerite wouldn’t know. Lee had bungled that, as he managed to do most everything, by tearing the paper. Frustrated, he ripped the envelope open, figuring that later on he’d lie and claim to have done so by mistake.
    What Lee read devastated the fifteen-year-old:
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    Hello mother
    Hope this finds you well. Lee too. I am truly sorry that you had to leave under such awful circumstances. My wife could stand no more. Nor could I. Enough on that. We will talk about it someday