Libra - Don Delillo [103]
“We did a certain amount of small arms in the Glades,” he said to T-Jay now. “They had me using a pistol on a stationary target. I’m making the mental leap this is what you told them you want.”
Wayne’s assignment wouldn’t take him anywhere near President Jack. He would be working strictly short-range. It was a matter of fitting the man to the nature of the task. He was the intimate killer type.
In Fort Worth
She wore shorts like any housewife in America. She thought she was in a dream at first, walking on the street in bare legs, with her hair cut short, looking in shopwindows. She saw things you could not buy in Russia if you had unlimited wealth, if you had money spilling out of your closets. She knew she hadn’t lived in the world long enough to make comparisons, and Russia suffered terribly in the war, but it was impossible to see all this furniture, these racks and racks of clothing without being struck by amazement.
They had very little money, practically no money. But Marina was happy just to walk the aisles of the Safeway near Robert’s house. The packages of frozen food. The colors and abundance.
Lee got angry one night, coming back from a day of looking for work. He told her she was becoming an American in record-breaking time.
They were like people anywhere, people starting life a second time. If they quarreled it was only because he had a different nature in America and that was the only way he could love.
Neon was a revelation, those gay lights in windows and over movie marquees.
One evening they walked past a department store, just out strolling, and Marina looked at a television set in the window and saw the most remarkable thing, something so strange she had to stop and stare, grab hard at Lee. It was the world gone inside out. There they were gaping back at themselves from the TV screen. She was on television. Lee was on television, standing next to her, holding Junie in his arms. Marina looked at them in life, then looked at the screen. She saw Lee hoist the baby on his shoulder, with people passing in the background. She turned and looked at the people, checking to see if they were the same as the ones in the window. They had to be the same but she was compelled to look. She didn’t know anything like this could ever happen. She walked out of the picture and then came back. She looked at Lee and June in the window, then turned to see them on the sidewalk. She kept looking from the window to the sidewalk. She kept walking out of the picture and coming back. She was amazed every time she saw herself return.
Lee stood in front of Robert’s house and watched his mother approach. She looked shorter, rounder, her hair gone gray and worn in a bun. She was working as a practical nurse and showed up in uniform, all white, with dark-rimmed glasses and the little bent hat that nurses wear. It was the official uniform of motherhood and she looked like the angel of terror and memory sweeping down from the sky.
She embraced him crying. She held his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. She searched for her lost son in the tapered jaw and thinning hair. All this love and pain confused him. This blood depth of feeling. He felt a struggling pity and regret.
She was writing a book, she said, about his defection.
One day they were living with Robert, the next day with his mother. He didn’t know how it happened. She took an apartment large enough for all of them, although she had to sleep in the living room. It was like growing up with her all over again, the bed in the living room, and one night they stayed up late, mother and son, after Marina and the baby were asleep.
“She doesn’t look somehow Russian to me.”
“She is Russian, Mother.”
“Well I think she is beautiful.”
“She admires you. She says the place is so clean and neat. She likes your soft hair, she says. But no book, Mother.”
“I went to see President Kennedy. I have done my research. I had a lot of extenuating circumstances because of your