Oswald's Tale (47 page)

MR. JENNER.
When you say slept with, you mean in the same bed?

MR. PIC.
In the same bed, sir.
¹⁴

3

Indian Summer, New York

In 1952 Marguerite sold her house, got into her car with Lee, and drove to New York, where John Pic was stationed in the Coast Guard:

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
. . . I had no problem of selling my home and going there . . . the main thing was to be where I had family . . .

MR. RANKIN.
And what date was that?

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
That was exactly August 1952, because I wanted to get there in time for Lee’s schooling . . . Robert joined the Marines in July of 1952. And that was my reason for going . . . So at this time I was living in my daughter-in-law’s home and son. And we were not welcome, sir.
¹

John Pic had not known in advance that Marguerite was planning to live permanently in New York. He had thought it was just a visit, and so he could put her up. At this time, he and his wife lived in his mother-in-law’s apartment in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. It was what John called “a freight-car type,” one room after another, but there was space because his mother-in-law was away visiting her other daughter in Norfolk, Virginia.

MR. PIC.
. . . They brought with them quite a bit of luggage, and their own TV set. On my way home from work I had to walk about 8 or 10 blocks after the subway, and Lee . . . decided to go up and meet me. We met in the street and I was real glad to see him and he was real glad to see me. We were real good friends. I think [in] a matter of a few days or so I took my leave. Lee and I visited some of the landmarks of New York, the Museum of Natural History, Polk’s Hobby Shop on 5th Avenue. I took him on the Staten Island Ferry, and several other excursions we made.

MR. JENNER.
Go ahead.

MR. PIC.
Well, sir; it wasn’t but a matter of days before I could sense they moved in to stay for good, and [my mother-in-law] was due back in a matter of a month or so.

During my leave I was under the impression that I may get out of the service in January of 1953, when my enlistment was up, so [my mother drove me] to several colleges . . . Fordham University, for one, and Brooklyn . . . I remember one conversation in the car that she reminded me that even though Margy was my wife, she wasn’t quite as good as I was, and things like this. She didn’t say too many good things about my wife. Well, naturally, I resented this, because I put my wife before my mother any day.

Things were pretty good during the time I was on leave but when I went back to work, I would come home and my wife would tell me about some little problem they would have. The first problem that I recollect was that there was no support for the grocery bill whatsoever. I don’t think I was making more than $150 a month, and they were eating up quite a bit, and I just casually mentioned that and my mother got very much upset about it. So every night I got home . . . and my wife would have more to tell me about the little arguments . . . It seems that there was an argument about the TV set one day between my wife and my mother . . . According to my wife’s statement my mother antagonized Lee [until he was very] hostile towards my wife and he pulled out a pocketknife and said that if she made any attempt to hit him that he would use it on her. At the same time Lee struck his mother. This perturbed my wife to no end. So, I came home that night, and . . . my wife told me this in private, sir. I went and asked my mother about it . . .

MR. JENNER.
Was Lee present when you spoke with your mother? . . .

MR. PIC.
I am getting to that, sir. So I approached Lee on this subject, and about the first couple of words out of my wife he became real hostile toward me . . . it perturbed my wife so much that she told them they are going to leave whether they liked it or not, and I think Lee had the hostility toward my wife right then and there, when they were getting thrown out of the house as they put it.

When I attempted to talk to Lee about this he ignored me, and I was never able to get to the kid again after that. He didn’t care to hear anything I had to say to him. So in a matter of a few days they packed up and left, sir. They moved to the Bronx somewhere . . .
²

Marguerite offers a variation on this episode:

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
. . . it was not a kitchen knife—it was a little pocket knife, a child’s knife, that Lee had. So she hit Lee. So Lee had the knife—now, I remember this distinctly, because I remember how awful I thought Marjory was about this. Lee had the knife in his hand. He was whittling, because John Edward whittled ships and taught Lee to whittle ships. He puts them in the glass, you know. And he was whittling when this incident occurred. And that is what it occurred about, because there was scraps of wood on the floor.

So when she attacked the child, he had the knife in hand. So she made the statement to my son that we had to leave, that Lee tried to use a knife on her.

Now, I say that is not true, gentlemen. You can be provoked into something. And because of the fact that he was whittling, and had the knife in his hand, they struggled.

He did not use the knife—he had an opportunity to use the knife.

But it wasn’t a kitchen knife or a big knife. It was a little knife.

So I will explain it that way, sir.

So immediately then I started to look for a place. I did find a place, I think off the Concourse . . . in the Bronx. And it was a basement apartment . . .
³

A month or more later, Robert, taking his first leave as a Marine, came to visit Lee and Marguerite at their apartment in the Bronx, and John and Marjory were invited for a family dinner.

MR. PIC.
. . . [Lee] sat in the front room watching TV and didn’t join us whatsoever . . . Didn’t speak to me or my wife.

MR. JENNER.
That kind of put a pall on the visit, did it not?

MR. PIC.
Yes, sir . . . Lee walked out and my mother informed us that he would probably go to the Bronx Zoo. We had Sunday dinner, and in the course of the conversation my mother informed me that Lee was having a truancy problem and that the school officials had suggested that he might need psychiatric aid to combat his truancy problem.

She informed me that Lee said that he would not see a head shrinker or nut doctor, and she wanted any suggestions or opinions from me as to how to get him to see him, and I told her just take him down there. That is all I could suggest.

MR. JENNER.
What was her response to that?

MR. PIC.
. . . He was definitely the boss . . . I mean if he decided to do something, regardless of what my mother said, he did it. She had no authority whatsoever with him. He had no respect for her at all.
⁴

Soon enough, Marguerite and Lee were called into children’s court. Eleven years later, testifying before the Warren Commission, Marguerite consults her notes:

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
I have that information here.

Went to school in the neighborhood, Public School 117, which is a junior high school in the Bronx. It states here he attended 15 of 47 days. This is the place we were living that Lee was picked up by the truant officer in the Bronx Zoo.

I was informed of this at work, and I had to appear before a board, which I did.

Lee went back to school.

Then he was picked up again in the Bronx Zoo. And I had to appear before a board committee again.

Then the third time that Lee was picked up, we were—I never did get a subpoena, but we were told he had to appear at Children’s Court . . . I did not think it was anything serious, because the Texas laws are not like the New York laws. In New York, if you are out of school one day you go to Children’s Court. In Texas the children stay out of school for months at a time.
⁵

4

Youth House

MR. CARRO.
I forget whether he had just turned 13 or was still 12, but in New York State we have a law that requires each boy to attend school until at least 16, and this was a young man of tender age who had at this point taken it upon himself to just not bother to go . . .

The judge felt that since there was no father figure . . . this was not a salutary situation [and] he wanted to find out a little more about this boy before he made a decision, and consequently he asked for the study at the Youth House . . .
¹

MR. LIEBELER.
Would you say that Oswald was more mentally disturbed than most of the boys that you had under your supervision at that time?

MR. CARRO.
Not at all, actually. I have handled cases of boys who committed murders, burglaries, and I have had some extremely disturbed boys, and this was just initially a truancy situation, not one of real disruptive or acting out delinquent behavior. No; I would definitely not put him among [boys] who turned out to be mentally defective, mentally retarded, quite psychotic, and who really had . . . disturbances that were far, you know, greater in depth than those displayed by Oswald.

MR. LIEBELER.
. . . would you say that it was just as much a function of the environment that he found himself in here in New York?

MR. CARRO.
. . . in my mind there was an inability to adapt from the change of environment [but] you meet the situations. Either you meet them head on or you retreat from them.

Now he apparently had one or two incidents where he was taunted over his inability to speak the same way that the kids up here speak and to dress the same way [and] apparently he could not make that adaptation, and he felt that they didn’t want any part of him and he didn’t want any part of them . . .
²

Youth House reports describe him as a non-participant in any of the floor activities. He reads whatever books are available and by 8:00
P.M.
asks to be allowed to go to bed. A psychiatric social worker, Evelyn Strickman, who certainly writes well, takes an interest in him.

. . . What is really surprising is that this boy has not lost entirely his ability to communicate with other people because he has been leading such a detached, solitary existence for most of his life.

He told me that . . . his truancy is caused because he feels he would prefer to do other things which are more important. Questioning at first elicited, “Oh, just things,” but what I finally learned from him is that he spends all of his time looking at television, leafing over various magazines or just sleeping . . . he feels almost as if there is a veil between him and other people through which they cannot reach him but he prefers this veil to remain intact. When I questioned whether it were painful or disturbing for him to [talk with] me today . . . he let me know that . . . he was not as disturbed in talking about his feelings as he thought he might be. This gave me an opening to inquire into his fantasy life and what I got was a complete rejection of any probing and a reminder that “this is my own business.” I let him know that I respected this but there were some things I had to know. Suppose I asked him questions, and if he wanted, he would answer. He agreed to this and actually answered every question that I asked. He acknowledged fantasies about being all-powerful and being able to do anything he wanted. When I asked if this ever involved hurting or killing people, he said that it did sometimes but refused to elucidate on it. None of these fantasies, incidentally, ever involved his mother . . .

[He did confide] that the worst thing about Youth House was the fact that he had to be with other boys all the time, was disturbed about disrobing in front of them, taking showers with them, etc . . . . Actually if he could have his wish he would like to be out on his own and maybe join the service. He acknowledged the fact that in the service he would have to live very close to other people and obey orders and follow a routine which he finds extremely distasteful, but he said he would steel himself to that and make himself do it . . .
³

There is a rather pleasant, appealing quality about this emotionally starved, affectionless youngster which grows as one speaks to him . . .
⁴
His face lighted up from its usual impassive expression when he talked about the three-month-old baby [at his brother’s house] and admitted that he had found a good deal of enjoyment in playing with it.
⁵

Concerning his home life with Marguerite in the Bronx apartment off the Grand Concourse, the interviewer noted: “ . . . His mother had found work as an assistant manager in a women’s wear shop and she is away again all day. He mostly makes his own meals . . .”
⁶

Marguerite, however, soon lost this job.

MR. PIC.
. . . she told me that they let her go because she didn’t use an underarm deodorant. That was the reason she gave me, sir. She said she couldn’t do nothing about it. She uses it but if it don’t work what can she do about it?
⁷

Some spiritual disruptions may even be strong enough to assert themselves through a deodorant. Marguerite has to be passing through still another bad time in her life.

MARGUERITE OSWALD.
. . . I think conditions of this kind in our United States of America are deplorable. And I want that to go down in the record . . . I had to stand single file approximately a block and a half, sir, with Puerto Ricans and Negroes and everything, and people of my class, single file, until we got to the main part of this building . . . I had packages of gum and some candy for my son. And the gum wrappers were taken off the gum, and the candy wrappers were taken off.

And my pocketbook was emptied. Yes, sir, and I asked why. It was because the children in this home were such criminals, dope fiends, and had been in criminal offenses, that anybody entering this home had to be searched in case the parents were bringing cigarettes or narcotics or anything.

So that is why I was searched.

So I was escorted into a large room where there were parents talking with their children.

And Lee came out. He started to cry. He said, “Mother, I want to get out of here. There are children in here who have killed people, and smoke. I want to get out.”

So then I realized—I had not realized until I went there what kind of place we had my child in.

We don’t have these kinds of places in Texas or New Orleans, sir.
⁸

The psychiatric social worker, Evelyn Strickman, is less charmed by the mother than by the son:

Mrs. O. is a smartly-dressed gray haired woman, very self-possessed and alert, and while making a superficial appearance of affability, I felt that essentially she was defensive, rigid, selfish, and very much of a snob.

One of the first things she wanted to know was why Lee was at Youth House because she had no clear understanding of the purpose of the institution. Before I even had a chance to explain to her, she went on to ask me if he had received a complete medical examination and in my answering in the affirmative, confided to me that she had noticed lately he had gotten very big “down there” and that while of course he was getting a little too big for her to look at him, she had been worried lest anything was the matter with his genitals . . .

Mrs. O., incidentally, bathed all her children herself until the time they were 11 or 12 and then said in an embarrassed manner that at that age they got a little too old for her to look at . . .

She went on to tell me that she had had him to a doctor six months ago for a head to toe examination and the doctor had examined the boy in her presence. He had apparently not examined the boy’s genitals and Mrs. Oswald had insisted upon this so he asked her to step from the room. She said she wasn’t gone but a few minutes when he called her back and said there was nothing the matter, and she somehow felt very dissatisfied with the examination . . . When I indicated we had found nothing the matter with his genitals, she then looked at once relieved and, I felt, a little disappointed.

Mrs. O. gave her current “analysis” of the reason for Lee’s truancy—the upset in moving from Fort Worth. She went on to tell me . . . that she had found it very difficult to adjust to New York and is sorry she came here. She indicated that she has always been a manager of shops of one kind or another and made it a point never to mix with her help. She said they were always respectful to her at home but here in New York, employees talk back to her, etc., and she finds it extremely difficult to take, complaining of their arrogance. Furthermore, she feels that life moves at a much faster pace here; living conditions are unsatisfactory, etc. Later on in the interview after I had gained her confidence much more, she confided in me that she had come from Fort Worth because she thought that it might be better for Lee since he was suddenly left alone after Robert joined the Marines and she wants to be close to what family she had for his sake. With her eyes filled with tears at this point, she told me that she had come to New York to be close to her son, John. There had been an exchange of letters and long distance phone calls and apparently John and his wife were very anxious for her to come, but she said that when she got here, she found an extremely cold reception. Her daughter-in-law is only 17 and apparently went out of her way to let Mrs. O. know that she could not settle with John and herself permanently . . . She said she was made so uncomfortable, that she moved just as soon as she could to an extremely inadequate one-room basement apartment. The living conditions were extremely miserable and she felt that Lee was becoming very depressed but she could not help herself. Just as soon as she was able, and had found another job, she took a three-room apartment in the Bronx and said that Lee seemed to perk up considerably after that.
⁹

Lee did perk up. He would go out in the morning and take the subway to the Bronx Zoo. We can enjoy the thought that Lee was happy with the animals. Wild beasts and little children are his natural companions. Nothing in the record tells us, however, which animal he happened to be studying at ten in the morning when a truant officer collared him long enough to ask a few questions.

Let us go back to Evelyn Strickman:

Near the end of the interview she confided in me [that her husband] died suddenly one morning at 6
A.M.
of a heart attack [and] she had had a rupture with her husband’s family at this time [because] she wanted him buried the same day. Her thought had been for herself and the baby she was carrying, since she felt she could do her husband no good by having a wake and a funeral, and she thought it would be just decent to get him out of the way as quickly as possible. His family had been completely aghast, said that they never saw anything as cold in their whole life, and had not spoken to her from that day to this. She had to rely upon her neighbors’ help when Lee was born and she had never had anything to do with her husband’s family since that time. She justified herself at great length to me, said that she did not feel it was cold but only sensible, and that her husband, when he used to joke with her, had always said, “Mag, if anything ever happens to me, just throw some dirt in my face and forget about it,” and she felt she had acted according to his instructions.

When I offered that it must have been rather difficult for her to have to be both parents and bread-earner at the same time, she told me very proudly that she had never found it so. She said she was always a very independent, self-reliant person who had never wanted any help from anyone, had always had “high fulutent” ideas, which she felt she had to a large measure accomplished, and she always was able to pull herself up by her own bootstraps . . .
¹⁰

She could. She did use her own bootstraps. At a certain point, enmeshed in the counseling that followed Lee’s provisional discharge from Youth House, she made her move.

MR. CARRO.
. . . the mother took off in January, without letting us know . . .
¹¹
We don’t have extra-state jurisdiction and we didn’t even know where she had gone . . .
¹²