Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  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

  5

  Macho Teenage Marxist

  What is insufficiently appreciated about manhood is that it is an achievement, not a gift of gender. To be bold, forthright, competitive, individual, courageous, and innovative does not come as a gratuity that is included with a male infant’s penis and scrotum. No, such male qualities have to be earned through brave acts, the honoring of one’s private code, and through fierce attachment to one’s finest habits.

  Of course, more than a few women would assert that the virtues listed above belong to the female sex as well. It is hardly the purpose of this book to jump—as Lillian Murret would put it—into a roar-up on such a matter; let it suffice that we are dealing with the psychological realities of the late Fifties, when some enormous majority of Americans still believed that men and women had highly separate roles and that the first obligation incumbent on a male was to behave like one. It is almost certain that Lee Oswald at fourteen and fifteen shared this point of view—how else can one account even in part for his dedicated reading of the Marine Corps manual, and his dreams, as we shall soon see, of daring deeds?

  When we encounter him again, after the debacle of New York, he has changed to some degree from the terrified twelve- and thirteen-year-old who wept during his mother’s visit to Youth House. Having passed though vats of shame and fear, he seems to take on strength as he enters into adolescence. New York has done something for him after all: Back in New Orleans, he is more ready for combat.

  MRS. MURRET. . . . Now, at the Beauregard School at that time, they had a very low standard, and I had no children going there and never did. My children went to Jesuit High and Loyola University, but they did have a very bad bunch of boys going to Beauregard and they were always having fights and ganging up on other boys, and I guess Lee wouldn’t take anything, so he got in several scrapes like that . . .

  MR. JENNER. Did you have the impression that Lee Harvey was doing well in school, or what was your feeling along that line?

  MRS. MURRET. I think he was doing very poor work in school most of the time. Then he got to the point where he just didn’t think he ought to have to go to school, and that seemed to be his whole attitude, and when I mentioned that to Marguerite, that seemed to be the beginning of our misunderstanding. She didn’t think her child could do anything wrong, and I [couldn’t] say that Lee ever showed that he liked school.1

  Well, no, he wasn’t about to like it. He had dyslexia. At that time, it had not been recognized in most schools as an affliction which so distorted your spelling that it was guaranteed to make a teacher think you were close to moronic. And then of course there were always students around to beat up on him in twos and threes. He didn’t like school.

  Still, it could not be said that he gave up all at once.

  MRS. MURRET. . . . I remember one morning he came over to the house, and he said that he wanted to get on the ball team, but he didn’t have any shoes and he didn’t have a glove, so I said, “Well, Lee, we can fix you up,” and I gave him a glove [and] Joyce’s husband sent him a pair of shoes from Beaumont, a pair of baseball shoes, and I told Lee, I said, “Lee, when you need anything, just ask me for it, and if there’s a way to get it for you, we will get it.” So then he got on the team, I think, but he got off as quick as he got on. I don’t know why. He never discussed that with us as to why that was, and we never found out.

  . . . I don’t think he was the type of boy who was too good an athlete.2

  Not good in school, not special at sports, and no money to date girls . . .

  MRS. MURRET. . . . Most of the boys had money, you know, and went out on the weekends with girls and so forth, but Lee couldn’t afford those things, so he didn’t mix, but he did like to visit the museums . . . and go to the park and do things like that, and you very seldom can get a teenager to do that kind of thing these days, not even then. They don’t all like that type of life you know, but that’s what he liked.3

  [One time] we went to the store and we bought Lee a lot of clothes that we thought he might need so he would look presentable to go to school, you know, whatever a boy needs, and when we gave them to him, he said, “Well, why are you doing all this for me?” And we said, “Well, Lee, for one thing, we love you, and another thing we want you to look nice when you go to school, like the other children.” So that was that.

  MR. JENNER. Did he wear this clothing to school?

  MRS. MURRET. Oh yes; he wore the clothing that we bought him [but] he was very independent. Like one time I remember asking him a question about something, and he said, “I don’t need anything from anybody,” and that’s when I told him, I said, “Now listen, Lee, don’t you get so independent that you don’t think you don’t need anyone, because we all need somebody at one time or another
,” . . .

  MR. JENNER. Do you think that a little of this independence might have rubbed off from his mother? . . .

  MRS. MURRET. Well, she was independent herself all right . . . 4

  Marguerite was doing her best. She might be living above a pool hall on Exchange Alley at the wrong end of the French Quarter, but even in a bad neighborhood you could maintain some modicum of style.

  MRS. MURRET. . . . A lot of people would be surprised, because . . . it looks like a pretty rough section, but she had a real nice apartment . . . she fixed it up real nice . . .

  Of course, they had these poolrooms and so forth in that section but I don’t think that Lee ever went into those places, because he never was a boy that got into any trouble. For one thing, he never did go out . . . The average teenager who was going to school at Beauregard would have probably been in there shooting pool and things like that, but he didn’t do that. His morals were very good. His character seemed to be good and he was very polite and refined. There was one thing he did: He walked very straight. He always did, and some people thought that was part of his attitude, that he was arrogant or something like that, but of course you can’t please everybody.

  MR. JENNER. But he did have a good opinion of himself, did he not?

  MRS. MURRET. Oh, yes; he did.5

  It is only fair to give Marguerite Oswald much of the credit for this:

  MARGUERITE OSWALD. . . . Lee continued reading Robert’s Marine Corps manual . . . He knew it by heart. I even said, “Boy, you are going to be a general if you ever get in the Marines.”6