Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  Lee’s conquest of his mother made it hard for him to grow away from her in another way as well. Was he not the sun of her universe? As long as he was the light of her eyes, he had a stake in her view of things. Her view of things was to become his. And here lay a fresh side of Lee’s tragedy, for his mother’s view was monstrously misshapen. Somehow, as she grew up, half an orphan, in New Orleans, Marguerite too had acquired the notion that she was special. She felt entitled to what she wanted and to a better life than she had. And this feeling alone made her life a hardship, since life could not meet her expectations. Everyday vicissitudes, burdens others manage to accept, were to her a gratuitous imposition. Marguerite became convinced that life was unfair to her and that she was not getting a “square deal.” She felt, and felt strongly, that she had a right to do anything she could to even up the score and bring a little perverse justice into the world. She acquired a bias against society, and she transmitted that bias to Lee.

  Marguerite’s feeling that she and Lee were both special, and that Lee was, in fact, the physical and spiritual extension of herself, was to emerge later when she testified before the Warren Commission. Marguerite acknowledged that she had certain “gifts,” a gift for singing and a gift for sewing. “So those are gifted things I can’t explain,” she said. “Lee had certain gifted ways about him also.”32

  The profound resemblance between mother and son came out in many ways. They were alike in a linguistic overreaching, a use, and misuse, of words that were too big for them. The ambitiousness they shared crept even into their language.

  The two also shared an uncanny constellation of emotions that had its outcropping in an extraordinary congruity of behavior. Feeling, as they did, that “the world owed them a living,” they both carried around with them a prickliness, a miraculous capacity for ingratitude. Marguerite’s relatives, the Murrets, saw her only occasionally, between marriages, when she showed up needing help. They always answered her call. They gave and gave, but Marguerite never gave in return. She was even able to accept what they gave in such as way as to deny that they had given her anything at all. They were only giving her her due. Her son Lee was the same. He, too, bristled with an independent aura—“I don’t need anything from anybody.” But he, too, was forever accepting favors and failing either to reciprocate or to thank anyone. As he saw it, it was not favors or help he was getting—it was his due. Lee, like his mother, was obsessed by his rights. And every now and then he gave the game away by standing on his hind legs and roaring for them.

  Since both felt that they were at the center of the universe, they assumed that others were thinking about them, and even plotting against them. Both were attuned to a whole world of hidden motives. Both loved mystery and intrigue, both suspected others of carrying on secret activities. Lee adored spy novels and spy films. And as for Marguerite, Robert Oswald says she “still sees a spy behind every door and tree.”33 Mother and son were like twin antennae vibrating to the possibility of conspiracy.

  Other things followed from this. Neither Lee nor his mother could open up or allow themselves to be vulnerable to anyone. They had to keep others from glimpsing what was inside their minds. And since they were holding together a view of the world that was not in accord with reality, they spent a great deal of energy tuning out signals that did not fit. By the age of four, Robert knew that his mother was deaf to anything she did not want to hear. His brother Lee was the same.

  As a result neither knew what reality was. Since the truth was weightless and elusive, they felt entitled to play fast and loose with it. Both of them lied. But in this they differed from one another, for Marguerite apparently had enough contact with reality to control her abuse of it. This was not true of Lee. His sense of reality appears to have been so badly impaired that the line between truth and falsehood was wavy, and falsehood was often truer than truth. He lied pointlessly, to no purpose and all the time, even when he had nothing to hide. Marina says Lee told three kinds of lies. One was vranyo, a wild, Russian, cock-and-bull lying that has a certain imaginative joy to it; another was lying out of secretiveness; and still another was lying out of calculation, because he had something to hide. Lying claimed much of Lee’s energy and complicated his life a great deal. But he had no choice. He had to keep his reality in and the reality of other people out. Somehow he realized that the two were not the same, and some desperate, animal-like sixth sense told him that he had at all costs to keep outside reality from breaking in and shattering his precarious inner equilibrium.

  Since mother and son both assumed that other people were thinking about them, publicity was essential to them. It did not matter if the publicity was negative, as it had been after Lee’s defection, for it confirmed what they had known all along, that the world was against them. Publicity held their world together. It proved that they were the center of the universe.

  Mother and son were, indeed, in a state of symbiotic nourishment and support. During Lee’s time in Russia, his mother decided that he must be a spy, very likely an American one. Lee had the same idea. He, too, loved to imagine that he was spy, and on balance an American one. Each had the same fantasy, yet not as a result of any communication that had actually passed between them. It was a case of two minds with but a single thought, and that thought the totally congruous product of two very similar personalities.

  Lee would willingly have gone further, would have become a spy and acted out his mother’s fantasy for her. It was not his fault that nobody asked him to be one. The same was true of his notorious acts, those that put his mother in the limelight, beginning with his defection to Russia. Marguerite never knew what Lee had done, exactly, since he did not tell her, but she always knew within seconds of the first call from a reporter how to make the most of it. Lee was not only acting out his own fantasies and imaginings, he was acting out hers as well.

  In the end he was to act on a really grand scale, a scale Marguerite had not dreamed of. But she adjusted right away and took credit for what her son had done. She told the writer Jean Stafford that if it was from her Lee had learned the “truths” that American society was not perfect, then, “I make no apology.”34 Lee’s brother John, too, was to say that his mother’s feelings against society had given Lee “a little extra push” toward what was to be the climax of his life.35

  Marguerite had not known what was coming, but she reacted as if to the manner born. It was for this she had been waiting all her life.

  PART THREE

  Texas, 1962–1963

  — 13 —

  Family Reunion

  On Wednesday, June 13, 1962, the Maasdam slid into its pier in Hoboken, New Jersey. The Oswalds were packed and waiting below. Tense and nervous throughout the voyage, Lee literally jumped when they heard a knock at the door of their cabin. He stepped back, whirled around, and stood confronting the door. It was their waiter, Pieter. He had come to say goodbye. Shyly, he showed Marina a photograph of the French girl he was meeting in New York. When he left and the door had closed behind him, Marina sensed the tension seeping out of her husband’s body. He had been expecting the police.

  With the baby cradled in Marina’s arms, the Oswalds made their way up to the deck. Lee’s tension returned, and he peered anxiously from side to side, looking for policemen. Someone was looking for him, but it was not the police. It was Spas T. Raikin, Russian-born representative of the Travelers’ Aid Society, which had been alerted by the Department of State. By the time Mr. Raikin got on board, he found that the Oswalds had cleared Immigration. He had Lee Oswald paged by loudspeaker several times, but no one answered. As Raikin phrased it a few days later in his report: “I had the impression that he was trying to escape meeting anybody.”1

  The Oswalds, meanwhile, engulfed in the chaos of the pier, were waiting to go through customs. Marina did not like the way the customs officers tore open the luggage of rich and poor alike, exposing possession—and poverty—to view. Otherwise, she was luxuriating in the adventure of arrival. She was pl
eased that it was raining. Rain meant good luck for her. Likewise the fact that it was June 13: thirteen was her lucky number. As for her husband, Marina noticed he was no longer nervous, only a bit depressed. In Russia he had boasted that reporters would meet them when they arrived in America. Now he declared emphatically: “Thank God there are no reporters!” He also said that he hoped his mother would not be there.

  It was on the crowded dock that Raikin found them. He guided them through customs and out to a Travelers’ Aid limousine, asking questions all the way. Even in this short span of time, Lee managed to tell quite a few lies, among them that he had been a Marine stationed at the US embassy in Moscow when he met and married Marina, that he had renounced his American citizenship, and that he had paid the family’s entire transportation to New York. He added that he had $63 in his pocket and was headed for his brother’s home in Texas. His brother would be unable to help him with the fare. Lee accepted the Travelers’ Aid offer of help, Raikin noted, “with confidence and appreciation.”2

  From Hoboken the Oswalds were taken to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 41st Street and thence, by cab, to the Special Services office of the New York City Department of Welfare, on Franklin Street. They were greeted by a Polish-speaking woman, who gave them coffee and apologized to Marina that the worker who spoke Russian was not in that day. Marina was surprised, to put it mildly, that in an hour or two in New York she had already met a Russian, Mr. Raikin, and now a Pole who was apologizing that there was no one there to speak to her in her native tongue.

  The Special Services office was the scene of a confrontation between Lee and members of the Department of Welfare. Told that the Oswalds had no funds, an official of the department, in routine fashion, called Lee’s next of kin, Robert, to ask him to furnish $200 for airfare for Lee and Marina from New York to Dallas–Fort Worth. Vada Oswald, Robert’s wife, answered the phone. She promised to contact her husband and have the money sent immediately. When Lee was informed, he was “quite angered, really very upset.” He “stomped around” and refused to accept his brother’s money.3 It was up to the Department of Welfare to pay the fare, he said. The members of the department stood firm; by law the department was required to ask friends or relatives to meet such expenses if they could. Finally, Lee accepted their decision.

  Marina had absented herself to breastfeed the baby. Unable to understand English, she missed most of the scene, but she surmised that Lee was misleading the department about how much money he had. To her the mere fact that he claimed to have only $63 was prima facie evidence that he had more, since “how could he live without lying?” She knew that he had had nearly $200 when he left Moscow and had spent hardly any of it since. Moreover, he had warned her on shipboard not to answer any questions about how much money they had. He wanted them, he said, to pay for everything, although he did not say who “they” were.

  The Oswalds were taken to the Times Square Hotel, a large, dingy building located at Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street. Lee actually volunteered to pay the bill. He deposited Marina and the baby in their room and quickly vanished, promising to bring them something to eat.

  The first thing Marina noticed was how dirty the room was. “Ten dollars a day and such filth,” she said to herself. She switched on the radio and decided to take a bath. But the letters on the faucets, “H” and “C,” were unfamiliar to her, and she decided to wait for her husband after all. She longed to look out the window. But between her and the view there were Venetian blinds, which she had never seen before, and they were black with soot. She snatched a washcloth and started to scrub them. She was still at it when her husband returned.

  He brought hamburgers and French fries, another new experience for Marina. Nervous yet elated, he placed a call to Robert and Vada in Fort Worth. Marina was fascinated to hear him speak English on the telephone. He handed her the phone and told her to say something to Vada.

  “Hi, Vada,” said Marina, blushing and incredulous to be speaking “English” for the first time.

  Afterward Lee explained about the faucets, and “hot” and “cold” became Marina’s first words of English.

  She took a bath and washed the baby’s swaddling cloths. Then the three of them set off for Times Square. It was ten o’clock at night, the city was just waking up, and Marina was enraptured. With its air of nocturnal excitement, New York reminded her of her beloved Leningrad. And yet it was unlike Leningrad, too. The stores were brilliantly lit, and Marina had never seen so much to buy. She was riveted by the window displays and stopped to “oh” and “ah” in front of every one. To purchase these things, she supposed, you had to know somebody, had to have special connections. Oh no, Lee assured her, you didn’t need any connections. The only thing you had to have was money. Grinning at her enjoyment, he steered her into a Japanese shop and bought her a pair of sandals. Then they spotted a flock of Russian tourists, as round eyed and incredulous as Marina. At the sight and sound of them, certain that she had seen her last Russian for all time, Marina was more incredulous still. They went to a food counter to eat, then back to the hotel, tired and happy.

  The next morning, June 14, Lee returned to the Franklin Street office of the Department of Welfare and, accompanied by a department representative, went to a nearby Western Union office to collect the $200 sent by Robert. At the West Side Air Terminal, on Tenth Avenue and 42nd Street, he bought two tickets for Delta Flight 821. The cost was $183.04. Lee, Marina, and the baby flew to Texas from Idlewild Airport.

  Marina was delighted by the smooth flight, even by the uniforms the stewardesses wore. But again she was troubled by the stares of her fellow passengers, who were intrigued by the sight of a swaddled baby. Marina had no idea that swaddling was strange to anyone. She was aware only that the people around her were better dressed than she and that they were staring. She shrank inwardly. She and the baby must look like beggars, she thought again.

  Robert and Vada, their four-year-old daughter Cathy, and their baby son Robert Lee met them when their plane touched down at Love Field. The two brothers had last seen each other not quite three years before.

  “What? No photographers or anything?” Lee greeted Robert as he swung jauntily through the gate. He asked again as soon as they were settled in Robert’s car: Had Robert had any calls from reporters?

  Yes, Robert answered. On June 8, nearly a week before, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had published a front-page photo of Lee and a story headed: “Ex-Marine Reported on Way Back from Russia,” based on information given to American reporters by the US embassy in Moscow. Robert had two or three calls from reporters after that, he said, but following Lee’s firm instructions from Minsk, he had told them nothing. Robert had the impression that his brother was “disappointed” by the absence of the press.4

  Marina, meanwhile, was preoccupied by something quite different. Vada and Robert and their children were all so perfectly dressed. Would they, too, think she was a beggar? Would they notice how clumsily her shoes were sewn together? Her embarrassment deepened on the drive from Love Field to Fort Worth when Vada, with Lee translating, offered to fix Marina’s hair. “I must look really dreadful,” Marina thought. She did not realize that Vada, a beautician, was simply offering the best she had to give.

  “My brother is a worker,” Lee told her as soon as they set foot in Robert’s house. “Yet look at this. He’s got a car and a house of his own!” And to Marina, indeed, Robert’s small, one-story house looked like paradise on earth. She had never in all her life supposed that one man, his wife, and children could fill up a whole house by themselves.

  She took an immediate liking to Robert and Vada, and she liked the cleanliness of the house. It was frustrating to be unable to speak to them directly without asking Lee to translate. But despite the language barrier, she soon learned why she had attracted so much attention on the plane.

  “Why do you wrap up the baby?” Vada asked.

  “Because swaddling is better for her,” Lee said, defending the Russi
an way.

  Nothing daunted, Vada showed them how to diaper the child. But before they put the baby to bed, Lee told Marina to swaddle her again—“She’ll sleep better the way she’s used to.” After that the baby wore diapers by day and swaddling by night, when Vada did not see her.

  Robert Oswald, a salesman for the Acme Brick Company of Fort Worth and, at twenty-eight, five years older than Lee, thought that his brother had changed. His skin was ruddier now and not so fair, he had lost a few pounds, and he seemed, at least until he relaxed a bit after the first few days, “tense and anxious.” But the biggest change was his hair. It was kinky now, in contrast to the natural curl it had had before, and it had thinned out badly on top. Thinking it over long afterward and reflecting that men in his family all had a full head of hair, Robert wondered if Lee had been subjected to shock treatments in Russia that changed his thinking as well as his hair. The only other change he noticed was that Lee seemed more “outgoing” than he had been before.

  The day after their arrival, on Friday, June 15, another member of the family materialized, the boys’ mother, Marguerite Oswald. She was working as a practical nurse in nearby Crowell, Texas, and she came to spend the weekend. Marguerite was a small woman, short legged and a little top-heavy looking. She had a large, square head; gray hair; and spectacles. Her clothes gave the impression of having been carefully selected and put together, the choice of a coherent personality. Marina liked her, especially her soft gray hair.