Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  So far, so good, except for one pivotal fact: Lee had not lost his job. His work was not “seasonal,” as he told the Russians, and the Leslie Welding Company had no thought of firing him. In fact, on Monday, October 8, the day after the gathering at his house, Lee turned up for work as usual, spent all day on the job, and simply walked off that afternoon without telling anyone he was quitting. Company officials were surprised when he failed to show up the next day, and more surprised still to receive a note from him a few days later asking that his last two paychecks be sent to a post office box in Dallas.

  It is probable that the Russians would have helped the Oswalds whether Lee had been fired or had simply quit. But Lee was not taking any chances; he did not quit until after he was sure of the Russians’ willingness to help him out. Earlier, he had put himself in a posture to get help, “playing poor” and using Marina and the baby as bait, perhaps without even realizing it himself. But this time it was a matter of cool calculation and conscious manipulation, the timing determined, apparently, by the fact that he had just paid off one of his debts, the $170 due to Robert for the airfare the previous June.

  In spite of his grumblings about the Russians and his warnings to Marina about becoming dependent, it was Lee who had made himself dependent. His move to Dallas was predicated on their offers of help in finding a job and on the certainty that they would care for his wife and child until he got on his feet. He could not have made the move without them.

  Marina and June spent three nights with the Taylors in Dallas, and Lee came to see them several times. On Monday and Wednesday of that week, Marina was driven to the Baylor University dental clinic by Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, Alexandra’s stepmother, who noticed that Marina brightened at the sight of the dental assistants in their white uniforms and showed signs of wishing to return to pharmacy work herself. Marina had six teeth extracted and new ones put in. The fee of $70 was paid by George Bouhe.

  After her last dental appointment, Marina and June took the bus to Fort Worth and settled in with Lyolya Hall. There, except for October 15, when Marina had a final dental appointment in Dallas and spent the night with George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, she and June stayed for nearly a month. Throughout this time their grocery and other expenses were paid by the Taylors and by Mrs. Hall and others in the émigré community. Lee never asked who was paying, did not offer to contribute, and did not tender any thanks.

  On Tuesday, October 9, Lee started looking for a job in Dallas. His first act was to call Anna Meller. She appealed to her husband Teofil, who had once worked with a Mrs. Helen Cunningham, now at the Texas Employment Commission in Dallas. Reluctantly, Teo Meller telephoned Mrs. Cunningham and asked her to find work for Oswald, whom he described as a Fort Worth boy who had lived in Russia, married a Russian girl, and had a child. Mr. Meller said that the need was urgent. Mrs. Cunningham was probably aware that Oswald had been a defector to Russia. But she was a kind woman, she liked and respected Mr. Meller, and she wanted to do him a favor. She said she would give Oswald the standard forms. If a prospective employer wanted to know more, he could ask.6

  Through Mrs. Cunningham, Lee was referred to a graphic arts firm called Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall. He made a good impression on John Graef, head of the photographic department, who thought he was “serious,” “determined,” and “likable,” with a “slight edge” over one or two competitors for the job.7 On Thursday Graef told Oswald he was hired. Lee was overjoyed. Friday, October 12, was his first day at work.

  George Bouhe had tried to help Lee in Dallas. Lee was staying at the YMCA, and Bouhe stopped by to inquire how he was getting along. He may also have given him a little money to tide him over until he found work. Once Lee had a job, Bouhe encouraged him to go to Crozier Tech night school to add to his qualifications and asked him to stay in touch.

  Lee’s response baffled Bouhe. The first few evenings after he started work, he called Bouhe from a pay telephone. Each time he said simply, “I’m doing fine.” With these words, and these only, he hung up. No small talk, no thanks, not a single detail about the job. When he moved out of the “Y,” he told Bouhe he was staying at the Carlton Boarding House, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Later, it turned out that he had never been there at all. Bouhe could see no reason for Lee to conceal his whereabouts. It was part, he says, of what he calls Lee’s “incessant mystery-making.”8 Lee probably wanted to drop Bouhe. He had by this time gained everything he wanted from him—a new job in a new town and temporary surcease from the responsibility of caring for Marina and the baby.

  Both Bouhe and the Mellers were puzzled by his behavior. They did not know of his lies, nor did they know that without their permission he was using their names as references, going so far as to list Bouhe at a false address. But indomitably generous as he was, Bouhe made a decision “not to go all out” for Lee. He was tired of being used and of Lee’s ingratitude. “He always got what he wanted,” Bouhe remarked later.9 Anna Meller phrased it in a way that reflected her European experience. “He would trample over you in hobnail boots,” she said, “in order to get what he wanted.”10

  As far as they were concerned, Lee simply violated every rule of human intercourse. He so outraged their notions of what decent conduct ought to be that he stunned them into giving him what he wanted. At first they had no way of dealing with him. But after a while they regrouped, pulled together the bits and pieces of his behavior and made sense of it, and managed to resurrect their defenses. They continued to help Marina after that. But they never helped Lee again.

  There were, however, others who would. For one of the curious facts about Lee Oswald is that he always had help when he needed it without giving anything in return. As a result he has left behind two impressions: one, that of a poor, lost soul who had no style for his relationships except to exploit people, and who did not do that very well; the other, that of a cool manipulator who was pulling strings and keeping every situation more or less under his control. It is scarcely any wonder that a thread that runs through the recollections of nearly all the men and women whom Oswald met following his return from Russia was a sense of having been ill-used. Ultimately, not one of them could think of him without pain, outrage, and a feeling of personal betrayal.

  — 17 —

  Dallas

  LEE STARTED to visit Alexandra and Gary Taylor during the few days that Marina and the baby were staying with them in Dallas. He used to come on foot or take the bus from downtown. The Taylors thought the atmosphere between Lee and Marina was one of estrangement, and that they did not like, let alone love, one another, because they never made any attempt to be alone together. Lee seemed to care nothing for Marina or for her feelings. Instead, he spent all his time with the baby, playing and gurgling to her in Russian. But he seemed to have been lonely after Marina and June went back to Fort Worth, for “he popped in and out” of the Taylors’ often for the next few weeks.

  Alix has said that Lee “could be very polite if he wished. He could be very sarcastic, very blunt if he wished. He could be a very friendly person if he wished, and he could be very quiet if he wished. It just depended who the people were.”1 She adds, however, that he could also be “very, very rude. He appreciated absolutely nothing you did for him. He never thanked you for anything. He seemed to expect it of you.” She did not understand why her father’s Russian friends tried to help him. He did not deserve it, they did not owe it to him, and yet she got the feeling that he thought they did.

  Gary Taylor was a little younger than Lee. He had many irons in the fire, and one of them was politics. He was an ardent Democrat, with a distaste for the John Birch Society, which was then very active in Dallas. Like his father-in-law, George de Mohrenschildt, Gary was a vociferous anti-Bircher and, if he disagreed with someone politically, was likely to dismiss him with, “Oh, he’s a Bircher.” Gary was probably the first person Lee actually met who felt strongly about the John Birch Society.

  Lee enjoyed talking politics with Gary. “He was e
asy, not too hard to get along with,” Alix says. “We argued with him but it was always friendly.”2 And according to Alix, Lee could be very persuasive. “He could make almost anybody believe what he was saying.” He was forever telling the Taylors that they were “stupid,” but because they were his age, more or less, and perhaps because he thought they were “stupid” and presented no threat to him, Lee opened up with Gary and Alix. With them he did not feel the same chip-on-the-shoulder need as he did with Bouhe and Mrs. Meller to defend the USSR, and he gave the Taylors the impression that he had been very, very unhappy in Russia and did not want to go back.

  “He disliked Russia just like he disliked the United States,” Alix said later, in an analysis of Lee’s character and political beliefs that was far from “stupid.”

  He disliked Russia very much. He didn’t agree with communism and he didn’t agree with capitalism. He believed in the perfect government, free of want and need, and free of taxation, free of discrimination, free of any police force, the right to be able to do exactly as he pleased, exactly when he pleased, just total and complete freedom in everything. He believed in no government whatsoever, just a perfect place where people lived happily all together and no religion, nothing of any sort, no ties and no holds to anything except himself. I really don’t know if he planned to work or not. I don’t know what Lee wanted to do in life. I think he wanted to be a very important person without putting anything into it at all. He expected to be the highest paid immediately, the best liked, the highest skilled. He resented any people in high places, any people of any authority in government. My husband told him you can’t be something for nothing, can’t expect to get high pay and receive a good position with no education and no ambition. No particular goal, no anything. He just expected a lot for nothing. I don’t think he knew what he wanted, and I don’t think he was too interested in working toward anything. He expected things to be just given to him on a silver platter. But in his ideas, he was extremely devoted. You couldn’t change his mind no matter what you said to him.3

  Alix asked Lee if he had written anything about Russia, and he brought her his manuscript one evening. She read it and told him he ought to publish it. His answer was no, it was not for people to read.

  Lee himself was reading a good deal: Hitler’s Mein Kampf and William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He also reread George Orwell’s anti-Communist classics 1984 and Animal Farm, both of which were loaned to him by Alix’s father, George de Mohrenschildt.

  The Taylors did not know where Lee was living. They thought he was at the YMCA at 605 North Ervay Street in downtown Dallas. Once, after an evening at their house, they dropped him off on the curb outside. Another time Gary picked him up inside. But Lee was actually at the Y only one work week, from Monday, October 15, until Friday morning, October 19. No one knows where he was living from October 8 to 13 or from October 21 to November 2. The Taylors helped him look for a room to rent and once spent an hour hunting for Lee at a North Beckley Street address given them by Alix’s stepmother. “We went up and down and up and down and never found the place,” Alix says.4 Lee endorsed two checks that month, on October 16 and 22, his final paychecks from Leslie Welding. Both times he wrote not his own, but the Taylors’, address on the back with his signature. Even Marina had no idea where he was staying, and their Russian friends joked that her husband was sleeping on a park bench. He probably had a room in Oak Cliff, very likely on North Beckley Street. Why he bothered to keep the address secret is anybody’s guess.

  Lee was happy in his job. Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall was an advertising photography firm that made billboards, posters, and advertisements for newspapers and magazines. For the first few days, Lee, an apprentice cameraman, followed his supervisor, John Graef, around to find out how things were done.5 Graef noticed that the new man did not seem to mind taking orders. Lee learned the intrinsic quality of various types of paper and film, and then he learned various photographic and developing techniques, including distortion photography. He was paid between $1.35 and $1.50 an hour, a forty-hour week. He had never had a job he liked so well.

  Marina, meanwhile, was outrageously happy in Fort Worth with Lyolya Hall. With no Lee, no one “beating on her nerves,” she says, she slept until two every day—the baby being trained, more or less, to do the same—and spent her afternoons in delicious solitude. Mrs. Hall returned late from work, and the two had down-to-earth conversations in Russian. Mrs. Hall offered to take Marina to her doctor for contraceptives. According to Mrs. Hall, Marina replied that her married life was so strange, Lee was so cold to her, and they had sexual relations so seldom that she doubted she was in danger of conceiving a child.6

  Marina’s version is a little different. She says that she took Mrs. Hall into her confidence as an older woman and asked her advice. Lee was not strong “as a man,” Marina explained, and came to a sexual climax very quickly. Was she to blame? What could she do to help? Were there any home remedies? Should one or both of them see a doctor?

  When she had been at Mrs. Hall’s a few days, an episode occurred that was pure Marina. She wanted to baptize the baby, although she knew Lee was opposed to it. Mrs. Hall called Father Dmitry Royster, the American-born priest of St. Stephen’s Eastern Orthodox Church in Dallas, to arrange it. And on the evening of October 17 the two women drove to Dallas, where Father Royster baptized June Lee Oswald, with Elena Hall as godmother.

  But that was not the end of the conspiracy. The next day was Lee’s twenty-third birthday. Marina had saved up some money and bought him socks, a shirt, and a sweater. On the night of October 17, Alexandra Taylor heard a knock at her front door, and there on the steps she found Mrs. Hall and Marina with June in her arms. They explained that they had just had the baby baptized on the sly, and since they did not dare go to the Y, they asked Alix to give Lee his presents and invent a story to conceal the fact that they had been in Dallas.

  Marina did not leave it at that. When she got back to Fort Worth, she telephoned Lee and told him to stop by the Taylors’. He did as he was told, and so did Alix. She made up a story about the presents, but Lee put two and two together. After that, Marina quickly broke down and admitted over the telephone what she had been only half trying to conceal: that she and Lyolya had been in Dallas and had the baby baptized.

  “Silly girl,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you’d forbid it.”

  “It’s your right to do as you please,” he said to Marina’s astonishment. On the night following the baptism, Lyolya Hall was injured in an automobile crash and was in the hospital more than a week. But Marina was not left all alone. Gali Clark (Mrs. Max Clark) came by nearly every day and drove her to the grocery store, where she not only paid for groceries but also bought Marina a carton of cigarettes. A chain-smoker, starved for cigarettes by her disapproving husband, Marina was grateful. But she was intimidated by Gali Clark. Gali was a “society” person, from the “old aristocracy,” Marina commented later. Manners meant a lot to Gali, and at times Marina could not tell what she was thinking. Complicated as Marina might be herself, she preferred a proteletarian directness in other people. She wanted to know where she stood with them.

  Alex Kleinlerer, a friend of Lyolya Hall’s, also came every day during his lunch hour to check up on Marina. At 1:30 in the afternoon he would wake her up by banging on the front door and ringing the bell. Inside he found chaos—dirty dishes in the sink and baby clothing everywhere. He did the cleaning and sometimes came back at suppertime. He and Marina took turns cooking; he would cook a Polish supper one night, she a Russian supper the next. Once or twice he took her and the baby out to eat.

  Lee came by bus to Fort Worth for all or part of every weekend to see Marina and the baby. They missed each other, and their weekend interludes were comparatively idyllic. But Lee’s attitude toward Mrs. Hall’s hospitality was paradoxical in view of his own Spartan style of living. “This is your house. I give it to you—all!” he would ann
ounce to Marina, sweeping his arm grandly about the entrance hall upon his arrival on a Friday. “Isn’t this a fine house I bought you?”

  Marina remembers that he was “always running to the icebox,” a thing he never did at home when he was paying for the groceries himself, to fix a Coke or a sandwich. “A full icebox!” he would exclaim delightedly before he pounced. He was fascinated by the kitchen gadgets, like the electric can opener, the sort of thing that Mrs. Hall and the other Russians thought he scorned. And at night he made love to Marina while watching another “gadget,” the bedroom television set, a distraction that helped slightly his problem of premature ejaculation. Afterwards, the two of them slept in separate bedrooms, a luxury that Lee said made him feel “like an aristocrat.”

  Lee took an acute dislike to Alex Kleinlerer, a short, dark man of about forty who sported a black mustache, spoke with an accent, and dressed with European flair. The facts of Kleinlerer’s relationship to Marina were innocent, but it was no secret that he dropped by Mrs. Hall’s on weekdays when Lee was not there. Kleinlerer’s feelings for Marina were intensely, and obviously, protective. Lee was furiously jealous.

  On Friday, October 26, Mrs. Hall returned from the hospital, and on Sunday Alix and Gary Taylor picked Lee up outside the Dallas Y and drove over for the evening in Fort Worth. The major topic of conversation was Cuba. President Kennedy had learned of the buildup of Soviet missiles on the island and demanded their withdrawal. The previous Monday the president had declared a naval blockade of Cuba, and for nearly a week the world had been teetering on the brink of thermonuclear disaster. Lee observed that in Dallas people were hoarding food in anticipation of war. Marina was certain that her country would never go to war over a tiny nation like Cuba, and Lee agreed. He had been to Russia, he said to Mrs. Hall, to Kleinlerer, and the Taylors, and he was sure the Soviet government would not start a war. When the missile crisis was over, Marina was greatly relieved, for throughout that ten-day period, she had felt torn between her own country, which she continued to love, and the kind Americans with their nice-looking president, Mr. Kennedy.