Reclaiming History (159 page)

After four or five days at the Mellers though, Lee and Marina agreed that they’d meet at the de Mohrenschildts’ apartment to see if they could iron out their differences. On the morning of November 11, a Sunday, Bouhe drove over to the Mellers, picked Marina up, and drove her to the de Mohrenschildts, where she met Lee. Bouhe did not want to be present at the meeting. He was literally afraid of Lee, telling Marina, “I don’t want to listen to his threats. If he sticks his fists in my ears it will suit neither my age nor my health.” The Mellers shared his view that Lee was a “megalomaniac,” “unbalanced,” a “psychopath.”
⁹⁹³

The meeting did not go well. Lee was nervous and embarrassed over being lectured by the booming George de Mohrenschildt (“Do you think it’s heroic to beat a woman who is weaker than you?”) and patronized by Jeanne, who told the two of them, “If you cannot live with each other peacefully, without all this awful behavior, you should separate, and see. Maybe you don’t really love each other.” When Marina said she couldn’t take Lee’s brutality anymore, Lee interjected, “I’m not always in the wrong, Marina has such a long tongue, sometimes I can’t hold myself back.”
⁹⁹⁴

Eventually, the de Mohrenschildts left the two of them alone for awhile to sort it out. Lee, realizing that things had gone too far, shifted to contrition. He told Marina he didn’t want to go on living without her. She was adamant, wanting to hurt him as he had hurt her. He grandly informed her that he was unable to change, that she had to accept him as he was. She told him she wanted a divorce. When it broke up, the de Mohrenschildts drove Marina as well as Lee back to Elsbeth Street so she could pick up her things for transfer to the Mellers’ apartment. Lee grew very angry, threatened to get even with them all, including George, and boasted, “By God, you are not going to do it. I will tear all her dresses and I will break all the baby things.” George, enraged, threatened to call the police while Jeanne tried to calm things down. (One hearsay account has George picking Oswald up by the front of his shirt and shaking him like a dog, telling Oswald he would really work him over if he laid another hand on Marina—a story that may be far-fetched but seemed plausible to some of their friends.) “Do you love your wife?” Jeanne asked Lee. “If you want your wife back sometime, you better behave.”

His bluff called, Lee seethed silently for a while, and then caved in and started helping to carry Marina’s things out to the car. Before she left, he took Marina into the kitchen and begged her one last time to stay. She refused. “Go this minute,” he bellowed. “I don’t want to see you another second.”
⁹⁹⁵

Later that afternoon, George Bouhe picked up Marina, the baby, and all their belongings at the Mellers and transferred them to the home of Declan and Katya Ford, who had a small baby and a four-bedroom house. Declan Ford was attending a convention of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in Houston for a week, so there was more room for Marina there than in the Mellers’ cramped two-room apartment, where she and the baby had to sleep on improvised beds in the living room.
⁹⁹⁶

Lee called Marina twice every evening until she eventually consented to speak to him. He told her that Robert had written to him to tell him that their brother, John Pic, and his family would be coming for Thanksgiving, and he needed her for the planned family reunion in Fort Worth. (Robert had written to his post office box, as Lee never divulged any of his addresses in Dallas to him.) She knew he was worried about being humiliated in front of his family, for whom he would have to concoct some explanation for his runaway wife, and she was beginning to weaken. Her position was tenuous anyway—how long could she count on the generosity of friends?

Katya Ford was also aware of the fragility of Marina’s situation, and her advice was practical. Katya was revolted by Lee, whom she regarded as an animal, but she recognized that Marina was not entirely faultless, that her personality played some role in provoking Lee’s brutality. Further, Marina’s lack of English narrowed her choices. All the women with whom Marina stayed knew that she was a terrible housekeeper, and it was unlikely that she could find employment even as a domestic, with or without English. Until she learned the language, she had no hope of building a life for herself in the United States. For the time being, it seemed that she would have to return to Lee, although Katya counseled her to start learning the language as fast as she could so that by the time June was old enough for day care, she might hope to find useful employment.
⁹⁹⁷

What Katya didn’t know is that Marina was starting to miss Lee. Her life with Lee was combative, and the icebox was always half-empty, but she thought it was “home all the same.” However, she would hold out a little while longer, hoping to teach Lee a lesson and value her more.
⁹⁹⁸

George Bouhe, who believed Marina’s break with Lee was permanent, continued to help. He took her to lunch with Anna Ray, a Russian married to an American, and Ray immediately offered Marina a refuge in her own home. Even though the Rays had two small children of their own, they had enough room for Marina and June, and Anna had an uncommon generosity. She was ready to teach Marina English and put her in night school. Marina’s plight touched Anna and she made it clear that Marina would be welcome to stay with her and her husband Frank virtually indefinitely, at least until she became able to make it on her own. Bouhe was delighted when Marina accepted.
⁹⁹⁹

The same day that Marina moved in with the Rays, Lee called Mrs. Ray and asked for permission to visit Marina and the baby, which she gave, telling him how to get there on the bus. When Lee arrived, he and Marina went into a room by themselves, and Lee begged for forgiveness. “Why do you torture me so?” he complained. “I come home and there’s nobody there. No you, no Junie.”

“I didn’t chase you out,” Marina said, “you wanted it. You gave me no choice.”

Lee got on his knees and begged her to come back, eyes filled with tears. He knew he had a “terrible character,” but now he promised to try to change and if she did not return to him he did not want to continue living. Marina, embarrassed and fearful that someone could come in and find him weeping on his knees, was moved. He refused to get up until she forgave him. She did, and they both cried. Lee covered baby June with kisses and crooned, “We’re all three going to live together again. Mama’s not going to take Junie away from Papa anymore.”

After supper, Frank Ray drove them all back to Elsbeth Street. Marina’s rebellion was over and the bridges burned. There was little chance that anyone in the emigré community would ever again offer her the help she would need to escape. For better or worse, she was now committed to life with Lee.
¹⁰⁰⁰
And for a few days thereafter, Lee and Marina were happy, playing childlike games with each other and going for walks every night, stopping for coffee and donuts. He even offered to teach her how to bowl, but the balls turned out to be too heavy for her to hold.
¹⁰⁰¹

The same night she had come home from the Rays, November 17, Lee wrote a letter to Robert, accepting his invitation for Thanksgiving and asking Robert to pick them up at the bus station in Fort Worth.
¹⁰⁰²
Lee had gotten Marina back just under the wire. Thanksgiving was just five days away.

L
ee and Robert’s half brother, John Pic, had returned from Japan with his family and was now living in San Antonio, so Thanksgiving was a chance for a rare family reunion. Although Robert had kept in touch with both brothers, Lee and John had not seen each other or even exchanged letters in ten years, not since Lee was a young teenager in New York. Robert made a point of not inviting Marguerite—he wanted the reunion to be “a happy meeting for everybody, with no bitterness or unhappy reminders.”
¹⁰⁰³

On the morning of November 22—just one year before the assassination—John and Robert drove down to the bus station to pick up Lee, Marina, and June. They were all happy and cheerful, Robert having no idea of the recent storm in Lee and Marina’s life. While waiting for John and Robert, Lee and Marina and the baby crowded into a photo machine to pose for pictures of themselves, and they were still laughing about the “silly pictures” they had taken when Lee’s brothers arrived. John was a little worried as to whether Lee would be as hostile to him as he had been ten years before, but there was no sign of that until they arrived at Robert’s house, when Lee greeted John’s wife Margie, whom he had threatened with a knife so many years before, and then never again addressed her for the rest of the day.
¹⁰⁰⁴

While the women occupied themselves with the Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen, the brothers sat in the living room and talked. Lee and John, in particular, had a lot to talk about, ten years to catch up on, experiences in Japan to swap. Two subjects were avoided, Lee’s trip to the USSR and Marguerite. Nobody wanted to spoil the holiday mood. They played with the children, and Robert shot some film of them, all in color. They had dinner in the late afternoon and sat around the table for around two hours.
¹⁰⁰⁵

Marina would later write that the day was “very gay,” that she liked “this good American holiday” and found it “very agreeable to celebrate it.”
¹⁰⁰⁶
Apart from Lee not talking to Margie, there was only one other disagreeable moment, one that would be remembered for a lifetime. Paul Gregory, Marina’s one-time Russian-language student, was home from college for the holiday and Marina called him to come over for a brief visit. John Pic was shocked when Lee introduced him to Paul as his “half brother,” a designation Marguerite’s three sons had avoided using all of their lives.
¹⁰⁰⁷
Lee had a long memory. But everything is relative, and for the three children of Marguerite and their wives it had been a good day, the last one they would ever spend together.

Indeed, it would be the last time Lee would see any member of his family until November 23, 1963.
¹⁰⁰⁸

W
hen Marina refused to grasp the lifeline held out to her by the Rays, the Russian community for the most part, with the exception of the de Mohrenschildts, gave up on her. George Bouhe, who had helped the most, never tried again—he even asked her to return the Russian-English dictionaries he had lent her.
¹⁰⁰⁹

Actually, one other compassionate soul did make one more attempt to help the Oswalds. Lydia Dymitruk had been captured by the German army in the Soviet Union as a teenager and brought, with her sister, to Düsseldorf. Freed by the advancing American army at the end of the war, Dymitruk became a Belgian citizen, eventually married an American, and settled in Dallas, where she became friends with Anna Meller. Shortly after Marina went back to Lee, Anna told Lydia that she received a phone call from Marina, who was distraught because the baby was ill and Lee would not take them to the hospital because he didn’t have money to pay the bill. The next day, while Lee was at work, Lydia advised Marina to dress both herself and the baby warmly, and she would drive them to a hospital. It was a very cold December day, and June was running a temperature of 103 degrees.

They went to the emergency room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas but were told there was no pediatrician on duty until five in the afternoon. They gave June some medication to reduce the fever and suggested they return after five or try a children’s hospital. Lydia and Marina went to a children’s clinic, but there were dozens of children ahead of them and a three-to four-hour wait. Lydia couldn’t spare that kind of time, so she drove Marina and June to their home, took care of her business, and came back around six. Marina then wanted to wait until Lee got home from work—but when he came home shortly thereafter, he was still opposed to taking June to a hospital. Lydia heard them arguing heatedly in the kitchen about it, but when they finally emerged, Lee had agreed to take June to the hospital with Lydia and Marina.

At Parkland, a doctor gave the baby a blood test, a chest X-ray, and examined her carefully. When he was finished, he gave Lee some forms to take to a service desk. Lydia and Marina waited in line with him there and heard him tell the nurse who looked over his forms that he had no money, was unemployed, drew no unemployment benefit, and was living on money borrowed from friends. Lydia, who was standing in front of Marina in the line, could hear Marina, who apparently was able to make out what Lee was saying in English, hiss, “What a liar.” The nurse gave Lee a slip of paper, requiring a small payment because of his financial condition, and told him to take it to the cashier. But Lee jammed the paper in his pocket and ducked out without paying anything at all.

During the car ride back home Lee complained that medical care in America ought to be free, as it had been in the Soviet Union, and Marina was on Lee’s case, in a harsh tone, all the way home. By the time Lydia had dropped them off at Elsbeth Street, she was heartedly disgusted with both of them, but more with Marina. “No wonder he’s so mean to you,” she told Marina. “I’m sorry for Lee, I don’t see how he takes it. You have a dreadful disposition. I couldn’t live with you a single second. You simply ate him alive.” At least someone was on Lee’s side in the small Russian community. Marina didn’t object to Lydia’s criticism, knowing she did, indeed, have a poor disposition, but thought to herself, “Just you try living with Lee, and then see how you behave.”
¹⁰¹⁰
Eventually a bill arrived in the mail from Parkland and Lee paid it without complaint. It was for two dollars.
¹⁰¹¹

There were few enough other visits to the Oswald household in the late months of 1962. Gary Taylor, the de Mohrenschildts’ son-in-law, dropped by one day shortly after Thanksgiving to return the manuscript about Lee’s life in the Soviet Union, which Lee had given him.
¹⁰¹²
Christmas Day, Elena Hall, who had remarried her husband John in November, dropped by with him to bring a toy for June. They noticed that the Oswald home had no Christmas tree or decoration of any kind, which they thought strange since in those days you could get a small tree for as little as thirty-nine cents. Oswald protested he did not want a tree, and told John that Christmas was nothing but a commercialized holiday.
¹⁰¹³
Later, Marina brought home a stray evergreen branch that she found. She also found nineteen cents that Lee had untypically left lying around and used it to buy colored paper (which she shredded into tinsel) and miniature decorations for the branch at a five-and-dime store. Parsimonious Lee was pleased for once. “I never thought you could make a Christmas tree for nineteen cents,” he said to Marina.
¹⁰¹⁴