Reclaiming History (187 page)

After Lee finished typing the first draft of his letter to the Soviet embassy early Saturday morning, the anger and fright of the previous night seemed to dissipate, and all seven of the Oswalds and Paines piled into Ruth’s station wagon so Ruth could drive Lee all the way into Oak Cliff and Dallas to a Texas Driver’s License Examining Station to get his learner’s permit. Unfortunately, it was a local election day and the office was closed.
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As a consolation, they trooped into a nearby dime store and did some shopping. Oswald bought rubber pants for both Junie and Rachel. He was in high spirits, crowing about his purchases, singing, and making puns in Russian that struck Marina, at least, as screamingly funny. His good mood persisted throughout the day. When Ruth left the house in the early afternoon to vote, he persuaded Marina to cook him a favorite Russian dish, potatoes and onions mixed with flour and eggs, and for once was pleased with the result, which he wolfed down while watching football on the television. At halftime he took the kids down the street for a popsicle and came back with Ruth’s Chris on his shoulders. After the game, he played “horsey” with the boy, galloping around on all fours with the boy on his back. Marina sensed that in spending so much time with Chris, Lee was pining to have his own son.
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That night in bed, Lee teased Marina, obviously not knowing that each of them had already been denied reentry into Russia, about returning to the Soviet Union, the thought of which he knew depressed her. And he continued his deception with her, telling her he wanted to go back too, and they would both work and see old friends. She didn’t want to go back to Minsk. He didn’t want to go to Leningrad. She didn’t like Moscow.

“Come on, Alka, let’s not go to Russia at all.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Hooray,” Marina cried. “Do you swear?”

“I swear.”

“Word of honor?”

“How come you need my word of honor?”

“Because sometimes you promise one thing and do another.”

“I won’t betray you this time,” he assured her.

It was not all back-and-forth chitchat. For some reason, Lee proceeded to tell Marina of all the previous women in his life, including eight during the time he was in Japan, the first one almost twice his age who taught him about sex and wanted to marry him, another he went to see more for her cooking than for love. He also told her of a one-year drought of women after he first arrived in Russia but then there had been a whole succession. “But it’s all in the past,” he said. “I was only tricking them. Then a girl came along with a red dress [Marina]—and she tricked me.” He did admit asking one of the girls, Ella German, to marry him, but “her grandmother scared her away,” Lee said. “Being American, she thought I must be a spy.” Lee told Marina that of all of the women he had ever known, she was the only one he had ever loved.

“Oh, Alka, you don’t love me. Look at the way we fight.”

“Everyone does that,” he replied.

“If you loved me, maybe we wouldn’t fight,” she rejoined.

“You silly, don’t you see that I love you?” he said as he stroked her hair. “Did you grow your hair long especially for me?”

“Who else but you,” she purred.
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R
uth was up before the others on Sunday morning. The previous night she had noticed on her desk what appeared to be the letter Lee had been working on. It was still there. At least the original handwritten draft was. The paper was folded over, but some of the text was visible, and she read, “The FBI is not now interested in my activities.” Struck by the fact that this obviously was a patent lie, she unfolded the letter and read the rest of it. It was a rough draft of the letter with many cross-outs. She was appalled and alarmed at the implications of it, with its talk of contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, and she wondered just whom she was harboring in her home. It sounded like a report from some sort of spy, even though she realized it was actually like someone trying to give the impression that he was a spy more than someone who really was. She was dismayed by the lies—the suggestion that the “notorious” FBI was trying to get Marina to defect to the United States, that he had met with Agent “Hasty” and had protested vigorously. She was offended that he was using her typewriter to write lies. Why, she asked herself, is Lee Oswald writing this kind of letter? What kind of a man is he after all?

She thought the FBI should see the letter. Someone, probably Lee, was in the shower, and she hurried to make a handwritten copy of the letter, which she put in an envelope and buried in a drawer in her desk before he finished. If Hosty came again as she thought he would, she would hand her copy of the letter over to him.
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Otherwise, Sunday was a typical weekend day. Lee again watched football in the afternoon. Michael came over for a while and had to step over Lee’s body sprawled on the floor. He didn’t begrudge Lee his leisure, but the thought crossed his mind that the would-be revolutionary did not seem to be working very hard to bring about the revolution. In the afternoon Ruth gave Lee another driving lesson, mostly on parking, and felt he was getting the hang of it.

But Ruth could not get the letter out of her mind. Late that evening she could not sleep, so she came out to the living room to join Lee, who was watching a late movie—a spy story. She wanted to confront him about the letter but finally could not. She didn’t want him to feel she was spying on him. In any case, it wasn’t just the letter that was troubling her, and Lee, for once, was perceptive and sensed her unease. “I guess you are real upset about going to the lawyer tomorrow,” he said.

She was going to discuss the possibility of a divorce from Michael, and she said she was indeed upset about the idea. She let it rest there, quietly watched a little more of the movie with him, and then went to bed.
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Ruth did go to see the lawyer on Monday morning, but since it was Veterans Day and Lee did not have to return to work, she parked her kids with a neighbor to give the Oswalds some welcomed time to themselves. Lee seemed self-absorbed, sitting alone in the backyard for a while before going back in and getting back to work on revising his letter. He eventually admitted to Marina that the letter he was working so assiduously on was to the Soviet embassy, but only to complain about the FBI. He even asked her to sign it along with him, but she would not. Later that afternoon, they talked more about the FBI while they hung the laundry out to dry. Lee told her that when they finally moved to a new apartment, after Christmas, he wanted her to keep their new address a secret from Ruth. Marina objected that she could not repay Ruth’s many kindnesses by doing such a thing. He eventually dropped the subject.
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On Tuesday morning, November 12, Oswald rode back to his job with Wesley Frazier. Since Frazier told the Warren Commission that once he and Oswald started to drive from Irving to Dallas that day, he never stopped anywhere,
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Oswald probably mailed his letter to the Soviet embassy earlier in a neighborhood mailbox. The letter was postmarked “Irving Nov 12 5-PM 1963 Tex.”
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That evening, Agent Winston Lawson flew into Dallas from Washington and the next morning, Wednesday, November 13, conferred with Forrest Sorrels. They discussed the Adlai Stevenson incident, which they did not want to see repeated during the president’s brief appearance in Dallas ten days hence. The danger posed by “extremist…right wing groups” preoccupied them throughout the time they worked on arrangements for the visit. Both the Trade Mart and the Women’s Building at the fairgrounds presented certain security drawbacks, but they were confident they could handle the problems once the decision was made in Washington.
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The next day, Thursday, November 14, Kennedy’s special assistant, Ken O’Donnell, informed Special Agent Gerry Behn that they had decided on the Trade Mart. Behn immediately called Dallas to inform Lawson.
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Late that afternoon, when Lee made his usual after-work phone call to Marina, she asked him not to come out to Irving that weekend. She was growing uncomfortable about the burden she and the children were placing on Ruth, and Lee had been there three days the preceding weekend. Ruth had said nothing to her, but she knew that Ruth was planning a birthday party for her little girl on Saturday and that Michael was going to attend it, and Marina definitely felt that all four Oswalds would be too much for what would be a family occasion. Lee made no objection and said he would do as she wished. Marina told him not to stay cooped up in his room the entire weekend, to take a walk in the park. Ruth got on the phone to tell Lee that because of the birthday party, she wouldn’t be able to take Lee back to the driver’s license place in Dallas. Lee was under the impression that he needed a car to get his learner’s permit but Ruth assured him that he didn’t, that he could go there without a car, which surprised him.
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That Friday, November 15, a week before President Kennedy was expected to visit Dallas, the
Dallas Morning News
reported that it was “unlikely” there would be a motorcade through the city. According to the
Morning News
, the decision as to whether the luncheon would be given at the Trade Mart or the Women’s Building had not been made—though it had been—but it was likely that the president would be driven to the luncheon directly from Love Field by the most convenient artery. That afternoon, the
Times Herald
was able to announce that the luncheon would indeed take place at the Trade Mart off Stemmons Freeway.
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The next day’s
Morning News
now said there
would
be a motorcade but that “the route of the Dallas motorcade has not been firmly established. The President is expected to travel over Lemmon Avenue or Cedar Springs Road to the downtown area, then west on Main Street before turning north after driving through the Triple Underpass. If he stays on schedule he would pass through the downtown area about noon.” Nothing was said about turning right off Main at Houston and left again on Elm in front of the Texas School Book Depository Building.
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Lee got over to the Driver’s License Examining Station on Saturday morning well before the regular noon closing hour, but he found a big crowd of people before him waiting to be served—the result of the station’s having been closed the preceding Saturday for the election and again on Monday for Veterans Day. He told Marina over the phone that afternoon that officials told him there was no use waiting in the long lines because he wouldn’t have had time to take the test anyway. He did, however, get an application form, which he took home to fill out. It was found among his belongings at his North Beckley rooming house after the assassination. He had not yet completed it.
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Lee told Marina he had taken her advice and visited the same park they had been to in the spring. She told him to be sure to “eat better” over the weekend, knowing he was prone to eat poorly, almost starve himself when they were apart. In another phone call that evening he assured her that he was not starving himself, that he found a restaurant where he could get a steak and fries with salad and dessert for just $1.25.
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Marina told Priscilla McMillan that Lee did not call her on Sunday, November 17, which was uncommon for him, but Ruth Paine says she is not sure he did not call. In any event, Marina missed Lee, and when she noticed June playing with the telephone and saying, “Papa, Papa,” that evening, she impulsively asked Ruth to call him at the number he had given them—she could have dialed the number herself, but she knew someone other than Lee would probably have answered the pay phone and she would be unable to converse in English with that person. Ruth made the call and asked for Lee Oswald. The man at the other end told her that there was no one in the house by that name. Ruth, astonished, asked, “Is this a rooming house?” and when she was told it was, asked, “Is this WH 3-8993?” “Yes” came the answer. But there was no Lee Oswald rooming there. Baffled, Ruth thanked the man and hung up.
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The next day, Monday, November 18, Oswald turned up at work as usual,
*
and he called Marina, as he usually did, at lunchtime. She told him that Ruth had tried to call him and asked him where he had been. “I was at home watching TV,” he told her. “Nobody called me to the phone. What name did she ask for me by?” Marina told him that Ruth had asked for Lee Oswald. There was a long silence from Lee. “Oh, damn,” he said finally. “I don’t live there under my real name.” Lee proceeded to scold Marina for trying to reach him at his rooming house. But Marina was even more angry with him. What was all this foolishness about? He told her he didn’t want his landlady to know his real name because she might read in the paper that he had been to Russia and been questioned by the authorities.

“It’s none of her business,” Marina said.

“You don’t understand a thing,” he said. “I don’t want the FBI to know where I live, either.” He ordered her not to tell Ruth about his alias.

Marina remained angry. “Starting all your foolishness again,” she said. “All these comedies. First one, then another. And now this fictitious name. When will it all end?”

He told her he had to get back to work and hung up.

Although he had ordered her not to say anything to Ruth, Marina couldn’t contain herself and told Ruth. She felt herself between “two fires,” loyalty to Lee and the fear that he was once again up to no good. That night he called again. Marina told Ruth she didn’t want to speak to him, but Ruth insisted—she couldn’t tell him that his wife would not come to the phone. When Marina did, Lee was insulting, addressing her as a
devushka
, a word that means something like “wench,” but more cruel in Russian than it would be in English.

“Hey, wench,” he said, “you are to take Ruth’s address book and cross my name and telephone number out of there.”

Marina would not hear of it. “It’s not my book and I have no right to touch it.”