Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  As so often happened with Lee, his letter did go to the top. It reached Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, secretary of the Communist Party, and she asked Arnold Johnson to reply. Lee received an answer three weeks later. It was soothing in tone, suggested that the FPCC was broad enough in character so that Oswald might be able to work in the “background” without going “underground” and added, in response to still another letter that had been received from him, that the Communist Party might find a way to get in touch with him later.14

  Throughout August Lee must have been considering his next move. And after the radio debate of August 21, he was ready to face the situation. He had passed out nearly a thousand handbills and membership applications, had engaged in public demonstrations, and had spoken twice over the radio. And he had not yet attracted a single follower. Nor had he had a single word of encouragement from the FPCC. He had to face the fact that for him, in New Orleans, the FPCC was a lost cause. So once again he fell back on an old plan that had been at the back of his mind for years. He would go to Cuba to fight for Castro.

  The obstacles were formidable. Lee had saved a little money, but possibly not enough to get to Cuba. Moreover, the State Department had banned travel to Cuba by American citizens, and all that summer the Militant had been filled with stories about Americans who faced imprisonment and fines on their return. That was only a minor deterrent, however, for Lee did not intend to return. He hoped to stay in Cuba. Or if he did not like it there, he would go to China, or else seek readmission to Russia, where he would rejoin Marina. But the problem was how to get to Cuba in the first place.

  Finally, Lee came up with a solution. About the third week in August, possibly just after his exposure in the radio debate, he announced to Marina that he had decided to go to Cuba. Since there was no legal way to get there, he was going to hijack an airplane.

  “I’ll be needing your help,” he added.

  “Of course I won’t help,” came the wifely response.

  Lee immediately started exercising to strengthen his muscles—deep knee bends and arm exercises. Each evening he tore through the apartment in his undershorts for half an hour, making practice leaps as he went. June, who thought he was getting ready to play with her, jumped up in bed, followed him everywhere with her eyes, and burst out laughing.

  Marina could not help laughing, too. “Junie,” she said, “our papa is out of his mind.”

  Lee pretended not to hear.

  “With shoulders like yours, exercises couldn’t hurt,” Marina commented helpfully.

  Lee came up to her and flexed his muscles. “You think I’m not strong? Just feel those arms. You think I’m weak and not a man?”

  “Of course. You’re just a foolish boy.”

  “And whose is that?” he asked, pointing to June. “I made her.”

  “That didn’t take much time,” Marina answered tartly. “I spent nine months of my time and health on her. I made her.”

  Lee kept up his exercises for a couple of weeks, causing much merriment in the household. Afterward he rubbed himself all over with strong-smelling liniment, took a cold shower, and came out of the bathroom as red as a lobster.

  Meanwhile, he had brought home airline schedules and a large map of the world, which he tacked up inside the porch. He started measuring distances on the map of the world which he tacked up inside the porch. He started measuring distances on the map with a ruler, and Marina heard him mention “Key West.”15 Next, he told her that the problem was to find a plane with fuel enough to fly as far as Cuba. A Miami-bound flight would not do; they would have to find something bigger, a plane headed for Philadelphia or New York that had plenty of fuel.

  Marina listened with disbelief as Lee explained how he planned to hijack the plane. He would be sitting in the front row, he said. No one would notice when he got up and quietly moved into the pilot’s cabin. There he would pull his pistol and force the pilot to turn around.

  “And how about the passengers?” Marina asked.

  “I have strong muscles now. I’ll deal with them.”

  His eyes shining, he told Marina what she would have to do. First, they would buy tickets under different names so no one would know they were man and wife. She was to sit in the rear of the plane. Once Lee had subdued the pilot, she was to rise, holding June by the hand, and speak to the passengers, urging them to be calm.

  Marina reminded him that she did not speak English.

  “Right,” Lee said. “That script won’t do. I’ll have to think up something new.” He sat her down on the bed, went out of the room, then burst through the bedroom door pointing his pistol straight at her: “Hands up, and don’t make any noise!”

  Shaking all over with laughter, Marina reminded him that she could not speak those words either. But Lee refused to give up. If only she would play her part, he promised to buy her a small, woman-sized gun. He said he had been shopping for one already.

  Marina could restrain herself no longer. “Do you really think anybody will be fooled?” she said. “A pregnant woman, her stomach sticking way out, a tiny girl in one hand and a pistol in the other? I’ve never held a pistol in my life, much less shot anyone.”

  “I’ll show you how.”

  “No thanks. I can’t stand shooting. I’d go out of my mind.”

  He implored her just to hold the pistol even if she did not mean to use it.

  “No,” she answered again. “If you want to break your neck, do it alone.”

  He ran through the script again. “I’ll be up in the front row. No one will think twice when I go into the cabin. I’ll whip out my gun and order the pilot to turn around. Then I’ll open the door and stand where both the pilot and the passengers can see me.”

  “And you don’t think the passengers would try to rescue him?” Marina asked.

  “Ugh, they’re cowardly Americans,” Lee said. “They won’t even dare to move. They’ll just sit there like cows.”

  “Do what you like,” Marina said. “But don’t count on me. It’s not my nature to go around killing people, and I don’t advise you to do it, either. The whole thing is so funny, it even makes the baby laugh.”

  Lee assured her he had thought of everything. Nothing could go wrong. Marina told him lots of things could go wrong; there was plenty he hadn’t thought of. It wouldn’t turn out the way he thought.

  Lee went to the airport and obtained more schedules, this time of flights not from New Orleans but from a smaller city nearby so he would have fewer passengers to subdue. For two days he was carried away by that. After he had tried about four times to talk Marina into joining him in his scheme, and had failed, he told her he had been looking for someone who would help him, someone who might want to go to Cuba. But he had given up. The reason he gave could not have been more significant: “Your accomplice is your enemy for life”—meaning that an accomplice can be a witness against you as long as you live.

  At this stage of their marriage, Lee was confiding in Marina, making her his touchstone, his lightning rod to reality. And Marina understood what he was asking of her. Even though she wondered, as he unfolded his hijacking scheme, whether or not he was crazy, she drew funny word pictures for him to show how his plan looked in the clear light of day. Ever since the night, at the end of June, when he had broken down and cried in the kitchen, she perceived that Lee needed her. With what appears to be an inborn sympathy for anyone who is lost or in trouble, or on the outs with the world, she reached out and responded to his need. “Do you know why I loved Lee?” she once said. “I loved him because I felt he was in search of himself. I was in search of myself, too. I couldn’t show him the way, but I wanted to help him and give him support while he was searching.”

  Indeed, by August of 1963 their relationship had become an extraordinary feat of empathy on Marina’s part, one that few people could have achieved, much less a girl of twenty-two. No doubt it was this quality that had enabled her to get through to Lee and win from him such trust as he was capable of givi
ng. Yet his “trust” was a crushing burden for her, too.

  As the one person whom Lee trusted, and feeling responsible for his actions as she did, Marina was painfully at odds with herself and her surroundings. She, too, had been a rebel. In part, it was this that had drawn her to Lee, and this that still helped her to understand him. But now she was about to be the mother of a second child, and carrying the full weight of the family, she badly needed an anchor. Everything in her strained toward staying in one place, settling in America, building a nest. Lee’s responsibilities had changed, but he had not. He was still a rebel, and he kept repeating the same actions again and again. He yanked Marina away from the stability she coveted, placed her squarely outside American life, and prevented her from building her nest.

  Even that was not the worst—for husband and wife were also at odds over right and wrong. Marina tried, not always successfully, to resist complicity in Lee’s deceptions. She refused to approve such of his schemes as she knew about. But she now insists that he had a stronger character than she, “because he brought me low and made me cover up his ‘black deeds,’ when it was against my morality to do so. I felt too much pity for him. If only I had been a stronger person, maybe it would have helped.”

  Marina’s words are an apology for her failure to make a different man of Lee and alter the outcome of his life. They are an admission of the guilt she felt for the way that their life together worked out. But the truth is that there is no such thing as being married to a man like Lee Oswald and not becoming his emotional accomplice.

  Meanwhile, she went on trying to help Lee find his way without letting him get dangerously off course. “Look,” she said to him about the hijacking scheme, “it’s not a good omen that the mirror broke. It means you’ve got to be careful. Go to Cuba if you must. But try to find a legal way. Don’t do anything dangerous when you get there. And don’t do anything illegal. If it doesn’t go right, come back home right away.”

  She reminded him that they had one child and would soon have another. “If you want my support, I’ll give it to you. I’ll save money and do what I can for you here. Of course,” she added, lowering her voice, “it would be better to save for the new baby. But I’ll sacrifice and try to save on that if it will help you to do what you want.”

  Her words found their mark. A day or two later, Lee burst into the apartment. “Guess what, Mama? I’ve found a legal way. There’s a Cuban embassy in Mexico. I’ll go there. I’ll show them my clippings, show them how much I’ve done for Cuba, and explain how hard it is to help in America. And how above all I want to help Cuba. Will you come to me if I send for you there?”

  “Hmm,” Marina said, “we’ll see.” She accepted his going to Cuba, so long as he did it in a legal way, for she knew that he would have to see the country with his own eyes before he could give up his dream. But she was skeptical. It was her guess that no country would satisfy him and that he would be home in three months to a year. And she could not resist teasing him. “If you do go,” she said, “for heaven’s sake take some American soap. It will be dirty there.”

  “Okay,” he replied. “You can send me packages if you’re still here.” Then he begged her again to come with him.

  “Not to Cuba,” she said, “but Havana—a lovely city.”

  Lee promised that she could study free of charge and get a job. Since he was American and the Cubans would be flattered to have an American defector, they would give him privileges—a job and a nice little house.

  Marina hated that about her own country: Russians felt that foreigners were somehow better than they were and gave them every privilege. She could not believe the same might be true of Castro, of whom she had heard nothing but good.

  “No, no,” she said. “They have real Communism there. You earn according to your work. You’ll have to work for ten years before they’ll give you any privileges. The place is full of poor people already. Besides,” she added, dropping her voice again in mild reproof, “it’s not who you are but what you are that will make all the difference to them.”

  Marina had no thought of joining Lee in Cuba. Cuba, China, there was no telling where he might want to go next. Of course she would have to join him if she had no way of living in America. But the wisest course was to wait and see. It was her hope that he would become disillusioned in Cuba as he had in Russia, and that this time he might learn something from it. He would come home, settle down, and live a normal life with his family.

  That was her dream. His was that she would join him wherever he pleased—“I go to China, you’ll go to China.” Or more ominous and more likely—“I’ll send you back to Russia. And if I don’t like Cuba, I will join you over there.” He added that while he was in Mexico City, he would go to the Soviet embassy and try to speed up her visa.

  Marina did not realize that Lee could not go to Cuba and simply come home when he had had enough. Instead, this time he would face a real danger of imprisonment. Nor was it easy for an American to gain admission to Cuba, even from Mexico City. He would first have to go to the Soviet embassy and apply for a visa for Russia. Then he could go to the Cuban embassy with his Russian visa and apply for a visa to visit Cuba “in transit” to Russia. That was where Marina came in. She was his pretext and his fallback plan. He was going to Russia to join his wife and children. Lee had not changed at all. Russia was still a place of refuge in his mind, the place he would go if he got in trouble or if he ran out of choices elsewhere. Even though he had now experienced life in the Soviet Union for himself, Russia continued to hold the same place in his thoughts that it had five years earlier, during his talks with his Marine Corps comrades.

  Once he was in Cuba, of course, Lee counted on the old magic to work. He would do in Havana exactly what he had done in Moscow in 1959: persuade the Cubans to let him stay. He would show them his clippings, his FPCC leaflets, his correspondence with the FPCC and the Communist Party, and all his bona fides as a Castro enthusiast and convince them that he was a believer and not a spy. Maybe they would allow him to join the army and train recruits in guerrilla warfare. Maybe Castro would send him out to help liberate neighboring islands. Or maybe he would stand by to help if there was an invasion from the United States. All he asked was to be allowed to fight for Castro.

  Later, if he got tired of Cuba, he might go to China or take his American passport and visit various countries in Western Europe at a leisurely pace on his way to join Marina in Russia. Money, of course, was a problem, but maybe he would have earned some as a mercenary or as a Castro volunteer. Maybe he counted on Cuba to give him a subsidy as Russia had. Or maybe he did not think about money at all.

  Lee’s plan bore a haunting similarity to his defection from America to Russia only four years before. Once again he would forsake his homeland and count on a foreign government to take care of him. The plan made no sense, of course. Even if Marina was permitted to return to Russia, it was extremely unlikely that he would be readmitted. There were no guarantees that he would be allowed to visit Cuba in transit, much less to remain there. And if he did succeed in visiting Cuba and was then denied readmission to Russia, he would face prosecution and imprisonment if he tried to return to America.

  Real or unreal as the plan might be, Lee before the end of August was studying Spanish again, as he had done in 1958. At the close of each lesson, he asked Marina to give him a little test, especially a pronunciation test, since he had trouble with the Spanish “r.”

  Lee appreciated Marina’s acquiescence, or her awareness, anyhow, that it was no use telling him what to do, and that the only way for him to learn whether he liked Cuba was to go there and experience it for himself. After she had given him her consent to go peacefully, via Mexico, he gave her his highest accolade—“You understand me.”

  Despite the harmony that presently prevailed between them, there was an occasional sign that it was not a case of two minds with but a single thought. They had always agreed that their next child, a boy, was to be named “David
Lee.” But for some time Lee had been turning another name over in his mind, and he cautiously broached it to Marina. He told her, stealing up a little on the subject, that he thought it might be a nice touch to call their new baby “Fidel.”

  Marina had been trying to give in, trying to understand and accept Lee, and do nothing to jangle his nerves. But this was too much. Was she, or was she not, about to be the mother of this child? To think that politics, the cause of all her woes and the thing she hated most in life, was to be insinuated into her family, into her very belly, was more than Marina could abide.

  She reasserted herself in all her old magnificent asperity. “There is no Fidel and there will be no Fidel in our family.”

  — 31 —

  Parting

  The Oswalds’ neighbors are astonishingly unanimous about Lee’s movements after he lost his job. One of them was out of work, too, and it seems he enjoyed nothing better than noticing Lee’s comings and goings. All the neighbors agree that Lee was “in and out” of his apartment during the day but invariably home at night.1 After reading at home all morning, during the afternoons he would sometimes catch a bus on the corner headed toward the business section, or walk that way. But he was never out for long. Once in a while he walked to a confectionery store on the corner of Magazine and Dufosset Streets, bought some ice cream, and carried it back to the apartment.2 The Oswalds did their grocery shopping at the Winn-Dixie on Prytania Street.

  The Garners, managers of the building, recall that Lee was never on time with the rent. Mrs. Garner vividly remembers Lee, clad only in a pair of outgrown, gold high school basketball shorts—no shirt—going up and down the street at night stuffing his garbage into everybody’s cans, including hers, because he could not or would not spend money to buy a garbage can for himself.3