That was enough for Lee. Using the street map he carried with him at all times, he figured out how to get to 136 Elmeer Street in Metairie. Hazel Oswald received him graciously. She gave Lee his father’s photograph and explained who his relatives were. It turned out that the Oswalds, like Lee’s family on his mother’s side, the Claveries, were of French and German descent. Although his uncles were dead, Hazel said that his father had three sisters, all alive and in New Orleans. Lee also had six first cousins in New Orleans and at least one first cousin once removed. But the family had drifted away from Lee’s father. R. E. Lee Oswald had been separated from his first wife for some time when he met Marguerite, and he got a divorce only when he decided to remarry. As Catholics, most of the family did not like it and saw little of R. E. Lee after that.[15] A few of them continued to see him and his new family, but his funeral in August 1939 had been the end of it. Only Hazel had seen Marguerite since, but she had never met Lee.
Proudly, Lee showed his aunt a photograph of Marina. Hazel, like the rest of the family, had read of Lee’s defection in the papers but had been too tactful to bring it up. On seeing Marina’s photograph, however, her curiosity involuntarily slipped out. “Is she Russian?” Hazel asked. Lee flinched and said, “Why do you ask that?”[16] When he got back to the Murrets’ that night, he reported that his aunt had been “very nice,” “very, very happy” to see him, and had invited him to come back again.[17]
He never did. Nor did he look up his cousins or his aunts or go back to visit his father’s grave. Perhaps he had discovered all he wanted to know; perhaps Hazel’s question put him off; perhaps his father’s photograph was a disappointment; perhaps his interests simply shifted. But he had made at least an attempt to trace his father’s history, to find out where he came from, to whom he belonged. In the city of his birth, he had gone back to the beginning of his life in search of the father he had lost, a loss that was perhaps in the forefront of his mind since he had said goodbye to George de Mohrenschildt only two weeks earlier. He found a grave and a photograph, nothing more. He did not tell Marina that he had visited his father’s grave or gone to see Hazel Oswald. He did not show her his father’s photograph. The picture did not turn up later among his possessions.
Lee continued his search for a job by answering newspaper ads and through the Louisiana State Employment Office, where characteristically, he lied about his previous job history and claimed, on his unemployment compensation forms, to have applied for jobs he had not applied for at all. His references, too, were works of imagination. He often used his Uncle Dutz Murret’s name, although he had not asked his permission. Occasionally he listed “George Hidell,” whom he described as a “college student” at “705 Polk Street.”[18] The address and occupation were fictitious, while the name “George Hidell” appears to have been made up of his own alias, “Hidell,” and the first name of de Mohrenschildt. Lee also fell back for references on William S. Oswald Jr., Alice Barre, and William S. Oswald III, an uncle, aunt, and cousin, respectively, whom he did not know and did not bother to look up and whose addresses he sometimes gave incorrectly.
Finally, two weeks to the day after his arrival in New Orleans, Lee found a job as a greaser and maintenance man at the William B. Reily Company, distributor of Luzianne coffee. On his brief application there, he may have set his own record for lies. He said that he had been living at 757 French Street (the Murrets’) for three years and that he had graduated from a high school that he had attended for only a few weeks; and he gave as references his cousin John Murret, whose permission he did not ask; Sergeant Robert Hidell (a composite of his brother Robert and his own alias “Hidell”), “on active duty with the US Marine Corps” (a fiction from beginning to end); and “Lieutenant J. Evans, active duty US Marine Corps” (the surname and first initial of a man he was to look up later that day, combined with a fictitious Marine Corps rank and identification).[19]
The job was manual labor, but at $1.50 an hour it paid more than his last job at $1.35. Lee had applied for photography jobs, or so he claimed on his unemployment compensation forms, but when the Louisiana State Employment Office actually arranged a job interview in photography, Lee did not bother to show up. On the morning he got his new job, he came back to the Murrets’ waving his newspaper in the air, grabbed Aunt Lillian around the neck, kissed her, and triumphantly announced, “I got it, I got it!”
Lillian was not impressed. “You know, Lee,” she said, in one of those remarks that only she could get away with, “you are really not qualified to do anything too much. If you don’t like this job, why don’t you try to go back to school at night and see if you can’t learn a trade?”
“No,” Lee said. “I don’t have to go back to school. I don’t have to learn anything. I know everything.”[20]
The same day he found the job, Lee also found an apartment. Myrtle and Julian Evans had known Lee and his mother when he was growing up, and Marguerite had once rented an apartment from them. Lee went to their building, and Julian Evans, who was seated at breakfast drinking his last cup of coffee, recognized him right away. He had known Lee both as a child and as a teenager, and there was something about him that neither he nor Myrtle liked. Julian finished his coffee, shook hands with the caller, and left for work. His wife Myrtle, a heavy-set woman in her fifties, who wore glasses and had reddish hair in a bun, peered at Lee closely. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Sure, I am Lee Oswald. I was just waiting to see when you were going to recognize me.”
“Lee Oswald! What are you doing in this country? I thought you were in Russia.”[21]
He explained that he was back, that he had a Russian wife and a child, and was looking for an apartment. There was nothing available at the Evanses, but Myrtle volunteered to help him look. It occurred to her that if he was going to work at the Reily coffee company, they might as well try on Magazine Street so Lee could live close to his job. They drove up and down Magazine Street looking for “For Rent” signs. Lee spotted one and they went in.
There were two apartments for rent at 4907 Magazine Street, and the bigger one looked as if it might do. It was on the ground floor. It had a long living room, a screened-in front porch, a yard, and the kind of iron fence children can’t crawl through. The rent was $65 a month. Myrtle advised Lee that it was the best value for his money and he’d better take it.
The landlady was Mrs. Jesse Garner, and Lee gave her a month’s rent and an application for utilities along with a $5 deposit. But then he told another of his funny, pointless lies. He said he worked for the Leon Israel Company of 300 Magazine Street. The company existed, but it was not the company that had hired him.
Myrtle Evans took Lee home with her for lunch. They talked about New Orleans, about Lee’s mother and brothers, and about Russia. Mrs. Evans’s curiosity was piqued about Marina. She said she would like to meet her.
“Just come any time,” said Lee.
That was the last Myrtle Evans ever saw of him.
Lee called Marina that evening to tell her about the job and the apartment. The next day, Friday, May 10, he went to work at the Reily coffee company for the first time and spent the night in his new apartment. On Saturday he showed up early at the Murrets’. Marina was expected that day, and they decided to move Lee’s luggage before she came. Again Lee loaded the car by himself; then he and Dutz sat in front with Marilyn and her mother behind, and the four of them drove to Magazine Street together. Lee was obviously eager for Marina to arrive. And he was delighted with the apartment. The neighborhood was not good, but the apartment had been freshly painted, the icebox was new, and some of the furniture looked new. Lee was not sure that Marina would like it, however. It had high ceilings, and Marina, like many Soviet Russians, did not like high ceilings.