As she got to know Marina, Ruth’s reservations about Lee grew to active dislike. It looked to her as if Lee “just wanted to get rid of his wife.”[25] He had not even taken her to a doctor although she was three months pregnant. Ruth had made almost a life’s work out of finding the best in people, but she had yet to find anything good in Lee.
Talking with Marina, Ruth came away with the impression that although she was troubled about Lee, she was committed to their marriage and would give her all for its survival. But Ruth had no inkling of how frightening Marina’s worries were. To Marina the Walker affair and its “Nixon” sequel meant that Lee loved “politics” more than he loved her and June. She feared that he could not wait to ship them both off to Russia so he could resume the political activities they had unwittingly interrupted. Life, or Lee, she limply supposed, would carry her as far as New Orleans. After that, Russia loomed like an iceberg.
As for Ruth’s feelings about Michael, Marina had the evidence of her own eyes. On the days when Michael was expected, Ruth hummed with happiness. She went skipping, almost airborne, about the house, singing madrigals in anticipation. And at suppertime—Michael generally came on Tuesday and Friday evening—she set the table with great care and served dinner by candlelight. Ruth was in love with Michael. She would do anything to patch up their marriage.
It was Michael whom Marina could not figure out. She was familiar enough with the ways of anger, but coldness she could not understand. To her it appeared that Michael had no feelings for anyone, not for Ruth, not even for his own children. What Marina could not have known was that Michael blamed himself bitterly. He yearned to be in love with his wife. He, too, would mend the marriage if he could. And what Marina could never have guessed was that underneath Michael’s reserve, his icily intellectual New England exterior, lay considerable compassion for her.
Marina and Lee were in touch. She had a happy note from him, written the day after his arrival in New Orleans, announcing that his aunt Lillian had taken him in warmly, that he was looking for work and would write to her as soon as he found it.[26] Marina was pleased that he signed the letter with the Russian Tseluyu—“I kiss you” or “Love”—a greeting he did not use even with his own mother. Maybe in spite of all that had happened he really did love her after all.
Once she called him on the telephone. And another time she wrote him a letter in which she mentioned that Ruth was driving east on her vacation and had offered to take her along. Marina wondered if she ought to go, ought to scout job possibilities in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia where there were Russian-speaking communities and where her language might be a help, not a hindrance, in finding work. Ruth had said that Marina was “quite excited” by the idea.[27] Her enthusiasm was in contrast with the passivity she had shown a few months earlier when George Bouhe and Katya Ford had tried to show her that she was not bound to Lee, that she could find a job and free herself. Now, for the first time, she seemed open to the idea.
The fact that she was at a distance from Lee and living in the household of a woman who was preparing to be self-supporting probably had something to do with the change. But Marina may also have been suggesting, as she had done before, that she could try to find work and help support them if Lee was unable to get a job. Or she may have been offering him an “out.” If he really did not love her and did not want to live with her again—or if he had any more horrors in store—then here was a chance to get rid of her without forcing her to go back to Russia.
And yet, for Marina, writing to Lee about finding a job was also the sort of ploy she used when she was trying to win somebody’s love. By hinting that she, too, had choices, that other people thought she could find a job, she was bidding up her own value to win back Lee’s love. She knew that it would make him jealous, and that for his jealousy she would have to pay. But it was utterly like her to get him to love her now—and pay later.[28]
Then came another cheerful letter from Lee in which he said that he still had not found a job, but his uncle had offered him a loan of $200.[29] Finally, on May 9 he called with triumph in his voice to announce that he had found a job and an apartment, and to ask them to come to New Orleans right away. Lee’s voice told Marina what she had been longing to hear: he loved her, he missed her, he wanted to pick up their family life again. Once more she began to have hope.
Overcome with joy, she cried out: “Papa loves us! Papa loves us!” to little June as if she did not believe it herself.
By noon the next day Marina, Ruth, and the three children were off in Ruth’s station wagon on the five hundred-mile journey to New Orleans.
— 27 —
Magazine Street
Marina hated the new apartment. She took one look at the high ceilings and the cockroaches and could barely hide her disappointment. Lee tried to show her how nice it was—the screened-in porch and the yard with wild strawberries growing in it. He had mopped the floor and cleaned the place, hoping she would like it. Marina knew it, knew his desire to please, but her feelings showed through. Seeing them together, it occurred to Ruth that Lee might or might not care about Marina, but he certainly cared about her opinion.
Marina and Ruth had arrived earlier that afternoon at the Murrets’. The five of them—two tired women and three small children—tumbled out of the station wagon and created chaos. Lee was beside himself with pride as he introduced Marina and the baby. He carried June on his shoulders and was ecstatic to see her walking for the first time.
Marina, too, was pleased, thinking that this house was to be her home. It was clean, cozy, neat—everything she had ever wanted. Then the truth reached her; she was going to have to live somewhere else. The Murrets were very kind to her, but Marina was miserably self-conscious. She thought she looked ugly and pregnant.
After an hour at the Murrets’, they drove to Magazine Street, and once Marina recovered from her initial shock, the five of them settled in fairly quickly. Ruth and the three children slept in the living room and a small extra room beside, it, while Lee and Marina used the bedroom in back.
They were happy to be together again—“I’ve missed you so,” Lee said again and again—and they made love three times that night and the next morning. It was the first time they had made love since March 29 or 30, the weekend when Marina had taken Lee’s photograph with the rifle. In the morning Ruth, on her way to the bathroom, passed by as they were making love.
“Do you think she saw?” Marina asked anxiously.
“Of course,” said Lee.
They were both embarrassed. Lee hardly dared face Ruth in the kitchen, and Marina felt the same way.
As for Ruth, she noticed that, pleased as Lee and Marina had been to see one another at first, irritation and even anger flared up quickly between them, very often over nothing at all. She and Marina had bought blackberries as they drove across Louisiana, and on Sunday Lee tried to make blackberry wine. Marina was sharp with him—“What are you doing, wasting all those good berries?” Lee kept on with it, but he was disheartened by Marina’s anger, and when she was not looking, he threw the whole mess out, berries, wine, and all. Shrewish as Marina was, Lee was even worse. He was in a bad temper the entire time. “Shut up,” he would say whenever Marina opened her mouth, and Ruth thought he was “rude” and “discourteous” to Marina throughout her visit.[1] So ferocious was their bickering that Ruth decided the presence of three extra people must be adding to the strain. She and her children left on Tuesday, a day or so ahead of schedule.
28
Pay later Marina did. According to a letter she wrote to Ruth in July, when she and Lee were living together in New Orleans, he had reproached her bitterly for even considering driving northeast with Ruth on vacation and gave it as still another example of Marina’s disloyalty to him. Marina added that it was one of the main bones of contention between them that summer.
29
In fact, Lee borrowed $30 or $40 from his uncle to make a first rental payment on his apartment. He repaid it promptly, after he had been at work a short time.