Later, she and Ruth discussed whether to tell Lee about the visit. Ruth thought it might be better to wait until the weekend, and Marina agreed. Each time he called that week (he called twice a day, during his lunch break and at 5:30 in the afternoon), he started by asking: “Has the FBI been there?” Each time Marina said no.
No sooner had he arrived on Friday than Lee went outside where Marina was hanging diapers and asked, “Have they been here again?”[8]
Marina said yes.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I had a lot on my mind. I forgot. Besides, it wasn’t that important to me.”
“How on earth could you forget?”
“Well, it upset you last time, and I didn’t want to upset you again.”
“It upsets me worse if you keep it from me. Why must you hide things all the time? I never can count on you. What did he want to know?”
“Ask Ruth. She remembers better.”
“I want to hear from you.”
“It was the same nice man as before, darkish and very likable.”
“I didn’t ask what he was like; I want to know what he said.”
Marina said that through Ruth he had explained to her that if anybody from the Soviet Union or the United States harmed her or tried to use against her the fact that she was from Russia, she had a right to ask the FBI for help. “He’s such a nice man, Lee. Don’t be frightened. All he did was explain my rights and promise to protect them.”
“You fool,” said Lee, his voice full of anger, as if it were Marina’s fault that Hosty had come at all. “Don’t you see? He doesn’t care about your rights. He comes because it’s his job. You have no idea how to talk to the FBI. As usual, you were probably too polite. You can’t afford to let them see your weaknesses. What did he say next?”
Again, Marina told him to ask Ruth. By now she was angry at Lee for ruining her good spirits and refusing to believe the favorable things she had to say about Hosty.
Her words had no effect at all. Lee was angry at her because she failed to remember every detail and had forgotten to warn Ruth in advance that she was not to say anything to Hosty. His tone went beyond anger: he was accusing Marina.
It is Marina’s recollection that Lee then went straight to the kitchen and quizzed Ruth, who was fixing dinner. After that he found Marina in the bedroom and started pumping her all over again. He treated her as if she were untrustworthy and had no understanding of how important the whole matter was. “You fool,” he said again. “You frivolous, simple-minded fool. I trust you didn’t give your consent to having him defend your ‘rights’?”
“Of course not,” said Marina, “but I agreed with him.”
“Fool,” he said again. “As a result of these ‘rights,’ they’ll ask you ten times as many questions as before. If the Soviet embassy gets wind of it and you agreed to let this man protect your ‘rights,’ then you’ll really be in for it. You didn’t sign anything, did you?”
“Nobody asked me to, Lee. But I promise you I’ll never sign anything without your consent.”
Suddenly he remembered something. “Did you write down the license number?”
Marina gave a little wave. “It’s on the bureau,” she said, repeating the number out loud.
“You’ve got a good memory,” he said, “but only for some things.”
Marina was exhausted. She felt as if he had squeezed her dry.
At supper Lee questioned Ruth again, and this time she saw more clearly than the previous weekend just how upset he was. She tried to be reassuring. “You have a right to your views even if they’re unpopular,” she said.
Lee complained that he felt “inhibited” by the FBI and hated being bothered all the time.
Ruth wondered if he was worried about his job, and he said he was.
Ruth then told him the only other thing there was to tell. Hosty had inquired whether he might have a mental problem. Lee did not even answer. He barely suppressed a “scoffing laugh.”[9]
Lee was pensive and withdrawn for the rest of the evening. Seeing how disturbed he was, a part of Marina decided that she must be a fool indeed not to have understood the seriousness of the whole affair. But another part kept telling her that Lee was making a mountain out of a molehill. She was tired of the way he was always blowing things up out of all proportion and trying to make her as suspicious as he was himself.
Early the next day, Saturday, Lee asked Ruth if he might use her typewriter. Ruth assented, and as he began typing she carried Junie in her high chair over beside him, where he could keep an eye on her. When she came near, Lee quickly covered up the paper written in longhand that he was typing from. His gesture aroused her curiosity.[10]
About eleven that same morning, after Lee had finished typing, all seven of them—Ruth, the Oswalds, and the four children—piled into Ruth’s station wagon and drove to the Texas Drivers’ License Examining Station in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Lee wanted to apply for a learner’s permit, get a license, and then buy a car so he would qualify for better jobs. But the station was closed because of the Veterans Day weekend. Finding themselves in a shopping center, all seven then trooped into a dime store, where Ruth bought a few items for her children and Lee bought rubber pants for June and Rachel. “Rachel is so rich,” he said with pride. “Junie didn’t have so many clothes when she was born, and I didn’t either. She’s lucky. She was born free of charge, and the neighbors have given her lots of clothes and such a fine bed!”
On the way home in the car, Lee was as cheerful as Ruth had ever seen him. “He sang, he joked, he made puns” and word plays on the Russian language that caused Marina to double up with laughter.[11]
Marina was relieved at the change in him. She understood that whatever he had written that morning had calmed him after his fright of the evening before. He had been similarly calmed after ordering her to obtain the license number, and calmed again after he took the number off their bureau.
Ruth left the house to vote after lunch, and Lee, cutting up a little again and behaving like a naughty child, said, “Hurry up, Marina. Make me some potatoes and onions before Ruth gets back.”
“As if Ruth will mind if you eat potatoes.”
“I feel funny eating her potatoes every day.”
Marina fried some potatoes and onions mixed with flour and eggs, and for once it was a success. “Finally it comes out right,” Lee said, seating himself on the floor in front of the television set. “I told you again and again how to do it, and at last you know. Now I feel like a king!” He proceeded to down it with gusto.
When there was a break in the football game, Lee shepherded the children down the street to buy popsicles. Chris Paine ran on a little ahead, and Lee was afraid that he would end up under a car. He caught Chris, smacked him on the bottom, and carried him the rest of the way. When they got home, he still had Chris in his shoulders. “This little brigand got away,” he explained, “and I was afraid he’d be hit by a car. So I gave him a little spank on the behind. He’s such a big boy that I can hardly carry him on my shoulders.”
8
Oswald had told Marina that, while he liked the job he had, he wanted to find another, in photography. He did not want Ruth to learn about this, because she had helped him find his job and he did not want to hurt her feelings. Still, he told Marina that one Saturday he would stay in Dallas and look for photographic work. Marina thinks that this was the weekend and that he came to Irving only on Saturday, November 9. Ruth’s recollections preclude this and establish that he came on Friday, November 8. Michael Paine does not place him definitely at the dinner table on Friday, November 1, and it is barely possible that he stayed in Dallas until Saturday, November 2. But again, the weight of evidence is that he arrived in Irving about 5:30 P.M. on Friday, November 1. (No photography lab in Dallas has any record of a job application by Oswald after early October.)
Marina’s confusion about the dates may result from the fact that the Hosty visits were, because of their impact on Oswald, by far the most traumatic event in her married life since Walker.
Two other points can be made. First, the fact that Oswald was thinking of another job indicates that he was not wedded to the book depository site. Second, he had been talking about coming late one weekend, and it may well be that, far from feeling angry when Marina told him not to come the November 15–17 weekend, he may actually have welcomed it.
11
Testimony of Ruth Hyde Paine, Vol. 9, p. 394; and conversation with Ruth Paine, November 23, 1964.