Ruth said that it was true.
Marina turned to her again. This time, with characteristic bluntness, she said: “Your Russian has suddenly become no good at all.”[8]
At police headquarters all of them were interrogated, with Ruth acting as Marina’s interpreter. Marina was shown a rifle and was asked if it belonged to Lee. She hated rifles; to her they all looked alike. She knew that Lee’s was dark and had a sight on it. Beyond that, she could not say. Glancing through a glass partition as the rifle was being held up in front of Marina, Michael suddenly realized what had become of the “camping equipment” he had held in his arms.
Marina was truthful in her inability to identify the rifle, but she was in a quandary over what she might be asked next, and what she ought to reply. She had no idea that Lee was charged with shooting a police officer; she had never even heard the name Tippit. She was aware only that Lee was suspected of killing President Kennedy, and she had no idea whether or not he was guilty. The facts appeared to be against him, but then, Lee was always in trouble, and Marina thought that his arrest might be a provocation or a misunderstanding. Whatever she did, she did not want to add a scintilla to any evidence the police might have against him. For behind the president, as she alone was aware, lay General Walker. Suppose Lee was cleared of killing Kennedy. They still might find out about Walker. And Marina mistakenly assumed that Lee was as likely to be put in the electric chair for an attempted murder as for murder itself.
Marina asked to see Lee. She was told that he was upstairs being interrogated and she could not see him that day.
Everything was topsy-turvy—Marina could make no sense of it at all. At first she had been offended and angered by the way the police officers had burst into Ruth’s house, ransacked everything, routed them out, and brusquely carried them off as if they were all criminals. But at the police station she felt badly frightened, and she expected to be arrested any second. That was how it would have been in Russia. Even if your husband were innocent, they would arrest you until it was straightened out. Now, inexplicably, the police were much nicer than they had been at Ruth’s. One officer offered to get her coffee, and another offered help with the baby. They saw her fear and tried to calm her. Even the officer who questioned her was kind. He was not harsh with her and did not try to twist her answers or catch her out in a lie. That was lucky, Marina thought. She did not want to say anything that might hurt Lee.
After the police finished questioning her, Marina saw Marguerite Oswald, Lee’s mother. It was the first time Marguerite had seen Rachel—indeed, she had not known that Marina and Lee had been expecting a second child—and she greeted Marina and the children warmly. Marina also caught a glimpse of Lee’s brother, Robert. He was sitting alone, very pale, with his head in his hands.
Marina has no idea how long they were at police headquarters, but eventually she, Ruth, Michael, and the five children were allowed to go back to the Paines’. She does not remember whether they ate, or what they ate, or who did the cooking. But the house was in an uproar. It was overrun by reporters who wanted to talk to Marina, Ruth, and Marguerite. Suddenly there were angry words between Ruth and Marguerite. Ruth was defending Marina’s right to speak, but Marguerite would not allow it. “I’m his mother,” she shrieked. “I’m the one who’s going to speak.” Then she told Marina that neither of them should talk to the reporters, and Marina, without being told, understood her reason—money. For a while they had the television on, and Marina remembers watching Lee being led through a corridor at the police station.
Despite the shocks she had had, Marina had her wits about her. Alone in the bedroom she found June’s baby book, which, by some miracle of oversight, the policemen had left behind. In it were the two small photographs of Lee dressed in black and wearing his guns. He had given them to her to keep for June. Not looking at them closely, Marina thought they were two copies of the same photograph. These, she realized, were evidence. She took them out of the baby book carefully and, in the privacy of the bedroom, showed them to her mother-in-law. “Mama,” she said, pointing to the photographs and explaining as best she could in English, “Walker—this is Lee.” “Oh, no,” Marguerite moaned, raising her hands to her head. She gesticulated a bit, put her finger to her mouth, pointed toward Ruth’s room, and said, “Ruth, no.” She shook her head, meaning that Marina was not to show the photographs to Ruth, or tell her anything about them.
Marina later made a terrible discovery. She happened to glance at the bureau and saw that, again by a miracle of oversight, the police had left another of her possessions behind. It was a delicate little demitasse cup of pale blue-green with violets and a slender golden rim that had belonged to her grandmother. It was so thin that the light glowed through it as if it were parchment. Marina looked inside. There lay Lee’s wedding ring.
“Oh, no,” she thought, and her heart sank again. Lee never took his wedding ring off, not even on his grimiest manual jobs. She had seen him wearing it the night before. Marina suddenly realized what it meant. Lee had not just gone out and shot the president spontaneously. He had intended to do it when he left for work that day. Again, things were falling into place. Marina told no one about Lee’s ring.
Before they went to bed that night, Ruth and Marina had a talk in the kitchen. Ruth thought Marina was “stunned.” Marina said that everything she had ever heard about the Kennedys came from Lee. If he had minded translating articles about them or telling her what he knew about the president, she was sure she would have known it.
Something else hurt Marina and left her bewildered. Only the night before, she told Ruth, Lee had suggested that they get an apartment together in Dallas soon. How could Lee have made such a suggestion, she wondered aloud, when he must already have been planning an act that would destroy their life together?[9]
“Do you think he did it, then?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know,” Marina said.[10]
Marina did not sleep that night. All she saw before her was the electric chair. She knew nothing about American law, the long trials and appeals that might take years in the courts. She thought that it would be over in three days and that Lee would be electrocuted.
What should she do if he were tried? She thought she would have to testify and would be committing a crime if she failed to tell everything she knew. She could tell them nothing about the Kennedy shooting. But she did know about Lee’s attempt on Walker. If they asked her about that, she would not be able to lie. And yet to say anything about it would be to incriminate Lee, help seal the case against him, and put him in the electric chair. To send your husband to his death—that would be a real crime.
Marina did not know if Lee was guilty, although the signs seemed to point that way. And so, of course, she could not know if he would confess. He might, claiming that his actions had been justified. Then again he might not. Either way, Marina thought, he would love being in the spotlight and would use it to proclaim his ideas. In his eyes his political ideas stood higher even than himself. He would talk about Marxism, Communism, and injustice all over the world.
None of this helped Marina as she tried to figure out what to do. Again and again, her thoughts came back to the electric chair. If Lee was guilty, then within three days he would be strapped in that chair and he would be dead. She herself would be in prison. What provision do they have in America, she wondered, for babies whose parents are both gone, one dead, the other in prison?