Yes, Robert answered. On June 8, nearly a week before, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had published a front-page photo of Lee and a story headed: “Ex-Marine Reported on Way Back from Russia,” based on information given to American reporters by the US embassy in Moscow. Robert had two or three calls from reporters after that, he said, but following Lee’s firm instructions from Minsk, he had told them nothing. Robert had the impression that his brother was “disappointed” by the absence of the press.[4]
Marina, meanwhile, was preoccupied by something quite different. Vada and Robert and their children were all so perfectly dressed. Would they, too, think she was a beggar? Would they notice how clumsily her shoes were sewn together? Her embarrassment deepened on the drive from Love Field to Fort Worth when Vada, with Lee translating, offered to fix Marina’s hair. “I must look really dreadful,” Marina thought. She did not realize that Vada, a beautician, was simply offering the best she had to give.
“My brother is a worker,” Lee told her as soon as they set foot in Robert’s house. “Yet look at this. He’s got a car and a house of his own!” And to Marina, indeed, Robert’s small, one-story house looked like paradise on earth. She had never in all her life supposed that one man, his wife, and children could fill up a whole house by themselves.
She took an immediate liking to Robert and Vada, and she liked the cleanliness of the house. It was frustrating to be unable to speak to them directly without asking Lee to translate. But despite the language barrier, she soon learned why she had attracted so much attention on the plane.
“Why do you wrap up the baby?” Vada asked.
“Because swaddling is better for her,” Lee said, defending the Russian way.
Nothing daunted, Vada showed them how to diaper the child. But before they put the baby to bed, Lee told Marina to swaddle her again—“She’ll sleep better the way she’s used to.” After that the baby wore diapers by day and swaddling by night, when Vada did not see her.
Robert Oswald, a salesman for the Acme Brick Company of Fort Worth and, at twenty-eight, five years older than Lee, thought that his brother had changed. His skin was ruddier now and not so fair, he had lost a few pounds, and he seemed, at least until he relaxed a bit after the first few days, “tense and anxious.” But the biggest change was his hair. It was kinky now, in contrast to the natural curl it had had before, and it had thinned out badly on top. Thinking it over long afterward and reflecting that men in his family all had a full head of hair, Robert wondered if Lee had been subjected to shock treatments in Russia that changed his thinking as well as his hair. The only other change he noticed was that Lee seemed more “outgoing” than he had been before.
The day after their arrival, on Friday, June 15, another member of the family materialized, the boys’ mother, Marguerite Oswald. She was working as a practical nurse in nearby Crowell, Texas, and she came to spend the weekend. Marguerite was a small woman, short legged and a little top-heavy looking. She had a large, square head; gray hair; and spectacles. Her clothes gave the impression of having been carefully selected and put together, the choice of a coherent personality. Marina liked her, especially her soft gray hair.
Marguerite was overjoyed to see Lee. He was not quite as happy to see her. “She’s gotten fat,” he apologized. “She’s changed a lot. She didn’t used to be that fat.”
“What do you expect?” Marina asked. “She’s not a girl of fifteen.”
Marguerite and Lee were arguing before the weekend was over. “She thinks that she did it all,” Lee grumbled. “She thinks she’s the one who got us out.”
Marguerite told Lee that she was planning to write a book about his defection. She had been working on it for some time. The year before, she had been to Washington and had asked to see President Kennedy as part of the background. “Mother,” Lee said emphatically, “you are not going to write a book.”
“Lee, don’t tell me what to do,” Marguerite replied. “I cannot write the book now because, honey, you are alive and back. It has nothing to do with you and Marina. It is my life, because of your defection.”
“Mother,” Lee said again, “I tell you, you are not to write the book. They could kill [Marina] and her family.”[5]
But on another matter mother and son agreed. Both criticized the US Department of State for the “red tape” that had delayed Lee’s return. Spontaneously, both made the same complaints, both used identical expressions, and both made the same errors of fact. Robert took no part in the airing of complaints by his mother and Lee and did not seem to look at things the same way.
While old relationships were being renewed, Vada Oswald and her sister, Gloria Jean, were busy transforming Marina, tailoring her to the brilliant Texas sun. They produced a pair of shorts and urged her to try them on. Marina did—and was horrified at the sight of her own legs. Then Vada cut her hair and gave her a permanent wave. Marina emerged into the backyard wearing shorts for the first time in her life, and with short, wavy hair. Robert and Lee rose to their feet. “You’re a real American now,” Lee said. “You won’t stick out any more.”
Robert was more gallant. He paid Marina many compliments, so many that it finally dawned on her that to Robert at least she was not just a “little Russian fool.” Emboldened, she asked Lee to inquire whether Robert was sorry that his brother had married a Russian.
“Oh, no,” Robert answered. “I was afraid he would marry a Japanese.”[6]
Lee, meanwhile, had already abandoned the baby’s Russian name, Marina, and was calling her “Junka” or “June.” And he told Marina to please call him “Lee,” not “Alka,” or Robert would think she did not know his name. She eventually came to use both names; later, looking back on their life together, she realized that “Alka” was the name she used when she was thinking of their happier, Russian days. “Lee,” his American name, was the name she used when she was angry, the name he wrung from her when he was spiteful. Those mean, spiteful moods, when it seemed as if there was no wound he was incapable of inflicting, came upon him at Robert’s. They began, it seemed to Marina later, when he started looking for a job. They got worse as time when on, and as being in his old environment again simply got Lee down.
But at first there was gaiety and laughter. Marina loved to laugh. She loved looking at things in a humorous way and was not above clowning now and then. Although Lee often laughed at Marina, he did not always laugh with her. He seemed edgy in the presence of her laughter, wary that it might be directed at him and might belittle him somehow.
Other strains in their relationship began to show almost immediately. Lee was irritated at constantly having to translate for her. He scolded Marina because she had not studied English. “But, Alka,” she said, “you didn’t let me.” He answered that she should have studied English anyway and would have if she really cared.
After a long weekend talking and getting reacquainted with Robert and Vada, Lee was out on the streets of Fort Worth. The first thing he did was check the Yellow Pages for a public stenographer, and on the morning of Monday, June 18, Miss Pauline Virginia Bates glanced up from her typewriter to see a young man walk in clad in dark trousers and a dark blazer with only a T-shirt underneath.[7]
Lee asked her to do some typing. Out of a large manila folder, he took a sheaf of notes and explained that they had been smuggled out of Russia under his clothes. “Some are typed on a little portable, some of ’em are handwritten in ink, some in pencil. I’ll have to sit right here and help you with ’em because some are in Russian and some are in English.”