The de Mohrenschildts delivered Marina and her possessions to the Mellers’, and that same day George Bouhe drove her, the baby, and their most needed belongings to the house of Declan and Katya Ford. The Fords had a young baby and a big house. Mr. Ford would be away that week at a geology convention. It would be easier for Katya to have them for a few days than for the Mellers.
Katya Ford had grown up in Rostov-on-Don and escaped Russia during the war. She married an American GI and came to the United States. Eventually, she was divorced and then married a second time, to Declan Ford, a consulting geologist. Scrupulous and realistic in her relationships, Katya had a devastating eye for character. She had been favorably impressed by Lee at their first meeting, but her impression had quickly changed.
Marina had been at the Fords’ for two days when Lee went to George de Mohrenschildt and found out where she was staying. Lee then telephoned and, when Katya answered, asked to speak to Marina. Or rather, he refused to hang up until he had spoken to Marina. Marina did not want to talk to him. “You’d better tell him yourself,” said Katya.
Marina was very curt with Lee. She told him it was no use calling any more; she was not going to come back.
Lee persisted. He started to call once or twice an evening after that Marina was abrupt for a night or two, but the third night she allowed herself to be drawn in. Lee had something on his mind: his brother Robert had invited them to spend Thanksgiving in Fort Worth. “Go by yourself,” Marina told him. It was a prospect that humiliated him, and she knew it. She felt herself weaken, wondered how he would manage without her, wondered what Robert would think of her for running away. She asked Katya whether she ought to go back.
Katya considered Lee a brute. She felt that there was something strange, something not quite right about him. In her view, hitting Marina was like hitting a frail, skinny kitten, and Katya could not forgive him. But she felt that Marina, too, was to blame. If Lee was unstable, Marina was immature. With a husband as highstrung, as ready to erupt as Lee, Katya thought it foolhardy and provocative to talk back as sharply as Marina did. A wife, the one person who is privy to all a man’s weaknesses, simply has to have tact, Katya believed, and Marina did not have an ounce of it.
Besides, Katya was practical. Marina was no good at housework. It seemed out of the question for her to find a job and a home as a live-in domestic helper, her best hope until she learned English. Until Marina could stand on her own feet, Katya thought, she had no choice but to go back to Lee. She advised Marina to start studying English right away and equip herself to hold a job. She could break away when the baby was old enough for nursery school.[9]
Marina was of two minds. She felt that she could not go on living off other people forever, but she did not see, although her friends were doing their best to make her see, that she actually had a choice and could live alone. She missed Lee, and she missed home. Of their quarrelsome, nearly hungry, existence she thought: “It’s a poor home, but it’s home all the same.” But she would not go back right away. She would hold out a while and teach Lee to value her more.
George Bouhe had Marina’s promise that she would not go back to Lee. The week of November 12, while she was at Katya’s, he took her to lunch with Mrs. Frank (Valentina, known as “Anna”) Ray. Mrs. Ray was a Russian married to an American, and they had three small children. Immediately, she invited Marina to stay at her house. Mrs. Ray would teach Marina English and put her in night school. Marina would live with the Rays until she could manage on her own. To George Bouhe, it was the answer to a prayer. It was Marina’s chance to break away, and she accepted.
That weekend Declan Ford delivered Marina and the baby to the Rays’. Marina had told Lee where she was going. Within minutes of her arrival, he telephoned and begged her to see him. “I’m lonely,” he said. “I want to see Junie and talk to you about Thanksgiving.”
Marina caved in. “All right,” she said, “come over.”
Declan Ford and Frank Ray picked him up at the bus stop.
“I think you know Mr. Ford,” Ray said, starting to introduce them.
“I believe I do,” Lee answered.
Ford disliked him for that remark and for the cold way in which it was spoken, when they had, in fact, spent an afternoon at the Mellers’ in September. He made a mental note about Lee: This guy is looking for someone to support him, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me. Twice, Frank Ray asked Lee where he was working, and twice Lee changed the subject and avoided an answer.[10]
Marina’s heart jumped when she saw her husband. They went into a room by themselves.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m sorry. Why do you torture me so? I come home and there’s nobody there. No you, no Junie.”
“I didn’t chase you out,” Marina said. “You wanted it. You gave me no choice.”
He loved her, he said. It wasn’t much, he knew, but he loved her the best he know how. He begged her to come back to him. Robert, he added, had invited them for Thanksgiving, and it would be terrible to show up without her.
Marina realized that Lee needed her. He had no friends, no one to count on but her. Harsh as his treatment was, she knew he loved her. But she brushed him away when he tried to kiss her. He went down on his knees and kissed her ankles and feet. His eyes were filled with tears, and he begged her forgiveness again. He would try to change, he said. He had a “terrible character,” and he could not change overnight. But change he would, bit by bit. He could not go on living without her. And the baby needed a father.
“Why are you playing Romeo?” Marina said, embarrassed at his being at her feet. “Get up or someone will come in the door.” Her voice was severe, but she felt herself melting inside.
He got up, protesting as he did so that he refused to get up until she forgave him. Both of them were in tears.
“My little fool,” she said.
“You’re my fool, too,” he said.
Suddenly, Lee was all smiles. He covered the baby with kisses and said to her: “We’re all three going to live together again. Mama’s not going to take Junie away from Papa any more.”
After supper Frank Ray drove the three of them back to Elsbeth Street.
Greatly relieved, Lee wrote his brother that very night: they would be happy to come for Thanksgiving.[11] He had engineered the reconciliation in the nick of time—Thanksgiving was only four days away.
The Russians were furious. Even Katya Ford said to Marina: “You mean you took advantage of all your friends just to teach Lee a lesson?” Still, they had qualms about consigning her completely to the tender mercies of her husband, and among themselves they discussed what they ought to do next. But one thing was clear: Bouhe had had it. “George,” he said to de Mohrenschildt, “I cannot go on. This guy is nuts, and we are going to have trouble.”
“Oh, come on,” George said. “You’re too critical. You’re a snob. Just because he didn’t come from St. Petersburg, you drop them like a hot cake. They are nice young people.”
“All right, George,” said Bouhe. “You carry the ball.”[12]
Which is precisely what happened. After that the Russians, with the exception of the de Mohrenschildts, saw very little of the Oswalds. Nevertheless, there were bulletins from the battlefront. “They’re off, they’re on, he’s beating her, they’ve broken up”—so it went.[13] One day the de Mohrenschildts seemed to favor separation, while the next they favored reconciliation. Rumors about the Oswalds flew all the way to Fort Worth, where Max Clark heard that de Mohrenschildt “got hold of Oswald and threatened him—picked him up by his shirt and shook him like a dog and told him he would really work him over if he ever laid another hand” on Marina.[14]
10
Testimony of Declan P. Ford, Vol. 2, pp. 325, 333–334; and conversations with the author.