“You don’t like my haircut?” he asked.
“On Robert it’s fine,” she said, “but on you it’s no good at all. You look like a squashed frog.”
He laughed.
Still staring at the picture, she added: “Anyone can see you ran away from Russia. You look frightened to death.”
Again he laughed, and then he played the title song from the movie Exodus four or five times on the jukebox.
Robert Oswald and John Pic met them at the Greyhound station in Fort Worth. John was now an air force sergeant stationed in San Antonio, Texas, and he, his wife, and his children were staying with Robert for the holidays. It was the first meeting of the three brothers since Lee’s childhood and the only time they would all be together with their wives and children. Marguerite Oswald, mother of all three boys, their opposing object and unifying force, was not present that day. None of them wanted her.
All of Lee’s life, John had expected “some great tragedy to strike” his youngest brother. Now that Lee had defected to Russia and come back, John supposed that he had had his tragedy and was curious to see how he had come out of it. John found his brother thinner and balder than he expected, with eyes somewhat sunk in his head. John was slightly bemused. He had not really talked to him since that day ten years before in New York City when Lee, who was then only twelve years old, had threatened John’s wife, Marge, with a knife. Lee and John had seen each other once or twice and could have met other times, but Lee, still steaming over the family quarrel, had refused to speak to his elder brother. John wondered if Lee still remembered.[16]
Lee at first gave no sign. The brothers greeted each other warmly and chatted amicably in the car. They were welcomed at Robert’s by the two wives, Marge Pic and Vada Oswald, and the four children, John’s two and Robert’s two. All afternoon the children played together. Lee seemed happy to see his brothers and especially to tell John about his experiences in Russia and the Marine Corps. Marina noticed that her husband did not have that “What am I here for?” attitude he displayed on most social occasions. But Marge Pic picked up a different signal. Lee was friendly enough when he greeted her. But in a way that was quite unmistakable he omitted to address another word to her all day.[17]
Marina was bored. She longed for someone she could talk to without Lee’s having to interpret. She telephoned her old pupil, Paul Gregory, who was home in Fort Worth for the holiday, and at six in the evening he came over.
It was at this moment that Lee’s hostility came into the open. As Paul Gregory appeared in the doorway, Lee introduced John as his “half brother,” a designation the three boys had been at pains all their lives to avoid. They had always stood together as full brothers and fellow sufferers at the hands of Marguerite. Suddenly, John was aware that Lee was still smoldering with the old antagonism. He was not one to forget.[18]
Marina and Lee said goodbye to the family. They spent the evening at the Gregorys’, where they spoke Russian and ate turkey sandwiches. Then they took a late bus back to Dallas, arriving at one in the morning. It would be a year and a day before Lee saw any of his family again—on November 23, 1963, when Robert visited him in a jail cell in Dallas.
— 20 —
Lee and George
With Marina’s return to the Elsbeth Street apartment, the Oswalds began their new life together in Dallas. It was a lonely life for Marina, with Lee at work all day and only infrequent contacts with her Russian friends. One day shortly after Thanksgiving, Gary Taylor dropped by to return a copy of Lee’s essay “The Collective.” He intended to stay only a few minutes, but so warm was his welcome—Marina ran down the street and bought doughnuts for the three of them—that he stayed for an hour or two. The Oswalds hardly ever had callers, and Marina was overjoyed to see a face from outside. Gary thought husband and wife were getting along well.[1]
Another visitor after Thanksgiving got a very different impression. She was Lydia Dymitruk, a friend of Anna Meller’s and a fellow émigré. Marina had called Mrs. Meller, upset because the baby was ill and Lee would not take her to the doctor because he was afraid he could not pay the bill. Mrs. Meller did not have a car, but Mrs. Dymitruk did, and she could provide transportation.[2]
Marina was distraught when Mrs. Dymitruk arrived. The baby was burning with a fever of 103 degrees, and they drove immediately to the emergency room of Parkland Hospital, where the nurses gave the baby medicine for her fever and announced that a pediatrician would be in at five in the afternoon. They would do nothing more. Lydia, who had never had a child of her own, was frightened because the baby seemed to be having trouble breathing and embarrassed because Marina kept telling her the undoubted truth—that in her country such callousness toward a sick child would be unthinkable. They drove on to a clinic, where they were dismayed to find forty sick children ahead of them. Lydia begged the nurses to take little June right away. She had a fever; her case was an emergency. She would have to take her turn, the nurses said, and that might not be for three or four hours. Lydia told them that she would hold them legally responsible if anything happened to the baby. Still they refused to give treatment.
Lydia left Marina and the baby at the Elsbeth Street apartment, promising to return. Lee was not yet home from work when she reappeared about five in the afternoon; and, afraid to go off without him, Marina asked her to wait. Lee came in, calmly ate dinner, and announced that he refused to take the baby to the hospital. “She’ll be all right, she doesn’t need it,” he said. “Besides, I can’t afford it. I can’t pay.” His attitude was the more extraordinary because he doted on “his” baby and generally trembled with fear if she so much as hiccupped or coughed.
He and Marina went into the kitchen to discuss it, and Lydia heard the sounds of a verbal battle royal. Marina won. Husband and wife soon emerged and announced that they were going to the hospital.
At Parkland a doctor took a blood test and X-rayed the baby’s lungs. When he had finished treating her, he signed some forms and told Lee to take them to the service desk. There, the nurse asked his address. Lee gave a false reply. She asked his job. He answered that he was unemployed. Did he receive unemployment compensation? “No,” he replied.
“How on earth do you live?” she asked, astonished.
“Friends help,” Lee shrugged.
Lydia did not hear the questions and answers. But she heard Marina, standing behind Lee in line, hissing at him in Russian, “You liar! What on earth are you saying that for?”
The nurse gave Lee a slip requiring a token payment to the cashier. Lee merely stuffed the paper inside his pocket and muttered, “Let’s get out of here.” They clambered into the back of Lydia’s car and immediately fell to fighting over which one would hold the baby. Marina berated Lee all the way home. The baby was sick, had been seriously sick for three days, and Lee was lying again. Would it ever end?
Up front, Lydia heard only Marina’s shrewish, schoolteacherish tone, not the substance of the battle. She was sorry for Lee. Lydia sensed that he was angry and tense, sitting with fists clenched, trying to hold himself in until he came to his front door. The one thing he did say was that he ought not to have to pay at all, that in Russia doctors and medicines were free, and they ought to be free here, too.