The Death of a President
Ruth’s chief efforts, of course, were devoted to Marina. Here her ingenuity developed unexpected veins of richness. For example, she was even helpful with the vexing problem of sexual frustration. She was among those to whom Marina had complained that Lee was inadequate. Ruth explained that they were both separated from their husbands, and she proposed that in the first week of December (six weeks after the birth of Marina’s second child) they should go to a Planned Parenthood clinic for “consultation on this matter of satisfaction.” But the greatest rewards were not in the conferring of blessings by Ruth, a have, upon Marina, a have-not. They lay in the normal friendship of two women who were genuinely fond of one another, enjoyed one another’s company and shared an abiding affection for their babies. Their unusual communal unit, in fine, was happy and prosperous. Although the future remained hidden, two adults and four children had made a sensible adjustment to a new way of life. The thing worked.
It worked, that is, for those who were included. Lee Oswald had been pointedly excluded. Since Michael Paine was absent by preference, Lee was the only individual frozen out by the arrangement, and for him it was a grim exile. Not only was he shut off from his wife; he was also isolated from his children. The children were important to him. In the fugue of Lee’s psychosis there was one sane streak, his performance as a father. As Ruth had observed, he had loved to come home with an armload of groceries and shout ahead in Russian, “Devochki!”—“Girls!” Now that had been denied him. He had been cozened, or had cozened himself, of his manliness, and his chances of getting it back appeared exceedingly dim. If at times Ruth seemed to be a Lady Bountiful cradling a cornucopia that disgorged an endless stream of marvels, it must be remembered that with every gesture she was asserting her role as head of the new household. Lee’s occasional presence was by her grace and on her terms. And they were very harsh terms. He had to accept his status as an outsider in what had been his own family.9
That is an extremely long string to attach to any gift, but she had been firm. His fists didn’t intimidate her. To Ruth, Lee looked like a weakling. She knew enough Marxism to recognize his babblings about it as a sham. On this she agreed with Michael, who as the son of a Communist was even more qualified to pass judgment upon Lee’s authenticity. During one of their random encounters he had watched Oswald gawking at the Paine television screen with glazed eyes. “For a revolutionary,” he had murmured with amusement, “this guy sure does a lot of sitting.” Poking around the crowded garage, Michael had moved Lee’s blanket roll twice. He assumed it contained camping equipment. As an engineer he knew from the moment of inertia that the tube within the blanket was iron or steel. The thought flickered across his mind that tent poles were made of metal these days, but that wasn’t his business; indeed, as he recalled later, he felt “a little embarrassed” to be handling another man’s belongings, and he never dreamed of untying it to peer within. The contents would have stupefied him. He had already weighed the possibility of Lee’s becoming a source of violence and ruled it out. Although something of a stranger in his own household, Michael was aware of a new relationship in it, and he had concluded that Lee wasn’t going to make trouble—that “he wouldn’t be a danger to Ruth.” Like his wife he dismissed Oswald as a pretentious, self-pitying lout. Ruth went even further. She was so unimpressed by the counterfeit ideologue that she didn’t hesitate to lay down the law to him. She didn’t want him in her house, she said, and Marina didn’t either. He would be allowed to see his children occasionally, but otherwise he wasn’t welcome. He must learn to accept the fact that his wife had made a new home. And outwardly, at least, he did accept it. His appearances on Fifth Street were so uncommon that he never even kept a razor there. His real home became his furnished room on North Beckley Avenue. On his trips to Irving he was, in effect, an estranged husband who has been granted weekend visitation privileges.
To Ruth it seemed that Lee was as obvious as a Parcheesi board. Marina, on the other hand, was more of an enigma. That was part of her charm. You never knew what would turn up next. Ruth was not entirely hoodwinked. She was conscious of what she called “a wall” in her companion. As she put it later, “You go so far with her and then she draws a shade.” Yet she had no inkling of the horror behind that shade. She never guessed the extent of Marina’s duplicity. Apparently the girl had told her everything about Lee. Since her confidences had included the most delicate secrets of the marriage bed, it was reasonable to assume that she had omitted nothing of consequence. In fact she had left out a good deal. She knew all about her husband’s aliases. He had told her about his shot in the dark at Walker, and using a box camera she had photographed him holding the 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano carbine and the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. At the very moment that she was leaving him for Ruth, during that long drive back to Texas, she knew that he was trying to get to Havana. But she had divulged none of this to her new companion.
In view of their rapport, Marina’s reticence on these subjects is unfathomable. At the express wish of Chief Justice Warren, who found her appealing, the President’s Commission treated her with exceptional consideration. In retrospect her own lack of consideration for the woman who had become her benefactress appears inexcusable. Most unforgivable, she kept her trusting friend ignorant of the significance of the brown-green blanket roll in the Paine garage. She was keenly aware of the rifle inside, and of the fact that as long as it lay there it would be available to Lee, whom she knew to be a thwarted assassin. Ruth was a devout friend. She said a Quaker grace at meals. As a matter of religious conviction she rejected all forms of violence; Marina knew that. Yet in defiance of conventions which are as highly honored in Russia as in the United States she had deliberately withheld from Ruth the astounding information that they slept each night beneath a roof that sheltered a high-powered weapon armed with full-jacketed military cartridges and a muzzle velocity of 2,165 feet per second.
It was approximately 5:25 P.M. when Wesley Frazier dropped Lee off and drove on to his own house, a half-block away. Because Marina was alone with the children—Ruth had gone to the grocery store—only Marina’s account of the ensuing scene at 2515 West Fifth Street survives, but it scarcely reflects credit on her and there is no reason to doubt it. Certainly it has the ring of truth.
She was first startled to see her husband, and then she was indignant. His arrival was entirely unexpected. Before coming out he was supposed to telephone and ask Ruth’s permission. He knew the women didn’t want him there during the week, which probably explains why he hadn’t called. There was another reason for his wife’s choler, however. Last weekend, at her request, he had remained in Dallas. Lee had been on his best behavior lately. He was carefully avoiding rows; he saw little enough of his wife and children as it was. Therefore when she had told him to stay away—this was on Friday, November 15—he had replied that since he wasn’t wanted he would quietly accede to her wishes, and that afternoon Frazier had driven to Irving alone. The following Monday, November 18, while watching young Junie play with Ruth’s telephone dial, Marina had a whim. She wanted to call Lee at his rooming house. Neither of the women had ever called him there before, but Ruth had the phone number, WHitney 8-8998. He had scribbled it down for her before Marina’s recent confinement, with the thought that she might let him know when his wife’s labor pains began. It was typical of Lee’s ineptness that he neglected to explain that he was living in Dallas under an assumed name. The baby had been born on a Sunday, when he was in Irving, thus averting a crisis then. On November 18, however, when Ruth dialed the number at Marina’s request, the voice on the other end told her that no person named Oswald lived at 1026 North Beckley. Next day Lee called Marina, and she learned from him that his housekeeper and his fellow roomers knew him as O. H. Lee. Irrationally, he was furious with her for having phoned. She was even more furious—it was impossible to keep this from Ruth—and although he called back several times that day she refused to talk to him.
Now it was Thursday, and although
Lee told her he had come to make peace, she continued to sulk. Sallow, dismal, and penitent, he repeatedly tried to start a conversation with her. He told her of his loneliness, of how much he missed the children. To him Ruth was “a tall and stupid woman”; he said that he detested her. Marina refused to listen to him, and he grew increasingly disturbed. But he wouldn’t quit. In her words, “He tried very hard to please me.” He put away diapers for her and lavished attention on Junie and the infant. When she remained implacable, he pleaded with her not to be angry with him; it upset him so. Then he made his proposal. He wanted her to leave Ruth. He was tired of living by himself. He suggested that the reason for their present row was that although they were husband and wife they were “not living together.” Again and again he repeated that her preference for Ruth was unbearable for him. He didn’t want Marina “to remain with Ruth any longer.” He wanted her and the children with him, and if she would only nod her head he would “rent an apartment in Dallas tomorrow.”
At this point the station wagon drove up. Ruth had finished shopping. She saw Lee as she drew over to the curb; he was playing on the lawn with Junie while Marina sat apart, pouting. Like Marina, Ruth was surprised to find him there, but she didn’t reproach him. Instead, she decided to divert him by mentioning the imminent arrival of John Kennedy. Kennedy had, in fact, been very much on her mind. In the supermarket she had wondered whether there were any way she and Marina could take the children into Dallas tomorrow morning and find a suitable observation point along the parade route. She had even thought of Lee in this context, wishing that he was working in the Book Depository building on Elm Street, which would command such an excellent view of the motorcade. She knew the building well. A thousand times, driving into the city through the triple underpass, she had consulted the red, white, and blue neon Hertz sign on its roof, which provided passing motorists with the latest time and temperature readings. But the Book Depository had two warehouses in Dallas, and Ruth was under the impression that he was employed in the other one, several blocks north of the plaza; it was the older of the two and, on November 21, the better known. So her suggestion remained unmade. Striding up with an armful of groceries, as he himself had done when he was head of this family, she merely said to him in Russian, “Our President is coming to town”—“Nahsh President Preyehdid v gorod.” Oswald made no reply. He brushed past her and went out to the car to help her carry in the grocery bags.
Embarrassed, Marina drew Ruth aside and apologized for Lee’s presence. She hadn’t known that he was coming, she whispered; it wasn’t her fault. Ruth murmured that she understood, and together the two mothers prepared supper. Marina, however, was unable to concentrate on her domestic duties. Lee persisted in begging her to quit Ruth. Whenever they were out of the other woman’s hearing he resumed his wheedling, and although she maintained her arctic silence it was impossible to ignore him completely.
At 6:30 he joined them at the table. He said little during the meal, He could scarcely woo Marina in Ruth’s presence. Toying with his food, he sat at the end of the long table, aloof, tense, brooding. He was preparing a new line of argument, and once the dishes had been cleared away he renewed his entreaties with his wife until, at last, she spoke to him. His appeals, she coldly informed him, had left her unmoved; she intended to stay here with Ruth. It was much more sensible that way. After all, while she was here and he was in Dallas, he was spending less money. But money didn’t mean much to Oswald anymore. At the prospect of further loneliness, he became more agitated. To this, Marina made what at first seemed to be an encouraging response. His niggardliness had always been a bone between them. She pointed out that with two young daughters it was difficult for her to wash everything by hand, and asked him to buy her a washing machine.
Really crawling now, he capitulated. He wanted her back on any terms, and he promised her the machine.
Then he discovered that she had been only trifling with him. Sarcastically she told him to go and spend the money on himself. She didn’t need his largess. She had found an asylum here with Ruth. She could manage without him.
That may well have been the breaking point for Oswald. He had nothing left, not even pride. After her snub, in Marina’s words, “He then stopped talking and sat down and watched television and then went to bed.” The interval between their final rupture and his early retirement was nearly two hours. Darkness came down upon Irving; the President of the United States spoke sharply to the Vice President in a Houston hotel room 240 miles to the southeast; and Oswald remained hunched in the shadowy living room. The mothers, busy with their children, had no time for him. Marina glanced in once and saw him staring at an old film of a World War II battle. Apparently he was intent upon the flickering Zenith screen. In fact, he was going mad.
Madness is not a virus. It does not strike all at once. Lee Oswald’s disease had been in process all his life. Unquestionably his mother had been a far greater influence in his life than either Marina or Ruth. They were dealing with an abnormal man whose snarl of problems had existed long before either of them met him, and while the situation may have contributed to his breakdown, it would be both unjust and inaccurate to hold either accountable for it. They had grave problems of their own, and Lee himself had contributed greatly to Marina’s.
Nevertheless, the impact of his confrontation with his wife on November 21 may have been decisive, and it seems clear that the total eclipse of his reason occurred shortly before 9 P.M. that evening, a few minutes after Jacqueline Kennedy had finished her brief Spanish speech in Houston, and while she and the President were making their way across the crowded lobby en route to the Thomas dinner. The time is established by two observations made by the women in the Fifth Street house. At nine o’clock Marina noticed that her husband had gone into her bedroom and closed the door. Simultaneously Ruth, who had just finished settling her children, crossed the kitchen, entered the garage to lacquer toy blocks, and found that the garage light was on. Immediately she knew that Lee had been in there. Marina had been with her, and Marina was always careful about lights anyhow. Leaving the switch on was characteristic of Lee’s carelessness, and Ruth didn’t give it a second thought. Yet there can have been only one reason for his trip to the garage. He went for the rifle. Whether he slipped the weapon into the brown paper bag and took both to the bedroom or left them in the garage is a matter of conjecture. The second course seems far likelier. In the bedroom he would have risked discovery by Marina, the only person in the world who would have guessed the full implications of the concealed rifle and who might have tripped over it if the baby, whose bassinet was a few feet from the bed, awoke her before dawn. Leaving it where it was, he could pick it up just as easily, and more safely, at daybreak.
Ruth finished the blocks and then talked to Marina, who bathed and retired at 11:30 P.M. Undressing in the dark, she tiptoed across the linoleum floor, turned down the embroidered white counterpane, and slid into the double bed beside her husband. In the moments before slumber she had the distinct impression that he was lying there awake. Since he slept until the alarm next morning—usually he rose early and turned the alarm off—it seems probable that sleep did, indeed, come to him very late. But Marina was in no mood for a truce. She was still angry. Wordlessly she turned on her side, drew up the bedspread, and dropped off.
Outside the bedroom’s small windows a light rain continued to fall. Overhead, invisible stars turned in the clouded sky. A wind had risen, tugging damply at mailboxes and wires and loose sashes, making furry little sounds in unswept gutters and storm drains. Thursday became Friday. The night sped on.
Two
SS 100 X
Two hours before dawn on Friday morning, the faithful began to gather on the fringes of the parking lot across from Fort Worth’s Hotel Texas. Drifting up Commerce Street in small groups, they lit cigarettes and leaned against the shabby store fronts, smoking and yawning. It was a marvel that they were there at all. The rain had continued to fall, and they had no assuran
ce that the speech here would not be called off. But this speech had been scheduled as a concession to the working-class supporters of Yarborough, and Kennedy’s reputation for hardiness was part of his charisma, so they came in increasing numbers, until the lot had begun to fill up like a parade ground before roll call. There were only a few feminine umbrellas, only a scattering of pretty secretaries; it was largely a masculine crowd: union men in waterproofs and stout shoes who swapped friendly shoves, called jovially to the mounted policemen in yellow rain gear who were watching over them, and craned their necks for some sign of the legendary Secret Service. By daybreak over five thousand spectators were staring up at the banal brown-brick facade of the hotel. Occasionally you heard a hoarse, lusty cheer.
Inside, early risers whose accommodations faced the lot became aware of the teeming below. At six o’clock, with an hour of darkness left, Bob Baskin of the Dallas News staggered sleepily to the window of Room 326 and glanced down at the rain-slick streets. Baskin decided to stay put; he could hear the speech from here over the public address system. Five floors above him and a half-hour later, Rear Admiral Dr. George Burkley heaved himself out of the bed in 836 and dialed room service, ordering breakfast. Like all members of Kennedy’s staff the chunky, shy physician had learned to function on the road with a few hours’ sleep. It was important to be up before the President; you never knew when to expect an urgent call from him, and several men had routine tasks which must be finished before he awakened.
Master Sergeant Joe Giordano had been dressed fifteen minutes before the doctor rolled out and was now supervising the affixing of the Chief Executive’s seals to the flatbed truck in the lot and the podium of the hotel’s Grand Ballroom. Ted Clifton tapped on the door of 804 and asked the bagman if he had packed. Gearhart had, and his roommate, Cecil Stoughton, was loading his camera with fast film and cleaning lenses. Bill Greer and Henry Rybka, the Presidential chauffeurs, had already left the hotel. They were in the Fort Worth police garage, fetching the President’s temporary car and his Secret Service follow-up car. On the floor below Kennedy, the communications center had begun to stir. Colonel Swindal was reporting from Carswell. His crews had checked out of the motel, his aircraft was ready to go. A teletype machine in the center came to life with a sprinkle of bells. The keys chattered out the CIA’s daily intelligence précis for the President. A Signalman sealed them in twin envelopes and handed them to Godfrey McHugh, who signed for them, trotted up a flight of stairs, and stood respectfully outside Suite 850, awaiting the familiar voice of command. He would have to sign again, noting the precise time the Commander in Chief received the secret reports, and Godfrey liked a tidy record.