Around noon, Paul’s father pulled up behind the Buick. There were two men and two women with him. They brought groceries. The elder Gregory hugged his son, then kissed Marina on the cheek (the one that wasn’t swollen). There was a lot of talk in Russian. The younger Gregory was lost, but Marina was found: she lit up like a neon sign. She invited them in. Soon they were sitting in the living room, drinking iced tea and talking. Marina’s hands flew like excited birds. June went from hand to hand and lap to lap.
I was fascinated. The Russian émigré community had found the girl-woman who would become their darling. How could she be anything else? She was young, she was a stranger in a strange land, she was beautiful. Of course, beauty happened to be married to the beast — a surly young American who hit her (bad), and who believed passionately in a system these upper-middle-class folks had just as passionately rejected (far worse).
Yet Lee would accept their groceries with only occasional outbursts of temper, and when they came with furnishings — a new bed, a bright pink crib for the baby — he accepted these, too. He hoped the Russians would get him out of the hole he was in. But he didn’t like them, and by the time he moved his family to Dallas in November of ’62, he must have known his feelings were heartily reciprocated. Why
Some of this I knew from Al’s notes. Most of it I saw played out on the stage across the street, or deduced from the only important conversation my lamp-bug picked up and recorded.
On the evening of August twenty-fifth, a Saturday, Marina dolled up in a pretty blue dress and popped June into a corduroy romper with appliquéd flowers on the front. Lee, looking sour, emerged from the bedroom in what had to be his only suit. It was a moderately hilarious wool box that could only have been made in Russia. It was a hot night, and I imagined he would be wringing with sweat before it was over. They walked carefully down the porch steps (the bad one still hadn’t been fixed) and set off for the bus stop. I got into my car and drove up to the corner of Mercedes Street and Winscott Road. I could see them standing by the telephone pole with its white-painted stripe, arguing. Big surprise there. The bus came. The Oswalds got on. I followed, just as I had followed Frank Dunning in Derry.
They got off the bus in a residential neighborhood on the north side of Dallas. I parked and watched them walk down to a small but handsome fieldstone-and-timber Tudor house. The carriage lamps at the end of the walk glowed softly in the dusk. There was no crabgrass on
Marina pushed Lee in front of her and pointed at the bell. He rang it. Peter Gregory and his son came out, and when June put her arms out to Paul, the young man laughed and took her. Lee’s mouth twitched downward when he saw this.
Another man came out. I recognized him from the group that had arrived on the day of Paul Gregory’s first language lesson, and he had been back to the Oswald place three or four times since, bringing groceries, toys for June, or both. I was pretty sure his name was George Bouhe (yes, another George, the past harmonizes in all sorts of ways), and although he was pushing sixty, I had an idea he was seriously crushing on Marina.
According to the short-order cook who’d gotten me into this, Bouhe was the one who persuaded Peter Gregory to throw the get-acquainted party. George de Mohrenschildt wasn’t there, but he’d hear about it shortly thereafter. Bouhe would tell de Mohrenschildt about the Oswalds and their peculiar marriage. He would also tell de Mohrenschildt that Lee Oswald had made a scene at the party, praising socialism and the Russian collectives.
