Meanwhile, he had brought home airline schedules and a large map of the world, which he tacked up inside the porch. He started measuring distances on the map of the world which he tacked up inside the porch. He started measuring distances on the map with a ruler, and Marina heard him mention “Key West.”[15] Next, he told her that the problem was to find a plane with fuel enough to fly as far as Cuba. A Miami-bound flight would not do; they would have to find something bigger, a plane headed for Philadelphia or New York that had plenty of fuel.
Marina listened with disbelief as Lee explained how he planned to hijack the plane. He would be sitting in the front row, he said. No one would notice when he got up and quietly moved into the pilot’s cabin. There he would pull his pistol and force the pilot to turn around.
“And how about the passengers?” Marina asked.
“I have strong muscles now. I’ll deal with them.”
His eyes shining, he told Marina what she would have to do. First, they would buy tickets under different names so no one would know they were man and wife. She was to sit in the rear of the plane. Once Lee had subdued the pilot, she was to rise, holding June by the hand, and speak to the passengers, urging them to be calm.
Marina reminded him that she did not speak English.
“Right,” Lee said. “That script won’t do. I’ll have to think up something new.” He sat her down on the bed, went out of the room, then burst through the bedroom door pointing his pistol straight at her: “Hands up, and don’t make any noise!”
Shaking all over with laughter, Marina reminded him that she could not speak those words either. But Lee refused to give up. If only she would play her part, he promised to buy her a small, woman-sized gun. He said he had been shopping for one already.
Marina could restrain herself no longer. “Do you really think anybody will be fooled?” she said. “A pregnant woman, her stomach sticking way out, a tiny girl in one hand and a pistol in the other? I’ve never held a pistol in my life, much less shot anyone.”
“I’ll show you how.”
“No thanks. I can’t stand shooting. I’d go out of my mind.”
He implored her just to hold the pistol even if she did not mean to use it.
“No,” she answered again. “If you want to break your neck, do it alone.”
He ran through the script again. “I’ll be up in the front row. No one will think twice when I go into the cabin. I’ll whip out my gun and order the pilot to turn around. Then I’ll open the door and stand where both the pilot and the passengers can see me.”
“And you don’t think the passengers would try to rescue him?” Marina asked.
“Ugh, they’re cowardly Americans,” Lee said. “They won’t even dare to move. They’ll just sit there like cows.”
“Do what you like,” Marina said. “But don’t count on me. It’s not my nature to go around killing people, and I don’t advise you to do it, either. The whole thing is so funny, it even makes the baby laugh.”
Lee assured her he had thought of everything. Nothing could go wrong. Marina told him lots of things could go wrong; there was plenty he hadn’t thought of. It wouldn’t turn out the way he thought.
Lee went to the airport and obtained more schedules, this time of flights not from New Orleans but from a smaller city nearby so he would have fewer passengers to subdue. For two days he was carried away by that. After he had tried about four times to talk Marina into joining him in his scheme, and had failed, he told her he had been looking for someone who would help him, someone who might want to go to Cuba. But he had given up. The reason he gave could not have been more significant: “Your accomplice is your enemy for life”—meaning that an accomplice can be a witness against you as long as you live.
At this stage of their marriage, Lee was confiding in Marina, making her his touchstone, his lightning rod to reality. And Marina understood what he was asking of her. Even though she wondered, as he unfolded his hijacking scheme, whether or not he was crazy, she drew funny word pictures for him to show how his plan looked in the clear light of day. Ever since the night, at the end of June, when he had broken down and cried in the kitchen, she perceived that Lee needed her. With what appears to be an inborn sympathy for anyone who is lost or in trouble, or on the outs with the world, she reached out and responded to his need. “Do you know why I loved Lee?” she once said. “I loved him because I felt he was in search of himself. I was in search of myself, too. I couldn’t show him the way, but I wanted to help him and give him support while he was searching.”
Indeed, by August of 1963 their relationship had become an extraordinary feat of empathy on Marina’s part, one that few people could have achieved, much less a girl of twenty-two. No doubt it was this quality that had enabled her to get through to Lee and win from him such trust as he was capable of giving. Yet his “trust” was a crushing burden for her, too.
As the one person whom Lee trusted, and feeling responsible for his actions as she did, Marina was painfully at odds with herself and her surroundings. She, too, had been a rebel. In part, it was this that had drawn her to Lee, and this that still helped her to understand him. But now she was about to be the mother of a second child, and carrying the full weight of the family, she badly needed an anchor. Everything in her strained toward staying in one place, settling in America, building a nest. Lee’s responsibilities had changed, but he had not. He was still a rebel, and he kept repeating the same actions again and again. He yanked Marina away from the stability she coveted, placed her squarely outside American life, and prevented her from building her nest.
Even that was not the worst—for husband and wife were also at odds over right and wrong. Marina tried, not always successfully, to resist complicity in Lee’s deceptions. She refused to approve such of his schemes as she knew about. But she now insists that he had a stronger character than she, “because he brought me low and made me cover up his ‘black deeds,’ when it was against my morality to do so. I felt too much pity for him. If only I had been a stronger person, maybe it would have helped.”
Marina’s words are an apology for her failure to make a different man of Lee and alter the outcome of his life. They are an admission of the guilt she felt for the way that their life together worked out. But the truth is that there is no such thing as being married to a man like Lee Oswald and not becoming his emotional accomplice.
Meanwhile, she went on trying to help Lee find his way without letting him get dangerously off course. “Look,” she said to him about the hijacking scheme, “it’s not a good omen that the mirror broke. It means you’ve got to be careful. Go to Cuba if you must. But try to find a legal way. Don’t do anything dangerous when you get there. And don’t do anything illegal. If it doesn’t go right, come back home right away.”
She reminded him that they had one child and would soon have another. “If you want my support, I’ll give it to you. I’ll save money and do what I can for you here. Of course,” she added, lowering her voice, “it would be better to save for the new baby. But I’ll sacrifice and try to save on that if it will help you to do what you want.”
Her words found their mark. A day or two later, Lee burst into the apartment. “Guess what, Mama? I’ve found a legal way. There’s a Cuban embassy in Mexico. I’ll go there. I’ll show them my clippings, show them how much I’ve done for Cuba, and explain how hard it is to help in America. And how above all I want to help Cuba. Will you come to me if I send for you there?”