The GI Bride (28 page)

He allowed me to put them back to bed and I
managed to calm them down, telling them that Daddy was just playing a silly game. I went
to him then and told him to come into the kitchen where the children wouldn’t be
able to hear anything.

There, I stuck my finger into his face and
said, ‘If you ever do anything like that again, anything that might affect my
children, I only have to make one phone call, and you will be maimed or dead.’ I
added that he’d better start looking over his shoulder, because someone might be
watching him. I’d heard that line in a movie and it seemed the right thing to say
at the time, even though I was quaking in my shoes.

He shoved my finger away and laughed. Then he
started to hit me. I screamed and went on screaming, which was why one of my neighbours
called the police.

When they arrived, Palmer was so belligerent
that, instead of just talking to him, they handcuffed him and took him to jail. I was
afraid that he would say something to them about the threat I’d made but I think
even he was smart enough to know that he shouldn’t risk bringing it up. He stayed
in jail overnight, but in the morning they released him. He came home grinning, as
though nothing had happened, took a shower and went to work.

The abuse was becoming more frequent and the
drinking was worsening. I found out that he was getting off the train a couple of
stations before ours so that he could stop for another drink, then try to walk it off
before he got home. I hadn’t been aware of his feeble efforts to hide the truth.
He would come home reeking of alcohol and sweat, making himself more and more repulsive
to me with each passing day. The only thing helping me now was the tranquillizers my
doctor had prescribed for me. I still had suicidal thoughts, but I knew I would never
act on them. Wayne would have been all right because his father was a good man, but I
could never have left Robin in Palmer’s care.

The next time he was especially violent to
me I managed to get out of the front door, went to my neighbour’s apartment and
called the police myself. Palmer knew what I was going to do so, thinking he was smarter
than everyone else, he was pretending to be asleep in bed when the police arrived. I
couldn’t believe it but, fortunately, the police didn’t either. Again, he
became extremely belligerent to the officers, and again, they hauled him off to
jail.

Within hours, he was back, and when I refused
to let him in, he tried to break down the back door. I opened it after he’d
promised to behave himself. He was laughing at how easy it had been to get someone to
bail him out, sneering and saying that no one could ever get the better of ‘the
great Robert Palmer’, as he now often referred to himself. I was stunned to learn
that one of our friends in the building had paid the bail money, and could never figure
out what that particular person found funny about Palmer’s dangerous
behaviour.

The next day I went to the police to swear
out a restraining order against Palmer. All it meant was that if he hit me again he
could go to jail, and not just for one night, but then the police officer told me the
awful truth. ‘In all honesty, ma’am, a restraining order is useless until
after the act is committed,’ he continued. ‘In my experience it’s
often too late by then. I’ve seen women end up dead. I don’t mean to scare
you, but you’d be better off getting as far away from that lunatic as you
can.’ I knew he was telling the truth from the many magazine and newspaper
articles I had read. If I let this go on much longer, I might become a statistic, and I
was not about to let that happen. There had to be something I could do, but what?

I talked to my lawyer friend again about a
divorce, but he said there was no way he could take the case because he knew it would be
a mess; also, his partners would never agree to take on such a contiguous case. I talked
to a number of other attorneys and one or two of them said they would take it on, but
they wanted a huge retainer fee, which was out of the question. I’d had the
promise of a little help from friends, but not nearly enough to pay the
enormous amount required to handle such a nightmare divorce.

To add to my confusion, a couple of my
friends were telling me once more that they thought Palmer was a latent homosexual,
pointing out his effeminate gestures and his walk. I still didn’t think it was
true. From what I had read about alcoholics, I believed that his unusual gait and
gestures could have been from poor co-ordination, caused by heavy consumption of
alcohol. He had told me early in our relationship that he was very choosy and that I was
the only woman he had ever had sex with, except for one ugly incident he’d bragged
about. He and a friend had got drunk enough to have sex with some elderly teachers
they’d met in the bar of a hotel where they were attending a convention. He
thought it was funny, and roared with laughter about how grateful the ‘old
gals’ had been. The story disgusted me, and I wondered how I could have forgotten
such cruel behaviour. I once asked him about the Jewish girl he’d claimed to have
been engaged to, but he told me they had never had sex because they had been too
scared.

The situation was making me ill. I
couldn’t eat or sleep and often couldn’t stop crying. I lost weight that I
could ill afford to lose and I had gone back to taking scalding hot baths every few
hours. Now worried about my mental state, there was just one more thing I could try. I
made an appointment to see my old friend Dr Edward Crown.

When Dr Crown saw the state I was in, he
leaned back in his chair and asked me to tell him everything. I must have rambled and
cried for ages, and he listened patiently as I poured out all that had been happening
over the past
few years. When he thought I had finished, he calmly
leaned forward, picked up the telephone and dialled a number he obviously knew by heart.
He spoke briefly to someone and then hung up. I hadn’t heard what he’d said
to the other person, as he was an extremely soft-spoken man; it was often difficult to
hear him when he was speaking directly to me. He wrote a name and number on a piece of
paper and handed it to me, telling me to call this person as soon as possible. He said
the man was an attorney who would take care of me, and that I shouldn’t worry
about anything, except looking after the children and myself. Before I left his office,
he pulled me into his arms, the way a loving parent might, and gave me the kind of hug
that tells you someone cares about you very much. I looked up into his face and realized
we both had tears in our eyes. I had just experienced a goodness that I had almost
forgotten existed.

I called Roy Golson, the attorney, and made
an appointment to see him. I told no one what I was doing. I didn’t feel I could
trust anyone to keep it from Palmer. He seemed to have an uncanny way of finding things
out but this was one thing I could not afford to have sabotaged.

Mr Golson listened to the story of my life
with Palmer and rolled his eyes. He knew we were in for an uphill battle and I
don’t think he was at all happy about handling the case. I never did find out the
connection between him and Dr Crown but it must have been a strong one to make him agree
to open such a can of worms.

The first thing that Attorney Golson did
after taking on my divorce case was to secure a court order to get Palmer out of our
apartment. It was essentially an eviction notice, and if he did not leave, he would be
in contempt of court and subject to arrest. Mr Golson and the judge advised me to stay
away for a while to avoid any possible repercussions once the shock hit him. The
children and I went to my brother’s house for a few days.

On receiving the court order, Palmer
instructed an attorney to fight it. His attorney, who happened to be one of his drinking
partners, had no idea of the magnitude of the circumstances involved, or of
Palmer’s previous arrests. Apparently, it took him little time to tell Palmer that
he must obey the court, that he had no recourse. And so the battle began, and a battle
it was.

Palmer moved out and I had no idea where he
was staying. He constantly harassed me with phone calls, and even though I had my phone
number changed to an unlisted one, he soon had it. I complained to the telephone
company, and again changed my number, but within a day, he had the new one and the
ranting calls started again. He would laugh and tell me repeatedly that I was wasting my
time, reminding me that he had connections everywhere, even in the phone company. That
was when he started stalking me. He seemed to know every move I made,
everywhere I went, and with whom. He took great pleasure in calling me and giving me a
run-down of my activities. He was also calling our friends, trying to turn them against
me and spreading untrue rumours about me. I wasn’t worried about that because
everyone knew they were untrue. Fortunately, he did not find out about the friends who
had Mob connections or I’m sure he would have tried doing something to discredit
me in that regard. Perhaps he did know but was clever enough not to mess with those
people. I often wondered what might have happened if he had tried to make trouble for me
in my innocent friendship with them. I suspect they would not have tolerated his
behaviour and I’m sure just a warning from them or their attorneys would have
frightened him into silence but, thank God, that never happened.

Mr Golson kept me posted of all the
happenings and more than once told me how lucky I was that Dr Crown was a friend because
he would never have taken my case if he had felt he had a choice in the matter.
Apparently Palmer was now busy trying to dig up dirt on Mr Golson, who was constantly
receiving calls and letters from him, warning that he would not stop until he got him
disbarred. He did, in fact, file a perjury claim against Mr Golson, but the court threw
it out.

When the divorce case finally got to court,
we went before Judge Fred Slater, who was an African American. That added to
Palmer’s anger, as he was extremely prejudiced. Having a black judge, I know, was
the ultimate insult to him. Repeatedly, the case was held up by Palmer’s delaying
tactics, one of them being an effort to get the judge kicked off the bench. He accused
me, my witnesses,
my lawyer and the judge of perjury, filing charges
against us all. He also filed a petition demanding a change of venue, claiming that
Judge Slater was biased, but in the end, he not only ran out of lawyer friends, who were
all sick of him, but angered the judge almost to the point of being counter-sued. I
don’t know how he managed to stay out of jail throughout the whole fiasco but at
last I was granted the divorce, full custody of Robin and child support payments. Palmer
received a warning from the court that he could lose his visitation rights with his
daughter if he displayed any drunken or abusive behaviour anywhere near us.

While all of this had been going on, I had
placed an ad in the newspaper for a roommate to share the apartment and expenses. I
thought the children and I could share one bedroom and we could let the other. The only
serious response I got was from a woman with two children who convinced me that we could
make it work by putting two sets of bunk beds in the children’s bedroom and that
she and I could share the other. I met her and the children and they seemed pleasant
enough. Deborah had a good job at the Chicago Rehabilitation Hospital but, having
recently lost her husband to cancer, was in a temporary financial bind because of all
the medical bills. She begged me to give it a try. She claimed to be a gourmet cook and
offered to make all of our meals; she also said how much she loved housekeeping and that
she would be happy to take on that responsibility as well. I thought this was too good
to be true and arranged for them to move in. Before I’d met Deborah I’d
asked her if she had a lot of furniture as I didn’t have room for very much.

‘Not really,’ she said.
‘After my husband died, I sold everything. But I do have a record player and a
standalone bar.’

‘Wow, you sound like a portable
party,’ I told her. ‘I can certainly make space for that.’

I was finally free of a situation that
I’d thought would never end. Palmer was ordered to pay all court costs while I
waited anxiously for the bill from my attorney, but it never came. I don’t know if
Dr Crown paid it, or if Mr Golson had taken my case as a favour to him. I could only
give thanks daily and wonder why someone had been so kind to me. Today, when I think
about Dr Crown, tears well in my eyes and my heart is full; I owe so much to him and I
still tell people about the angel who saved me.

The whole process of getting Palmer out of
my life seemed to take years but it was only a few months, and all that time there had
been a growing fear that it was not over. The secret I had been keeping, and hoping was
not true, was that I might be pregnant. I thought back to the last time Palmer and I had
had sex, if you could call it that. He had attacked and viciously raped me. I thought of
his low sperm count and how difficult it had been for me to get pregnant with Robin. I
couldn’t be pregnant, I told myself, but the queasiness I was experiencing each
morning worried me. Holding on to the hope that it was just nerves, I finally confided
in a friend.