The GI Bride (31 page)

After returning from England, I was in much
better physical condition. I had regained some of the weight I’d lost and my
curves were back. A healthy colour had returned to my cheeks, which was wonderful after
the yellow of hepatitis, so I felt confident and told her I would see about getting a
baby-sitter. If I could make the necessary arrangements, I would love to work for
her.

I soon arranged for Robin to attend good old
Gay Time Nursery School temporarily, and Wayne would go to Mom Evans when he got out of
school. I called Jeanne back to say we were all set. She asked if I knew of anyone
else who might be interested, as she still needed people, so I called
Bobby McCarthy; she said she’d like to do it too. At that point, I had forgotten
that Palmer worked for McCormick Place but it was huge and, with a bit of luck, I might
not run into him.

Bobby and I met and went together to have
our dresses fitted; they were pink gingham, ‘all-American-girl’-type
outfits, with multicoloured gingham frills around the hem. Bobby and I were greatly
relieved that we didn’t have to wear French maids’ uniforms, which might
have been the case since this trade show was all to do with food service. We also had to
wear high-heeled pink pumps and, if I say so myself, we looked smashing. Selected to
work for Continental Coffee Company, we would be serving coffee and cookies throughout
the day, and handing out information to the thousands of visitors.

Working at McCormick Place for just one week
was difficult: I had to take two trains and a bus to get there, and I had to be there by
eight a.m. It was a good thing the pay was generous or it might not have been worth the
effort. The journey wasn’t too bad in the morning, but coming home that first
night, I thought my feet were going to fall off; they were steaming when I finally took
off my shoes. Stupidly I had forgotten to take comfortable ones to travel in. Believe
me, I didn’t forget them the next day.

The Continental Coffee salesmen were
pleasant and polite, and treated Bobby and me well. We didn’t have a lot of time
for kidding around as we were busy all the time but we did have plenty of laughs. One
man kept watching me and hovered around, asking if I needed anything. He
was especially kind and thoughtful and even brought us both lunch.
Bobby kept telling me to watch out as someone seemed to have his eye on me, and it
became obvious that he was interested. The man in question was Spiro T. and he was a
Greek American. After a while, the other salesmen were teasing him about me. Spiro had
known Jeanne for years from calling at her restaurant, so he just told them he knew me
through her because she was my adopted sister.

On the second day, Spiro started talking
more to me, asking me about myself, and about where I lived. When I told him that I had
to take two trains and a bus to get to and from McCormick Place, he offered to drive me
home that night. Of course, I accepted his offer. When he dropped me off outside my
apartment building, he asked hesitantly if I would like a ride to work in the morning. I
jumped at the opportunity, thanking him for his kindness, and off he went, saying he
would see me at six thirty in the morning.

For the rest of the restaurant show, Spiro
picked me up and brought me home every day. He started calling me
‘Princess’. He couldn’t do enough for me and I have to admit that I
enjoyed having someone fawn over me. He was like a little boy with a crush. On the last
day of the show as he dropped me off at home, he asked if he could call me some time to
see how I was doing, and I agreed.

I had hardly stepped inside the apartment
door when the phone rang.

‘Hi, Princess,’ he said,
sounding nervous. ‘I’m just calling to see how you’re doing, like you
said I could, but can I take you out for dinner tonight?’ The silly man, after
dropping me off, had gone to the nearest public phone to call me.

‘Aw, thanks for the invitation, but
I’m exhausted and still have to feed the children,’ I told him, ‘but
call me again some time and I’ll see what I can arrange.’

‘Some time will be soon,’ he
said. ‘I’ve hardly slept since the first day I saw you and I was afraid I
might never see you again.’

Floored by this sudden outpouring, I
didn’t know what to say so I thanked him and said I’d look forward to
hearing from him. I had just heaved a sigh of relief that I hadn’t run into Palmer
at McCormick Place, and now I was buoyed up by having someone pay such kind attention to
me.

Jeanne phoned me soon afterwards to tell me
she had heard about Spiro’s infatuation with me. She warned me to be careful
because he was married. I told her I knew he was and that I didn’t intend to get
involved with him, and at the time, I meant it. Later, when I told my friend Mary about
it, she said that maybe dating married men was the way to go, as it sure would keep me
from making any more foolish mistakes. I had vowed never to marry again and thought
perhaps she was right, but I never dreamed that shortly after that conversation, I would
begin a long and beautiful affair with a married man.

Some time after the Continental Coffee
assignment, I took the children with me to visit my friend Bobby, who lived in a small
rented house on Chicago’s south side; I wanted to tell her how my crazy
relationship with Spiro was progressing, and to catch up on all of her news. While our
children played together, Bobby told me that her ex-
husband, Jim, who
was now a sign painter, was a hopeless drunk, and she had no idea how she’d put up
with his behaviour for as long as she had. ‘Any money he earned from painting
signs was spent before he got home. We were in debt up to our ears, and all he did was
laugh about it. Everything was always a big joke to Jim,’ she said. Her story was
all too familiar to me but I had no idea that she, too, had been going through some of
the same things that I had; she’d never talked about it much before.

As we were chatting, there was a pounding on
the back door immediately followed by Jim barging in; he had a friend with him.

‘We’ve done some salvage work at
one of the old theatres they were tearing down in Chicago,’ he told us.
‘We’ve brought home two beautiful slabs of marble.’

‘Home?’ questioned Bobby.
‘Did you forget you no longer live here?’

‘Well, I thought since I contribute to
the rent, you might let me store a couple of things here.’

‘Oh, yes, you do
occasionally
contribute to the rent,’ Bobby said. ‘Where do you plan to store it, Jim?
You already have tons of stuff here. When do you guys plan on removing or selling some
of it? You did tell me that was your plan.’

‘For now, we’re taking it up
into the attic. It won’t be in your way there,’ he said, and off he and his
mate went.

We sat there, listening to all the huffing
and puffing as they struggled to carry the heavy slabs of marble up the attic stairs.
Suddenly there was an ominous creaking, followed by a loud crack. We ran into the next
room to see where the sound had come from and when we looked up,
there
was a huge hole in the ceiling, with a prosthetic wooden leg sticking through it. From
up in the attic we could hear hysterical laughter followed by Hans, Jim’s friend,
shouting, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Jim, you idiot! Help me pull my
goddamn leg outta here.’

When the two of them finally came back
downstairs, after extricating Hans’s somewhat damaged leg, we all laughed until
tears rolled down our faces. I’d noticed that Hans walked with a limp but had no
idea he had a wooden leg. From what I had witnessed and stories I had heard, Jim and
Hans would have made a great comedy team.

‘See what I mean?’ Bobby said,
after the two men left on another expedition. ‘Everything is a big joke, and I
mean everything. He’s always had big plans to sell this stuff he drags in, but he
and Hans only really enjoy getting it, not selling it. It’s just a big game to
them. I always told Jim he should have married Hans.’

After we’d had a cup of tea, we
continued chatting and Bobby disclosed some of the problems she’d encountered
since coming to America; things she had never shared with me before. She was yet to make
a visit home, and hardly ever heard from her family.

‘Enough about misery,’ she said.
‘Let’s try to forget all that.’ Then, as if to lighten the mood, she
told me about an incident that occurred while she and Jim were still married.

‘I’d been so angry with him
about his drinking, I hadn’t talked to him for days, and when he’d tried to
have sex with me, I’d refused. I told him to go screw himself. Well,’ she
continued, ‘one night, I was in bed reading when I
heard him
come home. I could tell he was drunk by the sound of his fumbling and stumbling, so I
turned off the reading light and pretended I was asleep. I heard him come into the room,
and then heard him rummaging in the bedroom closet. Then, the closet light clicked on
and he called out to me, “Yoo-hoo, take a look at this, Bobby.” I sat up and
looked to see what was so important, and there he stood with a big grin on his face. He
was stark naked, had a hard-on, and he’d painted a sign that said, “It pays
to advertise,” and hung it on his willy. What are you going to do with someone
like that, Iris? I couldn’t stop laughing, and that was how he always thought he
could get out of everything.’

‘I see what you mean, Bobby. In a way
you’re lucky he made you laugh instead of cry, like my ex. I guess that’s
what you get for marrying a cartoon artist.’

Over the years, Bobby and I had had many
such conversations about our marital and other problems, but at least she was lucky
enough to have in-laws who supported her. They knew their son was a deadbeat and had
taken over his responsibility for the children by helping Bobby whenever they could; I
envied her.

In the meantime, Palmer was still harassing
me with phone calls and I realized it did no good to change my phone number because he
always found out what the new one was. I heard that he was still trying to dig up dirt
about me, and about anyone that had contact with me. He caused a great deal of
embarrassment and annoyance to some of my friends and neighbours, often calling in a
drunken state late at night. Even our poor old building janitor and his wife told me he
had called, trying to bribe
them. He wanted them to watch what I was
doing and report to him if I had any male visitors, or if they found liquor bottles in
the trash. I thought that was ironic coming from him. His behaviour was increasingly
sick and unpredictable, and even though there was still a court order against him doing
any of these things it didn’t seem to faze him. Everyone involved knew what was
going on and was trying to ignore him. It wasn’t easy.

Occasionally, even though my relationship
with Spiro was growing stronger, I still had dinner with Palmer’s old golfing
friend, Pete Huber, if he happened to be in town; he once took me to the Masters Golf
Tournament when it was being played in the area and that was very exciting. We had
become good friends and, knowing that, Palmer no longer had anything to do with him. He
had tried unsuccessfully to get information about me out of Pete but there wasn’t
anything to tell. He was jealous of our friendship and accused Pete of having sexual
relations with me, which he had not, and he viciously attacked his old friend as a
traitor. Pete and I were fond of each other, true, but our relationship was always
purely platonic.

I also had regular telephone conversations
with Chuck M., an old lawyer friend from my first marriage, and would sometimes meet him
for lunch if I happened to be in downtown Chicago. Chuck was doing well for himself, as
he was now a full partner in the prominent law firm he had worked for since
qualification. He was an Irish Catholic, married, with four or five children, but had
always kept in touch with me. He was sympathetic to what was going on in my life and
could always make me laugh with his dry sense of humour.

I’ll never forget the first time Chuck
asked me out for dinner (yes, another married man). I had always been a little nervous
when we’d had lunch together as I had seen him as being a bit out of my league.
Raised in England where the class system was so prevalent, I still saw professional
people as ‘above my station’. I did, however, agree to have dinner with him
that night and engaged the help of my friend Mary in putting together an appropriate
outfit for my big evening out.

So there I was, all decked out in
Mary’s basic little-black-dress, Mary’s pearls, Mary’s black coat with
the mink collar, Mary’s long black leather gloves and Mary’s evening bag. At
the last minute when I got a run in my stocking, I even had to borrow a pair of nylons
from her. We still laugh about my famous date, when the only things I was wearing of my
own were my underwear and a pair of second-hand shoes, but that wasn’t the
funniest thing about that evening.

Painstakingly, I got myself ready to go out.
Then, protected by an apron, I prepared the children’s dinner and waited for Mrs
Stella, our janitor’s wife, to come around to baby-sit for the evening.

‘You look pretty, Mommy,’ said
Robin.

‘Why are you wearing Auntie
Mary’s dress?’ asked Wayne. ‘And isn’t that Auntie Mary’s
coat?’

I told them I was going to meet someone
important, and that seemed to satisfy them as they both grinned at me. By now, I was a
nervous wreck. Everything went like clockwork, however, and as Mrs Stella came in at the
back door, the front-door bell rang. He was here. I kissed the children goodbye, threw
on my beautiful borrowed mink-trimmed coat and flew out of the front door.

Chuck and I were both nervous, he because
I’m positive he had never been on a date with another woman, and me because I was
going out for dinner with a married man of class. Like a blithering idiot, I blurted out
that I was so nervous that ‘my bone was as dry as a throat’, and when we
realized what I had said, we both relaxed into fits of laughter.