The GI Bride

by Simantel, Iris Jones

  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 dr
inking, 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.

  ‘I know the feeling,’ he was finally able to say.

  We drove out to the suburbs, to a fancy and well-known restaurant called Richard’s Lilac Lodge. I had heard that some of Chicago’s mobsters hung out there, not that I would have recognized any of them. After our car had been valet-parked, we entered the grand chandeliered lobby and stopped to take off our coats. As the coat-check girl helped me off with my lovely borrowed coat, Chuck’s eyes became as big as saucers.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he said, almost choking on his words. I looked down, and the world suddenly went into slow motion. I stood there, paralysed. I had forgotten to take off my coverall floral apron. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. Then, clutching my coat back around me, I dived into the nearby ladies’ room, locked myself inside a cubicle and sat there wondering if I would ever be able to show my face again.

  I decided the best and only thing I could do was face the music. I rolled the apron up as tightly as possible and stuffed it into my dinky borrowed handbag, I wasn’t about to throw a perfectly good apron into the trash, and went bravely out to face a bewildered Chuck, who was waiting for an explanation.

  ‘Jeez, I thought you were wearing a floral nightgown,’ he said, and laughed until tears rolled down his very red face. I honestly don’t know how we ate our dinner that night, but it definitely helped to have a couple of drinks first.

  Almost forty years later, I can still see that apron, with its frills and flowers. That night it must have looked every bit as big and looming as a pink elephant. As a good friend of mine said after hearing that story, ‘God does speak to us in strange ways.’ I’m sure that was a reference to the fact that I’d been out with a married man.

  Another thing that happened during my early dating days after my divorce from Palmer was the attempt by my Outfit-related friends at fixing me up with someone in ‘the family’. I’m sure it was their way of trying to bring me into it; they wanted me to be safe and protected the way they all were. Anyway, they set me up on a blind date with ‘Mike the Bear’, who was to pick me up and take me out for dinner. Well, the name alone scared the hell out of me, and when I met him, I knew why he had acquired that nickname. He was the hairiest man I’d ever met. He was a nice-looking, dark-haired Italian, but if you’ve ever seen a movie about the Mob, you’ve seen this man. Had he been an actor, he most definitely would have been typecast as a gangster. He even drove a big black Cadillac with tinted windows.

  We had a ple
asant enough evening out, but he wasn’t my type and I probably wasn’t his. I don’t think he had ever read a book, he had no idea what was going on in the world and obviously couldn’t have cared less. He wanted to see me again but I told him I was dating someone else and that I thought it was getting serious. I said he could call me but I think he got the message. When I told my adopted sister Jodi that it wasn’t going to work, she laughed and said she hadn’t really thought it would, but he had been the only single man she knew in her husband’s circle and thought it was worth a try. She also told me they had warned him to be on his best behaviour. Somehow, I could never quite see myself going out with, or married to, someone called Mike the Bear. Of course, if I had hooked up with him, I doubt Palmer would have bothered me again ever!

  I was now working full time for Catholic Charities Legal Aid Department in downtown Chicago. As an intake worker, I screened all potential clients for eligibility before they saw one of our team of lawyers, each of whom specialized in a different facet of the law. It was interesting, hearing the stories of people’s legal problems. Most of the lawyers were either fresh out of law school or probably not particularly ambitious. They must have been paid fairly well but probably not as well as they would have been if they had been successful in their own right. I imagine working for Legal Aid at least guaranteed a regular income.

  One of the clients was a paranoid schizophrenic. It was always difficult filling out the intake papers since we all knew that her perceived problems were part of her condition. She reported being followed by the CIA, spied on and physically tortured by aliens from outer space, poisoned by her neighbours, and stalked and sexually abused by Howard K. Smith, a well-known television reporter. My fellow workers had not warned me about this client, and the first time she was on my caseload, they all just sat there, watching my face. I’m sure, had I been a cartoon, there would have been giant question marks sticking out above my head.