The GI Bride (13 page)

I still laugh about the way some of the job
seekers filled out their applications. When it came to the box that required them to
fill in their sex, instead of writing male or female (M or F), several noted the
frequency of their sexual encounters. Blimey, I thought. No wonder they’re out of
work.

So that I could take a full-time job, I had
enrolled Wayne, who was now about two and a half, at the Gay Time Nursery School. Its
bus picked him up early each morning and brought him home in the evenings. On the first
day, he almost broke my heart: he cried and didn’t want to go; then, when he came
home that evening, he wouldn’t talk to me. He cried again the next morning, but
that night he was babbling about his new friends and all the fun he’d had. He was
also proud of the picture he’d brought home with him. The next morning, and every
morning after that, my little man went off happily on the bus.

An Italian family, who treated all the
children as their own, ran the nursery school, which was very well organized. It had a
large playground with lots of equipment,
and the children took their
afternoon naps on folding cots. The grandmother, or ‘Nonie’ as they called
her (from the Italian word
nonna
), prepared all of their food. Wayne informed
me that he had carrots every day ‘to make my eyes work real good’, and
celery, ‘for my brains’. It was often hard not to laugh at some of the
things he told me, with such a serious look on his face. Gay Time Nursery School still
holds a special place in my children’s hearts and mine; it truly was a godsend. It
was more like sending your child to stay with relatives than to an institution.

With me working full time, things at home
were worsening. My new-found confidence caused conflict between Bob and me. In tears at
work one day, I confided in my boss, Mr Dillon, about the situation at home following a
particularly unpleasant evening and night. He had seen me crying in the staff-room and
he told me that he would be there for me if I ever needed to talk. The previous night,
Bob had had a few beers and had become extremely belligerent. It had taken me longer
than usual to get dinner on the table for him: he had complained about having to wait
for his meal and that I hadn’t cooked the pork chops the way he liked them. Then
he derided me for getting behind with the laundry and ironing and for my reluctance to
go to his parents’ house every weekend.

‘How am I supposed to keep up with the
chores when the only time I have is on the weekends?’ I countered. ‘I
can’t be in two places at once. Don’t you think you could explain that to
your folks?’

‘My mother worked and kept up with
everything. She even managed to tile the kitchen and hang wallpaper,’ he
protested.

‘Yes, and you told me it had almost
killed her. I don’t plan on letting household chores kill me. I just need time to
get organized and that means having some free time on weekends.’

‘Well, if you can’t keep up with
things at home, you’re going to have to quit that job and start doing what
you’re supposed to be doing,’ he said, as though that was final.

‘Bob, I’m not going to give up
my job,’ I told him. ‘It will just take me a little longer to get a proper
routine going. I’ll soon have caught up on everything.’

Then he said something that really hurt
me.

‘You’re just lazy,’ he
said. ‘You can’t be bothered to take care of your son or me. You’re
selfish.’

‘I’m not selfish. I thought we
were going to save up for a house, which was the main reason I started working in the
first place. Have you forgotten that we even went and looked at houses?’ At one
time, we had looked at model homes in a new sub-division, but at thirteen thousand
dollars, Bob had said we couldn’t afford one on his salary of ninety dollars a
week: we’d have to wait until we’d saved a larger down-payment. I reminded
him of all that but he carried on berating me.

By now I was crying, deeply hurt, but I was
also angry. Then he took me by the shoulders and shook me. Before I could think, I hit
him. Shocked by the intensity of our confrontation, we both stepped back and stared at
each other. Outwardly I was shaking, but inside I was screaming. I’m sure we were
both thinking the same thing: what’s happened to us? How had we arrived at this
heartbreaking impasse in our marriage? Where was the tenderness we had once known, and
why had it gone? I wanted to make
him happy, but if I did it his way,
I would suffocate. I simply had to have something to fill the well of despair that was
threatening to drown me.

I knew Bob was having a hard time dealing
with my new independence. I was also aware that I was equally to blame, especially since
I was no longer the passive little girl he had married. I’d had terrible mood
swings after giving birth to our son but now I was dogged by depression, excruciating
loneliness and frustration. I couldn’t seem to do anything right. Every time I
thought I had moved a step forward, his criticism and negativity brought me crashing
down to an ever deeper place. Emotionally, I wasn’t walking through each day, I
was crawling.

The fact was that I was outgrowing him and
his work-eat-sleep routine, and neither of us knew how to deal with it. I suppose
that’s one of the dangers of marrying too young. Just before our wedding Nat King
Cole’s ‘They Try To Tell Us We’re Too Young’ was popular and
I’d often heard Dad singing it. Now those words haunted me daily.

My boss, Mr Dillon, had listened patiently
as I explained some of what had been happening. Eventually he told me his wife’s
brother was an attorney and, if I wanted, he would arrange for me to see him.

For the next few days I continued to work
and tried to catch up on the household chores that Bob complained I’d been
neglecting. I was exhausted from lack of sleep. My mind was in turmoil. Bob and I fought
about every little thing and I was sure he was just as miserable as I was. Soon I
realized that I couldn’t live like that any longer: it was destroying both of
us.

The following week, I told Mr Dillon it was
time for me to talk to his brother-in-law.

My meeting with the attorney was difficult.
He told me the grounds for divorce, if not adultery, would have to be physical cruelty.
I didn’t want to accuse Bob of physical abuse because I knew he wasn’t an
abusive person. The only times he had struck me were in moments of frustration, nothing
like the violence you read about in the newspapers. Besides, I had hit him back, and
that made me as bad as he was, didn’t it?

When I broke the news to Bob that I had
talked to an attorney, he was devastated.

‘You can’t do that, Iris. Please
give us another chance,’ he said. ‘How can you possibly think you can make
it on your own? How can I, for that matter?’

‘It’s too late, Bob.
You’ve told me over and over again that you don’t want to change just to
make me happy, but I
have
changed,’ I told him.

‘What about Wayne? You can’t
take my son away from me. How do I know you won’t take him to England?’

‘I have no intention of taking Wayne
from you. You’ll still see him and maybe he’d like to have parents who
aren’t fighting all the time.’ The arguments went back and forth for hours,
but we were both aware that the conversation was going nowhere. In the end we just sat
there, holding hands across the table, and cried until there were no tears left.

We had those conversations more than once,
and I’m sure he knew we couldn’t go on as we were, but when I finally told
him I was taking action, he took it badly. Again, we cried together but I told him we
had shed enough tears
and that it was time for both of us to have
another chance at happiness.

The divorce went through with no
complications since Bob did not contest it; he hadn’t liked the reference to
physical abuse but, of course, he knew it was true. There was nothing in the decree to
prevent me taking my son out of the country and I received full custody of Wayne. Bob
was granted ‘reasonable visitation rights’, but he and his family told me to
remember that it would be illegal for me to return to live in England; if I tried to do
so, they would fight for custody of Wayne. I believed them. With our marriage over, Bob
went to live with his parents while he sorted out his life, and I had to decide what I
was going to do.

Bob and I amicably divided furniture and
household items, each claiming odds and ends that were uniquely our own. His parents
demanded the return of anything valuable they had given us, particularly the silverware
they were buying for us, piece by piece. By then, I believe we had two place settings,
in a pattern they had selected, which was the same as theirs. I returned them happily. I
would have hated going through the rigmarole of washing and wrapping each piece
separately every time I used it, as they always did. I’d much rather have some
good old stainless steel that I could just throw into a drawer; I certainly didn’t
feel the need to impress anyone with such pretentious nonsense.

Then I planned my next move. I wanted to go
to England for a while. When I told the Ballmaiers, who had recently moved into a big
old rambling house nearby, they offered to store my furniture and put me up until I
left. Wayne and I shared a bed in one of their spare rooms.

At around that time, my lawyer, Charles B.,
called and asked me to have lunch with him. He said he had to talk to me about something
and, wondering what the mystery was, I agreed.

‘You’d better start looking for
a new job,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Well, no one knows it yet, but my
brother-in-law [who owned the employment agency where I worked] is bankrupt. You
won’t be getting any more pay cheques, and even if you do, they’ll
bounce.’

‘Thank you for warning me, but maybe
it’s not as bad as you think. I want to go to England anyway so I’ll take
off sooner rather than later.’ I was extremely grateful that I had been warned
I’m not sure I could have handled working for nothing: I’d already had
enough bad news.

It was almost Christmas and, I thought, a
good time for me to be with my family. My divorce would not be final until January but I
didn’t need to be in Chicago for that since we’d already had our court
appearance and had signed the papers. Each Christmas since I had left England I had
longed to spend it with my parents; I had cried whenever I heard such songs as
‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ played on the radio or television.
Christmas had never been a grand affair at home. My family couldn’t afford to
spend much but we always had a bottle of sherry on the sideboard, a bowl of fresh fruit
and nuts, and a roast chicken for dinner followed by Christmas pudding. Before digging
into the feast, we pulled the traditional crackers and enjoyed the meal wearing paper
hats. No, it had nothing to do with all those trimmings: it was the thought of being at
home with my own family whom by now I hadn’t seen for two and a half years. This
would be my dream come true, and I arranged for Wayne and I to leave Chicago on 22
December 1959 and arrive in London the next day.

My plan was soon shattered.

In the late afternoon of 21 December, even
though it was still light outside, I tucked Wayne into bed.

‘It’s not dark,’ he said.
‘Why do I have to go to bed?’

‘We have to go to bed early because we
have a big day
tomorrow. We’re going on a plane to see your
nanny and granddad and they live far, far away,’ I told him. He looked satisfied
and snuggled down to sleep … or so I thought.

I went downstairs to watch TV and have a
snack before I joined him. Eventually, knowing I probably wouldn’t sleep, with my
stomach in knots of excitement, I said goodnight to Cindy and Phil and went upstairs.
When I opened our bedroom door, I screamed. ‘Oh, my God, what have you
done?’ My head felt as though it was about to explode.

Cindy and Phil came running up the stairs to
see what had happened, and when they did, they pulled me away from the room. They were
afraid of what I might do.

My darling child had not gone to sleep.
Instead, he had decided to play. He had torn up our passport (a parent and child shared
one in those days) and painted everything on the dressing-table with red nail polish. I
thought I’d go mad. Wayne, who had been grinning when I opened that door, was now
howling. Phil gathered him up in his arms and removed him from my sight. By now, I was
crying wailing might be more accurate. Cindy dragged me downstairs and made me drink a
shot of whiskey, telling me that we would sort it out, but at that moment, I
couldn’t see how. I just wanted to die.

When I had calmed down to some degree, I
realized we would need a new passport, and a plan began to form in my head. First things
first, I thought. I phoned Ebert Photography Studio, which had taken our passport photo,
but it had closed for the day. Fortunately, I had become friends with the studio owner,
Will Ebert: he had taken the photos for my modelling portfolio and had used one
of my portraits in his advertisements. I looked his name up in the
telephone directory and, luckily, it was listed. Taking the bull by the horns, I phoned
him. Stifling sobs, I explained what had happened and that I had to be at the passport
office first thing the following morning. Could he possibly go to the studio and print
some copies of the passport photo for me? With no hesitation, he agreed to do so and I
arranged to meet him there. I already knew that, no matter what, we would not catch the
booked flight; I called the airline and asked that they put our reservations on hold
until I had the new passport.