The GI Bride (15 page)

Wayne and I had been in England for about
two months when Bob, who had written to us several times, insisted that we return to
America. He reminded me that it was illegal for me to keep his son away from him and
that he might have to take legal action. My parents concurred: they thought I should
return to the States and to my obligations. I later learned that it was not illegal for
me to stay in England with our son as long as I made every effort to ensure that he saw
his father.

I will never forget going down on my knees,
sobbing my heart out and begging, ‘Please don’t make me go back, please let
me stay with you.’ Dad cried too, but Mum, stoic as ever, reminded me that I had
made my bed and had to lie in it. All I could think was that she didn’t want me,
that nothing had changed, that she still didn’t care about me. Were my parents
worried that they might have to help support my child and me financially? I knew that my
mother didn’t approve of my divorce or of me; she was ashamed, and I was sure she
thought that everything had been my fault. At that time, in Britain, the only grounds
for divorce were adultery, and abandonment or separation that had lasted at least seven
years; the ‘other woman, or man’, referred to as ‘the
co-respondent’, had to be named in the decree and the story usually appeared in
the newspapers. Divorce was scandalous.

Chuck had made it abundantly clear that he
had no intention of marrying or settling down and said nothing to dissuade me from
leaving. Sheila had warned me not to
become too fond of him; he was an
old friend of hers and she knew he was not interested in having a permanent relationship
with anyone, even though he only ever dated one woman at a time. He had actually told me
that he couldn’t understand how anyone could juggle more than one relationship.
And so the time came for us to part. We said goodbye with tears in our eyes, promising
to keep in touch. He had never said he loved me, but while we were together I knew he
cared about me; I also knew I would miss him and hoped he might miss me too.

Having postponed the inevitable for as long
as possible, I booked our flight back to America and wondered what lay ahead for my
little son and me. I knew Wayne’s father would always be good to him he was a good
man but the rest was up to me. I just hoped I could do it on my own. Over the years, I
often wondered how my parents could have allowed me, a sixteen-year-old girl, to get
married and move to another country, but it was far more agonizing to recall that they
made me go back to America and virtually nothing. I had nowhere to live, no job and no
money, except the small amount I was supposed to receive in child support from
Wayne’s father and how could we even be sure of that? The pain of the perceived
rejection still lives in me, an ugly scar.

It is impossible to describe the heartbreak
I experienced at leaving my old home again. I remember only the all-consuming fear of
facing life alone, and the ache in my heart as I said goodbye to my family, my true home
and my beloved country. I didn’t know who I was any more. I was no longer a GI
bride; I was divorced, a
former
GI bride. Did that make me a GI divorcee? I
wondered how many
other GI divorcees were out there. Had they faced
the same fears that I now faced? Had any of them returned to their families in England,
or had they been forced to live with the consequences of their mistakes and decisions? I
didn’t seem to belong anywhere now, and I felt as I had when I was an evacuee
during the war: desolate and in despair.

As the plane rose into the air I watched the
British coastline disappear beneath the clouds, and a new, greater fear gripped me: what
if I could never afford to make another trip home? What if I had just said goodbye to my
family for the last time?

Back in Chicago, the Ballmaiers agreed to
let me stay with them until I found a job and an affordable apartment. My furniture and
other belongings were still stored at their house so Wayne and I moved back into our old
bedroom the scene of a destroyed passport and almost-aborted holiday plans.

I don’t know how I would have coped
without the Ballmaiers. My brother Peter and his wife Brenda now lived in a distant
suburb with their two children and they were expecting another, so I saw little of them.
I wished they still lived next door: I missed having them nearby. I couldn’t sit
around feeling sorry for myself, though. It was time to get some money coming in and I
had to find employment.

I’d always fancied working for a
doctor so when I found the help-wanted advertisement for a receptionist in a surgery, I
applied. The doctor hired me on the spot and I was soon working in downtown Chicago.
Over the years, it always proved easy for me to secure such positions: Americans seemed
to love having an English accent answering their telephones.

I still had a little money saved from the
divorce settlement and, after I’d received my first few pay cheques, I could
afford the security deposit on a small apartment close to the Ballmaiers. Bob, my now
ex-husband, was
always faithful in sending us Wayne’s allowance;
the amount was not huge but it made all the difference in that we could live in a decent
neighbourhood and apartment. He always made sure Wayne didn’t have to go without,
and his parents were good to their grandson too. Bob was also conscientious about his
visiting rights; he always picked his son up punctually and brought him home at the
agreed time; he did fun things with him, and often took him for the whole weekend so
that I could have a little break. I couldn’t have asked or hoped for a more
congenial arrangement and considered myself lucky that it was so.

The apartment I rented was near the elevated
train to downtown, and Wayne could once again attend the Gay Time Nursery School.
Everything seemed to be falling into place, but it was still a struggle and I worried
about our future. I had felt secure while staying with my family in England and, to a
degree, while I lived with the Ballmaiers, but it was frightening to be alone, and I
wondered if I’d be able to cope with the responsibility.

The second-floor apartment I rented was the
smallest of three in an old house. It consisted of a bathroom, then a large room divided
into kitchen, dining area and living room. A small bedroom led off the living room so
Wayne and I had to share the bed. My double bed took up the entire bedroom and there was
little storage space; the only place for the rest of my bedroom furniture was in the
dining area. Wayne’s bed, plus a few boxes of miscellaneous belongings, had to
stay in storage until I had a bigger place. I had no idea when that might be.

Luckily, a single girl in her thirties, Joan
Witek, lived in
the next-door apartment and we soon became friends.
Joan worked as a secretary in downtown Chicago. She was also director of music for a
large Catholic church and school in the city; she worked long hours but when she was at
home she was good company. Sometimes I dog-sat for her, and occasionally she baby-sat
for me.

Joan was not particularly attractive. She
fought a constant battle with her jet-black facial hair, and she was what you might call
a big girl. She was madly in love with one of her bosses and thought he felt the same
about her. I was sure that he was using her. There were many times when she prepared
dinner for him and he didn’t show up, which was lucky for Wayne and me because she
would invite us to eat the food. Joan was an excellent cook; the aromas of whatever she
was cooking would drift into my apartment and make my mouth water.

She tried to fix me up with one of her
boss’s friends. ‘Maybe if Clare [Clarence!] comes over to see you, Jim will
be less likely to stand me up,’ she said. I sensed there was method in her madness
and agreed to meet the man. We double-dated a couple of times, and we even went to Lake
Geneva for the weekend once while Wayne was away with his dad, but for me, there was too
much drinking, which I found a giant bore. One dreadful thing happened while this
liaison was going on. The four of us had been out for dinner and had come back to
Joan’s apartment for a nightcap. Jim took the key from her and unlocked the door.
We all piled in, expecting to hear her little dog yapping, but we were met with silence
and a foul stench. When she turned on the lights, there was the dog, quivering and
cowering under the kitchen table. All over the floor lay the torn-up
remnants of several sanitary towels. He had been in the garbage can and, to top it
all, had messed on the floor. No wonder he was shaking.

I was mortified so I can only imagine how
Joan felt. I immediately excused myself and went next door into my own apartment,
leaving Joan with two shocked men and the most embarrassing situation imaginable. Soon I
heard doors banging, and knew the men had left; the last thing I heard was one of them
saying, ‘Jesus Christ, that was disgusting,’ as they went down the stairs. I
went back into Joan’s apartment to see if I could help her, but she was
inconsolable as she began cleaning up. I could only wonder how she’d ever be able
to face her boss again, but she’d have to if she wanted to keep her job. For days
after that, the only smell coming from Joan’s apartment was that of burning
incense.

Dr H., my boss, had his office on the
mezzanine floor of a hotel on the near-north side of Chicago. It was close to Lake Shore
Drive, which was where many of the city’s elite resided. Dr H. had numerous
wealthy patients, including some members of Chicago’s illustrious high society. He
was also physician to the Chez Paree Adorables, who performed at the city’s most
famous nightclub, the Chez Paree. Many of the girls lived in the hotel and I often found
them sunbathing nude on its rooftop terrace when I went up there to eat my lunch. On one
occasion, I would have crawled over them to the rail, if I’d had to: the Queen and
Prince Philip had arrived in Chicago on their tour of Canada and North America. They had
sailed on the royal yacht,
Britannia
, down the St Lawrence Seaway to Lake
Michigan, and had disembarked at Buckingham Fountain.
I had read in
the news that their motorcade would be passing the hotel and there was no way I was
going to miss that, nude sunbathers or not. It was one of just two occasions in my life
that I was privileged to see the top of Her Majesty’s head. (The second time was
many years later at the Gare du Nord in Paris. She had travelled on the Eurostar, which
takes you from London to Paris direct, passing under the English Channel.)

After a while, Dr H. decided I could start
helping his two nurses. His practice was close to the historic Navy Pier, and he had a
contract to treat minor injuries incurred by the construction workers involved with
renovation and restoration work there. Between the regular patients and treating
injuries, the nurses were often swamped. They taught me to change wound dressings,
remove sutures and deburr needles. Yes, in those days, they reused needles, which had to
have any microscopic burrs filed off before they went into the sterilizer. I say
microscopic but all we did was test the end of the needle with the tip of a finger. No
wonder injections were so painful back then.

One of the doctor’s friends, who came
in regularly, began flirting with me. Byron H. was probably in his sixties, but I knew
he was a wealthy widower. At that time, I had begun to think I should look for a rich
man rather than elusive and often disappointing love so I flirted back. On one of his
visits, he told me he was going to the hospital to have some tests.

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘How come you come, I come, baby
come,’ he said, laughing like a banshee. What a jerk, I thought. How crude. I made
up my mind right then that I wouldn’t go
out with him if he was
the last man on earth … but I did, just once. We went to a smart restaurant and shared
pleasant conversation; he even told me about his wife and how she had died. He was so
much nicer than I’d thought, and when he invited me back to his house to see his
collection of old jukeboxes, I went. His home was sumptuous and the antique jukeboxes
were impressive. I thought I had misjudged him. I was relaxed and comfortable until the
mood changed drastically.

‘Well,’ he said,
‘I’ve been nice to you and now it’s your turn to be nice to
me.’

How could I have been so naive? That’s
what I get for being so trusting, I thought. Now what do I do?

‘What do you mean?’ I said,
acting as dumb as I now felt.

‘I’m taking you to bed.
That’s how you’re going to be nice to me,’ he replied, and pushed me
towards the stairs.

I was petrified. ‘No, I can’t
please. I have to get home. I promised the baby-sitter I’d be home by
now.’

‘You should have thought about that
before,’ he all but snarled at me.

Roughly, he grabbed me. His fingers dug into
my arms and his manicured nails were hurting me. Oh, my God, I thought, he’s going
to rape me, but then I had an idea. ‘If you don’t take me home right now, I
am going to tell your friend Dr H. and the girls in the office that you tried to rape
me.’