The GI Bride (33 page)

Poor Spiro, he was alternately embarrassed
and hurt over that incident and, sadly, that was the end of our lovemaking that night. I
did eventually tell him what had happened, but he was not amused; I believe that was the
only time I ever upset him. To this day, whenever I think of that episode, or see a
picture of moustachioed Groucho Marx, I still laugh. What can I say? I’ve always
had a weird sense of humour topped off with a vivid imagination.

There was one other funny, or perhaps I
should say peculiar, thing about Spiro. He had six toes on each foot. I was so glad
he’d told me ahead of time about this little abnormality because he loved to have
his feet rubbed. Had I come across that sixth toe with no warning, I might have been
visibly freaked out and hurt his feelings again!

During that period, I received a phone call
from my mother, and what she told me completely floored me. Mum had never called me
before and I thought at first that she was ringing to tell me that someone had died, but
that was not the case. She told me that my father had left her for another woman. He was
still president of the Watford Christian Spiritualist Church and he had run off with the
church secretary. My poor mother was in a terrible state, but told me she was managing
to hang on, with the
support of my two younger brothers who were both
still living at home.

‘I know there’s nothing you can
do, Iris, but I thought you should know what’s happened,’ she said.

‘My God, is he completely insane? What
the hell does he think he’s doing? What the hell does he think you’re going
to do?’ I yelled.

‘I was afraid to tell you. I knew
you’d be upset. I don’t know what’s going to happen I just can’t
think,’ she told me, and I could tell she was crying.

‘Don’t cry, Mum, the
bastard’s not worth it.’

‘Don’t call him that, Iris.
It’s her fault, not his,’ she said. Of course she would defend him, I
thought. She always has. And of course she was crying: he was the only one she’d
ever cried for. But that was all in the past. The question was, what could we do about
anything right now?

‘Do you think you’d like to come
over and stay with me for a while, Mum? I think we should figure out how to get you
here. It would do you good to be away from there for a while. Please, Mum, it would help
me too if we can arrange it.’ She said she would think about it, and then, almost
immediately, agreed to come.

After I’d hung up, I just sat there,
dazed by what I had heard. I couldn’t believe what my dad had done, and at that
moment, I hated him.

In a state of shock, I called my brother
Peter at work and told him I needed to see him right away. Yes, my reaction was extreme,
but it was as though I’d heard that my father had died. That was how devastated I
was. No, I hadn’t had a happy childhood. No, I’d never felt loved or that I
came from a particularly happy family, but, in spite
of its many
faults, my family had been my anchor, the only constant in my life. I needed to know I
still had that family and that they’d always be there for me, always my refuge.
Hearing that my family was suddenly no longer the cohesive unit I wanted and needed it
to be had shaken me to my very core.

I’m sure my brother couldn’t
imagine what the problem was as I hardly ever called him. He came straight from work,
though, and the minute he walked through the door, I broke down in tears. He kept asking
me what was wrong, what had happened, but I couldn’t get the words out of my
mouth.

‘Let me make us a cup of tea
first,’ was all I could say. It was performing the old English ritual that finally
settled me enough to tell him about Mum’s phone call and the details of what had
happened.

Peter was livid. ‘That bastard, that
bastard,’ he kept saying.

‘Mum and I talked about her coming
over here for a while,’ I told him. ‘I think she needs to get
away.’

‘The sooner the better,’ he
agreed.

The next day, I heard that Peter had called
Dad at the boarding house where he was staying, and that they’d had a terrible
row. Dad had become enraged when Peter referred to the lady-friend as a
‘broad’. Our father’s defence of her further angered my brother and
me, especially knowing that he had never defended our mother or given her support; it
all seemed so damned unfair and selfish. What did he expect Mum to do? How could she
manage on her own? Had he thought of that?

It took me a while to realize the irony of
my extreme
reaction to Dad’s abandonment of my mother: I was
dating a married man but, of course, to me that was different. It’s strange how
children, no matter their age, never see their parents as just ordinary people. It would
seem that we always expect them to be exclusively our unselfish parents with no
weaknesses or needs of their own.

My mother, with our help, was able to
arrange a cheap trip to America on a charter flight through the Transatlantic Brides and
Parents Association (TBPA). In spite of the reason for the visit, I was excited that she
was coming as she had never been to America before and normally would never have gone
anywhere without my father.

When Spiro learned of Mum’s impending
visit, he immediately started a little savings account so that we could spoil her and
give her a good time. He knew I would never take money from him so he said the account
was strictly for my mother. He was always surprising me with his thoughtfulness and I
truly think he was just as excited as I was about her visit.

Mum stayed for about two months, splitting
her time evenly between my brother and me. We took her everywhere and all of our friends
spoiled her too. I’ll never forget her happiness when Peter surprised her by
taking her to see Liberace, who was appearing in Chicago at the time; she needed a
little joy in her life. One night after we had been out for dinner with Spiro, she
realized she had lost her watch during the evening. The next day she had a beautiful new
one, courtesy of Spiro; she was completely smitten with him, as was I.

When she and I were having a tearful
discussion about Dad, Mum called his lady-friend a whore and blamed her
for the whole thing. She wouldn’t believe it was Dad’s fault, even with
his long history as a philandering womanizer. I pointed out to her that she was in
effect calling me a whore, too, since she knew Spiro was married. Good old loyal Mum
stopped for a minute you could almost hear the wheels turning in her brain. ‘Well,
that’s different, Iris,’ she protested, ‘completely different.’
Well, perhaps it was somewhat different since Spiro was still living with his wife.
However, the fact remained that I was the other woman. I wasn’t a whore, but I was
his mistress. Mum adored Spiro and would never have heard a disparaging word against
him.

While Mum was staying with me, my adopted
sister Jodi invited us to her house for lunch one day. At the time, Jodi and Dominic
lived in a beautiful house in River Forest, a suburb renowned for the many underworld
figures who lived there. My dear mum was nervous about being in such a grand home as she
was still living in a council house and had never been inside such a palatial residence.
Jodi had prepared a delicious lunch for us and later her sister Jeanne joined us. As we
were eating, Jodi’s husband, Dominic, walked in, looking as though he had just
stepped from the pages of a gentleman’s magazine. He had on a beautiful silk suit
and, as always, he was meticulously groomed, right down to his manicured fingernails.
Dominic was what you would call a big man, a handsome Italian, who struck a commanding
figure, but the Dominic I knew was a gentle giant, and always a true gentleman.

After Jodi had introduced him to my mother,
he kissed her cheek and welcomed her to his home. He then proceeded to cook himself
lunch. Mum was stunned. My
father had never prepared his own lunch and
here was this rich big-shot so-called gangster (funnily enough, I never did think of
Dominic in that way) cooking his own food. He told Jodi he was expecting someone for a
game of cards and asked her to send him into the den when he arrived. A little later his
visitor arrived and Jodi introduced him to us as Sam. After he had disappeared behind
closed doors, Jodi quietly told me who he was and it was a name readily recognized. She
didn’t have to say another word because he was one of the most infamous underworld
figures of his day. His name was in the newspapers too often for it not to be
recognized. I didn’t explain all this to Mum until later when we were at home.

‘Blimey,’ she said.
‘D’you mean to tell me I just had lunch with a gangster? You’d never
know it to look at him, would you? He seemed like such a lovely bloke.’

‘He is, Mum,’ I assured her.
‘He is a lovely bloke.’

The Mob affiliation was never discussed, nor
would it have been suspected, as the people I knew were all involved in legitimate
businesses. A name might be mentioned, as in the case of Sam, but there was never any
hint of impropriety. There was never a swear word used or permitted in the house, the
children were raised strictly, were extremely well mannered, and the family attended the
local Catholic church regularly.

Not too long after my mother and I had had
lunch with her, Jodi called me, warning me not to be surprised to see Dominic’s
name in the newspaper, in connection with a big headline story. She sounded upset but
didn’t elaborate; she simply wanted me to be prepared and she asked me to make
light of it if her mother seemed unduly concerned.

The newspaper headlines were about the
indictment of a large number of Chicago Outfit figures, including Dominic, on charges of
racketeering and illegal gambling. I don’t recall how long the case dragged on but
Dominic served time in federal prison in Minnesota and Jodi moved there for a while to
be near him. When he came out of jail, Dominic was ill with kidney disease, which Jodi
said they’d been unable to get proper treatment for while he was in prison. When
they eventually returned to the Chicago area, he made a good recovery and they were soon
living in an even more sumptuous house in Oak Brook, another of Chicago’s rich
suburbs.

There were many times when I envied the way
‘the family’ took care of its own, especially when one was in jail or ill.
Jodi and the children never had to worry about anything except their separation from
Dominic and the valuable years that were lost.

When the time came for my mother to return
to England, we all felt she was as ready as she would ever be. She was now anxious to
get home to my brothers, Robert and Chris, and we thought she’d be better able to
face life without Dad. It broke my heart to see her get back on the plane, knowing what
she would face when she arrived at home. I wished I could have gone with her, to help
her through the pain, but I promised her I would come soon. I was determined to teach
her how to live without suffering the mental anguish brought on by Dad’s
abandonment. He had already caused her too much agony over the years. I had to make her
see him for what he was, and help her understand that, in all likelihood, he would never
change. She simply had to let him go, and get on with her
life without
him. In my heart, though, I knew I was hoping for the impossible.

With Mum now gone and my relationship with
Spiro still strong, everything seemed to be going well, but then I got a bit of a shock.
One evening when I was at home alone, except for the children who were in bed, the
front-door bell rang. It was late and I couldn’t imagine who it might be, unless
one of my neighbours had forgotten their lobby key. I went to the door and there stood a
woman I had never seen before.

‘Are you Iris?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘Can
I help you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said,
her voice quivering. ‘I’m Mrs T.’

Wham! I felt as though I’d been hit
over the head with a sledgehammer.
In a state of total shock, I invited her to come
in and sit down. I was quaking and she was visibly shaking.

She proceeded to tell me that she had found
out about her husband’s affair with me through phone calls she had been receiving
from a man named Robert Palmer who had told her that he was my husband. He was now
constantly harassing her with calls to the family home and had even talked to their
children, telling them about their father’s affair, causing terrible emotional
trauma. He was also calling her husband at his restaurant and had threatened to kill
him. She said her husband had adamantly denied having an affair and had assured her that
he had never heard of me. He had reported the threatening phone calls to the police but
she still thought it was just an act to cover up the affair.

Suddenly this whole situation did not sound
right. I
knew that Spiro only had one child and this Mrs T. had
mentioned children in the plural. Spiro did not own a restaurant.

‘What is the name of your
restaurant?’ I asked her.

‘The Lamplighter, on Madison
Avenue,’ she said.

‘I go there a lot,’ I told her.
‘It’s my favourite restaurant.’

The Lamplighter was a lovely little romantic
place, not far from where I lived; all my friends went there. Suddenly something clicked
in my mind. ‘What is your husband’s name?’ I asked.

‘Spyros,’ she said.

Oh, my God, I thought. Palmer’s made a
huge mistake. Palmer, ‘the stalker’, in doing his detective work had found
out the name of my favourite restaurant. Somehow, he had learned the identity of the man
I was seeing. He had then discovered the name of the Lamplighter’s owner, which
was similar. It was too much of a coincidence not to be the same person. He had
incorrectly deduced that he finally had the goods on both of us.

When I explained it to the poor woman
sitting on my couch, I thought she was going to kiss me. I told her all about Palmer,
how sick he was, and encouraged her to have her husband press charges against him but I
don’t know if he ever did. She hugged me before she left and thanked me for
helping to straighten out what she had thought was the end of her marriage. Later, I
called her husband and apologized for all that he and his family had been subjected to.
He was nice about it but, obviously, he’d been terribly shaken by the whole
experience. Spiro and I thought it best to stop frequenting the Lamplighter as a
courtesy to those poor people who
had been the innocent victims of my
ex-husband’s warped mind.