‘Shall I call you back? How long do you need?’ he asked, and of course, I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know the answers. I said I’d be in touch as soon as I could, and promised not to keep him waiting.
After we’d hung up, I sat there, hardly able to breathe. My heart felt as though it was going to burst out of my chest. I tried to concentrate on taking deep breaths but it was impossible: there were iron bands around my ribs and they were crushing me. I was glad Wayne wasn’t at home to see me like that: it would have scared him. At last, I managed to get myself into the bedroom, where I curled up on the bed and pulled the covers over my head, hiding from a world that had suddenly spiralled out of control.
Later that evening, I went next door to see Joan and spilled out all that had happened. We talked for a long time, discussing the situation over a few strong drinks, and then she took both my hands in hers and looked me straight in the eyes.
‘Are you in love with this man? Even if you do love him, are you willing to face the legal battles involved with taking Wayne out of the country? Do you love Chuck enough to take Wayne away from his father?’ Her questions stunned me into reality. They were the questions I’d needed to ask myself, the questions I would have to answer honestly before making such a monumental decision.
The following day, I called Chuck and told him I had already begun seeing someone else, that it was obvious I didn’t know my own mind. I told him of my concerns about taking Wayne to the UK, but he counteracted by offering to move to America. I wondered if he really loved me or just felt sorry for me. With that in mind, I said it had all happened too suddenly, that both of us needed time to think before we jumped into something we might later regret.
I sent Chuck’s money order back to him and told him I thought we should forget the idea of getting together, that I wasn’t convinced we could make each other happy. I never heard from him again. Some time later, I learned from my friend Sheila that Chuck had moved to another town and had left no forwarding address. I felt terrible, but still believed I had done the right thing.
While I was still reeling from what had happened between Chuck and me, the next bolt of lightning struck. Palmer asked me to marry him and he had already bought the ring. I told him it was much too soon and that I would have to think about it. In addition, I still hadn’t met his parents. When I mentioned that, he told me they’d probably think no girl was good enough for him, and they would never approve of him marrying a divorced woman, especially one with a child.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the prospect of yet another rejection but Palmer was pressuring me to accept. He assured me that his parents would rarely visit Chicago, so why worry? I wasn’t sure how I felt about him, but after the Chuck incident, I was vulnerable and insecure. Palmer was good to Wayne and me, we had great times together, he seemed genuinely to care about Wayne and, of course, he was here. After much deliberation, and taking everything into account, including the security of his impressive job, his treatment of my son and that he was so much more sociable than my first husband had been, I accepted his proposal. His friends were flabbergasted. They’d been convinced that confirmed bachelor Palmer would never marry. And I felt quite special to have landed such a prize catch.
Not long after that, Palmer showed up at my apartment, stinking drunk from one of his ‘business meetings’. He stumbled up the stairs and fell on the floor, slobbering and blabbering about how sorry he was and how much he loved me; he had also wet his trousers. I wasn’t sure if it was beer or urine, but whatever it was, he stank, and I was disgusted. I threw his ring at him, told him to leave and that I never wanted to see him again. I don’t remember ever being so disappointed, angry or hurt before. I didn’t need that crap in my life and especially not in my son’s life.
He went away for a while, I supposed to have more to drink, and then he was back, banging on the door, throwing pebbles at my window, crying and begging for forgiveness. The neighbours threatened to call the police so I relented and let him in. He went to sleep on the couch after blubbering for a while, and when he woke up, in a more sober condition, he was contrite and embarrassed, promising never to do such a thing again. I didn’t take the ring back right away, but after a few days of bouquets and other peace offerings, I gave in. I didn’t understand the signs, couldn’t read the writing on the wall otherwise I’d say I must have been mad. We tentatively set a wedding date.
I met his parents when they came to town for a weekend, I supposed to inspect me. We had dinner together and were all visibly uncomfortable. They didn’t have a lot to say and I was grateful that Palmer did most of the talking. His mother, Esther, was on the dowdy side and kept her lips pursed, which told me she was trying to hold her tongue so that she didn’t say something she might later regret. It was fairly obvious that she had decided not to like me. His father, Dan, was quiet until he had a few drinks in him, then proceeded to talk about life in Peoria, or perhaps I should say death in Peoria, since he went on about all the people he’d known who had died there. Later, he began to ask me a lot of personal questions and I was grateful that Palmer put a stop to the interrogation. Dan also had a nervous tic, which was a little unsettling. I later learned he had undergone several operations on his nose, supposedly for a deviated septum. The result was that he snorted like a pig all the time.
Apparently, his parents had not lived together much when Palmer was a child, as his father had been sickly and had always gone to stay with his own mother when he was feeling poorly because he thought she took better care of him than his wife did. I found that most peculiar but at last I understood why Palmer had spent so much time living with his Uncle Art and Aunt Gladys.
I had been divorced for less than a year when we were married in the private chambers of Judge Abraham Marowitz, a well-known political figure in Chicago; I also heard that he was a major figure in the city’s Machine. Palmer’s friend Merle Schneider had arranged for the marriage to take place ‘in chambers’. She knew all the political bigwigs in Chicago from working in the Mayor’s office and having also been active in the Democratic Party. The only people to attend our wedding were my brother Peter, one or two of Palmer’s colleagues from the Convention Bureau, Merle Schneider and Pete Huber’s brother, Joe, another of his golfing friends. His parents didn’t come. His colleagues gave us a lovely wedding luncheon at a downtown hotel, plus two nights at the grand old Edgewater Beach Hotel.
Staying at the Edgewater Beach was like living inside a scene from a movie. It was very elegant and we stayed in a magnificent penthouse suite. I had my first room-service meal there, complete with champagne. Palmer looked handsome and debonair with his dark brown eyes and slicked-back black hair; he wore silk pyjamas and a matching bathrobe, and I felt like a movie star in my diaphanous white peignoir. It was like a fairy-tale. As I stood at the vast walls of glass that looked out over the lights of Chicago, I kept thinking, If they could see me now. However, the wedding night was not the success I’d hoped it would be. The romance fizzled out because Palmer seemed more interested in guzzling champagne than he was in making love to me. I almost had to force myself on him. He tried to make a joke of it, telling me we had all the time in the world for lovemaking; I should relax, drink some wine and enjoy the luxury while I could. I don’t remember much more about that night. What I do remember is that the day had been seriously marred earlier. Palmer and I were on the Lake Street elevated train, on our way into Chicago to be married, when he turned to me with a very serious look on his face. ‘I have an important question to ask you before we get married,’ he blurted out.
‘Now?’ I said. ‘Sure, ask away. What is it?’
And then he dropped the bomb.
/> ‘Can you swear to me you’re not marrying me because you’re pregnant with someone else’s child?’
The air went right out of me and I could hardly breathe. I felt as though he’d punched me hard, right in the solar plexus. When I was able to speak, I choked out, ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No, I’m very serious,’ he replied.
Who is this man I’m about to marry? I thought. Who is this stranger? I should have jumped off the train at the next stop. However, all I could think was that it was too late for me to turn back, and so, after I’d caught my breath, I assured him that I was not pregnant, and on we went.
To this day, I cannot believe that I still went through with the wedding. If there was one piece of advice I could give to anyone getting married today, it would be this: for God’s sake, if you have any doubts or fears about the person you’re about to marry, or about the marriage itself, it’s never too late to back out, even if you’re standing at the altar.
I was eventually able to push the incident to the back of my mind, and I comforted myself that his parents had undoubtedly put that thought into his head and he had asked me for their sake.
13: The Palmer Saga Begins, and Meeting a Royal Butler
After Palmer and I were married, I opened the mail each day and was horrified to discover that he was in a far worse financial situation than I was. I simply had a difficult time making ends meet, but he was up to his neck in debt. One of the first bills I opened was from a downtown Chicago florist for all the flowers he had sent to me during our courtship. It came with a threatening ‘past due notice’. That bill was a shock, but not nearly as shocking as some that came later.
That evening, after we’d had our meal, I presented the bills to him, pointing out the demand from the florist. ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked him.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s just temporary, a misunderstanding I’m trying to get sorted out with my bank.’
Another thing I found strange after we were married was Palmer’s compulsive behaviour. For instance, there was his bedtime routine of checking the locks on the doors and windows. First, he would lock them, then tug each handle exactly twelve times to make sure they were secure. Sometimes, if he wasn’t sure he had counted correctly, or if he lost count, he would start again. Not of major importance, I suppose, but if I had known then what I know now, that behaviour would certainly have rung warning bells for me. Occasionally, I would tease him. ‘I don’t think you counted right,’ I’d say. Not that I actually knew, I just wanted to see what he’d do. I knew it was mean to do that, but what the heck? I had little else to laugh about.
‘Goddamnit,’ he’d say, and check them all again. Once, I couldn’t stop laughing, and he became so angry that I thought he was going to punch me, so I decided it safest to ignore his weird behaviour. After all, what harm was it doing?
We had managed to find a much nicer apartment to move into after we were married. It had two bedrooms, a huge living room with a dining area, a modern bathroom, a smallish kitchen with lots of cabinets, and there were huge wardrobe-type closets throughout.
There was plenty of room in the second bedroom for Wayne, his toys and clothes; the walk-in closet was as big as a small bedroom, and he often used it as his den. We’d had little money to spare so he’d never had his own space before, a place where he could invite friends to play. The little guy had adapted to our compromised situation since his father and I were divorced, and now I was happy to be able to provide such a lovely spacious room for him. I let him help to pick out the bedspread and curtains.
The apartment, considered a basement apartment since it was partially below ground level, had large picture windows and was light and cheery. The building was almost new and was in a great neighbourhood. We were about half a block from the elevated train, the library, the YMCA and the Chicago Park District Recreation Center. There was also a children’s playground across the street and two parks nearby. Then, just one block away, was the school and all the shops we could need. It was perfect, especially since we had no car at the time; we certainly didn’t need one as long as we lived there.
We soon met our next-door neighbours, Mary and John Nicholson. They were also newlyweds and both worked for airlines. Mary soon became my best friend. Other people in the building included a novelist and an advertising man, an artist and a furniture designer, Greek restaurant owners, Jewish dress-shop owners, and a beautiful model who was the mistress of an infamous union leader and mobster. Later, another newlywed couple moved in a May and December match: she, another Mary, was just twenty-one and he was over fifty. Within nine months of their marriage, they had a baby, and then, little more than ten months later, they produced twins. Jack was already a grandfather so this new family must have been quite a shock to him, and to his adult children. We never understood what Mary saw in him. Every time we met, he was drunk, not pleasantly so. He always became obnoxious and often demeaned and insulted Mary in front of us.
‘Look at my wife’s fat ass,’ he’d say. ‘She’s got nice big tits, though.’ He’d be laughing as poor Mary cringed.
Overall, it was a most interesting group of people; we all got along well and had great fun together. Our neighbours were like an extended family; even the wife of our Italian janitor, who baby-sat for us regularly another Nonie to Wayne seemed part of the family.
There was another apartment building next door where a number of children lived, so Wayne had plenty of playmates. One of the families in that building was Greek and their yia-yia, Greek for ‘grandmother’, lived with them to take care of the children while the parents worked. Yia-yia also took care of any other neighbourhood children who happened to be around. Every morning she would cut a fresh long switch from the lilac bushes that ran along the edge of our properties, and she would use it much as a goatherd would in rounding up the goats. She couldn’t speak a word of English but jabbered away in Greek all day long, waving her switch menacingly at the children. The children adored and respected her. We never had to worry about them they could be outside from dawn to dusk, only coming in for meals, and we knew they were safe with Yia-yia. I remember telling Wayne, ‘You are such a lucky kid.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Well, you have an American grandma, an English nan, an Italian nonna and a Greek yia-yia.’
He looked puzzled. ‘How come I’ve only got one horrible grandpa, then?’
Hmm, I thought. I’d better change the subject, but first I reminded him that he had a nice granddad who lived in England.
‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said, ‘but I wish I had one here.’
Besides school, there was an abundance of free or cheap activities for children nearby. They could swim in the indoor pools at either the YMCA or the Park District, listen to stories at the library, play basketball at the court across the street and attend all kinds of fun classes at the Park District, which ran a day camp when school was out for the summer. There were just as many activities available for adults. Living in that kind of old neighbourhood, which is rare today, was much like living in an English village.
None of us ever had much money and our entertainment was simple. We had dinner parties within our building so we never had to worry about driving under the influence of alcohol. We would get together with Mary and John Nicholson almost every weekend and usually had baked beans, date bread and hot dogs for dinner. John was from Boston and baked beans were a weekend tradition. Sometimes the men would play basketball across the street or we would go for walks together around the neighbourhood. Usually on those promenades, Palmer would end up saying the same thing: ‘You know what they say. You can travel widely on your own block.’ We’d a
ll nod and grunt in agreement with his words of wisdom.
A day or two after one of our neighbourhood strolls, I was having coffee with Mary Rogers, the girl with three babies, and she said something that shocked me. ‘I was watching you guys walking up the street last weekend and couldn’t take my eyes off Palmer. He walks funny, like a girl,’ she said. ‘Have you ever noticed how he bobs up and down? And my Jack was just saying that he thinks he’s a bit limp-wristed.’ Without hesitating, she continued, ‘Do you think he might be queer?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I protested. ‘We have a very healthy sex life. There’s nothing wrong with Palmer, I can assure you. He’s all man. He plays golf and poker, and homosexual men don’t do that.’
‘Hmm, well, I was just saying,’ she said.
Just saying, my foot, I thought. How dare she say such a thing about my husband? I wanted to tell her what I thought of her drunken poor excuse for a husband, but I held my tongue. Least said, quickest mended, I thought. Although, I must admit, I had often watched Palmer and thought how oddly he walked. It really did look a little effeminate. And I had lied about our sex life: it was almost non-existent.
I honestly don’t think Palmer was homosexual. If anything, he was asexual. An online encyclopedia seems to confirm my conclusion: Wikipedia says, ‘Asexuality (sometimes referred to as non-sexuality), in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction to others or the lack of interest in sex.’ That certainly seems to fit.
The GI Bride Page 13
