‘Why?’ I asked, as the heat of embarrassment rose in my face.
‘You haven’t transferred your membership to this church yet.’
I stood frozen to the spot for what seemed like minutes but could only have been seconds, then turned and walked out of the church. Shock and disbelief turned to rage and I began to run, tears streaming down my face. I didn’t stop until I arrived home. Another rejection, I thought. I’ve been rejected by the bloody church. I was glad the children hadn’t gone with me that day: it would have made my escape much more difficult. Palmer asked me what had happened, and when I told him, he laughed. ‘That’s what you get for trying to be such a goody-goody,’ was all he said, which upset me even more.
The following day, the pastor came to see me. I invited him in but did not ask him to sit down.
‘I’m sorry you left in such a hurry yesterday. We didn’t have a chance to talk,’ he said.
There was a boulder-sized lump in my throat and I wasn’t sure if I could speak to him in a civil manner, but I took a deep breath and opened my mouth, surprised by my own daring. ‘How dare you and your precious church stand between me and my God?’ I spat. ‘How dare you?’
He stammered, then tried to explain the rules of that particular branch of the Lutheran Church, which was, as I recall, the Missouri Synod. I listened as politely as I could, and then it was my turn.
‘Thank you for showing me how far your church has distanced itself from the teaching of Christ,’ I told him. ‘You can be sure I will not be transferring my membership to yours or any other Lutheran church.’
He told me how sorry he was to hear that and assured me that I would be welcome to attend the church as long as I understood the rule about Communion. I almost choked on that final comment.
‘Does that mean you won’t be able to baptize my baby either?’ I asked.
‘Your infant child would be exempt from the membership rule, but I will pray that you have a change of heart about your own membership.’ I thanked him for his visit and showed him the door.
We ended up having Robin christened in that church because Mary and John Nicholson, who were to be her godparents, were also Lutherans, but I never again attended that so-called Christian church.
We had some interesting neighbours in the apartment complex but almost everyone worked in the casinos and slept most of the day. There was little socializing when we first moved in. A number of gorgeous showgirls lived close to us, and next to them I felt like a dowdy old frump, although I must say they didn’t always look so glamorous when they first got up and wandered out to their swimming pool to work on their suntans.
We felt fortunate when a non-show-business couple with a young daughter moved in next door. They were Don and Rosa Montgomery and their daughter’s name was Robin, which was quite a coincidence. Don was a scientist who lived and worked in Los Alamos in New Mexico but was on assignment to the Nevada nuclear test sites. Rosa was the sister of Ruth Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham. They were, of course, a religious family and were always thoughtful and kind to us. Their daughter Robin was a little younger than Wayne but at least he had someone close to his age to play with. I used to love hearing Rosa’s stories of how she and Ruth had grown up in China with their missionary parents and about some of the funny things that had happened before her father got the hang of the Chinese language. My favourite story was about why his congregation kept giggling during his sermons. At last, someone explained to him that the Chinese word for ‘pig’ was similar to the word for ‘Jesus’ and that he often got the two mixed up by using the wrong inflection.
Despite Palmer’s new job, we still seemed to be very short of money. When one of the newer neighbours asked if I would consider taking care of her child while she worked at the casino, I said I would. Stacey was about eight so now Wayne had another playmate. I hadn’t initially thought to ask the mother, whose name was Marilyn, what she did for a living but when I did, she told me she was a ‘gambler’ and proceeded to explain what that meant.
Marilyn would go to the casinos, day or night, and start looking for a man who was alone and on a winning streak. She would then stand next to him, encouraging him and cheering him on. Many times the man would consider her to be good luck and would end up giving her some of his chips to gamble alongside him. Of course, she didn’t gamble with the chips but cashed them in later. Sometimes she would end up drinking and dining with the man and perhaps he would buy her an expensive gift at one of the chic boutiques in the hotel. There were several such gambling girls; they made arrangements with the hotel boutiques to return the gifts and get perhaps half of the retail value in cash. It was quite a racket with the same items being sold many times over. I asked Marilyn if she ever went to bed with any of these men but she insisted, at least initially, that she was not a prostitute.
Later, she started staying away for longer periods. Sometimes I would have to go to her apartment to find clothes for Stacey and it looked as though a cyclone had gone through the building. There were cocktail dresses strewn everywhere and the whole place smelt of booze. I was worried that she was getting in over her head, and was increasingly concerned that she might be using drugs. She would sometimes cry uncontrollably on my shoulder, but when I tried to talk her into changing her crazy lifestyle she said she couldn’t because nothing else would pay as well. In return she paid me well and always in silver dollars. Poor Stacey spent more and more time with us, and would cry for her mother. It was heartbreaking and reminded me of my lonely childhood when I was evacuated during the war and separated from my family.
It was difficult to get into the Christmas spirit, with the hot desert sun beating down every day. We put up a small tree for the children and I seem to recall that we cooked outside on the grill on Christmas Day. Somehow, Christmas just didn’t seem the same out there in the desert. Wayne was happy because he got just what he wanted from Santa: a cowboy outfit. He took being a cowboy very seriously and was forever practising his draw. ‘Stick ’em up, pardner,’ he’d say.
We took him horseback riding at a ranch and to the National Quick Draw Contest to show him how fast he would need to draw if he wanted to be a real cowboy. Now, this cowboy business was a whole new thing for Wayne as he had previously had a Superman outfit, which he was always putting on and would leap into the room when we had company, scaring the hell out of our guests. He was funny as a little boy and, come to think of it, he still is; only the costumes have changed.
Soon after the holidays, Mary and John Nicholson came to visit us for Robin’s christening. It was wonderful to see them and I realized how much I missed having them nearby. While they were with us, Palmer arranged for us all to see the show and have dinner at the Flamingo Hotel; we were to see Myron Cohen, the comedian, plus the dancing girls. Mary and I decided to splurge and have our hair done at one of the fancy salons on the Strip. Now, in the early sixties the beehive hairdo was in, so Mary and I, wanting to be trendy, asked for exactly that. It being Las Vegas, where just about everything was done to excess, we came out of that salon with the biggest hair you’ve ever seen.
We had a great evening out, and after we’d stumbled home across the patch of desert that separated the Strip from where we lived, Mary and I decided that our expensive coiffures were much too splendid to waste. Mary said she’d heard that if you wrapped toilet paper around your head before going to bed, it would preserve your hairdo. So, between us we used an entire roll, wrapping our enormous beehives.
The next morning when we emerged, bleary-eyed, from our bedrooms, we took one look at each other and began to laugh hysterically. After rolling about in bed all night, our carefully wrapped beehives had grown about
a foot taller and skinnier, and when we finally composed ourselves enough to remove the paper, our hair looked as though it had been moulded inside a stovepipe hat. It was a terrible waste of toilet paper but the laughs we’ve had about that incident over the years have been worth it; I just wish we’d taken pictures.
Palmer and I played host to quite a number of his customers, most of whom were rich but pleasant company. One youngish man in particular comes to mind. Palmer brought him home for lunch one day and, in the course of conversation, he revealed that he had married the Kimberley heiress. ‘I know you’re not American,’ he said to me, ‘but are you familiar with the name?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘Kimberly-Clark paper products are well known in Britain too.’
‘No.’ He laughed. ‘I’m talking about Kimberley diamonds. You know, the Kimberley diamond mines.’ Oh, Lord, I thought, and here I am, serving him a ham sandwich.
Of all the amazing things that happened while I was living in Las Vegas, one thing stands out, and it didn’t involve anyone famous. I was taking the baby for a walk in her buggy one day, along the sidewalk on the Strip in the days when you could do it safely. Coming towards me was someone who looked familiar. I thought I must be dreaming after all, this was Las Vegas, not England. Who could I possibly know here? As we got closer, I realized it was who I’d thought it was. It was my old friend June Gradley from the South Oxhey council estate.
‘June Gradley!’ I almost shouted. ‘What are you doing here?’
She stared back at me, clearly dazed. ‘Iris Jones,’ she finally managed to get out.
We hugged each other, questions pouring out of our mouths. I remembered then that my mother had told me she’d married an American but she didn’t know where she lived in the States.
‘My Len’s still in the air force,’ she explained, ‘and we’re stationed at Nellis Air Force base here in Vegas but what are you doing here?’
‘Well, you might say I’m stationed in Vegas too,’ I said. ‘I’m married for the second time and my husband works at the Flamingo Hotel.’ We chatted for a while before exchanging phone numbers and addresses and promising we’d get together soon. I was over the moon to think that I would now have a normal friend in this weird place, and an old friend from England at that, another GI bride. How lucky can you get? I thought, as I walked away with a big grin on my face.
June and Len Armstrong had two young children and lived in military housing on the air force base, and I will never forget our first visit to them. They had invited us for dinner. When we got there, Robin was asleep so we laid her in the middle of their bed. She was only about three months old and not very active so we assumed she would be safe. As we sat around the table eating dinner, we suddenly heard a loud thump, followed by the sound of the baby screaming. We rushed into the bedroom and there was Robin, on the hard tiled floor. I picked her up and tried to comfort her but the screaming didn’t stop. I was terrified. Len said we should take her to the base hospital to have a doctor check her over, and that was what we did, with the baby still screaming. As soon as it was our turn to be seen, she stopped crying. The doctor checked her over, found nothing detectable wrong with her but told us to come back if she seemed to be sleeping more or longer than usual. I stayed up all of that night, just watching her, but she seemed fine and the next day she showed no ill effects from her fall except a small bruise on her forehead. The guilt I suffered for leaving her alone on that bed stayed with me for a long time and after that, in similar situations, I simply created a little bed for her on the floor.
Playing host with Palmer, entertaining his customers at the hotel, was great fun as long as he didn’t drink too much. I felt that although I was inexperienced I did a good job and managed to converse easily with just about anyone. Palmer told me that most people thought I was charming and loved my Englishness, whatever that meant.
The only problem was that it was difficult to acquire the necessary wardrobe for all those fancy dinner engagements. My crazy neighbour Marilyn had an abundance of evening clothes and usually came to my rescue. I borrowed dresses from her even though I often had to have them cleaned before I could wear them. Sometimes I just hung them outside for a while to get rid of the smell of smoke.
I used to love going to see and hear the entertainment in the lounges of the various hotels when we were with clients. I also remember two or three times leaving the kids with my next-door neighbour for an hour so that I could walk up to the Strip and listen to Jerry Vale, who was appearing at the Sands Hotel lounge I was crazy about him and almost fainted when he said hello to me one evening. In those days, you could order one drink and sit there listening for as long as you liked to some of the biggest stars around. I don’t think you can do that any more.
Palmer’s job required him to work long hours, but I was so busy with the baby and baby-sitting that I really didn’t have time to worry about what he was doing or how much he was drinking. We were still so short of money, though, that I had to take the baby to a free clinic for her inoculations. I used to feel guilty being there, along with all the poor Native American women and children. We were able to have nice evenings out because they were business-related and didn’t cost us anything, but making ends meet at home was another matter. If it hadn’t been for the money I earned for looking after Stacey, I wouldn’t have had enough to buy groceries. The situation seemed ridiculous to me, but if I questioned Palmer about it, he always had an excuse or blamed me for being extravagant. Extravagant with what? I would ask myself. I never could figure out what was extravagant about buying diapers or baby food. The entire time we lived in Vegas, my only extravagance was that one ridiculous beehive.
In many ways, Las Vegas was the perfect metaphor for my marriage to Palmer. It was all bright lights and plenty on the surface, but underneath the glitz, and the show-off entertainment, our life and marriage were an arid desert. My children and I were like tumbleweed, blown about by the ever-changing prevailing winds, and emotionally, I was parched.
After we had been in Las Vegas for about six months, and before we’d had time to begin looking for a different place to live or get our furniture out of storage, Palmer announced that he had been offered a job back in Chicago and we were going almost immediately. I was stunned. I never understood how these things came about: I didn’t know if he looked for jobs because he’d been given notice by his present employer, or if in fact they came looking for him. I just accepted it and did what I had to. What choice did I have? I certainly couldn’t stay by myself in the middle of the desert with two small children.
So, once again, we were on the move. My first concern was for Stacey. That problem was soon solved: Rosa Montgomery, my friend and neighbour, promised that she would take over the child’s care. Some time later, I learned that Marilyn, Stacey’s mother, had disappeared for a long time. We eventually discovered that she had run off with a man who turned out to be a drug addict, and that he had abandoned her in some distant part of the country. The last I heard was that the courts had granted the Montgomerys temporary custody of Stacey, but I often wondered over the years what happened to her. I’ve always hated ‘losing people’, but my own life had become so complicated that it was often hard for me to keep my own little family intact, let alone keep track of others.
The next bad news was that since Palmer had not stayed for the minimum year at the Flamingo they would not pay for our move or the storage of our furniture. The latter had now racked up a bill of several thousand dollars. The job Palmer was going to was not paying our moving expenses either so I couldn’t believe his new employer had begged him to work for them. I asked Palmer if he thought Uncle Art would help us out but he said he couldn�
��t ask him. Apparently, unbeknown to me, he had already asked his uncle for help too many times.
We loaded everything we could into the car, added a car-top carrier and filled that, leaving just enough room for us to squeeze in. I will never forget how frightening it was going round the hairpin curves on some of the roads in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It felt as though the car was going to topple over the sheer drops at the roadsides because it was so top heavy.
That journey back to Illinois, along what is now known as Historic Route 66, took us three days considered a fast time in 1962 and was just one more nightmare in my life; one that would have been better forgotten were it not for two interesting things that happened along the way. One was when we stopped at a roadside café in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Armed guards, guns drawn, brought in several prisoners who were wearing typical striped uniforms. The men, chained together at the ankles, shuffled along, looking at the floor as they passed. I guessed they either were a chain gang or were being transported between prisons. They sat at a long table nearby and the whole place suddenly became silent; it felt as though everyone was holding their breath, waiting for who knew what? I glanced at Wayne and almost laughed: his eyes were as big as saucers. It was another occasion when it felt as though we had landed in a scene from a movie.
The next incident was the kindness shown to us by a poor old couple, typical hillbillies with no teeth and the sides cut out of their shoes to accommodate enormous bunions; they managed a horribly run-down motel in the Ozark mountains. It was late at night and freezing cold when we found it. When those old folks saw how exhausted we were from travelling across country with two children in that small car, they brought food and coffee to our cabin because they knew there was nowhere for us to get a meal. They were real angels and I could have kissed them. I have no idea where we were; all I know is that we had driven off the main road up into the hills. I remember thinking that someone could have murdered us in our sleep out there and no one would have known where we were or what had happened to us.
The GI Bride Page 17
