The GI Bride by Iris Jones Simantel

this area felt far
more European than the sprawling strip malls in the suburbs, or what I now thought of as
‘the wasteland’. I often wondered what all those other GI brides thought of
America and if they were as disappointed in it as I was; I suppose it depended on where
you went. Many years later, my old friend June Gradley (now Armstrong), who went to live
in Vermont, said she loved it there because it was so green and mountainous; it sounded
a lot different from Chicago.
    Before we’d moved into the apartment,
we’d had to scrub down all the walls from top to bottom: they were filthy with
black soot. On the advice of Bob’s mother, we cleaned the torn and faded wallpaper
with damp bread.
    ‘Hooray! At last I’ve found
something worthwhile to do with your horrible American sliced bread,’ I told
Bob.
    ‘We’ll probably be able to get
some fresh baked in this neighbourhood. They’re bound to sell it at the bakery or
the Jewish deli but maybe only pumpernickel or rye bread,’ he replied.
    ‘What the heck are they?’ I
asked.
    ‘Oh, God, something else you probably
won’t like.’ He laughed. ‘You might have to bake your own.’
    That was a joke: I didn’t know how to
fry an egg. Poor Bob, it would be his turn to eat things he couldn’t recognize
once I started cooking.
    We continued to scrub and scrape for days,
but our sad little apartment hardly looked any different when we’d finished. The
windows had been caked with dirt and we’d had to use razor blades to scrape off
the encrusted grime.
    ‘Jeez, I thought I was moving up in
the world but, so far, this is definitely a move down,’ I commented, to my poor
husband. I immediately regretted what I’d said because he lost his usual
smile.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t be. I was only
joking,’ I told him, but I wasn’t.
    At the time, we couldn’t afford to buy
paint so, other than a coat of cheap whitewash in the closet where we were to hang our
clothes, we were stuck with the ancient wallpaper and scuffed, peeling paint.
    ‘Too bad we can’t take off this
wallpaper,’ I told Bob. ‘It might be worth something on the antiques
market.’
    We unpacked our bounty of wedding gifts and
set up housekeeping. It was exciting to have my own home for the first time ever, even
though it was a bit seedy. We nolonger had to worry about upsetting
anyone and could even invite people to visit.
    I’ll never forget the first time the
Irvines came for a meal.
    ‘I’ve asked the folks to supper
next Sunday,’ Bob announced.
    ‘Oh, God, what am I going to feed
them?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m
sure they’ll enjoy whatever you prepare. Just relax, and it’ll be
fine.’
    Hmm, I thought. Easy for him to say. At
least they were coming for supper and not dinner: that meant I wouldn’t have to
cook a big meal.
    After much agonizing, I remembered the big
fancy salads my posh aunt used to serve and thought I could manage something like that.
I covered a large platter with fancy foil doilies, arranged lettuce leaves artistically
around the edge, then layered all the other salad vegetables in decreasing circles,
ending up with a vase of celery sticks in the middle, surrounded by radish rosettes. It
looked beautiful. To go with the salad, there was a plate of sliced ham and cheese, and
bread and butter. The family said how pretty it looked and then we dug in. After
they’d finished with the salad, they all just sat there. I thought they were
waiting for dessert and went to get the pie I had bought.
    ‘What’s the main course?’
enquired Bob, who had not had any input before and hadn’t seen what I was
preparing.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I said.
    ‘You know, silly, the meat and
potatoes.’
    I stood there, stunned, looking from face to
face.
    ‘Haven’t you cooked anything,
honey?’ he asked.
    ‘No, of course I haven’t. You
can’t have cooked meat and veg as well as salad. You have ham and cheese and bread
with