Once and Future Wife

by David Burnett

  Everyone laughed.

  “I’ll pass your evaluation on to the committee,” Ms. Watkins promised.

  “Howard, I’d like another glass of punch.” She turned to him, a pitiful expression on her face. “Please? Even if you can’t tell me what’s in it.”

  “Oh, I can tell you,” he said. “We’ll discuss terms when I return.”

  The music gradually became louder and morphed from Christmas music to popular songs and golden oldies. As Howard returned with the punch, several couples moved to the open area near the grand piano and began to dance. He set the glasses on the table and placed a hand on Jennie’s shoulder.

  “Ms. Bateman, would you do me the honor?” He motioned toward the dancefloor.

  “Of course.” She reached for his hand as she stood and nearly collided with the waiter who was bringing her dessert, a slice of pie that was easily twice the size she had expected.

  She turned to Kara and pointed to the pie. “Guard it. Not a bite is to be missing. And the punch.”

  Kara raised three fingers. “Scouts honor,” she said as another waiter placed an apple torte in front of her.

  “I’d really like your recipe. Will a dance make me special?” Jennie asked as she and Howard walked toward the dancefloor.

  “Oh, it will take more than that, but a dance is a good start.” He placed his hand on her back and Jennie took it, gently pulling it around her.

  “Getting closer.”

  As Howard spun her around, Jennie spied Kara cutting small pieces of her pie and passing them to the others. Just like Kara, she thought.

  ***

  Jennie was moving her feet and bouncing as they returned to the table to the strains of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Howard sat, and she plopped into his lap. There was a collective gasp around the table.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Missed my chair.” She stood quickly and put her hand on Howard’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Fine. Just surprised.” He reached for her hand as if to pull her back. “Pleasantly.”

  Jennie slipped away, sat in her own chair, and stared at her plate.

  “You ate my pie.” She turned to Kara, then glanced at her glass. “You drank my punch.”

  Kara raised her right hand. “Not a single sip of that…”

  Jennie popped her shoulder. “Bad, bad, Kara.” Everyone laughed and Jennie joined in, louder than the others.

  Jennie had just finished dessert when Rob Baxter, the PE teacher, asked her to dance. After a last sip of punch, she took his hand as they walked across the room, and she wrapped her arms around him for the slow dance that followed.

  She didn’t make it back to the table before she was picked off again. Twenty minutes later, she finally sank into her chair.

  “Great party, Ms. W,” she shouted over the music and voices. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

  “Jennie, what are you doing?” Kara whispered, a puzzled expression on her face. “What would Thomas think?”

  “Thomas likes to see me having a good time.”

  “But…and when did you stop your meds?” she whispered.

  Jennie turned away. “Party pooper.”

  Howard put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. A few seconds later, though, she slipped away, jumping to her feet, cheering. One of the first-grade teachers and her boyfriend had taken over the dancefloor.

  “Go, Noelle, go,” Jennie called over the music as Noelle’s boyfriend tossed her into the air in time to the music, caught her smoothly and spun her.

  Rob Baxter asked Kara to dance, and Janice and Marty were both on the floor.

  Jennie drifted away from the table and began to ask guys to dance, and no one, married, engaged, or single, turned her down.

  Mr. Bane, who worked at the district office, a man about Ms. Watkins’s age, cajoled her onto the floor, and the entire group circled around, clapping. Forty minutes later, when Kara finally returned to the table, Jennie was talking with them.

  “I’m exhausted,” Kara panted. “I need a break.”

  “Not me. I want to party ’til dawn.” Jennie took Mr. Bane’s hand. A slow dance had just begun. “Dance with me, Mr. Bane.” He smiled sheepishly. Jennie pulled him to his feet, and the two headed back toward the floor.

  As eleven o’clock neared, the music began to slow, and the strains of “Silent Night,” traditionally the final song of the evening, filled the room, and the entire group stood and sang. As the last notes died, Ms. Watkins signaled for attention.

  “I hope all of you enjoyed our party tonight. Please join me in thanking our planning committee for all of their hard work. It was suggested at my table that grades of A-plus should be awarded to all of the members.” After the applause died away, she continued. “I wish all of you a very happy Christmas…and we will see you in the New Year.” She raised her hands in a gesture of dismissal. “Drive safely on your way home.”

  “It’s just eleven o’clock,” Jennie wailed as people collected coats, wished each other a merry Christmas, and started toward the door. “I’m not Cinderella, and it’s way too soon to wind down. I don’t want to go home.” She turned to Howard. “You ready for a real party? I know just the place.”

  “I had thought we’d drive back to your house…”

  “It so too early. I’m feeling good, and I’m ready to party like it’s twenty ninety-nine.” Jennie’s voice carried over the noise of the crowd, and several turned to look. “Anyone else up for some heavy-duty fun?”

  She surveyed the room. People stared at her, but no one spoke.

  “Stick-in-the-muds.” She scooped up her purse and tossed her coat over her shoulder, “See you guys next year.” She almost sprinted from the room.

  ***

  “Is she all right?” Ms. Watkins asked Kara. “Is she drunk?”

  “Buzzed, I guess, but, no, I’ve seen Jennie when she has had too much to drink and this is not it.” She lowered her voice. “She told me she’s no longer taking meds and I think she’s manic. That would explain why she’s flirting with every man she meets.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We need to get her home and call her doctor.” Kara looked around. “Not sure where she went, though.” The room was almost empty. Howard appeared to tell them he would be riding home with Janice and Marty.

  They walked to the door of the banquet room and stopped, scanning the restaurant for Jennie. “Nothing we can do if we can’t find her,” Ms. Watkins began.

  “There.” Kara pointed toward the restroom, across the restaurant, near the front door. Jennie was leaving. She had removed her leggings, and she waved them above her head.

  “Be safe. Be good,” she called as she almost skipped through the door.

  As Kara and Ms. Watkins hurried after her, pushing through the front door, Jennie was hopping into her car. She opened the windows and revved the engine. The tires squealed as the car sprang forward.

  “Jennie, stop.” Kara ran toward the car and Jennie slammed on the brakes. “Where are you going?”

  “To party,” Jennie hollered. “Anchors aweigh.” She saluted, stepped on the accelerator, and sped off.

  “What does that mean? Anchors aweigh?” The confusion showed on Ms. Watkins’s face.

  “It means trouble. That’s the theme song of the Rusty Anchor, the bar where Jennie used to work. We’d better stop her.”

  The Rusty Anchor

  “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.”

  Jennie raced across the city, singing the old navy song as loudly as she could. Back in the day it had been sung at the Rusty Anchor at two fifteen each morning, serving as the last call, a signal that the legal closing time was approaching and that final orders were being accepted.

  Actually, there had been an alternate, more raucous version of the song than the one used by sailors. Penned by one of the regulars at the bar, it boasted two stanzas, the first for men, the second for women. Jennie had been the only woman who�
�d ever had the nerve to sing the entire second verse in public, and she belted it out tonight as she pulled into the only vacant space in the parking lot.

  She left her coat in the car with her leggings, and slipped between a beat-up pickup and a shiny black sports car, both wedged into the no-parking zone near the entrance. She recalled her father’s advice that it was a good sign when you found both beamers and clunkers in a bar’s parking lot, since it meant everyone in town drank there. She shivered as the frigid air hit her bare legs and whipped up her cotton tunic.

  Pushing open the door, she felt as if she had stepped back in time.

  The Anchor was just as she remembered it. Country music blared from an ancient box in one corner, guys clustered around tables, beer mugs or whiskey glasses in hand, and a gigantic bronze anchor, salvaged from a ship that had run aground in the fifties, hung on the back wall.

  Curt Woodard presided over the bar. Dressed in stained khakis and a t-shirt emblazoned with an image of the rust-encrusted anchor, he looked just as he had when she had picked up her last paycheck fourteen years earlier. I’ve even seen that t-shirt before, she thought.

  Two young women clad in high heels, tight shorts and cropped halters, blond hair in ponytails, were waiting tables. She’d donned the same outfit six days a week during her three years at the Anchor, although she’d generally let her waist-length hair hang loose down her back. Curt had liked it that way.

  She looked around. A few of the guys were familiar. Sam was across the room in the chair that had been his for almost two decades. Timmy Jacobs stood at the bar. He had never been one to sit while he drank. A couple of others were old timers, but Jennie didn’t recall their names. Other than the two waitresses, Jennie saw no women.

  Typical. And a lot more fun.

  Only the television sets were new. Large screens were mounted on the walls, each one displaying a different ball game. Jennie took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of polished wood, stale smoke that had infused itself into every nook and cranny from years gone by, alcohol, and human bodies. She smiled. She was home.

  As Jennie stepped away from the door, one of the waitresses brushed against her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” she said as she struggled to keep her tray from tipping.

  “No worries.” Jennie placed a hand under the tray to help steady it. “Stay anchored.”

  She laughed when the waitress gaped at her, seeming surprised she knew the slang for supporting the tray and not spilling the beer.

  “Vickie, our drinks,” a guy called impatiently.

  Jennie glanced to the left, where a man stood at one of the tables, scowling, beckoning for the waitress to hurry, and she stepped away quickly. “If I had been waiting his table, his drink would have been served over his silk tie and pinstriped suit,” Jennie sniffed.

  Turning away, she moved slowly across the room toward the bar, her hips swaying from side to side. Conversations ceased as she passed each table, the guys looking her up and down as if she were a strange species that had ventured from its normal habitat. She noted one man’s mouth drop as his eyes reached her bare legs much sooner than he had expected. She flashed him one of her brightest smiles and ran her fingers across his shoulder as she slipped past him.

  Curt’s eyes twinkled as she approached.

  “Hello, Curt…My usual, please.” She leaned her forearm against the bar and gazed into his eyes. Curt had been one of her favorites. She’d been one of his.

  “Ms. Jennie Lindsay. It has been a while.” He drew the words out as he nodded and smiled. “Jack Daniels, straight up, as I recall.”

  Jennie startled at the name. She’d not been divorced when she’d worked at the bar, not until the last few months, and Curt had only known her by her married name. Hearing him say it, though, caused her to think of how she wanted it to be hers again, and she wondered—she knew full well—what Thomas would think if he knew where she was.

  She smiled at the thought of Thomas. She would leave home after breakfast and see him in the early afternoon…

  Then his image faded.

  “Your memory is impressive.” She smiled at Curt. “It’s Bateman now though. How have you been, Curt?”

  “Not bad. Not bad at all.” He poured her drink. “I had forgotten. You divorced the professor just before you pulled up stakes and moved on.”

  Jennie sipped the whiskey. “He divorced me, but yes.”

  “You’re looking good.” His eyes wandered down her body. “Really good. Except for the short hair, I’d swear it was nineteen ninety-nine and you had dropped in on your night off.” He glanced at the two girls who were waiting tables. The one named Vickie was flirting with the guy in the pinstriped suit, and the other was massaging Sam’s shoulders.

  “Looking for a job? I’ve another uniform in my office. Get on back there and change.”

  They held each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then, Jennie shook her head.

  “Not tonight.” She leaned forward, her face almost touching his. “Tonight, I’m here to party.”

  As she stretched across the bar for a hello kiss on the cheek, Curt glanced down and his eyes dilated. All the way to Florida, Jennie thought, smiling broadly.

  She felt her tunic slide several inches up her body, and she heard a gasp from behind her. She looked over her shoulder and winked at the man sitting not more than two feet away. A whistle rang out from one corner of the room, then the room suddenly became very quiet.

  Jennie turned and allowed her gaze to roam about the bar. Every eye was on her.

  Sam sat three seats away. He smiled at her. “Welcome back,” he mouthed.

  A chair clattered to the floor as the guy in the pinstriped suit sprang to his feet, the waitress pushed aside, apparently forgotten.

  In one corner, she spotted a young guy, a college student, she decided, who had risen from his chair—the whistler, she guessed. He seemed to be part of a group, several guys and a girl she had not noticed earlier. The girl was wearing a tunic much like Jennie’s. She had twisted around in her chair and her hand covered her face, as if embarrassed by the boy’s behavior.

  Nice outfit, Jennie thought. Who says I’m getting old?

  Jennie flashed the boy a smile, then she placed an elbow on the bar, leaned back, and sipped her whiskey.

  The girl in the corner shouted something at the boy, but with her head turned and her hand over her face Jennie couldn’t make out the words. She could only imagine the girl had given the boy an earful, and that made Jennie laugh.

  “Oh my word.”

  She heard this from the gray-haired man three tables away. She’d not known that the Anchor could be so quiet. She raised her glass above her head, laughing at the expressions on the guys’ faces as her tunic rose another inch.

  “Anyone want to party?”

  A cheer echoed through the room.

  “Hubba-hubba,” the gray-haired man exclaimed as he jumped to his feet.

  Chairs scraped across the floor as men stood up to look. They pointed at Jennie and turned to each other, some giving high-fives, others rubbing their palms together as if they were about to sit down to a feast.

  “Who’s the chick?” one guy shouted, and suddenly all of them were talking and calling out at the same time, making such a racket that it was difficult to distinguish one voice from the next. The whistles and catcalls were so loud Jennie might as well have been walking naked through a construction zone.

  Shouts came from all corners of the room, multiple voices rising above the commotion, until it all blended into a raucous blur.

  “Where’d that sweet thing come from?”

  “Give us a show.”

  “Yeah! Take it off.”

  Curt raised his hand for quiet, but it had no impact on the men.

  “Come on over here, sweet thing, let’s do it.”

  “Yeah, let’s party.”

  “Party ’til we drop.”

  As the volume continued to rise, Curt pounded on the bar. �
�Quiet,” he hollered. “Hold it down.”

  Still, the rumble of voices grew louder, men screaming to be heard. Almost everyone was standing now, and guys began to move toward the bar and cluster around Jennie.

  “I can’t see,” someone called out.

  “Move to the front, little fella.”

  “You don’t want to miss this.”

  A short man stumbled as he was shoved through the crowd. Jennie laughed and reached out, squeezing his arm and pulling him toward her.

  “Get it on.”

  “Everyone quiet,” Curt bellowed. “Quiet!”

  His voice rang out above the hubbub, but the chanting didn’t stop. The men were good and riled up, not one of them seemed to want to quiet down.

  “Hey, Curt, who’s the broad?”

  “Stone cold fox.”

  “Hot as…”

  BONG!

  A beer mug bounced off of a ship’s bell that hung on the far wall, shattering as it smacked against the metal. One of the waitresses jumped and screamed, and the guys roared.

  “Right on.” Jennie pumped her fist as Curt hurled a second one across the room.

  BONG!

  It was his standard method for gaining a crowd’s attention, and, as he picked up a third mug, the noise finally began to subside.

  “Gentlemen.” He paused and looked around the room, waiting as the last voices died away. “Gentlemen, this young lady is none other than Jennie Lindsay, legendary waitress at the Rusty Anchor, celebrated in song and story, the only woman who has ever been able to drink me under the table, walk home afterwards, and then entertain her boyfriend ’til dawn.”

  Again, the sound of a whistle cut through the clatter of voices, some cheering, others taunting Curt for allowing a woman to out-drink him, some calling him a liar.

  Curt laughed. “Some of you remember her.” He raised his voice to be heard. “All of you have heard the stories. Her photograph graces the Rusty Anchor Wall of Fame.” He motioned toward a group of photos hanging on the wall behind the college student.

  “Wall of fame or wall of shame?” someone called.