"Well, Joanie's got herself a very handsome young man," Verna Mae also just blurted out.
She saw her daughter give her another look, but that didn't stop her.
"He's a little bit younger than Joan."
"A little bit? Mama, he's three and a half years younger than me!" Joan said as though that was something awful.
Joan looked at Jaclyn, shook her head, then said, "I honestly don't know what I was thinking, and I'm the one who asked him out first."
"She was thinking he's gorgeous!" Verna Mae said making things worse.
Jaclyn was now very uncomfortable, but smiled before saying she really needed to finish shopping and get home even though there was no one there to get home to.
They all hugged again then said goodbye.
Just seconds later, Joan lit into her mother.
"Mama? What in the world is wrong with you?"
"Now what do you mean by that?" her very petite mother asked as if this was the first, rather than the the hundredth time they were having this little talk. "What did I say that was so wrong?"
"Why did you have to mention the age difference? You know that drives me crazy!"
Her mother shook her head then said, "Oh, for the life of me. I will never understand you! You're 28 and you've been married twice and divorced both times, and now you have this wonderful man in your life, and you're still complaining! For the life of me I don't understand you!"
Joan Thomas was 28, attractive but not beautiful, and when it came to men—extremely picky. She denied that but knew it was true. In fact, both of her now ex-husbands were never good enough to satisfy her and she'd driven them off with her endless nitpicking and demands. She justified it by claiming she knew what she wanted and further saying she knew what they wanted. They just needed someone to...show them.
"I have very high standards," she'd always added whenever anyone dared mention that she was...pushy. She was that and a lot more, and although she'd made herculean efforts to hide it for as long as she could, her current boyfriend was seeing the real Joan begin to emerge.
Jared Quinn was a Marine stationed at MCAS Beaufort, where those letters stood for Marine Corps Air Station. He was an aviation ordnance man, military occupational specialty or MOS 6541, who repaired ejection racks and missile launchers. He'd been on active duty for a little over three years and was every bit as attractive as Verna Mae had said. Joan had noticed him at church the first time he showed up, and she'd made her move just minutes after the pastor said the final 'amen'.
After introducing herself, she let the handsome young Marine know there was a Christmas party at the church that Wednesday evening, and she'd demurely asked him to go with her.
Joan had lived in Beaufort all her life, and while she had nothing against Marines, she'd never dated one and had vowed (privately) that she never would. She used 'moving around too much' as her excuse, but the truth was she hated the short hair that marked every Marine in the city. In addition to the air station there were also tons of Marines from Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island which was located just across town in a little city called Port Royal running around everywhere in their high and tights.
And as a registered nurse with a college degree, the thought of dating a serviceman with a mere high school diploma was something else she couldn't tolerate. Until she met Jared.
He was different. He was so handsome she was able to overlook the white sidewalls and his choice of careers and his lack of a college degree. She'd even blushed when she introduced herself, but he was very nice about it and said he hadn't noticed when she felt her cheeks flaming on. She later learned that he'd gone to college for three years before enlisting, but that only bothered her more because she saw him as some kind of quitter, which was how she saw her first husband who dropped out of college to support them when they got married at 19.
Early on, she managed to bite her tongue and not voice her opinions very often. But now, just one month later, she was finding fault with things Jared said or did, and to make matters worse, she'd begun bringing up the age difference nearly every time they were together.
Jared had ignored it the first couple of times, then when she brought it up in front of some friends a third time, he tried making a joke out of it.
"It just kills me! When I turn 30, Jared will still be 26! Twenty-six! Can you imagine?" a very animated Joan said as she looked for sympathy but got only blank stares as no one else could understand or relate.
"Hey. I'll be 26...and a half," Jared said, drawing a chuckle from the others but an icy stare from Joan.
She still hadn't really exposed her true self at that point, and although he wasn't in love with her or anything close to it, Jared thought she was a nice girl who was also reasonably attractive. And up to then she'd been reasonably pleasant, and he'd enjoyed spending time with her.
But as of late, he was fast realizing there were two Joan Thomases. One was a sweet Southern Belle. The other was...not. This other Joan didn't quite ride a broom, but Jared was now able to picture her mounting one every now and then. And while he hadn't yet told her, he'd decided that if this was the new normal for her, then he was going to end things very soon.
Joan bristled at her mother's comment, but her mom was the one person who could handle her, and she knew there was no way she was going to convince her she was wrong. After all, as she'd reminded Joan many times, she'd known her daughter all her life.
But her mother got one more lick in before giving it a rest.
"Jared is the nicest, kindest man you've ever dated, and if you don't get your act together, he's gonna leave you, too!"
Joan didn't let the hurt show, but that remark stung. Bad. It stung because it was true, but Joan was unable to stop being herself, and a part of her knew this latest relationship would soon go down in flames just like her marriages had. Worst of all, she felt powerless to stop it, and was still trying to find a way to justify her behavior to her mother. But she'd known her mom all of her life, too, so she threw in the towel. For the time being.
On their ride home, Verna Mae unintentionally poured salt into the wound when she tried to get her daughter to talk.
"Did you notice how smooth Jackie's skin is?"
Joan glared at her mother then said in an icy tone, "It's Jaclyn, Mama. Not Jackie. Jaclyn."
She hesitated for a moment then snapped, "And yes, I noticed."
"Well, excuse me!" her mom said as she turned away and raised her chin.
Jaclyn had lived much of her life in Beaufort where her father had once been a Marine drill instructor at Parris Island. He was an aviation maintenance man, and after his three-year tour was up at 'PI' as the locals called it, he moved over the air station where he remained until being selected for the rank of first sergeant. Their family moved away for three years only to return once her father had been selected for sergeant major.
Two of the years she didn't spend in Beaufort were in Columbia, the capitol of South Carolina. Kenny broke down one day after she told him she couldn't put up with any more of his drinking and abuse and promised to do better.
And for a few months after the move, he did. He got a decent job doing construction, and he hadn't had a drink since they left Beaufort. But as she found out the hard way, old habits really do die hard. Fear had kept her with him before, and once he started drinking again, fear kept her with him in Columbia. Fear of him and the fear of being alone.
That was true until one morning when she woke up with a black eye and a swollen lip. It was as though something snapped, and from that moment on she was no longer afraid. She sat up in bed and looked at her husband who'd passed out drunk the night before as he'd done more times than she could count and for the first time thought, "I'd rather die than live like this one more day."
So before he woke up, she packed as much as she could in two suitcases and returned home to Beaufort, moving back in with her parents who wouldn't let Kenny get near her when he came around drunk a few days later.
She couldn't help but laugh when her daddy pulled out their 12-gauge shotgun and stuck it in his face the first and only time Kenny came looking for her and said, "You can leave with or without your face, Ken."
Jaclyn hadn't seen or heard from him since except for the two times he showed up in court during the divorce process. Mercifully, there were no children to worry about, and after just six months, Jaclyn went back to her maiden name of Frances and began starting over. She'd gained a ton of weight over the last three years of her marriage, and she was bound and determined to get back to the size 6 she'd been all of her adult life prior to that.
She was now running 5k and 10k races and had a decent job in town and had just gotten her own place. During the time she spent back home she was thankful both for her parents' hospitality and that there'd been no children's lives to ruin. But Jaclyn was now 37 years old and wanted nothing more than a loving husband and a baby of their own. That said, she was adamant about one thing. She really would rather live alone than ever get involved with another man like Kenny.
*****
"You still seeing that Joan chick?" Jared's roommate and fellow Marine sergeant named Bill Sampson asked.
"Yeah," came the very unenthusiastic reply.
"She's kinda hot. For a skinny girl," his fellow 'ordie' said.
"Yeah. She's uh, she's great," Jared replied almost absentmindedly as he mulled over how to go about extricating himself from the mess he'd gotten mired in as he ran a comb through his thick, dark hair that was just under three inches on top, the maximum allowed for male Marines.
