by Amy Marie
As soon as I had some waitressing experience under my belt, I started waiting tables at Fountain City Bar and Grille, closer to the base. When I first started there, I was still so young. I soon realized the way to get tips was to flirt a little—but looking my age, too young to drive? That wouldn’t work.
So I bought copies of magazines with articles on glamorous makeup, hair, and clothes—Seventeen, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Glamour. I took in my uniforms little by little so they were snug in all the right places. I bought makeup and learned how to apply it. I teased my curls for more volume and bigger bangs, and I shellacked them with Aqua Net until I couldn’t breathe. I was careful not to make the changes all at once. After a couple of months, I looked old enough for the customers to flirt with.
Which leads me to Spring Break my senior year. I was almost eighteen—my birthday was shortly before graduation—and I had been playing grownup long enough that I believed it. A handful of young soldiers from the base strutted in, heading for the bar. I locked eyes with one of them—like magnets snapping together—and he changed directions, heading straight for my section. He saw me slip out the back door for my break after I put their orders in, and he followed me.
Dark eyes, dark hair, and dark brooding energy. He pinned me against the wall and made out with me like it was his job.
It wasn’t my first kiss—not even my first French kiss—but I’d never experienced anything like that. He was like a bulldozer. No, a steamroller, and I might as well have been a pinecone in its path. I was young and hopelessly naïve, hopelessly outmatched by his intense nature and the chemistry between us. By the sheer fact that someone wanted me.
I melted against the rough bricks behind me and let him kiss me completely stupid. We didn’t come up for air until someone yelled “Order up!” out the door. He wiped his thumb under my bottom lip and smirked at how dazed he’d made me.
I should have seen the writing on the wall when he smacked me on the ass and said, “Go get my food before it gets cold, Doll.” Every time I came to his table, he wrapped his hands around my legs—not way up under my skirt where it looked vulgar; just around my knees. But his touch was possessive and melted my insides. When they finished, he pressed a big tip into my hand along with his phone number, and he made me write my number down for him. As he left, he put his hand behind my neck and said, “You’re mine now, Doll. Got that?” Eyes wide, I nodded, and he gave me a hard peck on the lips.
And that was it. Jason Vanzandt claimed me.
He came in every night he could. If my section was full, he sat at the bar. He followed me outside for my breaks and polished my tonsils. After a few weeks, I started bringing a change of clothes, and he would drive somewhere we could make out. There was never a lot of talking going on, but I wouldn’t let him go all the way no matter how much he sweet-talked me and told me he loved me.
Toward the end of May, I asked him if thought he could make it to my graduation. And that is when he realized he was dating someone still in high school when he was twenty-two.
Jailbait!
He got a little panicky until I told him my birthday was only a few days away, so he would be attending the graduation of an adult. Then he started acting like waiting was his idea, and that it would be the perfect way to celebrate my birthday.
Thank God I told him I wasn’t on birth control, and I wasn’t ready to turn into my mom. That threw cold water on him—he let me know really quickly that the military didn’t play around about child support (especially with a minor!), so it was best we didn’t take any chances.
Somehow, he made it sound like his idea again, and launched this whole campaign about how much he loved me and couldn’t live without me. He gave me some money to go to the clinic and get on the pill.
Then he started announcing his plans for when I would finally belong to him.
At my graduation, my scholarships and acceptance to Columbus State were announced, and between the classes I took and the AP and CLEP tests, I would start college with almost two full years of credits under my belt.
My parents first met Jason when he ran up to me, picked me up, and spun me around in circles before kissing me. They cleared their throats, drawing my attention, but before I could introduce them, he dropped to one knee and proposed. Needless to say, my graduation and birthday dinner at Red Lobster was awkward.
Well, for everyone except Jason, who seemed oblivious to the tension.
At the same time, my parents seemed resigned to it. Frankly, I think they were relieved at the prospect of not having any kind of responsibility for me, although they hadn’t truly had any responsibility for me for years. I paid for my own clothes, school supplies, and gasoline. I fed myself, and I was rarely home to use the electricity. I showered at school, because the water there was hot and wasn’t full of rust.
Granted, Dad did rebuild some old Franken-car from the junkyard for me to drive. He bought some of the parts as he was fixing it up, but I paid for the body and motor he picked out. As soon as he got it running, though, I paid for my gas and changed my own oil and filters.
After all their indifference, it felt like someone pointed the sun in my direction when Jason looked at me. And I was young and dumb enough to miss all the red flags. A few days later, he drove me to our spot overlooking the Chattahoochee. I was so exhausted from pulling a double at work, that when he told me he loved me and he wanted me to belong to him completely, that he wanted to take care of me? To marry me?
I didn’t hear a single warning alarm, though they were undoubtedly sounding loud and clear. I was so damn tired of being on my own, taking care of myself, that it sounded like every fairy tale I’d ever dreamed of.
He told me that day he had a surprise. He had already cleared it with whoever he had to clear it with on base, had already submitted all the paperwork as soon as I turned eighteen—before we actually got engaged.
But somehow, he called in some favors to move us up the list, and thanks to unexpected turnover in married housing, we would have a place next Monday. He could move out of the bachelor barracks and we would have a little house of our own—not a trailer.
All we had to do was get married so the paperwork could be officially approved.
I worked breakfast on Tuesday, then I was off until dinner Wednesday. I brought the new dress I got for graduation to work that day, a drapey white tea-length dress with spaghetti straps and a pale blue sash tied at my waist. Jason hung that in the back of his Monte Carlo Super Sport, next to his uniform and our toiletry kits, as we drove to Lookout Mountain.
We stopped at a Red Roof Inn and got a room to clean up and change. Jason brought everything to the room and left me there to get ready, coming back as I was putting on my shoes. He handed me the keys to his car so I could wait in the air conditioning, and I left him to change into his uniform. We drove to a nearby wedding chapel, and our early June wedding was all over within a matter of minutes.
We didn’t even have a honeymoon that night—he had to get back to the base, and I wanted to pack the few items I wanted and have them out of the house before I broke the news to my parents. When we got back to my car in the parking lot, Jason kissed me senseless, promising wicked things to come.
Reaching down to twist my new wedding ring, he said, “You’re really mine now, Doll. Soon, your body will be mine, too.”
I dreaded breaking the news to my parents, but I didn’t see them that week. After I graduated, they seemed to be home even less frequently than before. Finally, I wrote a letter telling them that Jason and I eloped, and I was moving to the base with him. I gave them my new address and phone number, but I had little expectation that I would hear from them. I brought them a peach pie from the restaurant and put it on the table, knowing that would draw their attention, and I put the letter on top of it.
If I had expected my parents to swoop in and demand I return home, I’d have been disappointed. Thankfully, I knew better than that. A week later, we received a greeting card from them cong
ratulating us on our wedding. It also said they were trading the trailer for an RV, since they could finally travel. They promised to send us their new address when they found someplace to settle.
Frankly, it was more than I expected from them.
The first few months, Jason and I had that raging chemistry that blocked everything else out. But something happened—I’m still not exactly sure what or when, but things seemed to sour at work, and that bled over to his mood at home.
The team leader had him expecting promotions to come quickly, but Jason said the squad leader didn’t like him—didn’t like the team leader, either. Instead of coming to the restaurant the evenings I worked, he started hanging out on base with a few friends from the squad, rotating to a different house each time. He said it was better not to spend so much money eating out. Which was true, but something seemed a little off. I would throw together some kind of casserole or dish he could put in the oven every few nights when it was Jason’s turn to host.
I started finding more and more beer cans in the trash, but he said a few extra guys came by after dinner. By that point, Jason was getting edgy and defensive. Critical of what I cooked for him. It wasn’t classy enough.
The cans of cheap beer soon gave way to bottles of nicer beer. Jason said he and his team leader were trying to win his new squad leader over, who liked to drink something more sophisticated than cheap beer.
The number of bourbon bottles started creeping up as well, eventually outnumbering the beer bottles. And not the bottom-shelf Early Times Jason had been drinking on ice, or hiding in his sweet tea, Coke, and coffee every chance he got. No, the new squad leader drank Michter’s 10-Year Old Single Barrel on special occasions, and Blanton’s Single Barrel every day—or in a pinch, Four Roses Single Barrel.
Thankfully, Jason tended to stick with the more affordable Four Roses brand. He hid the big bottles of yellow label in pantry, drinking that when his friends didn’t see. To be honest, I think he refilled—or maybe just topped off—the fancier single barrel bottle from these.
He told me my trailer park food embarrassed him in front of his friends and especially his new squad leader. So I talked to the cooks at work, and checked out some cookbooks they recommended from the library. I copied recipes on notecards and put them in my new recipe box along with some the cooks brought me. I called his mother and asked her for Jason’s favorite recipes. I swallowed my pride and asked a few of the wives who were serious Suzy Homemaker types for some of their favorite recipes or cookbooks for feeding the men.
By the time the fall term rolled around, I managed to find a balance between preparing nicer meals he could heat up and finding nice things he could grill. I started back to school during the day, but at Columbus State instead of high school. I found a program that offered a certain amount of money to military spouses for classes at Columbus State that I could take advantage of when my scholarships ran out. I barely had to pay anything besides gas back and forth.
I got a promotion at work, scheduling all the servers, training new hires, and doing some office work before my shift. I couldn’t bring myself to share that with Jason. If he noticed my pay was higher, I planned to tell him they offered me extra hours since we were newlyweds.
He never noticed.
No matter how much I tried, he kept getting more critical of my cooking, of my housekeeping, of my fashion choices. He laughed when he saw a psychology textbook, asking why on earth I thought I was smart enough to understand that.
He started smelling more and more like stale bourbon when I came home and found him passed out. On the couch, in his chair, on the back porch in a deck chair, and sometimes even in our bed.
And our chemistry? It fizzled out. I would occasionally catch a glimpse of the man who won me over, when everything was going well for him. But those moments we connected were fewer and fewer.
I was so excited when he managed to get a weekend pass for our anniversary! We never got away for our honeymoon, so that’s what this trip was going to be. When he got off duty, I had the car packed, and we drove all night to get to Tunica. After checking in, we took a nap. I woke to find a note saying he was looking around to see what the casino had.
I didn’t see him until breakfast the morning we left, and he smelled like an ashtray in a brewery. He had on sunglasses and handed me the keys to drive home. By that point, I realized he was easier to deal with when he was sleeping it off, so I didn’t mind the drive.
But hungover Jason? He was a nightmare. He raged at me when we got home and the sound of my door closing woke him up. He wasn’t physically abusive, but he was extremely controlling, and the sex that night was rough. But it was the first time he’d touched me all weekend, so I let it go.
I woke up the next morning, sore and a little apprehensive. I fixed coffee and was putting breakfast on the table when Jason walked out of the bedroom. “I’ve put up with this long enough, Doll. You don’t have enough time to be a real wife—the kind I need if I’m going to keep advancing. I’m stalled at specialist, and I need to make sergeant. You knew I was career Army when we met, but you’re holding me back.”
I stared at him, speechless. I set down the tray I carried, lifting the coffee carafe from it to pour first his coffee then mine. I served breakfast from the tray, putting biscuits on our plates, then bacon and eggs. Jason reached for the butter dish and jelly on the tray, swiping them angrily across his biscuits.
“You finished the spring semester, and you have the summer off. So you have the summer to decide. Quit school or quit work so you’ll have the time to be my wife. And let me give you a hint: school doesn’t pay for all the things you spend my money on. Maybe if you quit school, money won’t be so tight anymore.”
I stretched every penny I could. I made a lot of my clothes, and I went to the consignment store and yard sales in the rich neighborhoods for the rest of them. I watched our grocery spending like a hawk. I packed a lunch on school days, not even buying a soft drink from the machine.
I still changed my own oil and filters. His, too, not that he was aware of it. Surprising, since—like my father—Jason was a mechanic. His MOS, or military occupational specialty, was wheeled vehicle mechanic.
Not that I knew that when we married.
What I didn’t control was Jason’s liquor consumption. And that? That was getting completely out of hand. It had eaten up all the money from my promotion and more.
But what could I do? “I’ll contact the financial aid office and see if I can put my scholarships on hold. Maybe there’s some paperwork I can fill out so I can save them for later.”
He snorted, plowing through his food. “Like they’d care. You’re probably flunking all those classes, anyway. Wasting all that money and the time I could have used you here.”
He shoved a huge bite of biscuit in his mouth and talked around it, spitting crumbs in the butter and jelly in the process. “But do you care what I need? Not damn likely. Here I am, working my ass off to finance your schoolgirl dreams just so you can screw me out of my promotions. And I don’t even get to see you in the naughty little plaid skirt.”
He looked at me, and the eye contact was like a blast of ice shot straight through me. His voice was soft, so soft, and deceptively even. “I’ve been patient as long as I’m going to. This ends today. Do you understand?”
For the first time, fear crept into my heart. I was scared of my husband.
I didn’t bother driving to the school. I called the financial aid office and told them I had to take some time off. I hadn’t used any of the military spouse funds, so that would still be available to me. They could allow me to take a break for one semester on one of my scholarships, and one year on the bulk of my funding. But about one quarter of my remaining scholarship funds would be lost if I didn’t enroll full time for the fall term. I allowed tears to roll down my face as I finished the call, then I took a deep breath and banished them.
The time I spend at Fountain City was my lifeline. My coworkers sa
w the strain in my eyes—they had to—but they never pushed. Eventually, Jason’s jealousy over my time took aim there as well. He demanded I quit, but he wasn’t willing to give up having a second paycheck. Somehow, he wrangled an entry-level civilian job for me on base at the Commissary.
He sold my old junker, telling me I didn’t need a car unless it was raining, and I never had to leave the base. His Monte Carlo was sufficient for us. And now I could be at his beck and call every day.
Yet I saw him less at that point than when I was in school and working off base. Those rotating dinners? They never came to our house anymore. Every night that summer, I fixed dinner and left a plate warming in the oven for Jason. Each morning, I found the plate in the sink and lots of bottles in the trash.
He was gone early each morning, presumably for PT. By the time fall enrollment passed, Jason alternated between occasionally showing up for dinner and screaming insults at me, or doing the invisible man act where I found plates in the sink, or not coming home at all.
Those nights he didn’t come home soon introduced something new. In addition to his clothes in the hamper smelling like stale alcohol and smoke, they now sported occasional hints of perfume and smudges that looked suspiciously of lipstick.
The first time he saw me lift a shirt like that out of the hamper and stare at it, he concocted some story about a waitress tripping.
The next time, it was somehow the fault of “bitch female recruits they let in the Army who were trying to take hardworking men’s jobs.”
I forced it out of my mind, not wanting to process what it meant. My husband was lying to me.
And that civilian job on base? After a few months, one of his tirades was about how I wasn’t in a high-level position that would help him get promoted. He said it was embarrassing to have a wife working such a low-level position—the one he insisted I take instead of looking for a better civilian job—so I needed to quit and be a housewife. It made him look better when his wife didn’t have to work.
