Dolled Up At Denny’s [by Denise Duhamel, Recessionista Poet]

My friend’s husband has just lost his job.I have another friend going bankrupt. In his
70s, he says he’s tired of being a good boy scout. A third friend, in his 40’s,
just had his home go into foreclosure.
It is tough here in Florida where real
estate has plummeted and the many people able to pay their mortgages are “under
water,” a particularly scary way to put it because we in Florida live where hurricanes are fierce.

 My friend’s husband has just lost his job. She teaches part
time, but soon they may not have health insurance.She and I once shopped together at J. Jill in
a mall in Boca Raton,
where she didn’t have to worry so much about what she purchased.If I remember correctly, she bought full
price while I spent my time at the sales’ rack.
I had never been in a J. Jill before, but she swore by this store. And she was right. I still have the two shirts I bought that day
and they’ve held up.

 My friend’s husband has just lost his job. I keep repeating it because it is so hard to
believe. He worked in finance, and I am
sure he will work again. He helped me
with my home equity loan, my stubborn window that wouldn’t shut, my author’s
photo. In fact, my friend’s husband is
an amazing photographer but hasn’t made his living that way. He’s the kind of man who says let me help you
with that and volunteers. He’s the kind
of man who cleans the inside of his car when he knows you are allergic to the
dog hair that may be lurking in the upholstery.

 My friend’s husband has just lost his job. Still, she is trying to be upbeat as we drive
to Miami International Airport
to pick up a poet coming into town. The terminal seems eerily deserted. His plane is delayed or rerouted. We don’t
know what happened, but we wait until every last piece of luggage has been
picked up and the belt stops. We are
worried about our friend—Did his cell phone die? Why isn’t he calling?—but some
small part of me is relieved. That’s
because I was thinking that this dinner on South Beach 
was sure going to be expensive.

On our drive home, my friend and I spot a Denny’s. Let’s do it, we say. We are all dolled up with long  earrings and
good hair. The man who greets us says,
Thank you for coming! I say, Table for
two, please, though the place is almost empty. Even Denny’s has fallen on hard times. My friend and I write a list poem about what might have happened to our
poet friend, one line after the other. It seems lately everything is going wrong and writing helps relieve our
anxiety:

DENISE
DUHAMEL AND DENISE LANIER ARE
DISMAYED WHEN MAJOR JACKSON IS
MIA AT MIA

Maybe Jennifer Lopez forced him into her limo at the airport parking garage
            in Vermont and whisked him away to be her lover and twin wrangler.
Maybe he was abducted by tech-challenged aliens who can’t figure out how
            to text message for ransom. The aliens think Major is a high-ranking
            military official because of his name.
Maybe he was quarantined when a potbellied pig escaped the Prada bag it
            was being transported in, causing swine flu panic on the flight.
Maybe, distracted and listing end words for his double sestina, Major got on
            the wrong plane and is in Pflugerville, TX where he’s eating fried
            Spam sandwiches.
Maybe he stopped to be a good Samaritan and realized he had no idea how to
            change a flat tire.
Maybe he dropped his cell into the plane’s toilet and it was sucked away with
            the force of a White House intern in a blue dress.
Maybe he slipped sideways into an alternate universe in which each pinprick
            of light contained the dreams of all the sleeping poets in this world.

My friend and I each want two pancakes and two
sausage links, but all we can find are Grand Slams on the
menu and our waiter says, I can do that for you. My friend’s
husband calls to see if we made it to the airport OK (because we are
directionally challenged). My friend tells him, in fact, that we
found the airport terminal (on the third try) but not Major. My
friend’s husband offers these insightful scenarios:

Maybe he was captured by hopelessly lost landlocked Somali pirates.
Maybe he was busy trying to explain his latest visual poetry project to the fire
           department after an experiment with scrabble tiles, lingerie, authentic
           maple syrup and saran wrap went terribly wrong.
Maybe with Scrabble tiles spelling out POETRY GOD still stuck to his
           forehead, Vermont Airport TSA officials pulled him aside for special
           screening.

But,
in the end, we two Denise’s decide:

Maybe, arriving at the wrong terminal, Major asked an American Airlines
           worker to page “Denise.” Denise Richards showed up and kidnapped
           him for the next season of It’s Complicated.

My friend’s husband has just lost his
job, but we are having fun, writing anyway. Being in Denny’s
with her reminds me of my dad who loved their Moons over My Hammy and
the free refills of coffee. My dad was a Depression baby, born in
1927, and, shortly before he died, he told me he felt that maybe
another depression was coming. The pancakes are amazing. The fluffy
butter and the little cups of wonderfully fake syrup, also amazing.
The waiter is attentive—Anything else? More water? My
dad was very optimistic—and hoped that he was wrong about the
way he thought the economy was going. Our waiter is trying to be
optimistic too.

My
friend’s husband just lost his job, but she is stunning as she
reapplies her lipstick and picks up the tab. The total comes to
$9.13, our friend’s flight number. We choose to take this as a
cosmic sign that Major Jackson is OK and that everything else is
going to be OK too.

— Denise Duhamel, Hollywood, FL.