Six of One

by Joann Spears

  Moving on to college, Harry became a Rhodes Scholar and wrote a treatise on spirituality that made quite a splash in academic circles. After his metaphysical phase was over, Harry swung back to the practical and did a stint in the military. Honorably discharged, he turned his attention to business. Since then, he’s built up a mega-successful corporation with links to several countries, an enterprise that has supported his hobbies as pilot, architect, and polo player, to name a few.

  Men who are magnificent and endearing and dangerous do not get that way without some tragedy, some awful crack right through the heart, and Harry was no exception. He lost his older brother, Arthur, when they were both still in high school. Arthur’s was a sudden, swift, and unexpected demise, and Harry never really got over it. Arthur’s being the more serious and solemn of the two brothers gave Harry permission, when Arthur was alive, to be the fun-loving younger brother and to not have to take himself terribly seriously. With Arthur gone, Harry felt compelled to graft a sense of responsibility that he was ill prepared for onto his heretofore-carefree ways.

  But as is the case with all but the most expertly done grafts, the patch shows. It shows when Harry gets too full of himself sometimes and acts like a pompous twit. It shows when he loses his temper and gets in a childish snit, or when he cannot admit losing and refuses to quit. Somehow, though, none of that detracts a single bit from his charm.

  But enough about Harry. Let’s talk about me for awhile.

  Chapter Three

  The Heroine Being a Date Late and a Dwarf Short

  I do not want you to think that Harry was the only one in our relationship with a past. You see, there were five men in my life before Harry. I was smart enough—or maybe just lucky enough—not to have married any of them, but there is no doubt about it: five they were, and Harry would round things out to an even half-dozen.

  I found my first love when we were both in college. I would parry with him briefly and retreat shyly behind my history books in pursuit of the magna cum laude. He would peer at me soulfully when he thought I wasn’t looking. When he would realize that I was looking, he would either grab his field glasses and dash off to urgently survey something or turn on his microscope and magnify into the wee hours. His way with lenses made him the leading talent in the Science Department, but he was undecided on a specialty on which to focus his considerable acumen. It all ended when he disappeared to Tanzania with the Peace Corps, never to be heard from again. I could only assume, as time went by, that he remained immured out there in the tropics: sick, dead, or, even worse, married to some conniving little missionary.

  Sadly, my first love was unconsummated: during my one and only attempt at seduction, he succumbed to Morpheus’s embrace before I could get him to succumb to mine (more about this later). When I told my cousin Kath about it, she nicknamed my would-be lover “Sleepy” and asked which of the remaining Seven Dwarves would be my next romantic objective. We laughed at the time, but little did either of us realize just how self-fulfilling a prophecy that would turn out to be.

  “Dopey” appeared on my romantic horizon next. I was tutoring to make extra money while I worked on my PhD. A wide-eyed undergrad literally stumbled into my office one day, looking for help in cramming his way through his final exams. Eventually, he decided that I was his dream girl and actually proposed to me before it was all over. Dopey, unlike my previous love, at least was man enough to remain awake and at attention during romantic encounters. Even so, Kath and I agreed that if I married him, ours would be what Barbara Pym called “one of those dreadful marriages, with the wife a little older and a little taller and a great deal more intelligent than the husband.” Last I heard, Dopey was married to an Avon lady and living happily ever after.

  “Bashful” walked into my life next. At least, I thought he was bashful—restaurants, movies, parties, and crowds in general scared the crap out of him. But Kath was the one who figured out that Bashful was bashful because he was married, not ochlophobic. I argued with Kath against calling him Bashful because strictly speaking, it wasn’t so; she quite rightly pointed out to me that “Taken” is not an authentic dwarf name.

  “Sneezy” achooed himself into my heart with a bang and was a refreshing change from the reclusive Bashful. Parties, late nights, concerts; the man’s energy was boundless. It took my Kath, once again, to put the puzzle pieces together and figure out that his hyperactive sinuses and racing mind meant that he was living the high life in an entirely different sense than I had realized. I put him on a plane to a rehab in Maine one day and never saw him again.

  “Grumpy” came next. His being a staid, older academician had its attractions after the Sneezy adventure. I felt the need of a safe haven, and I looked at his being gruff and cantankerous as the price of admission. I didn’t need Kath, though, to realize that he would always love his books more than he loved me. I saw my chance when Harry happened along, and I dumped the grump in favor of “Mr. Plump” (Harry had started putting on some tonnage in his forties). When Harry and I announced our engagement, Kath said that any man who was lucky enough to marry me should be pretty damned “Happy” about it and that our running Seven Dwarves joke had come to the best of all possible ends.

  It surprised me at the time that Kath had forgotten about the last dwarf, Doc. Before Harry’s advent, she had always said that my prize for working my way systematically down the dwarf line would be finding Doc at the finish. Kath, not to mention my mother, had always wanted me to marry a doctor. But Kath lost sight of that in the forest of dollar signs she saw around Harry, and I privately was a little disappointed that our treasured inside joke would only achieve 85 percent completion.

  I will wrap up the “me chapter” with my preparations for my bachelorette night—my last hurrah as a single woman. First step: glasses off, contacts in. Next, hair swept up to expose my cheekbones—very soignée. I chose the perfect little black dress to accentuate the orchestra, skim the balcony, and show a lot of toned, non-professorial, stiletto-heeled leg. My earrings were long and dangling; my necklace, a gift from Harry, unashamedly called attention to my cleavage. I was perfect—and off to the Rainbow Lounge to party till the dawn’s early light. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

  Chapter Four

  Regarding the Sweet Smell of Six Exes

  The person who was, hands down, having the most fun at my bachelorette night was Cleva, Harry’s ex number four—the one he had met online. Since she was living in Westphalia, she did not actually meet Harry face-to-face until they had formed quite a chaste, but intense, mind-meld via Internet and cell phone. Harry eventually made his way to Westphalia to meet her, marry her, and bring her home. Unfortunately, the mind-meld did not survive the relocation. As for the marriage—or, should I say, as for the sex—Cleva has been heard to describe it, with Teutonic phlegm, as “Phffft!” Harry never talked much about it, but I know the annulment was a remarkably quick and clean break for them both. Now, Cleva was dancing like no one was watching, and I was sure her hips didn’t lie.

  Anna-Belinda, the fashionista among Harry’s exes and incontestably the least kindhearted of them, was watching Cleva with no little degree of scorn. Anna-Belinda had never done anything without making damn sure that someone was watching—and noticing. “Would you look at Cleva!” she said. “What makes a woman that size wear a dirndl dress—and with a horizontal animal print, no less? Her butt looks as big as a Midwestern state!”

  “Well, she has the boobs for it; and they’re hers, not the fake kind you suddenly come back from vacation with.” It was just like Jane, not the swiftest horse in Harry’s stable of exes, to state the bloody obvious. To her credit, it was also like her to try to think of something kind to say—even about the woman who had followed her in Harry’s marital progression.

  Kitty chimed in next. “Well, I got my boobs from a vacation in Florida, and no one has complained yet. I’ll bet Harry wishes I’d had them while he was married to me!”

  If implants ca
me with odometers, Kitty’s would probably have been reaching the hundred-thousand-mile mark around then. She was one of those lusty, good-natured girls you can’t help being fond of, a girl you want to take under your wing and give motherly advice to, even though you know she won’t take it. She was the baby among Harry’s exes—his midlife crisis wife.

  Kate, Harry’s ex number six, took Kitty’s face in her hands, turned it toward her own, and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a motherly look. “Breast implants are medically unethical, personally unhealthy, and damaging to the feminist ethos,” she chastised fondly. Those were weighty statements for a bachelorette event but so like Kate, the most intellectual of Harry’s wives. She is what you would call a “handsome” woman and wealthy as well, having gotten the largest divorce settlement of any of Harry’s wives. Clever girl!

  Now it was Kay’s turn. “Speaking of such things, Dolly, I hope your mammography and Pap smear are up to date. It may be awhile before you can get those kinds of things done in England. Wait times for medical services over there can be something awful.”

  “Well, Kay,” I replied, “why do you ask? Afraid something might not be in working order for the wedding night?”

  Kay was one of those women who would talk seriously about gynecological exams when everyone else was sipping on weenie straws, but she laughed with me nonetheless.

  “No, my dear, I just want you to be well and healthy as a new bride in England. I lived there for awhile, you know, and the health services are not like they are here.” The woman Kay whom I was speaking to that night—so sensible, both feet on the ground—was not at all like the girl Kay who was the first of the exes to steal Harry’s heart.

  Once upon a time, Kay had been the dreamy former homecoming queen that Harry, the incumbent homecoming king, had quite properly fallen head over heels in love with. She had been Harry’s brother’s girlfriend before the weedy and awkward Arthur had died so tragically. A couple of years after the death, the godlike “Homecoming Harry,” all muscles and blond hair, came to court Kay. Everyone said it was a match made in heaven, even if Kay herself did seem a bit less at home with the beefy than she had with the bony. But, being a game girl, she entered into the spirit of the thing, and Harry was duly enchanted. For quite awhile after they were married, his feet never really did touch the ground. They hit dirt with a bang, though, as fertility problems eventually set in, haunting Harry and Kay for years. The trajectory of grueling treatments, false hopes, miscarriages, disappointments, and depression was punctuated by the birth of their daughter Mary, but the trauma of the children that almost were before and after Mary scarred both Harry and Kay in different ways.

  Kay took the physical brunt of those difficult years. Her delicate face began to look worn, her lithe figure fleshed out, and, according to Harry, she lost all interest in sex, although Kay herself has always disputed this allegation with only a knowing chuckle as her explanation. Harry, on the other hand, still looked in his prime, but his spirit proved less durable than Kay’s did. F. Scott Fitzgerald might have said that he was like the country he lived in: everything came too easily to him. When something finally did not come easily, it devastated him. The devastation left him wide open to Anna-Belinda, the carpetbagger who broke up Harry and Kay’s marriage and eventually became Harry’s wife number two and the mother of his daughter Lizzie. In what can only be taken as proof that karma really does exist, she proved to be far and away his messiest divorce. Anna-Belinda herself is a big believer in things like karma, Kabbalah, crystals, and covens; she picked all that up in her fashion-model days, when she hung out with the likes of Madonna and Angelina Jolie.

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my bridesmaids draped the bar at varying degrees of intoxication. Bella had drunk herself into a crying jag and was playing on the sympathy of a rather nice-looking fellow at the bar who was taking her phone number. If he sticks around for the month or so that Bella’s conquests usually last, I thought, he will find out that the crying jag is the least of the emotional excesses of which Bella is capable. Ever so slightly buzzed, my sweet lady Jean was watching the others with disdain, a little concern, and maybe even a little envy. On the whole, she would rather have been at home with a good book in her lap and Chopin on the iPod, but, being a dutiful cousin, she was making a creditable attempt at partying with the girls.

  Both Bella and Jean had been full of promise as youngsters, but they had had difficult childhoods. The parents were largely absent in Bella’s case; she was often in the care of the indubitable Miss Bess, she of the heavy metal frying pan. Not that Bess would ever have used it on Bella in the literal sense, but Miss Bess’s overbearing personality is enough of a heavy metal object in itself to inflict some damage. Jean’s parents, sadly, were ever present, domineering, and more overtly abusive.

  Striking a happier note, my four lovely demoiselles Maria were in a proper party mode, giggling and swarming. It seemed like no matter where you looked, there was a Maria, all gauzy and bright in her party best. They would be even gauzier tomorrow when they donned their painstakingly matched Taffeta, peau de soie, and flora in honor of my bridal day. As they wafted down the aisle, identically attired and stepping in unison, they would be a bridal-backing phalanx to conjure with. Harry’s younger daughter, only just old enough to be on an outing like this, had glommed onto the Marias, who were cheerfully and capably taking on the challenge.

  “I’m never going to get married! I’ll just date hotties forever!” said Lizzie.

  “What about when you’re old, like Dolly?” the less-than-diplomatic Bella asked.

  “No fat old men like Dad for me! I’ll just switch over to boy toys when the time comes!”

  I had no doubt that Lizzie would carry out her plan when the time came. For now, though, she was a radiant and skinny young thing and still looked enough like jailbait to keep most of the men she was flirting with on the right side of caution. The Marias were shooing away the odd few that looked like they might be on caution’s wrong side, and Lizzie herself proved no slouch, having poured a drink onto the crotch of a guy who had tried to get fresh with her earlier in the evening. She knew how to defend herself, having once narrowly fended off an opportunist would-be stepfather.

  Maggie and Molly Rose were out on the dance floor, shaking their moneymakers for all they were worth—which was a considerable sum. Molly Rose had made some real money with hers during her long-ago first marriage. Her second husband was only moderately successful but undeniably a handsome and charming man. They were a cute couple, but Harry always thought his baby sister could have done better. Maggie, a plump girl with an extra-large moneymaker, was ogling, with a discerning and experienced eye, the young men who were flocking around the four Marias. She was sure to find someone to do before night was through; I had seen her eleventh-hour conquests time and again. Most girls just get prettier at closing time; Maggie manages to get younger and skinnier, too.

  Auntie Reine-Marie was cutting quite a rug on the dance floor. I was glad she was there with us for that special night; it had taken quite a lot of fast-talking to get her to join us, even though she had been quite the party girl in her day. (I think that the saddest three words in the English language are “in her day.”) As children, we cousins loved to see Auntie Reine-Marie dressed up and ready to go out with one of her many beaus, looking as beautiful as a movie star. It was like a game of Mystery Date come to life; too bad the girl who was so right for the “prom date” always walked away in the end with the “dud.”

  I knew that Auntie Reine-Marie’s plan for that night had originally been to stay home and put the finishing touches on a wedding memento that she was stitching for me. When I told her that receiving the wedding stitchery after the wedding was a price I would gladly pay to have her at my bachelorette night, she gamely agreed to attend.

  Well, it had gotten to be past four o’clock in the morning, and I was still looking fantastic in my little black dress, not to mention still being soignée despite a fair deg
ree of inebriation. I was not so intoxicated, though, that I couldn’t see straight, and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a guy making—quite determinedly—for the bar. He was just gorgeous, positively swoon-worthy, with a George Hamilton suntan and a touch of gray around the temples. If it weren’t for my dignity and my consciousness of the height of my stilettos, I might have been in danger of a fall.

  Kath noticed me listing and charged at me at full sail, bearing a dish of cocktail nuts. “Dolly, dear, I think you’ve overdone it,” she said. “You look as white as a sheet. You’d better have some of these; the protein will buffer the alcohol. You don’t want to wake up with a hangover tomorrow. Here, have a handful!” Anything to keep her quiet, I thought—until a couple of those cocktail nuts went down the wrong way! How embarrassing, I remember thinking, coughing and choking like this and making a scene. Eventually, I wasn’t even able to cough anymore. My future stepdaughter Mary, with admirable presence of mind, dialed 911 from her cell phone and tried ever so hard to be brave. Molly Rose was barreling over to me, dragging the golden-brown stranger and shouting, “Make way; there’s a doctor in the house!”

  And then things went black.

  Chapter Five

  Dolly Believes She Is Not in Kansas Anymore

  Well, this is one for the books, I thought to myself, when the picture finally came back on. It appeared to me that I was in some kind of castle turret, because the room was round and had stone walls and flagstone floors. I felt chilly in spite of the embers I saw smoldering in a grate across the room. The candles scattered about the chamber made for a passable amount of light; as near as I could tell, there wasn’t any electrical lighting in the room at all. The bed I was lying on was huge but not at all well sprung, and the sheets felt funny, almost coarse. The blankets were heavy—I did not feel at all dozy and cozy under them; if anything, I felt like I had been rolled up in a rug, à la the Arabian Nights. There wasn’t much else that was Arabian about the room, though, and it felt clammy and drafty at the same time, despite the tapestries that lined the wall and reached from floor to ceiling.