by Joann Spears
Harry’s six ex-wives had clubbed together to come to this bash in a luxury van, and now they were being summoned to the door by their chauffeur. They said their goodbyes to me on the way out. Kay touched my shoulder in a reassuring gesture.
“See you at the wedding!” I said hopefully.
Jane just rolled her eyes at me. “I know I’m not ripest banana in the bunch, but really, Dolly—how well is all your cleverness serving you right now?”
I did not answer the question. “Denial,” Jane reminded me, “ is more than just a river in Egypt.”
“And deception,” Kay interjected, “is more than just a movie from 1946 with Bette Davis.”
“How many years has it been since you two have seen each other?” asked Kitty, shaking Wally’s hand by way of hello and goodbye. If I knew Kitty, she was also surreptitiously assessing Wally’s finger length and girth to make a quick-and-dirty weenie-size estimate, just as a matter of routine.
“Twenty years and then some,” answered Wally. “We knew each other in college. I will not give an exact figure on the time; not cricket to reveal a woman’s age, you know. You can take my word for it, though, that I know the count in years, months, weeks, days, and hours. I had a lot of time to think while I was immured in the tropics. Too many miles, too little smiles—you know the sort of thing.”
“All that time you were away, you never forgot Dolly, and Dolly never forgot you. I’m quite impressed,” said Kitty. It was not entirely possible to tell if she was speaking about our mutual memory or Wally’s finger measurement.
Kate, squeezing my hand, was the next to take her leave. “Well, Dolly, you look quite well now. Your color has returned, and you look much less frightened than you did when you first woke up. This gentleman seems to have set your mind and your heart quite at ease,” she said.
“Yes, it’s just like magic, the effect that he’s had on you,” said Anna Belinda, nodding good-bye to both Wally and myself. Cleva, bringing up the rear of the ex-sextet, left me with one word only as she took her leave of me.
“Dolly: muth.”
“What?”
“Muth!”
“Muth?”
“Yes, muth!”
“If I may interrupt,” said Wally with authority, “Muth is the German word for courage, Dolly. I am correct, am I not, gnadiges fraulein?” he asked, gallantly kissing Cleva’s hand. She nodded, gave a thumbs-up sign, and exited the Rainbow Lounge.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Adventure of the Silly Kid and the Odyssey
Wally and I were finally alone, and now that I was no longer with the wives and questions were permitted, I felt like a kid in a candy store in more ways than one.
“Where have you been all these years, Wally? What, besides the stars and the GPS, brought you back to me? Why here of all places and today of all days?” I asked.
“Well, Dolly, you knew I was Tanzania-bound that night all those years ago in the Shakespeare Garden,” he began. “I was so unsure of myself. I was so unsure of you. When you invited me into the garden that night, I hoped that it was to talk about love, but I feared that you were doing it simply out of pity for my geekiness. Either way, I thought that you were just so far above me in every way that I couldn’t make the first move. I hoped that you would do it, but you didn’t. You fired nary a shot or a volley. What is a man to think about that?” he asked.
“Really, Wally! I thought that I had done my bit by setting up the rendezvous. The least you could have done was amp up for the skirmish,” I said, in self-defense.
“Really, darling, we were in the Shakespeare Garden, not the Astrodome.”
“And now we are on the Rainbow Lounge floor. How, from where we started back then, did we ever wind up here?” I asked. The question was rhetorical, but Wally answered it anyway.
“I wound up here by way of Tanzania, not to mention Zambia, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, and a few other places. I never expected to stay in Africa as long as I did. After my stint with the Peace Corps was over, I planned to return to civilization. The years in the tropics had burnt away the humiliation of that night in the garden; I hoped to find you again. Then fate stepped in, and UNICEF begged me to stay and work on a project that was vital to the fight to eradicate malaria among children. They needed a biologist, a meteorologist, a sanitary engineer, and a geographer, all rolled into one. I was the only one around who fit the bill. I couldn’t say no to all those ailing children—past, present, and yet to come.”
“I am glad you didn’t say no to them,” I said admiringly. “I just wonder why you didn’t make some effort to contact me, Wally. A call, a letter, an email—anything.”
“Not so easy to do from the savanna and the Serengeti, Dolly. The few letters I did manage to get out came back marked ‘Return to Sender,’ and you had disconnected your college phone by the time I got to a phone myself. Besides, after the malaria gig was over, they needed me again to fight the good fight against the raging HIV epidemic in the area, not to mention the Ebola. I needed to add medical expertise to my repertoire for that assignment, so there was a stint in medical school in addition to the fieldwork. It helped to keep my mind off the fact that I’d lost you.”
“Then what happened, Wally?”
“Well, then they recruited me for the fight to end cattle plague. They needed a veterinarian’s expertise for that, so it was back to school again, and then a herculean international effort that will soon have eradicated the disease from the face of the earth. Millions will be spared disease and famine.”
I could not help beaming.
“I’m so proud of you, Wally!”
“Perhaps you’d like to accompany me to next year’s Nobel Prize ceremony?” he invited, grinning.
“You have tickets?” I asked.
“No, dear, I’m going to receive the prize. Two prizes, actually: the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for Medicine.”
“Will you be going back to Africa after that?” I asked, not without trepidation.
“I can never go back to Africa.”
“Why not?”
“I developed a troublesome tertian fever during that last project,” Wally said. “I’ll be fine as long as I stay out of severe climates. My days in the tropics are effectively over. Fortunately, there is work for me to do in England—in the Cotswolds. The climate will be ideal, and they need someone there to do research into cattle diseases. My recent veterinary experience will come in handy.”
If there had been any buttons on my outfit, I would have burst them with pride.
“You are quite the Renaissance man, Wally!” I said.
“You and your Renaissance!” he replied fondly. “Does it consume your imagination now the way it did when we were in college, Dolly?”
If he only knew, I thought. If he only knew.
Chapter Forty
Harry Redux
Next, it was my turn to fill Wally in on my life and times over the past twenty-five years. My world of post-secondary education was stodgy compared to Wally’s Third World drama, but he was duly attentive and asked lots of questions. We talked for quite awhile, until I realized that I would have to make a move; much more talk about my Tudor research and my bridegroom would be standing in the lurch at the church.
“Dolly, you don’t really want to leave, do you?” asked Wally hopefully. “Not now that we’re together at last. Or, should I say, together again?”
“The last time we were together, Wally, you passed out cold!” I reminded him.
“And you kicked off our reunion tonight by doing the same thing! It almost amounts to a tradition with us.”
I conceded the point. “Okay. I guess we’re even.”
“A kiss would make us even more even. How would you like to try it again, now that you’re conscious?”
I never had a chance to answer that last question, by the way. We were lip-locked and tongue-tied before I even had time to think. The sinewy, suntanned man in my arms had subsumed the diffident boy in
the Shakespeare Garden, although not entirely. When we finally came up for air, he was trembling as he looked questioningly into my eyes.
“Wally, I’m getting married in a few hours!” I reminded him.
“You’re not married yet,” he said determinedly.
“No, I’m not married yet, and I don’t want to screw it up!” I declared, more to convince myself than to convince Wally. “Harry is the catch of a lifetime. He topped AARP’s ‘Hottest Bachelor List’ last year—did you know that?”
“I suppose he was as hot as all that because he didn’t have time to cool off between wives,” Wally said. “Darling, what are you thinking about, signing on with someone with six strikes against him? Are his looks, success, power, fame, talent, and money really that important to you?”
“Yes, Wally, they’re very important to me,” I confessed. “And there’s one thing about Harry that you’ve forgotten: in addition to being good-looking, successful, powerful, famous, talented, and rich, he has been present and accounted for during the last twenty-five years. That is more than can be said for you. A woman needs to consider that kind of thing when she’s choosing a husband.”
“Don’t brains, heart, and courage count for anything?” Wally asked.
“Of course they do!” I said.
“Well, then!” boomed a voice from the stage behind us—Harry’s voice. “I’ve got enough brains, heart, and courage to go toe-to-toe with anyone. And that includes you, Mister…Mister…”
Wally presented his credentials to the sputtering Harry. “That’s “Doctor,” my good man, not “Mister.” I am Dr. Waldo Rolly. You must be Harry!”
“I am,” Harry replied. With that, he stepped out from behind the stage curtain and glowered at Wally and me. The curtain rustled again, and a Teacup Yorkie peeked out shyly from behind it. I knew that could mean only one thing: my cousin Kath was not far behind. She takes that dog with her everywhere she goes, and she must have tipped one of the house staff to mind it in its little travel bed while she partied the night away last night.
“And what in the world is that?” asked Wally, laughing as he looked at the little dog.
Kath emerged from behind the curtained recess and gave the dog an affectionate caress.
“That,” she said to Wally, “is my little dog.”
“Yes,” said Harry, looking pointedly at Wally. “Even I have enough brains to know a little dog when I see one. Must be all those smarts I picked up when I was a Rhodes Scholar.”
“Mind where you go, Harry,” I said, feeling it only fair to warn him. “Wally is a biologist, a meteorologist, an engineer, and a geographer, as well as a physician and a veterinarian.” I left the “sanitary” out of the engineer credential in the interests of good taste.
“A doctor!” exclaimed Kath, giving me the “your mom always wanted you to marry a doctor” smirk. “You could take care of me when I’m sick,” she said to Wally.
“That goes for your little dog, too,” Wally reminded her. “Don’t forget, I’m a veterinarian as well as a physician.”
“You must have a lot of heart, caring so much for animals,” said Kath. She is a firm subscriber to the “love me, love my dog” school of character appraisal, and she clearly approved of Wally.
“Harry has a lot of heart, too!” I said, defending my choice of fiancé.
“I should say I have!” bellowed Harry. “I’ve had enough heart to love six wives, and I still have plenty of heart left to love Dolly with.”
“That may be so, Harry, but have you got this?” Wally asked, rolling up his sleeve.
What Wally had up his sleeve, or should I say under it, was my heart. There was no denying that there was my name, tattooed on his deltoid, smack-dab in the middle of a heart with a big, red arrow going through it.
“I’ve never had the nerve to get one of those,” confessed Harry, nonplussed to say the least.
“That surprises me, Harry,” said Kath. “You’ve got nerves of steel when it comes to a million-dollar deal in the boardroom, and yet you go all pale at the thought of getting a tattoo.”
“It’s the needles,” confessed Harry. “Not even for Dolly could I face a tattoo needle.”
“So much for your courage!” said Wally.
Harry practically roared in response.
“I’ve been married six times, and I’m about to be married a seventh! If that isn’t courage, what is?”
“That is not courage!” Wally insisted. “That is just not getting it right the first time—or the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time! When your first choice is the right choice, you know it, because no other choice will do. Isn’t that so, Dolly?”
Wally was right; for me, no other choice but the first choice would do. I could swear I had heard that somewhere before, too.
Chapter Forty-One
Beau Tied and Dwarf Morphed
Wally lifted me to my feet and then walked over to Harry, his right arm extended for a manly handshake. “Harry,” he said, “a man with your reputation on the playing field couldn’t possibly be a poor loser. Friends?”
Harry took Wally’s hand grudgingly.
“Friends,” he said.
“How about a kiss for me?” I asked gingerly, proffering my cheek to my erstwhile fiancé.
“Anything for you, Dolly, any time,” said Harry, giving me a brotherly peck. “All you ever need to do is ask, Dolly. And now, it is time for me to put Plan B into effect. A man with my reputation in the boardroom always has a Plan B.”
“Harry, what are you talking about?” asked Kath.
“Well, I promised myself this time, with six divorces under my belt, that I would have a Plan B available just in case my seventh marriage went the way of the first six. I’ve done all the footwork already; the way is prepared for me.”
“Sounds very philosophical,” said Wally respectfully.
“It is very philosophical,” said Harry. “I am going to become a Buddhist monk.”
“It takes a very good man to make a successful Buddhist monk,” Kath said. “You have six ex-wives behind you. Are you sure you qualify?”
“My dear,” said Harry seriously, “I’m a very good man; I’m just a very bad husband. Don’t you see? Dedicating myself to celibacy and contemplation is the logical way to redress a lifetime of poor connubial decision-making. As I said, I have already laid the groundwork for Plan B so that I could implement it at a moment’s notice if I had to. Once we figure out what to do about the wedding guests and all that, I will be on a plane to Tibet. They even have my Buddhist-monk name picked out for me at the monastery.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Pu-tai,” Harry responded.
“I’d be wary of a name that started with the monosyllable ‘poo,’” said Kath, nuzzling her little dog.
“What does Pu-tai mean?” I asked.
Wally was able to supply this information, having picked up a little Tibetan in his travels. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Harry,” he said, “but doesn’t that more or less mean ‘fat and happy’?”
“Happy!” whispered Kath into my ear. “That means Harry gets to be your ‘Happy’ dwarf, even if he doesn’t get to marry you.”
“Yes,” I whispered back into her ear, “and look who I am going to marry.” The two of us could not help laughing, and the men urgently demanded to know what was going on. All Kath and I could do, though, was answer in unison, “Doc!”
Now all we had to do was figure out how to turn the inside joke into an inside job.
Chapter Forty-Two
Get Thee to the Church on a Dime
Kath and I headed back to the hotel, an impressive team of two. My job was to be made up, coiffed, and hook-and-eyed into my wedding ensemble. Kath, like a bulldog, defended my change-of-intended to the assembled bridal party. In the meantime, Wally wended his way to Splendid Tuxedos and came out suitably attired in nuptial raiment. Palpably in love, Wally and I drifted up the aisle and were hitched without a hitch. Harry proc
ured a saffron robe and sandals and got his head shaved in time to stand beside Wally as best man. Our wedding reception doubled as Harry’s farewell-to-the-flatlands-of-civilization party and was a success on both counts. Harry’s best-man toast was simple but heartfelt.
“To Dolly and Wally Rolly!”
“To Dolly and Wally! May they always be jolly!” chorused Harry’s six exes.
“Dolly and Wally, humph! We think it’s folly,” said Harry’s mother and grandma, but they raised their glasses in the toast just the same.
“Wally asked us to mind his collie, Molly, till he and Dolly get settled in the Cotswolds,” said the four Marias. They were happy about being able to help.
“We’ll be minding Harry’s parrot, Polly, forever, because of Dolly and Wally,” moaned Harry’s sisters. “Those things live to be hundreds of years old!”
“To Dolly and Wally—and our father, Harry, too, by golly!” said Harry’s daughters.
“Really,” Bella said, “whatever way you look at it, Harry still gets his Dolly.”
“Whatever are you prattling about?” Miss Bess asked her.
“Our Dolly or the Dalai Lama; either way, it’s a win for Harry,” replied Bella.
Fending off a volley of tossed rice with her bridesmaid’s parasol brolley, my dear cousin Jean summed up the bridal toasts as we all left the building.
“Happiness always, and never forget how much we all love you.”
I have never forgotten; after what came next, how could I forget?
Chapter Forty-Three
A Consummation Devoutly to be
Wished—or Perhaps Not
It has been a year now that Wally and I are married—a year since my night in “the Almighty’s Way Station for Wayward Tudor Women.” I have kept rule number one and not told a living soul about that night—not even Wally.
