Six of One (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Speculations on the MO of an MD” or
“What’s Up, Doc?”

Miss Bess was ill at ease with the fanciful turn the conversation had taken.

“Did he say Dolly’s eyes are loaded with stars? Is the man delusional? Where is the ambulance that I told Kath to call? It might be just as well if they brought a straitjacket, just in case.”

“Does he appear foolish to you?” Auntie Reine-Marie asked Miss Bess. “He doesn’t appear that way to me. Determined, perhaps, but certainly not foolish.”

“I’ll say the man is determined! He said he’d come here looking for Dolly from far, far away. You don’t think he’s a stalker, do you?” I heard my cousin Jean whisper.

“If he is, he can stalk
me
any time he wants!” said Maggie.

“He’s not a stalker. Trust me, I can spot psychosis from miles away.” Bella’s assessment was very reassuring; she was, after all, our go-to person on psychosis.

“I wonder who this man is and what he wants to see Dolly about.
Somebody
had better tell him that Dolly is marrying our Harry tomorrow,” said Harry’s mother.

“This doctor might be just the ticket for our Maggie. I don’t see any ring on his finger!” said Harry’s grandma. It was an impressive application of the “waste not, want not” principle.

“That’s some tan he’s got! It’s deeper than my Moondoggie’s by a long chalk,” said Cleva, Harry’s ex number four, setting my mind wandering again with her long-chalk talk.

“He’s better looking than Dad, that’s for sure,” said my prospective stepdaughter Lizzie. The silence that followed that comment lasted long enough to be awkward, but the Mystery Man pretended not to notice. Lizzie’s directness evidently amused him.

“Well, young lady, you’ve a lovely smile,” he said, “and if you look anything at all like your dad, he must be a very good-looking man altogether. Who
is
your dad?”

“My dad is Harry, the man that Dolly is going to marry in a few hours.”

“So it’s true; Dolly
is
marrying Harry,” the man said dully. As he uttered the words, the strong voice became suddenly boyish and unsure of itself. The fog around me started to lift, and I watched the man’s tan fade as the color drained from his face. The stalwart shoulders started to droop, and his physique went from sinewy to weedy in a single breath. He looked like a lost boy, and I recognized him instantly.
Now
I knew who I was looking at; there could be no doubt about it.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

As to Parting Shots and Connecting Dots

“Wally!”

“About time you recognized me, you sweet little fool. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me after all these years.”

“I’ve never forgotten,” I said. “How could I forget, no matter how long ago it was, Wally?”

“
Wally
?
You don’t look like a ‘Wally’ to me,” Miss Bess said to him, suspiciously. “Not the kind of name I’d expect a medical man to have at all. A damned
silly
name, if you ask me.”

“I don’t blame you for looking after Dolly’s interests when she’s in such a vulnerable state,” said Wally. “Allow me to introduce myself, Madam. I am Dr. Rolly, MD, PhD, Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. I am Dr. Waldo Rolly, and I am at your service. Perhaps Waldo—my full name—is more to your liking than my nickname.”

“It’s even
worse
, if you ask me,” Miss Bess said.

“Well, I’m afraid I’m fresh out of names and credentials after that,” Wally said, laughing. “But, speaking of names: Dolly, is it true that you’re going to change, or perhaps hyphenate, your name today? Are you really going to marry Harry?”

“That
is
the game plan,” I answered.

“Dolly! You still have time to get back to the hotel and get coiffed and dressed in time for the ceremony, if you hurry,” said my future mother-in-law, scenting danger. “Grandma Margaret and I will bring the car around for you. Grandma, wake
up
!”

“I’ll help you out to the car with Grandma Margaret, Elizabeth,” said Miss Bess, happily in her element.

Cousin Kath, begging my pardon, whispered something in Wally’s ear, and he reached into his pocket and handed her his keychain, which she slipped into her pocket as she scurried away, her face all lit up with conspiratorial glee.

“Yes,” she said a little too loudly, “I’ll bring your car around, Dr. Rolly, so you can accompany Dolly back to the hotel—just in case she should take a sudden turn, you know.”

“Yes, and I’ll take charge of getting the bridesmaids in gear,” said my cousin Jean. “Bella, and all you Marias, come with me. We’ll get things set up for Dolly back at the hotel,” Jean said, taking the lead as the remainder of the bridal party filed out behind her.

“Mary, Lizzie, come with your Aunt Maggie and me. We’ll find your father and tell him that there may be a slight delay in getting Dolly to the church on time, but that she’s alright and he needn’t cancel the ceremony,” said Molly Rose, ushering the remaining in-law contingent out of the door. “Well, we can let Harry know what has happened, anyway,” continued Maggie, turning backward to tip me the wink. Auntie Reine-Marie said nothing but blew me a kiss on her way out the door.

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.