Hopeless Fairytale
Brenda told Michael she’d been married five times on the night she met him, but she could tell he didn’t believe her.
Unfortunately, it was partially true.
Brenda knew there was something about her eyes, a quirk of birth or genetics, which gave a man the impression that all of her attention sat centered on him and him alone, despite the fact she might be thinking of nothing more exciting than the grocery list. Men, or rather their egos, found that type of wholehearted attention utterly desirable. She’d discovered that everything usually escalated from there and most times she was powerless to halt the galloping trajectory towards the inevitable. An engagement ring soon followed, then the altar, and then… well, everyone knew what happened next.
And now here she was, trapped in her indecision; sit and wait for husband number six bearing her glass slipper in the form of a sparkly new engagement ring or flee with escape and freedom in mind. After all, it could only end badly.
She’d been so full of hope at her first wedding. Ronnie was a lovely young man with an earnest overbite and a nervous twitch. She knew he harbored a few mother issues but she was sure she could sort those out quickly enough. After all, they were young and in love and the world was their oyster. Unfortunately, that oyster turned out to be a rather stagnant cockle and the longed-for pearl nothing more than a worrisome piece of grit in the form of Ronnie’s mother. She’d marched into the registry office just as the happy couple were about to say their I Do’s, grabbed the shrinking, cowering Ronnie by the collar, and hauled him away muttering something about unsuitable unions, brainwashing, and marrying one’s own kind.
However, husband Number 2 had quickly appeared to dry Brenda’s tears. Charles was an older man with a penchant for wearing built-up shoes and a monocle in his left eye. Charles’s mother had passed away, which gave Brenda a modicum of reassurance after the whole Ronnie debacle. Charles had proposed quickly, swept up in the wonder of Brenda’s attention-giving eyes, and he had insisted on a short engagement. This time it was Charles’s undercover lover, a public school mathematics teacher named Ian, who’d marched up the aisle and demanded that she hand his man back.
She wasn’t in love with husband Number 3, but all the right conditions for love to grow were there. Luciano was a handsome Italian man with a handlebar moustache and a loud, booming laugh that sometimes frightened small children. Luciano said she was bellissimo with a kiss of his fingers to his lips and told her he wanted to feed her pasta and spaghetti until she grew round, pretty, and plump. However, the unexpected appearance of Luciano’s irate wife as Brenda’s father helped her out of the limousine on their wedding day soon put paid to that prospective marriage.
Husband Number 4 was a radiant burst of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy year. Patrick was a robust, round-bellied, redheaded man with an engaging accent and no shortage of bawdy jokes. Patrick loved social events, meat pies, fried chicken, and draught beer – and he loved Brenda. He promised her a life full of good times and laughter and she believed him. His heart attack at the altar as he fumbled with sweaty fingers for the wedding band was both unexpected and devastating, but Sam the handsome paramedic helped Brenda through her loss.
Brenda was genuinely in love with husband Number 5 and she thought that Sam held the key to ending her run of marital bad luck. Dark-haired, dimpled-smile Sam was outgoing and adventurous. He dedicated his Instagram feed to breathtaking, toe numbing shots of himself leaping from planes, swimming with sharks, and walking along narrow ledges on the tops of tall buildings. Sam was afraid of nothing and Brenda felt safe and protected in his arms. However, it ultimately turned out that the one thing Sam was afraid of was marriage. She discovered that sad fact as she waited forlornly for him to arrive at the church as the clock ticked, her bouquet drooped, and the wedding guests awkwardly shuffled their feet and peered over their shoulders at the door.
She now sighed and looked at the time on her watch, the rose gold watch that Michael had given her. Michael was fond of gift giving. He’d showered her with sumptuous bespoke jewelry, exotically fragrant blooms in crinkly purple tissue paper, and svelte, satiny dresses that made her think that he imagined her to be a size smaller than she actually was almost since the first moment they’d met. He’d brushed off her sad tale of failed marriages past, declaring that fate had intervened at last to bring him and Brenda together.
Michael was an Elvis impersonator, a heavy-set, jowly man who performed a hip shake in a white sequined suit and sang Jailhouse Rock at work functions, birthday celebrations, and Christmas do’s. It was at one of those work functions where Brenda had first met him, catching his eye as she sipped watered down wine out of a paper cup and picked listlessly at the pastry shell of a tiny custard éclair. He was at her side in an instant, offering her a refill from a glass pitcher held in fat, be-ringed fingers and telling her she was the cutest little jailbird he ever did see.
They’d been dating eight months now, which was a long time for Brenda. Generally by this stage of the relationship she’d received a ring or been stood up at the altar. However, she was almost certain that tonight would be the night that Michael would propose. He’d asked her to wear her favorite dress and he’d paid for her hair appointment, a standard trim and premium blow out, at Madame Cassandra’s this afternoon. All signs were pointing towards a proposal but she didn’t know if she had the strength to go through with it. Not again.
Michael was a very pleasant man and she did see a future with him, but that was the problem. She’d seen a future with each of her five previous one true loves and where had that got her? Jilted, that’s where. Besides, it was time consuming to return all the wedding presents and some of her relatives, especially her uncles, had begun to make bad taste jokes that they thought were funny but Brenda certainly didn’t.
She’d toyed with the idea of leaving a note on the front door and heading off to drown her sorrows somewhere dark and dive-y, of avoiding Michael’s proposal altogether, but she’d now wasted so much time prevaricating that here he was pulling up at the curb in his orange Toyota with the double black racing stripe. She could almost feel his sense of excitement from here, radiating off the man in waves.
She pasted a smile on her face and wrenched open the door, aware that the evening could only go downhill from here. He’d propose, she’d coo over the ring, they’d make plans for the wedding and for a life that could never be… “Hello, Michael.”
“Darling! You look ravishing.” He scooped her up in his arms and pressed her to his spongy belly, covering her face with kisses until she giggled and began to think that tonight might not be so bad after all. He let her go at last, giving her a wicked grin accompanied by a very un-Elvis-like cackle. “I have a surprise for you.”
“How sweet,” Brenda murmured as she prepared herself for the inevitable.
“I’ve brought my friend Mr. Jaxon along.” Michael opened the back door of the Toyota with a flourish and Brenda was perplexed to see a wizened little man with a hooked nose and a superior attitude step out.
“Errrr.” Brenda waited for her surprise with some trepidation. Mr. Jaxon vaguely reminded her of Ronnie’s mother and that wasn’t a good sign.
“Mr. Jaxon is a marriage celebrant and he’s prepared to do the deed tonight.” Michael gave her a most out-of-character anxious look. “If you’ll have me, that is. I know your previous marriage attempts haven’t ended well and I thought I might try to circumnavigate all of that palaver, skip the engagement and the frothy white dress, and marry you now.”
“Oh.” Brenda felt her knees quiver, her heart race, and her future beckon to her with a prankish smirk.
And right then and there, in her favorite black dress that matched her eyes and with her hair coaxed and shaped into perfection by a premium blow out, Brenda said I Do to her sixth husband and finally stepped into her happily ever after.
The End