Six of One by Joann Spears

Author:Joann Spears
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, humor, Contemporary Women, General Humor, Women's Fiction, Humor & Satire, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 1466324384
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2011-12-02T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Enter the Gladiators” or “Stealing a Screamer March”

Thanks to the four Marys, I was suitably attired to “enter the arena”; but, as it turned out, the arena came to me. Six women—they could only be the six wives—streamed into the room single file. Flamina, Seton, and Livy, having hurriedly arranged enough chairs for the six wives and me, scattered like leaves in the wind. I was on my own and confident in my fashion choices. I especially liked the touches of red; they defined the outfit, like the scarlet lining of a matador’s cape.

The six wives wordlessly seated themselves in an arc, facing me; it was like looking at a gallery of Holbein portraits come to life. I had looked at them a million times: those simple, feminine, unmade-up faces, holding their own in settings of bejeweled and sartorial splendor. I would have recognized them anywhere.

They seated themselves in chronological order: Katharine of Aragon, Ann Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Katherine Parr. Each appeared at about the age she was when she left Henry VIII’s employ, so to speak.

Katharine of Aragon was a stout dowager. In stark contrast was Catherine Howard, barely out of her teens. She was lush with youth and looked remarkably agile for such a full-figured girl. The other four wives were good-looking young women in their twenties and thirties. In modern-day dress, coiffure, and makeup, none of the four would have looked amiss on a women’s magazine cover, I thought—Ann Boleyn on Vogue, Jane Seymour on Woman’s Day, Anne of Cleves on BUST, and Katherine Parr on Ladies’ Home Journal.

After the cacophony that had accompanied the advent of some of my other visitors that night, the silence in which the wives paraded made quite an impression. I thought at first that they must have meant it to be intimidating. Luckily for me, any intimidation quotient that “the big six” had was decidedly diluted in my case by their familiarity factor.

The wives were, not surprisingly, dead ringers for my own Harry’s six exes. My experiences in the real world with my marital predecessors had shown me that, as one woman against six, the odds were against my ever having the last word on any given good night. I reasoned, then, that tonight, I might as well have the first word. I was feeling fully up to it; the six of them could not possibly have anything to hit me with that I haven’t been hit with before, I thought. Looking back, I am glad I did not give voice to that sentiment. If I had, I would have felt damned silly by the time the night was over.

“I wish that I was in the portrait gallery with all of you rather than here in the peanut gallery all by myself,” I ventured, securing the victory of the first word (not to mention the subsequent twenty-two).

“A point for you, Dolly. You attempt to outwit us and be a clever girl! That gives truth to the rumor,” said Ann Boleyn, “about you and Catherine Willoughby.

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