Third Time's a Charm.... Not
by Cookie Michaels

At 12 years old, I was sneaking Joanna Lindsays and Victoria Holts out of my grandmother’s collection to read the naughty parts and daydream. I vowed I’d find my hero someday, the man who’d risk life and limb to sweep me off my feet and into his matrimonial bed.

Fast forward to 40. Married three times, they all were sweepers. Shame none of them were keepers, too.

Number 1 promised me the world. I was 26 years old and his third wife, 20 years his junior. He cooked spaghetti for me on our first date and we married four months later. After a one-night hometown honeymoon in Pascagoula, Mississippi, my “coon-ass” moved us to Beaumont, Texas, into a neighborhood where I spent the first night listening to fireworks, wondering what holiday the locals were celebrating. In the morning I discoverd it was gunfire from the crack house behind us. Two years and a baby later, we divorced.

Number 2 was a blind date who came along when I was a very lonely single mom. He said he’d take care of us, love us and be a provider. He said he paid his bills, owned his house and worked from home. When we eloped a month later I learned he paid his bills three months late, the house was in probate and his stay-at-home job was as a cannabis farmer who also dabbled in distribution and sales. We were divorced within a year.

Number 3 began with a late night instant message: “Hi.” I know now there was a reason my mama always said never talk to strangers. She should have warned me not to marry them too. Number 3 flew from Arizona to Mississippi two weeks after our first emails. The Chicago transplant moved here a month after we met, traveling by car and UHaul trailer to start his new life with his southern belle fiancé. He made the trip on Sept. 11, 2001. That should have been a sign, but by the end of the month I had said “I do” in front of the same justice of the peace who pronounced me wife to number 1 too. We never spent an anniversary together and half of our four-year marriage was me moving out and living somewhere else. We separated for good after Hurricane Katrina. Poetic justice that he came here on the wings of a national disaster, and went out the same way.

Is there a number 4 in the works? Heaven help me if I even think about it.

I'm sticking to make-believe heroes and imaginary husbands from now on. At least that way the worse that can happen is I end up with an ugly papercut.



The End