And then there was Rhonda...

This ad reminds me of one of my step mothers.

Cookie had many.

With a father who was married more times than Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky, its easy to get confused.

One of his wives was very nice.  Make that two.  Or was that second woman just a woman who was in and out of his life?  No, I think it was the second "Mary", Unibrow Mary, as we used to call her.

As I have said before it was a mind boggling parade of floozies.

But the "artiste" stood out.  Her name was Rhonda.  "Ronnie to my friends." She was very tall, had been a "dancer" and would brag about how she loved culture.

To one of my cousins she reported said "I just love, love the Boston Pops, Public Broadcasting, and - if I may - loved listening to the Longines Symphony when I was a child."

My cousin, having been born in 1938, was just a few years older than Ronnie at the time, and said "The Longines Symphonette?  Like on the radio?"

To which Ronnie answered "Yeah,I just imagine all those society people in the concert hall listening to them, like I was in my house."

My cousin hadn't the heart to tell her that the "Symphonette" was recorded in a studio and was an advertising gimmick.  "I didn't want to 'bust her bubbles, y'ah know?'"

Rhonda was also a lover of wigs.  In the three months that she was married to our father, I don't think anyone saw her real hair.

My mother met Rhonda once, at a school function when she came with my father.  "Cookie's dad wanted me to wait in the car.  And I said 'like a common dog?'"

It was an art open house and I remember my mother's response.  She turned her head to my father and raised her left eyebrow.  That was all.  My father turned red as raw meat.  

"Rhonda, there is nothing common about you," said my mother.  "Let's get you a cup of punch, right over here and chat..."

When it was time to leave, my mother shook Rhonda's hand and said that she enjoyed meeting her.  Rhonda, who was wearing what I have come to call her "hillbilly hair" (A woman's mullet down to her waist) smiled and said  "Yeah.  Me too."

In the car home my mother said "If your father's wife Hee Haw ever offers to drive you anywhere do not get in the car with her.  Is that understood?"

Why?

"Because, that's why."

Well, that opportunity never came to pass because Rhonda and my father went their separate ways when my father came home about a week later to find the silver gone, Rhonda's clothes gone, and a note, which I my mother told me "explained why she was leaving and signed in a lipstick kiss."

Why did she leave?

"Because, that's why."

Why did Dad tell you what was in the note.

"Because he did, that's why."

Sometime later, the divorce was final, and the silver reappeared.  And Rhonda was not spoken about, mainly because it was a matter of weeks before "Sharri" ("That's Shar-ri, with an i...") appeared, and the who cycle repeated itself.

Years later when my father was married to the last of wives, a miserable shrew who we call "Shark" (and who is still out there, somewhere, stalking her next piece of prey) we found one of Ronnie's wig cases.  Inside was a wig - brittle with age, and a rats nest of a mess.  I thought about keeping it, but what I do with it.  We also found a newspaper clipping, brown with age mentioning "Randy Ronnie" and naming a club in Cleveland's Short Vincent block.

I showed it to my mother, and she asked why I had kept it.

"Because, that's why."