THE 6-7 MAN OF MATRIMONY

Tom Sykes was trying to get off the phone. This conversation was going nowhere. The hostile, angry parent was giving him the business. She was the mother of one of the 15-year-old CITs (counselor in trainee) who had attended his theater and summer music camp in upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region.

“My daughter’s a talented pianist. A born actress. Great with kids. And yet you gave her a bad rating as a CIT. The other CITs weren’t half as good as my Betsy,” complained the mother. “She’s in tears. It’s all your fault.”

“Ma’am. I regret that Betsy feels hurt,” Tom said in his defense. “I have nothing personal against her. But she skipped a lot of meetings when we were forming a camp band. Disappeared at times for team building projects. If she’s that upset about it, perhaps she should attend a different camp next summer. Okay?”

“It’s not okay. This isn’t the end of it,” Betsy’s mother threatened.

Tom knew the CIT’s accusations against him were made up out of whole cloth.

Maybe his camp job was now in jeopardy. Because only an hour later, the camp’s CEO, LeAnne Jenkins, called Tom to say she had just been on the line with Betsy’s mother, who was complaining about how her daughter had been treated.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Sykes, we’ll have to suspend you from the job until our board of directors finish their review. You can understand the position we’re in.” Sounding overly officious and formal, Jenkins added that “we have to protect our sterling reputation.”

“And mine too,” replied Tom, sarcastically returning the favor.

Like he needed all this grief. Didn’t he have enough trouble with women already? Such as incredibly failing at marriage six times.

Tom had other dealings in the works. Such as preparing his lesson plan as an adjunct professor of journalism at several Geneva, New York-area colleges. The Fall semester was beginning shortly and he had done nothing to get ready to teach his classes.

Having these two jobs, camp director and college professor, allowed him, just barely, to meet his daily living expenses. Such as paying the rent on his smallish one-bedroom apartment located up on a hill in Geneva. At least the place offered a stunning beautiful vista of Seneca Lake, one of the 11 Finger Lakes where he occasionally had taken his sailboat out for a spin before selling it to save on expenses.

One expense for Tom involved sending child support payments to an ex-girlfriend named Jaylee Meadows. The terms of the deal ironically meant Tom was paying for Jaylee’s lawyer to ensure he was fulfilling his obligations to give her child support. The legal terms of the child support matter meant Tom had visitation rights to see his little girl for only 2 hours on Saturdays twice every month. Hardly enough time for what he wanted. But the judge in this case didn’t care what he wanted.

That girlfriend, Jaylee, had moved back with their 2-year-old child to her mother’s house in northeastern Pennsylvania outside the city of Erie. That came after Jaylee ultimately decided she didn’t want to marry Tom. She understandably was “freaked out” and “shocked,” Jaylee said, when he revealed the secret that he had kept from her about all his prior marriages.

Jaylee was the same lady he had hired for his summer camp as CFO for managing the company’s finances. They had known each other for only a month when Tom, against his better judgment and not knowing Jaylee was pregnant with his child, proposed matrimony, skipping the bother of getting engaged.

Tom planned to use this week to finish writing his thesis for obtaining a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Syracuse University located about 50 miles from Geneva. He figured a Masters would help him land a full-time journalism teaching gig. This adjunct teaching stuff was for the birds. Besides not allowing for a steady source of income, some tenured journalism faculty looked down on adjuncts as inferior teachers or scholars.

His thesis’s argument concerned a subject he knew intimately. It dealt with how the demise of daily newspapers threatened the journalism profession in totality. More students, seeing little future in journalism, would gravitate to other professions--most likely AI or something else related to computer technology. No more ace investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame at the Washington Post, which was losing more subscribers and laying off long-time op-ed columnists and editors.

Growing up in the city of Auburn, New York, Tom had trained every day for hours on end to be a professional flute player. He was talented. But not talented enough to make a living at it. He would never be another Sir James Galway or Paula Robison, several of the world’s best flutists.

That’s when at the golden oldie age of 20 he had sold one of his flutes on eBay, and switched majors at Syracuse to journalism, even if the profession already was starting to go down the tubes. But news writing and reporting was something he was good at.

Still, he hadn’t given up music entirely when the owners of the Finger Lakes summer music camp hired him as their director. It was also that same year when he had gotten married for the third time, probably on the “rebound” from his second failed marriage. Meaning he had a wife to support, as she desperately wanted to be a stay-at-home mom with two kids. That marriage lasted about six months before it was finally annulled on the grounds of incompatibility.

As he switched on his computer to finalize his thesis, he saw the email pop up on the screen with a message from his ex-girlfriend’s lawyer. It threatened Tom with legal action if he didn’t come through in the coming days with the hefty monthly $1,200 in child support. The lawyer said this was the second and final notice. Pay up now or they’d see him in court.

Tom emailed back saying he had already sent the check. It must have gotten lost in the mail. Give it another day or two. If it didn’t arrive by then, Tom promised to send Jaylee another check. Tom had investigated what the average monthly child support should be. From what he saw, $1,200 was way over the average amount. About $700 a month was the norm. But the support magistrate (judge) when Tom made his appeal didn’t see it his way. She ruled he had to pay the $1,200.

Several minutes later the lawyer emailed back with exclamation points that claiming the check was lost in the mail “is the oldest excuse in the book! Ms. Jaylee Meadows needs the money now! She has child care expenses to pay on her credit card!” Tom should FedEx the check or there’d be consequences! the lawyer wrote.

Tom emailed back that Jaylee was exaggerating her financial state. Tom had never failed to send her what he owed. Give it a day or two for the check to come. “I ask for your patience.

Okay?!” he wrote with his own sarcastic exclamation point. He pressed “Send.” Apparently, that ended the email chain. No response from the lawyer. Depending on the explanation (or exclamation), that could be good. Or bad.

Later that afternoon Tom met his friend and former newspaper colleague Fred McDuffee for their regular 9-hole round of golf at the local public course outside Geneva. Some 22 months earlier, first Tom, and later Fred had been laid off from their respective newspaper reporter-editor jobs up in Rochester. Tom had worked as a reporter for 23 years, collecting unemployment for the last year and his benefits were about to run out. Fred must have sent out more than 150 resumes for jobs in journalism, either as a reporter, or to teach at a college, and had either received outright rejections, or more commonly, no response at all. He was facing a cold reality. Either find a job in the next week, search for work in another field, or go on welfare.

Still, the prospect of having no income coming in wouldn’t stop him from keeping his weekly golf date with Tom. Even if he sucked at the game, playing golf was the one thing keeping him halfway sane. Just being outside in fresh air would prevent him from feeling the proverbial walls were closing in on him.

Tom related to Fred that things could be worse. Remember Jaylee?” Tom asked.

“Who?

“You know, my ex-girlfriend. The one I had a kid with.”

“Oh yeah. Nice work,” Fred teased him as was his nature since what else made his life more exciting and meaningful? Fred said it was crazy that of all the women Tom had married, his ex-girlfriend was the only one who ended up bearing his child.

“It’s crazy for sure,” Tom acknowledged. “Now Jaylee’s on my case about not getting her child support. I sent her the check. She’s just being petty and nasty about it. What do you make of that, Mister Unemployed?” Tom could be just as sarcastic as Fred.

Fred had to laugh. “Man, that sounds like fun. So, to change the subject if you don’t mind, I got a 3 on this hole. Now we can celebrate. You’re buying us the drinks. Okay? To commemorate my birdie on number nine. Not bad for a duffer, huh?”

“Yeah, sure. You’re Tiger Woods,” kidded Tom. He resisted the temptation to chide Fred for how he had cheated on hole number nine, a 285-yard par 4, by chucking his ball toward the green from an unplayable lie behind a tree in the woods, thinking Tom didn’t see him do the dirty deed, even if he had. The guy’s life was in turmoil, figured Tom. Let him have his moment in the sun. Even as dark clouds were forming to bring on the predicted late summer afternoon thunderstorm.

On that same ninth hole, Tom scored a well-deserved 8 after four-putting. He kiddingly blamed his lousy putting on the green’s poor condition. He actually got a 9 on the hole, but if Fred could cheat, why not Tom?

After a couple of drinks with Fred, who moaned and bitched about his upcoming divorce from his wife Ethel of 21 years, Tom headed to the post office to mail an alimony check to his second wife, Gertrude (Trudy) Watkins. She had reverted to her maiden name after she and Tom got divorced. Tom always considered that second marriage to Trudy as “rebounding” after divorcing his first wife Rebecca (Beth) Steinfeld. He and Beth had met at a journalism class at the college that they both attended as undergraduate students. They seemed to have immediately hit it off until the short time later when they didn’t. Unfortunately, that initial attraction was a mirage.

It became apparent Beth had anger issues and one day she tried to hit him with a spatula after one of their many disputes over one silly thing after another. Tom also had anger issues which led them to seek marital counseling with an anger management therapist at their college. That therapist had recommended they both try saying only nice things and compliments to each other, which led to another argument. After a year of marriage, Beth said maybe they should see other people to relieve the mutual tension. Seeing other people led Tom to eventually meet Trudy, his second wife.

Eventually, that marriage failed too for one reason or another.

Tom’s third wife, Michelle Martinez, was herself reeling from a recent breakup with her “common law” husband of eight years. Michelle had gone alone to marriage counseling but it didn’t “take,” especially because Tom refused to go with her to the counselor, claiming it wouldn’t do any good. It only seemed to make her angrier that Tom wasn’t the right guy for her. She eventually went back to her common law husband, where they became officially married. Last Tom had heard about Michelle, she was still married to that guy. Which worked out beautifully for Tom in that now that Michelle was married to somebody else, he didn’t owe her any more alimony payments.

Back home after the golf outing and drinks with Fred at the so-called “nineteenth hole” even if they played only nine holes, Tom showered and changed into what he called his “writing” clothes for putting together his course curriculum. That after-hours outfit consisted of a bathrobe over his oversized t-shirt and baggy shorts whose elastic was wearing out, making them want to droop down to his knees.

The ill-fitting shorts reminded him of his fourth wife, June Anderson, who always got upset when he sat down at the dinner table looking like, as she described it, a “bum.” From the way she had been raised by her strict parents, June said he should be dressed more formally at dinner in at least a suit jacket over a long sleeve shirt and pressed slacks.

That was only one of several reasons why they divorced. They had probably rushed into getting married without getting to know each other better. The tension stemmed from June wanting them to spend more “quality time” together going out to dinner, attending plays and poetry readings, signing up for dance classes, vacationing in Europe to experience other cultures, and inviting friends over for coffee and drinks. Translation--they should be more social. When things started to deteriorate between them, June chided him for being married and divorced so many times. June was generally a nice person. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But she felt hurt herself in that as time passed, Tom seemed to lose interest in her.

Then there was the issue of children. They should have talked about it before they got married, Tom realized, because they had diametrically opposed opinions on the matter. June desired to have two children, like “normal” people do. Tom said curtly he already had one kid to support. Maybe if he got that full-time teaching gig they could talk about children when the time came.

That wasn’t good enough. June said she was sorry. She wanted “more out of life.” Irreconcilable differences between them were what the divorce decree stated. One of the last things she said to Tom was that he was a “killjoy.” In order to end the argument, Tom said he couldn’t argue with that.

Following his disastrous divorce from June, he hooked up with his fifth wife, Mabel Buchanan, who he met at a gathering for an event called Singles Enjoying The Arts. It was Mabel who had gotten the ball rolling with Tom after she called him out of the blue to invite him to accompany her to a rock concert in Syracuse. Mabel had done a lot of digging, she revealed, to find his phone number since they hadn’t exchanged contact information during the singles event. Maybe Tom felt grateful to Mabel for making the effort to contact him, even if he wouldn’t call that the only reason he agreed to marry her. Mabel had already been married twice before, which gave Tom and her something to talk about when they were dating. Sooner than later after they were married, they stopped having things to talk about.

Following that divorce, Tom pledged he wouldn’t get married again. That is until he met a short time later Wife #6, Sydney Black, a physical therapist. That marriage quickly collapsed the day Sydney confessed she was having an affair with one of her patients. That person in question turned out to be bisexual. By all means, Tom said to Sydney, go with the woman you really love. Goodbye Sydney.

All these women, so little time. For his friends and lovers, it was hard to keep straight the names of all of Tom’s ex-wives and relationships or the order in which he had married or hooked up with them. Sometimes, it was hard for Tom to keep track of it either. He considered all these marriages a source of pain and embarrassment, as he told his new therapist at the college where he taught journalism classes.

If Tom understood the therapist correctly, she said he had every right to feel embarrassed about being married so many times. Maybe, the therapist had suggested, he might try being just friends with women he liked and felt compatible with instead of always thinking he should make the plunge and jump into marrying them.

At his next appointment with that therapist, Josie Williams, they continued their discussion about what made Tom keep winding up at the altar. The therapist had done her homework before his session with Tom. She brought up Elizabeth Taylor’s marrying eight times. Apparently, Ms. Taylor had confided to a friend after one of her divorces, that “I don’t want to be that much in love ever again. I gave everything away. My soul, my being, everything.”

“What lesson do you take away from that, Tom?” Williams asked, seeking to know how he would react to the explanation that Elizabeth Taylor seemed to always need to be in love and it never worked out.

Tom shrugged. “I don’t think I need to be in love. If that’s what you’re asking me to say.”

“I’m asking you to say what you think. Not what I think,” said Williams.

Tom shrugged again. “I guess I think I don’t like living alone. But then again, I need to have ‘alone time’ occasionally. Doesn’t everybody?”

They came to the end of the session. Next week, Williams said, they would talk about how he would respond when and if he met the next woman he’d like to marry.

“If there is a next one,” Tom blurted out loud. He sighed.

“I’m sure there will be,” suggested Williams.

Tom thought to himself, “A 7th wife? Good lord. Am I going to make that same mistake again?”

Tom went home confused about what indeed would happen. The therapist had ended that session by bringing up how hip kids today use the slang term “6-7” to mean “so-so” or confusion. In other words, whether someone could commit to an action. Or not. As in “maybe this, maybe that.” So fitting to pin that 6-7 expression onto Tom, as he was done with #6, and God help him if there was a #7.

“Give that idea some thought, Tom, of what happens if and hopefully when you meet another woman you like. We’ll talk about it at our next session,” directed the therapist.

Several days later, he turned in his 42-page thesis about the decline of the journalism profession. His faculty advisor said he’d let Tom know if the thesis was accepted and Tom would earn his Master’s Degree in Journalism.

It was the advisor’s idea that Tom write his thesis on the future for journalism, although he might not have realized that Tom would describe it so negatively. By the time Tom had finished writing it, he hoped to never see the darn thing again. Writing about journalism’s perilous state was depressing enough. But if that would earn him his degree, it would be worth feeling depressed writing about it.

In the course of his next session with the therapist, she interrupted Tom who was recounting in her words “ad nauseum” on how he had always wanted to be a professional flute player. She chastised him for losing focus.

“You’re avoiding the issue, Tom, and it seems to me on purpose. Let’s talk about that 6-7 idea we talked about before.”

She smiled. “Before we do that, however, I want to ask if you gave any thought to what we talked about how Elizabeth Taylor got married so many times.” She interrupted herself to add, “Actually, Tom, how ‘bout we talk about that actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Nine marriages. Poor woman. 6-7. Confused. But she was witty.”

The therapist smiled again. “Tom, you know what Zsa Zsa talked about regarding all the guys she married? She said, ‘You never really know a man until you have divorced him.’”

Tom laughed. It was one of the more humorous and pithy things he had heard in a long time. He liked this therapist. She and him had formed a solid doctor-patient bond. Nothing to do with romance. Even if she was a very attractive lady who in other circumstances, Tom might have asked out for a date. Tom later found she was divorced but seeing somebody and it was getting serious.

“So Tom,” she continued, “don’t be like Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was joking but it wasn’t really a joke. If there’s nothing else you get from our sessions, Tom, don’t leave here thinking you don’t really know a woman until you’ve divorced her.”

Tom nodded. “I guess you mean I better know what I’m getting myself into before I ever get married again. Right?”

The therapist glanced at her watch. “Our 45 minutes are up. We’ll continue this discussion at our next session. Tom, I really think we’re getting somewhere. That pleases me. And it should you too.”

“It does,” agreed Tom for the sake of the argument. Actually, he wasn’t sure they were getting somewhere, that hip 6-7 feeling again. But maybe subconsciously he was afraid they were getting somewhere in discovering what exactly was ruining all his marriages.

One early evening after teaching his feature writing class at the university, Tom decided to satisfy his curiosity about a local men’s support group that met every week at a community center in Geneva. Actually, it was his friend Fred McDuffee who egged him on to join Fred at the next session.

“Man, I’m already seeing a therapist every week. Isn’t that screwing me up enough?” Tom joked.

“This is different,” replied Fred, for once all serious and reframing from his usual sarcasm. “You need to hear feedback about the crap other guys are experiencing in their lives. And in yours.”

“In other words,” said Tom, “misery loves company.”

Fred shrugged. “Yeah, brother. Something like that.”

Tom, a born skeptic about the value of such forced togetherness, had resisted attending because he figured the discussion would amount to a pity party. A bitching society of lost souls sitting around bemoaning the state of their marriages, or complaining about how it was impossible to meet the right woman. Or man. He was all too aware of those problems. But his golfing buddy Fred had been attending for the last several months, after his wife suddenly out of nowhere announced she was dumping him. What was the harm, Fred asked, in Tom at least giving it a shot? If Tom didn’t like it, he could leave and no one would force him to ever come back.

Fred was excited to have Tom attend the meeting with him. Fred would get props from the group to have brought in a prospective new member.

They entered a room where eight men of varying ages and physiques sat in a circle. Fred made the introductions.

“Guys. Say hello to my golfing buddy, Tom Sykes.”

“Welcome buddy,” said the group’s self-appointed “facilitator,” Jack O’Reilly. “Tom, we’re talking about how we deal with loneliness. You’ve come to the right place, Tom, to share your thoughts and feelings, without anyone judging you. Tom, would you like to share with our group how you handle being lonely.”

Tom wondered why O’Reilly kept repeatedly saying Tom. Was that something they taught you to do at these meetings? To offer Tom a feeling of intimacy and to get him engaged with the other people sitting around probably getting their kicks from all their kvetching. He couldn’t be sure what it meant. That 6-7 questioning feeling striking again.

Tom replied that he was more into a “listening mode” for the moment. He preferred hearing how others in the group dealt with depression and defeats.

“Perfectly fine, Tom. If that’s what you want to do,” O’Reilly said. “But part of the healing process, Tom, is to share your thoughts and feelings with us. Right, gang?”

For that next hour, Tom heard various horror stories from the group. One frightening tale in particular stood out. That’s when Gus, a middle-age looking guy with a ponytail and a white full beard, revealed that his wife had attacked him with a steak knife after they argued about the usual culprit, “money.” Gus wanted to spend it. His wife didn’t. Even though they now lived apart, Gus said he was still scared that she might show up at his new dumpy apartment and try to kill him with her .22 caliber pistol that she had bought for extra protection. She claimed falsely, Gus maintained, that he was stalking her.

Then there was Charley’s story of woe of how he wanted to shoot himself after his boyfriend no longer wanted to have intimate relations with him. He just wanted to be friends. Obviously, Charley took that news badly. So much for that friend. That had happened some time ago and since then, Charley hadn’t met anybody else to love or to love him. He had been staying home alone and thinking about committing suicide. That was until he came to this support group. He felt better about things knowing his true soulmates were the members of this group.

Tom had to admit, despite his initial skepticism, that compared to hearing these stories, his own hangups and problems didn’t seem to be as traumatic as he thought.

Yes, maybe he would join the group for their golf outing two weekends from now at the country club where O’Reilly was a member. O’Reilly said the greens fees wouldn’t cost that much. He was getting them a discount to play. Only $35 apiece, which included a bag lunch and an initial free adult beverage at the club’s “19th Hole” bar and grill.

In the days that followed Tom saw his fortunes turn for the better. His Master’s thesis won an initial acceptance even as his faculty advisor said Tom’s work seemed unnecessarily gloomy about the future of journalism. The advisor said the three-person panel reviewing Tom’s paper would undoubtedly give it their stamp of approval based on the advisor’s recommendation.

Rarely did that panel ever disagree with him, the advisor proudly said.

Equally, if not more importantly, Tom received an email from LeAnne Jenkins, saying the Board of Directors of his summer camp could find no evidence that he had treated unfairly the 15-year-old, Betsy. That didn’t mean, Jenkins quickly added, that he was being fully exonerated. The Board didn’t appreciate even a whiff of scandal making them look bad. For some reason that didn’t make sense to Tom, the Board said if he wished to continue serving as camp director, he’d have to first undergo anger management counseling with a therapist of the Board’s choosing.

Tom enjoyed working at that camp, especially since he made it a point to bring in kids from underserved communities in Rochester and elsewhere in the region who otherwise couldn’t afford the registration fee. He was proud of doing that.

But maybe it was irrelevant that the camp wouldn’t rehire him for next summer. His Master’s Degree would certainly boost his credentials of landing a full-time journalism teaching job. In fact, his CV, which now said he had earned that degree, had already produced dividends. A university in the Buffalo area emailed that he was being considered for a teaching position. That opportunity arose after one of the school’s journalism professors had suffered a stroke incapacitating him for the immediate future. They needed a substitute who could fill in while that professor recovered, if in fact he ever did. Would Tom be interested in temporarily taking over the class? Would he ever. Even if it meant commuting three times a week about 100 miles to Buffalo from Geneva.

That following weekend at the country club, Tom’s threesome of golfers from his support group needed someone to make it a foursome. Would it be okay if a woman joined them?

That’s when Tom laid eyes on the very attractive mid-30s brunette, Melinda Martin. After teeing off on the first hole, they could already see that Melinda, with her excellent 3-handicap measure of her golfing prowess, was way more skilled at the sport than any of them could ever hope to be.

Tom’s friend, Fred, obviously had designs on her. But it turned out as they hit hole #3, she was more interested in Tom by the way she looked at him, not to mention how he looked at her.

There was an obvious mutual attraction. As they finished their round at hole #9, Melinda asked Tom if maybe he wouldn’t mind going somewhere in town to have a drink with her. Are you kidding? Obviously. he wouldn’t mind.

Who knows where this might lead between him and Melinda? “For God’s sake,” Tom thought, “it’s only a drink. What’s the harm in that?”

Of course, he knew the harm in that. His confused 6-7 marital history made sure of it. But he shouldn’t let that past determine his future. If he had learned anything about blindly falling too fast into what he thought was love, it was that maybe he and Melinda Martin could first for a good long while just stay friends.

Eric Green is a former newspaper reporter, press aide to a U.S. Senator on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and ESL teacher. His news stories, essays, and short stories have been published widely, including in the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun. His latest short story, "The Comic Who Stopped Joking Around," was published by the Hudson Valley (New York) Writers Guild.