Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (22 page)

“What exactly did you
do
with this man, or priest, or whatever he is?” Secrest kept asking the princess, who never gave a satisfying answer.

“Oh, you know,” Isabella would say, affecting a breezy persona. “This and that, college things, nothing much.

“We studied, I suppose,” the princess would add if pressed. “And, you know, made popcorn in the dorm lobby.”

Secrest puzzled quite a bit over those comments, spending hours thumbing through an encyclopedia of American euphemisms in
case “studied” or “made popcorn” had some scandalous meaning she was not aware of. In moments like that, Secrest wondered
if she was in over her head and perhaps should write a memo about the whole series of events to Hubert, who would surely intervene
and let her off the hook.

In her desperate worry, Secrest had seized upon the one whispered comment—something about a photo—that she had overheard Isabella
make to Geoffrey. She could not imagine what sort of relationship Isabella had had with this Jimmy Bennett or what sort of
photos might exist of it. He was American, after all. And something of a Packers fan, the detective had reported. “Please,”
Secrest prayed, imagining the worst possible photo of a wholesome Bisbanian princess, “if Isabella is wearing anything in
these photos, don’t let it be the jersey of an American football team.”

“What if the headlines said something like ‘Packer Backer’?” Secrest kept asking. (For all her street savvy, Secrest did not
have the most creative imagination.)

Still, it had to be good news to find that the mysterious man with a camera was leading a movement that advocated giving up
treasured personal belongings. “Such as photo albums?” Secrest wondered hopefully. And that he further rejected money and
power. Such a person surely would have no interest in the princess or her secret. That is what Secrest argued, and we all
more or less agreed.

But Secrest could not relax. I think on some level, she suspected that something was up. She had picked up on the reckless
romance that charged the air around Raphael and Isabella—or was it the air around Isabella and Geoffrey? The air definitely
seemed charged with danger when the princess was with either man. I did not fully appreciate this at the time, and I see it
clearly only in retrospect. I thought then that I was suffering from a mood disorder, which I attempted to treat with organic
herbs, various stretching exercises, and, on the advice of Princess Iphigenia, an enema or two (I found this unpleasant).

In those days, Secrest often took me with her on official shopping trips. She said that it made for less lonely travel and
that she appreciated what she not very delicately called my “common perspective” on the venture. “I must know,” she said,
“how the princess will be perceived by the lower classes.”

What I could actually perceive was the inside knowledge of Geoffrey’s latest advice—prints or solids, studs or dangling earrings,
bracelets or rings. There was an ever-changing and exhaustive list, often but not always loosely associated with some Springsteen
song.

And I do mean loosely. You should have seen the incredulous look on the prince’s face when Geoffrey used the song “Ricky Wants
a Man of Her Own” to suggest to Isabella a summer of sundresses with rickrack trim. “How positively precious,” the prince
said. (That was not a compliment.)

Even at her best, Secrest had trouble keeping all of Geoffrey’s rules straight, and by the time she reached the latter months
of her pregnancy, she was in no mood to even try. I would step in then, helping her sell Isabella on items the princess was
unsure about.

(I don’t know why I did this. I had
never
been particularly fond of Secrest and was, in those days, even less so. Her pregnancy had filled me with petty envy, since
I had not been so blessed myself after many years of marriage.)

“I know you’re trying to avoid shawls,” I would say to Isabella after Secrest bought several different styles, not knowing
that Geoffrey had banned that look without even a pretense of a lyrical connection. (Geoffrey had experienced a childhood
trauma when wearing an older sister’s hand-me-down, which his mother had told him was a cape but which his playground friends
immediately recognized as a girl’s shawl.)

“But this,” I would say, borrowing on my mother-in-law’s strategy and showing the princess one of Secrest’s purchases in a
confident way, “is really more of a drape.”

“A drape?” Isabella would purse her lips, looking reluctant but intrigued. She had been disappointed when Geoffrey vetoed
shawls, which she thought were pleasingly theatrical.

“Well, if you’re
sure
it’s not a shawl . . .” Isabella would pause and appear to think for a moment. “I mean, obviously, it’s not. There’s no fringe
involved. A shawl always has fringe, doesn’t it? That’s practically the definition of a shawl—the fringe lining.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I’d say, although I thought she was wrong. “And this goes so well with the dangly earrings you’re
wearing this season.”

Suddenly, she’d be sold. Secrest would roll her eyes and knit her brows in an exasperated way.

On the last shopping trip I made with Secrest before her maternity leave, she grilled me over and over about just what level
of celebrity radio personalities enjoy in America, and whether or not Isabella’s association with Jimmy Bennett could be passed
off as the innocent glad-handing required of any member of the royal family.

“She wasn’t a member of the royal family then,” I reminded Secrest. “And Jimmy Bennett wasn’t yet a radio personality.”

I said this as if I were trying to make Secrest feel better, but of course I knew it would make her feel worse, and I delighted
in the way she tsked and tutted and fretted about it. After I realized that Secrest had in her mind some sort of sordid photo
of an intimate nature, I stepped it up a notch. “But ultimately,” I said with a bored sigh, “I suppose it depends on just
how glad her hands seem.”

This always caused Secrest to gasp, pat her pregnant belly, stare out the window of the stretch Bisba, and murmur to herself.

Needless to say, Secrest was fixated on what the proper course of action would be. Should the princess let sleeping dogs lie
in their remote African camp, or should she reach out, clarify the status of things, see if a small gift of camels and donkeys
could keep Jeb happy and remove any temptation he might feel to leave Africa someday.

“On the other hand,” Secrest said, rooting through the size-six racks for tight jeans, another (more literal) suggestion from
the “Ricky” song, “maybe we don’t want to give this Jimmy any ideas.”

Ultimately, she decided the princess should leave Jimmy/Jeb alone, a piece of advice she passed along from her hospital bed
a few hours after giving birth. (Isabella had called to congratulate her, but Secrest launched into the Jeb question as if
the previous twenty hours of labor had never happened.) Isabella listened, agreed, and thanked Secrest for her sound reasoning.
She vowed to put the whole matter out of her mind. “By the time you’re back from your leave,” the princess said, “I’ll have
forgotten about the whole thing.”

But that wasn’t true.

For Isabella and Raphael were well into planning their fanciful escape and figuring out where they would each live during
their separation. While Secrest was off singing lullabies, Jimmy Bennett’s camp in Africa kept crossing Isabella’s mind.

“Jimmy was a kind chap,” she said to Rafie. “He was always picking up stray pets and giving rides to homeless people. I’m
sure he’d take you in for a few months.”

I saw Geoffrey suppress a smile at that. Did Isabella realize she’d just compared her husband, a prince, to stray pets and
homeless persons? Did Raphael? I don’t know. But I could tell Geoffrey realized it. And appreciated it.

Regardless of whether the prince noticed the insult, he certainly noticed the suggestion that he slip off to hide in a miserable
desert camp. He did what royal people always do when they’re trying to avoid saying what they really think. They ask questions.

That’s why if you ever see members of the royal family in the midst of a parliamentary protest they don’t want to involve
themselves in, you’ll hear them say, “What sort of poster board did you construct your signs with?” Or “Have you read that
new book on the history of demonstrations?
The National Times
gave it a stellar review.”

So in full royal mode, Rafie asked every possible question you can imagine about Jimmy Bennett and eventually retrieved every
trace of information Isabella knew about her former classmate, from the model of the car he drove at Yale to the history of
his habit of whistling a lot. (It was a ner-vous tic left over from a childhood in which he spent long road trips attempting
to drown out his sister’s singing.) Finally, Rafie asked some pedestrian question, the precise wording of which I’ve long
forgotten, that prompted the princess to say, “Oh no, dear, Jimmy wasn’t from Connecticut, he was from Green Bay. You know
that little town with the big American football team. He hated it there. Said if you ever wanted a good place to hide, that
was it. Claimed Elvis Presley was still alive and jogging about the streets there, unnoticed.”

Raphael smiled broadly like a man who had stumbled upon an excuse to send his wife off to the store just before a play-off
match was being broadcast. “Well, then,” he said, “that sounds like the place I ought to hide.”

And before Isabella knew it, her husband was holed up in Green Bay, and she was headed for Kenya.

S
ix months after arriving at Jeb’s camp, I was singing lullabies myself. Jeb’s camp was destined to become Milo’s birthplace,
and she was immediately the most adorable person there. Babies always have beautiful crinkly faces, adorable toes, and the
most wonderful yawns. But Milo was particularly distinctive, being born with especially wise eyes, exceptionally soft skin,
and an extraordinarily full head of dark curly hair.

Once I saw her, I knew that perfect baby girl could handle the name Geoffrey had dreamed of for a son. Isabella agreed, which
surprised me, given the Bisbanian bias toward feminine names that end with an “a.” “Oh yes,” she said to me moments after
the birth. “She will make a lovely Milo.”

During the christening, Jeb pronounced the name Mi-lo, stretching it out and thus emphasizing the two syllables. Not that
they needed emphasis. To the ears of Jeb’s followers, all of whom had followed Jeb’s example and shortened their names, Milo
was a lengthy, jaunty, extravagant waste of syllables. So I think it puzzled them when Jeb seemed to absolutely delight in
the name, rolling it around on his tongue, laughing at it like an indulgent, patient parent.

Many of the camp’s later arrivals assumed that Jeb
was
Milo’s father. I was insulted by the suggestion, and a snobbish, ugly spirit would overtake me, causing me to curse the place
that had offered me nothing but hospitality. “Milo was, thank you very much, conceived in a castle by parents with clean fingernails,”
I wanted to say, “not in some dumpy desert camp out of a sordid affair between dirty wretches like us.”

I never actually said that. Instead, I would merely report matter-of-factly that Milo’s father died in a plane crash a few
weeks before I came here, six months before her birth. But my temptation to point to Milo’s grander roots, even though I did
not yield to it, shamed me at the time and troubles me even now. It goes against everything I say I believe about the basic
equality of all people, the inherent rights of all children, no matter the circumstances of their birth.

But I held fiercely to those private thoughts, the spirit of which is arguably the motivation even now for writing this book.
It seems to make no sense. Such hostility for a place that had offered me nothing but sanctuary. Such sneering at a place
that I had chosen as home.

I guess becoming a mother does these things to you. You spend all your young adulthood cursing capitalism and proclaiming
your lack of interest in material wealth, but you still want your baby to believe in Santa and to have presents spilling out
from around the tree in a lavish display of luxury. You say looks don’t matter, and yet you beam when someone compliments
your baby’s smile. Parenthood prompts not only unconditional love but petty pride.

I thought Milo was special, and I thought perhaps that pointing to a special start in life proved it. Although I never said
that to the people in Jeb’s camp. I never even said it to Milo, who did not, I’m embarrassed to say, get many explanations
out of me. A child should know something about her family heritage, I suppose, but Milo does not. I never wanted to talk about
it. Not in any specific way.

Except for one time when Milo was not yet two. It was the day Isabella left Jeb’s camp. Rafie’s parents, the queen and king,
had been begging her to come, and I had sealed the deal with my fake Springsteen quote.

By that time, Isabella had won over all but the most skeptical of Jeb’s followers. She quit talking about penance and talked
about peace. She volunteered for more than her share of the kitchen duties. And she became quite a handy seamstress, making
clothes for herself and many of the rest of us. (The haphazard look of the wool dress she wore to Bisbania should be blamed
on poor sewing tools, not on Isabella’s skills.) She sometimes even watched Milo for me, cooing and carrying on with such
gusto that the other camp members would gather to watch and laugh with her.

(When all else failed to calm Milo’s colicky phases, Isabella would twirl about the hut, shouting “coochie-coo” and flapping
her hands above her head like some sort of mad pigeon. Her hips somehow seemed to swivel in the opposite direction of the
twirling. It was an entirely ridiculous workout and, if ever videotaped, would have either ruined Isabella’s reputation forever
or launched a new line-dance craze. “You could call it the ‘E Street Shuffle,’” I said once, more glibly than I intended.
Isabella looked at me sadly, and I realized that for the first time in her life, she might understand what Geoffrey and Springsteen
had been saying about the less-than-graceful steps people take in life.)