Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (27 page)

It was the strangest body of work I could imagine, beautiful and elegant. Geoffrey’s humble vocabulary had sometimes masked
for me the complexity of his writing, the beauty of his observations. And here he wrote in a lovely and longing way about
the beauty of nature and the simple wonder of a finely tuned engine and the poetic mystery that exists in a well-executed
hand of poker. He talked about falling in love with Bisbanian horse racing and about the majesty of the Bisbanian skyline.

During the time he kept this journal, he was advising the world’s most famous woman on every aspect of life, from fashion
to royal politics. But he mentioned none of it. And he didn’t mention me. The entire drama of my life centers on my dear husband,
who did not see fit to chronicle any of the pertinent details in the lovely journal that he wrote in diligently each night.

Except for one page, one page that makes my heart clutch. On the night before the plane crash, he wrote only a few lines,
lines that I have memorized and seared into my soul.

“Been happier these last few months than I’d ever hoped to be,” he wrote. “All going to change tomorrow. Don’t know how it
will go down. Know this: going to live out my life with the best gal in the world. My dear Belle.”

I
’ve always been a little obsessed about names. I tend to go on and on about the issue, chatting for hours about the way people
acquire nicknames and drop middle names and combine surnames. People ultimately do choose for themselves what they’re called—I
think I’ve mentioned that before—and the choice they make is almost always significant.

In fact, if I think back to the days in the castle when we were putting the finishing touches on the plot to fake Raphael’s
death, the debate I remember most clearly was over the question “Ralph or Raul?”

The prince thought it should be his choice, and his choice was Ralph. “I must insist,” he said. “It is my name.”

But Isabella would have none of that nonsense. “Don’t be silly, honey,” she said. “No one chooses his own name! Besides, I
can’t fathom calling you Ralph. It sounds positively American.” She paused dramatically and finished with a flourish. “I would
gag.”

Raphael pointed out that sounding American was rather the point.

Isabella sighed in an overly patient, seemingly bored way. “I know,” she said. “But it’s supposed to sound like modern America.
They don’t go for generic names anymore. America is quite cosmopolitan now, even in Green Bay. They like style. They like
panache. They like mystery. They like Raul.”

“Mystery?” Raphael was incredulous. “Isn’t it Spanish? What’s so mysterious about Spain? It’s like France, only with bad shoes.”

Isabella ignored him. “Ralph is the sort of name they would give a cow,” she said. (The Bisbanian royal family is not fond
of cattle, or any other large, thick mammals.) “I might as well start calling myself Bessie. Or Daisy or, or, or . . . Mabel.”
She spit out that last one with a disgusted snort. But then she looked at me awkwardly and smiled weakly.

“No offense,” she whispered. “The name Mae is quite smart, couldn’t be less like Mabel. Like a spring day, Mae is.” Her brow
furrowed as if that did not sound quite right to her. “Or, you know, a whole spring month.” She smiled with satisfaction at
that and then made a gesture toward the clear sky. “Simply lovely.”

Then she glanced at Raphael in a way that I suspect meant: “Exhibit A.”

My interest in names got the better of me then. I could keep silent no longer, though it would seem that Rafie’s alias was
none of my concern. But I had a sister named Elsie, and I’d seen her put up with cow jokes her whole life. This was a pet
cause with me.

“Cows aren’t really named things like that, you know,” I said.

The prince and princess both turned to look at me.

“It’s all propaganda from the butter companies,” I continued, sounding more authoritative than I felt.

Isabella rolled her eyes and looked off into the distance.

“Cows are named things like Heifer 527, and most bulls aren’t named anything at all. It’s straight to the butcher block for
them.”

Isabella cleared her throat and looked at her nails. She wasn’t accustomed to commoners talking about butcher blocks. Or arguing
with her.

“And besides,” I said, “those sorts of wholesome, old-fashioned ‘gal’ names—‘British barmaid names,’ they called them—were
all the rage for fashionable parents back when we were born.”

I wished I hadn’t volunteered the British part. Or the bit about barmaids. But it was a trend, dammit. Isabella ought to be
able to understand that. I kept blabbering.

“At least hip parents, parents who studied trends and read books like
Beyond Jennifer and Jason.
” I feared I was sounding a bit defensive. “It’s only in Bisbania’s royal circles that people think they have to give their
daughters ultra-feminine names with an ‘a’ at the end.”

Isabella stared at me and crossed her arms. She tossed out the next question the way the king’s attorney might cross-examine
a witness. “What is your sister’s name?”

I sat up straight and said the name with as much pride as I could muster.

Isabella nodded in a matter-of-fact way. “And didn’t your mother grow up on a dairy farm in Appalachia?”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. Tiny Bisbania would fit a hundred times into the distance that separates western Kentucky
from Appalachia, but pointing that out would get me nowhere. Isabella thought there was a world of difference between South
Main Street and North Main Street, but was skeptical that there could be any difference at all in opposite ends of a long
American state.

Frankly, from her perspective, there probably isn’t.

Raphael interrupted at this point and steered, so to speak, the conversation back to Isabella and the possibility of being
named Mabel. “You can call yourself ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s bovine,’ for all I care,” he said. He was exercising a bit more backbone
now that Isabella had agreed to his royal escape plan. “I like Ralph, and Ralph it shall be.”

But Isabella convinced him—how, I can’t imagine—to first seek Geoffrey’s advice. “We don’t have to take his advice,” she told
Rafie. “It won’t hurt to ask.”

It did hurt her case, as it turned out. Her trusted adviser surprised and irritated her by siding with Raphael and going with
Ralph.

And yes, I did notice that my husband chose a name for the prince that Isabella said she could not use without gagging.

Still, I had to agree that it was the correct thing to do. Raphael was absolutely right about names. People ought to be able
to choose what they are called. Of all the awful things uttered about Isabella over the years, the most unforgivable, I now
believe, was the tabloid insistence on using Izzy, even knowing she despised it.

But no matter how right Geoffrey’s advice was, it still seemed strange, coming from him. He was notorious for bestowing nicknames,
never asking permission, for example, before starting to call some nice young woman who showed up in his garage Belle.

Although perhaps this habit of nicknaming was just an unthinking reflex that did not reflect his actual name philosophy. After
all, he had chosen to change the spelling of his first name and to take his wife’s name in marriage. He had some appreciation
for the power of deciding for yourself how you will be addressed.

So he sided with Ralph. And I was happy for the prince. I agree with Isabella that it was not exactly the most regal of names.
It sounded to me like the name of a slightly overweight, suburban minivan driver. But I admired the prince for being able
to see something solid and decent and true in it. And you know, there is nothing wrong with slightly overweight, suburban
minivan drivers. In fact, they are often quite easy to talk to.

Once I called for Isabella, and “Ralph” answered the phone. He said she was throwing pottery at the time and couldn’t talk,
so he and I started chatting, and we talked for several hours. It was one of those lovely long conversations you have, carrying
the phone about your apartment, watering plants, feeding the cat, painting your nails. I almost forgot that I’d never forgiven
him for giving up on speech therapy. And I tried to remember if he had been such a fine conversationalist when his name was
Raphael.

At one point, he mentioned Lady Carissa—Aunt Carrie, he called her—and he talked about how spectacularly fond of her he had
always been. I agreed that she was an impressive woman.

“I always wondered why she didn’t marry that count,” I said. “It bothered my friends and me. We couldn’t imagine what all
the controversy was about.”

The prince seemed surprised that I didn’t know. “We never told you?” he said. “I suppose we should have. You’re practically
family, having raised Milo and all.”

Then he told me the whole sordid story, the entire pathetic tale, the complete embarrassing saga. I must say it explained
a lot, more than I could have imagined. I was so utterly glad that I had asked.

I guess it was an icebreaker of sorts for us. I had been declared practically family, and Rafie opened up to me in a way he
never had before. He lowered his voice a little and told me he had been sick lately. He said he was sure he’d be okay, but
it had made him look back over his life, and he realized the regrets he had were all about me, about the sacrifice I had made
and about the child I had raised. “I also still wish I’d put money on the eighty-to-one long shot that won the Ascot ten years
ago,” he said. “But never mind that.”

He said he wanted me to know that it hadn’t been for nothing, that he had lived a life of happiness few people could imagine.
“You know Isabella as well as anyone,” he said. “You know that she can be vain and headstrong and impossibly dim and unimaginably
exasperating. You can imagine what she was like to live with during that pony-print fad.”

I chuckled.

“But I’ve been so happy these past few years,” Rafie said. “Snowed in with my princess, frying cheese curds and arguing over
whether we put enough garlic in the pasta sauce.”

There was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say.

Finally, Rafie spoke again. “And spaghetti really is as good as they say.”

We both laughed then.

He whispered, “Thank you.”

And that was all he said.

Oh, all right. He said one more thing. He hinted at that which I was not going to go into. But I suppose I must.

He said there was something that had always bothered him about Geoffrey, and he said he would like to know the answer before
he died. And he was asking the right person, because I knew Geoffrey so well and because I understand that names are almost
always significant.

“Why,” he asked, “did Geoffrey call you by the same name he used for my wife? Why did he call you both Belle?”

I
think I’ve set the story straight now. My husband wasn’t a royal mechanic, he was a royal adviser. I wasn’t just a mechanic’s
wife but the secret author of modestly successful lowbrow novels. Isabella was not an effortless icon but a highly managed
product of my husband and me. Or mostly my husband. The prince did not really die, at least not when everyone thought he did.
And I didn’t give birth to the daughter I raised, a girl who was conceived as the legitimate heir to the throne. At least
that is what I was told and what I choose to believe on most days.

I choose to believe that she is the biological child of Isabella and Raphael, even though the princess spent way too much
time with my husband and even though she allowed him to run his hand along her pregnant waist in a familiar way on what turned
out to be the last night of his life. I believe this even though he wrote in his journal about planning to live out his days
with Belle. I was able to maintain this belief because my husband called me Belle also, an oddity that completely mystified
Raphael and that I understood only in part and don’t really like to talk about.

That’s pretty much it. Except for Lady Carissa’s secret, the one she confessed on the night before her wedding and that Raphael
shared with me because I was raising his daughter. It is the final piece of the puzzle, and it explains everything. Almost
everything, at least.

Undoubtedly, if Rafie had become king, the truth about Lady Carissa would have been revealed long ago. Despite his many flaws,
he was a progressive, fair-minded sort. But she died, as you know, while he was still a prince. Looking back, I wonder if
her burial marked the death of all Rafie’s kingly ambitions, because the outing of Lady Carissa’s disability was the one act
he would have relished as king.

Compared to faked deaths and hidden births, this secret is not all that shocking in most circles. But in the particular culture
of the Bisbania court, which still conducted all official business in that throaty and consonant-heavy native language of
Bisbania, Lady Carissa’s secret was too awful to imagine.

The count would not dare risk passing it along to his offspring, and the queen, Lady Carissa’s much older sister, feared it
would have prevented her own marriage if the king or his family had learned about it sooner.

But Regina had already married the future king when Lady Carissa began to learn the native language of Bisbania and her tutors
discovered what Raphael described as a “lack of fluidity in her speech.” I had to consult speech pathology textbooks to find
the lay term, and here it is: She stuttered.

Not in English, which she spoke in a lyrical, flawless, public-radio kind of lilt. But in the ugly, challenging native language
of her home country, she could not smoothly say, despite months of desperate practice, even the few words she would have needed
to utter aloud at her wedding.

The night before the ceremony, she told her fiancé, with whom she had always spoken English. She had hoped, surely, that the
count would strike a blow for progress and insist the wedding be conducted in English. Instead, he broke off the engagement
altogether. Which, as I think I noted before, forced embarrassing explanations to five kings and four queens. Or was it the
other way around? I can’t really remember. It has been such a long time ago.