Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (28 page)

Little Rafie was so horrified by this story that he vowed to dedicate himself to the study of speech handicaps, a vow that
would have—if things had been just a little different—led to a satisfying and successful career.

So that was Lady Carissa’s secret. And now I suppose you want to know mine.

Rafie died without knowing. I ended our phone call without answering him. That was my punishment, I suppose. It was the judgment
I delivered to him for surviving a plane crash that killed the man I loved. And for, in my mind, wasting the opportunity that
death gave him.

But though I like to think of myself as not answering him out of spite, the truth is that I
couldn’t
answer him. I did not really know myself why Geoffrey used the same nickname for Isabella and me.

This oddity, this shared nickname, was the one thing that I clung to, the only thing that got me through the journal entry
that I found when I shamefully searched through Geoffrey’s personal effects. “My dear Belle.” He could have meant me. Must
have meant me. Surely meant me. That is what I told myself.

But the entire time we lived in the castle, I did not ask Geoffrey why he would choose the same nickname for the two women
he spent the most time with. I suppose I was afraid to.

Geoffrey was a man of mystery. I don’t think any of us ever understood him, and I can’t begin to guess his rationale. Did
he call us by the same name because he saw something similar in both of us? Was it a grand and meaningful gesture? Or if it
was just a simple, unimaginative, lazy shortening of our names? I guess that is
the
question about Geoffrey. Did the things he said mean anything? Or were we all just reading too much into them? The only difference
is that this involves the very fabric of my heart, not the lyrics of “Pink Cadillac.”

Oh, and did you catch that? Did you see what I slipped into that last paragraph? You may not realize it, but I’ve now told
you my darkest secret. This is the secret that Ethel Bald knew. She did not know that Raphael was still alive. She did not
know that Geoffrey was trying to help him fake his death. She did not know Milo is the heir apparent to the throne. How could
she?

She was just a reporter, remember. She did not know the secrets of people’s hearts. She knew only the things that she overheard
in bathrooms and noticed while scooping up caviar and found by searching public records.

After our encounter in the bathroom that day—the day she got the Green Bay scoop—she worried about the quizzical, suspicious
way I had looked at her. She searched immigration records first and then looked into houses bought and cars leased. So by
the time I called to tell her that I knew her secret, she already knew mine. It may not seem that shocking in most circles.
But it would have destroyed me in the eyes of my snobby Bisbanian friends, the sort of people who dislike cows and believe
all girls should have dainty names that end in “a.”

“A lazy shortening of our names.” That is the line that perhaps you caught.

I don’t know why, in a psychological sense, Geoffrey would call me by a nickname that he had previously used for another woman.
But I do know in a technical sense why he gave me the nickname Belle.

He called me that because, on the day of my birth, when the nurse asked my parents what I would be called, they recycled a
moniker previously given a favorite milk cow. It was not Mae, the name Isabella reluctantly likened to a spring day.

No. The name on my birth certificate is Mabel.

I
suppose you remember the funeral of Isabella’s father, the Earl of Cordage. It made quite a splash at the time, marking as
it did Isabella’s first trip back to Bisbania after accepting the seldom-awarded Nobel Prize of Speech Pathology.

“I hadn’t even realized there was a Nobel Prize of Speech Pathology,” Ethelbald Candeloro wrote, still gushing as much as
ever despite being positively ancient. “But if I had, I would have predicted long ago that Isabella would win it.”

Isabella felt terrible about the prize, of course. She had submitted her husband’s work to several medical journals as a tribute
to him shortly after his death. The real death, I mean. She had always been so proud of what she called “Rafie’s little papers,”
and she thought the journal editors would be interested. (I think it also assuaged her guilt for having redecorated shortly
after Rafie’s death, covering forty rooms of green and gold with soothing and tasteful pastels. “It’s as if I’m painting right
over his memory,” she had said in a melancholy way. “But it
does
look so much better.”)

The journal editors were indeed interested in the articles, to which Isabella had signed her own name. She had little choice
about that, because the work had clearly been done years after the world thought her husband died.

Once published, the articles became the talk of speech pathologists everywhere, and the next thing you knew, she was accepting
all sorts of awards, modestly crediting her late husband as her inspiration and creating a mini-sensation by suggesting that
singing Springsteen’s rat-a-tat early lyrics could be soothing to those suffering from pathologies of oral communication.
“There is hardly a situation in life,” she said, “that can’t be improved by ‘The E Street Shuffle.’” No one questioned that
Isabella wrote the articles. After all, why couldn’t she fit in a little speech pathology training between her Thai classes
and welding work?

Isabella called me several times during the Nobel Prize- nomination process, crying from mortification and guilt. But I just
laughed and told her to rest easy. I could not think of a more fitting end to the entire ridiculous saga.

At any rate, the Nobel publicity had only just begun to abate when Isabella’s father died. She returned to Bisbania for the
funeral, wearing an elegant suit of such deep brown that you would swear it was black. (The press called it “brackish.”)

Isabella’s nephew, the son of Lady Fiona and the heir to his grandfather’s minor title, gave a lovely eulogy. He called his
grandfather a descendant of heroes and the father of legends.

Isabella had cried at that. And so did Lady Fiona, though I suspect for different reasons entirely.

They had never been close, that family. So few noble families are. Fiona and Isabella palled around enough when they were
young, but I suspect Isabella never shared a single secret with the lady—didn’t admit that she befriended a mechanic, much
less nursed a crush and shared a kiss. And by the time she was off faking deaths and giving away babies, they barely talked
at all.

Isabella’s mother was a cold, standoffish woman, a commoner who somehow thought that she had married beneath herself by wedding
an earl and who thought Isabella had married further down the tree still.

Sometimes when I think about that, I suspect that Isabella’s family life explains what she needed from Geoffrey. Maybe he
was the brother she never had.

After Fiona’s son spoke, Fiona sang a slow and haunting song, and then Isabella slowly walked up to the front of the mourners
and said, “I don’t know about being the father to legends. But he was a good father to me.”

Then she sat back down.

I don’t think it was true, judging by how little she spoke of him, how rarely she visited, how infrequently she called. But
it was the absolutely right thing to say. I saw Secrest, seated in a back row with her husband and son, nod approvingly.

That was the moment featured on all the websites the next day, and it made people all over the country cry. A lot of people
called their parents that night.

This is why we need princesses, you know. We need to know that other people suffer, though they have more money than we do
and more servants. We need to see them at funerals, and we need to hear about their divorces. If they gain weight along the
way, so much the better.

We need to watch them bear sadness and get their hearts broken, and we need them to dress well while they do it. We need them
to always pick the right words.

We need to be able to salute their style.

People might argue about the definitive photo of Isabella. She looked radiant after her wedding, of course, and that is a
logical choice. But some argue for the eerie photos of her standing on the stormy beach in those cropped pants. Others remember
her shoveling snow or working in the forge. A few mean souls are sure to nominate the “thar she blows” photo. Fair enough.
I suppose it is, in its own way, as good a candidate as any.

But I remember one photo that most people paid little attention to. It is a photo from Isabella’s father’s funeral. She is
standing with all her usual poise and polish, and there is a line of mourners waiting to offer condolences. The line is beautiful.
All those lovely faces, Bisbanians of all races and classes and ages. And in the front of the line is a slim, raven-haired
woman with a regal nose and a snug but conservative black dress.

There is a single tear running down Isabella’s face, and Milo is wiping it away.

Why is Isabella crying? That is what I ask myself when I look at that photo. Is she crying for the father she has just lost?
Or for the daughter she lost all those years ago?

Dear Milo, when I began writing this book, I told myself that it was the best story I knew, and thus I needed to write it
down. I thought it would make a little money, and I hoped it would make Frederick proud. But as I wrote, I realized that I
was also settling some old scores. Isabella and Raphael bought my silence over the years, in various ways and at various prices.
They gave my husband a job. They gave his death a “purpose.” They gave me a baby. I always accepted the deal. But after all
this time, it felt good, I confess now, to say to myself, “Actually, I think I’m going to talk.”

They would be at my mercy for a change.

It did not take long to see that my actual purpose was, surprisingly, more noble than that. My true motivation was, it turns
out, the only legitimate motivation. And it is you, Milo. You should know everything. Take this book and do with it what you
will. Do you want to be queen? Then take the DNA test, ship this book to Frederick, and start working on your posture. (You’re
not a kid anymore, and the crown is heavy—in more ways than one.)

If you are happy with the life you have, then hide this away, save it for your son, and give it to him when you think the
time is right. Let him decide if he wants to rule.

I know you the way only a mother knows a child, but I’m not sure what you will decide. Such an agonizing choice for my little
girl. I am sorry that I can’t make it for you, and yet so glad that it is not mine to make.

In the beginning, I observed that a woman of Isabella’s generation, raised in the time that she was raised, could not walk
away from an invitation to be queen. A generation later, the question is: Can a woman now?

Despite fifteen years as a serious journalist, mostly at
The Courier-Journal
(Louisville, Kentucky), and despite a long-standing attempt to pass myself off as an informed citizen, my bookshelves sag
with royal biographies. Not those ponderous, important ones about historically significant world leaders. No, no. I prefer
the ones that go on and on about the beauty regimens, parenting styles, and in-law battles of people with no actual power—especially
a certain ill-fated (but always well-dressed) British princess.

My secret desire was to write such a royal biography, a book that would explain how the mood of a nation, an era, a planet
can turn on something as simple as the dietary practices of a young lady who marries “well.”

But living in Louisville, I could hardly scare up a suitable princess to share my daily tea, much less one who would choose
me as her confidante. So I did the only sensible thing a frustrated royal biographer could do: I made it all up.

I am delighted to say that my make-believe princess loves Bruce Springsteen as much as I do and shares my fondness for lunching
with friends and hanging out at the horse track. I did, however, marry better than she did. (My heir, by the way, occasionally
humors me with
pretend
tea parties, but only if I promise to discuss Sesame Street characters and types of construction equipment.)

For more information about my teatime habits (and Princess Izzy), please go to
www.beverlybartlett.com
.

Beverly Bartlett’s Top Five Favorite Bruce Springsteen Songs

* “Thunder Road”

* “Land of Hope and Dreams”

* “If I Should Fall Behind”

* “Badlands”

* “Highway 29”