Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (6 page)

The queen became so distressed that she brought in one of those disastrous British princesses. I can’t remember her name now.
It’s become so hard to keep them all straight. But whatever her name or title, she was, at that point, just beginning to live
down a series of dating disgraces, misguided forays into pop music, and unsuccessful dieting ads. She was no help at all.

“I can’t imagine why they want you to take my advice,” she said, in the marvelously blunt way of the British. “The best thing
that ever happened to me was Will’s mum dying. It somehow reminded people that, princesses or not, we’re still mortal, still
human beings, we still bloody bleed and die. Even then it took years to pull my image out of the loo.”

You can imagine what that did for Isabella’s spirits.

In fact, the visit of the British princess only succeeded in getting King Philippe, who had been moping about the castle in
a fretful way, thinking along very unhelpful lines. His staff insisted that whenever he and the queen dined together, he would
whisper, “Divorce worked out well enough for King Will’s father.”

The queen would invariably reply, “Widowhood worked out even better.”

The problem is that once people are expecting you to be awkward and ill at ease, there is almost no way to appear to be graceful
and at ease. You can glide across a room like an angel, but any photographer worth his press license can still manage to get
a picture of you blinking and in midswallow. No one in the room even saw such a moment, but it looked great next to a headline
with the word “dizzy.”

Once you’ve made a few clumsy mistakes, there’s almost no point in coming out with a wonderful, insightful speech. People
just assume someone else wrote it.

I could compile a book about exactly what went so gloriously wrong in the first year or so of Isabella’s marriage. I could
debate whether it was bad advice or bad karma. Was it that Isabella, for all her celebrated levelheadedness, wasn’t up to
the job? Or was it that no one, really, is up to that job?

That book has been written many times already. If you’re looking for a good one, I’d recommend
Dizzy Izzy: Deconstruction of a Postmodern Princess
by Camille Paglia, although it does dwell a bit much on the silly psychobabble of the time period. (And the constant comparisons
to King William’s mother will just bore many of today’s readers to tears. You have to remember the book was written relatively
soon after Will’s mum’s death, and people of the time actually thought she would be of more lasting significance than Isabella.)

Still, I’m telling the story not of Isabella’s missteps but of how she found her footing. Change rarely happens overnight,
and this change most certainly did not. But there was a moment when it became marvelously apparent, and that was the moment
when Ethelbald Candeloro published a column under the headline:
I’M DIZZY FOR IZZY.

Ethelbald, with amazing candor, wrote of how he had been cruelly delighted when the engagement had been announced, because
Isabella had shown all the signs of producing years of juicy copy. Yes, he had joined the throngs praising the prince’s choice
at the time. Who would, on news of an engagement, be tactless enough to predict a rip-roaring disaster? But that was, Ethelbald
now admitted, what he had privately expected. From the way her name so easily lent itself to mockery (Dizzy Izzy, indeed)
to her absolute daring (her wedding dress was lovely, but anything so bold portended years of fashion mistakes ahead), it
all added up to a sure sign of a terrific fiasco.

When would princes learn, Ethelbald remembered asking himself at the wedding, that they must marry only crowned heiresses
of other countries, creatures who were neither glamorous nor down-to-earth nor mature nor levelheaded? A successful match,
Ethelbald had thought, would come only when princes marry silly, selfish women who demand their butlers bring food right to
their room and insist on wearing only the gowns of their great-grandmama the Queen of Someplace Distant and Tasteful. Ethelbald
noted in passing that Rafie’s sister, Princess Iphigenia, was a prime example of a proper princess and was sure to suit some
foreign prince very well.

All this rubbing shoulders with commoners and dressing like a modern woman and living like a modern woman, it just wouldn’t
work at all, he had thought. Isabella’s so-called down-to-earth quality—which he viewed as more of a stubborn, selfish insistence
that she should have the same right to breeze about the public streets as the average commoner—was the surest sign of disaster
to come. Ethelbald had thought Isabella’s desire to eat in ordinary cafés and to have tea with commoners, however charming
on the surface, would inevitably cause her to blunder into disaster. Isabella was so unassuming, he had argued, because she
did not fully appreciate her new role; therefore, she never understood her own privilege, could not fathom the danger of dining
in public spots, spending her own money extravagantly, or trusting those who seemed kind.

Ever since the marriage, Ethelbald had half expected to find photos of her straddling a motorcycle and French-kissing some
long-haired American auto mechanic with a criminal record. When, instead, the “thar she blows” photo appeared, the only surprise
was that it wasn’t much worse and much sooner. That’s what he said at the time, and that’s what he believed. He had considered
it only a good warm-up for a rocking few decades.

But—and here is where the tone of the column made a dramatic turn—something had changed. And for the life of him, Ethelbald
said, he didn’t know what it was. Sometime in the last year or so, Isabella had become a real fairy-tale princess. The cynical
old coot actually used the phrase “real fairy-tale princess.”

He talked of how she worked tirelessly for charity, how she dressed in plain but pretty pastel suits set off to perfection
by the tweaking of the tiniest detail—a thin bejeweled belt, a series of miniature bows down the back, some fine needlework
on the bodice. “Her fashion staff reports that she calls this ‘detailing,’” he said. “But photographers call it dazzling.”

And speaking of photographers, he noted that she never frowned at them even when (he admitted!) they were quite beastly. On
St. Teresa of Calcutta Day, Isabella gave blood.

He could not fault her for not being generous. She was generous with her time, her money, and her smiles. He could not fault
her for not being glamorous. She was glamorous. And while it was undoubtedly true that she spent more on her clothes than
the average woman in the kingdom, she routinely wore the same clothes several times over—just in stunning new combinations.
Consider, he said, the sleeveless cloud-colored shift dress she wore to a children’s ward on Valentine’s Day. Posed with the
nurses in modern blue scrubs that day, Isabella in her white dress looked like a sweet, old-fashioned angel of mercy. Florence
Nightingale herself could not have been easier on the eyes.

Then, a couple of months later, when Rafie was speaking to war veterans on the National Day of Remembering, she wore the same
dress, this time set off by a tailored jacket with subtle military styling and just enough crimson trim to bring to mind the
nation’s naval uniform.

No matter what Isabella’s clothing allowance actually was, Ethelbald said, the princess had proved herself a fine example
to frugal women everywhere who wanted to find sensible but stylish and fresh ways to liven up an old dress. Besides, he noted,
the average woman would spend more, too, if she were photographed so often. And if she looked so beautiful in everything she
wore.

In a final flourish, Ethelbald, with no apparent shame, praised Isabella’s good humor and self-deferential quality, applauding
her decision to give to an eBay charity auction the goblet she had carried to the Russian baby shower.

“I thought I’d spend the rest of my career writing about Dizzy Izzy,” he famously concluded. “But the joke is on me, because
now ‘I’m Dizzy for Izzy.’”

N
o one else knows this. But Isabella told me once. She got a faraway look in her eyes, and her voice took on a distant, dreamy—some
would even say goofy—quality.

She told me that, on the night before she was to leave Yale and return home, the buzzer in her room went off. When she heard
his voice on the intercom, she realized that she had, in some way, been waiting for that buzz for three years. She didn’t
know why he had waited so long.

They talked for hours, under the stars. She invited him up, but he declined. So they stood there, leaning against his truck,
listening to music that drifted down from a fourth-floor dorm room. It seemed to Isabella that the sky was higher that night
than it had ever been. She looked up once and felt faint. It seemed, also, like all her thoughts and feelings and insights
had never been so fresh and original and profound.

That is what she said. And since she is not generally inclined to speak about events in such a silly, gushing (dare I say?),
romantic way, I can only suppose that is truly the way she felt.

She said she had always admired Geoffrey’s muscles and laughed at his jokes and appreciated his kindness, but she had never,
until that night, noticed—not consciously, at least—that he was this tiny thing. In the garage, he seemed to loom large as
he moved about, the master of his environment. But here, she could see that there was, all around him, this huge world: big
stone buildings, ancient tall trees. Geoffrey did not seem in control here. He was small and vulnerable. In that moment, he
seemed not like someone who kept her car safe and thus her life secure, but like someone who was small and alone and who might
need a hug.

So she hugged him. They hugged for a long time.

Then they kissed.

It was not, quite obviously, her first kiss, but it was so tender, sweet, and passionate that it evoked memories of teenage
love and shared ice cream and broken curfews. At least that’s what Isabella said it did for her. And I guess hearing her talk
this way made me think of those things, too.

Then Isabella said to Geoffrey, “I’d better be going.”

Then she said, “Good night.”

She never knew why she did it. She never knew why she pulled away. Why she didn’t go right on kissing him for hours, following
those kisses wherever they led, which would have most certainly not been marriage, but might have been a painfully passionate
few months. You know, the sort of relationship with such incredible highs and lows that the whole world seems to spin on the
mood of your beloved, where it feels at times like you’ve caught hold of an angel’s wing and it’s burning you up but keeping
you so splendidly warm, the kind of relationship that when, years later, happily married and content with your life, you see
someone who resembles your old beau on a street in a big foreign city, your stomach churns, though you wouldn’t take him back
for a second. I think Isabella considered her failure to climb on for that ride a sign of her emotional immaturity, of excessive,
even royal, rigidness.

But I also think she was too hard on herself. I suspect she realized that it was simply too late. Had Geoffrey knocked on
her door and stood in that parking lot even a month sooner, she might have given it a go. If either of them had believed in
each other enough to pucker up before they were about to be separated by an ocean, it would have indicated something—some
real chance, some real daring.

But by the time he showed up, her clothes were already in boxes and her roommate was already gone. Isabella and Geoffrey had
shared drinks and talks and life philosophies and had stared into each other’s eyes and held that stare for just a bit longer
than was comfortable and had flirted and complimented and bantered. But they had lacked the courage to do more.

As she kissed him there in the parking lot, she knew that their lack of courage was a fatal error, a deal breaker, a sure
sign that they had no long-term chance. And given that, she knew that nothing they could do or say or share over a few passionate
months could possibly make him mean more to her than he already did.

They could carry on long-distance and she could suddenly take an interest in getting a doctorate and Geoffrey could thrill
her by calling and break her heart by not calling enough and they could soar together and crash together and when it was all
said and done, he would still be what he already was, a fond and tender half-regret, a road not fully taken. So she might
as well walk away now, without all the dramatics.

Some practical part of her heart knew that.

They would not end up together, not because of any differences in class or culture, not because of the distance or her degree.
It was far simpler than that. He was a rebel who showed up at doors of women who were leaving. And she was, then, a very good
girl who left on the day she was scheduled and did not fiddle with long-distance love. Neither of them could have imagined
then that she would someday lead him into the worst trouble of his life.

So why did they kiss at all? It was so that years later, when Geoffrey said things like “Maybe I was kidding myself” and when
she wrote letters that began “Remember me?” they would be only words, uttered in the form of humility. They did not mean anything.
He knew he had not been fooling himself. She knew he remembered her. For there had been that kiss.

Y
ou can imagine, of course, what a stir Ethelbald’s “Dizzy for Izzy” column caused at the castle. The queen spun into a tremendous,
envious funk, which she did not fully shake for many years. The king was rather relieved that the words were kind, at least,
but he was sorely afraid that it would only encourage Her Highness into more high jinks. Prince Raphael was delighted. Sir
Hubert was mortified.

Isabella was scared to death.

She read it that morning over tea. Her husband handed it to her and told her that though he normally discouraged her from
reading the columns, he thought she should see this one. She smiled pleasantly at the end and said, “That’s nice.” But she
was thinking that it wasn’t nice at all. It was the most awful thing that had ever happened.
Ethelbald Candeloro knows about Geoffrey!
she thought.