Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (8 page)

It is true that, like many newlyweds, they struggled during the first year of their marriage. Isabella’s public stumbles created
nights of icy arguments and heated silences in the couple’s suite in the west wing of the castle. In their worst nights, they
confronted demons and nursed regret and wondered about former loves. Despite all that bumbling and mumbling, despite their
misgivings and wonderings, their public face never faltered, and of all the charges lobbed at Isabella during her dizziness
days, it is a compliment that no one once suggested she was a bad wife.

Later, when she became the phenomenon that defined a century, she managed to do so without seeming to ever intentionally overshadow
her husband. Perhaps it was a testament to their humility and companionship, but I think it was because the magic that Isabella
spread worked the best on people she was close to. And Raphael was the closest. So he would look at a sea of well-wishers,
notice that 80 percent of them were reaching for Isabella’s hand rather than his, and his only reaction was to be sorry that
he’d distracted the other 20 percent. At least that is the impression he always gave in public, and in my experience, it is
the impression he gave in private, too. He was, simply, a team player and she was his team.

This is not to suggest that they were just friendly coworkers. Far from it. Neither the prince nor the princess was raised
to engage in mushy banter and sweet nothings, but oh, how they laughed and giggled and shared conspiratorial looks and phrases.
(In the entire time that the royal couple lived at the castle, neither Secrest nor Vreeland could figure out the meaning of
certain code words that Their Highnesses would exchange with each other, prompting gales of laughter.)

In fact, if things had only turned out differently for Raphael, I am quite sure that his marriage to Isabella would have been
remembered as one of the greatest love stories ever lived on a global stage. And that is saying quite a bit for what was,
after all, the relatively sensible pairing of two well-positioned people. Usually, great love stories must have great suffering.
There must be valiant struggles and cruel ironies and tremendous sacrifices. They can’t just be cavorting about European resort
towns in a souped-up Bisba, making a splash by going through drive-throughs while wearing tuxes and diamonds.

(“Those stuffy royal banquets always leave me wanting,” Isabella reportedly said to a Bisbanian White Castle employee one
late night, as she pulled up to order twenty burgers to go. The employee—dubbed Burger Boy by the low-rent tabloid that bought
his story and published it under the headline
WHITE CASTLE PRINCESS
—claimed this comment was awfully suggestive, given that it was uttered in a breathy voice, while Rafie, who was in the passenger
seat, moved his hand along Isabella’s thigh and stared at her in a slightly drunk, leering way. Her tiara, Burger Boy said,
was slipping off the side of her head. Most commentators, including Ethelbald Candeloro, did not believe Burger Boy. I was
never brave enough to ask either Isabella or Rafie, so I don’t know for sure. But I must say it sounds just like them to me.)

The true story of Isabella and Rafie’s love actually does have cruel ironies and great sacrifices and valiant struggles. But
no one knows that story. The story that the world believes it knows, with Raphael’s sudden death and Isabella’s long exile,
is just too short. You’d think the decades during which the widowed princess wore her somber brown and roamed American streets
would have permanently etched the Isabella-Raphael love story on the world’s romantic psyche. But it somehow just made people
forget Rafie altogether.

Nevertheless, I’m getting ahead of myself again. First I must finish explaining Isabella’s glorious recovery.

The improvement noted by Ethelbald Candeloro had, as I already stated, started right after Isabella read Geoffrey’s first
letter. That first occasion was not at all like the last one. When Isabella read the letter the final time before destroying
it, she wept. For the letter had come to mean a great deal to her. But when she read it the first time, she laughed bitterly.

She had not known exactly what she was hoping for. The letter was in fact much like what she should have expected. Geoffrey’s
simple, uncomplicated observations were, after all, what she had always liked about him. But she had somehow entertained the
notion that her life and the strange turn it had taken would have merited more than a paragraph, especially a paragraph that
suggested she listen to the Boss.

Isabella appreciated the works of Springsteen as much as any European princess could. She rather enjoyed the CDs Geoffrey
had loaned her while she was at Yale, and she had even downloaded some more. She had listened to songs about the romance of
the roads that lead out of dying small towns as she was flying back into tiny Bisbania, with its petty neighborhood politics
and struggling industries. She had listened to songs about working-class couples being torn apart by economic hardship while
she was being courted by the prince.

But she stopped listening to the music when she moved into the castle, where the music was always selected by Hubert or the
queen and where the king required that 86 percent of any playlist be national.

Somewhat irrationally, Isabella thought Geoffrey should know about the castle playlist rules, so it irritated her that he
suggested listening to a retro American songster, and it further irritated her that Geoffrey seemed to go out of his way to
point out that he had married—though this seems unfair, coming from a woman who had been the star of the most celebrated wedding
of the century. (Especially given that Geoffrey mentioned his wife only in passing, and not until the “P.S.”) But fairness
was beside the point. Isabella was experiencing the same sort of jealousy that makes all of us prefer to believe that none
of our ex-boyfriends ever really got over us, even when the evidence would suggest that they were over us before the relationship
was officially over.

Despite Isabella’s rather pronounced initial disappointment, she saved the letter. Sometimes when she was lonely or sad, she
would pull it out of her makeup drawer and reread it. These readings became daily and served to elevate and solemnize the
simple words, and soon she found herself taking comfort in them. She came to like the notion that she could listen to a working-class
American songwriter for advice, since it seemed to dignify her duties as real work. It also eventually came to please her
that Geoffrey’s wife had sent her advice. It suggested, somehow, that despite all the “Dizzy Izzy” headlines, Her Royal Highness
the Princess of Gallagher had a following, an appeal, a “people,” if you will. There were real human beings out there—an American
car mechanic’s wife among them—who were rooting for her.

So she ordered (she would say “asked”) Secrest to bring her headphones, and the princess began listening to Springsteen while
writing letters or signing proclamations or dining alone. They gave her energy, put a bounce in her step, and helped her to
laugh at herself. Many a day, she’d head off for a round of ribbon cuttings humming “Working on the Highway” and giggling
a little. Often she would attempt in her speeches to toss out a poetic image that she thought might have suited the Boss—most
notably in a commencement address at Bisbania Community College, in which she compared a degree to a beloved and well-tuned
car.

More and more, she found herself relying on Springsteen for inspiration and comfort. Then one day, while lifting weights to
one of the rocker’s lesser-known tunes in the castle gymnasium, she came to believe that somehow the Boss was speaking directly
to her.

She had the headphones turned up loud. She was attempting to keep pace with the music as she did her modest bench presses—less
weight, more reps for toning. Suddenly, the lyrics jumped out at her. The song, entitled “Cynthia,” was a silly little ditty
about construction workers admiring a classy lady. She doesn’t stop or greet the men, but they don’t care. In a gloomy and
glum world, the workers appreciate simply knowing that such loveliness exists.

Isabella was so enthralled with the song that she stopped in mid-bench press to listen to it. She had, like many princesses
before her, struggled to know her job. She was not an actress who entertained, nor a stateswoman who governed. What should
she do? And here was the answer. The construction workers saw the classy lady as an excuse to take a break from their daily
labor. When she passed by, it was a reason to “stop, stand, and salute” her style.

In the days that followed, Princess Isabella couldn’t get the lines out of her head. They seemed, she thought, to be written
particularly for princesses of her generation. Suddenly, she was at ease. Her taste in clothes became unfaltering. At the
same time, her knack for picking appropriate causes became unwaveringly accurate. She learned how to look directly into people’s
eyes, even when looking at six hundred people at once. And, in an unexplained twist, she even finally developed nice skin,
which allowed her to wear less makeup.

Her newfound knack for capturing the public fancy became, perhaps, most apparent in what became known as the “sock incident”—the
near disaster that ensued when Isabella was photographed hopping off a train in celebration of Public Transport Day wearing
one black sock and one blue.

We are not, I’m sorry to report, speaking of a mere flash of color peeking out from a royal trouser leg. There was, in this
outfit, a lot of sock. Isabella was wearing knee-high stockings with a short plaid skirt, capturing the so-called schoolgirl
look that the queen thought was questionable enough for a woman of Isabella’s age, even if the colors were right.

But, in this case, the colors were quite clearly wrong.

Secrest had, needless to say, been on vacation. Otherwise, she would have personally checked the tags for dye-lot numbers
and held them up to the window, as was her routine, to detect any unfortunate fading issues, which can sometimes occur even
with the best laundries. Yes, the clothes were as right as rain whenever Secrest checked them.

But Secrest was lying on a beach in southern Spain that day. So the niece of one of the castle gardeners, a young intern originally
hired to walk the royal dogs, had taken Secrest’s place in handling the princess’s clothes. Although it appears that by “handle,”
we mean only that she “handed” them over, because the subsequent investigation found evidence of slipshod work from toe to
top. In addition to the color problem, the socks were from two different designers, and one of the princess’s bobby pins had
a speck of rust.

Isabella herself, I suppose, could have saved the day by glancing at her feet herself. But she was not accustomed to paying
much attention to such things and probably could not have been expected to notice the coloration differential in the dim light
of her dressing room.

However, the difference screamed for attention in the early-morning train-station light and caused gasps of wonder and astonishment
from the crowds bottlenecked at the station. (It is one of the ironies of Public Transport Day that the efforts to accommodate
visiting dignitaries make everyone else late for work.)

Hubert was beside himself with rage and hurt. He fired two laundry maids and, of course, the inattentive intern and further
launched a review of the castle vacation policy.

“Why on earth would Secrest be on vacation on Public Transport Day?” he kept asking the other senior advisers, who all agreed
that they could not imagine a legitimate reason.

The queen herself launched the internal review of how the intern came to replace Secrest, and the review provided weeks of
surprising revelations. I’ll spare you the sordid details of how an unrequited crush on the dog groom had served to distract
the young worker. But I will say that the entire staff was beside itself with shame and self-loathing after the investigation
turned up an ominous memo, carefully filed away but never followed up on, from the head of kennel operations, who complained
just days before the sock incident that the intern had twice walked Grover, the royal greyhound, using a leash that did not
match his collar.

“The leash was red. The collar blue. Dear Grover is a rare milky white,” the kennel chief wrote. “The poor dog looked like
the flag of France! Scandalous!”

Hubert, who had found the memo in his own file cabinet but could not remember it ever crossing his desk, turned green with
rage every time he thought about it. “This is the person put in charge of the princess’s clothes?” Hubert said. Ever after,
he became obsessive about reading every memo addressed to him, often twice, to the exclusion of all other duties.

The castle maintenance staff was soon charged with installing an elaborate lighting system in the dressing room of all the
principal royals so that they could direct their dressers to adjust the lighting to mimic eighty-six distinct environments—from
a cloudy day at the racetrack to a dusk trip down a red carpet to, needless to say, a clear morning in a train station on
Public Transport Day.

(As a quick aside, I must report that among the ramifications was a personal one for Secrest, who met the chief of kennel
operations over a hot morning cider to discuss the unfortunate chain of events. They found comfort in each other’s words and
eventually in each other’s arms and were happily married soon after. Secrest was a blubbery, happy mess at the wedding, but
was as ramrod strict as ever when she returned to work from her weekend honeymoon.)

But even as the sock crisis reverberated throughout the castle, ending a few careers and several carefree vacations, it played
completely differently with the public, thanks to an anonymous freethinking public relations professional who was helping
out at the anti-domestic violence organization known as Battered Women No More. The young public relations executive was a
student of something called “guerrilla public relations,” in which do-good organizations with little funding grab media attention
by “hijacking” news stories and taking credit for celebrity fashion errors or marriage breakups.