The Secret Life of Prince Charming (16 page)

“He’s in the bathroom.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Perfect,” I said. “Long day from trains and airplanes. How’s everyone there?”

“Fine. Grandma, though—the mystery continues. I surprised her when she was on the computer and she stood up so fast, she knocked over the chair. She said she was buying something too expensive and I just startled her conscience.”

“She was probably bidding on a sports car.”

“Vacation home, yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of. eBay should come with warnings, like they have on alcohol bottles. Know your limit. Let me talk to Sprout.”

I handed the phone over. Sprout listened, rolled her eyes at me. “No, my ears were fine,” she said. “I chewed gum and I kept opening my mouth real wide like you said.” Pause. “It’s great. There’s a pool. Dad’s putting on his swim suit now. We’re going for a quick dip.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me to show off the fact that she could lie effortlessly and make faces at the same time. “Steak and baked potato. With the works. Okay. Love you too.” Sprout flung one arm around me and then squeezed. “Mom says to hug you.”

“A hug back,” I said.

Sprout flicked the phone closed. “Mission accomplished,” she said. She lifted her chin, in a display of
easy, no problem.
“Call me Queen of Liars.”

It had gotten dark all the way, and the living room was lit with candles—candles everywhere, on tables and books and in the fireplace and on the windowsills. Joelle sat on the worn velvet
couch with her feet on the coffee table, ankles crossed. She held a glass of red wine and was looking at the painting, propped now against one wall and sitting in a heap of wrapping. Frances Lee was in a fat leather chair; she’d changed into a long tie-dyed T-shirt and her hair was up in two clips shaped like butterflies. Her knees were up against her chest and the T-shirt was stretched over them.

Here’s what I liked about Joelle. She patted the couch next to her, indicating for us to sit, as Frances Lee got up to cut some pieces of peach pie. Joelle did not ask us about school, or what grade we were in, or what we like to study, or any of the other BS I-don’t-know-what-to-say-to-you questions. She treated you like you’d sat on her couch a hundred times before, so you felt like you’d sat on her couch a hundred times before.

“I spent nearly all the money I had at the time on that painting,” Joelle said. “I barely ate for weeks after.”

“I’d have rather had the food,” Frances Lee said. “Burger King Whoppers, Kid Valley onion rings, skip the art.” There was the small smack of Frances Lee licking a finger as she cut the pie. She seemed hungry almost all of the time.

“Vanilla malts,” Sprout called back to her.

“Take one over a painting any day,” Frances Lee said.

“Come on, Quinn, vote with me,” Joelle said.

“It’s interesting,” I said, as I looked at the painting. I was trying to be polite. It was also disturbing—I’d always thought so. One breast was a triangle, one eye off in the corner of the canvas, boxed in a cube.

“She looks psychotic,” Frances Lee said. She handed around plates and forks. Warm peaches, sugary crust. I cut the tip of the
piece with the edge of my fork. It was some sort of fruity heaven.

“I’d been with Barry maybe seven, eight months? I was crazy about him, ‘crazy’ being the operative word.”

“He hadn’t started the Jafarabad Brothers yet, right?” I asked. I was feeling suddenly more awake. I could tell this was the start of the kind of conversation I had come for, the story of my father. It was right there, and I wanted both to hurry toward it and slow it down.

“He’d dropped out of school, was juggling in this summer vaudeville show that went from festival to festival. I sewed the costumes. I had no idea what I was doing. God, some of those outfits. I did this one for this singer. Bonita, something. Can’t remember. It was a dragon. Big shiny green tail, and she couldn’t even move. Had to inch her way off the stage.”

“I thought he was in college when he started the show,” I said. “I heard he did it to pay for a sailing trip.” I remembered that article. The story I’d heard from Dad before.

“Can you imagine Barry on a sailboat for more than an afternoon? He hates the water. He practically has to get high before he sets foot in a swimming pool.” I nodded. I knew she was right. “
I
had the idea to start the show. We were sitting around one night and I just started telling him how he had the kind of charisma and talent to hold a show by himself. Forget the singers and the old-fart ventriloquists. He could get a gimmick, make it big. Use his dark looks. Maybe team up with Mike, who wasn’t nearly as talented, but who could play second string, yes? Can you tell I treated him like God? I perhaps haven’t treated God even that well. I fell in love with Barry, and he fell in love with my adoration of him.”

“Which all works out until you stop adoring.” Frances Lee licked the back of her spoon. Sprout had completely polished off her pie. So much for hating it.

“I didn’t stop adoring, that was the problem. I had plenty of evidence to stop adoring, but the more he didn’t give me what I wanted, the harder I tried to get it. I kept putting coins in the proverbial slot machine, because that one time I’d gotten a small payoff. Putting them in, putting them in, hoping…By giving him this idea, by encouraging him, by sitting in on rehearsals and calling around to get bookings—I made myself necessary to him. And yet, always,
always,
he held back a bit, by being cool, being important, having other…
people
around always. Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this,” she said. She nodded her chin toward Sprout.

“If you mean we shouldn’t discuss this because of me, I’m not a baby,” Sprout said. “I can handle the truth. We’re here for it.”

Joelle smiled. “All right then, yes. I can see that.” She took another sip of wine.

“Women, then. There were always other women around. I wondered who they were and why they were around and I told myself how confused I was when inside I wasn’t really confused. I knew there was something he wanted to change about me—namely, that I didn’t like his behavior. I knew that, I just didn’t want to see. I started getting love confused with angst. Love meant upset. Love meant large, crazy feelings.”

Frances Lee made the beeping sound of a truck backing up. “Warning, lesson ahead.”

“Don’t worry, Mom does it all the time,” Sprout said.

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn’t drama,” Joelle said. “Real love is
there,
not something out of reach.”

“That’s about twelve lessons,” Frances Lee said.

“Hard earned,” Joelle said.

“Now you’ve got Roy,” Frances Lee said.

“Love with Roy is peaceful. I thought something was wrong, it was so peaceful. Then I realized that what was wrong was that for the first time, it was right. No big scenes, no crying, no clinging and plotting and scheming to keep him. It just
is.
” She set her wineglass down. The candles on the table flickered with her movement.

“And they all lived happily ever after,” Frances Lee said.

“Don’t knock it,” Joelle said. “It’s a hell of a lot better than feeling like
that.
” She gestured with her fork to the woman in the painting. “No wonder I spent all my money on her. The visual equivalent of me. That’s about how disoriented I was. And I called that love.” She shook her head at herself. “Let’s hang her up now.”

“Where are we going to put her?” Frances Lee asked.

“Somewhere where I can see her every day. To remind myself how far I’ve come.”

“Great. We’re going to have to look at that thing all the time? I’ll have nightmares.”

“Go get the hammer, Frances Lee,” Joelle said.

Frances Lee was right about the surprise. When we turned off the lights, all of the stars hanging from the ceiling glowed in the dark.

“Magic,” Sprout whispered. And then we just lay there in the darkness, quiet, watching the soft yellow lights sway in the night air. Sprout’s breath was so hushed and regular, I thought she was asleep. But then, there was a small voice beside me.

“Are you awake?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said.

“Where are we?” she said.

I knew how she felt. “It feels like we’ve been gone a long time, doesn’t it?”

“Weeks and weeks. I like Joelle, though.”

“Me too,” I said. It felt sort of wrong to like her. It felt like a
betrayal of Mom somehow. But I did like her. She was comfortable and real, and her house was all cozy enchantment.

“It’s weird she was married to Dad,” Sprout said.

In a way, I could see them married more than I could my own mom and dad. “Their houses are sort of similar,” I said.

Sprout was quiet for a long time. There was just darkness and spinning stars of gold, a crack of light under the door, the smell of night coming through the windows. Then she spoke. “Maybe he took that, too,” she said.

I was having a hard time going to sleep. I had gotten to that point where I was so tired that I wasn’t tired anymore. I’d listened to the sounds of everyone going to bed, the dog flopping down to the floor, the quieting of his jingly tags and clicking toenails; a door shut softly. I heard the scrape of a chair outside against a cement patio, smelled cigarette smoke drifting, and then the back screen door sliding closed. The light filling the crack under the door was gone now. The house seemed to breathe in and out in rhythms of sleep. Even the breeze had stilled and the leaves on the trees had hushed. I had to go to the bathroom, but I was trying to talk myself out of it. I didn’t want to get up and walk around this unfamiliar house, and it was so quiet that a flush would certainly wake people up.

I watched the stars and felt far from anything familiar. Liv and Zaney seemed almost like people from a long time ago, another life, and I hadn’t thought about Daniel at all since I’d left. He was beginning to feel like a memory you weren’t sure if you’d made up or really experienced, like the trip to Florida I’d taken as a baby and only knew through the stories I’d been told. I’d given up baby food on that trip, Mom had said, and though I know I was too young, I swear I remembered the scrambled eggs she said were the only things I would eat.