The Secret Life of Prince Charming (21 page)

Frances Lee groaned.

“Oh, I know. I do. This is not easy to confess. But I tell this story because there’s something I want
everyone
to be aware of.
People need to understand this. I started getting headaches, migraines. A terrible pain in the base of my neck. Stomach problems. I got very sick. Listen, headaches, a ball in the pit of your stomach, tightness in your chest—these are not signs of true love, and if I’m being honest, I had those ‘symptoms’ from the beginning. I was
always
anxious with him. Here I am, a doctor, and I’d forgotten something hugely important.”

Olivia Thornton took a sip of her tea then. She looked at us intently. “The body knows. Okay? Even when we don’t know, the body knows. And sometimes, often, its knowledge is superior to ours. It’s the one thing I’m completely sure of. Body knowledge—it’s the purest kind. It does not succumb to the mental edits and little erasings that the mind is so fond of. You want the truth, go to the body.
Listen
to the body. It screams, when necessary.”

Frances Lee worked the key into the lock of the apartment. A brick building, in the University District of Seattle. We’d scraped the top of Bob’s head getting into the underground parking garage.
Ouch,
Frances Lee had said. Frances Lee went to school here, and we were spending the night at the apartment of her friend, Riley, who was away on vacation. As we stood at the door, I felt tiredness hit, as if it had waited politely for the right moment to show itself. God, I was tired—an
inside
sort of tired, where it’s not just your body that needs rest, but your mind and your thoughts and your feelings, too. “We’re supposed to feed the cat and water the plants,” Frances Lee said as she turned the key upside down and tried it that way.

“I’m allergic to cats,” Sprout said.

Frances Lee groaned.

“Kidding,” Sprout said.

Frances Lee opened the door, and the cat appeared,
mrow
ing and winding itself around her legs. “Warning, I’m a dog lover,” she said to it. Riley’s apartment was absent of nearly everything but a pile of clothes and a big-screen TV. One couch. One bedroom with one bed and a computer on a desk, a muddle of papers around it.

“Riley’s got his priorities straight,” Sprout said. She clicked on the television, and a bunch of guys in football uniforms had a beer at a bar as a table full of cheerleaders looked on. “Hussies,” she said, and clicked it off.

“He said the couch makes into a bed,” Frances Lee said. She dropped her bag, looked in the fridge. “You guys aren’t going to believe this,” she said.

“What?” I went into the kitchen, and Jake and Sprout came too. A single can of Coors sat in an otherwise empty refrigerator.

“It’s a sign,” Sprout said.

“I wish signs were easier to read,” Frances Lee said. “What do two cans of Coors mean? God sends signs in beer cans? Has it occurred to anyone else how Barry finds these really great women?”

“I know it,” I said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jake said.

“And then proceeds to treat them like crapola,” Sprout said.

Sprout flung herself on the couch, and just as she hit the cushions, something tipped over an edge inside of me. Just,
over, like that. Maybe it was only because I had reached the overload mark—after being with each other for three days straight, packed in a car, in a bed, in elevators, in restaurant booths and gas station bathrooms, anyone who might have said anything might have been doomed, most especially someone as easy to flatten as a little sister. Or maybe, this image of my father—I kept trying and trying to hold it, to keep it real, but it was like a reflection on water, and Sprout kept running her hand through that water, breaking up the pattern, making it impossible to see. She kept on doing this, again and again, and I wanted her to stop. She really needed to stop that, though maybe, too, the vein of magma under the earth’s surface had just finally reached the point of boiling, the point where the earth rose and shifted and changed forever. I didn’t want Jake to see us argue, or even Frances Lee, but what came next was out of my mouth before the guards of self-control could step in.

“Why do you hate him so much?” My voice sounded tight as violin strings.

She was like a happy little windup toy suddenly scooped up into someone’s palm. She stopped squirreling around on the couch. She beamed lasers from her eyes.

“Why do you love him so much?”

“He’s our
father.
He loves
us.
” She was an idiot if she couldn’t see this. Stupid and childish.

“‘Father’ is a word. ‘Love’ is a word. It doesn’t mean that something actually
is.
”

“Well it
is.
He’s not perfect, I know that. What have we seen? He’s not good with women. He’s not good at relationships. So?”

Frances Lee made a little snort of disgust. “
So?
He eliminated
my mother and me from his personal history. Olivia Thornton didn’t even know about us. You don’t eliminate people you love.”

Jake slapped his thighs with his palms and stood. “O-kay. I’m outta here. Dinner. We need dinner. I’m going to go hunt a bison or something and drag it back to the cave.”

“Make sure he has extra cheese on him,” Frances Lee said.

There was silence. The door closed behind Jake.

“He’s not good at
any
relationship,” Sprout said.

“Maybe with his
plants,
” Frances Lee said.

“Even his plants are just another way of showing off,” Sprout said.

“Yeah, you’re right. He doesn’t have a relationship with them, either. Have you noticed that there’s no person-to-person thing here, only a person-to-object-that-makes-me-look-good?”

I ignored her. I glared at Sprout. “You’re just protecting Mom. You sound just like her.”

Sprout crossed her arms. “You sound like
him.
Why do you act like he’s been so good to you, when he hasn’t? You give him more loyalty than you give Mom, who’s always there for you.”

The magma rose, rose. I could feel some crackling fire of anger inside, the kind that could spit sparks. The kind that could do something horrible if I let it out all the way—grab her and hit, pull her hair until she screamed. That anger was so deep it
was
the veins of the earth, hidden, but a real fact of its structure, capable of doing immense damage at the slightest quake.

“He’s there for me,” I said. Sparks could fly, sparks could catch on things and destroy them. Veins of the earth could open and crumble buildings with the force.

“You want to know what I hate? Do you?” Sprout’s voice rose. “I hate the way he’s been to Mom. I hate the way he’s been to me. But what I really hate? I hate the way he’s been to
you.
”

“He’s good to me.” I spit the words.

“You try to talk to him and tell him about your life, and he changes the topic back to him. You say, ‘Here’s what happened at school,’ and he says, ‘When I was in school, I was the most popular kid…’ blah, blah. You say, ‘I scored seventy on the math PSAT,’ and he says, ‘I never used anything I learned in math in real life.’ He treats you like a
servant.
‘Quinn get my this, get my that…’ And you just do what he asks. He cuts you down all the time.
All the time.
‘Well, you have brains, Quinn, that’s the important thing. Anyone can have beauty.’”

“That’s sick,” Frances Lee said. “Fucking sick.”

“I’m not listening to this.” Goddamn her!

“‘Maybe you’re just a late bloomer, Quinn.’ ‘Your mom never was that good looking, either.’”

I hated her then.
Hated.
I felt a fury I didn’t even know I could feel. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I yelled.

“I hate that the most, because you just take it,” Sprout said. “Like you don’t even hear it. Like you don’t even
feel.
”

“Get away from me,” I said. “Get away.” I made a lunge for her, and she ducked. I ended up with one of her braids in my hand. She yelled out in sudden pain.

“You’re beautiful, and he doesn’t even know it!” she cried.

I let go then. I felt as if my heart stopped. I’m not sure I was breathing; I think the cracked earth stopped spinning. If there were diamonds below the ground, or only the fury of molten rock, I couldn’t tell. There was just stillness and darkness. “He
doesn’t even see how beautiful you are,” she whispered.

I went to the only place I could go to escape. Into the bedroom of Riley, some guy I didn’t know, who had a picture of a basketball player on his wall and a box of Cheerios by his bed, the flaps open. A pile of guy stuff in a tumbled ball on the floor—athletic socks, jockeys, a towel and a bathing suit with Hawaiian flowers on it, both likely still damp; there was the smell of damp things left too long with other damp things. I laid down on Riley’s bed, put my face into Riley’s pillow with the green pillowcase. I could hear the sound of a baseball game from the park across the street—the
pink!
of a ball against a metal bat, a crowd cheering. I was there for a long time, until there was a tap at the door, and Frances Lee ducked her head in.

I kept my head there, on Riley’s pillow. I shut my eyes tight against her words. Frances Lee came and kneeled beside me. She put her hand on my hair. She had opened the Coors—her breath had the bright-sour-yellow of just swallowed beer. She stroked my hair.

“He
has
given me things,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

I sat up, because I remembered something. Frances Lee sat cross-legged, the tattoo of the mermaid facing upward. I’d remembered my ring, given in a small white box on my sixteenth birthday. He’d made a cake, with Snow White on it. I held up my hand, to show her. “He gave me this,” I said. “When I turned sixteen.”

Frances Lee sighed. “Oh, Quinn,” she said. And then she held up her own hand, pointed to a ring in a stack of others, a gold ring with a small garnet in it. “My sixteenth birthday.” And
I couldn’t help myself, then. I saw and I saw and I saw clearly, but I hated that I did. I hated it, and I started to cry, and I hated that I did that, too. Tears gathered out of nowhere, a sudden monsoon. It may have been years and years worth of tears. Tears from a whole life, there all at once, after waiting so long.

I laid down on that bed and cried, as Frances Lee rested her cheek on my back, staying there beside me until I was through.

Jake came back with two big square boxes of pizza, with a stack of napkins balanced on top, and a bottle of Coke.

“Everybody is friends?” Jake asked, and I nodded, but my insides still felt hollowed out. I was exhausted in a way that felt like years and years exhausted. Eons exhausted. It hurt too much to look at Sprout. She knew the worst things, and that somehow made me feel ashamed. We sat in a circle on the floor, pizza slices in front of us on the pizza-box-top table.

I tried to eat. Jake was telling the story of when he and Gavin were seven and ten and staged a death scene for his mother to find. They had sprawled out in twisted poses on Gavin’s bed, with ketchup splurted all around. The only problem was, she was late coming home. They had to keep popping up to look out the living room window to see if she was coming yet, and they made a mess in the hall. She got mad at them and made them clean everything up and told them that death was not a joking matter.

“Which of course we say now every time anything gets too serious. ‘Death is not a joking matter,’” Jake said.

“I’m going to try that when I get home,” Sprout said. “Freak out Mom.” She wasn’t looking at me, either.

Frances Lee lifted up another piece of pizza with a long string of cheese still stuck to the cardboard box, and that’s when my brain did that amazing thing brains do—made some kind of connection that it must have been working hard on without my knowledge. “Jane,” I said suddenly.

“Jane?” Frances Lee said.

“She said, ‘Jane.’ Remember? Dr. Thornton. What she heard on the phone, ‘Jane, no.’ Jane, age six.”

“It’s not a woman…,” Frances Lee said slowly. “It’s her
kid.
”

“Okay, wait,” I said. My brain was doing the other thing brains do—once they get going, they don’t stop. Put the right nickel in, and you get a thousand others, pouring down Las Vegas riches. “I know who this is. I know who the vase belongs to. We met her.” I snapped my fingers, trying to make the name come. I looked at Sprout for help. “Woman with a kid? We went to the zoo with them. The girl wet her pants and we gave her an extra pair of yours that Mom had packed in case you got cold. God, what was her name?”

“I don’t remember this,” Sprout said.

“It was probably when Mom and Barry weren’t speaking, because I don’t remember a woman with a daughter,” Frances Lee said.

“Heather,” I said. Jackpot. “Heather something.”

“Heather Grove,” Sprout said.

“Oh my God, how did you remember that?” Frances Lee asked.

“I thought it was the most beautiful name I ever heard,” Sprout said.

“That’s amazing,” I agreed.

“I named my sock monkey Heather Grove. That one Grandma made,” Sprout said. “With the red butt.”

Jake cracked up. I didn’t feel like smiling, but my smile didn’t seem to know that.

“What are we waiting for?” Frances Lee said. “World Wide Web, watch out.”

We found four Heather Groves. One owned a horse ranch in Montana. One was in Michigan, and she painted fantasy oils of wizards and dragons using lots of black and purple. She had written that she was “A Professional Role Player,” whatever that was, causing Frances Lee to say that she and Dad would be a perfect match. There was a Heather Grove selling her car in Tennessee, and another Heather Grove in St. Petersburg, who’d run a marathon, who’d been a member of the Franklin Elementary PTA, and who had a website of her jewelry design.

“Try that one,” Frances Lee said. “He likes artist types. And runner-dancer-athletes.”

Jake clicked. Enamel jewelry, et cetera, et cetera. Various pictures of necklaces and rings.
Visit my website often!
it said. As if the site were a living room no one had to clean. “Let’s read her bio,” Jake said.

“That’s her,” I said. All you had to do was look at her picture.

“That’s definitely her,” Frances Lee said.

The woman was blond and pretty, the sort of woman with wrists as delicate as the handles of china cups. She’d have a leafy, whispered voice. “‘Heather Grove uses her training in the ancient art of jewelry…blah, blah, so on, so on…,” Frances Lee said.

“Ha-ha. Look at this,” Sprout said. She wasn’t paying attention. She waved around some papers that were on Riley’s desk. “Oooh, Riley.”

“Keep out of his things, Sprout,” I said.

“Riley’s got a girlfriend,” she sang. “Riley’s got
lots
of girlfriends.”

She stuck the papers in front of my face. Lots of small pictures of women, profiles of ages and places and interests. They were all mostly dressed and behaving reasonably well, so I didn’t snatch the sheets from Sprout. “Get those out of my face,” I said.

“This has got to be her. Look, she grew up in the Northwest,” Frances Lee said.

“We found her,” Jake said.

“Check this one out,” Sprout said. “Oooh-la-la. Jeez, she’s as old as
Mom.
Maybe Riley likes older women. Check it out, Grand Canyon cleavage,” she said.

We ignored her. “See if there’s contact information,” Frances Lee said to Jake.

“Ah, ha-ha,” Sprout cackled. “Is this supposed to be a sexy look? Because she looks like she’s sleeping.” Sprout poked the paper right under my nose.

“Sprout, knock it off,” I said.

“What time is it?” Frances Lee said. “No, too late to call Florida now.”

“We can call her in the morning,” I said. “We can’t meet her in person, but we can at least talk to her on the phone.”

“We can mail her the vase, anyway. This is fantastic. I feel like we’ve done it. Found them all,” Frances Lee said. “Vic-to-ry.” She did a little dance.

“Quinn?” Sprout said. Her voice was small. I was ready for some hilarious trick on her part, a sudden yell of “Riley’s soul mate!” or something else. Some great big funny joke to snap me back to a good mood.

“Do not,” I warned. “I have no interest in seeing any more of Riley’s potential love interests.”

“Quinn, you might want to see this one,” she said quietly.

Maybe I was setting myself up, but something in Sprout’s voice made me turn from where I was bent over the desk and look down at the paper she held in her hand. My eyes followed to where the tip of her finger lay. “Oh my God,” I said.

“Someone you know?” Jake said.

“Oh my God,” I said again.

It was Annie, in that photo Grandma must have found for her, Annie in the wet-look leather bikini on the beach. Annie was here, in some college kid’s apartment, taken from the same
computer on which he’d probably written some Poly Sci 101 paper. Who knew where else she was. In some sixty-year-old’s basement, next to his Radio Shack computer and
Playboy
s? On the hard drive of some freak who kissed only one girl—in the sixth grade—and who lives with his mother?

“Who is it?” Frances Lee said.

“It’s our aunt. She lives with us. Annie,” I said.

“That is too hilarious,” Frances Lee said. “What are the odds? Ah, ha-ha,” she laughed. Then she looked at us. She made her face serious. “Maybe not hilarious. Not at all funny. Zero funny.”

I took the sheets from Sprout and flipped to the front. Riley had done a search for women ages eighteen to thirty, within twenty-five miles of his zip code. Personal ad, in
Hot Singles Times.
And God, there was Annie. Our Annie, right there with all of these women who didn’t seem like real women. Women who didn’t seem like they had jobs and favorite cereals and
nieces.
Women who made themselves pieces and parts, breasts and legs and invitations. Women who maybe kept the same secret Annie did, who didn’t let on when they gave you your change at the bank or made your nonfat vanilla latte or
came home
that they advertised themselves to anyone who’d look, because they were—

“Desperate,” Sprout said. “It feels desperate.” She sounded sad. Like she might cry.

“Lots of people do this, gang,” Frances Lee said. “So, she’s lonely and wants to meet someone. It’s not some sort of crime.”

“My cousin met his wife on eLust,” Jake said. “They’re very happy.”

“Anyway, it’s really hard to meet a nice prisoner these days,” Frances Lee said.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had socked her arm, the same as I would have done to Sprout. She socked me back. Sprout socked both of us.

“Watch who you’re socking, girly,” Frances Lee said. “Both of you girlies.”

In spite of the bad feelings I was having right then, all the bad feelings of the last few hours, about Dad and Sprout and Annie, I felt this small twinge of…
pleased.
I knocked my shoulder into Sprout’s.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. She knocked her shoulder back into mine in reply. Forgiveness can be a long, complicated thing, involving confessions and Kleenex and promises. Or it can be this—simple, with the unspokens already known and understood.

It had gotten late, and the lights were all off in Riley’s apartment. Frances Lee claimed the bedroom since she was the oldest, and we didn’t argue. The cat, whose name we didn’t know but whom Sprout named Big Dust Bunny (or BDB, for short), slept in there too, with Frances Lee. Sprout and I shared the pull-out bed, and Jake had arranged the couch cushions on the floor; he balanced on those with one of Riley’s blankets. His feet dangled off the end.

“I’ve never felt so tall. I feel like a basketball player,” he said.

It was dark, except for the circle of white from a streetlight outside. A siren screamed. A door slammed down the hall. Riley’s refrigerator made a steady appliance-snore.

I lay awake. It was true, what Sprout had said, about not feeling. But something had changed, and the feelings arrived now the way a season does, with surprising suddenness, melting things and pushing up new growth. In some ways, I understood why they called it heartache, because your heart actually does ache, but then again, so does the rest of you. It perhaps should be called entire-person-ache. I felt the leaden sense of loss. I thought about objects, about what Olivia Thornton had said. About jars and umbrellas, about a certain umbrella in a certain hailstorm. I thought about rings on your sixteenth birthday and a shell given on a beach at midnight.

Objects. Objects had weight. Memory and meaning could cling to them, like the smell of laundry soap to a pillowcase. That wooden bowl in your parents’ kitchen, the one where they put the keys and the single paperclip and the found marble—it’s the bowl that’s
always
held the keys and small lost things. It’s not just a bowl, it’s
home,
and so is that big platter edged with flowers that the turkey goes on. A dried corsage, brown and crunchy and past-tense except for the pin with its pearly tip still bright and sharp, stuck through a thick stem of green floral tape—it’s all of your junior-high years. A mask, a clock, a painting—all pieces of yourself that you most want to hold on to. Long-kept objects were past moments where things felt sweet and right—a shell, curved and white, so full of hope still that it almost feels warm to the touch. To take them
would be an act of cruelty. A hunter’s trophies.

Objects could be false reassurance, too, couldn’t they? Artificial proof of love, a memory that was maybe better than a reality—a ring, smooth against the base of your finger. In a white box on a small mattress of cotton. Handed over like diamonds.