The Secret Life of Prince Charming (5 page)

“Yeah, great. Good for you. The whole play is like making a romantic musical about some stalking boyfriend who kills his girlfriend in a parking lot. I loved the big dance number in that one called ‘Restraining Order.’”

“You’re too serious,” Aunt Annie said.

“Something only said by people who aren’t serious enough,” Mom said.

“Girls, girls,” Gram said. “I’ll send you to your rooms.”

“I give up,” Mom said.

But she didn’t give up. After we’d put away the dishes and Gram went back to eBay and Aunt Annie went out on a date with Quentin Ferrill, Mom sat alone at the kitchen table, a piece of blank paper in front of her, a red Sharpie in her hand. She made a list. A list titled “Warning!” Under that, attributes to be on the lookout for in a guy.
He has either a very low opinion about himself, or a very high one,
she had written. Under that:
He believes he’s more special than other people. The rules don’t apply to him.

I stood behind her. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Mom, I love you, but you’re losing it. Do you want to just lock us in our rooms and not allow us to date until a panel of experts approves the guy?”

“Excellent idea,” she said, and chewed the end of her pen.

“We’re not stupid.”

Mom set down her pen. “It’s not a matter of being stupid. You can be smart and
not know
. And you can know and
not care
. Sit down, talk to me,” she said.

“I’ve got to go. I’m going to meet Daniel.”

“He’s not coming over?” She raised her eyebrows.

“He wants to go to Greenlake and walk or something.”

“Well, good,” she said. “I was wondering if the two of you ever
talked
. All those movies…” She took my hands. I could have guessed what was coming. The thing that she always said when she wanted to cover up extreme behavior on her part. “You’ll understand when you have kids of your own,” she said.

“Right.”

“I was twenty years old when I met your Dad. That’s only
three years
from where you are now. Three years! This could happen to you in no time. From that one point, my life veered off. You and Sprout are here because of it, and I’m grateful for that. But, Quinn, I just wish somebody would have told me. Somebody should have
said
…”

“They could make it a requirement at school. Relationships 101.”

“I’m not kidding, they should,” Mom said. “The most important decision you’ll make, and no one tells you
how
.” She let go of my hands. “All right. You’ve got to go, and I’m going to Lizbeth and Jack’s for some dessert-champagne thing. She got promoted at REI. Now there’s a twist of fate for you. REI, Lizbeth, who can’t walk and bounce a ball at the same time, and who thinks a hike to the mailbox should be rewarded with a Ho Ho. You guys should stop by. Sydney’s home for the weekend.”

Lizbeth was Mom’s friend since their days at the UW. They both ended up living in Nine Mile Falls, and Sydney, Lizbeth’s daughter (a student at Whitman), and Evan and Charles, her twins, were like cousins to me. The small white line by my left eye was from the stitches I got falling off the trampoline they
had in their yard. “Next time?” I said. “Daniel really wants to go to Greenlake.”

“Okay. I understand. Hey, I love you, daughter.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’ve got to go figure out what to wear,” Mom said.

I followed her upstairs. Ivar tried to shove ahead of us like he always did. To him, the starting gun went off the moment someone’s hand touched the banister. Mom wore her old khaki shorts with all the pockets, a tank top dotted from spots of wayward bleach. Her hair was pulled back, making a too-small pony tail. There was a smudge of red on her forearm, from leaning on the paper a moment ago. I loved her. I did. But in that moment, right then, looking at that smudge, there was something about her that irritated me. Maybe it was her own ordinariness, the ways she came up lacking. The gray showing through her brown hair, her relentless insistence on wanting the best for us, her slightly bristly legs. But being irritated by her made me feel weirdly relieved; the hazy, hovering worry I’d had since seeing the objects lifted. I had a mean thought—it sat there in my head the way a crow does on a railing—cruel, entitled, mocking.
That’s
why he left.

Daniel was definitely on uppers.

“Let’s lie down,” he said. He spread out a blanket he’d brought from home, a blue quilt with a fabric image of a girl in a bonnet on it.

“She can lie in the middle.” I pointed down at the girl.

“Holly Hobbie,” Daniel said. “My mom’s had this blanket since she was a little.” Which explained the white rickrack at the blanket’s edges. Seventies-kid bedspread. He tested the fabric
with his palm, to make sure there was no dampness underneath. He sat down and looked up at me with a grin as shiny as a new appliance.

“Why are you so happy?” I said. I sat beside him. He leaned back on his elbows, looked up into the lacy trees over us.

“God, Quinn. Why not be? Why not be happy when this day is so beautiful?”

I looked over at him, watched him for signs of dilating pupils or sudden tremors. Daniel talked about his math test, or how Evan McConnell was such an ass but how Coach Grayson never noticed. He didn’t talk about feelings or life or anything larger than a moment. We’d laugh about Señora Little, the new Spanish teacher, whom you’d feel sorry for if your capacity for pity hadn’t turned into frustrated contempt. Her lack of classroom control had turned every fifth period into a prison riot, which she attempted to fix with altered seating charts and “new rules” that lasted the day. Adam Seddell and Mitchell Hagen would move her cactus around when her back was turned, and Mitchell Hagen was a good guy who never got in trouble anywhere else. Sean Riley got expelled from the class after hitting the donkey piñata with snowballs, became an office T.A. instead, and now used his new position to excuse students from fifth period. The principal had sat in Mrs. Little’s class five times that semester alone, but still students would ring up the class phone as she taught, or set their own phone alarms to all go off to “La Bamba” at exactly one thirty. Daniel would tell me what happened in Mrs. Little’s third period, and I would tell him what happened in her fifth, but happiness and beauty were not things we discussed.

I leaned down next to Daniel. I ran my fingers along his arm, the soft hairs there, and it seemed that maybe I could think about Daniel in a new way. Something about him had changed and I didn’t know why. I put my nose on his sleeve, remembered his separateness from me, his internal life I knew nothing about. It seemed thrilling to me, the fact that I might not know or couldn’t know. It made me feel like I wanted him, maybe for the first time, although maybe it wasn’t really him I wanted, but just the chance to overcome some obstacle within him, to get him to hand over something he wasn’t willing to hand over. Maybe desire needed mystery. Maybe desire needed something out of reach, some impossibility. Desire meant wanting, not having.

Daniel’s shirt smelled flowery, sweet. It didn’t smell like cotton and laundry soap. It was strong enough that I wrinkled my nose. “Did you get squirted by some perfume lady at Nordstrom’s?” I said.

“What?” Daniel said. He brought his sleeve to his own nose. “I don’t smell anything,” he said.

We watched a slow jogger, a woman who did not lift her feet while she ran, but instead shuffled them close to the ground. Then, her opposite, a man made thin with tight, shiny nylon, speeding past on a bike with wheels circling in a blur. We watched a man and a wife and a baby, lifted from a stroller and placed on a quilt.

Daniel leaned in and kissed me then. It was a different kind of kiss, less distant and polite, more present. It felt like a part of Daniel was there in a way he’d never been before. I tried to be there too. I so much wanted to be there, to feel something you might call love. I tried to summon up that feeling, what I
guessed it might be like, something big. It was a little like the time my dad took Sprout and me to a circus. Long ago, before he left, one of the memories that had stayed with me from when he lived with us. I must have been no more than nine. He was excited to go, and I can still remember trying to get there, too, to that excitement. I smiled and went along and clapped and tried hard not to feel what I really did, which was sad, because the elephant’s eyes looked sad and the girls in sequins looked sad, and the trapeze artist rubbing chalk on his hands looked sad, yet still I was clapping and smiling.

I kissed Daniel, but part of me, the truthful part, was holding back. His lips slowly pulled away from mine, and his eyes were closed, but he looked happy. He looked almost surprised when he opened his eyes.

“Quinn,” he said. I’m not sure who he was expecting.

“It’s me, I’m here,” I lied.

Everyone was in bed when I got home, or I thought so at first. I went into the dark kitchen to get something to drink and gave a little screech when I realized someone was sitting at the kitchen table. It was Aunt Annie, just sitting there, drinking red wine out of a juice glass, the bottle sitting in front of her.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I thought you were home already. I thought everyone was in bed. I just got back from my date with Quentin.”

“Must have been great,” I said. “Drinking away the memories?”

“No, no…,” she said. “It was great. Really great.” She was wearing a sparkly top and jeans, but her eyes looked tired. The curls she’d made in her hair were tired too, relaxing back to their old normal straight selves.

“Yeah?”

“He’s got the greatest eyes. Did you see him in the magazine?”
Northwest Homes For Sale
magazine. Quentin Ferrill was
one of those real estate agents who felt that their picture would send the clients flocking. I nodded. Annie had left the magazine open to his page, him and the six bulky, high-end homes he was selling, some photographed at sunset. “He’s really into art, did I tell you? He used to teach at the university level, but didn’t like academia. Real estate gives him more freedom. But those are the kinds of words he uses—
academia
.”

“Smart, then.”

“God, beyond that. I can feel like such an idiot, compared. He’s always mentioning certain painters…The
Fauvre Style
…”

“Do you like that?” I was still trying to understand the half-empty bottle.

“I
love
that. I love everything about him. And he’s different than anyone else I’ve been with. He is. Not so full of himself. More vulnerable. I just don’t know what he feels about me. I mean, he asks me out, right? He looks into my eyes? But then I took his hand and he pulled away. What’s with that? I don’t get it. I don’t get what’s going on.”

Ivar snored underneath the table at Aunt Annie’s feet. “It’s early,” I said. “Maybe he’s just…sorting out his feelings.”

“Yeah,” Aunt Annie said.

“I’m the wrong person to ask.”

Aunt Annie didn’t think so. Or maybe she was just in that place where you need someone, anyone, to tell you what you need to hear. “He must like me if he asks me out, right?”