Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (24 page)

I thought she should have been speaking more and worried that studying that ugly consonant-heavy language was confusing the
child, though the language experts I consulted said that was unlikely. Still, that summer she had coined the word “pleasably”
in an apparent effort to use the Bisbanian adverbial form of the English word. It worried me so much that I called the pediatrician—I
was, in retrospect, a bit of an anxious mother—but he said she was merely trying to reconcile the grammar rules of two languages
and that she would work it out quickly. An assessment that Rafie, with his speech pathology experience, shared when pressed.

Isabella, however, found it highly irritating. Like most modern Bisbanian royals, she had never cared for the old language.
I’m sure she was puzzled by Rafie’s desire for Milo to learn the language and by my decision to honor that request. She became
somewhat cranky about the whole issue. “Can’t she speak English?” she asked one day in an irritated way. (Milo had just called
out, “Faster, pleasably,” as Isabella and I were taking turns pushing the gargantuan stroller around the neighborhood.)

Isabella’s question annoyed me, needless to say. But I didn’t get to answer, because at that moment the photographer Joplin
pulled up. The sight of him filled me with all the aggressive hostility that only motherhood could bring out in a normally
unassuming person like myself. I was terrified that he would take and publish a photo of Milo, prompting the gossip columnists
to start talking about how much the child recently spotted with the princess resembled the “late” prince.

So, filled with righteous indignation, I marched right up to Joplin and knocked on the window of his sporty little car. “My
daughter is only a child,” I said when he rolled down his window. “And she doesn’t need the likes of you taking her picture.”
I thumped his camera with my thumb, prompting Isabella to gasp and look off into the distance in an embarrassed way. She had
never seen me like this. Besides, she had long ago lost any sensitivity to the indignity of being photographed by strangers.

“Snap the princess at the grocery,” I continued with a huff. “That’ll suit your purposes well enough.”

Joplin stiffened and looked stunned. He had never, ever been accused of being overly zealous. In fact, editors were always
saying the photos were not zoomed in enough and that he should work harder to get shots from inside Isabella’s home.

Sensing the discomfort of both the princess and the photographer, I regretted starting off on such a confrontational note.
But rather than admit my mistake, I launched in further, attempting in some sick way to justify what was an indefensible tone.
“Just because you muck around in the scum,” I said, “doesn’t mean you have to drag children into the muck with you.”

Joplin stared. Isabella coughed and let her eyes shift from the distant skyline to her own feet.

I cleared my throat. Paused. I wanted to stop but somehow couldn’t. I said, “So back off.” And then pitifully added, “Uh,
buster.”

By this point, I realized that I had gone beyond all hope of redeeming myself and was relieved when Milo helped me out of
the mess. “Mommy,” she called from the stroller, which I had left parked a few yards off. “Mommy, say ‘pleasably.’”

I blushed finally. Isabella cringed. Joplin laughed.

“Well, little lady,” he said. “That’s a good suggestion. That just might help her get what she wants.”

And then, inexplicably, he asked me if I’d like to go get a beer, a question I had not heard in a good many years. It was
not an invitation that anyone at the castle ever extended. (The royal family considered the beverage too German and preferred
to stick with mixed drinks, although beer was sometimes discreetly served to foreign guests who expected it.) During my youth
in America, the question was common enough but was usually not posed to married women. So I had not been asked out in this
way since before I married Geoffrey. And that was arguably a lifetime ago and felt like longer still.

So I blushed again and stammered that, well, uh, why not. (The obvious reasons why not—that I had just told the man off and
called him a scum mucker and, perhaps worse, “buster”—did not immediately leap to mind.)

Isabella and Rafie were enthusiastic babysitters, though astonished to have the opportunity.

“A date?” Raphael said. He glanced at me, then Isabella. “With a
commoner
?”

“I don’t know if it’s a date, exactly—” I began in a feeble manner.

“Mae is a commoner,
too,
dear,” Isabella said, interrupting in a way that made me bristle, although she was only stating the obvious and I had not
known what I was about to say anyway.

But Isabella did not approve of the date, either.

“I can’t imagine why he asked you out,” she said, watching me as I looked through one of her smaller closets for a suitable
jacket to borrow. “He’s been taking pictures of my backside for months and never even introduced himself.”

“You do have a husband,” I said in what I thought was a rather pointed way.

“But this Joplin chap doesn’t know that,” Isabella said, missing my point. “He thinks my husband is dead.”

(If you think this is a rather tacky complaint to make to the person whose husband really was dead, then I share your sentiment.
But I didn’t let it bother me that night, giddy as I was with excitement.)

I did so enjoy myself with Joplin, though he was easily fifteen years my junior. It reminded me, dare I say it, of that wonderful
first interview with Geoffrey, the one that was supposed to be about family-owned businesses but ended up being all flirtatious
giggles and sly asides. Joplin and I talked and laughed and gazed into each other’s eyes a bit. And the thing was that I never
had one moment of awkward explanation or discomfort.

Joplin did not ask me how I knew the princess or why I was visiting or how I came to have a daughter or if I’d ever been married
before. No, no, no . . . We talked for hours but without ever asking the most fundamental questions of each other.

We talked about the advances in photographic technology and about how bad tattoos look in pictures. We discussed the perils
of poor posture. But he also indulged me in conversations about my own interests, allowing me to go on and on about how inaccurate
it was for someone, say the author of my most recent review, to describe chick lit as a “failed genre.”

“Failed? Failed?” I said, perhaps feeling a bit tipsy from the beer and figuring that after my speechifying at the park, I
couldn’t scare him off anyway. “It sold more books than that reviewer ever sold, that’s for sure.” My Americanisms were slipping
back in full force. “How many millions must you sell before you’re a successful genre!”

Joplin, who was wearing a snug turtleneck that showed off his strong arms rather nicely, grinned and said I was right and,
I do believe, called me “babe” a time or two.

For the rest of that Green Bay visit, I took to smiling in what I fancied to be my most engaging way every time I ventured
into public with Isabella, in case Joplin happened by with his camera. I confess with some regret that I would meet his eyes,
and the two of us would exchange knowing, snide expressions whenever Isabella did something too, well, royal.

For example, we both smirked when she used a handkerchief to flip the handle of a public drinking fountain. I put my hand
over my mouth and let my eyes laugh meaningfully when she insisted on clutching her purse in her hand, meaning that she could
not carry as many groceries as the commoners in her company—me, for example—who would sling their common purses over their
common shoulders like common pack mules.

It was cruel. I probably should have been ashamed. But Isabella was on my turf now. All those times she had exchanged glances
with Iphigenia or Rafie or, most important, Geoffrey. I suppose I had never forgotten all those days at the castle when I
was the amusing sidekick, the pitiful rube. I said Isabella had become my best friend. I claimed all that was behind us. But
when Joplin came along, I jumped at the chance to catch the eyes of a man and share a joke at Isabella’s expense. I confess
I enjoyed it.

As far as I know, the only words that Isabella and her mythmaker, Joplin, ever exchanged were on the night of my second date
with him. He picked me up at Isabella’s door. (Rafie was, obviously enough, hiding someplace in the recesses of the “cabin,”
probably with a game on.) I was just about to formally introduce Joplin to the princess when Isabella interrupted.

“Must you always run my photos next to those of Her Majesty?” she said somewhat abruptly. She did not specifically mention
the hair issue, but I knew she had been fretful about being outdone by Iphigenia. The queen’s hair was being quietly styled
in those days by the finest Parisian beauticians, who had fled to Bisbania when a shaving craze rocked France and nearly bankrupted
them. Meanwhile, Isabella was forced to make do with a salon in the Green Bay Mall called “Tresses for Lesses.”

“It’s not like I’m related to Genia anymore,” said Isabella.

The photographer looked a bit amused. “I don’t really control where the photos are placed, Your Highness,” he said.

“I suppose you don’t,” Isabella said, sighing in a dramatic way. “But perhaps you could explain to your editors,” she persisted.
“It’s not like we’re sisters. We’re only former sisters-in-law, and I’m just a commoner again. You shouldn’t even call me
‘Your Highness.’”

Joplin said, “I’ll pass along your concerns.” Then he paused—I’m not sure if it was a pause for effect or if he was merely
struggling for a better term and failing—before adding, “Your Highness.”

Isabella was clearly frustrated. She looked tired and wished us a good night as Milo clung to her leg, pointing in the direction
of the indoor pool and crying out, “Pleasably.”

As we walked out to the car, Joplin met my eyes, raised one brow, and winked. It melted my heart. I winked back.

I think that is when my post-Geoffrey life truly began, the moment I exchanged winks with a younger man. Isabella and Rafie
wanted me to stay as far from Joplin as possible, and I suppose they were right to want that. But at that moment, for the
first time in a long, long time, I did not at all care what Isabella and Rafie wanted.

For all our faults, Isabella and I were civilized, refined, soft-spoken, and modest women. But both of us had in the past
few weeks lashed out at this rather vacant and dim photographer. We had attacked him without provocation and with very little
point. We had ignored the normal protocols and pleasantries and assumed the worst in this guy who was bringing out the worst
in us. And I went on a couple of dates with him and drove Isabella mad with envy.

None of this has much to do with Joplin, though I guess we both liked his lanky schoolboy frame and disarming smile. For reasons
that someone with a psych degree would be better capable of exploring, Joplin was just the stand-in, the person on whom Isabella
and I projected all our unspoken rivalries, worries, and longings. Really, he—as a person—meant nothing to me.

Although I did not realize that at the time, while I spent the rest of the evening and no small part of the early morning
with him. Those few hours were a delight that cannot be reproduced in the telling. He complained about what the cold weather
does to his camera equipment and compared the ins and outs of photographing stripes, plaid, or polka dots. It sounds boring,
put like that. But anything is interesting if you’re interested in it.

Joplin’s interest was contagious. It was the most stimulating conversation I’d had in a very long time. Then, in the early
morning, he talked mostly about the dimple in my left cheek.

I found that conversation more stimulating still.

When I returned to Isabella’s house, I went to look in on sleeping Milo and stared at her sweet face and told myself that
I was in no position to take up with a much younger American man, a journalist, no less. And that I really must pull myself
together. Sternly, I lectured myself. And as I stroked Milo’s hair, I was filled with resolve.

I really think that if things had been different, my resolve would have held. But that became a moot point, so to, uh, speak.

Because the next day, in a twist that is fitting for the soap opera that is my life, Joplin was injured in a motorcycle accident,
a horrible wreck that stole what had frankly been his already limited way with words and, as is so often the case with head
injuries, much of his memory of the events of the previous few weeks.

He never showed any sign of recognizing me again.

Though when he learned to talk again, his first word was “pleasably,” according to the volunteer who handled much of his treatment
at the Green Bay Clinic of Speech.

The accident did not at all alter his eye for photography and thus caused only a short pause in his career. He later dedicated
one of his best-selling photography books,
Princess in Brown Plaid,
to that hardworking volunteer- speech-therapist aide. “To my friend Ralph,” the dedication read. “He has not the degree but
the heart of a speech pathologist.”

P
erhaps now is the right time to tell you what I really think of my daughter’s father, the former prince and the wannabe speech
pathologist.

Mothers have been known to have rather complicated feelings about the fathers of their children. So maybe you’re not surprised
that I remain even now conflicted about the prince.

In those last few months in the castle, as Geoffrey and Isabella were spending more and more time hanging out with the bust
of Michelangelo and plotting plane crashes, Rafie and I grew closer, too. We sometimes exchanged looks when Isabella punched
Geoffrey’s arm in a familiar way or when Geoffrey batted his eyes at the princess.

We exchanged a
lot
of looks, particularly during a protracted discussion about what Geoffrey should be wearing when he was found treading water
after the crash. Isabella was thumbing through paramilitary catalogs, giggling and carrying on. “Oh, Geoff, you’d look
fantastic
in this,” she said, pointing to a futuristic paratrooper ensemble. “I’m sure the tabs would go completely gaga. They’d be
waxing on about your heroic self so much, they’d forget all about poor ol’ Rafie and his so-called death.”