The Charmed Wife

by Olga Grushin

  At her approach, the cage exploded with screams.

  She clutched at her heart to keep it from leaping away and blinked at the large green bird with eyes of molten amber. The bird was screaming still when a door flew open in the upholstered wall, and Prince Roland strode in. She had just the time to notice that his hair was disheveled and the top two or three buttons of his shirt were undone, when he spoke, and everything else was driven from her mind.

  “You! What are you doing here?”

  She had heard plenty of shouting in her youth, but no one had ever addressed her with such venom. Stunned, she stared at him. His eyes had gone dark, his face was rigid. He looked like someone else, someone she did not know. She pressed her hands to her mouth, and turned, and fled, pursued by the bird’s strident screaming; and it seemed as if the screams had words in them, some words meant just for her.

  She ran—ran through chambers of startled maids, chambers of nasty statues, chambers of stalking cats, until she found herself in a room more frightful than the rest, a badly lit, cavernous place deceptive with the quivering of candles. The air here hung stuffy with some musky perfume, and a monstrous bed stood drowning under storm-tossed waves of scarlet silk. The bed—the bed was horrible, the bed was obscene—and oh, was it possible that someone was hiding under the sheets, breathing, stirring, giggling?

  For one lost minute, she felt that she herself might be asleep, she herself might be dreaming, for nothing was what it was, nothing was what it seemed to be. She flew away again, a soundless cry frozen in her throat, her mind in turmoil, down long carpeted corridors, past numbered doors, and still the nightmare went on, and sudden rips ran through the fabric of things all around her, revealing snatches of dangerous half-truths beneath, and she almost lost all hope of ever finding her way out, when an unexpected light grew before her, and there was the yawning O of the concierge’s mouth, and bellboys hurtling out of her way, and the revolving lobby doors—and at last she was outside.

  She scrambled into the carriage, repeating, “Go, go, go!” to the old groom, who rushed to put out his cigarette and groped for the keys, raised eyebrows all but vanishing in the nest of white hair. She expected the prince to burst out of doors after her then, to chase her limousine down the street—yet he did not. She lowered the curtain on her window and sat staring straight ahead with dry, unseeing eyes. It was not until the last gas station on the outskirts had remained behind that she realized she had forgotten Brie and Nibbles in that terrible place. At that moment, they seemed to her the only true friends, the only loyal souls, the only ties she had to anything familiar. She thought of a dozen sleek cats she had glimpsed prowling through scented shadows, and had no choice but to order the groom to turn around. As the carriage bounced back over the cobblestones, she remembered her actual reason for coming here and, with a sickened start, unclenched her tense, sweaty hands, only to find her daughter’s darling soap slipper half melted, deformed out of all recognition. She pressed it to her heart and cried, heavy with humiliation, all the way back to the palace.

  Prince Roland, fully buttoned now, was standing outside. He watched her as she went in, waited stony-faced while she explained about the mice to the confused butler. It took a long, a very long, time to find Brie and Nibbles. (The reason for the delay was simple, if rather unfortunate: in the kitchen of the von Liebers’ palace, Nibbles had been eaten by a cat. Brie had not wanted to go to the kitchen at all, for she had a queasy feeling in her tummy, but he mocked her for her cowardice with such booming laughter that she ended by gathering her tremulous tail in her paws and creeping after him. Once there, Nibbles made an obnoxious racket, clanging lids on the pots, shouting out the contents of the pantry, boasting that his nose would lead him to the tastiest cheese in the icebox, clowning for all he was worth, when out leapt an enormous beast with burning orange eyes and gobbled him up, just like that, before anyone could finish saying “Parmesan.” In fact, everything happened so fast that there was no possible way to ascertain whether or not Nibbles had died a hero, although it might have seemed to Brie that, in the split second before the murderous jaws gaped open, Nibbles had turned sickly gray and attempted to hide behind her. She had no time to think about it, however, busy as she was bashing the monster on the mouth with a ladling spoon. The cat, momentarily taken aback by Brie’s ferocity, recovered quickly and was readying itself for another jump when the entire kitchen exploded in an ear-splitting commotion. A hundred roaring mice poured out of every crack and crevice and attacked the beast, prodding its sides with forks, lobbing rinds of moldy cheese at its head, poking its paws with toothpicks, until it howled and bolted in a malodorous blur of rotten vegetables.

  Brie, gasping for breath, lowered the ladle and saw herself surrounded by creatures wild in appearance, ragged and grim, some missing ears or tails, many sporting horned helmets of crude leather.

  “But, but,” she stammered, “but you’re all girls!”

  “Women,” the mouse who had led the charge corrected sternly. “Our men were all eaten by foul beasts a long time ago, because men are weak and slow. I am General Gertrude, the leader of my pack. We call ourselves Valkyries. We run free and fight evil whenever we find it. We saw you in battle, and we deem you worthy. Join us, sister.”

  And the timid Brie, who feared drafts and dust bunnies, looked in wonder from one strong, lean face to another—looked especially long into the bright eyes of a tall warrior with a jaunty red sash around her waist who stood shoulder to shoulder with Gertrude—and felt something equally strong and bright respond in her own breast, and saw another kind of life stretch before her, a purposeful, exhilarating life. Then a faint echo carried the princess’s plaintive calls to her ears: “Brie, Nibbles! Brie, Nibbles, where aaare you?”—and her heart broke twice over, for her poor cousin and for the princess’s imminent grief. She had to go back.

  She explained her predicament to the Valkyries, thanked them for saving her life, and, feeling quite small once again, began the never-ending trudge to the door. On the threshold, a firm paw held her back, and she found herself meeting the bright, steady gaze of the mouse with the red sash.

  “General Gertrude has given me leave to come with you,” said the mouse. “I will pretend to be Nibbles, to keep your princess happy.”

  “But . . . but you too are a girl!” Brie cried weakly, overwhelmed by amazement, anxiety, and relief all at once.

  “A woman,” the mouse replied with some severity, then added, in a gentler tone, “And would your princess know the difference?”

  And so it was settled, and Captain Brunhilda left her Sash of Blood Honor behind and became Nibbles the Fourth in the royal palace. And in truth, she had no choice in the matter, for, the instant she had beheld tiny Brie fearlessly walloping the duchess’s meanest cat squarely on the nose with the ladle three times Brie’s size, she knew her own heart forfeited forever. Of course, it would take time and delicate persuasion before Brie herself shared Brunhilda’s certainties, but after a few particularly chilly nights when the fire in the princess’s bedroom died early and it seemed only natural to huddle closer for warmth, Brie would understand that everything she had learned in the course of her hitherto conventional mouse existence was merely one possible way of going about life, and that, moreover, they could always adopt. And from then on, Brie the Third and Nibbles the Fourth would live happily ever after. Their furry bliss, however, was still some weeks away when the princess picked them off the floor in the duchess’s kitchen and, silent tears streaming down her face, slipped them inside the pocket of her traveling cloak, where Brie, thrust into immediate proximity to Brunhilda’s bristly coat, started to tremble, as she had not trembled in the face of death an hour before.)

  With her best friends recovered, the princess wiped her tears and walked stiffly to the carriage. The prince followed her, saying nothing. They did not speak all the way back to their palace, and when they arrived, she left the carriage witho
ut looking at him and went straight to bed. The next morning, the wintry sun shone into the bedroom and Prince Roland bounded in, smiling hugely, bearing a tray of oranges. She still had not risen, in spite of the late hour; she had slept poorly, cried much, and was suffering from a headache. He pounced onto her bed, her starched, white, modest, girlish bed (nothing like that other bed, rumpled and red, candlelit and musty, wanton and savage), and sang out: “And how is my beautiful little princess today? Tired from yesterday’s ride? It was so sweet of you to come. I’m sorry if I wasn’t quite myself. I was traveling to King Julius’s court, you see, when I was overtaken by some passing sickness, and the Duke von Lieber’s servants, who happened nearby, were kind enough to take me in. Of course, the duke and the duchess themselves were away on a hunt, but their physician saw to my comfort. When you arrived, and so unexpectedly, I was running a fever and hardly knew what I was doing or saying. If I seemed out of sorts and offended you, I am so very sorry. It was a joy to see you, my love. It always is.”

  She rose on one elbow and looked at him. His beauty was breathtaking as ever, his teeth blinding, his blue eyes clear; dimples appeared and disappeared in the smooth planes of his cheeks.

  “But the butler said,” she began. “The butler said the duchess would see me.”

  “No, my love, you misunderstood. Have an orange. Wait, let me peel it for you.”

  And she took the orange, and tried to think, but her temples throbbed, and she did grow uncertain, for the butler had indeed mumbled and she had been distracted, and in any case, fairy-tale princes never lied. The orange was sweet. Prince Roland was sweet. Their life was surely sweet. And look, there were cavorting pink-cheeked cupids painted on her ceiling and tiny blue flowers embroidered on her snowy eiderdown, and the sun slanted joyfully through her lacy blue curtains, and things were now firmly back in their places, just where they had always been. Her love for the prince was all abating bewilderment and deepening relief. While she ate the orange, he played with her golden ringlets, and the tips of his fingers smelled of sweet juice.

  By the time he left, she was smiling again, if a bit wanly.

  * * *

  • • •

  “‘Overtaken by some passing sickness’!” the witch snorts. “Doesn’t matter what they actually tell you or how plausible it is, it only matters whether you are willing to believe it. And you are, and you are, and you are, until one day—snap!—you aren’t. And here we are, up to our elbows in toad skins and newt eyeballs.”

  “Ah, don’t listen to her, my darling,” croons the fairy godmother. “You were simply overexcited by that green-eyed lady’s admittedly vulgar approach to interior decorating, and you forgot proper etiquette. Surely, a visiting princess must quietly await her hostess instead of barging through rooms without knocking on doors? Of course, such an embarrassing display of poor manners would cause some coolness between you and your husband, but that’s far from tragic.” She gives me one of her patient smiles. “And just between us, my heart, it pays to close your eyes to minor missteps. A man is not a supermarket, you know, you can’t just stroll down the aisles with a basket on your arm, picking and choosing whatever you please. Still, a spoonful of tar shouldn’t ruin a barrel of honey. I see no reason to resort to murder.”

  I make no reply. The woman’s middle-aged certainties are all of a kind, belonging to a world of nighttime cups of warm milk, herbal remedies for both toothaches and heartaches, sensible commonplaces, and reduced passions, and I am already too old and still too young to believe in such placid wisdom.

  “Not altogether romantic of you, now, is it,” the witch says mildly as she stirs the brew, “suggesting that poor put-upon wives ignore their spouses’ transgressions with such vigor, all in the name of pragmatism and material comfort?”

  “In the name of peace and love,” the fairy godmother says firmly.

  “Is it, though? Is it, really?” The witch shrugs. “Well, you are the resident expert on love around here, I just clean up the mess afterward. Still, from where I stand, it seems much more pleasant to be eating éclairs amidst silk cushions in some lovely little palace than to be getting soaked at a crossroads. It pays to be oblivious, wouldn’t you agree, for as long as you can take it—or should I say, fake it?”

  “I don’t see what you’re implying here,” the fairy godmother blusters.

  I do, though, and my breath hitches with a sudden sense of unease.

  “Please.” My voice breaks a little. “Please. Can we just get on with this?”

  The surface of the potion has continued to flicker all the while.

  When we look down, it is already spring in another year.

  The Middle of the Middle

  In her twenty-ninth year, she began to have unsettling dreams, of herself drifting lost—and, shockingly, naked—through dark, scented places where no walls ran straight, no angles were right, but everything curved and wavered and candles quivered and peaches dripped and cats streaked softly past her bare calves. When she awoke, her rib cage heaved as if something untamed were beating against it from the inside, and there was a hot heaviness somewhere at her core, at the bottom of her stomach, perhaps, that she did not understand and did not like. On such mornings, she threw on her dress, ran to the nursery, and, relieving Nanny Nanny (who was shedding just then and welcomed rest), drew princesses and built cardboard castles with Angie, then, after putting her down for a nap, sat by her bed and told her about the ball, about the slipper, hurrying just ahead of the child’s questions in her scramble to reach the happy ending, again and again.

  “And they danced together all night,” she would say in a rush, “until the clock began to strike midnight. Then she fled as fast as she could, and in her haste lost one glass slipper on the stairs. And the prince declared that he would marry the girl whom it fit. And all the girls in the kingdom tried it on, but it fit no one, until the courier came with it to our house. My ugly stepsisters did their best to squeeze their big, ugly feet into it, but they failed. And then the courier got down on one knee and put the slipper on my foot, and of course it fit perfectly. They took me to the palace, and dressed me in beautiful clothes, and held the royal wedding, and then the prince and I lived happily ever after, while the stepsisters got just what they deserved. Gloria, the older one, never married at all and became a bitter spinster, while Melissa married someone so poor she now spends all her time scrubbing floors and washing dishes!”

  But as she told the story over and over, it grew leached of inner meaning, as a word might when one repeated it too often, and she started to find it oddly lacking. What if the slipper had fit someone else—would the prince have married the other girl instead, would he have even known the difference? Was she, in fact, all that different from every other maiden with a sweet singing voice and a patient disposition? What exactly had he liked about her at the ball—the way she waltzed, the cut of her bodice, the childlike size of her feet? Why hadn’t they asked each other’s names, or, failing that, favorite colors at least, or favorite ice cream flavors? Also, and most disconcertingly, why did the recollection of the young courier kneeling before her—the brief pressure of his hand upon her bare instep as he had helped guide it inside the slipper, the golden brown of his gaze that had lingered one moment too long on her lips, the soft burr of his accent (like her, he had come from a distant land as a child)—why did it make her feel so profoundly unsettled?

  It was at this point in her ruminations that she rose and, blushing, went to see her husband. They had not been alone in quite some time. The guard at Prince Roland’s door muttered apologies while trying to bar her way into the study, but she distracted him with her most radiant smile, ducked under his elbow, and pushed the door open. The prince sat behind his massive oak desk, his elegant fingers steepled, his eyes closed, a thoughtful look on his face, while one of the Singing Maids—they only ever employed singing maids in the palace—appeared to be crawling in sea
rch of something underneath the desk, her ample uniformed rump protruding beyond the desk’s carved phoenixes and vines, undulating in some hurried rhythm.

  At the slamming of the door, Prince Roland’s eyes flew open, his eyebrows flew up, and he said, his usually smooth voice rather husky: “Esmeralda, you may stop looking for that thumbtack now, my wife is here.”

  She heard a choked exclamation, a rustling of clothes, and presently Esmeralda emerged from under the desk, a bit rumpled and red-cheeked, her mouth slack, her small black eyes running about her face like startled beetles. She gave the maid a polite nod, then, once the door closed behind the woman, went and sat in Prince Roland’s lap, entwining her arms about his neck.

  “I love you,” she said. “Do you love me?”

  Without replying, he pulled her closer with a jerk. She gasped. His gaze seemed both intent and unfocused, and before she quite knew what was happening, his lips were devouring her neck. And then that persistent warm, heavy feeling somewhere at her core flared up, and everything grew urgent and new and vastly surprising, and she was lost in the fumbling tangle of skirts, the helpless, eager need to undo his britches (which had somehow proved already undone—but no matter), the awkward struggle to accommodate their arms, their legs, their rocking to the confines of the chair, to the shamelessness of the afternoon light flooding the windows, all of it so rushed, so vital, so unlike the few (so very few) nighttime, chaste, brief, sweet, embarrassed, blanketed, invisible, horizontal couplings of their first year of marriage (and none at all since she had found herself with Angie—which she had always assumed to be the proper way of these things—so why now, why this?—but no matter, no matter) . . . A button popped, the chair groaned, he groaned, she felt something unexpected rising in her, something overwhelming, akin to a powerful command to close her eyes and fall backward, trusting some great new sensation to break her fall—a sensation so unfamiliar, so freeing, so imperative as to be almost frightening. But just as it had started without warning, so now, without warning, it was over, everything was over, and, still poised on the brink of that fall into the unknown that she had not taken, that she sensed she would never take now, she felt something inside her shifting, tilting, growing unhinged and unmoored.