The Secret Life of Prince Charming

by Deb Caletti

  There were too many endings—school over, Daniel over. Liv came by with Zaney and Kerry, another friend of ours from volleyball, and tried to get me to come to Starbucks with them, but I said no. I kept checking my phone (no call yet no call yet no call yet), and I wanted to wait for Frances Lee by myself. Waiting is one of those hard things best done in private. It’s hard enough to do a hard thing without an audience.

  Ivar was home already, which was odd. He never got back until three or four, but already at eleven he was lying on the front porch, chin on his paws as if he, too, was feeling some sort of loss. My appearance seemed to instantly cheer him, which is a nice thing about dogs, because it instantly cheers you, too. Dogs are a quickie self-esteem boost, for sure. He leapt to his feet and swished his tail back and forth, back and forth.

  “You’re home early,” I said. I looked down at him and he looked up at me. It’s not something I like to admit, but sometimes I forget he can’t talk. I’ll ask him a question and realize I’m waiting for a reply. The funny thing is, he just looks back at me patiently as if we’d gone through this a thousand times. I can’t talk, remember? Oh, yeah.

  Ivar shoved past me on the stairs and raced me to the kitchen and had a big, long, sloppy drink out of his water bowl as I unpacked my backpack and waited for my phone to ring. Another thing I shouldn’t admit is how many times I actually checked to see if the phone rang even though I knew good and well the phone didn’t ring. I had it right beside me and…silence, and yet I kept flipping it open to see if I’d missed Frances Lee. I even checked the settings to make sure I hadn’t silenced it accidentally, which made me think of Mom going through the garbage, frantically searching for the IRS refund check when she’d already put it in her purse to take to the bank. We can really freak ourselves out when something good’s about to happen. Good can freak us out as bad as bad can.

  It’s amazing how much stuff you save, and I sifted through science notes and index cards from an English debate and daily math assignments and decided that my someday grandchildren wouldn’t give a shit about any of it. All that work and effort and there it went, slid into the trash with the eggshells and coffee grounds. I kept my film studies paper on The Phantom of the Opera, an English paper about A Farewell to Arms, tossed pens that didn’t work anymore and a dried-up highlighter, and wondered if I should just call Frances Lee back myself.

  I heard the bus groan and creak to a stop out front, and a few minutes later Sprout flew through the front door, hauling a big paper bag full of school stuff, and her blue-and-green padded lunch bag and her backpack made of tie-dyed canvas. She was wearing Grandma’s crocheted hat even though it was warm, and her braids stuck out from underneath. She wore red knee-highs with her denim skirt, and she could look like the kid with no friends, but somehow it all worked on her. Someday she’d probably marry a great guy somehow born from stuffy Republican parents who would disdainfully call her “the creative type.” She’d drive them crazy with unmatched silverware and babies she’d name Grace and Beauty.

  “Get ready, people, it’s summer!” she yelled.

  “No people, just me. Grandma left a note that she went to the dollar store.”

  “Cool. Maybe she’ll buy more of those squirrel statues that have snow-globe stomachs.”

  “Or use-once-then-break screwdrivers.”

  “We still have that huge bag of straws she bought last time,” Sprout said.

  “When’s the last time you used a straw?”

  Sprout dumped her bag and was already looking for post–school satisfaction in the fridge. “True. Hey, maybe I’ll use straws all summer.”

  “It’ll be the Summer of Straws,” I said.

  “Some people have Summer of Love, but not us,” she said. The fridge door closed, and now Sprout was hunting in the kitchen drawer. “Aha.” The Bag o’ Thousand Straws was tossed out. Sprout poked a hole in it with her thumb, plucked one out. She put a red-striped straw in her mouth and pretended to smoke it like a cigarette.

  “Stop that or you’ll ruin your lungs,” I said, and then the phone rang. My heart thumped around and I started to immediately cushion myself against disappointment. My self-protection mode was on the default setting, so much so that it was like I was wearing a permanent emotional life jacket. Before I opened my cell phone I remembered the possibilities. It might be Liv. Maybe Zaney. Maybe Daniel, pleading for forgiveness. I peeked. Frances Lee’s number! Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  “Where’re you going?” Sprout said. “Who is it, Quinn? New boy-friend! Man, you don’t waste any time, do you?”

  “Hello?” I jogged out into the hall, up the stairs. Shut the door to my room. I was panting. I needed to go to the gym or something.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “So this is weird,” Frances Lee said. “You, me, phone. What, I’ve met you once?” Frances Lee was the type to get right to the point, I could see.

  “Once, I know,” I said.

  “So, what do I owe the pleasure to? No, wait, that’s wrong. To what do I owe the pleasure? Whatever, you know what I mean.”

  I paused. Why, exactly, had I called? What did I even want from her? “I guess I need answers to a few things,” I said.

  “Not something I’m exactly known for,” she said. “Questions, yeah. Answers, not so much. Wait, can you hang on a sec? My mom’s trying to come in and she’s carrying all the grocery bags at one time. God, I don’t know why she does that. They’re hanging all up her arms.”

  “Sure.”

  The phone clunked down and I heard her voice in the distance. “Jesus, Mom. Here.” And Joelle’s voice, “You know I hate making more than one trip.” There was the rustle of bags and the clunk of hard glass bottoms set on countertops, a few whispers I couldn’t hear, and then Joelle’s voice, sounding surprised. Sudden quiet.

  “Okay, I’m back,” Frances Lee said. “Answers, you were saying.”

  “I know this is strange.” I stumbled. “I just, you know, Dad came back into our life a few years ago. I’m just trying to understand everything.”

  “Identity crisis.”

  “I guess.”

  “That I know about,” she said.

  I started to relax. I sort of liked her already. She reminded me of someone, but I didn’t know who. “Something strange happened recently,” I told her. “Just after Dad’s girlfriend left.”

  “Is this the one named after a cheese? Or did he have one after her?”

  “No, the cheese.” I felt bad saying that. I liked Brie. “Brie,” I said. “She was actually really nice.”

  I heard Frances Lee shout in the background. “Ma! Barry left the cheese.”

  “I think it was the other way around,” I said. “She left him.”

  More yelling. “The cheese left him!”

  “Not possible,” I heard Joelle say. “Barry never gets left.”

  This wasn’t exactly how I saw this conversation going. I didn’t think I’d be having this talk with Joelle, too. Joelle, and the other women in my dad’s life—they were, I don’t know, other women. There was Mom and Dad, and even Brie felt like some sort of outsider we’d agreed to let in. It was strange to me that Joelle was, in a way, right here with me, a woman who’d had more history with my father than even my mother had. I felt like I was reading his diary. Maybe I’d find out more about him than I really wanted to know.

  “After she left, something happened,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  I twisted my ring around my finger. The one Dad had given me, with the arms holding the heart. “Something appeared in his living room. Something of hers. A statue. Something I’m sure she doesn’t know he has.”

  “So he took it. Probably wants to punish her.”

  “But I think it’s more than that, because I started looking at other stuff there, underneath things, and there were women’s names on some of them. Certain objects. I think he took things from women. Maybe something from every woman.” I
t sounded sort of crazy, said out loud.

  There was silence as Frances Lee thought about this. “You think he stole something from every woman he’s been with.”

  “Yes.”

  “And why would you think this again?”

  “There were names on things. Women’s names.”

  “Like some sort of freaky fucking museum. A woman-object trophy museum.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. “I know this sounds nuts, and your mom probably just gave it to him, but is she missing a painting?”

  “Hold on.” The sound was muffled, a hand held over the phone to quiet her voice, but it wasn’t doing much good. “Mom!” I could hear her shout. “Did Barry ever take a painting of yours?”

  Joelle had disappeared I guess, but now her voice got loud again, same as an approaching siren that stops somewhere in your neighborhood. “…and he knows I know. Do you realize how much that painting’s worth? Most valuable thing I had.”

  And then, a still muffled Frances Lee to Joelle again: “Why didn’t you tell him you wanted it? Why didn’t you call the police or something?”

  “You don’t call the police on your child’s father, at least not for a painting.”

  “Fuck,” Frances Lee said. But this was loud and clear, said to us both. She was back. “I guess the answer is yes.”

  “It’s hanging above the fireplace,” I said. My stomach felt heavy and sour, the way it does when you might get sick. I loved my father. I didn’t want to betray him. There were pieces of me, big, screaming pieces, that wished I’d never made this call, that wished I’d never looked under that statue or behind that painting.

  “Maybe that’s a reason I always had to meet him somewhere else,” Frances Lee said. “I’ve never been invited to his house, do you know that? I’ve never been in my father’s house.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Frances Lee was his daughter. There had to be a reason she’d not been allowed there, right? A reason that made sense?

  “Well, we’re going to want it back. You know that, don’t you? We’re going to want it back.”

  My hand was sweaty. So slick with sweat I was lucky I could hold that phone. Had I thought that far ahead? Because now what? Because, God, what had I set in motion? I pictured a blank spot above his fireplace. I pictured that blank spot being my fault. I pictured my father’s reaction, my father’s absence. No, I wanted to say. No. He was my father, and I needed him. No.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Can you bring it to us?”

  Silence. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do that, I knew. I heard Joelle’s voice again. “She can’t do that, Frances Lee. You should know that more than anyone.”

  I wanted to cry. Maybe with relief. Maybe with that landslide of feeling you get when someone understands you. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Okay, sure. Maybe I can go get it. I don’t know. We don’t want him to know you told us, is that it? Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Quinn,” Frances Lee sighed.

  “I don’t want to hate him,” I breathed.

  “I know you don’t. I know that. You don’t want to hate him. But you do want to understand him.”

  “I guess.”

  “You kind of have to.”

  “I guess.”

  “To see yourself.”

  I didn’t say anything. It seemed like we sat there on the phone for a long, long time. We sat there until Frances Lee sighed again and then spoke. “Let me just think about this, okay? Like, maybe we should get together or something. I’ll call you.”

  “All right,” I said.

  She hung up.

  My life, which for a day had felt on some edge of newness and change, abruptly slid back to being just the way it was. I wanted to lay down and sleep. I doubted I would ever hear from her again. But I had barely set my head on my pillow when my phone rang again. I almost didn’t look. I had no room right then for Liv or anyone else. But I did look. I sat upright again.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Frances Lee said.

  I went from despair to joy in about ten seconds. My heart swooped. “What?” I said.

  “It’s a little crazy.”

  “Okay.” I was in the mood for crazy.

  “We’ll give it all back.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t exactly know what she meant.

  “We’ll do it together. Then we’ll face the consequences. Together. You won’t have to do this alone.”

  There was the sense of gathering again, some strength of forces. That something you feel when someone is right there beside you to pick up the other end of a heavy thing.

  “It’ll be some karmic trip,” she went on. “Some act of karma. We’ll go on a karmic quest. Pack it in my truck and give it all back. To the women.”

  “Starting with my painting,” Joelle said in the background.

  “Give back the stuff Dad stole,” I said. “Go on some trip.”

  “Yep,” Frances Lee said.

  “We could just mail it,” I said.

  “You don’t mail a quest,” Frances Lee said.

  “I’ll have to think about this,” I said. What I was thinking was, Mom would never allow it. No way would Mom ever allow this.

  “Think about it and get back to me in twenty-four hours. I’ve always wanted to say that, ‘Get back to me in twenty-four hours.’ But actually, if we’re going to do this, I’ve got to make plans. I told my friend Juan I might be able to help him move cross-country, and I’ve got to tell him yes or no.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “There’s only so many days of summer break.”

  “I’m still trying to imagine giving the objects back,” I said. This wasn’t just an empty spot above the fireplace—this was looting your own father’s house. His most prized possessions.

  “Wait, how much stuff is there?” Frances Lee asked. “There isn’t, like, furniture or big shit, is there?”

  “No. But I didn’t look in the whole house. Maybe there’s more. I only saw five or six things. God, there could be a ton of stuff other places, I never thought of that. And these were the only things with names. How many more things don’t have names?”

  “We can’t be responsible for his whole fucking life. We’ll just do the few things you found. The five or six. Unless someone lives in Arkansas, or something. Mom’ll get her painting, the cheese’ll get her statue.”

  “How’ll we know who they belong to?”

  “Mom’s known the guy forever. Do you have the names?”

  “Yeah.” Jane, age 12. Olivia Thornton. Elizabeth…Abigail Renfrew. Abigail Renfrew!

  “So, we’ll start there.”

  “I’ve got to figure this out,” I said. What I’d have to figure out was what whopping lie I could tell to get away with this. I’d have to figure out if I could live with all the whopping lies I’d have to tell.

  “Call me,” she said.

  “Thank you, Frances Lee,” I said.

  But she was already gone again.

  My hands were shaking. I closed my phone and stared at it. I needed something, but I didn’t know what. Something to drink. Food. An answer. I opened my bedroom door. Sprout was standing there with her arms folded.

  “Boy oh boy, are you in trouble,” she said.

  Sprout followed me down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  “Goddamnit, Sprout,” I said.

  “And I thought you had a new boyfriend,” she said.

  “Goddamnit, you know you’re not supposed to listen in,” I said.

  “Good thing I did, is all I can say,” she said. “Trouble is a-brewing.” Gram’s words again. Sprout had plucked off her hat, and her hair was all fuzzy-static on top.

  “Find me some Fritos or something, I need to think,” I said.

  Sprout rummaged around in the cupboard, found those snack bags of chips that you need to eat three or four of to be sufficiently chip satisfied. “Here. And just so you know, you
go anywhere with Frances Lee, I’m going too.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I said.

  Sprout just laughed.

  “Mom would never let us,” I said.

  “Mom would kill us. Dad would kill us. That just means we need a plan,” Sprout said. “A plan that involves shading the truth.”

  “It seems so mean. Stealing from him. God,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m even considering this.”

  “Why is it that nice people can be so stupid and blind?” Sprout said.

  I glared at her. “I told you, let me think about this.” I tore open a dwarf-sized bag of chips with my teeth.

  Sprout stopped, listened intently. “Ivar’s in the bathroom. Ivar!”

  “Someone left the door open,” I said.

  “Kleenex feast,” Sprout said. She rushed into the bathroom, and a moment later Ivar came tearing out of there. Ivar was an old dog, but he had sudden bursts of criminal behavior, like a senior citizen who suddenly decides to rob a bank. He jetted out of the bathroom fast as a lightning bolt, with a flash of white Kleenex stolen from the garbage can clenched in his teeth. “Open up, Ivar. Open,” Sprout said. She’d caught up to him, had her hands around Ivar’s fierce little chin. Finally, reluctantly, he released his treasure.

  “Gross,” Sprout said.

  “Who forgot to shut the door?” I said. I knew who, and I was looking at her.

  “Who forgot to tell me about Brie’s statue? It’s what a good sister would have done,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything, just munched my chips. She was right, of course.

  ABIGAIL RENFREW:

  There is a song by the Eurythmics that begins, “Love is a stranger in an open car; to tempt you in and drive you far away.” In love, I have traveled so far from who I am that at times I have not been able to see the barest outline of myself. It’s not something I like to discuss, this self-betrayal. Only in my art do I tell my own secrets and the secrets I have kept of the men I have been involved with.

  So, reluctantly: I met Michael Banks, quite apropos, in a college psychology class. He was different from the other male students in that he did not spend his weekends guzzling beer and finding this interesting as topic for discussion. He was more sensitive than aggressive. He couldn’t even bear to kill a spider, or so he would repeatedly tell you. He cared about other people more than himself, and he would tell you that, too. Secretly, I thought him a little fussy. He abhorred signs of real life—dirty dishes, hair in a sink—and he’d place a Kleenex over his nose when something smelled unpleasant. His reaction to my cat’s litter box was that of someone who had stumbled on a horrific crime scene.