The Secret Life of Prince Charming

by Deb Caletti

  “You’re honestly not telling me you’re changing your mind now,” Frances Lee said. For a minute I thought I’d spoken out loud, but then I realized I hadn’t moved, and neither had Sprout. We just sat in that car, listening to the crow. Frances Lee didn’t seem all that sure herself—she was still sitting there too, the keys dangling from the ignition.

  And then there was the cree-awk of an old door opening, and Sprout was striding up the stone path, heading for the ceramic frog that sat there. She crouched down by it, lifted him up to expose what I knew would be wet earth and potato bugs and the silver key. The neighbor’s orange cat appeared out of nowhere to wind himself around her knees.

  “Come on,” Frances Lee said.

  She scooted from the seat and slammed the truck door and then my feet were on the stone path too, clomping up the wood steps to my father’s door. Sprout was working the key into the lock.

  “You’re a couple of pansies,” she said. Grandma said this whenever Mom and Annie hid their eyes at the scary parts of movies. Frances Lee looked my way and smiled. Sprout turned the door handle, and then we were in the living room. It was cool in there, the summer heat having been locked out. And quiet. The river beyond the dining-room doors sparkled, but the rooms themselves seemed diminished without Dad. Just rooms in a house.

  They didn’t seem like just rooms to Frances Lee. She whistled. “Wow. Pretty nice.”

  She walked around, surveyed. Walked to the fireplace. “Mom’s painting.” She stood before it, looked at the woman, the pieces of her broken up into triangles and squares, disjointed jawbone and breast and eye, twenty pieces, not one. I watched Frances Lee look at that picture, a daughter in her father’s house, and felt the wrongness of separate pieces—a father, a daughter, two others, two mothers, all strangers.

  She broke gaze with the woman in the painting, wandered off. “What’s all coming with us?” Frances Lee said. Her voice came from the kitchen now. Sprout was in there too. Frances Lee was checking things out, seeing this place where her father lived. We were both doing the same thing, probably. Trying to understand him.

  “Just the few things in here,” I said. I stayed there in the living room. I felt like a thief being in his house without his knowledge, and it felt less wrong to stay in only one room.

  I heard the fridge door close. Sprout came back in and handed me a cream soda. I heard the click of a drink can opening in the kitchen, and then Frances Lee also appeared, taking a long swallow.

  I pointed at the things, called them by their owner’s name. “Jane, age six,” I said, and gestured to the vase. “Olivia Thornton.” I took the mask from the wall.

  “Joelle Giofranco,” Frances Lee said, and nodded her head toward the painting. “Let’s get it down from here.”

  I stood on the needlepointed footstool, and Frances Lee stood on one of the kitchen chairs that Sprout hauled in. We lifted down the painting. It was so heavy, I couldn’t imagine how I’d taken it down on my own that night. Sprout got some kitchen towels to wrap the small objects in.

  “Have you thought about how entirely pissed Barry is going to be?” Frances Lee said.

  I stopped what I was doing, wrapping the clock, Elizabeth, in an orange-and-pink striped towel. Frances Lee seemed sort of pleased with the idea. “I’ve thought about it,” I said.

  “He’ll probably never speak to you again,” she said. She seemed sort of glad about this, too. I wondered for a brief moment about all the reasons she was here. “Barry hates to be humiliated.”

  “I’m sure he’ll forgive us eventually. We’ll probably have a pretty awful talk,” I said.

  Frances Lee laughed. But it was a sarcastic, bitter one. “You’re kidding, right? Talk? He never talks, as in you get to speak too. And he hasn’t talked to me in three and a half years.”

  “Why?” I asked. I was beginning to think he had his reasons.

  “I wrote a poem called, ‘Tyrant Lizard Daddy.’ It got published in the school paper.”

  I wanted to say, Well? I wanted to say, We’re obviously not the same people. Just because he stopped talking to you, doesn’t mean he’d do the same to me. But I didn’t say any of that. I kept quiet.

  “We’re going to figure it all out later,” Sprout said. She held Brie’s statue, which was now cradled tightly in terrycloth decorated with leaves and pine cones.

  “Fine,” Frances Lee said. “You’ll see.” I hate it when people say, “You’ll see.” “You’ll see” means that you’re too much of an idiot to see a meteor coming. “Anyway,” Frances Lee went on. “It’s one of those times where this bad thing is a good thing, and when doing bad is the right thing. Fear can fuck up your eyesight like nothing else.” I wasn’t sure if I knew what she meant or not.

  “I’ve got twenty-twenty vision,” Sprout said.

  But Frances Lee ignored her; she just looked at the woman in her mom’s painting, set now against the fireplace hearth. “Why is it I know how she feels?”

  Frances Lee went outside to get the large roll of plastic to wrap the painting in.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Sprout. She’d gone from her silence in the car to a strange, businesslike demeanor. She was worrying about Dad, I was guessing. And all of this would be my fault, I knew; this decision, whatever happened after. Dad never speaking to us again maybe; Sprout needing therapy for the rest of her life because of it. The words kept running through my head: These are some of my most prized possessions.

  But Sprout had something else on her mind. “It just doesn’t feel like sisters,” Sprout said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “It should feel like sisters,” she said. “Not strangers.”

  “I know,” I said again. She sat in the red velvet chair, holding the strawberry towel-wrapped package. She looked small there. She should have been thinking about Band-Aids and sprinklers and Sno-Kones, the things of summer. But she was thinking about damaged roots and broken branches. When your parents are divorced, your world is different from that of the kids whose parents aren’t. It just is. In their world, moms and dads and kids go on bike rides together, and they all go on summer vacation. Dad cleans the gutters of clogged leaves; Mom knows how he likes his coffee. The big problems are being asked to clean your room and being treated like a child and the times the parents fight because Mom thinks Dad never listens. No one puts things in a suitcase unless they are going on a trip. No one watches their bags being handed over from one parent to another in a parking lot. No one knows the name of their parents’ attorney. No one debates who they should get the field trip money from, or the check for school pictures, because each parent might get pissed because it’s the other one’s turn to pay. No one has to make sure both Mom and Dad are on the emergency contact form because each keeps crossing the other out.

  No one feels they have to correct the wrongs of one parent to another.

  Sprout held that statue, and I wanted to hug her. But I didn’t. Because when your parents are divorced, you’re really strong, too. People are always expecting you to be falling apart or in trouble or depressed or otherwise not coping. But you know better, because not coping is only an option for people who have everything. The rest of us have to get through, even if we don’t do it perfectly.

  And what Sprout said next reminded me of another thing about kids whose parents are divorced. Brief relationships are thrust upon us, relationships we’re supposed to be game for. We’re supposed to have good attitudes about the girlfriends and boyfriends and step-sisters and various kids—the boyfriend’s monstrous seven-year-old; the girlfriend’s slutty, bratty daughter who your father thinks is “so nice” but who goes to your school and you know she’s done every guy there. The one you wouldn’t want to get in an elevator with, but who now is going to accompany you on a spring-break trip to California because you should all “get to know each other.” And too, there are the “grandparents,” and someone else’s uncles and cousins you’re supposed to throw a Frisbee to at “their” family picnic
, when you’d rather just sit on the grass and eat watermelon, the only food that doesn’t seem casserole creepy and macaroni alien. You have to go to some house (not your house) with some relatives (not your relatives) on Christmas Eve, where they have ham when you always have turkey. Where they have Brussels sprouts and weird cooking you’re supposed to compliment.

  And sometimes, in spite of it being a slice of white smashed up with a slice of dark rye to make some sort of forced sandwich, sometimes we do connect. Sometimes we actually even love. We touch down into another life like an insect on water, alight, and then, just as we drink and the drink is good, we’re supposed to move on.

  “This will all be worth it if we get to see Brie again,” Sprout said.

  Chapter Ten

  “What do you do when a father isn’t a father? Hmm? Tell me, because I just don’t know,” Frances Lee said. “Wait, the seat’s going to be hot.” She tossed us each a towel to sit on. Mine said Aloha! and had a tiki hut and palm trees on it. Sprout’s had Cinderella and those mice from the Disney movie, dancing around the hem of her dress. It seemed like a funny towel for Frances Lee to have. But maybe Disney movies are one thing most people have in common.

  The objects from Dad’s house were in the backseat with Sprout, all except for the painting, which was too large and had to be put in the open bed of the pickup. Frances had put so much plastic and tape around it that it could have been dropped from a high building and been fine, but still I worried when I could hear it slide and thunk after Frances Lee started back down Dad’s road. I could see Frances Lee’s eyes in the rearview mirror, watching Dad’s house grow smaller behind her. I watched it too. I wondered if I’d ever see it again.

  “If we don’t go back, we don’t go back,” Sprout said.

  “I’m not going back anyway, since I was never invited in the first place,” Frances Lee said. She signaled to get back on the freeway, the truck’s turn signal sounding frantic-fast. Tick-tick-tick-tick!

  I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t managing the who-cares-not-me attitude. My stomach was heavy, and I felt that press inside my forehead that meant too many feelings were struggling for too little space. Maybe I was going to cry. Maybe there was no way I was going to cry in front of Frances Lee and even Sprout right then. I loved him, that was the thing. I wanted him to love me. Sometimes it was hard to tell those two things apart.

  We didn’t talk for a long while, as Frances Lee drove back north to head for the ferry toward her home, our first stop. It was one of those times where there was too much to say, so you can’t say anything. The job was too big, so we just rode like that, three separate planets with our own histories, spinning in silence.

  “Never met a fried food I didn’t like,” Frances Lee said. We’d gotten to the ferry terminal in the early evening, and Frances had parked the truck in line with the others and then made a beeline to a fish-and-chips stand next to the dock. She’d cheered up as soon as she drove down the curved road toward the terminal, though I think we all did. The approach of the sea can do that, and so can the salty wetness of ocean air. That smell makes you feel that things are on the horizon, and I could feel the heaviness inside lift, too, when I saw the glinty white water, sparkly with sun. The sea seemed patient and endless and wise. It was a visual sigh of relief.

  Frances Lee was practically skipping, carrying the brown bag already getting spotted with grease. I had that nagging feeling again that she reminded me of someone, only I couldn’t figure out who. Sprout held the napkins and straws and the teeny packages of salt, and I carried the cardboard container of three cups of root beer, the crushed ice and soda sloshing against the sides. You could tell Frances Lee had done this before—the guy in the fish-and-chips stand knew her, and so did the lady in the ferry-ticket booth. She spread a blanket over the hood of the truck and we climbed up and sat cross-legged. Frances reached her arm into the bag and handed out the red-and-white checked containers of fries and fish.

  “Now this is living,” she said.

  “That guy in the bread truck is staring at us,” Sprout said.

  “Take a picture, it lasts longer,” Frances Lee said.

  “He’s actually a Hollywood scout in disguise of a hamburger-bun delivery man,” I said.

  “He’s looking for a pair of great buns, ha-ha,” Frances Lee said. She gave him a little wave.

  “Oh God,” Sprout said. “Don’t wave!”

  “He stopped, didn’t he? Look, now he’s pretending to read. We know you’re not reading, sucker.” Frances Lee dropped a floppy fry into her mouth. “When I die, bury me with a bunch of fries.”

  “Gross,” Sprout said.

  “I thought you were a vegetarian,” I said to Frances Lee. “Or maybe you just eat fish.”

  “I’m not a vegetarian, my mom’s a vegetarian,” she said. “If you got that from Our Father, it’s because he always gets Mom and me mixed up. He’s sure we’re either both the same or that she’s turned me against him. He can’t quite grasp the fact that someone might not like him all on their own for their own reasons.” Another French fry, dropped in from above. “Wait, scratch that. He can’t imagine anyone not liking him at all. Someone doesn’t like him, something’s seriously wrong with that person.”

  “Aunt Annie tried to be a vegetarian, but it only lasted a few weeks,” Sprout said.

  “I force myself to live in dead animal denial,” Frances Lee said.

  “Hey, I just bought it at Albertson’s,” I said. “I didn’t kill it.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Engines are starting up!” Sprout took a fast drink from her straw, started to grab up her food containers.

  “We’ll be fine,” Frances Lee said. “We’ve got time.”

  But Sprout had leapt off the truck with a squeal and was already heading for the backseat. By the time we collected our napkins and bags and cups, Sprout was buckled into her seat and ready to go. We got back in too. Just at the very moment Frances Lee turned the key, the other cars started to move forward. A white paper from a straw was stuck to the bottom of her shoe, there on the accelerator.

  You could know a family member so well that a single blink could tell you they were upset. And, yet, too, there was family so unknown they might as well be the guy behind the counter at Radio Shack.

  Sprout got a little hyper on the ferry, leaning over the railing and going up to one deck and then down to another, her hair falling manic out of its braids so that there were only two little chunks still left in rubber bands. Frances Lee sat on a padded bench by the wide ferry windows, flipping through an Island Real Estate magazine. “Here’s my house,” she said. “It’s got a pool. Wine cellar.” She showed us a picture of a huge, chunky mansion.

  “Holy moly,” Sprout said.

  We all picked out our houses and watched the water speed past. After a while, you could feel the ferry shift from cruising to a slow lumbering. We’d passed the humps of the small islands of the San Juans, and now zooming toward us was the small dock of Orcas Island. The terminal building looked like a fishing shack, with the painted capital letters ORCAS on its front, and the white houses with red roofs offered something cozy and settled. We tromped down the narrow ferry steps and walked between rows of cars to reach our own. There was a sense of excitement at this arrival, it seemed—I felt it in the way all the cars and trucks were lined up and waiting, starting up their engines, as the men in their orange vests hooked fat ropes over the pilings black with creosote, and as the seagulls stood nearby and watched with practiced boredom.

  We drove off the ferry and around the small town; we wound our way along wooded roads, punctuated with peeks of the sea. It was beautiful here; that was an easy thing to say, but it was true. Frances Lee drove casually, her elbow out the window and the radio off, and I could see Sprout in the back, face turned toward the window and watching everything we passed.

  We turned down a dirt road and bumped past a pasture. An old gray horse looked up as we drove by, and Fra
nces Lee raised her hand in a wave to him. “Hey, Harv,” she said. “That’s Harvey. He’s Roy’s horse. Roy’s Mom’s lover. Here on and off, but Harvey is here always.” My secret inner conservative came out for a second at the words “mom” and “lover” in the same sentence, but Frances Lee acted as if this was the most natural thing in the world. She didn’t say “Mom’s boyfriend” (maybe that made it sound like they were sixteen and going to the movies), or “Mom’s partner” (which maybe made it sound like they could plan a kitchen remodel but not a marriage), or “Mom’s friend” (which maybe made it sound like they never had sex). But “lover”—that made it sound like all they did do was have sex. Maybe there were no right labels for love after you were a certain age.

  The road turned from pasture to a messy garden of lavender and hydrangeas and sunflowers and daisies. There were the strings and new vines that meant green beans in September. A tiny blue shingled house sat on a lawn that was already browning from sun. Frances Lee shut off the engine. “So,” she said. She seemed pleased with herself, but then looked over at us as if remembering that we were there—a couple of packages from FedEx, maybe, that had just arrived and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with yet. The problem was solved immediately, though, because right then the screen door opened and out came Joelle, holding the collar of a jowly brown dog.

  “They’re here!” she said.

  “Look what I brought you,” Frances Lee said as she got out of the truck. We got out too, and I felt Sprout beside me, her hand slipping into mine. I squeezed it tight.

  “All these girls,” Joelle said. “Look at all these girls.” She looked different than I remembered too, or maybe that was because the only image in my mind was that of a batik dress and bangled bracelets. Joelle was a lot older than Mom, with blond-gray hair that was long and curly and pulled back. Frances Lee looked like Dad, that was for sure. It must be weird to look so much like a parent you never saw. To have only the connection of your physical selves. Joelle wore a pair of overalls with a peace sign embroidered on the butt, which I saw when she came over and hugged Frances Lee. Next, her arms were around Sprout and then me, too, giving my back a pat, my shoulders a grip. She smelled like wood and dog and lavender and baking bread.