The Secret Life of Prince Charming

by Deb Caletti

  Maybe I dozed, I don’t know. If I did, it was the weightless, surface dozing that’s only imitation sleep. You still feel awake, and if anyone told you different, you wouldn’t believe them. I still lay on that pull-out couch, the rod where the bed folded right behind the small of my back. The windows were still dark, and not much night progress had been made. I stared at the bumpy texture of the white ceiling, which I could see in the light of the streetlamp from the window. I tried to force my mind into some state of bored-sleepy-confused, but it wasn’t working very well. I flung one arm out from the covers; let my fingers dangle in midnight air.

  Sleeplessness is a land with its own inhabitants, and it was there that I met him once again. Fingertips, against mine. I didn’t need Aunt Annie to translate this. I found his hand with my own.

  “Let me hold you to sleep,” Jake said.

  And it was like this, my arm dangling down, his reaching up from where he lay on the floor, that I finally rested.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “That fucking cat slept on my face,” Frances Lee said in the morning. She was in the big T-shirt she used for sleeping, but the faces of the Grateful Dead guys were on her back. You could see the stitching where the tag was, right at the base of her throat.

  “Backward,” Sprout pointed.

  “What?” Frances Lee looked down. “Oh, man. Dress Yourself 101. I got hot in the night with that fur ball lying on me. I swear to God, he was trying to suffocate me. Some payback for the fact that his precious Riley is missing. He’s never coming back,” she said to the cat, who was mrrrowing and circling the kitchen. “He’s left you forever to go be with another, much better cat.”

  “Glad to see that Frances Lee woke up on the right side of the bed this morning,” Jake said from the floor.

  “Get me coffee,” she said.

  “I would do that, but I’m paralyzed from the waist up,” he said. He made a lot of ow, ooh, ow noises, sat up. “Good morning,” he said to me.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  Frances Lee caught my eye. Raised her eyebrows in the way that said oh-inter-esting. She had disappeared her arms into her shirt and was scootching it around the right way.

  “It’s Brie day, it’s Brie day, it’s Brie day,” Sprout sang. She appeared to be the only one who had a good night’s sleep. “Hey, wait. Your phone’s ringing.”

  My heart did a drastic, jump-off-a-roof plummet. I listened. It was a far-far-away sound. “Jingle Bells.” Coming from my backpack.

  Jake caught my eye. See, he knew this about me now. The Christmas carols. “Very funny,” I said to Sprout. “You’re hilarious. Go get it for me.”

  Sprout was still young enough that she would obey my command without thinking. It made me feel a little guilty, but not enough. She handed me my phone. I tried to stay calm.

  “It’s gonna be Mom,” Sprout said. God, I hoped not. “We can tell her about Aunt Annie in the classifieds.”

  “We can’t tell her that,” I said.

  “Of course we can. It’s our duty. You love each other, you look out for each other,” she said.

  “You love each other, sometimes you mind your own business.” I jabbed her foot with mine to remind her of why else we couldn’t say anything about Annie. Disneyland? I mouthed. Sprout put her hands to her mouth as if shocked by what it had nearly done. I flipped open the phone. It wasn’t even Mom. “It was only Liv,” I said.

  “Whew,” Sprout whispered.

  I listened to the message. “Just Liv, needing me to call her back,” I reported. “Something important to tell me.” Not about Daniel, she had said in her message, but I didn’t repeat this part out loud. Daniel’s name did not belong in the same room as Jake did. Sometimes different people could feel more like different lifetimes.

  “Wait,” I said. “The important thing has to do with someone who lives with us. Why does she have to be so mysterious?”

  “Uh-oh,” Sprout said.

  “You don’t suppose Liv was looking for a woman age eighteen to thirty?” I said.

  Liv’s message went on forever. Met some guy, et cetera, et cetera. I wasn’t even really listening until she said what she said next. “Oh, and Quinn?” she said. “Weird thing. I was at a movie last night and my phone was off, but your mom called me, like, five times. She wants to know where you are.”

  There was no answer when we tried Heather Grove.

  “Her machine,” Frances Lee said. “Do I leave a message?” I shrugged, but Frances Lee was already talking. “Heather Grove? This is Frances Lee Giofranco. I’m Barry Hunt’s daughter. I believe you used to date him. I just wanted to let you know we have an object of yours. Something that we’d like to return to you.”

  “Sounds like we’re holding it hostage,” Jake said. “‘We have an object of yours.’”

  “A million dollars in small bills and the vase won’t get hurt,” I said.

  “Has anyone ever noticed that when people think something is real funny and that something is you, it doesn’t feel especially funny?” Frances Lee said.

  “I’ve noticed that,” Sprout said.

  “Frannie needs lo-ove,” Jake said.

  “If you hug me, I’ll kill you,” she said.

  He walked his scraggly self over to her, draped one arm around her shoulder. “You are my friend, you are special,” Jake sang in his husky morning voice. Mr. Rogers never sounded so good.

  “You are my friend, you are special to meeee!” Sprout joined in beside me from the bed. She was bouncing on her knees.

  “Not so loud,” I said. My nerves were edgy enough. My own phone sat beside me—it seemed not entirely impossible that it might suddenly transform from a small bit of friendly metal to my own raging mother in the flesh.

  “Somebody shoot me,” Frances Lee said.

  I did the simplest thing. As we were packing up to leave Riley’s apartment, I sent a text to Mom to tell her we were fine, that we’d see her tomorrow at the train station. And then I turned off the phone. We had only two more days before we came home, and there was no way she could find us. We needed to finish this trip as we had planned. I would stonewall. I would shut my inner Venetian blinds and hope for the best. I decided I’d better get Sprout alone as soon as possible to tell her what had been going on, but then I changed my mind about that, too. Let her enjoy the rest of this trip. Let her enjoy Brie Day, especially.

  “I’m so excited I can barely stand it,” Sprout said as we headed for the truck.

  “Front seat, you,” Frances Lee said to her. For a second I thought Frances Lee was trying to be extra-nice to Sprout since this was a special day for her. But then she winked at me. I climbed in the back with Jake. He reached out for my fingertips and held them. My fingers felt like they had been on a long, long journey and had finally reached home. It was the kind of happy that felt like an arrival.

  “So gang, our last official full day of our karmic quest. Today, Portland and the cheese. Tomorrow, Abigail Renfrew, and then we take ol’ Big Bob home. You guys get the train, Jake makes it to his gig, and I head back to the arms of my ba-by.”

  “Poor Gavin. What a sucker,” Jake said.

  “Of course, I could just let you out here, Jake,” Frances Lee said.

  “Gavin’s the luckiest guy on earth,” Jake said.

  Frances Lee turned the key.

  “I can hardly wait to get there,” Sprout said.

  There are a few things you don’t say to automobiles and appliances at certain times, lest you ignite some Freaky Friday–type moment of fate-altering disaster. “I can hardly wait to get there” is one of those things that should never be spoken as a key is turned, as is “I’ve never had a problem with this car yet” or “Everything’s going my way today!” But it was too late, and so of course the engine did not kick and rumble to life but instead only made a sick, groaning sound, something like ruh, ruh, ruh.

  “Goddamn it, goddamn fucking shit-ass car,” Frances Lee said. “I told you, Jake, I told
you.”

  Jake let go of my fingers, leaned over the seat; his back was long and lean, white T-shirt stretched across his shoulders. “Give it a minute, Frances Lee,” he said. “Wait a second and try again.”

  “Don’t tell me to wait a second and try again,” she said, and then waited a second and tried again. Ruh, ruh, ruh. Frances Lee let out another stampede of swearing. Sprout folded her hands in her lap.

  “Be patient, Frannie. This is what happened before.”

  “Don’t tell me to be patient,” Frances Lee said. Her voice filled the car the way a very large man would. “When you’re the one who poured that Coke in and fucked up my engine.”

  “It was fucked up already,” Sprout said quietly. She looked out the window as if at the scenery that would be passing had we been able to go anywhere. I could see her worried expression in her reflection in the glass.

  “Count to ten, Frannie,” Jake said.

  Frances Lee counted to ten, which was really a counting to five. But when she turned the key, the engine rumbled alive just as it always did, maybe even stronger, as if to prove that the sick ruh, ruh, ruh actually belonged to some other, lame engine.

  “Man,” Frances Lee exhaled. Jake looked over at me and grinned. I grinned back, relieved.

  “I keep having this horrible thought that we’re going to get stuck at Abigail Renfrew’s house,” I said.

  “Look, the truck’s fine now,” Frances Lee said.

  “You don’t like Abigail Renfrew?” Jake asked.

  “Hate,” I said.

  “Barry and she were…When their mom and he…,” Frances Lee said.

  “Oh,” Jake said. “So. Yeah. It’d suck to be there any longer than you had to.”

  What would suck would be somehow missing our train home, freaking Mom out beyond the point of rational, having to stay with Abigail Renfrew or something. But I didn’t say any of those things. We had to make it home. Home—that house in Nine Mile Falls where my family lived—it seemed like a faraway place, somewhere foreign I had once visited a long time ago. Home meant no Jake or Frances Lee, no sitting in this truck with its now familiar hot plastic seats and Buddha wobbling on the dashboard and floor mats with ridges that the bottoms of my feet knew. Home meant big, dark unknowns. Secrets told. That was the thing about secrets—they didn’t too often stay that way. Secrets always wanted out.

  “I guess you always imagine the worst,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. Fate’s not so obvious, anyway,” Jake said. “If that’s what you think would happen, that’s not what’s gonna happen.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be hit by a semi instead,” Frances Lee said.

  “I’m going to pray the whole way that the engine makes it,” Sprout said.

  “If you get God to listen, tell him I need new tires, too,” Frances Lee said.

  We were back on the freeway heading to Portland, so Bob got to act like the mayor in a parade again, waving his hamburger at the crowds, who were honking and shouting to him.

  “I’ve kind of forgotten what it’s like to drive without a ten-foot cartoon in the back,” Frances Lee said.

  “Someone’s going to honk because you left your coffee cup on the top of the car, and you’re just going to smile and nod,” I said.

  “Phone,” Sprout announced. She was right. It wasn’t even my phone, but still my heart lurched at the sound—a tiny, electronic Latin beat, attempting minuscule cheer way down between Frances Lee’s seat cushions. She felt around for it, swerving a little as she did.

  “Whoa,” Jake said, he looked at me and made his eyes wide and fake afraid, and I nodded back with the same eyes.

  “Hel-lo,” she sang. Listened, listened. “Yeah, yeah I did. So, weird story, I know,” she said. She tilted the phone toward her chin, mouthed, Heather Grove. Someone honked, but it was a long, angry beeeeep, an automotive yell that had nothing to do with Big Bob friendliness.

  Frances Lee was telling our story, driving with her elbows and making exaggerated facial expressions so that we could have some idea of what was happening on the other end. “We need to get your address to send the vase,” she said. Her truck veered slowly over the line, and Sprout gave a little squeal. “Pen.” Frances Lee gestured toward the glove compartment, causing the truck to wander to the right again. She almost took out a big old car full of silver-haired old people, with the license plate MIZ JUNE. Sprout fished around inside the glove box—Fritos bag, envelopes, proof of insurance with coffee cup ring on it, French-fry bag, another French-fry bag, parking stubs.

  “For God’s sake, Frannie, pull over before we get killed,” Jake said.

  “So we can get your address, and uh, shit!” Frances Lee said. She swerved back into our lane, followed Jake’s advice, and took the next exit.

  Sprout looped three pens around in circles on an envelope before she found one that worked. “Okay, ready,” she said.

  Frances Lee repeated Heather Grove’s address, and Sprout took it down. She stuffed everything back into the glove compartment. “We were hoping to hear a little about it, you know, how you met Barry,” Frances Lee said. “What happened between you…” Frances Lee signaled tick tick tick tick! pulled into an Arco station, yanked the parking brake, and turned off the engine.

  “Please start again. Please start again,” Sprout said.

  “If it doesn’t start again, at least we’re alive,” Jake said.

  “That must have been really hard,” Frances Lee said. Listened, listened, listened. “Uh-huh. She probably won’t even remember, even if you always will.”

  Jake took my hand again. Squeezed. My heart was so happy. It made me feel like I could live at the Arco station for the rest of my life. We could stay right there, in the truck, my hand in his. People could bring us CornNuts and Red Vines for dinner.

  Frances Lee talked to Heather Grove a little while longer. I rolled down my window and smelled the smell of gasoline and hot asphalt, and the odor of mustard and slick magazine pages coming from the propped-open door of the mini mart. And then Frances Lee said something that made my heart break, sad as it was just happy, there with Jake’s hand in mine and an old Volkswagen pulling in to a pump and a crow picking at a bread crust in the parking lot.

  “Did you know about me?” she asked.

  Jake stared out his own open window then, at the gas station island with its paper-towel dispenser and blue paper towels folding out from the bottom. Squeegees and buckets of soapy brown water and blue paper towels to wipe your windshield with were better to think about than Frances Lee’s voice right then. It sounded split open, the way a piece of fruit is, laid bare in two halves.

  “No, from his first marriage,” she said. “No, twice.”

  After a little while, Frances Lee hung up. “Fuck,” she whispered.

  Frances Lee felt around for her cigarettes, which weren’t there. We were quiet. Even Sprout just made the ends of her braids dance with each other in silence. We sat there a minute, until Frances Lee cleared her throat, sighed. Made her voice cheery as crepe paper and game-show hosts. “Pop quiz. Why did Barry and Heather not live happily ever after?”

  “She wasn’t good enough,” I said.

  “Very good,” Frances Lee said. “Anyone else?”

  “Mean to her,” Sprout said.

  “Excellent.”

  “He had one on the side,” Jake said.

  “A’s for everyone,” Frances Lee said.

  “He’s getting predictable,” Jake said.

  “Here’s the story,” Frances Lee said. “Recently divorced and she just wanted a relationship really bad. White picket fence, yeah, but also someone next to you at the movies. Someone you can share your too-big steak with and what that sleaze Victoria said about you to your boss. Wanted that more than anything. Only problem, Barry wasn’t exactly Prince Charming. He didn’t like all the time she spent with her kid. Jane, age six, who had made her that vase for Mother’s Day in kindergarten. Well, she had a relationship, all right. Just, it w
as shit.”

  “I feel sad for Jane, age six,” Sprout said.

  “Collateral damage,” Frances Lee said.

  HEATHER GROVE:

  Those questions you have? Whether he’s the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay?

  When you’re not sure whether you’re in love with someone or not, the answer is not.

  Frances Lee and Sprout wandered around the false brightness of the mini mart. I could see Frances Lee’s head cruising around in the aisles, and the bright bits of orange from Sprout’s shirt.

  “This is beginning to feel like my life,” Jake said. “Do you know what I mean? Like tomorrow we’ll get up again and go to another Denny’s before heading to some other woman’s house.”

  “I know.” I did know.

  “I’ve never eaten so much meat in my life.” He was referring to the Denny’s and Denny’s look-alike restaurants’ Grand Slam-ish breakfasts that he’d always order. Eggs and pancakes with bacon/sausage/Canadian bacon and every other breakfast meat known to mankind.

  “More meat than most families eat in a week,” I said.

  “My real life doesn’t feel like my real life anymore,” he said.

  “I know.”

  And just like that, he leaned over and kissed me, and my arm was around his neck and it was a little like that time Mom decided to barbecue and we couldn’t start it and then Grandma came along and poured on this stuff in a metal can and almost set the house on fire. Jake’s breath, his sudden lips, his smell, taste of coffee and milk and Jake-ness—it was sudden fire, and my body was alive when it had been sleeping. Maybe whoever wrote that stupid Sleeping Beauty had a kiss like this once, because I did feel awakened; I would have gotten on the back of Jake’s horse now if he’d had a horse, and let him take me anywhere. Anywhere—and it was me who had my hands on him, who wanted to feel his thighs through his jeans, the place where the edge of his T-shirt met skin. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t been kissing Jake every single day since I was old enough, why I couldn’t have had that kiss every single day, and every day from now on. Once you are awake, truly awake, you don’t want to go back to sleep again.