Prince Gregory was a teeteringly tall, amiably shambling, pink-cheeked twenty-five-year-old wearing a moss green tweed three-piece suit that was lovingly cut yet still at odds with the prince’s lanky frame. He wore the suit as if he were a top-ranked contortionist and could wriggle out of it at any second or as if his body were racing a few yards ahead of his wardrobe. The prince’s thatch of reddish gold hair was recently chopped and barely tamed, like glinting crabgrass. There was something breathless and awry about the prince, as if he’d just struggled into his grown-up clothing after a spontaneous rugby match or a quick skinny-dip in some royal pond or pool. He was all elbows and knees and craning neck, with each sector of his anatomy insisting on a separate destination.
“Good morning,” he blurted out. “Hello, so sorry to be late, Prince Gregory, and please don’t anyone bow or faint or fall to their knees, oh, all right, you may all grovel just a bit, if it will make you happy.”
I laughed, because I’d been about to opt for a deep curtsy, a respectful nod and maybe a military salute, all at the same time. Instead I just stood there, giggling and wondering if because we were both celebrities, I should hug the prince and complete an air-kiss. Jate had once told me that, “When you meet another famous person, you have to do an instant star-check. If the person is less famous than you, you can shake their hand and be very warm, to show that you’re such a good person, but never air-kiss a less famous person, because that’s what they want, they hope that your more-famousness will rub off on them. If you meet someone who’s exactly as famous as you, a hug and a kiss are just right, because that way you can both pretend that you’re normal people, who’ve happened to run into each other at the local Famous People’s coffee bar, or the Kennedy Center Honors. But if you meet someone more famous than you, and that almost never happens, you have to behave like a fan. You have to face the truth and say, ‘Hi, you’re you and I’m just me, so you win.’ And so they get to make the rules.”
Prince Gregory stuck out his hand vigorously, proving that just because he was a young prince, he didn’t have delicate, over-bred, forbidden hands, and he said, “Good God, you really are that beautiful, especially here in England, where everyone is simply hideous. You’re completely out of place. You have no business here, children will point at you and start to sob, asking, ‘Mummy, I thought you told me that attractive people were extinct. By decree.’ You’re just appalling.”
Of course because I’d stood behind the Super Shop-A-Lot register for hours at a time, I’d memorized Prince Gregory’s features from the covers of all the celebrity weeklies. He was especially known for his mother, Princess Alicia, who’d died horribly in a plane crash on her return from a humanitarian visit to an earthquake site in Africa. In the last known photograph of her, Princess Alicia had been wearing a fitted safari jacket and kneeling beside a bereft Kenyan woman who was cradling a dead infant. The princess had her hand on the woman’s shoulder and was absorbed in their conversation, through a nearby translator. The princess was young and tall and unbearably beautiful but despite all that, you didn’t want to smack her.
Princess Alicia had used her looks and her title to both dazzle and improve the world and she’d concentrated on riskier, less immediately popular causes. She’d had herself photographed cuddling babies with infectious diseases and she’d blackmailed unscrupulous corporations into providing flour, rice and basic sanitation for sprawling, crime-ridden refugee camps. She’d auctioned off her most memorable gowns to establish schools for little girls in fundamentalist strongholds and she’d attended the birthday blowouts of rock stars, provided that the rock stars appear at concerts benefiting rape victims from countries bordering on more civilized regions, where the rock stars had enjoyed five-star safaris and burbled on their blogs about receiving spiritual wisdom from cheetahs.
Princess Alicia had died the year I was born and my mother had idolized her. She’d kept scrapbooks of the princess’s life and accomplishments and she’d page through them, chatting about Alicia as if they’d been buddies. “Oh look,” she’d say, “this was when Al went to Moscow, I love her in purple. And see how she’s smiling at that prime minister, you can tell that she hates him.”
While I’d known what Prince Gregory looked like, this was still the first time I’d ever met royalty in person. When I was little, I’d never been obsessed with princesses like Cinderella and Snow White and the rest of the Disney chicklets, with their bulging hair and their tinkling voices. I’d thought they were all simpering and drippy, running around with teeny noses and warbling about how they couldn’t live without their dopey, strong-jawed boyfriends who were always off in the forest. Rocher, on the other hand, had dressed up in her highly flammable budget Halloween princess costume as often as she could and she’d been known to sleep in it. This outfit had a shiny polyester ice blue satin bodice crisscrossed with thick, drooping black bands, grimy white puff sleeves and a limp, dead-salmon-colored satin skirt with an increasingly ragged hem. Rocher had worn this sad dress-like thing over a long-sleeved T-shirt and thick pink tights with blackened knees, along with a golden plastic crown that she’d nabbed by telling the counter girl at Burger King that it was her birthday. The crown’s golden finish had soon chipped and its large plastic ruby had only lasted a week until Rocher’s dog had eaten it and gotten diarrhea.
Rocher had worn her princess getup on every possible holiday, including Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the Fourth of July, because, as she would explain, “It’s a special day, so there has to be a princess, to proclaim things.” If Rocher hadn’t wanted to finish her beets, she’d announced, “Beets are not princess food. Beets are for common folk.” And when her cousin Cortney-Brianna wore an identical, only brand-new princess costume, Rocher had decreed, “Cortney-Brianna is not a princess. She’s a turd.” From Rocher’s example all I’d learned was that royal people are flighty and bossy and allowed to make everything up as they go along.
“His Royal Highness has been with us before,” said Dr. Barry. “But, Miss Randle, have you ever visited a burn unit?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I believe you’d remember. We’ll begin gradually, with some of our less extreme patients and then progress. If you’re having any difficulties, please let me know.”
When I said, “I’ll be fine,” I noticed that Dr. Barry and the prince exchanged a glance but I was determined to prove myself brave and unflappable. I was becoming protective of Rebecca; just because she was beautiful, I didn’t want her to be underestimated.
We were all issued stiff white nylon smocks, headgear fitted with elastic like a shower cap and fabric face masks because, according to Dr. Barry, “All of this isn’t for our sake, but to protect the children. We can easily endanger them, by bringing in outside bacteria. Their wounds make them extremely vulnerable to infection.”
Dr. Barry led our group through a well-sealed, thick metal door and into the unit itself, which was a large, almost circular space with beds set at intervals around a central nursing station. Each bed was encased in walls of thick, clear, shimmering plastic, hanging from tracks on the ceiling.
“This is Devlin,” said Dr. Barry, parting a set of plastic curtains and bringing the prince and me to the bedside of a little boy whose arms and legs were wrapped in layers of gauze. “Devlin is seven, and he’s been with us for almost a month. Devlin, I’ve brought some new friends to see you. This is Prince Gregory and Rebecca Randle, who, I’m told, is a kind of actress.”
“Hello,” said Devlin, smiling. “I’m sorry, but I can’t shake your hands.” Devlin moved his limbs a fraction, to prove they weren’t only bandaged but immobilized.
“That’s perfectly all right,” said Prince Gregory, tugging a small metal chair up to the bed so he could speak to Devlin face-to-face. “Does all this drive you mad, when you get an itch?”
“It’s awful,” Devlin admitted. “Sometimes I have to wait for a nurse and then she scratches the wrong side of my nose or the itch is un
derneath my bandages, where no one can reach and I just want to tear them off.”
“Which, as Devlin and I have discussed, would not be a good idea,” said Dr. Barry. “Devlin is extremely brave and we’re very proud of him. When his home caught on fire, he saved his younger sister.”
“Your parents must be so proud of you,” I said, following Dr. Barry’s lead.
“My parents died in the fire,” said Devlin. He didn’t say this as an accusation or with a trace of self-pity, but as information, as if he were telling me, “I have a new bicycle.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I was about to add, “My mom died too,” but I didn’t want the conversation to become a contest. I had no idea what to say next, what possible comfort to offer, so I just asked, “Do you need any scratching?”
“My left ear,” said Devlin and as I leaned across his body, Dr. Barry began to object and then Devlin screamed, as I’d accidentally brushed against the bandages on his arm.
“Take care,” Dr. Barry admonished me as I jerked my hand away from Devlin’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” said Devlin, now taking short, deep breaths, to quiet the pain. “I shouldn’t have screamed.”
“It’s quite all right,” said Prince Gregory. “In fact, that’s the great advantage of being in hospital, and being all banged up. You’re allowed to scream whenever you like.”
Devlin smiled at the notion of such royal permission and while I was feeling clumsy and stupid for needlessly increasing Devlin’s torment, I was grateful for everything the prince had said. Unlike me, he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be seven, and he knew that little boys are big on loud noises.
“And now let’s have a visit with Angus,” said Dr. Barry, holding open the plastic panels that led to the next bed. “Angus is ten,” she continued, “and he’s been with us for almost a year.”
At first Angus resembled a pastry, a pillowy white cream puff nestled against his bedding. His head, except for his small pink mouth, was completely swathed in bandages, along with his chest and the stumps of his arms, which ended at the elbows. Both of his legs were also gone, from just above the knees. I struggled not to gasp. I didn’t know if Angus had been permanently blinded or how aware he was of his ravaged body. I’d also heard about phantom pain, where people can experience agony in parts of their bodies that aren’t there anymore. As I tried to figure out where to look I knew that both Dr. Barry and Prince Gregory had begun chatting with Angus, but I hadn’t registered anything they’d been saying.
“Miss Randle?” Dr. Barry repeated.
“Yes?” I said, trying to sound cheerful, as if I’d just rushed in from a nearby ward.
“This is Angus, and he has a question for you.”
“Of course. Hi, Angus.”
“Hello, I can’t see.”
“Because of all the bandages.”
“So when people come by, I always ask them, what do you look like?”
I froze, because I had no idea what to say. Should I describe what Rebecca looked like, or Becky, or would it be enough to say, “I have brown hair”? Everything about me was a lie and while I’d grown comfortable with fooling everyone else, misrepresenting myself to Angus would be unforgivable.
“Miss Randle is very pretty,” supplied Prince Gregory. “She has dark hair and green eyes and there’s a toad squatting right on her head, pounding on her skull and searching for mosquitoes.”
This made Angus laugh, or it made his isolated pink mouth laugh, and he insisted, “There is not! There isn’t a toad! Miss Randle, is there a toad on your head?”
“No, there isn’t,” I said, longing to sound as even-keeled and resourceful as Prince Gregory. “Prince Gregory is lying. It’s a pig.”
“You have a pig on your head?” asked Angus, both skeptical and hopeful.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s small, it’s more of a piglet, but it goes with me everywhere. Because it likes the taste of my shampoo.”
“Is that true, Dr. Barry?” asked Angus “Is there a pig?”
“I’m only a doctor,” she replied. “So I’m not qualified to say. But we should remember that Miss Randle is an American.”
As Dr. Barry examined the dressing on what was left of one of Angus’s arms, I aimed to breathe normally. I was taking my cues from Dr. Barry and Prince Gregory, who were using jokes to put everyone at ease. I felt very young and very scared and very selfish, because I wished that I were somewhere else, in the hospital cafeteria or on the movie set with Jate, any place without such well-lit, overwhelming tragedy.
“Ah, and here we have Selina,” said Dr. Barry, taking the prince and me toward the most substantial enclosure in the unit, which shielded what appeared to be a small inflatable kiddie wading pool being monitored by a skyline of boxy, chest-high cabinets, fitted with rows of blinking lights and round gauges with arrows, all draped in miles of bunched wires and plastic tubing. Even Dr. Barry paused as a nurse unzipped a clear plastic panel; these panels were thicker and included a plastic ceiling as well.
Selina was a twelve-year-old girl who, Dr. Barry told me later, had been tied with clothesline and duct tape and then doused with gasoline and set on fire by a drunken, psychotic uncle because Selina’s father hadn’t been willing to lend the uncle money for beer and whiskey. The police and ambulance hadn’t arrived for almost an hour and Selina hadn’t been expected to live. She’d been maintained in a medically induced coma for over a month and fed intravenously and she’d only recently been allowed to regain consciousness.
Selina didn’t seem human. Her body had been burned over 90 percent of its surface, and her raw, weeping flesh, or whatever was now exposed underneath where her flesh had once been, was still too tender for any attempt at skin grafts. She was being kept heavily sedated and every inch of her was coated with a gluey antibiotic gel that had to be removed and replaced, as gently as possible, with a trickle of water every twelve hours. What was left of Selina’s body lay suspended on a hammock of webbed plastic netting stretched between metal posts, so that air could circulate and begin to promote the most minute, earliest stages of healing.
My eyes refused to focus, darting from a few inches of charred, blistered skin to a set of tubes somehow anchored to a pus-bloated forearm. Without meaning to, I saw what had become of Selina’s face. There was a single eye staring from a bare socket and there was a clear breathing tube located near what had once been Selina’s nose, above a twisted mouth of bloated, rubbery, scarred lips. These few remaining, distorted features were floating in a mass of wet pink and purple membranes, as if tossed into a bubbling stew.
Without thinking, I ran, away from the draped cube and out of the ward, through many sets of doors and into a restroom, where I vomited into a sink. My thoughts flew, from what had happened to Selina’s face, to any notion of her physical pain, to her prospects. What life, what future, could she hope for? Why hadn’t the hospital staff let her die? Wouldn’t that have been kinder, and the only real way to save her? After trembling, sweating and retching until my stomach was empty, I cupped my hands beneath the cold water faucet to rinse my mouth. I was alone, so when I stood, the mirror revealed Becky, her straggly brown hair damp and smeared across her splotchy cheeks, her eyes blank and her mouth open, trying to grasp — what? Selina’s life? My own? How everything, all of my happiness and excitement and adventure had become, not a joke, not a useless irony, but ugliness itself? The sort that has nothing to do with what you look like?
I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and gave a halfhearted tug to what had once been my red silk jacket and skirt and I stepped out into the hall, searching vaguely for a nearby exit, fresh air and a return flight to Missouri. Instead, Prince Gregory was standing nearby. He grabbed my elbow and marched me to a deserted waiting area, where he sat beside me on a pale green vinyl bench. He gave me a second to pull myself together, as he watched me with a certain kindness but far more impatience.
“We are exactly the same,” he began. “We are the luckiest
idiots. Through no fault of our own, we were both born with certain extreme and unjust natural advantages: I am a prince, and you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Who cares? It’s disgusting. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help anyone.”
“Look at me,” the prince continued sharply. “And listen carefully, because I’m one of the very few people who can actually tell you this. No, we’re not doctors or nurses or researchers, we don’t possess any sort of practical or helpful skills. We can’t heal Selina, or lessen her agony, or make certain that her repellent uncle is punished. We couldn’t be more ridiculous or more inept, or more of an insult, really. Except for one absolutely absurd and entirely essential fact: We rule the world.”
“What?”
“When I was turning six, there was a small party in the family quarters at Buckingham and I was told to invite a few of my little friends from school. And one of my gifts was a small metal fire truck. And David, my first cousin, he wanted that fire truck so very badly, and we fought over it, and I blackened his eye. And then I grabbed the truck and I told David, ‘This is mine, because I’m the prince and one day I shall be king. And you are only a duke. A duke. I pity you.’ And that was when my mother all but dislocated my arm and dragged me off and hurled me into a chair and she said, ‘You are a dreadful little boy. You don’t deserve to be a prince, let alone a king.’ And I insisted, ‘Yes I do!’ and I sobbed. And then, for the first and only time, she struck me, quite hard, right across my smug little face.”
“She did? Princess Alicia hit you?” I didn’t say this because I was shocked at a mother smacking a child who deserved it, but because it was Princess Alicia, the beacon of beauty and goodness everlasting.
“And I was so surprised at how really angry she was that I stopped crying, and she said, ‘Gregory, you are a very lucky little boy. People look to you and to me and to your father. And so we must set an example. For the rest of your life, you must always be kinder and more generous and more loving than anyone else. And do you know why?’ And I asked, ‘Why, Mummy?’”
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