No Ordinary Princess

by Pamela Morsi

  "Well, I should think so!" Gerald's jaw was set with such angry affront that Princess couldn't help but smile.

  "What a lucky woman I am," she stated. "The men in my life stand ready to defend me at any moment from the absolute truth."

  She grasped his hand, lacing her fingers through his own. "I am not and cannot be offended by the truth," she said.

  Her words caused his brow to furrow once more. They had already reached the edge of town and it was all she could do not to hug him right in public.

  "I never wanted too much for myself," she told him, quietly. "Only to be loved."

  It was nearing sunset as they dropped Muna and Maloof at the Emporium. Princess exacted a promise from her friend not to tell Mr. and Mrs. Nafee until after her father had heard the news.

  "Be happy for me, Muna," she whispered to her friend as she said goodbye.

  "I am,” Muna insisted. "I am, it's just ... oh, it's just something strange. I'm too suspicious, I suppose."

  "There is nothing to be suspicious about," Princess assured her. "I love him, he loves me, we're married now and plan on living happily ever after."

  "Of course you will," Muna said with almost too much conviction. "I ... I am very happy for you, Prin. Maybe I'm just jealous that you got to marry first."

  They laughed together at that and then kissed each other on the cheek.

  Gerald helped her back into the surrey and they headed for home.

  "I don't want you to worry about meeting my father," she told him. "Believe me, his bark is much worse than his bite."

  "Is he going to bark at me?" Gerald asked.

  "Probably," she admitted. "He's probably going to bark at both of us. But we're just not going to pay any attention."

  "It's a good plan," he agreed.

  To her disappointment, Princess realized as they pulled into the porte cochere, her father's Packard, and therefore her father, was not at home.

  "Oh, dear," she complained. "I hadn't thought about that and I should have. He ... he stays out many nights, on business, of course."

  "Of course."

  Howard hurried out to take charge of the horses. Gerald leapt down from the seat and raised his arms to her. He didn't help her down in the genteel fashion of a courtier, but rather grabbed her waist like a loving husband and lifted her to the ground. She loved it and smiled up at him, her heart in her eyes.

  "Well, perhaps it's better that Papa isn't here," she said. "I'm not sure what to do. Do you think that we should send for him? I'm not sure exactly where he goes. But somehow Howard always seems able to find him."

  Gerald looked down in her eyes and smiled as he shook his head. "I think tomorrow will be soon enough for him to know."

  "Do you think we can . . . we can stay in the house together before we tell him?" she asked.

  "We are man and wife," Gerald answered. "Didn't Reverend McAfee say that what God has joined together let not man put asunder."

  Cessy nodded. "Then you think that it's all right," she said.

  Gerald smiled, leaned closer, and whispered softly to her. "I think that we'll have this whole big house to ourselves this evening."

  Cessy blushed, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.

  "I'm sure Mrs. Marin has prepared a wonderful meal, and there is always more than enough for two. We—"

  "We will certainly need to eat a hearty supper," he agreed, his voice sultry and teasing. "Something to keep up our strength."

  Then he slipped his arm under her knees and lifted her up into her arms.

  "Oh dear! You needn't carry me," she exclaimed. "I can walk."

  He raised an eyebrow. "I will try to make that as easy to say tomorrow as tonight."

  "What?"

  "Never mind," he answered and carried her across the threshold of the porte cochere doorway.

  Chapter 11

  Queenie's Palace was quiet since Sundays were typi­cally slow. There were a couple of games still running in the back room. A few patrons sat at the bar. The bartender had strict orders to cut them off at three drinks. Queenie didn't believe in appearing to have too a good time on the day the townspeople would find it most objectionable. In the legal vacuum be­tween the dissolution of the territory and the brand-new state, the laws regulating drink and vice had become murky and unenforceable. But community groups were already beginning to petition the legislature to come down hard on businesses like the Palace. The wild, free-for-all territory days were quickly becoming a thing of the past. The good people of the future Oklahoma now wanted churches and schools and the quiet pleasures of home.

  Home. Queenie sat in the silence of the upstairs room that was her home, staring out the back win­dow at the sunset just beyond the alley.

  In the distance she saw a well-sprung buggy driv­ing slowly through the streets of town on a late Sunday drive. What was that like, she wondered. What was it like to be a Sunday-drive kind of person? What was it like to be a decent person with an ordinary life? To be a wife, a mother, an accepted member of a community.

  King always said that he didn't believe in regret­ting. She'd always agreed with him. Nothing could change the past. And given the same set of circum­stances, Queenie believed that most folks, certainly she herself, would make exactly the same choices a second time.

  No, she didn't believe in ruing the past. But she did believe in planning for the future.

  Queenie laid a hand upon her stomach. She felt nothing there, no life, no mystery, no anticipation. There was a new beginning there, but all it brought to her life was an intermittent nausea.

  She could never change the past. She could never again be a young girl, green and foolish, picking cotton and listening to a sweet-talking man's lies. She didn't even want to.

  The road she'd traveled had taught her a lot. She wouldn't give up what she'd learned about life and about people. And she wouldn't have wanted to miss King. If she'd married some hardworking, respectable farmer, if she'd worked his land and raised his children, she would never have found King, the love of her life. That alone was worth all the dues that she'd paid.

  She continued to silently watch the sunset from her window. It was amazing that as it got closer to the earth, closer to the end of the day, it seemed to grow larger and brighter as if daring the land to try to extinguish it. All day it had shone yellow against a pale-blue sky. But now, after all of that, it was vivid orange against an horizon of pink and magenta.

  Was life like that? Could people live one way, easily recognizable and familiar, and then dramatically change to an entirely different life?

  What had the young tool dresser said? It helps a bit if you can just throw away your old past and start out with a brand-new one, cut exactly to fit.

  Queenie closed her eyes and a yearning welled up in her. A yearning so strong and sweet and powerful it choked her throat and became an ache in her breast.

  Unexpectedly the door burst open and King Cal­houn entered the room.

  "What you doing sitting here in the dark, darlin'?"

  "Don't you ever knock?" Queenie snapped, hur­riedly drying the dampness at the corners of her eyes.

  King gave her a long look. "Didn't know I needed to," he replied. "You want me to light the lamp?"

  "I'm watching the sunset," she told him, still waspish in her tone. "I don't need a lamp for that."

  "No, I suspect not," King agreed.

  He came up to stand behind her, following her gaze through the back-alley window. He lay his hands on her tired shoulders and began to gently knead the tightness in her neck and rub out all the pain and cares of her day.

  "It is kinda pretty, ain't it?" he said finally. "That sunset, I mean. A fellow like me don't get too many chances to just sit and watch the world turn around. Seems like I'm always busy trying to get it to spin in my direction."

  Queenie sighed under the machinations of his hands and regained her good humor.

  "Is it spinning your way today?" she asked him.

  "Nope," he sa
id. "Not yet. I don't have so much as a trail to follow on a lending banker. We're hitting oil up there on the hill, any minute now, I can almost smell it. Without a pipeline or a refinery, we might as well let the buffalo grass soak it up and put a match to it."

  "I'm sorry, King," she said. "The offer of a loan is still open."

  "It wouldn't be enough, not even if I sold the house I gave Princess and stole the money I put for her in trust. It takes bank money to build a refinery. A man can't do it on his own fortune alone."

  There was nothing more that Queenie could say.

  "I just wish I'd made some provisions for you," King told her. "I'm real sorry about that, Queenie. I truly am."

  "What do you mean provisions for me?"

  "If the field goes belly-up there'll be nothing here but the stinking little Burford Corners that we started with," he said. "It'll be no place for a fine Palace like this."

  "It's just a building," Queenie said with a shrug. "It's the people that make a business, we can always do as well one place as another."

  King shook his head. "Still, darlin', I regret getting you messed up in this."

  "I thought you didn't believe in regrets, King," she pointed out.

  The big man shrugged thoughtfully. "Maybe I've been wrong," he said.

  He pulled up a chair and took her hand in his own. He chose his words carefully as if for once he was hesitant to speak his mind.

  "Queenie, this is a real nice place you've got here," he said. "It's a clean and honest business. There ain't nothing here that a person would have to be ashamed of."

  "Thank you," she answered.

  "It ain't . . . well ... it ain't bad like ... I mean, Queenie, I've seen worse."

  Queenie couldn't imagine what he was getting at and snorted, shaking her head.

  "I imagine you have," she said. "There's worse up and down both sides of the street outside."

  "Queenie, I mean I've seen a lot worse."

  Beads of sweat popped out on King's forehead, yet the evening breeze through the back-alley window was cool. He looked over at her, his expression weary, worried, torn. He cleared his throat as if steeling his determination before he spoke.

  "My mama was a whore, Queenie," he stated bluntly. "She was more than a whore. She was a gin-crawler with her hands out and her legs open."

  "Oh, King," Queenie whispered.

  "It's true, too true. This joint is a palace compared to the way we lived."

  Queenie watched him, waiting.

  "We never had no place," he continued. "From time to time she'd have a crib, but mostly we lived on the streets. She hardly knew and never cared. Why would she? She was never sober. Philadelphia looks mighty fine from the avenues, but it's an ugly view from the street."

  "King, you don't have to—"

  "Queenie, I want to tell you," he interrupted. "I've been keeping it inside me for a lifetime now, hiding it, running away from it. It's time I said it out loud and heard it myself."

  The pain in his heart was reflected upon his face.

  "I learned to steal and lie and cheat. I learned to do things for money that most men wouldn't have done to save their life."

  There was no emotion in his voice. He spoke the words almost dispassionately, as if he were reading them from the story of someone else's life.

  "I learned to sell my mama, Queenie. I went out and sold her body myself. When she'd be too drunk to get herself a Joe Poke I'd go around to the bars and hustle her business. I was about eight or ten, I guess."

  He raised his eyes to Queenie's, his voice mimick­ing that he'd once had as a child.

  " 'Hey fellah, you wanna meet my sister?' I'd say. It was always best to pretend she was my sister. To make the fellahs think she was younger than she was. 'My sister, she likes it all; suck, pull, or pump and you're guaranteed to fire, sure as a gun.' That's what my boyhood was like, Queenie. That was what I did with my childhood."

  Queenie squeezed his hand, wanting to offer what­ever comfort she could. "I'm sorry, King," she whis­pered. "I'm very, very sorry."

  "It was a long time ago," he said. "It was a very long time ago. She's dead and I'm . . . I'm the King Calhoun."

  "You are the most wonderful man that I have ever met," Queenie assured him. "And the things you been through only make me love you more."

  He nodded. "That's my point, Queenie. I had a terrible mother, no father at all, and a really bad start in life. I've lived things I don't want to remember and done things that I can't forget. But I'm not ashamed to be who I am. Even with all of that, I've turned out all right. I've worked hard, made something of my life. Maybe this child, our child, could, too."

  She looked at him questioningly.

  "This Palace is not such a bad place for a boy to grow up. It's warm and dry and . . . and he would know that he was loved. You'd be a wonderful mama for any boy."

  Queenie eyed him suspiciously. "You want me to have this baby, King? Even after what you just told me about your own life, your own shame."

  "But it wouldn't be like that for him."

  "He or she might well think it is," she said. "No matter how clean and legal the saloon is, King, it's still a saloon. And I may not be a gin-crawler, but I'm as much a whore as your mother."

  "You haven't whored in ten years, I'd swear it."

  "What do you call last night?" she asked.

  "Last night?" King was momentarily nonplussed. "Last night you made love with me."

  "Is that what you'd call it?" she asked.

  "I certainly would."

  "Well, our child might hear it called otherwise. Every decent soul in Burford Corners would be quick to tell him that his mother is a barroom prostitute and his daddy a whoremonger.''

  "Queenie . . ."

  "You're not the only one who's been trying to see a way out," she told him. "I've hardly been able to put my mind to anything else. But what you're thinking just won't do. You've turned out to be a good man, King, a fine, gentle, tender man, despite who your mother was and what kind of life you were born into. But I've seen otherwise, King. I've seen boys and girls who could break my heart. Innocent children jerked into the world and left to fend for themselves in the shadow of the bar or the bordello. Hungry, dirty, beaten, and broken, all they get from life is a harsh word and a slap in the face. I won't do that to a child, King, not even one that I want as much as I want yours."

  His expression was immediately crestfallen.

  "Then there is no way?"

  Queenie looked into his eyes, loving him, wanting him, wanting his child.

  "I wish ... I wish . . . hell, I've even prayed for a way, but I just can't see one, King. I just can't see one."

  The quiet evening at home on her wedding night was one of the longest and most nerve-racking that Princess could ever remember. Gerald had taken the team back to the livery and she was jumpy as a cat the whole time he was gone. She tried to organize a lovely dinner for two, but she was so nervous and almost giddy that she simply could not think straight. Mrs. Marin had graciously taken up the challenge of their wedding feast as if a gauntlet had been thrown. They sat in the dining room for what must have been hours.

  Princess was so anxious and edgy she had no appetite at all. Still, it was an impressive display of culinary excellence. The formal dining table was set with the snowy handloomed linen table dressings. The rose china was hastily unpacked and washed. And a simple pork roast dinner miraculously blos­somed into a veritable feast of a thousand courses.

  Cessy had no idea what she ate, but she was extremely aware of every bite that Geralcl took. She sat at the far end of the table from him and barely a word passed between them during the meal. Yet she was aware of every movement he made. Every breath he took. Strangely, it made her tremble.

  Howard had managed to unearth a dusty bottle of wine. Although Cessy had never cared for spirits, she found herself nervously bringing the rim of the glass to her lips time and time again. Gerald drank very little, but as they rose finally
to leave the table, he drained the contents of his glass and urged her to do the same.

  "Shall we withdraw to the sitting room, Cessy?'' he suggested.

  She agreed, and they spent a very long, uncomfort­able evening making stilted conversation as they sat next to each other on the silk damask t ê te-a-t ê te. They had always talked so easily together and been so in tune. Why now that they were man and wife could they not seem to find one interesting thing to say to each other?

  Cessy knew the answer. They couldn't enjoy a pleasant evening together without thinking about the inevitable night that followed it. She had felt so free, so alive and cheerful in their ride home from the school. But now, looking at the man that was now her husband, the niggling doubts that she had deliber­ately refused to give credence to had begun to creep into her thoughts.

  Muna clearly did not trust him. And Reverend McAfee seemed disturbed by her choice as well. Ma suggested that it was very strange for such a man to live in town for no reason. And then there was the letter, the strange, nearly illiterate letter from a Yale graduate.

  "Cessy, I believe that it is time for us to retire for the evening."

  Gerald had leaned his head down more closely to her own to speak quietly in her ear. Princess was startled at his unexpected nearness. His voice broke into her rumination and she felt momentarily guilty and disloyal for her thoughts. It was simply nerves, she assured herself. Wedding jitters was what they were called.

  "Are you ready to go upstairs?" Gerald asked with more concern.

  "Oh! Whatever you think," she assured him hastily.

  He stood and formally offered his arm. Princess took it.

  "You are a bit fidgety tonight," he said.

  "Yes, it's really quite natural. I'm . . . I'm not used to being alone with you," she admitted.

  "What about all those dark nights on your front porch?" he asked.

  Cessy blushed, remembering. She knew she had allowed him an inordinate amount of liberty with her person, but tonight somehow she was ill at ease and shy. As they climbed the wide staircase with its sharp angles and sturdy, austere design, she deliberately steeled herself against her fears.