The Frog Prince

by Jane Porter

  I was supposed to be charming and fun, lively, entertaining, a cherished wife who’d wait a year or two and then have adorable children.

  “You said it was already cracked.” Cindy’s voice snaps.

  I take a quick breath and look away to stare down the dim hall that seems to wind forever to the back, where the bedroom and kitchen are. “It was,” and my patheticness just grows. I’m drowning here, I think, and I used to be a good swimmer. I was the strongest swimmer I knew.

  “Then forget it.” She turns, walks out, her tiny heinie marching toward the stairs, leaving the door wide open.

  I hear her climb the steps back to her apartment, the two-story apartment that dominates mine. Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I let the door shut, harder than I’m supposed to, and in my bedroom I throw myself face-first onto my queen-size bed with the girlish headboard. I bought the bedroom set when I left college, when I got my own first apartment and thought it was pretty and grown up, and it wasn’t until I was divorced and forced to use it again that I realized the furniture set was never grown up. It’s a princess wannabe set, with a pale pink princess headboard, the kind of headboard I never had as a kid.

  So I bought it as an adult.

  For the adult I wanted to be, the adult I was trying to be. Oh, God. I’ve spent my whole life kidding myself.

  I thought if I just played my cards right, if I did what I was supposed to do, I’d end up like one of the heroines from the stories my mother read to me as a little girl—beautiful, clever, happy.

  Happy.

  And it hits me, harder than ever before, that I’ve screwed up, that I’m just possibly the most screwed-up woman on the face of the planet (North American continent, anyway) and that those fairy tales my mother read me (she loved them) and the lessons I take away from them (I loved them) were simply fiction.

  I’ve based the most important decisions in my life on fiction. So not-good.

  I pick up the phone, dial a number with a never-forgotten area code.

  He answers on the third ring. There’s music playing in the background. Voices laughing. “Jean-Marc?” I say, and my voice, which is never particularly strong, wobbles.

  “Holly?”

  “Hey.”

  “I can hardly hear you.”

  It’s your music, I want to tell him. But I don’t, because I can see his rambling storybook ranch house, with the set of French doors that are open onto the trellis-covered patio, where guests must be lounging in comfy chairs near the pool. It’s summer in the valley, which means hot. And moonlit. And scented with the unforgettably sweet fragrance of orange blossoms.

  I should be there. I would be there. If he had let me.

  I close my eyes. Why am I calling? Why am I doing this? I must like torturing myself. “Do you have a second?”

  “Sure. Let me go into the house.”

  So he was outside. A rock falls from my throat to my stomach and lands hard.

  I can hear him talking to others, his voice muffled as if he’s put the phone to his chest, and then I hear footsteps, a door closes, and a moment of silence. “Holly?”

  “Hi.” Be calm, be calm, be calm.

  “Something wrong?”

  God damn it, yes.

  You once said you loved me. And you married me. In front of God and my family and everybody.

  I see us at my family’s old-fashioned church in Visalia with the marvelous stained-glass windows, the same church I attended every single Sunday from birth until I went away to college. I see us in St. Tropez in lounge chairs on the pier, sunlight glinting madly off the perfect turquoise water, me obsessed with Jean-Marc’s indifference while Jean-Marc is obsessed with Rimbaud’s poetry. I see us stiff and silent, signing the divorce papers at the ugly Fresno courthouse, the building more suitable for a prison than for an office building.

  “No.” But I’m going to cry; I’m going to break open fast. Jesus. How can it be so easy for him? How can it—we—have been nothing at all? “What happened?” I ask, and I know I’m a fool, know that this is ground that’s been covered a thousand times without any insight gleaned, but I still need answers, something definitive, something to save me. Make me human again. The truth is, I have to understand how his feelings changed. I need to know what makes love fade, or if it was something I did.

  “Oh, Holly.” He sighs. “Are you having a bad day?”

  Stupid tears sting my eyes. No, Jean-Marc, I want to scream, not a bad day, just a bad life. I thought you were my Prince Charming, and instead you were a toad. I sniff unattractively, and somehow, thinking of him as a toad, a really awful warty, stinky toad, makes me feel marginally better.. “Are you having a party?”

  “Just a few friends over.”

  I say nothing. What can I say? I was the one who filed for divorce. I was the one who played bad cop to Jean-Marc’s good cop. I was the one who moved. He got to stay behind. He got to keep the friends. Even better, he got the great Waterford glasses—a complete set, minus the eight white wine I have, which he doesn’t miss since he has twelve red—so he ought to be having parties.

  “It takes time to settle into a new place,” he says, his accent suddenly becoming thicker, more Gallic. The guy knows when to play his French-foreign-hero card. “You have to be patient. Give it time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Starting over is never easy.”

  I nod, not that he can see, and scrub my face dry.

  “It was the same for me,” he adds. “When I left Paris, came here, everything was so different. I felt like a fish out of water.”

  Oh, shut up.

  Jean-Marc’s a professor of French literature at Fresno State, the local university. When we met at the Daily Planet in Fresno’s Tower district, I fell for him hard and fast. I loved everything about him: his Frenchness, his style, his incredible accent. He was so different from anyone I’d ever met, so interesting, so romantic. Our dates were like something out of a romance novel—champagne (French champagne, not Napa Valley sparkling wine), intimate little restaurants (Continental cuisine, of course), expert seduction with real French-kissing.

  “What went wrong?” I repeat, growing angry all over again. Why did you stop loving me?

  He sighs, a heavy Gallic sigh. “I don’t know, Holly. These things happen.”

  Do they? Why? How?

  I used to phone him more often, a call every two or three weeks under the auspices of checking in, and every call is like this. We have conversations of nothing. I ask hopeless questions, and he has no answer; he gives me no help. I’m desperate. And he’s a stranger.

  It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. I’m still shocked. Mortified. I was always the good girl. I was the one who worked so hard not to make mistakes. I was the one who made sure everyone else was happy first. But here I am in a drafty apartment in a city that feels strange, trying not to fall apart.

  No one told me this part. No one talked about what happens after the happily-ever-after.. Fairy tales usually conclude with “The End,” but in my case, there was another page that said, “The Beginning Again, Part II.”

  Part II.

  How awful.

  I know Olivia says I must get out, meet people, start dating, but dating again scares me to death. What do I tell people? What do I tell them about myself?

  A Cancer, born in the year of the rat, I like sushi, Italian food, movies, travel, and hiking. Oh, and I’m divorced. Yeah. We lasted just under a year. But hey, that’s life; it’s cool.

  No.

  You can’t tell people that. You can’t just spill stuff like that. I know. I’ve tried. And people freak. First they say, “You’re so young!” and when I don’t elaborate (how can I?), they get that frosty look, all frozen and cold, and I feel more alone than before.

  So now I don’t say anything about the divorce to anyone, and I just smile. Even though on the inside my eyes are stinging and my jaw aches because, honest to God, I don’t want my own apartment. I
had a house—a home—with Jean-Marc. I had a squashy down-filled sofa and bookcases filled with books, yellow climbing roses on the trellis, flagstone pavers from the patio to the pool, and a perfect little gated side yard with lush green grass that would have been perfect for a child’s swing set.

  I thought I had a future, a husband, a life. I wasn’t prepared to be starting over. Wasn’t prepared at all.

  “Jean-Marc,” I croak because I’m thinking of the lawn where I’d pictured the swing set and the little guest room off the master bedroom, where there’d be a bassinet and a changing table. Baby clothes are so small and sweet, and babies after a bath smell so good, and I really wanted the whole thing—the family. The love. The happiness. “Please,”

  “Give it time, Holly. You’ve only been in San Francisco a couple months.”

  I don’t want to give it time. I want him to say he’s sorry, that he’s made the worst mistake. I want him to say he’s lonely and his bed feels empty and that no one makes him laugh like I do, and no one is as fun, and no one looks as cute eating an orange as me, because those were the things he used to say to me. Those were the things that made me feel beautiful and special.

  But he’s never once said he wants me back, not even when he admitted—very quietly a couple of months ago—that he never meant to hurt me. Apparently things just got carried away. He should have put a stop to the wedding plans before they got out of hand. Sadly, he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  “Cherie, forgive me,” he says now, “but I’ve got to get back. They’re calling me.”

  He’s sorry. But for all the wrong reasons. He’s sorry because he’s going to hang up on me.

  Why did he let this get out of hand in the first place? He didn’t need a green card. He didn’t need money (not that I have any). He didn’t need a social life.

  What was I?

  But he can’t tell me that, or won’t tell me that, and I’m left tangled up in knots, knuckles white from gripping the phone so hard.

  “Don’t go, Jean-Marc—”

  “It’s going to be okay, Holly.”

  It hurts so bad; his words hurt endlessly. It’s like when my dad left my mom, but it’s worse because this is Jean-Marc leaving me.

  “Holly.”

  But I don’t speak. I can’t. My chest burns. My heart, even with the hole, aches, and I screw my eyes closed even tighter. I feel like shit, like the worst person alive. I did love him. I really believed in him.

  I believed in us.

  “Take care of yourself,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  Gone.

  For thirty seconds I think I’m going to be sick. For thirty seconds I want to rip my heart out and throw it in the street and hope some goddamn cable car runs over it, but that’s really dramatic, a little too Gladiator, not to mention Lorena Bobbit.

  Before Jean-Marc, I was the most romantic person I knew. I was going to be the one who never got divorced. I was going to be the one who did it right. I grew up on Barbara Cartland romances (with some Erica Jong and Xaviera Hollander thrown in for good measure), and I believe in soul mates. Marriage. Commitment.

  Being good doesn’t really pay off.

  And I didn’t know it until now. My mother (God forgive me) not only read me the wrong books, but told me a pack of lies. Everything she passed on to me had to do with being good. And there were so many goods I can’t remember them all, but in short, these were some of the biggies by academic year:

  Kindergarten: Good girls don’t show boys their underpants.

  Second grade: Good girls eat their lunch quietly.

  Fourth grade: Good girls go to church on Sundays.

  Sixth grade: Good girls don’t backtalk their parents.

  Seventh grade: Good girls sit with their knees together.

  Eighth grade: Good girls do all their homework.

  Tenth grade: Good girls don’t kiss on a first date.

  Eleventh grade: Good girls don’t go past second base.

  Twelfth grade: Good girls don’t get reputations.

  And I did it all. I was the ultimate good girl. I followed the rules, made my mother, my teachers, my high school guidance counselor happy. I wasn’t a problem. I didn’t need attention. I didn’t require energy. I took care of myself. I managed my needs. I was so damn good.

  And it was a mistake. I shouldn’t ever have been good. I should have been bad. I should have broken every rule and made up my own rules and experimented like crazy and spent the summer between high school and college on my back...

  Well, not really. But close. I should have at least messed around. Being a good girl screwed me over.

  To hell with the good girl. I hate her/me right now. I hate reality. I would prefer to return to fantasy.

  I need some fantasy because I can’t be divorced. I can’t be the person who is sending out little apology notes so soon after the wedding thank-yous. I can’t be the person who is stopped on the street by the second cousin of the soon-to-be ex-husband, who says, “We’re just so surprised, Holly. It doesn’t seem like you. You were the last person we ever thought would do this.”

  And, of course, I just stand there with my stupid tight little smile, trying not to cry, trying not to shout, Do you really think you’re helping things? Do you think I like being me right now?

  Finally my survival instinct kicks in, and I can breathe again. I exhale and inhale while I’m trying to get a grip.

  Why do I call him? Do I like pain? Do I need pain? Is there any reason to continue torturing myself like this?

  I might as well take a whip and beat myself. I’d probably get as much enjoyment. There’s an idea. Holly Bishop’s Guide to Self-Flagellation.

  Suddenly I have to know how bad it is. Not just the relationship with Jean-Marc, but everything, all of it. My body. My life.

  I strip off my robe, stand stark naked in front of the mirror, and look. And look. And what I see isn’t exactly pretty. There’s a lot more of hips and thighs than I remember, and I’ve grown a stomach where there never was one. Happily the breasts are bigger, but so is the roll on my ribs where my bra strap would hit.

  The knees still look good. The shins and calves are reasonably shapely. Shoulders are fine. Upper arms rather heavy, but the forearms are presentable. I need some work, but the body is salvageable.

  (There’s no point in being too hard on me. It’s going to take time to get in shape—can’t hate myself forever.)

  Resolution: Stop eating so much crap.

  Resolution #2: Start getting more exercise.

  In fact, why not start getting more exercise right now?

  Push-ups. Right here. Right now. I drop to the floor. Let’s do ten.

  I manage two.

  That’s okay. Let’s finish them off girl-style. By seven I think my arms are going to fall off. I roll over onto my back, start my crunches. I heard somewhere that basketball great Karl Malone does a thousand crunches every day—surely I can do fifty.

  Or forty.

  By twelve my abs are burning. By sixteen I know I’m scaling back my goal. Forty was a little ambitious. I’m just starting out. I have to be practical.

  I die at twenty.

  Reaching for my robe; I cover up, enthusiasm waning a little. It wasn’t a great start for the rest-of-my-life fitness program, but it’s a start.

  And that’s the key thing.

  I shower, dry off, avoid the mirror. Diet plans always say to avoid the scale and mirror in the early weeks of any new program (I’m sure they said the mirror, too), and in my favorite ratty winter pajamas—we wear the flannel winter stuff year-round in the city—-I head to the kitchen, open the freezer, look at the carton of Dreyer’s Rocky Road Light (not Chunky Monkey, Olivia). I know I shouldn’t have ice cream. Even the light stuff isn’t on the diet plan. But ice cream isn’t really crap food. It’s dairy. Calcium. Protein. Strong bones. Helps with sleep.

  I eat right out of the carton. Three bites. Four. I should stop. I really only need a taste. Anything mo
re than a taste is just empty calories, and the experts say it’s the sensory we’re wanting when we eat anyway. The texture. The flavor. The oral need. One bite and we should have met that need.

  But I don’t seem to have met the need yet.

  Just a couple more bites. Let me just get a couple of extra marshmallows (I love marshmallows), and with my mouth full of nuts and ice cream and sticky marshmallows I see myself the way others would see me: wet-haired Holly standing at the fridge with the freezer door still open, ice-cream carton clutched to her flannel-covered breast, right knuckles smeared with melted ice cream, cheeks packed, stretched, eyes glazed. And I’m appalled.

  I’m no better than an animal. It’s disgusting. I have two sets of dishes—everyday Mikasa and my gorgeous Rosenthal—and I still can’t use a bowl?

  I take one more bite and hurriedly put the ice-cream carton away. Feeling very guilty at the moment. All those good intentions are already out the window.

  No. It’s okay. You’ve had a momentary lapse, a stumble, but not a big fall. I’m back on the diet plan. I’m serious about losing weight.

  In fact, I’m going to do three more push-ups right now.

  On the kitchen floor I squeeze them out: one... twooooo... thhhhhrree.

  Back on my feet, I dust off my hands because the floor is surprisingly dirty, and glance around the kitchen.

  It crosses my mind that I really need a roommate. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing push-ups for. I’m so lonely I’ve become my own source of entertainment.

  Holly beats herself.

  Holly needs a life.

  At least Jean-Marc was company. One of the advantages of sticking together almost a year despite knowing he didn’t want me anymore (besides being able to keep the wedding stuff) was not being alone. But now I am alone. In the kitchen.

  I’m suddenly so tired.

  My kitchen is so quiet. The street noise doesn’t reach the back of the apartment, and I can’t even hear Cindy’s music tonight. It’s just me. Me alone with my thoughts.

  How did I get here? Moving truck, yes. But how did I get to be twenty-five and divorced? I don’t even remember ever dating.

  Slowly I put the tea kettle on the stove, grab a box of herbal mint tea from the cupboard, and sit down at the cute table by the window to wait for the kettle to boil.