The Frog Prince

by Jane Porter

  “Yes.” And Paul is suddenly mollified. You can almost see his ruffled feathers smoothing. “I had a reservation for seven and—”

  “What time did you arrive, sir?”

  Paul’s look of satisfaction fades somewhat. “Seven.”

  “You were here together at seven?”

  “No. I was here. My... date... was running late.”

  “I see. And did we not have a table available for you?”

  “You did. It’s back there somewhere,” and Paul gestures to the wall at the back. “But I don’t want to sit back there. I want a center table. It’s what I requested when I made the reservation.”

  “Table thirty-seven,” the hostess murmurs, having returned. She leans across the podium, pointing to the diagram of the restaurant interior.

  The older man nods. “There isn’t the center table available, but we’ve a lovely table for you waiting, and we can seat you right now if you’d like.”

  “Yes. Well...” Paul swallows, looking far from comfortable. “Okay.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The manager takes the two menus from the hostess. “If you’ll come this way,” he says, and leads us to our table. Table 37. Right in the middle of the long wall, right where Paul didn’t want to be.

  Paul hesitates at the table as the manager waits silently, expressionlessly. This is what he does for a living. He can wait all night if necessary.

  “Where would you like to sit?” I ask Paul, desperately ready to move beyond the seating stage of dinner. I hate tension—avoid conflict like the plague—and I can’t bear to continue in this vein.

  Paul shrugs. “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll sit on the booth side, then,” I offer, and I slide carefully between tables and settle into the booth, the seat sinking slightly.

  Paul sits in the chair opposite me. The table’s small, we’re practically touching, and the restaurant is beginning to fill up. The hostess seats a couple on one side of us. The middle tables are virtually full.

  As I pick up my menu, Paul mutters, “I can’t sit here.”

  I look up at him. “Why not?”

  “I can’t face the wall. I always sit with my back to the wall. I have to be able to see the door. I have to see who’s coming and going.”

  If I had known Paul was going to be such a pain in the ass, I would never have agreed to dinner. “Would you like to switch places with me?”

  “Yes.”

  I get up and give the hostess an apologetic smile as I have to squeeze past the couple she’s now trying to seat on the other side of us. And now Paul’s squeezing past the couple, and it’s a four-way traffic stop with everyone backing up, moving forward, turning a corner, sitting down.

  It’s a damn production, and I’m roiling on the inside, but I take his chair. His chair is hard. And warm. For some reason that gives me the creeps. I suppose if I liked him, if I were more attracted, it’d be a nonissue, but right now, thinking of my butt sitting where his butt has just been is making me feel a little squirmy.

  But Paul’s still not happy. “Now you’re too tall.”

  I look across the table, try to avoid my reflection in the big mirror running behind Paul’s head. “What?”

  “Can you scrunch down a little?”

  I smile, but I feel peculiar on the inside. I’m not understanding. Something’s happening, and I don’t understand what it is.

  “People are going to think I’m short.” He’s talking again, probably because I’m just staring at him, my mind blank, my face blank, unable to process anything.

  “People will think you’re taller than me,” and he’s still talking. His mouth is moving, and I’m watching his mouth, thinking this is weird, he’s so weird, but I can’t seem to say or do anything. “But you’re not taller than me, Holly. I’m taller than you.”

  “I know. And nobody is going to think that.”

  He gives a little bounce on the bench, and yes, okay, he is rather low, but he’s no lower than I was, and I never worried about who was taller or shorter.

  “I can’t sit this low.” He bounces on the bench again, up and down in his black “Sprockets” turtleneck, and with his pale hair combed all the way off his forehead, I feel as if I were in a German postmodern play. Abruptly he leans across the table, tries to get the attention of another unfortunate busboy. “Yeah, hi,” Paul says as the busboy approaches. “I’m too low. I can’t sit this low.”

  The busboy stares at Paul and then me, uncomprehendingly, but I say nothing, too fascinated with my glass of ice water.

  “I need something to sit on.” Paul’s voice carries, and I slink lower in my seat, knowing that people are going to think Paul is my boyfriend. They’re going to think we’re together, because, well, we’re together, and that’s humiliating, so I practice detaching myself from my body and floating above the restaurant.

  “I need something to sit on,” Paul repeats, and I’m no longer floating anywhere but crashing back into our table headfirst.

  Something he can sit on? Like what? A booster seat?

  “You want something to sit on?” The busboy repeats haltingly. He doesn’t speak English as a first language, either, and I curse Paul silently for putting young immigrant males through this torture with me.

  But Paul’s pleased. He’s been heard. “Exactly!”

  The busboy leaves, and Paul looks at me, hands folded on the table. “We’re going to get this fixed.”

  Oh, yes, we will. And my thought is that I’m just going to stand up and leave—I don’t owe him an explanation; I can just go—but before I can move, the manager returns with the busboy in tow.

  “What seems to be the problem?” the manager asks.

  Paul bounces on the seat once, twice. “I can’t sit here. I’m too short. I can barely see over the table.”

  “Why don’t you change places?” the manager suggests with exaggerated politeness, pointing to me.

  Paul shakes his head. “My back would be to the door.”

  I glance down at the napkin in my lap and think calming thoughts.

  “So what do you want me to do?” the manager says.

  “Don’t you have something I can sit on?” Paul holds his hands up, showing a good twenty inches of space. “You know, something tall?”

  “Like what?”

  “Phone books.”

  “You want to sit on phone books?”

  “Three or four.”

  The couples on either side of us are listening. They’re not even trying to hide their interest. Both couples, one young and chic and the other older and silver, are following the discussion now.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the manager answers, “but we don’t have phone books.”

  “You have to have phone books. Every restaurant has phone books.”

  “But not for people to sit on.”

  “I just need—”

  “No.”

  Paul flushes. “You have to have something in the back. Something I could use.”

  “And what do you suggest?” The manager’s voice drips ice.

  Paul glances around, his gaze traveling across the restaurant, over the tables, the linens...

  “Napkins. Towels. Something like that.”

  If I were boneless, I’d slide beneath the table right now.

  “You’d like towels,” drawls the manager.

  “Or tablecloths.”

  “Tablecloths.”

  “Yes, tablecloths,” Paul repeats stiffly. “If you don’t mind.”

  The manager bows and walks away. I lower my menu. Paul glowers at me, and I rise. I’ve had it, absolutely had it, and I want to be polite and find a cordial way to make my escape, but before words leave my lips, two busboys return with a stack of tablecloths, still wrapped in plastic from the cleaners.

  “Wonderful!” Paul enthuses, as if this were entirely normal. I stand next to our table as he takes half the tablecloths, places them on the bench, sits down, tests the tablecloths, and then stands
and takes three more.

  And that’s when I go. I don’t even say a word. I can’t. Holding my coat and purse close to my body, I run from the restaurant and all the way to my car as if the devil himself were chasing me.

  That was horrible, horrible, and I will never, ever endure another bad date—or rude man—just because I’m supposed to be a nice girl.

  I’m not that nice.

  God help me, I’m honestly not that nice.

  I’m so upset driving home—upset with Paul, upset with Tom, upset with me—that I can hardly see straight.

  By the time I reach my apartment, I crack, absolutely crack, and do the worst thing possible, I pick up the phone and make the absolutely worst kind of call.

  A call of need, a call of desperation.

  I phone Jean-Marc. Late on a Friday night, no less. Even worse, he picks up.

  Jean-Marc is quiet on the other end of the line, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far, said too much, sounded too broken, too exposed, too pathetic.

  I know the worst mistake is ever to need too much, and yet I need too much.

  This much I know.

  I’m the way I am because I feel so hollow, and the only way to fill the emptiness is by getting something.

  Something like attention. Something like warmth. Something like... love.

  I’ve read all the magazines and books you’ve read, watched the same TV shows, too. I know what the experts and talk show doctors say. No one will ever love me the way I need to be loved. No one will ever want me the way I want. No one will ever give me everything, so I’ve got to do it for myself. I have to like myself more. Have to love myself so no one else will ever have to do that job.

  But I want someone to do that job. I want someone who will find it not a job but a pleasure. Someone who will want me, like me just because I’m likable.

  “Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t call anymore.” Jean-Marc sounds quiet, distant, so coolly, completely detached. I say nothing. I’m pressing my nails into the palms of my hands. Not call? “I don’t—” My voice breaks. He hasn’t been a proper lover, proper husband, proper anything at all, but he’s still somehow important. Significant.

  He ties me to a life I don’t have anymore, the life I’d thought I wanted, the life I thought I was getting.

  “It’d probably be better,” he says, and I wonder how he could say that. Better for whom?

  Him?

  And I see him—us—on our first date, the beautiful French restaurant, the champagne he’d ordered, and me sitting there smiling like a fool as the bubbles rose up inside me, dancing in my head even as the bubbles fizzed and popped out of my flute onto the back of my hand. It was magic: the place, the night, the dreams.

  I even remember what I wore—a turquoise silk blouse, black leather, pants, something sparkly at my ears—and I felt just as sparkly on the inside, felt beautiful and together as if the world were my oyster.

  “You don’t want me to call anymore.”

  “I just don’t think it helps. You always get upset and I—”

  I hang on his words, wondering, hoping, wanting him to finally say something that will help, something that will make sense.

  “You’re using me as a crutch,” is what he does say. “But I can’t help you adjust. I can’t help you through this.”

  “Why not?” And this time I can’t keep the anger to myself. “Why not, Jean-Marc? You helped make this.”

  He makes a rough sound in his throat, very guttural, very French. I’ve heard my favorite French actors do this, and they sound intelligent, gorgeous, sexy, but it makes me see red now.

  “You are a part of this,” I say, and I’m practically shouting. “You married me. Whether you like it or not. You walked me down the aisle. You said the words ‘I do.’ You put the ring on my finger—”

  “Only because you wanted me to.”

  I grab for air, mouth opening wide.

  “You pushed,” he continues, his voice bitter, more bitter than I’ve ever heard before. “You pushed and pushed and there you are, living in my house, sleeping in my bed, and what was I to do? Hmm? Tell me, Holly, what was I to do?”

  Love me. Be glad I was in your house, sleeping in your bed.

  My eyes sting, and I look away, can’t focus, turn my head the opposite direction, trying to escape the pain inside me. I did this. I did this. I did this.

  But how?

  “I loved you,” I say at last, and the words are almost • laughable between us. What the hell does “love” mean? What the hell does love do?

  “Holly, you’re a good girl, a sweet girl, but I didn’t ever...” He sighs. “Cherie, I didn’t love you.”

  Oh. It was bad the first time, but it’s no better this time. No, not at all. “You said you did,” and my voice comes out small, and I sound no better than a kid. Hurt, disillusioned—this isn’t the me I want to be.

  He’s not saying anything, and for a minute there’s just this awful silence and emptiness, and I know this place. I know this feeling well.

  “You wanted me to love you,” he continues. “You wanted something I didn’t have, something... I don’t know... something I just couldn’t give you.”

  “So it—we—were just sex?” Not that the sex lasted very long, either.

  “And friendship.”

  Fuck. You.

  I’m seething. Raging. The friendship was obviously lacking, and for your information, the sex wasn’t that good.

  “We made a mistake.” Jean-Marc, who never wanted to talk, can’t seem to shut up now. “So we’re fixing it.”

  Leaving me is his idea of fixing.

  Jean-Marc must have gone to Dad’s class, Abandonment 101: Agony for the Whole Family.

  “I won’t call again,” I say, but I don’t want to say the words, don’t want to make anything so final, so definitive. Like death, I think.

  Or divorce.

  But that’s what this is. And the realization slams into me, swift, harsh—divorce.

  Finished. Kaput. Over. Dead.

  “Take care, Holly.”

  Is this it, then? It’s really over, the final tie cut, the relationship truly dead and buried?

  I want to say his name; I want him to be kind; I want warmth, but I can’t tell him what I want, can’t humiliate myself again with what I need.

  “Be happy,” he adds, and before I can say “Good luck, good-bye,” he’s hung up.

  The tears want to rush my eyes. There’s a half-scream hanging in my throat. I can’t bear it when people hang up on me, can’t bear it when people walk away from me, can’t bear feeling so helpless. Feeling so...

  Abandoned.

  Thanks, Dad.

  I leave my apartment to keep from dissolving into the mess I tend to be, and walk, and walk. It’s dark, and the cold bites at me, and I should have brought a coat, but maybe it’s better this way, better to keep me icy and alive than warm and fragmented.

  I can’t call him anymore, I think; he’s told me not to call. He’s told me to leave him alone. That’s essentially what he’s saying.

  Stay away.

  Leave me alone.

  I don’t want to deal with you anymore.

  And even though I’m chilly, the tears well up and they fall, but I keep walking up Fillmore, and I wipe the tears as they fall, but I don’t stop walking. I just bundle my arms across my chest and stagger up a hill and down a hill and past the big beautiful houses in Pacific Heights, and back down the street toward Japan Town. I’m so full of missing, so full of loneliness and broken dreams, that I don’t know what to do but walk.

  And walk.

  And walk.

  Missing is the hardest thing I know; missing is so much harder than not thinking and not feeling, and now that I’ve started to feel, I’m afraid to be alone with all my emotions.

  If I knew how to talk to my mom, I’d call her right now. I know she was just here for a weekend with me, but she loved Jean-Marc; she thought he was the answer to everything,
thought he’d whisk me away, save me from myself. And yet here I am—alone and single again and not quite certain that I can take care of myself despite all my indignant assertions.

  But of course she’d think Jean-Marc was the answer. She’s the one who craves the fairy-tale ending even more than I do. She’s the one who believes it’s a man who will, and must, save us... that women need to be rescued, as if we were all helpless, fragile maidens locked in towers and dungeons or lying asleep, poisoned.

  Rapunzel had to let down her ridiculously long hair so the prince could climb up it and free her.

  Cinderella needed a fairy godmother and glass slippers for Prince Charming to save her from a life of misery.

  Snow White needed not just one but a bunch of little men—seven, to be exact—to protect her until the prince could stumble through the woods and discover said maiden, unconscious and waiting for him. A gift offering on ice.

  No, can’t call Mom, can’t tell her what I’m feeling, or let her close to my pain. I don’t think she knows what to do with pain. She doesn’t even know what to do with her pain. For God’s sake, she’s fifty-five and sleeping on the living room couch in front of the TV every night!

  I lost my husband and I lost my dad, and in so many ways I lost my mom, too.

  The losses, added up like that, are rather horrifying, and there seems to be a pattern here, and the pattern requires examination, but that’s the one thing I can’t do. I’m afraid to pull out a mirror and inspect all my flaws and wounds. I’m scared. What if I’m not a real human being after all?

  What if I’m an alien?

  A two-headed monster from Mars? Something from one of those old sci-fi films I used to watch at the Tower Theater in Fresno back in high school?

  I bundle my arms across my chest. It’s colder, and I’m chilled all the way through. My teeth have begun to chatter, and the chattering teeth have helped dry up my tears.

  I make another turn, climb another hill, and return to my neighborhood.

  I reach the café where I went to breakfast a couple of weeks ago and order a cup of decaf cappuccino, and I sit at a table by the window with my grande cappuccino and stare down into the oversize cup. The tears are so close to the surface but there’s no one to call, no one to tell. I’ve spent too much time trying to be okay; I don’t know how to ask for help.