This way of handling the funeral, Rafie noted while pitching it to his father, would give the occasion a quiet dignity and an understated majesty but would not raise too many uncomfortable questions about why there were more pictures of the royal family taken with Lady Carissa’s casket than had ever been taken of the royal family and Lady Carissa.
The king, oblivious to the tortured history of this advice, took to it immediately and thought it was the soundest suggestion he had heard in a long time. He remarked to the queen, who had been tearfully meeting with her tailor to create a suitably mournful suit for the funeral, that their son had grown into a wise man and, using the cliché that Bisbanian royals always used about a worthy prospective heir, said, “Rafie will keep the throne warm.”
So everyone who knew enough to have an opinion thought that Rafie’s idea about how to handle the funeral was perfect. Except that it was really Isabella’s idea. And except that she would have claimed to Rafie that it was Geoffrey’s idea. But Mae, the only other person to actually discuss the plan with Geoffrey, and who knew him as well as anyone, was not at all convinced that Geoffrey had anything so concrete in mind when he rambled about rich pretenders and poor shirts.
Still, it wasn’t as if he had talked about the lack of satisfying programming on commercial television or the plight of war veterans. He had, for whatever reason, chosen a Springsteen lyric that could, with some effort and creativity, be applied to the situation.
So Mae did not know what to think. Sometimes she thought that her sweet husband was really just a handy mechanic who made bland observations that seemed “wise” only to the extent that Isabella projected her own wisdom into them. But other times Mae thought her husband was crafty and conniving and that he was playing the princess as if she were his puppet. Mae was never sure which she would prefer him to be.
She was at even more of a loss about Isabella. Did the princess not see the way that Geoffrey was, intentionally or unintentionally, manipulating her? Did she not question his merit as an adviser? Did she not think his constant turning to Springsteen lyrics a bit, well, odd?
Apparently, she did not.
For when Geoffrey used the Springsteen song “Cover Me” to suggest that Isabella start wearing summer gloves, Isabella promptly headed for the nation’s fanciest accessory store and purchased every glove they had in stock, which was not many, because summer gloves had been out of fashion for most of the past century. Then she called all the nation’s top designers—and truth be told, a few French ones that the royal family did not care to publicly do business with—and asked for custom-made gloves.
She wore these gloves to luncheons, on shopping excursions, and while making hospital rounds, delighting the photographers by peeling them off finger by finger before shaking hands with the patients. Of course, you know what happened. It brought gloves back from the grave, setting off an unparalleled fashion frenzy that—aided by the increasing worry about UV rays—has not died down yet, all these decades later. Gloves reemerged as a European classic, suddenly becoming a symbol of continental femininity and grace. At first the gloves stopped right at the wrist, but they gradually got longer and longer, reaching to the elbow and beyond even for daytime wear, though old-timers like, well, like the queen, would roll their eyes and sniff and snort and mutter something about strippers.
There is, after all, no way to stop a trend once it’s started. Old glove companies, which had grown resigned to relying on scarves, belts, and lowbrow dickeys for their livelihood, were in demand again, pulling out old patterns and retraining seamstresses on the fine art of finger seams.
Geoffrey’s role as the princess’s somewhat questionable adviser fits into a long tradition. Royal women and presidential wives are always being accused of such nonsense. The czar’s wife had Rasputin, and virtually all the powerful women who came after her were supposedly using tarot-card readers or psychics. But it never worked out for any of them.
So, no matter how vapid Geoffrey’s advice appeared on the surface, you must give him this: It worked for Isabella. Certainly no other famous advisee made so much out of so little as did the Princess of Gallagher, who became an international icon and fashion setter with nothing more than perfectly ordinary looks and the crown of a tiny, out-of-the- way country with a few big horse races, a long fig season, and a reputation for making unreliable but attractive automobiles. No wonder Isabella thought Springsteen lyrics, as filtered through Geoffrey, worked just fine.
If you ever wondered why Isabella and Raphael gave up the tropical vacations that were typical of the royal family, now you know. Springsteen, a New Jersey boy, did not sing much about palm trees. That is why the prince and princess, in the last months of their public life together, were so often seen walking down the aging boardwalks of Bisbania’s touristy cold-water beach neighborhoods, where the royal couple delighted locals and the paparazzi by buying cotton candy, climbing into rusty carnival rides, and taking turns trying to win stuffed animals for each other. Geoffrey called these their Greetings from Asbury Park vacations, a reference to Springsteen’s first album. The queen called them “pure insanity.”
“Does the heir to the throne really need to be hanging upside down?” she would ask. “In public? On something called the Psychedelic Monster, no less?”
Whatever you called the vacations, they were brilliant public relations. The contrast between these low-budget and low-maintenance trips of the Gallaghers and the yachting vacations of the less popular members of the royal family could not have been more stark.
While Isabella had embraced this idea and insisted to Rafie that it was Geoffrey’s stern advice, Mae could not help notice that when the princess had first consulted Geoffrey about vacations, he had actually mentioned another album entirely.
The subject had come up during a lighthearted, casual conversation that the mechanic and the princess shared while sitting on the garage patio, their feet irreverently propped up on a rather amateurish bust of Michelangelo while they sipped what they claimed was iced nonalcoholic raspberry cider but which Mae thought smelled of whiskey. (Her assessment, however, is suspect because she made it from several feet away and from the other side of a partially opened sliding glass door, while she was working on a steamy romance about, of all things, a missionary from Alaska.)
“If we don’t come up with something, Geoff, it’s another fortnight on the yacht for me,” Isabella said. “It’s simply excruciating. The queen arranges nightly domino tournaments.” She sighed and leaned back to examine her carefully manicured pink-painted big toe, which she positioned just below the right eyebrow of Michelangelo. She squinted at it and called out, “Pinkeye!”
Geoffrey and she both laughed at that in a slaphappy, giddy, or perhaps slightly drunk way.
Geoffrey was normally rather protective of the bust, which the castle had accepted from an Italian count while under the mistaken belief that it was a sculpture by Michelangelo, rather than a sculpture of him.
The bust was actually the work of the count’s daughter—if you can correctly describe a project undertaken in art therapy sessions as “work.” When the queen realized the mistake, she ordered the sculpture hidden from her sight forever, an awkward order given that she had signed a legal agreement with the count promising to “prominently display” the bust “for now and as long as King Philippe and his heirs fill the throne.”
The castle advisers solved the problem by placing the bust on Geoffrey’s patio, a decision that was explained to the count in a flowery letter that continually referred to Michelangelo as the “first great mechanic” and described the slab of concrete off Geoffrey’s office as the Garden of Engineering.
Geoffrey loved that, loved talking about “the garden,” and always got angry if visitors leaned on Michelangelo’s likeness or otherwise showed disrespect. But now he put his own big, hairy, calloused toe over the other eye and said, “Corn eye!” He and Isabella both laughed some more, until she leaned her head over on his shoulder and loo
ked up at him in a pleading way.
“Help me, Geoff,” Isabella said with exaggerated drama. “I know you’d never want to vacation with the in-laws.”
A cloud passed over her face then, and she glanced quickly at Mae, sat up straight, and pulled away from Geoffrey. “Nothing personal,” the princess said, smiling weakly to her confidant’s wife. “Any in-laws, I mean—even when they’re honest farm folk like your family.” She looked at Geoffrey, lowered her voice a little, and continued as if she had never uttered the aside to Mae. “It’s inhumane.”
That was when Geoffrey began musing about the Springsteen album Nebraska, which was named after a large and empty American state and which can only be described as a dark and grim collection of tales about unlucky characters who are forever poking dead dogs, chasing outlaw brothers, and using maps as napkins after eating greasy fried food.
Isabella’s giddy mood grew more and more somber, and she stared at Geoffrey as he prattled on. She bit her lip and looked for all the world like she was developing a renewed appreciation for her mother-in-law’s domino tournaments on the yacht. Then, finally, Geoffrey’s monologue ambled up to a point, which was this:
“Of course, Bruce also talked about beach boardwalks.”
“Well,” Isabella said, springing back to life. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, but you know what I always say: ‘The Boss will not let us down.’ I hear Oceanside is delightful this time of year. I’ll ask Secrest to make arrangements—once she gets her head out of the loo.”
(Secrest and the kennel chief were expecting their first child, a blessed event so late in life, but it was proving to be a difficult pregnancy.)
Isabella jumped up and was gone before Geoffrey could finish saying he thought that sounded like a great plan. Mae replayed the conversation over and over in her mind and asked herself many things that I’m sure you can imagine and also asked herself who was really giving the advice.
Isabella directly questioned Geoffrey’s advice only once that I know of. He had suggested she wear a snakeskin suit to a ceremony marking the opening of parliament. This advice would have been suspect enough, even if it had not been gleaned from the lyrics of one of Springsteen’s seedier songs, an early work about street life in America called “The E Street Shuffle.”
The song is populated with a greasy lot of characters—boy prophets, teenage tramps, a riot squad, a man-child, and someone called “Power Thirteen.” Not saints, I’m guessing, and probably not the smartest dressers either.
Isabella apparently guessed the same. “Snakeskin?” she said, in a higher voice than usual. “An entire suit?” She wrinkled her nose, rubbed her hands along her arms as if imagining the feel of such a thing. She cringed. “I can see, perhaps, a nice pair of shoes.”
She looked at Secrest and Mae. Secrest shrugged skeptically. Mae just looked away.
“Or maybe a handbag,” Isabella offered.
Geoffrey smiled patiently but did not change his advice.
Mae knew Geoffrey had long nursed an inexplicable fondness for “The E Street Shuffle,” a mysterious jumble of words and clichéd nicknames. Mae considered the song positively nonsensical and finally broke the awkward silence by saying so. But Geoffrey relayed Springsteen’s own published explanation that “The Shuffle” was a dance with no set steps—the dance created by people shuffling through life.
Needless to say, this insight, while interesting, did not really convert any of the three women to the merits of snakeskin and did not, truth be told, even elevate the song in their eyes. Isabella, Secrest, and even Mae were not the sort to be sympathetic about that sort of thing. Each was a firm believer in picking up your feet and walking properly. “I fail to see,” Isabella said, “how shuffling could help anyone!”
But even in the face of this dubious counsel, she ultimately did not really argue. She simply looked at Geoffrey for a long time, then sighed. “I’ll talk to my designer,” she said.
That is how Isabella came to parade before the assembled legislators of Bisbania in a dignified cream business suit with a striking rattlesnake skin collar that was tastefully set off with a matching belt, shoes, and handbag. It was not her most celebrated look. It was not featured in splashy photo books about Isabella’s style and it was not mass-produced by the “designers” who specialize in rushing cheap knockoffs into European department stores. But it was, at least, not a complete embarrassment. Most of Bisbania never even knew she wore the thing. After all, when was the last time you watched a parliamentary ceremony?
Geoffrey never confronted Isabella about her rather loose interpretation of his recommendation. At least, he never did that I know of. But I have often suspected they had conversations that did not get back to me.
Geoffrey’s final advice to Isabella was interpreted with similar flexibility. Isabella, weeping and wailing, called Geoffrey home early from a family vacation to help her decide what to wear to the investiture ball, the event during which Princess Gene’s coming-of-age would be celebrated and she would be officially named Her Royal Highness the Princess of South Main Street.
“I was going to wear that stunning red gown by the designer Burlle,” Isabella said, sniffling a little in a message she left on Geoffrey’s phone. “You know, the one with all the beading and the train. But now it turns out that Genia’s wearing red. I can’t look like I’m trying to show up my own sister-in-law. But the queen is wearing orchid, and Rafie hates me in yellow, and the king threatened to remodel our kitchen again if I show up at another event in black. I’m at a complete loss.”
She dispatched Geoffrey to search the Boss’s lyrics for advice. He spent the afternoon with his headphones on and ended the day by humming the song “Tougher Than the Rest,” in which the love interest wears blue. Secrest, recently returned from a twelve-week maternity leave that had failed to soften her up one bit, was certain that Isabella would positively blanch at this advice. Isabella had long sniped about navy as being the boring default color choice of overly sensible royal women who usually desire the slimming effects of dark colors but invariably lack the courage to buck Bisbanian tradition and wear black.
Isabella did not blink at all. Instead, she summoned her bodyguard and had him drive her to Bisbania’s trendiest designer that very afternoon. That is how Princess Iphigenia was outdone at her own investiture ball by her sister-in-law in a quickly designed but dazzling peacock-blue gown.
Isabella’s choice of peacock blue is another bit of crucial evidence in understanding Mae’s questions about Geoffrey’s advice. Peacock blue is barely even blue. “Why’d you wear green?” Geoffrey was overheard asking Isabella.
She just laughed and dragged her hand over his cheek. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s peacock blue.”
“Ah, yes,” Geoffrey said, “when you step out into the light there, I can see what you’re talking about.”
But whatever its color, and whether it was selected because of Geoffrey’s shrewd advice or Isabella’s own fashion sense, it did look breathtaking in the famous photo of Isabella twirling on the dance floor with the president of the United States, her elegant wispy scarf floating behind her.
If you look carefully at the photo of Isabella and the president dancing, you can see Princess Genia, freshly returned from the Canadian school where she’d gotten a degree in Internet publishing. She is sitting forlornly and wondering why exactly she had requested that Isabella not wear red.
(Oh, all right, it’s not obvious from the photo that she is thinking that, but come on, what else would she be thinking?)
That is the famous photo from that night. But another photo taken that night has been largely forgotten, because its significance is understood by few and its place in history is less obvious.
In that photo, which I love and loathe, which repels and attracts me, which I stare at and grow sickened by, Isabella is dancing with an unknown castle mechanic. His hand is resting on her slim back, just below the plunging back line of that stunning “blue” dr
ess. Isabella looks like she is happy and safe and very comfortable, and the car mechanic looks proud and pained and like he senses danger.
In the background is Raphael, who, to the untrained eye, looks merely distracted, as if he is staring off into space. But that is how you read Raphael’s expression when you know that he is a prince, the heir apparent to the throne, and when you think the man in the foreground is just a car mechanic. But knowing what you know now, I think you can understand why I read more into Raphael’s expression, why I see a certain rigid irritation, a cold resentment, a tired worry. Am I imagining it? I don’t know, and certainly no one else does.
For as you must remember, the story of Princess Isabella’s life changed rather dramatically on the morning following Princess Iphigenia’s investiture ball. That is the reason the photograph of Isabella, the apparent future queen, dancing with the young U.S. president in front of the relatively dowdy Princess Iphigenia, became so poignant. Everyone in the world knows the momentous event that happened to the royal family the next morning.
Just a few hours after those lovely ballroom photos were taken, hours after Isabella had seemed to make peacock blue the next hot color, a lowly royal mechanic, Geoffrey Whitehall-Wright, died when the single-engine plane he was piloting plunged into the stormy, icy waters of the predawn Bisbania Sea. Such a sudden, violent, unexpected death of a trusted, albeit low-ranking, castle aide is exactly the sort of thing that tabloids feed on, compose conspiracy theories about, and make up long backstories for.
But Geoffrey’s death got little attention, because the world’s eye was turned that stormy morning to a more important matter. For, as you must realize, His Royal Highness the Prince of Gallagher, the man known everywhere as Prince Raphael, the heir to the Bisbanian throne, was Geoffrey’s passenger.
Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Page 8