Still, it had to be good news to find that the mysterious man with a camera was leading a movement that advocated giving up treasured personal belongings. “Such as photo albums?” Secrest wondered hopefully. And that he further rejected money and power. Such a person surely would have no interest in the princess or her secret. That is what Secrest argued, and we all more or less agreed.
But Secrest could not relax. I think on some level, she suspected that something was up. She had picked up on the reckless romance that charged the air around Raphael and Isabella—or was it the air around Isabella and Geoffrey? The air definitely seemed charged with danger when the princess was with either man. I did not fully appreciate this at the time, and I see it clearly only in retrospect. I thought then that I was suffering from a mood disorder, which I attempted to treat with organic herbs, various stretching exercises, and, on the advice of Princess Iphigenia, an enema or two (I found this unpleasant).
In those days, Secrest often took me with her on official shopping trips. She said that it made for less lonely travel and that she appreciated what she not very delicately called my “common perspective” on the venture. “I must know,” she said, “how the princess will be perceived by the lower classes.”
What I could actually perceive was the inside knowledge of Geoffrey’s latest advice—prints or solids, studs or dangling earrings, bracelets or rings. There was an ever-changing and exhaustive list, often but not always loosely associated with some Springsteen song.
And I do mean loosely. You should have seen the incredulous look on the prince’s face when Geoffrey used the song “Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own” to suggest to Isabella a summer of sundresses with rickrack trim. “How positively precious,” the prince said. (That was not a compliment.)
Even at her best, Secrest had trouble keeping all of Geoffrey’s rules straight, and by the time she reached the latter months of her pregnancy, she was in no mood to even try. I would step in then, helping her sell Isabella on items the princess was unsure about.
(I don’t know why I did this. I had never been particularly fond of Secrest and was, in those days, even less so. Her pregnancy had filled me with petty envy, since I had not been so blessed myself after many years of marriage.)
“I know you’re trying to avoid shawls,” I would say to Isabella after Secrest bought several different styles, not knowing that Geoffrey had banned that look without even a pretense of a lyrical connection. (Geoffrey had experienced a childhood trauma when wearing an older sister’s hand-me-down, which his mother had told him was a cape but which his playground friends immediately recognized as a girl’s shawl.)
“But this,” I would say, borrowing on my mother-in-law’s strategy and showing the princess one of Secrest’s purchases in a confident way, “is really more of a drape.”
“A drape?” Isabella would purse her lips, looking reluctant but intrigued. She had been disappointed when Geoffrey vetoed shawls, which she thought were pleasingly theatrical.
“Well, if you’re sure it’s not a shawl . . .” Isabella would pause and appear to think for a moment. “I mean, obviously, it’s not. There’s no fringe involved. A shawl always has fringe, doesn’t it? That’s practically the definition of a shawl—the fringe lining.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I’d say, although I thought she was wrong. “And this goes so well with the dangly earrings you’re wearing this season.”
Suddenly, she’d be sold. Secrest would roll her eyes and knit her brows in an exasperated way.
On the last shopping trip I made with Secrest before her maternity leave, she grilled me over and over about just what level of celebrity radio personalities enjoy in America, and whether or not Isabella’s association with Jimmy Bennett could be passed off as the innocent glad-handing required of any member of the royal family.
“She wasn’t a member of the royal family then,” I reminded Secrest. “And Jimmy Bennett wasn’t yet a radio personality.”
I said this as if I were trying to make Secrest feel better, but of course I knew it would make her feel worse, and I delighted in the way she tsked and tutted and fretted about it. After I realized that Secrest had in her mind some sort of sordid photo of an intimate nature, I stepped it up a notch. “But ultimately,” I said with a bored sigh, “I suppose it depends on just how glad her hands seem.”
This always caused Secrest to gasp, pat her pregnant belly, stare out the window of the stretch Bisba, and murmur to herself.
Needless to say, Secrest was fixated on what the proper course of action would be. Should the princess let sleeping dogs lie in their remote African camp, or should she reach out, clarify the status of things, see if a small gift of camels and donkeys could keep Jeb happy and remove any temptation he might feel to leave Africa someday.
“On the other hand,” Secrest said, rooting through the size-six racks for tight jeans, another (more literal) suggestion from the “Ricky” song, “maybe we don’t want to give this Jimmy any ideas.”
Ultimately, she decided the princess should leave Jimmy/Jeb alone, a piece of advice she passed along from her hospital bed a few hours after giving birth. (Isabella had called to congratulate her, but Secrest launched into the Jeb question as if the previous twenty hours of labor had never happened.) Isabella listened, agreed, and thanked Secrest for her sound reasoning. She vowed to put the whole matter out of her mind. “By the time you’re back from your leave,” the princess said, “I’ll have forgotten about the whole thing.”
But that wasn’t true.
For Isabella and Raphael were well into planning their fanciful escape and figuring out where they would each live during their separation. While Secrest was off singing lullabies, Jimmy Bennett’s camp in Africa kept crossing Isabella’s mind.
“Jimmy was a kind chap,” she said to Rafie. “He was always picking up stray pets and giving rides to homeless people. I’m sure he’d take you in for a few months.”
I saw Geoffrey suppress a smile at that. Did Isabella realize she’d just compared her husband, a prince, to stray pets and homeless persons? Did Raphael? I don’t know. But I could tell Geoffrey realized it. And appreciated it.
Regardless of whether the prince noticed the insult, he certainly noticed the suggestion that he slip off to hide in a miserable desert camp. He did what royal people always do when they’re trying to avoid saying what they really think. They ask questions.
That’s why if you ever see members of the royal family in the midst of a parliamentary protest they don’t want to involve themselves in, you’ll hear them say, “What sort of poster board did you construct your signs with?” Or “Have you read that new book on the history of demonstrations? The National Times gave it a stellar review.”
So in full royal mode, Rafie asked every possible question you can imagine about Jimmy Bennett and eventually retrieved every trace of information Isabella knew about her former classmate, from the model of the car he drove at Yale to the history of his habit of whistling a lot. (It was a ner-vous tic left over from a childhood in which he spent long road trips attempting to drown out his sister’s singing.) Finally, Rafie asked some pedestrian question, the precise wording of which I’ve long forgotten, that prompted the princess to say, “Oh no, dear, Jimmy wasn’t from Connecticut, he was from Green Bay. You know that little town with the big American football team. He hated it there. Said if you ever wanted a good place to hide, that was it. Claimed Elvis Presley was still alive and jogging about the streets there, unnoticed.”
Raphael smiled broadly like a man who had stumbled upon an excuse to send his wife off to the store just before a play-off match was being broadcast. “Well, then,” he said, “that sounds like the place I ought to hide.”
And before Isabella knew it, her husband was holed up in Green Bay, and she was headed for Kenya.
Chapter 25
Six months after arriving at Jeb’s camp, I was singing lullabies myself. Jeb’s camp was destined to become Milo’s birthplace,
and she was immediately the most adorable person there. Babies always have beautiful crinkly faces, adorable toes, and the most wonderful yawns. But Milo was particularly distinctive, being born with especially wise eyes, exceptionally soft skin, and an extraordinarily full head of dark curly hair.
Once I saw her, I knew that perfect baby girl could handle the name Geoffrey had dreamed of for a son. Isabella agreed, which surprised me, given the Bisbanian bias toward feminine names that end with an “a.” “Oh yes,” she said to me moments after the birth. “She will make a lovely Milo.”
During the christening, Jeb pronounced the name Mi-lo, stretching it out and thus emphasizing the two syllables. Not that they needed emphasis. To the ears of Jeb’s followers, all of whom had followed Jeb’s example and shortened their names, Milo was a lengthy, jaunty, extravagant waste of syllables. So I think it puzzled them when Jeb seemed to absolutely delight in the name, rolling it around on his tongue, laughing at it like an indulgent, patient parent.
Many of the camp’s later arrivals assumed that Jeb was Milo’s father. I was insulted by the suggestion, and a snobbish, ugly spirit would overtake me, causing me to curse the place that had offered me nothing but hospitality. “Milo was, thank you very much, conceived in a castle by parents with clean fingernails,” I wanted to say, “not in some dumpy desert camp out of a sordid affair between dirty wretches like us.”
I never actually said that. Instead, I would merely report matter-of-factly that Milo’s father died in a plane crash a few weeks before I came here, six months before her birth. But my temptation to point to Milo’s grander roots, even though I did not yield to it, shamed me at the time and troubles me even now. It goes against everything I say I believe about the basic equality of all people, the inherent rights of all children, no matter the circumstances of their birth.
But I held fiercely to those private thoughts, the spirit of which is arguably the motivation even now for writing this book. It seems to make no sense. Such hostility for a place that had offered me nothing but sanctuary. Such sneering at a place that I had chosen as home.
I guess becoming a mother does these things to you. You spend all your young adulthood cursing capitalism and proclaiming your lack of interest in material wealth, but you still want your baby to believe in Santa and to have presents spilling out from around the tree in a lavish display of luxury. You say looks don’t matter, and yet you beam when someone compliments your baby’s smile. Parenthood prompts not only unconditional love but petty pride.
I thought Milo was special, and I thought perhaps that pointing to a special start in life proved it. Although I never said that to the people in Jeb’s camp. I never even said it to Milo, who did not, I’m embarrassed to say, get many explanations out of me. A child should know something about her family heritage, I suppose, but Milo does not. I never wanted to talk about it. Not in any specific way.
Except for one time when Milo was not yet two. It was the day Isabella left Jeb’s camp. Rafie’s parents, the queen and king, had been begging her to come, and I had sealed the deal with my fake Springsteen quote.
By that time, Isabella had won over all but the most skeptical of Jeb’s followers. She quit talking about penance and talked about peace. She volunteered for more than her share of the kitchen duties. And she became quite a handy seamstress, making clothes for herself and many of the rest of us. (The haphazard look of the wool dress she wore to Bisbania should be blamed on poor sewing tools, not on Isabella’s skills.) She sometimes even watched Milo for me, cooing and carrying on with such gusto that the other camp members would gather to watch and laugh with her.
(When all else failed to calm Milo’s colicky phases, Isabella would twirl about the hut, shouting “coochie-coo” and flapping her hands above her head like some sort of mad pigeon. Her hips somehow seemed to swivel in the opposite direction of the twirling. It was an entirely ridiculous workout and, if ever videotaped, would have either ruined Isabella’s reputation forever or launched a new line-dance craze. “You could call it the ‘E Street Shuffle,’” I said once, more glibly than I intended. Isabella looked at me sadly, and I realized that for the first time in her life, she might understand what Geoffrey and Springsteen had been saying about the less-than-graceful steps people take in life.)
So despite her rough start at the camp, Isabella was quite popular by the time she left, and her send-off from Kenya was marked with as much fanfare, in the camp’s own way, as her return to the castle generated back at home. There were hugs and tears, and Jeb sang a little song. Isabella worked the crowd with all her old regal flare, conveying to each camp member that he or she was surely the one who would be missed the most.
I remember Isabella gave Milo at least seven goodbye kisses. As she bent to kiss the child, I remember thinking not only that Isabella still had her regal posture, but if any of us had a camera, we could prove again why photographers love her. She never looked so beautiful as when she was miserable. And she did seem miserable as she kissed Milo and wished us all farewell.
Milo was oblivious to the sadness, concentrating on giving an adorable baby wave and asking an adorable baby sentence: “Where go? Where go?”
I answered with the absolute truth, using familial words that my little baby had not heard before and wouldn’t hear again and could not possibly remember.
“She’s going to see your grandparents in a castle,” I said. “And then she’s going to live with your daddy.”
Chapter 26
So that, I guess, is the one thing you did not see coming. My child is the heir to the throne. My child’s father is His Royal Highness the Prince of Gallagher. By all rights, I should hold the title last held by ol’ Reggie herself. May she rest in peace. I should be the Queen Mother.
But I suppose such a title would never be given the likes of me, a tawdry American scribbler who was once married to castle help. That is fine. I do not desire the title nor the respect and certainly not the fame. I have always felt uncomfortable being the center of attention—at a graduation dinner, a surprise birthday party, a farewell gathering in the office on the last day of a job. At showers, I always felt sorry for the bride or the expectant mother, never envying the moment in the spotlight even as I envied the stage of life that had brought them to the moment. Though I didn’t need to worry about the latter, as there were no baby showers for me, of course.
I did receive a few gifts, however. Isabella herself sewed a surprisingly soft camel-hair baby blanket while we were at the camp. “You can’t wrap a baby in the scratchy stuff we wear,” she said. And when I eventually returned to Bisbania, she set me up with a high-end Italian stroller, the same model that Isabella’s sister, Lady Fiona, had famously used for her son and was always bragging about in interviews for parenting magazines. “She’s very particular, my sister,” Isabella said. “So this stroller must really be the bee’s knees.”
But it was Lady Fiona’s nanny, not the lady herself, who took Isabella’s nephew on walks, and I’m sure the nanny struggled as much as I did to maneuver the luxurious, yacht-sized stroller on the narrow, crowded sidewalks of Gallagher. I needed a lighter, more nimble baby mover, if I needed anything at all. After all, Milo was old enough to get around by herself most of the time. The stroller gift, in other words, made me feel awkward and uncomfortable on many different levels.
You’re not surprised about my discomfort, I’m sure. And knowing all that you do, you will also not be surprised that the most difficult episode in my relationship with Isabella involved a rivalry over a man. You may be surprised to learn that the man in question was neither her husband nor mine.
The episode took place about three years after those eventful months in which Geoffrey died and Raphael’s daughter was born. It occurred during a summer trip that little Milo and I made to visit Isabella and Rafie in Green Bay.
As you know, most of Princess Isabella’s iconic reputation was made during the so-called Green Bay years. People older than I used to compare this ph
enomenon to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, who made the jump from run-of-the-mill celebrity to international icon only when she had lost her obvious claim to fame and attempted, or at least gave the appearance of attempting, to live an ordinary life.
In the same way, Isabella’s life as a princess seems now to a lot of people like so much backstory. Now, when most people think of Isabella, they picture a wiry, dignified-looking woman wearing somber brown clothes—or, in the words of the fashion writers, “molasses and oatmeal-colored” clothes—and living out a (relatively) modest life in the Wisconsin woods.
But she lived that modest life with so much gusto! She was an active, dynamic, perpetual-motion machine. All those photos of Isabella plowing in the community garden or taking library classes on the latest in wiring your home for wireless home management made an impression on people. She took up golf and learned to yodel in the fine tradition of American cowboys. (“I suppose the alpine yodeling style is good for the Europeans,” she famously said to Yodeling Monthly, building up to what I believe was a calculated compliment to her new continent. “But no one belts it out like a buckaroo.”)
At first Raphael was a bit puzzled by Isabella’s lengthy list of pursuits. Hadn’t they planned to while away their time cuddling on the sofa and putzing around the house? But by the time Isabella’s interest had turned to blacksmithing and she had built her own forge, Raphael had grown rather proud of her mushrooming interests and skills. He marveled that his wife could, even while living miles away from a major media market and even after officially giving up her royal title, still influence people the globe over. Women around the world, you see, were admiring how the princess looked in her blacksmithing goggles and saying, “Oh, all right, maybe I should at least take a needlework class.”
In that sense, Isabella became a new sort of icon, the sort that women would look to for inspiration when going through a midlife crisis. And not just the sort of crisis solved by heading off to the gym. That least of all. Women with grown children would suddenly take up painting. Or ballet. Or start learning to cook Thai dishes. Or—why not?—speak Thai.
Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Page 17