Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Read online

  Ever since the marriage, Ethelbald had half expected to find photos of her straddling a motorcycle and French-kissing some long-haired American auto mechanic with a criminal record. When, instead, the “thar she blows” photo appeared, the only surprise was that it wasn’t much worse and much sooner. That’s what he said at the time, and that’s what he believed. He had considered it only a good warm-up for a rocking few decades.

  But—and here is where the tone of the column made a dramatic turn—something had changed. And for the life of him, Ethelbald said, he didn’t know what it was. Sometime in the last year or so, Isabella had become a real fairy-tale princess. The cynical old coot actually used the phrase “real fairy-tale princess.”

  He talked of how she worked tirelessly for charity, how she dressed in plain but pretty pastel suits set off to perfection by the tweaking of the tiniest detail—a thin bejeweled belt, a series of miniature bows down the back, some fine needlework on the bodice. “Her fashion staff reports that she calls this ‘detailing,’” he said. “But photographers call it dazzling.”

  And speaking of photographers, he noted that she never frowned at them even when (he admitted!) they were quite beastly. On St. Teresa of Calcutta Day, Isabella gave blood.

  He could not fault her for not being generous. She was generous with her time, her money, and her smiles. He could not fault her for not being glamorous. She was glamorous. And while it was undoubtedly true that she spent more on her clothes than the average woman in the kingdom, she routinely wore the same clothes several times over—just in stunning new combinations. Consider, he said, the sleeveless cloud-colored shift dress she wore to a children’s ward on Valentine’s Day. Posed with the nurses in modern blue scrubs that day, Isabella in her white dress looked like a sweet, old-fashioned angel of mercy. Florence Nightingale herself could not have been easier on the eyes.

  Then, a couple of months later, when Rafie was speaking to war veterans on the National Day of Remembering, she wore the same dress, this time set off by a tailored jacket with subtle military styling and just enough crimson trim to bring to mind the nation’s naval uniform.

  No matter what Isabella’s clothing allowance actually was, Ethelbald said, the princess had proved herself a fine example to frugal women everywhere who wanted to find sensible but stylish and fresh ways to liven up an old dress. Besides, he noted, the average woman would spend more, too, if she were photographed so often. And if she looked so beautiful in everything she wore.

  In a final flourish, Ethelbald, with no apparent shame, praised Isabella’s good humor and self-deferential quality, applauding her decision to give to an eBay charity auction the goblet she had carried to the Russian baby shower.

  “I thought I’d spend the rest of my career writing about Dizzy Izzy,” he famously concluded. “But the joke is on me, because now ‘I’m Dizzy for Izzy.’”

  Chapter 6

  No one else knows this. But Isabella told me once. She got a faraway look in her eyes, and her voice took on a distant, dreamy—some would even say goofy—quality.

  She told me that, on the night before she was to leave Yale and return home, the buzzer in her room went off. When she heard his voice on the intercom, she realized that she had, in some way, been waiting for that buzz for three years. She didn’t know why he had waited so long.

  They talked for hours, under the stars. She invited him up, but he declined. So they stood there, leaning against his truck, listening to music that drifted down from a fourth-floor dorm room. It seemed to Isabella that the sky was higher that night than it had ever been. She looked up once and felt faint. It seemed, also, like all her thoughts and feelings and insights had never been so fresh and original and profound.

  That is what she said. And since she is not generally inclined to speak about events in such a silly, gushing (dare I say?), romantic way, I can only suppose that is truly the way she felt.

  She said she had always admired Geoffrey’s muscles and laughed at his jokes and appreciated his kindness, but she had never, until that night, noticed—not consciously, at least—that he was this tiny thing. In the garage, he seemed to loom large as he moved about, the master of his environment. But here, she could see that there was, all around him, this huge world: big stone buildings, ancient tall trees. Geoffrey did not seem in control here. He was small and vulnerable. In that moment, he seemed not like someone who kept her car safe and thus her life secure, but like someone who was small and alone and who might need a hug.

  So she hugged him. They hugged for a long time.

  Then they kissed.

  It was not, quite obviously, her first kiss, but it was so tender, sweet, and passionate that it evoked memories of teenage love and shared ice cream and broken curfews. At least that’s what Isabella said it did for her. And I guess hearing her talk this way made me think of those things, too.

  Then Isabella said to Geoffrey, “I’d better be going.”

  Then she said, “Good night.”

  She never knew why she did it. She never knew why she pulled away. Why she didn’t go right on kissing him for hours, following those kisses wherever they led, which would have most certainly not been marriage, but might have been a painfully passionate few months. You know, the sort of relationship with such incredible highs and lows that the whole world seems to spin on the mood of your beloved, where it feels at times like you’ve caught hold of an angel’s wing and it’s burning you up but keeping you so splendidly warm, the kind of relationship that when, years later, happily married and content with your life, you see someone who resembles your old beau on a street in a big foreign city, your stomach churns, though you wouldn’t take him back for a second. I think Isabella considered her failure to climb on for that ride a sign of her emotional immaturity, of excessive, even royal, rigidness.

  But I also think she was too hard on herself. I suspect she realized that it was simply too late. Had Geoffrey knocked on her door and stood in that parking lot even a month sooner, she might have given it a go. If either of them had believed in each other enough to pucker up before they were about to be separated by an ocean, it would have indicated something—some real chance, some real daring.

  But by the time he showed up, her clothes were already in boxes and her roommate was already gone. Isabella and Geoffrey had shared drinks and talks and life philosophies and had stared into each other’s eyes and held that stare for just a bit longer than was comfortable and had flirted and complimented and bantered. But they had lacked the courage to do more.

  As she kissed him there in the parking lot, she knew that their lack of courage was a fatal error, a deal breaker, a sure sign that they had no long-term chance. And given that, she knew that nothing they could do or say or share over a few passionate months could possibly make him mean more to her than he already did.

  They could carry on long-distance and she could suddenly take an interest in getting a doctorate and Geoffrey could thrill her by calling and break her heart by not calling enough and they could soar together and crash together and when it was all said and done, he would still be what he already was, a fond and tender half-regret, a road not fully taken. So she might as well walk away now, without all the dramatics.

  Some practical part of her heart knew that.

  They would not end up together, not because of any differences in class or culture, not because of the distance or her degree. It was far simpler than that. He was a rebel who showed up at doors of women who were leaving. And she was, then, a very good girl who left on the day she was scheduled and did not fiddle with long-distance love. Neither of them could have imagined then that she would someday lead him into the worst trouble of his life.

  So why did they kiss at all? It was so that years later, when Geoffrey said things like “Maybe I was kidding myself” and when she wrote letters that began “Remember me?” they would be only words, uttered in the form of humility. They did not mean anything. He knew he had not been fooling himself. She knew
he remembered her. For there had been that kiss.

  Chapter 7

  You can imagine, of course, what a stir Ethelbald’s “Dizzy for Izzy” column caused at the castle. The queen spun into a tremendous, envious funk, which she did not fully shake for many years. The king was rather relieved that the words were kind, at least, but he was sorely afraid that it would only encourage Her Highness into more high jinks. Prince Raphael was delighted. Sir Hubert was mortified.

  Isabella was scared to death.

  She read it that morning over tea. Her husband handed it to her and told her that though he normally discouraged her from reading the columns, he thought she should see this one. She smiled pleasantly at the end and said, “That’s nice.” But she was thinking that it wasn’t nice at all. It was the most awful thing that had ever happened. Ethelbald Candeloro knows about Geoffrey! she thought.

  Ethelbald, she was convinced, was like a cat batting around the mouse rather than biting its head off. She realized suddenly that she hated Ethelbald. She hated his ugly mustache and she hated his sick grin and she hated the way he was looking up from that column, smugly, as if to acknowledge that he was toying with her.

  It was, she thought, quite apparent. For out of the whole column, one line stood out starkly: “I half expected before the first year was out to find photos of her straddling a motorcycle and French-kissing a long-haired American auto mechanic with a criminal record.”

  Strictly speaking, Isabella knew that this warning, which she was certain it must be, was a bluff. After all, her one kiss with Geoffrey had been leaning against a pickup, not straddling a motorcycle. Besides, it wasn’t a French kiss but a good wholesome Bisbanian kiss, she could assure you of that. Geoffrey didn’t have a criminal record. (That high school marijuana charge would not have been considered criminal in most of Europe.) And she would have noticed if cameras had been sported by any of the dozens of people who had passed them that evening in the dorm parking lot where she and Geoffrey had lingered and talked and hugged and finally kissed. Wouldn’t she have noticed?

  In fact, the only person she particularly remembered passing by that night was Jimmy Bennett, a classmate who was himself leaving—unenthusiastically, it must be said—that same weekend for his home in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He had been entertaining friends for months by loudly lamenting his return home, portraying it as a place so remote in location and so insular in attitude that some of the more cynical townspeople claimed Elvis Presley was living out his waning days there, unnoticed by his neighbors.

  “Trust me,” Jimmy would say, “it’s possible. Elvis could jog up and down the streets of Green Bay every day for years, and no one would notice. They’re an unobservant lot.”

  “Jog?” Isabella would ask. “Wouldn’t Elvis be rather old by now?”

  “They also can’t count,” Jimmy would say.

  Isabella thought Jimmy was a harmless, funny guy, and so she’d never thought much about how he’d seemed to linger longer than strictly necessary that night when he came by to pick up something that Isabella’s roommate had left for him. But now that Isabella was thinking about it, she was beginning to remember a few troubling details. For example, the “something” her roommate had left for him was a camera. Also, the camera was one the roommate and Jimmy had used on a class project—a journalism class project.

  Jimmy had seen her in the parking lot with Geoffrey. Isabella remembered that he’d approached in a hesitant, curious way. She had told him to go on up to the dorm room. She’d probably gestured to the window of her room, three flights up and with a direct line of sight to where Geoffrey’s truck was parked. She’d said that the door was unlocked, that the camera was on the desk. “Help yourself,” she said, and added with a giggle, “Have fun in Green Bay.”

  Jimmy had rolled his eyes and grimaced a little and headed on up. A little later, she saw him leave. At least she thought she remembered that, though she could not say for sure now if “a little later” had been minutes or hours. Time had seemed to stand still that night. And so much had happened in the time since.

  She’d never thought much about Jimmy’s visit before. But after Ethelbald’s column, it was the only thing she could think about. And she didn’t at all like what she was thinking.

  For while the details of the column—the motorcycle, the French kiss, the criminal record—were sufficiently wrong to give her hope, they were sufficiently right to give her pause. It is hard for us to imagine now the terror this struck in poor Isabella’s heart. To an objective observer, it would hardly seem that a photograph of a youthful passionate kiss, even if such a photo suggested more of a relationship than actually existed, would have caused anything more than the slightest, most fleeting embarrassment for the princess. After all, the time she had spent with Geoffrey was while she was single. She and Rafie had not even dated. In fact, during that same time, the prince was often photographed with a bevy of beautiful women on his arm.

  But Isabella’s fear was not the rational fear of a woman who was considering the possible existence of an embarrassing photograph. Isabella’s fear was not that Ethelbald knew her secret actions, but something worse. She feared he knew the secrets of her heart.

  It seems crazy. But from Isabella’s perspective, it was the only possible explanation. A man who openly admitted to loathing her writes a column praising her and dangles in it a sentence that describes her one secret almost perfectly. Was it a warning? A public bid for a photo that he knew must exist? Could it be just coincidence?

  Isabella excused herself, went into her largest closet, and pulled from her safe the only thing of Geoffrey’s she had dared to keep—his first letter. She read it again, closed her eyes, and repeated it, convincing herself that she had memorized it. Then she shredded it. The letter, even if printed in full in Ethelbald’s column, would not have created the faintest stir. No one could have imagined that it meant anything to anyone. It was all froth and bubble. The notion that it had somehow converted the unsuccessful Princess Isabella into the “I’m Dizzy for Izzy” phenomenon would seem preposterous. But Isabella had to do something, and it was the only thing she could think to do: destroy her one physical link to Geoffrey.

  That is the reason the letter does not exist. But I read it a time or two before it was destroyed. So I know what it said:

  Dear Belle,

  Glad to hear from you. Don’t worry about losing touch. I’ve been pretty busy myself, so I know the score. We’ll just do better from now on.

  Dreadfully dull, eh? I know how that is. Same old, same old. Easy or hard, life gets dull if it’s too predictable. That’s when you should kick back, listen to some good tunes, and remember that life is what you make of it. Remember, the Boss will never let you down.

  Will write more later,

  Jeffrey

  P.S. I got married myself. My wife told me to tell you, “Keep your chin up.”

  Chapter 8

  The ramifications of Ethelbald’s column did not end with the torn-up letter. Outside the castle, the column unleashed a frenzy that never really died. You can hear echoes of it still, all these years later, in the commentary about Isabella being one of the “faces of the century.”

  When a longtime royal watcher like Ethelbald writes a column like that, it gets picked up everywhere. The theme was beaten into the ground, and suddenly, there were little feature stories on the news, even in America. The Yale gift shop, I’m told, started selling T-shirts that said, FROMPRESIDENTS TO PRINCESSES, WE PREPARE YOU FOR LIFE. (I think it was some sort of American joke. But you know the way they are. You never can be sure.)

  You’d think it would have become boring—and if there were any complaints, they were from people like my old hot-tub friends, casual, unprofessional royal watchers who rather liked a good scandal now and then. Too much flawless pizzazz gets boring so quickly. “Well, she’s a bit much,” such people would say with a sniff. But then, just in time to save the tabloids, Isabella would manage to stir something up to sell
a few more papers. There was the way she proclaimed often enough and loudly enough that it was sure to be leaked that she wouldn’t be producing grandchildren until King Philippe agreed that her firstborn, be it a boy or a girl, would be next in line to the throne. (The king finally agreed, officially changing the line of royal succession to treat male and female offspring equally.)

  And there was the time when Isabella nearly caused that poor reporter to faint by volunteering during a gardening interview what she thought of the parliament’s move to repeal a long-standing ban on the once traditional Bisbanian “sport” of urban bunny trapping. The sport had become distasteful to almost all the nation’s citizens, and not only because the phrase “bunny trapping” looked so bad in tourism brochures. Let’s just say the traditional traps were about as efficient as the nation’s signature motor cars and thus were considered cruel. Not to mention the unpleasantness of encountering, during a stroll in the park, a not quite successful trapping.

  Still, it was unprecedented for a member of the monarch’s family to take a stand on even such a clear-cut issue. Yet Isabella did so, almost nonchalantly.

  “I know my responsibilities as princess require me to remain removed from politics,” she said, sounding a little sad. “But surely my responsibilities as a person, and a citizen and a Christian, are more important. They require me to speak out on matters that are as simple as right and wrong. And this is wrong for our country on so many different levels.”

  The majority leader, a member of a trap-building family, nearly wept, he was so livid at her statement. He demanded an apology and hinted vaguely that Isabella was not fit to be queen. But his words backfired, as more and more people demanded to know why, exactly, he believed that a person, a citizen, a Christian should not speak about what she believed.