The Princess Bride (4 page)

“Angelica?”

Helen put her finger to her lips and whispered, “It’s her third day on but I think she may be a treasure.”

I whispered back, “What was wrong with the treasure we had when I left? She’d only been with us a week then?”

“She proved a disappointment,” Helen said. That was all. (Helen is this brilliant lady—junior Phi Bete in college, every academic honor conceivable, really an intellect of startling breadth and accomplishment—only she can’t keep a maid. First, I guess she feels guilty having anybody, since most of the anybody’s available nowadays are black or Spanish and Helen is ultra-super liberal. Second, she’s so efficient, she scares them. She can do everything better than they can and she knows it and she knows they know it. Third, once she’s got them panicked, she tries to explain, being an analyst, why they shouldn’t be frightened, and after a good solid half-hour ego search with Helen, they’re
really
frightened. Anyway, we have had an average of four “treasures” a year for the last few years.)

“We’ve been running in bad luck but it’ll change,” I said, just as reassuringly as I knew how. I used to heckle her about the help problem, but I learned that was not necessarily wise.

Dinner was ready a little later, and with an arm around my wife and an arm around my son, I advanced toward the dining room. I felt, at that moment, safe, secure, all the nice things. Supper was on the table: creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, gravy and pot roast; terrific, except I don’t like pot roast, since I’m a rare-meat man, but creamed spinach I have a lech for, so, all in all, a more than edible spread was set across the tablecloth. We sat. Helen served the meat; the rest we passed. My pot-roast slice was not terribly moist but the gravy could compensate. Helen rang. Angelica appeared. Maybe twenty or eighteen, swarthy, slow-moving. “Angelica,” Helen began, “this is Mr. Goldman.”

I smiled and said “Hi” and waved a fork. She nodded back.

“Angelica, this is not meant to be construed as criticism, since what happened is
all my fault
, but in the future we must both try
very hard
to remember that Mr. Goldman likes his roast beef rare—”

“This was roast beef?” I said.

Helen shot me a look. “Now, Angelica, there is no problem, and / should have told you more than once about Mr. Goldman’s preferences, but next time we have boned rib roast, let’s all do our best to make the middle pink, shall we?”

Angelica backed into the kitchen. Another “treasure” down the tubes.

Remember now, we all three started this meal happy. Two of us are left in that state, Helen clearly being distraught.

Jason was piling the mashed potatoes on his plate with a practiced and steady motion.

I smiled at my kid. “Hey,” I tried, “let’s go a little easy, huh, fella?”

He splatted another fat spoonful onto his plate.

“Jason, they’re just loaded,” I said then.

“I’m really hungry, Dad,” he said, not looking at me.

“Fill up on the meat then, why don’t you,” I said. “Eat all the meat you want, I won’t say a word.”

“I’m not eatin’ nothin’!” Jason said, and he shoved his plate away and folded his arms and stared off into space.

“If I were a furniture salesperson,” Helen said to me, “or perhaps a teller in a bank, I could understand; but how can you have spent all these years married to a psychiatrist and talk like that. You’re out of the Dark Ages, Willy.”

“Helen, the boy is overweight. All I suggested was he might leave a few potatoes for the rest of the world and stuff on this lovely prime pot roast your treasure has whipped up for my triumphant return.”

“Willy, I don’t want to shock you, but Jason happens to have not only a very fine mind but also exceptionally keen eyesight. When he looks at himself in the mirror, I assure you he knows he is not slender. That is because he does not
choose
, at this stage, to be slender.”

“He’s not that far from dating, Helen; what then?”

“Jason is ten, darling, and not interested, at this stage, in girls. At this stage, he is interested in rocketry. What difference does a slight case of overweight make to a rocket lover? When he
chooses
to be slender, I assure you, he has both the intelligence and the will power to become slender. Until that time, please, in my presence, do not frustrate the child.”

Sandy Sterling in her bikini was dancing behind my eyes.

“I’m not eatin’ and that’s it,” Jason said then.

“Sweet child,” Helen said to the kid, in that tone she reserves on this Earth only for such moments, “be logical. If
you
do not eat your potatoes,
you
will be upset, and
I
will be upset; your father, clearly, is already upset. If you
do
eat your potatoes,
I
shall be pleased,
you
will be pleased, your tummy will be pleased. We can do nothing about your father. You have it in your power to upset all or one, about whom, as I have already said, we can do nothing. Therefore, the conclusion should be clear, but I have faith in your ability to reach it yourself. Do what you will, Jason.”

He began to stuff it in.

“You’re making a poof out of that kid,” I said, only not loud enough for anybody but me and Sandy to hear. Then I took a deep, deep breath, because whenever I come home there’s always trouble, which is because, Helen says, I bring tension with me, I always need inhuman proof that I’ve been missed, that I’m still needed, loved, etc. All I know is, I hate being away but coming home is the worst. There’s never really much chance to go into “well, what’s new since I’m gone” chitchat, seeing that Helen and I talk every night anyway.

“I’ll bet you’re a whiz on that bike,” I said then. “Maybe we’ll go for a ride this weekend.”

Jason looked up from his potatoes. “I really loved the book, Dad. It was great.”

I was surprised that he said it, because, naturally, I was just starting to work my way into that subject matter. But then, as Helen’s always saying, Jason ain’t no dummy. “Well I’m glad,” I said. And was I ever.

Jason nodded. “Maybe it’s even the best I read in all my life.”

I nibbled away at my spinach. “What was your favorite part?”

“Chapter One. The Bride,” Jason said.

That really surprised me. Not that Chapter One stinks or anything, but there’s not that much that goes on compared with the incredible stuff later. Buttercup grows up mostly is all. “How about the climb up the Cliffs of Insanity?” I said then. That’s in Chapter Five.

“Oh, great,” Jason said.

“And that description of Prince Humperdinck’s Zoo of Death?” That’s in the second chapter.

“Even greater,” Jason said.

“What knocked me out about it,” I said, “was that it’s this very short little passage on the Zoo of Death but yet somehow you just know it’s going to figure in later. Did you get that same feeling?”

“Umm-humm.” Jason nodded. “Great.”

By then I knew he hadn’t read it.

“He tried to read it,” Helen cut in. “He did read the first chapter. Chapter Two was impossible for him, so when he’d made a sufficient and reasonable attempt, I told him to stop. Different people have different tastes. I told him you’d understand, Willy.”

Of course I understood. I felt just so deserted though.

“I didn’t like it, Dad. I wanted to.”

I smiled at him. How could he not like it? Passion. Duels. Miracles. Giants. True love.

“You’re not eating the spinach either?” Helen said.

I got up. “Time change; I’m not hungry.” She didn’t say anything until she heard me open the front door. “Where are you going?” she called then. If I’d known, I would have answered.

I wandered through December. No topcoat. I wasn’t aware of being cold though. All I knew was I was forty years old and I didn’t mean to be here when I was forty, locked with this genius shrink wife and this balloon son. It must have been 9:00 when I was sitting in the middle of Central Park, alone, no one near me, no other bench occupied.

That was when I heard the rustling in the bushes. It stopped. Then again. Verrry soft. Nearer.

I whirled, screaming
”Don’t you bug me!”
and whatever it was— friend, foe, imagination—fled. I could hear the running and I realized something: right then, at that moment, I was dangerous.

Then it got cold. I went home. Helen was going over some notes in bed. Ordinarily, she would come out with something about me being a bit elderly for acts of juvenile behavior. But there must have been danger clinging to me still. I could see it in her smart eyes. “He did try,” she said finally.

“I never thought he didn’t,” I answered. “Where’s the book?”

“The library, I think.”

I turned, started out.

“Can I get you anything?”

I said no. Then I went to the library, closed myself in, hunted out
The Princess Bride
. It was in pretty good shape, I realized as I checked the binding, which is when I saw it was published by my publishing house, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. This was before that; they weren’t even Harcourt, Brace & World yet. Just plain old Harcourt, Brace period. I flicked to the title page, which was funny, since I’d never done that before; it was always my father who’d done the handling. I had to laugh when I saw the real title, because right there it said:

You had to admire a guy who called his own new book a classic before it was published and anyone else had a chance to read it. Maybe he figured if he didn’t do it, nobody would, or maybe he was just trying to give the reviewers a helping hand; I don’t know. I skimmed the first chapter, and it was pretty much exactly as I remembered. Then I turned to the second chapter, the one about Prince Humperdinck and the little kind of tantalizing description of the Zoo of Death.

And that’s when I began to realize the problem.

Not that the description wasn’t there. It was, and again pretty much as I remembered it. But before you got to it, there were maybe sixty pages of text dealing with Prince Humperdinck’s ancestry and how his family got control of Florin and this wedding and that child begatting this one over here who then married somebody else, and then I skipped to the third chapter, The Courtship, and that was all about the history of Guilder and how that country reached its place in the world. The more I flipped on, the more I knew: Morgenstern wasn’t writing any children’s book; he was writing a kind of satiric history of his country and the decline of the monarchy in Western civilization.

But my father only read me the action stuff, the good parts. He never bothered with the serious side at all.

About two in the morning I called Hiram in Martha’s Vineyard. Hiram Haydn’s been my editor for a dozen years, ever since
Soldier in the Rain
, and we’ve been through a lot together, but never any phone calls at two in the morning. To this day I know he doesn’t understand why I couldn’t wait till maybe breakfast. “You’re sure you’re all right, Bill,” he kept saying.

“Hey, Hiram,” I began after about six rings. “Listen, you guys published a book just after World War I. Do you think it might be a good idea for me to abridge it and we’d republish it now?”

“You’re sure you’re all right, Bill?”

“Fine, absolutely, and see, I’d just use the good parts. I’d kind of bridge where there were skips in the narrative and leave the good parts alone. What do you think?”

“Bill, it’s two in the morning up here. Are you still in California?”

I acted like I was all shocked and surprised. So he wouldn’t think I was a nut. “I’m sorry, Hiram. My God, what an idiot; it’s only 11:00 in Beverly Hills. Do you think you could ask Mr. Jovanovich, though?”

“You mean
now
?”

“Tomorrow or the next day, no big deal.”

“I’ll ask him anything, only I’m not quite sure I’m getting an accurate reading on exactly what you want. You’re sure you’re all right, Bill?”

“I’ll be in New York tomorrow. Call you then about the specifics, okay?”

“Could you make it a little earlier in the business day, Bill?”

I laughed and we hung up and I called Zig in California. Evarts Ziegler has been my movie agent for maybe eight years. He did the
Butch Cassidy
deal for me, and I woke him up too. “Hey, Zig, could you get me a postponement on the
Stepford Wives
? There’s this other thing that’s come up.”

“You’re contracted to start now; how long a postponement?”

“I can’t say for sure; I’ve never done an abridgement before. Just tell me what you think they’d do?”

“I think if it’s a long postponement they’d threaten to sue and you’d end up losing the job.”

It came out pretty much as he said; they threatened to sue and I almost lost the job and some money and didn’t make any friends in “the industry,” as those of us in show biz call movies.

But the abridgement got done, and you hold it in your hands. The “good parts” version.

Why did I go through all that?

Helen pressured me greatly to think about an answer. She felt it was important, not that
she
know necessarily, but that
I
know. “Because you acted crackers, Willy boy,” she said. “You had me truly scared.”