The Secret Life of Prince Charming (3 page)

Sprout had squeezed herself half on my lap and half on the gear shift. I buckled the seatbelt around us both. “You okay?” I asked, and she rolled her eyes.

Dad told us a story about Thomas as he drove, something Dad said was hilarious, about Thomas and Dad being recognized in a restaurant by some fans, but it was hard to hear the details with the wind whipping around us. Thomas was one of the Jafarabad Brothers. Dad was the main guy, with the stage name “Anoush Hourig,” Brother Anoush, whose name means “Sweet little fire,” which Joelle, his wife before Mom, thought up. Dad’s real name is Barry Hunt, and his other “brothers” are Siran and Ghadar, or, to us, Uncle Mike and Thomas. None are related, but Uncle Mike started the troupe with Dad before we were born, when he was first married to Joelle. “Ghadar” has been about five different people; the latest is Thomas, who used to live in New Jersey. The big joke is that the names are girl
names in Armenian, but only Armenians know that, and they like being in on the laugh.

We got to Dad’s house, which is right on the river, an angled two-story shingled house that looks like a fairy-tale cottage gone mad. Cobblestones lead to the front door and down to the river, and the fireplace is made from big rocks. We pulled into the drive, and when Dad cut the engine, Sprout let out a long groan.

“Get me outta here, I can barely breathe,” she said. “Where has Brie gone? Did she go to LA to visit her mom? Did she take Malcolm or is he here with you?”

I got out of the car and let Sprout free. She was obviously more clued in than I was—I’d assumed Brie had gone on a business trip or something. But the questions meant something more to Sprout. You could tell by the way her eyes were darting around, searching for clues. These weren’t the kinds of questions that were only information gathering—they were anxious ones, begging for reassurance. “I don’t see her car,” Sprout said.

Dad got out, slammed the door. He wiped a smudge on the hood with the sleeve of the white tunic he wore with his jeans. “No, no,” he said. “Gone. Gone as in, gone, gone. Left. Sayonara. Nice knowing you, Barry. Thanks for the memories….”

He opened the front door with his key, and we stood in the entryway. Sprout looked stricken. “What do you mean?” she said softly, but you could tell what he meant by just stepping foot inside the house. Malcolm was Brie’s four-year-old, and he usually left evidence of his presence—tennis shoes by the door, plastic dinosaurs, Legos in the living room, a Ziploc bag of cheese crackers abandoned on the stairs—a trail of his activities same as breadcrumbs in a forest. But there were none of
those things in sight—the house was clean. And it was quiet. There was no slam of a door or the pounding, running feet that we usually heard when Malcolm knew we’d arrived. There was no sound at all. It was so quiet, you could hear the kitchen clock
tick-tick-tick
ing.

“I can’t believe this,” Sprout said. Her cheeks were flushed. “She can’t be gone.” Her voice wobbled. I took her hand.

“Charles, these things happen. I don’t want some big reaction on your part. If anyone should be having a reaction it’s
me
.” “Charles” was what my Dad called Sprout. No one on Mom’s side called her that. It was another strange thing about divorce. Sometimes even your own name was different.

“Why did she leave?” I asked, but maybe I had some idea already. I was trying to work up some sense of surprise, but it wasn’t what I was feeling, not really. I could pretend surprise out of politeness for Dad, but surprise was a lie. Brie was fifteen years younger than Dad, and he sometimes treated her as if she wasn’t quite ready to be out in the world without his help. Maybe he had his reasons. Probably he had his reasons. But I’d hear her through the wall in the next room. “I run my own business, Barry,” she’d say. “I’m perfectly capable of figuring out which skirt goes with what shoes.”

“I don’t know why she left,” Dad said. We followed him to the kitchen, where the walls were covered in wood from an actual barn, a deep brown, cozy wood. He opened the refrigerator and took out a Coke. “And, frankly, I don’t care. She’s the one making the mistake. After all I’ve given her?” He popped the cap, took a long swallow. “She’ll come running back, won’t she, and then it’ll be too late. You betray me? Simple. Good. Bye.” He
wiped his hand in the air as if Brie had just been erased.

“Will we ever see her again?” Sprout said. “Will we ever even
see
her?” Sprout’s voice rose. She clutched that hat so tight in one hand, squeezed my own hand in her other.

“You
want
to? Charles, I don’t get why you’re all out of control, here. Brie never did anything for you. For any of us. She was a
taker
.”

“You said to treat Malcolm like my
brother
. Brothers don’t just disappear,” Sprout said.

Dad looked at me and made his eyes say
Can you believe this craziness?
He shook his head. He looked at his watch.

“Come on, Sprout,” I said. I let go. I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t even know what
Come on
meant, or what place I was urging her toward. Just someplace else, I guess.

“I’m going upstairs,” Sprout said. “I don’t know how you could
do
this. Goddamn it.” She would have never tried this at home. For some reason, at Dad’s we were the Good Child and the Bad Child. Sprout turned into some little tyrant here that she really wasn’t. Her back looked both fierce and dejected as she headed up.

Dad looked down at his hands, gave them an appraising look. He opened a drawer, took out a pair of fingernail clippers, and fit them over the curved moon of one fingernail. “Charles doesn’t know how much she hurts me,” he said.
Click.

“I know,” I said.

“I try and try, and you know, honestly”—
click
—“I don’t know what I could have done different.”

“Nothing,” I said. “It was a little sudden. She’s just…confused.”

“
Very
confused.” He put the clippers down and looked up at me as if we agreed more than we did. “Does your mother allow her to talk like that? A ten-year-old girl, with that mouth? How is she going to turn out? You’ll help with dinner? Maybe something with chicken? Or we can go someplace.”

“Sure,” I said. Eleven-
year-old girl with that mouth
, I thought but didn’t say. I slung my backpack over the back of one chair.

“I’m going to write for a while,” he said. “You know Saturdays. The only day I’ve got. And once June hits…” June meant that the Jafarabad Brothers were on the road a lot. June meant that Dad “lived out of a suitcase,” though I noticed that “I live out of a suitcase” is one of those complaints that is actually bragging in disguise.

“Okay,” I said.

He turned as he headed out, as if he’d just remembered something. “How’s school and all? College applications? Et cetera, et cetera?”

“The counselor at school said I should apply to Yale,” I said. “Can you believe that?” I felt embarrassed to say it. Even the word itself seemed huge and made of ivy-covered brick.

He clapped his hands together, then gripped me in a hug. “I knew you’d be doing something fucking outrageous. My daughter at Yale.” He released me, held my shoulders. His dark eyes bore into mine in a display of deep connection and utter confidence. “Golden child,” he said.

I smiled. “It’s really competitive. I don’t even know if I want to go there. It’s just something she suggested.”

“Of course you’d want to go there,” he said. “You are not just
anyone
. The Hunts have never been
average
. You deserve the best,” he said.

“The best is expensive,” I said. “Even with a partial scholarship—it’s crazy expensive.”

“Well, we’ll have to talk,” he said. He kissed my cheek, a big on-purpose noisy smack. I felt pleased and hopeful. This was the thing about Dad. He could make you feel so special. He went upstairs to his office, and I played a game of Masterpiece with Sprout to cheer her up, because it was her favorite. We sat on her bed in the room we shared at Dad’s house, selling and buying treasures with paper money.

“Sprout, he hasn’t done anything to you,” I said.

“You’re kidding, right? Christ Almighty, Quinn,” she said. Another one of Grandma’s favorite expressions.

“I don’t know why you’re always on his case.”

“I don’t know why you never see a bad thing he does.”

We’d had this argument before, and it never went anywhere. And it would never go anywhere, as long as she kept listening to Mom. “He’s a great dad, even if he isn’t like other fathers. He’s different, that’s a good thing. He loves us,” I said.

“Right. He talks to us, and it’s like we’re not even really there.”

“That’s crazy. Of course we’re there. It wouldn’t kill you to make an effort,” I said as she rolled the dice and won a painting—the Jackson Pollock that looked like a square of crinkled aluminum foil.

She looked under the painting, at its hidden value. “Forgery,” she announced. She wasn’t supposed to tell, but she always did.

“Put it back. Go again,” I said.

“I wish you’d open your eyes,” she said.

Sprout and I finished the game of Masterpiece and then played another. After a while, Dad popped his head in the door.

“Let’s go out!” he said. “Let’s try something totally new. Celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” I asked.

“Celebrate anything. Our life! The fact that we’re luckier than ninety-nine percent of the population. Name the cuisine,” he said to Sprout. “Name it. Something we’ve never had.”

“Holland,” Sprout said. She’d just done a report on it in her fifth-grade class.

“Dutch,” Dad mused. “Do they have Dutch food? Dutch restaurants? Waitresses in clogs? I’m not sure we’ll have much luck with that one, Charles. How about African? Pakistani? Korean? Afghani?”

“Afghan,” Sprout agreed. “Like the blankets.”

“Or the dogs with floppy ears,” Dad said. He flicked Sprout’s braid, and she reached up and flicked his in return. It was a small surrender. She needed him, too, even though she didn’t like to think so. Everyone needs their dad. I was glad we were all friends again.

Dad bounded down the stairs, and we grabbed our shoes and followed. He opened another dark wood drawer by its iron handle, the one where he kept the phone books. He pulled out
the fat lump of the Yellow Pages and slopped it open. His Internet use was still at the first-grade level. “Afghan, Afghan…Ha! Basmani. Over on twelfth. Excellent. I’ve heard it’s got the best Afghan food. Buraani bonjon, qaabuli pallow. I love to say those words.” He said them again, added a midair curlicue flair. “Sounds like I’m casting a spell. Buraani bonjon!” he said fiercely, and thrust his fingertips at us.

“Ribbit,” Sprout croaked.

“Beautiful, it worked,” Dad said.

We squashed back into the car and headed to the restaurant, the bottom level of a Victorian house, with tables outside and strings of lights hanging all around. Dad parked in the handicapped space just outside the door.

“Handicapped,” I said.

“No one cares,” he said. “Anyway, people love it when I park my car out front. Brings in business.”

The inside of the restaurant was candlelit, with orange walls and ceilings draped with fabric. Crowded, and humming with noise. That night, he was Dad at his best, when he drew you in and you had more fun than you knew you could have. Dad of energy and big ideas. One time, Dad decided that we’d go in a restaurant and order the first six things on the menu, no matter what they were. Another time, we had a Yellow Party, where we ate yellow food and dressed in yellow and then left in the evening to find a yellow Rolls Royce we could test drive. Another night, we ate six brands of frozen Salisbury steak dinners to see which was best. At Basmani, Dad ordered more food than could fit on the table and told us stories about all the famous people he knew, and about the time the Jafarabad
Brothers had tried a trapeze act, but only until he’d broken his arm in two places. He told us about his father, the diamond merchant. How a diamond was the hardest and most perfectly imperfect substance on earth, an object of beauty forever, its crystals forced up from the depths of the earth by erupting volcanoes. He drank a couple of glasses of wine and flirted with the waitress, and we all laughed loud, and quiet couples looked at us with envy. Then we carried a stack of Styrofoam boxes full of food home again, and they were still warm when I carried them on my lap.