The Secret Life of Prince Charming (7 page)

“She’ll be picking us up at the train station next week,” Sprout said.

“Impossible. She doesn’t have her driver’s license yet,” I said.

“Good one,” Sprout said.

“Her mom could pick us all up,” I said. I don’t know why, but I was suddenly feeling on Sprout’s side. My inner evil twin again. Anyway, we were insulting Hannah Reporter, not Dad.

“She could drive us in her Fisher Price Cozy Coupe.”

“We could all make it move with our feet,” I said. “Wait, here they come. Pretend we weren’t just talking about them.”

Dad had his hand at the small of Hannah Reporter’s back, guiding her into the living room as if she might otherwise get lost.

“What are you working on?” she asked Sprout.

“A story,” Sprout said.

“Charles is a wonderful writer,” Dad said. “I’m also working on a novel.”

“Really?” Hannah said, but she didn’t write this down. “What’s your story about, sweetie?” she asked Sprout.

“It’s about a girl spawned from the devil,” Sprout said.

Hannah’s eyebrows went up, and her mouth opened like those dark tunnels trains go through. Sprout’s story was actually about Ivar and the neighbor’s dog, Tucker, who leave home and go on a trip. Stolen right from
The Incredible Journey
.

“Cool,” Hannah said.

Dad walked Hannah to the front door. We could hear him: “The novel’s based on my family history, told in magical realism,” he said.

“Blah-be-blah-blah-blah,” Sprout said.

The front door closed. He’d gone outside, where they were probably standing outside her car door. He was out there a long time.

“For God’s sake, she’s twelve,” Sprout said.

“He’s just being friendly,” I said.

“If she becomes our new stepmother, I’m outta here,” Sprout said.

Dad worked in his office the rest of the day, and Sprout and I did homework. Later, Uncle Mike and Thomas came over to talk about the Jafarabad Brothers’ summer show, and Dad made beef curry for dinner. Dad was a really good cook, though he didn’t usually do it unless there was company over. He liked to make dishes that he could prepare right in front of guests, rather than something you shoved in an oven and forgot about. He liked to stir things up dramatically and flourish knives and juggle bottles of herbs and spices, same as he would in one of his shows.

Everyone sat down to eat, and Dad lifted a large goblet of red wine from his place at the head of the table. “To the Jafarabad Brothers’ World Tour.”

“The world’s gotten pretty damn small.” Uncle Mike laughed. He rubbed one eye with his fingers.

“Lift your glass, damn it,” Dad said. “Our lives are more interesting than ninety-nine percent of the population.”

“Barry, you’re so full of shit,” Uncle Mike said.

“The world?” Thomas said. “Wisconsin? New Jersey?”

I could almost feel Dad’s face change before I saw it. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck. You.”

The room was suddenly quiet. Mike rubbed his thumb and index finger up and then down over the stem of his wineglass. “A joke, Barry,” he said.

“I
like
New Jersey,” Thomas said. He seemed a little stunned. I felt a sort of sick shame, either for Dad or about Dad, I couldn’t tell which.

“You could still be juggling Coke bottles in your garage, if it weren’t for me,” Dad said. He stared coldly at Thomas, and then seemed to change his mind about the whole thing. Dad looked toward Sprout and me. “All right, then. To my family,” Dad said. “Each and every one of you in this room.”

We raised our glasses, and the weird and hollow clinks hung there in the tension of the room. Amidst the arm raising and elbows, Sprout knocked over the large bottle of Perrier in the center of the table, sending everyone scurrying for napkins. The strained moment passed, and we ate curry and Dad made Sprout read her story about Ivar and Tucker, which earned a round of applause. The dishes were piled in the sink. “Just put them in there for the maid,” Dad said, even though we didn’t have a maid, of course. After Uncle Mike and Thomas left, there was the smell of garlic and turmeric hovering around the house like a restless ghost.

Restless was how I felt inside too. I kept passing the living room and looking at that statue and those other objects, feeling a should I/shouldn’t I push-pull. I wanted to confront Dad, but I didn’t want to make him mad. Probably, it wasn’t my business anyway. But why did it feel very much like my business? Why did I feel like one of those art films where time was chunked up and out of order and it was only somewhere near the end that all the pieces came together in a way that made sense? I wanted to understand things, really understand them, in some way that was deep and solid, and yet my own niceness required that I keep skimming along the surface. I brushed my teeth, decided to go to bed, backspaced on that idea, and set my toothbrush down suddenly.

I knocked on Dad’s bedroom door but there was no answer. I listened for sounds of him upstairs, but all I could hear was the technological twinkling of Sprout playing with her cell phone ringers. I walked downstairs and heard the kitchen drawer open (the Useless Gadget Drawer, as Dad called it), the sound of plastic spatulas and potato peelers and once-used candy thermometers all clattering together. The drawer shut. The water faucet went on. Dad stood at the counter in his black silk robe with a dragon on the back and poured a measuring cup of water into a bowl. The dishes in the sink had been done.

“Chocolate craving?” I said. He was holding a telltale red box of brownie mix, head tilted back so that his eyes could see the small-for-him words of the directions.

“You caught me,” Dad said.

“Brownies,” I said.

“Brownies,” he agreed, as if there may have been some dispute. He cracked an egg in with one hand. I saw that chocolate
might not have been what he was actually craving—on a paper towel was a small hill of pot, which he’d stir in later, I knew. I’d seen this routine before, would sometimes also smell the burnt-grass-mat odor coming from the outside deck as he smoked, the orange rolling papers called Zig-Zag open on the counter.

He must have felt my eyes. “Those guys always get me so uptight,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. As part of my relentless trek along the road of good choices, I never drank or did drugs myself; honestly, I sort of looked down at those people. When I was friends with Sara Miller in the sixth grade (definitely not a good choice), we once downed a can of her brother’s beer, and I guess she liked it so much she kept it up from then on. But I think she was just one of those people who drank self-destruction in her baby bottle. You’ve got a good life and you purposefully set out to mess it up…I never got that. Maybe I just never understood the point, the way other people seemed to understand the point. Some people understood the point so well, they made it a personal credo, the law of their independent nation, but it just seemed stupid to me, and maybe even weak. Like the world was just too big and bright and real for you, and you just couldn’t take it.

So, that Dad did this—it bothered me enough that I didn’t know what to do with it. Inside, it felt as if someone had handed me something bad I didn’t want—a switchblade, some poison in a bottle—and there it was, in my hand. The only thing I could do was to shove it in some drawer or at the bottom of a garbage can, pile other stuff over it. I didn’t say anything when he folded the drugs into the batter. But I did say something else.

“How are you doing, Dad, with Brie gone and all?” I said. I
sat down at one of the tall chairs at the counter. Folded my hands in front of me and then unfolded them. I looked like I was giving him a job interview. I looked like Mom.

“Who?” he said. “Kidding! I’m
kidding
. God, you should have seen your face. Like this.” He opened his mouth and eyes wide, wide open. “I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. You can’t let any one person have that much power over you, okay, Quinn? Remember that. I didn’t fail, here. I gave her everything I could give.” He licked the spoon. “Hey, kiddo, I need to change the subject here for a minute, okay? We gotta talk about this whole college thing.”

“Okay,” I said.

“First, can I say that I think you’re going to do great things in the world? Your intelligence, it makes you a very powerful person,” he said.

I smiled. I liked the thought of that. I liked that he saw me that way.

“I’ve got to tell you, though, my philosophy on this. A person’s education, well, I think they should own it, you know? Feel a sense of responsibility toward it. You see?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure I did.

“It’s fine if that gets handed to you, but who cares about it then? Why do you need to work hard in school if someone just gives you a blank check? I just got to tell you, I don’t believe in that. I won’t participate in teaching those sorts of values.”

I didn’t understand where he was going with this, and then suddenly I did. “I don’t have to go to Yale. I can go somewhere less expensive.”

“It’s not about the
money
,” he said. “It’s not about
not having
the money. I’m talking about appreciating your education.”

“But of course I’d appreciate my education.”

“You’ll appreciate it more when you’re the one who has to pay for it,” he said. “We just need to get straight right now about what I’m willing to do and what I’m not willing to do.”

His point was becoming clearer and clearer. I felt creeping, growing dread. In terms of college, I’d heard
Your dad and I will work it out
enough times to know that Mom was expecting his help. I pictured Mom writing checks, big checks, checks weighty enough to make her shoulders hunch. “What
are
you willing to do?” I asked.

“I’m not willing to pay for your own higher education, and I’m not trying to be the bad guy here, it’s a matter of
principles.
It’s a matter of raising you to be the kind of person you should be.” He was still standing there with that fork. But then he turned back around, conversation over. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I hate to cry. But my chest seized up in some hot, heavy pain. I don’t know what I was feeling, only that it was too much.