Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (21 page)

You know the photo I mentioned, the one taken at Geoffrey’s funeral when Isabella held my face in her hands? She was whispering
to me then, telling me—she would say asking me—to come with her to Africa. My husband was dead, and I was lonely and tired
and scared. So I said yes.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I did.

Remarkably, she became my best friend while we were in Africa. Our time in the castle together had been inevitably strained.
The princess’s poise and her looks and her glamour were such that no common woman—least of all one whose husband was in the
intimate position that Geoffrey was—could feel completely at ease with her. Besides, her relationship with everyone she actually
knew was a little strained. She had that particular kind of magic—common to all icons, it seems—to be absolutely available
only to those people she would never see again.

But she was transformed in Kenya. I suppose I was, too. We arrived with expensive manicures and overly pampered skin, and
we each felt the eyes of the others on us, so we naturally fell into a conspiracy. We would make trips to the well together:
only we would know how slow we were at hauling up the water, and how upset we got about breaking a nail, or how clumsily we
handled the buckets.

On those walks, we talked a lot. Mostly, at first, Isabella just apologized. “I’m so sorry, Mae,” she’d say. “I’m just incapacitated
with the horror of it. We let Geoffrey down, Rafie and I. I guess we let you down, too.”

But one day I told her I didn’t want to talk about Geoffrey’s death anymore, I wanted to talk about his life. That was when
she began to tell me stories, giving me much of the information I have revealed to you in this book, including the story of
the time she kissed Geoffrey, which was a strange first story to tell his widow, I guess. But I enjoyed it despite myself,
for it all sounded just exactly like Geoffrey, and it did ultimately explain why Isabella had brought us to the castle, and
it set what turned out to be the whole rest of my life in motion. So while I wished that Geoffrey had never kissed her, I
thought about all that I would have lost if Isabella had not pulled us onto this ride. Geoffrey’s life was too short, but
he did so love working on the cars at the castle. I was able to give up journalism and become a novelist. And when we were
not counseling Her Highness through some crisis or another, Geoffrey and I delighted ourselves by tramping around the stone
streets of the capital and taking weekend trips throughout Europe and talking about art.

I loved Geoffrey. Hiding my identity may have hidden that fact, forcing me, as it did, to leave out so many critical chapters
of our life together.

I never even told you, did I, how the young reporter who hung out in hot tubs with female coworkers and gossiped about the
royal family eventually did a story about the perils of family-owned businesses and interviewed a young mechanic named Jeff
Wright at his family’s garage. I didn’t explain how my heart leaped the very first time our eyes met and how that interview
lasted about two hours longer than it should have, and how I liked the hot blackberry cider he made me, and how I was married
in a simple white suit with a bouquet of red roses, and how dashing he looked, and the odd, endearing way that he saluted
me as I walked down the aisle.

And I did not tell you how I helped proofread his letter to the princess and how I thought, frankly, that it was all wrong.
He mentioned Springsteen in the body of the letter and put me in the postscript. The princess would think Geoffrey a rube.
But then I thought she would never even read it, so I pointed out only that he had spelled “tunes” as “toons.” “That’s a comic
strip, not a song,” I said. He fixed it and mailed it the next day.

I also did not tell you, not directly at least, how I felt that I blossomed in Bisbania. How I finally had enough time to
exercise properly and enough money to buy well-made clothes and to have my nails and my hair and my pores handled by professionals.
I did not explain that in my newfound freedom, I at last gave up my struggling journalism career and indulged my overactive
imagination, writing outlandish, fast-paced novels in which smart career girls with good taste in clothes were always falling
in love with blue-collar guys who called them “babe.”

While in Bisbania, I enjoyed my husband, too, loved him in whole new ways. Isabella may have distracted him occasionally,
and she undoubtedly deserves much of the blame for the events that shortened his life. But at the same time, she somehow gave
me more time with him. We could have worked for forty years in that house with robin’s-egg-blue siding, and I might never
have witnessed Geoffrey reading poetry or watched him as he studied the
Mona Lisa
. That was the luxury money bought us, although Jeb would be disappointed to hear me say it. You find time, he would say,
or you make time, but you do not buy time. (Needless to say, he was completely opposed to the idea of “saving” time, as if
it could be stored away in a rented garage in L.A. for later use.)

Maybe I’m a little like the editors of those face-of-the-century books—the ones who cynically place Isabella on the cover
to boost sales. Not that I need help selling books; my novels have done well enough, thank you very much. But I suppose I
have received more from Isabella than I ever gave her.

This is not to say that I gave her nothing.

In America, we once had a strange custom of appointing the widows of politicians to the position their husbands had held.
As if marrying the man prepared them for the job. For a long while, Isabella—apparently likening Geoffrey’s role to that of
an American county sheriff—wanted me to keep her supplied with meaningful Springsteen lyrics. But I just didn’t have the emotional
energy or the desire to help her in this way. When she would not let it rest, I would make lyrics up. When she wanted to know
what Springsteen would say about whether to leave Jeb’s camp, for example, I demurred and pleaded tiredness and ignorance
and even unwillingness. But she begged and whined and nagged, and I finally spun something out of air. I said, “I keep thinking
of the song where he says, ‘Ain’t nothing holding me here, except for those smokes and a case of beer.’” It wasn’t even a
good attempt at faking a Springsteen lyric. I was not trying very hard.

Isabella seemed a little surprised and, I must say, suspicious. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I’m not familiar . . .” Her voice
trailed off, but then she looked around the dingy camp. By that time, she had grown used to living without things, but she
did not at all like living with dirt. Her face brightened a bit. “It would seem to argue for me to move on.” She looked at
me as if for assurance.

“Yes,” I said in what I believed to be a solemn voice, though I was laughing inside, suddenly wondering if Geoffrey had ever
used this technique with her. I felt close to him again just by thinking it. “It would seem to argue for that,” I said.

That is the awful way I sometimes treated my dear friend Isabella.

Now that you know who I am, perhaps you think you understand why I’m telling this story. You think I’m merely trying to give
Geoffrey his due, to cast suspicion upon the spoiled prince who set in motion the events that led to my husband’s death, to
shed a bad light on the woman who took up a good part of my husband’s time and no small part of his affections. I guess all
those things are factors, though I’m rather appalled to admit the more vengeful aspects of my motive, and Geoffrey would have
been uninterested in getting his due. (He comes to me in dreams sometimes, and no matter what I ask him, he merely wags his
finger in mock scolding. “
You
always gave me too much credit,” he says, then winks. “I never knew what the hell was going on.”)

But I assure you, there is more behind this than a desire to honor my husband and seek revenge against Isabella. I’m motivated
by a secret that sometimes keeps me up worrying at night. It is the secret that I long to tell and fear telling.

I am about to take something from Isabella, but it will not be a regular trade. That which I will take—a bit of privacy, a
small amount of the public’s good wishes—will not then be mine. Isabella and I will both be the poorer when this story is
told.

So why am I telling it?

I want Milo, my sweet daughter, to be happy.

I
suppose I should tell you at last what happened to Jimmy Bennett. I should explain how Secrest’s detective eventually found
him. I should reveal his hiding place and resolve once and for all whether he actually had the photo that Isabella lay awake
nights imagining and fearing. It’s a critical question, really. For if he did not have that photo, then much of my life was
lived in vain. Without the photo, there would have been no reason for Isabella to have plucked Geoffrey and me from our simple
life. I could have whiled away years, writing my mediocre little magazine pieces and never noticing that my husband perked
up a bit every time Isabella was on television.

The possibility of the photo is what prompted Isabella to lure Geoffrey to Europe. Geoffrey’s arrival at the castle is what
caused Rafie’s jealousy. Rafie’s jealousy is, I believe, at least part of what fueled his desire to sneak off to the Wisconsin
woods and take Isabella with him. And Rafie and Isabella’s sneaky plan is what killed my husband.

That tawdry chain of events all directly affected the circumstances of my child’s birth and life. And the chain all starts
with Isabella’s fear about the photo.

So was the plan set in motion by something real? Did Jimmy Bennett have a photo of Isabella and Geoffrey?

It had taken Secrest’s detective a year to find Bennett, a shockingly long time in the age of satellite photos and searchable
Web-based public records. The detective had followed professional ties that led from city to city in an ordinary, traceable
way, but she came to a point where Bennett had just fallen off the map and she could not unearth another clue. So she found
his mother, then living in a nursing home in Milwaukee, and the detective spent many days with Mrs. Bennett, sharing cigarettes
and coughing together, until the phone rang—on Mother’s Day, predictably enough. The trace attached to the back of Mrs. Bennett’s
phone worked its magic, and the detective at last had Bennett’s phone number. She called Secrest, and Secrest told Isabella,
and it wasn’t long before Isabella was chatting on royal phones with Jimmy Bennett as often as she talked to Geoffrey.

Which I don’t think Rafie liked and I know Geoffrey didn’t care for.

Those early conversations were awkward and stilted, filled as they were with unanswered fears and unspoken questions.

“Oh, Jimmy,” Isabella would say. “It’s wonderful to talk to you again. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of you over
the years. What fun we always had!

“Someday,” she would continue with calculated casualness, “we’ll have to get together, reminisce some, look at old photos.”

Jimmy would be chatty enough when the conversations were all small talk and idle gossip about old classmates, but he would
grow silent at that sort of suggestion.

“Perhaps,” he would say after a pause. “But I didn’t keep much from my college days. Most of my photos are gone.”

“Gone?” Isabella would say. “Did you”—she would try to hide her excitement—“
burn
them?”

“Burn them?” Jimmy would sigh. “Throw them away? Sell them? What’s the difference? All that matters is that they’re gone.”

The vaguer Jimmy was, the more often Isabella called. One thing led to another, and soon enough I was talking to Jimmy Bennett
fairly often myself, though most of my conversations were in person. Sometimes, usually when I was too tired to be guarded,
I would ask him if he had that photo. But even after we knew each other quite well, he would demur; he would hem, haw, roll
his eyes, change the subject. Or he would ask me questions back: “Does it matter?” Or “Would it change anything either way?”
Or “Why do you want to know?”

Until one night, when I was so tired, so weary, so lonely that I lost my temper. I cursed him—I regret that the most. I cracked
a branch over my leg and let out a low animal howl. I glared at him and told him exactly why I wanted to know. I told him
almost everything that I’ve told you and a few things I haven’t told you yet, and I screamed at him, tears running down my
face. “HELL YES, IT MATTERS!” I said. “My whole life is a chain of mysteries. I want to know one thing for sure.”

He nodded, looked off into the darkness for a while. Then he said, “No, Mae.” He flicked a pebble into the fire, got up, brushed
the dirt off his jeans. He looked down at me. I was still seated. He patted me on the head, a gesture that should seem patronizing
but somehow seemed only loving.

“
No hay una fotografia.
”

And Jimmy Elvin Bennett, whom the detective had been initially unable to trace past an Evansville, Indiana, radio job, but
who had moved to Mexico and changed his name to Juan El Baez and then, of course, moved to Kenya and changed his name to Jeb,
turned and walked away.

S
ecrest had been appalled. Somewhat relieved, of course. But totally appalled. Of all the places where she had imagined the
detective might find Jimmy Bennett, she had not expected anything like this.

“A commune?” she sputtered into the phone when the detective called with the news. “A commune in the desert?”

It seemed awfully tawdry, and it made Secrest worry about what other sorts of people Isabella had associated with in America.
The two she knew about so far—Geoffrey and Jimmy Bennett/Jeb—she did not like at all.

Former associates of the princess should be living conventional, upstanding, boring lives, not forgoing baths and living on
dirt floors with a cell phone buried in their smelly hut, and not, needless to say, applying rock lyrics to world events or
even royal fashion dilemmas. (Jimmy/Jeb was able to use his phone, by the way, because of a nearby celebrity safari ranch,
which had built a series of cell towers so that Hollywood starlets could e-mail their wildlife photos home before they had
even headed back to the lodge.)