The Empress Chronicles (10 page)

“Easy, easy, Cupid,” I soothed.

The shape moved quickly and as fluid as a snake, weaving in and out of the saplings and brambles. Sometimes the nuns walked about before Mass. Perhaps it was a sister? “You there,” I shouted. “What brings you to our forest?”

There was no response, and the figure continued to slither out of sight. Whoever was trespassing in our forest, I could not discern it. Cupid gave a second little rear now that he was all ignited.

“Settle,” I whispered, stroking his mane.

We continued on, this time the reins slack, a long-strided walk back to the stables.

And as we approached Herzog, there grew a clot of people in the yard, all surrounding a kernel of something I soon realized was my mare. There, in the center of a crowd, stood Psyche, still saddled, still angrily swishing her tail.

The grooms, four under-grooms, and a handful of house staff were huddled in a mass of men, some with firearms upon their person. One man trained his gun toward the sight of Cupid and me flying toward them, and then another man pulled his arm down just as a shot rang out. I heard the second man call out, “Sisi. What in the kaiser’s name were you thinking?”

I pulled up to the crowd, Cupid glistening with sweat. My own perspiration salted my eyes and soaked into the corners of my mouth. “Your forgiveness,” I gasped to the man who’d yelled at me. As I rode closer, sure enough, it was the young Count S., his deep, dark eyes shooting daggers at me. Oh, why must this man continue to appear in my least ladylike hours? Why must this rogue, this hero, this count—whoever he was—always bear witness to my folly and misdeed?

“Your filly was wandering the yard, your saddle atop, the other horse missing. We had thought for sure you’d been assaulted by a lunatic assassin,” yelled the count, oddly stirred up, his voice cracking a bit in his distress, the young man of him sneaking through.

“But why would you believe such a silly thing?” I bade, dismounting Cupid, and handing over his reins to the stable hand.

“Are you daft, Duchess?” answered the count. “You are fortunate that your dear parents know nothing of your folly.”

I noticed now that the count brandished something in his working hand. He looked like a bishop, delivering a fiery homily, dashing us all to the inferno, and then I realized what it was in his hand. “Please, Count S., my book,” I said, trying to quell the panic that I felt. There it fanned before me, my journal and the dried-up fox brush, the very one he’d presented me, now employed to mark my place in the journal. He’d searched in Psyche’s saddle pouch, where, stupidly, I’d left my diary. Had he opened it? Read it?

“Wouldn’t your governess be pleased to know you hold her in such high regard,” he chortled, regaining composure. “Nevertheless, it is gratifying to see that the souvenir from your first hunt has been put to such good use.”

Count S. was in uniform. He cut a lean figure, and I felt myself blushing upon realizing that he’d read my private pages. That he’d leafed through my poems and sketches. I twitched as my body remembered being cradled by him after falling from the trapeze. His dark brown eyes did not blink.

I could not allow myself to lose poise in front of the servants, groomsmen and peasants, and yet I wished so overwhelmingly to snatch back my privacy and run to my room. Instead, I forced a smile into being and reached my arm out for my journal. “Count,” I said, honey forced up my throat, “how gentlemanly of you to return a lady’s private thoughts and ramblings back to the security of her discretion. I am in your debt.”

Count S. held the book just out of reach, as if I were a dog begging for a bone and he wished for me to leap at it so he could order me to sit. “Duchess, I would that you understand a few things about this world you hold at such a distance,” he said. “First, five men have been occupied all afternoon with the finding of you. These men are late for their suppers, thanks to you.”

I wished to stamp on this count’s head, he was so arrogant, but instead I curtseyed my apologies to the grooms and the under grooms.

“Second, although many at court sympathize with the revolutionaries, Duke and I among them, there are some dangerous players afoot who would like nothing more than to shoot someone of royal blood. Or perhaps knock off her head as if it were a stag or fox.”

Despite every muscle in my mouth working against me, I smiled my understanding and said, softly and repentantly, “Your forgiveness, sir.”

“And last, dear Sisi, I caution against the employment of such a beastly and louse-ridden article for use as bookmark.”

“Count, it is only in homage to you that I would use the souvenir brush in this way,” I said, trying my utmost to keep lilt in my voice for the sake of those overhearing our exchange.

Perhaps my governess’s continual pleas for decorum had merit and men did respond more favorably to honey than vinegar, for Count S. then bowed to my words and swiftly returned my diary, fox brush and all, on the spot.

Spice had been my choice. I adored the white, white, white square plates. The clean servings of steamed sea bass on banana leaves where there was space around the food. The perfection of clear vermicelli noodles with a dollop of plum sauce, topped with bright pink ginger garnish.

“Do they have gluten-free offerings?” The Girlfriend wants to know as we sit down at our table.

“Willow doesn’t eat wheat,” explains Dad.

“Um, it’s a Vietnamese restaurant? Rice, I think. Not wheat.”

“Don’t get snotty, Princess,” Dad says.

Willow says, “Some Vietnamese dishes call for seitan—it’s Asian gluten. Mock duck, for instance?”

Again with the Asian gluten. “Spice doesn’t serve duck. Mock or not mock,” I say. But really, I have no idea if that’s true. I glance down to see ox penis soup on the menu. And pig’s ear salad. I love that they have the word
penis
on a menu. But I certainly won’t be ordering it. Gross.

“So,” Dad interjects after Willow dissects the brain of the waitress, asking five million questions about the menu. “How was Doktor Gray-ta?”

He always feigns a German accent when he pronounces her name, and that really bugs me. “Fine,” I say. “But she’s retiring.”

“When?” Dad happily accepts his pepper-infused vodka martini.

“Soon. Like a month from now. She said she’d refer me to someone.”

The Girlfriend sips tea, her bobby pins glinting in the track lighting overhead. “That must be difficult. Having to switch therapists.”

If anyone at this table has a real disorder involving food, it isn’t me. Maybe we could get a two-for-one deal with the next shrink. I don’t say that out loud though.

Dad gestures toward my food diary at the empty table space between us. “Homework?”

The book sits there like an innocent bystander with its stolen pages tucked inside. I haven’t yet had the nerve to investigate them, but my heart brims with anticipation. With a secret excitement. “I’m supposed to write about eating and feelings and so forth. SOP for OCD CBT.”

“Will someone turn off her brain? Jeez,” Dad says, smiling in that way he does when I’m clever and he’s clueless.

Our food arrives and over a steaming bowl of pho, the tangy bite of fresh cilantro all the way up in my sinuses where I like it, I get brave and ask, “So, um, were you born with the name Willow or, like, did you appropriate it?”

“Ap
pro
priate?” bursts Dad. “You are so vocabularistic, Miss Fancy P.”

“I was born with the name Wilhelmina, actually. Willy, they called me. Until I found out that was a euphemism for penis. That put an end to it. I decided Willow was more, uh, feminine, I guess.”

Dad reaches over his spring rolls and kisses her cheek. “A more fitting name for you, there couldn’t be.”

I hate seeing him kiss her. Touch her. The last time I saw him and Mom kissing, it was on their fifteenth anniversary. They came home from a dinner date, put Joni Mitchell on the iPod player, and danced around in our living room. Six months after that Mom threw his clothes out the second-story window. Willow. She was to blame. Willow, and probably me.

Dr. Greta tried to assure me that their problems had nothing to do with me, because that’s what shrinks are supposed to say to the children of divorce. There’s a party line they all use, and I know this because I’ve heard it on the radio, on television, and in movies.
Your parents both love you. You are not to blame.

My pho is growing cold and thick. As usually happens when my food starts changing on me—cooling, thickening, congealing, whatever—my appetite evaporates. And some time shortly after that the thought of putting something in my mouth will make me ill.

Reading my body language, Dad says, “Is that all you’re going to eat?”

“Full,” I say.

The Girlfriend turns her wrist over, looks at it, even though it’s a silver bracelet there, not a watch. “Should we get the bill? The train will be here soon, I think.”

Dad summons the beautiful Asian waitress, her sleek black hair down to her butt.

“Your check, sir?” she asks, the tone in her voice like she’s gargling with honey.

Dad slaps a credit card down, and the waitress smiles and takes it away.

“You will really like Cory,” says Willow. “Every girl does.”

“Yeah,” Dad mumbles. “And I’m pretty sure he knows it.”

I gaze out the window as my father and Willow back-and-forth their thoughts on
the boy
. I watch a streetcar lurch to a stop: its bright orangeness, the music of its electric engine, yoga-panted passengers getting on and off with their rolled-up mats. So clean and new and familiar. I miss this neighborhood so much already, and I’ve only been gone a week. In every direction, just steps from Spice, are the lofts and apartments of my former life. Steel, concrete, bamboo, granite. My favorite building was one Mom and I called the Japanese Correctional Facility. Zen mixed with harsh lighting and long, exposed pipe corridors. The institutional look was soothing to me. So contained and no-nonsense. As opposed to Willow Creek, where nonsense is the rule. Furls and fronds on everything. If the Pearl was a pattern, it would be checkerboard, and the farm, paisley.

Out the window, I watch the sun struggling to win out over the June clouds. This time of year it’s midafternoon before the gray gives up. Today, I sort of wish the clouds would win. Right up Glisan, just a few blocks away, is the Conrad. The doorman, Gus, sometimes allowed me to sit behind his reception desk and hand out biscuits to the poodles and spaniels who lived there. They would dance on their hind legs, their tiny tongues panting and expectant. Gus kept antibacterial liquid in a pump bottle behind the reception desk, and I slathered it on in between doggies. I miss Gus. He knew I loved to play the concert grand in the apartment, and he’d tease me, calling me
Maestro
. Just thinking about the sound of that piano, the sleek ivories, the high polish of the music deck, made me tear up.

Right outside the window of Spice stands a clot of teenagers waiting for the light rail. Their group has that accidental circle look, held together with the cool indifference they can afford because they all belong. My chest tightens when I think about actually meeting this brother, who’s probably chugging into the train station at this very moment. Boys like that—the popular ones, the athletes, troublemakers and smart-asses—to them I’m completely invisible. Becket stopped bothering me once Jewellee dropped him. Kevin, Gray, the AHA! boys who tormented me; they sort of slipped off the earth in high school. They became the stoners. The skaters. They cut school, or when they were in school, they cut class. But Cory didn’t sound like the type of kid who sold weed during football games. He was more like a football player with a nose for booze. Like Chris Seebold. Zach Preston. Kids whose parents had connections, so when they screwed up, there was a safety net.

This one loft-sitting job we had, the hedge-fund guy’s kid, Adam, was a senior at Lincoln, and if it weren’t for Mom and me pushing him out the door with a four-shot espresso every morning, he never would have graduated. “We’re enablers,” Mom used to say. “But it pays the bills.”

“Have another card?” the pretty Asian waitress asks.

Dad asks, “What’s the problem?”

“Denied,” the waitress says, the former lilt in her voice gone.

“Here,” says Willow, reaching into her Peruvian satchel. “I have cash.”

Dad doesn’t make a move to overrule, and Willow counts out the bills. I can tell the tip is minimal. Like under ten percent minimal. The waitress snatches the money and mumbles a thank you as she turns away. Transaction over. Good riddance. As I stand up to leave, I look at my mostly full bowl of pho and think I shouldn’t waste so much food. I wonder what Mom is eating on the high seas. Marlin? Crab? Prime rib? She likes expensive entrees. Especially when someone else is picking up the tab.

The cold metal of the seat worked its way into the backs of my thighs, and they’re tingly numb when I stand up, grab my ingestion book, and shuffle out of Spice, lagging behind, as usual. Outside, the sun gleams completely victorious, and the brightness hurts my eyes after the dark violet light of the restaurant. I blink, and blink again, then shake at the vision in front of me: Dad and Willow up the street, having a little argument. I hear Dad say, “I’m a little worried about his influence on Liz. She’s pretty fragile right now.”

Willow sees me and closes her mouth before whatever she planned to say comes out. Instead, she says, “We’ll get through this, Billy. It’ll be fine. Just have a little faith.”

The clock tower at Union Station rises from the edge of the Pearl like a middle finger. Unlike the organized checkerboard of the Pearl, the area around the train station is a frayed hem, bordering on tangled chaos. Train tracks scar up the yard behind the building, and two bridges choke it from either side. Cars circle the small parking lot in front, and more than anywhere else in Portland, impatience makes horns honk and tempers flare.

Dad doesn’t want to park, so Willow squirts out as we inch to the curb, practically before the car stops. The heavy Volvo door slams behind her, and Dad reaches his hand toward her, like he’s ready to yank her back in by the ends of her hemp T-shirt. But it’s too late; she’s already inside the big oak doors of the ancient train station.

Awkward.

“Well,” says Dad to the rearview mirror, “our blended family is about to blend just a little more.”

I can see my eyebrows rise in the mirror. Bushy orange eyebrows. And my tufted hair looks very Bozo.

Dad says, “It’s not easy for you, all these changes. I know that.”

A red pimple has sprouted between my eyebrows. A third eye. I squint to see if I can make it smaller. Nope.

A security guy with one of those stomachs that drapes over a belt to below crotch level comes waddling up to the car. My father waves to the guy before he can open his mouth to tell us we need to move along, and then Dad guides the Volvo away from the curb with his two hands, both at twelve o’clock on the wheel. “I love her so much, you know,” Dad says. “She’s beautiful, strong, smart.”

Dad would soon lap into oversharing like he does. I put myself into see-no-evil, hear-no-evil monkey mode. It isn’t that hard, really, to become blind and deaf at will. I just have to concentrate on the transportation of blood, breath and nerve cells inside of me. I make myself small, smaller.

Dad:
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
.

The car chugs around the parking loop, and I tune my father out as I run my fingers over the cover of my journal and the stolen Sisi pages. I feel the urge to take a peek, but I pinch myself instead, hard, on the inside of my arm like I do when I don’t want to give in to something. Meanwhile, Dad drives around, up and down a couple of one-ways, and he blathers on in his telling-me-more-than-I-want-to-hear fashion. Then, after a while, I hear my name, and like one of Willow’s goats hearing the cracked corn bin open, I snap to attention.

“So, Liz, what about it?
Have
you had sex with a boy yet?”

Holy crap. Were fathers really supposed to ask that? And in such a casual way, as if the question had been,
So, Liz, have you taken trigonometry in school yet
?

“Yes,” I say, as alarmed at my lie as he must be to hear it.

“Really? When? Who?”

“Oh, you know, everybody at my school does. Especially girls from, you know, broken homes and whatnot?” Where did
that
come from? The sting of that particular meanness shocks me spilling out of my mouth that way. I crane my neck to see how what I said registered on Dad’s face. If he’s an emoticon, the mouth part would be a straight line. Confused.

“So, you’re sexually active?” he asks finally with a bit of discomfort.

Actually, I’m about as sexually active as a piece of sheet music. I haven’t even really had a boyfriend yet. No entwining of fingers. It’s true that the entire student body of Lincoln is getting it on in any available basement, family room and bridge underpass. But me? Nada.

Nobody in his right mind would want me.

“Do you use condoms?” Dad blurts as we cruise by the train station entrance for a third time.

Condoms. Right. There is no need for condoms. I’ve never even
seen
a penis. Well, not really, anyway.

It wasn’t until the sixth grade Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex presentation at AHA! that I learned penises could morph into solid clubs of wood. By then I heard the term
boner
a thousand times, but I always thought it meant
sly smile
. The Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex presenter sent around a large, stiff model of a rubberized penis. She said boner, woody, stiffy, chubby, hard-on. These were euphemisms for the male erection.
Male erection
, I thought.
Is there a female erection too
?
What else have I missed
?

Two years later, I would learn more about all of that—the female equivalent of a boner. And it wouldn’t be in a classroom, or on a couch in some dank basement rec room. It would be in a mental ward, where they sent me to protect me from perverts.