The Secret Life of Prince Charming (10 page)

Mom wouldn’t like me doing what I did next, and neither would Dad. But if the Hoffmans were strong women, that meant you did what you needed to.

Directory assistance.

“What city?”

“Orcas Island, Washington,” I said. “Joelle Giofranco?”

“I have a J. Giofranco.”

“Okay.” My heart was beating, thudding away with some kind of guilty importance. Bravery was speeding through its phases right there while I held the phone—the wild moment of
yes,
the certainty of your own stupidity, the realization that you’d just assured yourself either terrible regret or great triumph, no in-between. It was late, and Frances Lee might not even live with her mother anymore, far as I knew. I’d have to explain myself to Joelle, a woman my father had been married to but whom I didn’t know at all—a woman with whom he’d shared Christmas mornings, a bed, divorce papers with their signatures side by side.

“Hell-o.”

I was struck dumb. I instantly understood what that expression meant then. Thoughts had completely vacated the premises. The idea of stringing words together in some meaningful way seemed like figuring out one of the mathematical equations that only mini genius Victor Wattabe and our teacher, Mr. Evanston, could solve.

“This is Quinn Hunt,” I said. “Barry Hunt’s daughter? I’m looking for Frances Lee.”

“This is Frances Lee.
Who
is this?”

“Quinn?” I hated the question mark in my voice. As if I wasn’t quite sure who I was, which was maybe the truth. Which was maybe exactly why I was calling.

“
Quinn
-Quinn, as in my father’s daughter?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Whoa, okay. This is sort of a surprise. Is Barry okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. He’s perfect,” I said.

“And he’ll be the first to tell you so,” she said.

I smiled. “It’s just…me,” I said. “I was just hoping maybe I could talk with you.”

“Thank God you’re not calling to say he needs one of my kidneys,” she said.

“I didn’t think I’d even find you there.”

“I’m home on break. But you almost missed me, because I’m just heading out. Friends, bonfire, cha-cha-cha. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Sure. No problem.” My heart was beating ridiculously. I felt like I was some twelve-year-old, calling a boy for the first time. But this was my…The word felt strange. The word belonged to Sprout.
Sister.

“Phone number,” she said.

There was a broad span of silence, because nerves had made me stupid. I was sitting on the other end of the phone with a pen in my hand, thinking she was going to give me her phone number, something which, of course, I had just dialed.

“
Your
phone number?” she said. “So I can call you back?”

“Oh, right,” I said. My face got hot. I was blushing with weird-awkward humiliation. God, I was stupid. Stupid, stupid. I’d always been the older, capable one, the one who held Sprout’s hand and told her what to do. I wasn’t used to feeling so
young
.

Still, when I gave Frances Lee my number, there was something else besides humiliation that I felt. Some twist of hope. The sense that the velvet cord had just been lifted up, and that I would now be allowed through.

“Tomorrow,” Frances Lee said, and then she was gone.

That morning, the last day of school of my junior year, I came downstairs for breakfast and saw that Grandma had snuck something onto Mom’s list again. Underneath
He is in any way violent or explosive,
Grandma had written,
You feel you need to pay a private detective to get the truth about him.

The list was getting pretty lengthy. Two pages now. Our fridge was looking like a self-help book. I left the house, walked into the kind of dewey-grass, sunny-sky day that made you feel like the summer had already promised you something. We had to be at school for only two hours, which seemed stupid. Two hours, and all that really happened was yearbook signing and locker cleaning, which really meant kids dumping stuff on the hallway floors, making the last day hell for some weary custodian. Two senseless hours—made you wonder if some rigid rule-freak was in charge over at the school-district office, someone who probably had thousands of those little
KEEP THIS TICKET
tickets.

I didn’t see Daniel, or rather, I saw the back of Daniel’s head once, and Daniel’s car in the parking lot, but he must have been avoiding me, because the locker we shared was cleaned of his stuff; the pictures of his friends were gone and only the bits of tape that held them up were left. He didn’t take any of the pictures of us, which meant that either he was being kind or cruel—giving me them, leaving me with them, who knew which.

There were too many endings—school over, Daniel over. Liv
came by with Zaney and Kerry, another friend of ours from volleyball, and tried to get me to come to Starbucks with them, but I said no. I kept checking my phone (no call yet no call yet no call yet), and I wanted to wait for Frances Lee by myself. Waiting is one of those hard things best done in private. It’s hard enough to do a hard thing without an audience.

Ivar was home already, which was odd. He never got back until three or four, but already at eleven he was lying on the front porch, chin on his paws as if he, too, was feeling some sort of loss. My appearance seemed to instantly cheer him, which is a nice thing about dogs, because it instantly cheers you, too. Dogs are a quickie self-esteem boost, for sure. He leapt to his feet and swished his tail back and forth, back and forth.

“You’re home early,” I said. I looked down at him and he looked up at me. It’s not something I like to admit, but sometimes I forget he can’t talk. I’ll ask him a question and realize I’m waiting for a reply. The funny thing is, he just looks back at me patiently as if we’d gone through this a thousand times.
I can’t talk, remember?
Oh, yeah.

Ivar shoved past me on the stairs and raced me to the kitchen and had a big, long, sloppy drink out of his water bowl as I unpacked my backpack and waited for my phone to ring. Another thing I shouldn’t admit is how many times I actually checked to see if the phone rang even though I knew good and well the phone didn’t ring. I had it right beside me and…silence, and yet I kept flipping it open to see if I’d missed Frances Lee. I even checked the settings to make sure I hadn’t silenced it accidentally, which made me think of Mom going through the garbage, frantically searching for the IRS refund
check when she’d already put it in her purse to take to the bank. We can really freak ourselves out when something good’s about to happen. Good can freak us out as bad as bad can.

It’s amazing how much stuff you save, and I sifted through science notes and index cards from an English debate and daily math assignments and decided that my someday grandchildren wouldn’t give a shit about any of it. All that work and effort and there it went, slid into the trash with the eggshells and coffee grounds. I kept my film studies paper on
The Phantom of the Opera,
an English paper about
A Farewell to Arms,
tossed pens that didn’t work anymore and a dried-up highlighter, and wondered if I should just call Frances Lee back myself.

I heard the bus groan and creak to a stop out front, and a few minutes later Sprout flew through the front door, hauling a big paper bag full of school stuff, and her blue-and-green padded lunch bag and her backpack made of tie-dyed canvas. She was wearing Grandma’s crocheted hat even though it was warm, and her braids stuck out from underneath. She wore red knee-highs with her denim skirt, and she could look like the kid with no friends, but somehow it all worked on her. Someday she’d probably marry a great guy somehow born from stuffy Republican parents who would disdainfully call her “the creative type.” She’d drive them crazy with unmatched silverware and babies she’d name Grace and Beauty.

“Get ready, people, it’s summer!” she yelled.

“No people, just me. Grandma left a note that she went to the dollar store.”

“Cool. Maybe she’ll buy more of those squirrel statues that have snow-globe stomachs.”

“Or use-once-then-break screwdrivers.”

“We still have that huge bag of straws she bought last time,” Sprout said.

“When’s the last time you used a straw?”

Sprout dumped her bag and was already looking for post–school satisfaction in the fridge. “True. Hey, maybe I’ll use straws all summer.”

“It’ll be the Summer of Straws,” I said.

“Some people have Summer of Love, but not us,” she said. The fridge door closed, and now Sprout was hunting in the kitchen drawer. “Aha.” The Bag o’ Thousand Straws was tossed out. Sprout poked a hole in it with her thumb, plucked one out. She put a red-striped straw in her mouth and pretended to smoke it like a cigarette.

“Stop that or you’ll ruin your lungs,” I said, and then the phone rang. My heart thumped around and I started to immediately cushion myself against disappointment. My self-protection mode was on the default setting, so much so that it was like I was wearing a permanent emotional life jacket. Before I opened my cell phone I remembered the possibilities. It might be Liv. Maybe Zaney. Maybe Daniel, pleading for forgiveness. I peeked. Frances Lee’s number!
Oh God, oh God, oh God.

“Where’re you going?” Sprout said. “Who
is
it, Quinn? New boy-friend! Man, you don’t waste any time, do you?”

“Hello?” I jogged out into the hall, up the stairs. Shut the door to my room. I was panting. I needed to go to the gym or something.

“Quinn?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“So this is weird,” Frances Lee said. “You, me, phone. What, I’ve met you once?” Frances Lee was the type to get right to the point, I could see.

“Once, I know,” I said.

“So, what do I owe the pleasure to? No, wait, that’s wrong. To what do I owe the pleasure? Whatever, you know what I mean.”

I paused. Why, exactly,
had
I called? What did I even want from her? “I guess I need answers to a few things,” I said.

“Not something I’m exactly known for,” she said. “Questions, yeah. Answers, not so much. Wait, can you hang on a sec? My mom’s trying to come in and she’s carrying all the grocery bags at one time. God, I don’t know why she does that. They’re hanging all up her arms.”

“Sure.”

The phone clunked down and I heard her voice in the distance. “Jesus, Mom. Here.” And Joelle’s voice, “You know I hate making more than one trip.” There was the rustle of bags and the clunk of hard glass bottoms set on countertops, a few whispers I couldn’t hear, and then Joelle’s voice, sounding surprised. Sudden quiet.

“Okay, I’m back,” Frances Lee said. “Answers, you were saying.”

“I know this is strange.” I stumbled. “I just, you know, Dad came back into our life a few years ago. I’m just trying to understand everything.”

“Identity crisis.”

“I guess.”

“
That
I know about,” she said.

I started to relax. I sort of liked her already. She reminded
me of someone, but I didn’t know who. “Something strange happened recently,” I told her. “Just after Dad’s girlfriend left.”

“Is this the one named after a cheese? Or did he have one after her?”

“No, the cheese.” I felt bad saying that. I liked Brie. “Brie,” I said. “She was actually really nice.”

I heard Frances Lee shout in the background. “Ma! Barry left the cheese.”

“I think it was the other way around,” I said. “She left him.”

More yelling. “The cheese left
him
!”

“Not possible,” I heard Joelle say. “Barry never gets left.”

This wasn’t exactly how I saw this conversation going. I didn’t think I’d be having this talk with Joelle, too. Joelle, and the other women in my dad’s life—they were, I don’t know,
other women
. There was Mom and Dad, and even Brie felt like some sort of outsider we’d agreed to let in. It was strange to me that Joelle was, in a way, right here with me, a woman who’d had more history with my father than even my mother had. I felt like I was reading his diary. Maybe I’d find out more about him than I really wanted to know.

“After she left, something happened,” I said.

“
What
happened?”

I twisted my ring around my finger. The one Dad had given me, with the arms holding the heart. “Something appeared in his living room. Something of hers. A statue. Something I’m sure she doesn’t know he has.”

“So he took it. Probably wants to punish her.”

“But I think it’s more than that, because I started looking at other stuff there, underneath things, and there were women’s
names on some of them. Certain objects. I think he took things from women. Maybe something from every woman.” It sounded sort of crazy, said out loud.

There was silence as Frances Lee thought about this. “You think he stole something from every woman he’s been with.”

“Yes.”

“And why would you think this again?”

“There were names on things. Women’s names.”

“Like some sort of freaky fucking museum. A woman-object trophy museum.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that. “I know this sounds nuts, and your mom probably just gave it to him, but is she missing a painting?”

“Hold on.” The sound was muffled, a hand held over the phone to quiet her voice, but it wasn’t doing much good. “Mom!” I could hear her shout. “Did Barry ever take a painting of yours?”

Joelle had disappeared I guess, but now her voice got loud again, same as an approaching siren that stops somewhere in your neighborhood. “…and he knows I know. Do you realize how much that painting’s worth? Most valuable thing I had.”

And then, a still muffled Frances Lee to Joelle again: “Why didn’t you tell him you wanted it? Why didn’t you call the police or something?”

“You don’t call the police on your child’s father, at least not for a painting.”

“Fuck,” Frances Lee said. But this was loud and clear, said to us both. She was back. “I guess the answer is yes.”

“It’s hanging above the fireplace,” I said. My stomach felt heavy
and sour, the way it does when you might get sick. I loved my father. I didn’t want to betray him. There were pieces of me, big, screaming pieces, that wished I’d never made this call, that wished I’d never looked under that statue or behind that painting.

“Maybe that’s a reason I always had to meet him somewhere else,” Frances Lee said. “I’ve never been invited to his house, do you know that? I’ve never been in my father’s
house.
”

I didn’t know what to say. Frances Lee was his daughter. There had to be a reason she’d not been allowed there, right? A reason that made sense?

“Well, we’re going to want it back. You know that, don’t you? We’re going to want it back.”

My hand was sweaty. So slick with sweat I was lucky I could hold that phone. Had I thought that far ahead? Because now what? Because, God, what had I set in motion? I pictured a blank spot above his fireplace. I pictured that blank spot being my fault. I pictured my father’s reaction, my father’s absence. No, I wanted to say. No. He was my father, and I needed him. No.

“Yes,” I said.

“Can you bring it to us?”

Silence. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do that, I knew. I heard Joelle’s voice again. “She can’t do that, Frances Lee. You should know that more than anyone.”

I wanted to cry. Maybe with relief. Maybe with that landslide of feeling you get when someone understands you. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Okay, sure. Maybe I can go get it. I don’t know. We don’t want him to know you told us, is that it? Is that right?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Oh, Quinn,” Frances Lee sighed.

“I don’t want to hate him,” I breathed.

“I know you don’t. I know that. You don’t want to hate him. But you do want to understand him.”

“I guess.”

“You kind of have to.”

“I guess.”

“To see yourself.”

I didn’t say anything. It seemed like we sat there on the phone for a long, long time. We sat there until Frances Lee sighed again and then spoke. “Let me just think about this, okay? Like, maybe we should get together or something. I’ll call you.”

“All right,” I said.

She hung up.

My life, which for a day had felt on some edge of newness and change, abruptly slid back to being just the way it was. I wanted to lay down and sleep. I doubted I would ever hear from her again. But I had barely set my head on my pillow when my phone rang again. I almost didn’t look. I had no room right then for Liv or anyone else. But I did look. I sat upright again.

“I’ve got an idea,” Frances Lee said.

I went from despair to joy in about ten seconds. My heart swooped. “What?” I said.

“It’s a little crazy.”

“Okay.” I was in the mood for crazy.

“We’ll give it all back.”

“Okay.” I didn’t exactly know what she meant.

“We’ll do it together. Then we’ll face the consequences. Together. You won’t have to do this alone.”

There was the sense of gathering again, some strength of forces. That something you feel when someone is right there beside you to pick up the other end of a heavy thing.

“It’ll be some karmic trip,” she went on. “Some act of karma. We’ll go on a karmic quest. Pack it in my truck and give it all back. To the women.”

“Starting with my painting,” Joelle said in the background.

“Give back the stuff Dad stole,” I said. “Go on some trip.”