Page 85 of Prince Charmless
“I grant you one question.”
She thinks for a second like she doesn’t want it to go to waste. Obviously, I’ll let her ask any amount of questions she wants.
“Do you know where your mother’s missing necklace is?”
“No.”
She squints at me.
I squint back.
She squints harder.
“I’m serious, I don’t know.” I really don’t. “They think it was one of our staff who took it.” Which is still hard for me to believe. I wouldn’t say I’m a trusting person, but I’ve known some of the groundskeepers as long as I’ve known my own father. I think my mother offered more tea, coffee, and biscuits to the housekeepers than they offered us. My heart wants to believe they would never steal her necklace.
Melina dismounts from my lap and sits next to me. “Maybe we’re living in a Disney movie, and it’ll magically appear for the next Princess of St. Claire.”
“Disgusting,” I say, wincing.
She laughs. “So it’s not a conspiracy? I can’t believe you know as much as I do.”
“I was even questioned,” I say. “Which is a really cool thing to be accused of right after your mom dies.”
I might’ve cussed my Dad out when he politely asked if I knew anything. I was in the anger stage of grief for a while. Maybe part of my short temper could’ve been excused given the circumstances, but there came a point where I was making it harder on everyone by no fault but my own. Dad tried his best to walk eggshells around me, only coming in my room to ask questions like, ‘Are you eating’, and ‘When’s the last time you showered?’ Weeks went by without me or my brother talking to each other. It was 2:06 in the morning when he found the courage to text me. It wasn’t anything prosaic, mostly stream-of-consciousness with not a lot of periods and a whole lot of typos. He signed off by saying,It feels like you died too.Gut-wrenching. I’d rather he shot me in the face. That night I finally emerged from my hovel. Tom and I rewatchedCowboy Bepopand consumed high-fructose corn syrup until the sun came up.
“I’m done, by the way.” Melina holds up a compact mirror. “You’re good as new. Well, the bruise is still there, but at least no one can see it.”
I adjust her hand to see my jaw. Her work is impressive. The remnants of the coastal douchebag are gone. At least from what I can see, which is nothing. The amount of shit I’ve bumped into or knocked over today is embarrassingly high considering it’s only the early afternoon.
“What would I ever do without you?”
She tucks some hair behind her ear. “Can I ask you one more question?”
“You can ask me as many questions as you want.”
“What was your mom like? I know she never really spoke to press.”
Melina asks like this is a touchy subject, but it’s not anymore. When I look back, I’m less angry that she’s gone from life and more grateful that she got to be in it at all.
“Charlotte was an overprotective, hopelessly sarcastic, control freak,” I say with all the affection in the world.
Melina hums. “Must be hereditary.”
“She didn’t like crowds or public speaking or English.”Or pantyhose or the color orange or most prime ministers, she didn’t like a lot of things.“But it’s hard to describe her as shy because it didn’t feel like that at home. She was one of those people who are talented at everything, cooking, sports, and musical instruments. And Mario Kart for some reason, she was really good at Mario Kart.” We played that a lot during the end.
“She sounds like a cool person.”
“Shewasa cool person. And a rampant chain smoker. Sometimes I wonder if she was still around, I would be less of a bastard.”
Melina leans her head on my shoulder. “You’re not a bastard, Taylor. Just because you hide some of your, uh, personality quirks from the public, doesn’t mean that deep down you’re not just a guy trying to do something useful for the world.”
I don’t respond. I have done and probably will do some shitty things because of my mother’s death. What I most regret in life is leaving my thirteen-year-old brother alone as our dad was figuring out the whole single-parent thing, only coming back a few times out of the year to not be reminded that she isn’t there. I finally return from Dartmouth to find out he’s planning to enlist. My little brother. The one who has trouble reading and is obsessed with Pokémon. Him. He’s going to be given a machine gun? Between boarding school and college, I’d missed his childhood.
Her necklace wasn’t the only thing that disappeared after Mom was gone.Interpersonal connectionmight be whattherapists call it. Mom was our glue. She made us talk to each other and apologize and share, you know, normal human shit. My dad, brother, and I are all too stubborn and masculine to put in the effort with each other, and we’ve just learned to live with it. I can’t tell my father that I’d be a wreck if I lost him. And I can’t tell him that every time he puts a cigarette to his lips it scares the ever-living shit out of me. It’s difficult to describe exactly what we lost and it’s hard to mourn things you can’t label. Better to just repress the feeling down into a diamond with the hopes of one day passing it like a kidney stone.
“Stay an extra night,” I say, putting my arm around Melina. “Please.”
She sits up. Only a month ago I wouldn’t believe she’d ever look at me with such care and compassion.
