Page 61 of The Impossible Princess
Distant cousins have driven over from Schwascle, and their children are rolling down the lawn, giving the picnic lunch a festive air. There is no one from Pavieau. My father’s family is never represented here or anywhere. Though I hope to confide to him about Max, the sheer number of sacrifices he’s made for the Crown are laid before me.
“Your cooking makes me smile,” I say, hugging him quickly. Running off to round up some of the children for a game of tag, I return with a sharp appetite.
My good mood lingers as I change for my meeting with Mama, digging my court shoes and hose from the back of my closet.
“I’m punctual,” I tell Caroline who glances up from her makeshift office outside the library, a furrow on her brow. It’s too much to expect her to laugh but is that pity in her expression? It couldn’t be. “What is it?”
Caroline shakes her head and pastes on a fake smile. She is picking up all our worst habits, and I recognize a surprising impulse to touch her hand and ask her what’s wrong.
The moment passes, and she ushers me into Mama’s presence. A tingle of worry dances up my spine, and I paste one of those smiles on my face, giving her a curtsey. She bids me take a seat—not across a desk but in a cozy arrangement of chairs near the tea service. She pours out, the ritual of tea taking a few minutes while I try to guess what is in the thick folder on the seat next to her. A patronage assignment? I can’t help it when an excited smile touches my mouth. Mama is finally going to give me a real responsibility.
“Have you enjoyed your holiday?” she asks.
“Yes, the weather has been good.”
“None better than yesterday. We played five-pins on the lawn, and you were nowhere to be found. Your little cousins were sad to miss you.”
I take a sip of tea, on my best manners, almost enjoying the novelty of having small talk with my mother. She loathes chit-chat and is usually in a position to hustle people along to weightier topics. “They’re growing so tall.”
“Yes. Though I’ve found that being tall and being grown-up have almost nothing in common.” She sets down her cup and hefts the folder onto her lap.
“Do you know what this is?” she asks in a tight, polite tone.
I shake my head. The cover flips back and I see a letter headed with the insignia of NewsNook—the morning show program. Not a patronage. Disappointment ripples through me. A patronage would mean trust and trust might mean I could tell her about Max sooner.
“It seems that you are to be featured in the news, Clara,” she says and my stomach drops into my court shoes. I feel like a tiny boat bobbing on the ocean while a leviathan opens its jaws below. This is not good.
“And look how much material they have to cover.” She begins taking out photos and more printed paper, labeling each as she stacks them in a pile. “You’ve done a lot of things this summer. Meeting a certain lieutenant commander.” Slap. “Planting his garden.” Slap. “Painting his cottage.” Slap. “Swimming. Kissing all over a nature preserve.” Slap. Slap. “Running off for a secret rendezvous only yesterday.”
My mouth drops open at each photo, some mercifully blurry, but some of them are as clear as day. The hike to the waterfall is rendered in near-perfect detail, and once again, Max looks like he adores me. I should feel butterflies seeing the way we look in these pictures—like two people very much in love. Instead, I feel like I’ve just swallowed an anchor and the weight of it makes me sick.
More pictures follow of my exploits in college—some of them captured by the press, some taken off social media pages of my sorority sisters and some of them are too private to have come from anyone but the person who snapped them. Friends and old boyfriends sold their photos to the press.
“Not only do we have a bevy of quotes from former palace staff, but there’s also an interview with the best friend of the lieutenant commander’s ex-girlfriend—a woman, take note, who is doing important work for the scientific community of Sondmark. She isn’t merely giving speeches about solar panels. She’s engineering them.”
My chin tightens, but I touch the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I blink rapidly. No tears. I won’t let them come.
“This friend suggests that your relationship with the lieutenant commander has been going on for a year. That you’re the reason they broke up. That the stuck heel was some kind of prank you both pulled on the entire country during one of the nation’s most important ceremonies. NewsNook,” she enunciates it like the most popular television program in her country is a foreign word, “has asked the palace to comment about…what is it?” She reaches for the cover letter again. “‘The Party Princess and her Scorching Summer Fling’ before it airs on Monday.”
Mama takes her glasses off and sets her hands in her lap, tipping her head slightly. I am shaking with fury—at the photographer, at the news coverage, at those gross words (‘scorching summer fling’) that seem to reduce Max to a toy and me to a child.
“I thought I told you to end this.”
I blink, my focus snapping back to her. “Max and I are friends. There is nothing to end.”
The words are reflexive, but they aren’t even half true. We passed friendship so long ago that I can’t even remember feeling the bare, uncomplicated pleasantness of it anymore.
Mama’s smile ratchets tighter. “Well, you’ve managed to convince me,” she answers, holding up a picture of us wrapped around one another, his hands on my waist, mine banding the back of his neck. It’s going to be some of the best TV Sondmark has ever seen.
“I have friends of my own. Why does it matter who I spend time with?” I push back the slightest bit and she scents blood.
When Mama is angry, she doesn’t yell. Her voice gets deadly calm, just as I’m hearing it now. “Do you know what it was that ignited the revolution in Pavieau, Clara?”
We don’t talk about Pavieau and the shift confuses me. I blink. “The economic—”
“It was a few pictures of a young princess, one of your great aunts, biting into a piece of fruit and tossing it away. Maybe it was unripe. Maybe it was bruised. Maybe she was ill. None of her explanations mattered when they dragged her and her family through the press—called her decadent and wasteful. We aren’t people to them, Clara. We’re symbols, and there are narratives attached to these pictures that you have no hope of anticipating. That is why I care about who you consort with.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.” I’m choking with anger and bewilderment, but Mama’s voice never falters.
