Still Life with Woodpecker Read Free Page B

princesses who also were oblivious to it, in word and in action.
    During the period following Leigh-Cheri’s miscarriage, the supposed virtue of maturity was cardinal in the Puget Sound palace. Although understandably vague about what maturity might actually be, Leigh-Cheri strove, with her parents’ encouragement, to acquire more of it. Nightly, until the age of fifteen, and on a few evenings thereafter, she had been told a bedtime story; until a few weeks prior, she had been flailing about paroxysmally amidst pompons, shouting incomprehensible incantations meant to further the fortunes of a band of innocent sprites worshiping a sacred fruit (upon the fortunes of that same football team habitually rode much of mature King Max’s bank account, but that’s another matter). It was about time she grew up. Princesses were not exactly a dime a dozen. And this princess, it had suddenly dawned upon Tilli and Max, was a sexpot.
    She might be expected, upon attaining the age of twenty-one, to marry well, very well, indeed. In fact, there was probably no man, from Prince Charles to the U.S. president’s son, whom she might not fairly mate. Those prospects pleased the King and Queen. Heretofore, living under the stare of the CIA, having agreed to “retire” from the royalty circuit, the Furstenberg-Barcalonas sheltered no particular ambitions for their daughter and were content to have her indulge a normal American girlhood (although they were unconvinced that developments such as vegetarianism and ecology were normal). Now, it occurred to them that if this young woman were to attract the attentionof the right man, one of the emerging Arab rulers, for example, even the CIA probably would be powerless to prevent a most propitious union.
    It was the wrong time to speak of marriage to Leigh-Cheri. Leigh-Cheri had driven a wooden stake through the valentine. Yet, on the premise that it would aid preparation for her mission in life; on the premise that were she ever to resume her studies in environmental sciences she might not be so easily distracted by vibrations from the half-shellfish half-peach that occupied the warm, watery bowl of her lower regions, she made herself available to maturation, if maturation would have her.
    Put away was her teddy bear. Put away were her Beach Boys records. Put away was her fantasy of a Hawaiian honeymoon with Ralph Nader, her daydream of Ralph and her driving off together into the Haleakala sunset with their seat belts fastened. Not that she’d changed her mind about how perfect she’d be for him—he worked too hard, smiled too little, and dined as one indifferent to both flavor and fate; he clearly was a hero in need of rescue by a princess—it was just that romantic fantasies were …
immature
.
    Leigh-Cheri read books on solar radiation. She perused papers on overpopulation. To keep abreast of current events, she watched every news telecast that she could, fleeing the TV room immediately whenever a love story was dramatized. She gave her ears to Mozart and Vivaldi (Tchaikovsky was painful). She fed flies to Prince Charming. And she worked at keeping her person and her room exceedingly clean.
    “Cleanliness is next to godliness” was one slogan of maturity to which Leigh-Cheri could faithfully subscribe—not stopping to consider that if by the last quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.

13
    GULIETTA DIDN’T WORK ON SUNDAYS. It was only fair. Even Friday got Thursday off, thanks to Robinson Crusoe. On Sundays Queen Tilli would lumber into the kitchen, her Chihuahua affectionately clasped, and make brunch.
    The odor of frying bacon, sausage links, and ham tiptoed on little pig feet all the way to the north end of the second floor. Inevitably, the odor would awaken Leigh-Cheri. Inevitably, the odor made her simultaneously ravenous and nauseated. She hated the sensation.