The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton Page B

sister and whispered, “Linda is very, very cute. She’ll be a great little dancer.”

    When they got back to the house Lucy’s husband, Marc, was on the deck, firing up the gas grill. “Hello there,” he shouted into the kitchen to Walter. “How’s it going?”
    Walter came through the sliding doors, grinning at Marc, grinning as hard as he could. “Good, good,” he said. “Yourself?”
    “Great, just great.” He pointed past Walter, back into the house. “How’s Miss Dance on Her Tippy Toes?”
    “She did everything right,” Lucy said from the dark kitchen. “Walt even said so.”
    At first, during Lucy’s courtship, Walter hadn’t wanted to like Marc. But as her high school career wore on he found that it took too much energy to repress what he supposed could be called fondness. He admired Marc, especially at a distance, when he was out in the yard mowing the grass or washing his newest car in the driveway. Marc worked eighty hours a week at the Chrysler dealership. He was skilled, giving his customers high fives, remembering their first names, and their children’s names, but Walter sensed that his brother-in-law was embarrassed by his calling, that even at nineteen, when he’d started in the business, he’d felt apologetic. He worked out and he had his blond hair styled and he let Lucy dress him in pink short-sleeved polo shirts. His were the honest good looks you’d think you could trust, a man who would not lose his boyish appeal into his forties, who would grow up to be the salesman of the year, time and time again, until at last he owned the dealership.
    It was the pleasantness in Marc, always moderated to the same pitch, that rendered Walter speechless. He wondered if Marc was capableof fighting for a school-bond issue, or seriously thinking about a presidential candidate, or feeling a wave of sadness at the sight of poor lost Linda on the dance floor. Walter once dreamed that Marc was dressed in gold lamé, flying on his own power in a powdery sky. When Walter concentrated on liking Marc, on getting to know him, he was bored to tears, and if he focused on the elements of his dream, what might have been an indicator, a peek into Marc’s soul, what was lurking and probably forever stunted, Walter fell silent.
    “She buys this meat from the Jewel,” Marc was saying, “that doesn’t have any fat in it. Zip-o fat.”
    “Wow,” Walter said, marveling not at the meat but at a twenty-four-year-old who had already reduced his wife to a pronoun.
    Lucy opened the sliding door and stuck her head into the September heat. “Walt, Linda wants to show you what she made at her art class.”
    Walter excused himself and followed Linda into the living room. Lucy had just bought a white velvet sofa and loveseat, new end tables, and two ceramic lamps with frilly shades. The living room was not large, but there was a vaulted ceiling with rough-hewn beams that was supposed to make the place feel spacious. Next to the rocking chair, the one relic from Maplewood Avenue, there was an antique wooden wagon with blocks arranged inside to spell Linda, Lucy and Marc. Linda stood at the shelf where Lucy stored the ChildCraft set of reference books, and the Parents magazines in binders. Perhaps she had so many classes she couldn’t decide what handicraft to show him, or maybe, Walter thought, she too was struck by the decor of the room.
    “Sit down, why don’t you, Linda,” Walter said, taking the child by the hand and helping her onto the sofa. “While you’re thinking about where you put that art project, I want to show you something. That’s right, you get settled, and here, give me that headband, if you don’t mind.”
    Linda watched without a word while Walter first stretched the band and then fit it on his head. “Your great-aunt, Sue Rawson—you remember, the tall old lady who looks like an endangered bird—she used to take me to the ballet when I was little and it pretty much changed my life. She