And my dad said, "Lars would go with you."
So basically, I am never going anywhere alone again.
This made me kind of mad. I sat in the backseat with red from a traffic light flashing down on my face, and I said, "Okay, well, that’s it. I don’t want to be a princess anymore. You can take back your one hundred dollars a day and send Grandmère back to France. I quit."
And my dad said, in this tired voice, "You can’t quit, Mia. The article today closed the deal. Tomorrow your face will be in every newspaper in America—maybe even the world. Everyone will know that you are the princess Amelia of Genovia. And you cannot quit being who you are."
I guess it wasn’t a very princessy thing to do, but I cried all the way to the Plaza. Lars gave me his handkerchief, which I thought was very nice of him.
More Wednesday
My mom thinks the person who tipped off Carol Fernandez is Grandmère.
But I really can’t believe Grandmère would do something like that—you know, give thePost the inside scoop on me. Especially when I’m so far behind in my princess lessons. You know? It’s almost guaranteed that now I’m going to have to start acting like a princess—I mean,really acting like one—but Grandmère hasn’t even gotten to all the really important stuff yet, the stuff like how to argue knowledgeably with virulent antiroyalists like Lilly. So far all Grandmère has taught me is how to sit; how to dress; how to use a fish fork; how to address senior members of the royal household staff; how to say thank you so much and no, I don’t care for that, in seven languages; how to make a Sidecar; and some Marxist theory.
What good is any of THAT going to do me?
But my mom is convinced. Nothing will change her mind. My dad got really mad at her, but she still wouldn’t budge. She says Grandmère is the one who tipped off Carol Fernandez and that all my dad has to do is ask her and he’ll find out the truth.
My dad did ask her—not Grandmère. Mom. He asked her why she never bothered to consider that her boyfriend might be the one who spilled the beans to Carol Fernandez.
The minute he said it, I think my dad probably regretted it. Because my mom’s eyes got the way they do when she’s really mad—I meanreally mad, like the time I told her about the guy in Washington Square Park who flashed his you-know-what at me and Lilly one day when we were filming for her show. Her eyes got narrower and narrower, until they were nothing more than little slits. Then, next thing I knew, she was putting on her coat and going out to kick some flasher butt.
Only she didn’t put on her coat when my dad said that about Mr. Gianini. Instead, her eyes got very narrow, and her lips almost disappeared, she pressed them together so hard, and then she went, "Get . . . out," in a voice that kind of sounded like the poltergeist in that movieAmityville Horror.
But my dad wouldn’t get out, even though technically the loft belongs to my mom (thank God Carol Fernandez didn’t put the loft’s address in the paper; and thank God my mom is so paranoid about Jesse Helms siccing the CIA on sociopolitical artists like herself, in order to yank their NEA grants, that she keeps our phone number unlisted; no reporters have discovered the loft, so we can at least order in Chinese without fear of hearing a story onExtra on how much the Princess Amelia likes moo shu vegetable).
Instead, my dad went, "Really, Helen. I think you’re letting your dislike of my mother blind you to the real truth."
"The real truth?" my mom yelled. "The real truth, Phillipe, is that your mother is—"
At this point, I decided it might be best to retire to my room. I put my headphones on so I wouldn’t have to listen to them fight. This is a trick I learned from watching kids on made-for-TV movies whose parents are divorcing. My favorite CD right now is the latest Britney Spears, which I know is really dorky, and I could never tell Lilly, but secretly I sort of want to be Britney Spears. Once I had a dream Iwas Britney, and I was performing in the auditorium at Albert Einstein, and I had this little pink minidress on, and Josh Richter complimented me on it right before I went onstage.
Isn’t that an embarrassing thing to admit? The funny thing is, while I know I could never tell Lilly about that dream without her going all Freudian on me and telling me how the pink dress is a phallic symbol and being Britney signifies my low self-esteem or something, I know I could tell Tina Hakim Baba, and she would totally get into it and just want to know whether or not Josh was wearing leather pants.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but it’s really hard to write with my new fake fingernails.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether or not Grandmère really is the one who tipped off Carol Fernandez. I mean, when I went to my princess lesson today I was still crying, and Grandmère was totally unsympathetic about it. She was all, "And these tears are because . . . ?" And when I told her, she just raised her painted-on eyebrows—she plucks hers all out and draws on new ones every day, which kind of defeats the purpose, if you ask me, but whatever—and went,"C’est la vie," which means "Well, that’s life" in French.
Only in life, I don’t think a whole lot of girls get their faces plastered across the cover of thePost, unless they’ve won the lottery or had sex with the president or something.I didn’t do anything except get born.
I don’t think "that’s life" at all. I think that sucks, is what I think.
Then Grandmère started talking about how she’d been fielding calls all day from representatives of the media, and how all these people want to interview me, like Leeza Gibbons and Barbara Walters and stuff, and she said I ought to have a press conference, and that she’d already talked to the Plaza people about it, and they’d set aside this special room with a podium and a pitcher of ice water and some potted palms and stuff.
I couldn’t believe it! I was like, "Grandmère! I don’t want to talk to Barbara Walters! God! Like I really want everyone knowing my business!"
And Grandmère said, all prissy, "Well, if you don’t try to accommodate the media, they’re just going to try to get the story any way they can, which means they’ll keep showing up at your school. And at your friends’ houses, and at your grocery store, and at the place where you rent those movie videos you like so much."