Alaskan Holiday

I must have been about ten years old when I started to write to Eddy.  Even though I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, I had been raised on European fairy tales and was looking for a prince of my own.  When I found out that Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son was my same age, I decided he was going to be my special project.  I wrote to him weekly–news about school, my family, my cat, getting stitches, my friends, books, movies–nothing unusual, just stuff.

He started to write back when we were both twelve.  I’m not sure what sparked him since I now realize he gets tons of junk mail just like my letters.  He’s told me I was persistent and seemed like what he imagined to be a “real” American girl.  I still think I was lucky more than anything, though I do know he was interested in girls back then and now, despite what the media says about “Educated Edward,” and I do know he enjoys things and people that seem genuine to him.  That seem outside the confines of London and duty and bloodlines.

His early letters were very polite.  I remember I used to show them to my mother because there was no reason not to.  He would ask me about things I had described in my last letter.  He wanted to know about my school, what we did on our lunch hour, what my neighborhood was like.  He was very on top of whatever fads were in and wanted to know if I had a Duncan yo-yo or a mood ring.  But everything was prefaced with, “Would I please tell him about” and “thank-you for sharing.”

As we got further into puberty, Eddy got ruder.  It started out kind of gradual like; he’d ask me how I was wearing my hair, and would I please send a picture.  Then he got down right obnoxious– did I wear a bra yet? had I gotten my period?  I told him it was none of his business and asked him if he had wet dreams.  He wrote me a brief not apologizing, and then I heard nothing from him for several months except for a form Christmas card with “hope you have a pleasant new year” scribbled on the bottom.

When he started writing again it was to tell me he was going to be in New York and Washington DC the next month, and could I arrange to meet him?  I remember begging my folks, and my mom seemed ready to let me go, but my dad is very strict about missing school and Eddy’s visit coincided with the end of the semester.  And then there was the expense of travel, and arranging for at least one of my parents to get off work so I would have a chaperon.  What I’m saying is, the whole meeting just turned out to be too much of a hassle, and we weren’t able to pull it off.  But we did start writing again.  He told me about books and music he liked, about jokes he played on his brothers, about wanting to get away.  But I guess it was the same stuff I was writing to him.

At this time he started to make more public appearances, more official business.  His attitude about this was inconsistent.  Sometimes he seemed to really enjoy the attention, the excitement of travel and meeting other royalty and heads of state.  Other times he complained he was being used by the English people to satisfy their need to appear superior to other nations by flaunting their royal family.  I don’t think Eddy is aware of how egocentric he comes off sometimes.

I remember when his oldest brother got married.  His letters before the ceremony were full of whining.  He hated his suit.  He hated having to ride in an open carriage with his grandmother.  He seemed indifferent about his future sister-in-law and hated the increased number of photographers buzzing around.  But then after the wedding, all he could write about was how much fun he had.  Suddenly Diana seemed beautiful, and the people lining the streets and cheering were all marvelous and the whole world seemed to be good and wholesome and a great place to be.  He said he wished I’d been there so we could have danced together and I’d understand.  But I think I did understand.  The pictures in Time and his letters and being seventeen, I really could hear the music, and I’d start smiling as if I were at a ball.  When I was really sitting on a chair in my parents’ den.

About this time our letters started to take a different tone.  He asked me if I ever wanted to have children, if I thought I might want to go ahead and get married while I was young like Diana was, or if I would insist on waiting.  My plans were vague, and my imagination was wild, but it was focused more on romance than on commitment.  I knew he was going on official type dates and that he was friends with most of the young women he was exposed to.  But he wouldn’t tell me about them, and I wouldn’t tell him about my boyfriends.  I’d tell him about books I was reading like Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights, and didn’t he find them romantic?  I asked him if he had ever been to Yorkshire to see the Bronte’s abbey, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in an old mansion that was falling apart and run around in the heather on the hillside.  I think I also wanted to roll around in the heather, but I was too shy to admit to that.  I did stop signing my letters “your friend” and started signing them “love, Ellen.”  I’d tell him how I wished we could be together, sometime.  When we started college, though, our letters grew more infrequent and I began to concentrate on other kinds of writing.  Perhaps it was all those letters I wrote as a kid that led to my passion for playing with words.

I was surprised to receive an exceptionally long letter the summer of 1990.  I had moved to Fairbanks, Alaska to study creative writing at the University there, and the envelope had been forwarded from Milwaukee.  By this time our correspondence had dwindled down to a couple of short notes a year, one sent at Christmas time.  But this letter was ten pages, handwritten on a long legal tablet.  What was especially odd was that he didn’t really say much.  There was a long description of a garden he had started on a plot left for him behind the palace.  He told me about the plants he was growing, the soil conditions, the insects that fed on them, the insects that helped.  At the end he said, “Ellen, write to me please and tell me about your neighborhood, tell me something simple and good.”

Later I found out that he was dismayed to discover his brother was cheating on Diana, but at the time I was oblivious to the Windsors’ problems.  I wrote and told him about my summer job as an attendant at the university museum, about tourist season, about seeing a moose on my road, about the little cabin I lived in, about swimming in the gravel pit behind the airport.  Two weeks after I sent that letter off, he showed up at work.

I was collecting admissions at the desk when he walked in the door with the museum director, two cops, and a half dozen secret service men.  I had never seen him in person before and was startled by how thin he was.  I wanted to shout out, but he was looking straight at me, and I could tell by his expression that he wanted me to stay quiet.  He was shaking all the tourists’ hands and when he walked by my desk, he shook mine, leaving a piece of paper in my palm.  It said, “When I walk out, slip me a note with directions to your cabin.”  Perhaps another person might think he was being a bit forward, but I was tickled.

He only spent about half an hour walking through the exhibit area, and a third of that time he spent standing next to the giant stuffed Kodiak bear while tourists took his picture.  But I had plenty of time to get my note ready.  I put myself by the front door so I’d be in his path when he left.  As I shook his hand I said, “Would you like to dance?”

His replied, “Very much so.”  The secret service men all chuckled, like secret service men do, but they didn’t know why.

After work I went straight home and started to pick up, and half an hour later the place didn’t look too bad.  Then a cab pulled up and Eddy stepped onto the dirt path that leads to my cabin.  The cab drove away, and there he stood, still looking thin and looking kind of lost.  I hadn’t even had time to think about being nervous and decided I wasn’t going to be at that moment either.  I walked off my porch, grabbed his hand, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Hey man, do you want to dance?”

“Always.”  He said always.  And it was weird because that was what I wanted him to say, but it wasn’t so much that I was looking for him to be my Prince Charming anymore.  I suppose he was still my old crush, but he was also my old friend come to visit me.  I hadn’t even thought of him arriving on a fine Arab charger since I was twelve and he first started answering my letters.  I didn’t ask him how long he was staying or what his plans were.  At that time I didn’t even think about it.

I made dinner–spaghetti with Rague–because that was all I had.  He didn’t seem to mind even though I didn’t have meat or wine.  After dinner we went to the Howling Dog and we did dance.  Someone had taken him to Big Rays to get him some plaid flannel shirts, and his short hair made him look like another GI from Fort Wainwright.  All of his acting lessons helped him develop a pretty convincing Texas accent; he even got into a conversation with a bartender from Austin.  I guess he fit in pretty well with the locals.

The Howling Dog features The Flyers, the best rhythm and blues band north of Chicago, and back then they were the only band in town I liked to dance to.  He was stiff and a little out of sync dancing to the blues, but he was something else during the slow songs.  Not exactly hot, but definitely comfortable.  He held me loosely and let me decided how close I wanted to get to him.

Eddy was the same way when I brought him back home.  He was not what I’d call a sexual dynamo, but he was a nice person to make love to.  He wasn’t the lest bit aggressive or forward, but responded to every touch.  I think he was tired; that night he slept for ten hours.

I had just pulled a tray of Jiffy muffins from my oven when Eddy finally climbed down from my sleeping loft.

“Smells good,” he said.

“It’s my mom’s recipe,” I lied, and turned around so he could kiss me good morning.  I wondered if he had had imitation apple bits often enough to know them from the real thing.

“Can we go swimming in the gravel pit? he asked as he pulled on his jeans– pulled them on one leg at a time.

“It’s too cold.” Really warm days are a rarity in Fairbanks and it was late August.  “There’s blueberries growing on Murphy Dome that are ready to be picked, though.”  He smiled at that.  Neither one of us said anything about running wild like Catherine and Heathcliff, but that was what was going through my mind.

I drove him in my old Toyota Tercel all the way up the dirt road and past all the No Trespassing signs.  I was a little worried that someone who had traveled as widely as he wouldn’t be suitably impressed, but when we got to the top of the hill and got out of the car, he assumed the air of a man at church as he reverently surveyed the view of the surrounding valleys.  A few small clouds cast shadows on the distant hills.  The clouds and their corresponding shadows were soft and round, friendly looking, maybe sexual– and they moved so quickly across the sky, like they were skating.

We didn’t roll in the bushes, just quietly picked the berries and put them in our pots and our mouths.  I guess we’re both basically quiet people.  But while we were being silent, I began to wonder about what was going to happen.  I knew I couldn’t keep him in my cabin even if I wanted to.  And as much as I liked him, I didn’t want to.  School would be starting in a few weeks, and I’m relatively serious about my course work and my writing.  I don’t have room in my life to take care of an escaped prince.  After we filled out pots and before we drove back towards town, I sat down on the ground next to him and got up the nerve to ask him what his plans were.

He gave me a big-eyed look and said, “I’m going to move into your cabin and become your personal servant and do all your laundry and cook your meals.”

I smiled and reached over so I could touch him and took hold of his knee.  “Hey man, I could use a servant, but what will I feed you?”

“Bread and water, that’s all I require.”

“And where will I keep you when I need to concentrate on my work?”

“I think I can fit in the cabinet under your kitchen counter.”

I need it for my cookery.”

Eddy picked up the hand I had put on his knee and gently wrapped his fingers around mine.  “Right now, I’m supposed to be on a three-day rafting trip out on the Brooks Range with four of my guards.  I managed to convince two of then whom I’ve been with for a number of years to give me some time away.  The other two must have found out late last night that I was gone.  I’m sure they must have played along, and the four of them are out on the river without me.”

So tomorrow you go back.”

“Yes.”  He pulled on my hand so I would look at him, and I did.  He seemed to be searching my face for something, but I’m not quite sure what it was.  I don’t think he found it because he looked away.  “I guess I just needed to get away for a while and be with a friend. Thank you for sharing your time with me.”

I laughed because he had that same polite tone that his letters had when we were twelve, but I didn’t tell him why I laughed.

We picked up a bottle of wine and went home.  There Eddy built a campfire in front of my cabin, and we drank the wine and danced slow to a Paul Simon tape, watching the flames.  The next day he went away in another taxi.  He still sends me Christmas cards.

Fairbanks, 1991