Wooden Hearts, Out to Lunch

“It was a birthday present, they say,” I started to tell her.

“What was?” she yawned, stirring the ice cubes in her glass lazily. It must be nice, I thought, to not care about anything but ice cubes. It must be nice to love without regret.

“The puppet,” I repeated, looking around for the waitress. I wanted my food, but she was nowhere to be seen. I looked back at the girl, who didn’t seem nearly as hungry as I. No matter. As long as she was away from that hospital bed, “The princess received it as a birthday present.”

“Why?”

“I’m getting to that,” I insisted, trying to hide my frustration. She was always like this. She never saw the significance in what I had to say. And she never saw the truth. But I was also getting to that, “Her parents gave her the puppet as a birthday present,” I tried again.

She was silent, perhaps listening, perhaps just giving up. Either way, I was pleased, “Her name was Annabel, and she was a lonely princess. Perhaps she didn’t know she was lonely, for she had servants and maidens and a very brave knight to keep her company. But like all princesses, she needed a prince.”

“But no man was good enough for her,” she finished for me. Ah; she knew where this was going.

“Exactly. No man was good enough. So her parents came up with the plan for the puppet. The greatest puppet maker in all the land had created it, with real golden hair and sparkling green eyes and skin so smooth that no one could tell it was made of wood. And each limb was so perfect, each joint so oiled and smoothed, that when the strings were pulled, it looked like it was moving on its own.

“Needless to say, the princess was delighted. This prince was perfect in every way shape and form. On the outside, at least. She could lift him up and take him around the palace. But soon, she wanted more. A pretty face only goes so far…”

----

She ran her fingers over the prince’s face, “You need a name,” she whispered. He said nothing. He didn’t ever seem to want to say much. She only smiled sadly, “There was a story my father read me, when I was very little,” she then began to tell him. He loved to hear about her past, “It was about a swan who…well, that isn’t important.”

She thought she heard him whisper “What is important then?” But she couldn’t be sure. It always sounded like a breeze in the wind. She could feel her heart strain for more. She wanted to hear him say it, not just a whisper and not just the wind.

“There was a prince in the story. His name was Siegfried,” she then said quickly, removing her hand from his face. He sat in the chair lamely as she sat across from him, staring intently into his eyes. She sat there for a long time before speaking. She knew he wasn’t going to speak. She knew, and the more she knew, the more she stopped believing she could love him. And she stopped believing he could love her.

“Do you like it?” she finally asked, now whispering as well. It kept her voice from sounding strained; she wanted to sound like she wasn’t choking something back. She couldn’t let his visionless eyes see her cry. She couldn’t let his wooden ears hear her sob. He liked it, so Siegfried it would be. The name fit the man like a glove. He was the prince from any page of a fairytale.

He could have been anyone she wanted, but she didn’t want to know that, so she laughed these thoughts away, replacing them with joy.

“Princess,” a voice said from reality, pulling her out from the distant corner of her thoughts. She looked up to the doorway of her room. A young man stood there, his eyes piercing through towards Siegfried, coated in something Annabel couldn’t place.

“Sir Callahan,” she greeted him with a respectful nod, turning her chair to face the man. She straightened herself in her seat, as any respectable royal was expected to do. She held her chin high and tightened her lower lip, as she had seen her father and mother do many times, before knights and subjects alike, “Do you need something?” she asked tightly, “I am very busy and if this not an emergency…”

“It’s not, I confess,” the young man then said, relaxing in his armor a bit, looking at her with calm eyes, “I was just saying goodbye,” he then nodded his head. Without another word, he looked at her again and left.

She never understood things like that.

----

“Things like what?” she asked, as the waitress brought a tray of food to our table. I waved my hand as the small woman asked who had the hamburger. She could figure out that the salad was for the woman sitting across from me.

“You know…things like that,” I said, wondering how I should describe it, “Long, lingering stares, hopeful glances, shots of jealousy.”

“I understand things like that,” she pointed out, playing with her fork before stabbing a tomato within the lettuce leaves, like a hunter on the prowl.

I shuddered briefly, thinking of how she didn’t understand anything at all. I don’t think she saw, too engrossed in her food. I shook my head, “That isn’t the point. The point is she let the knight leave for war without a word.”

“You never said he was leaving for war.”

I wanted to groan. I had to hold it in, the sound ripping at my lungs with frustration. She wasn’t always this difficult, but she always was a bit stubborn. I think I liked this part of her the most, “Also not the point. The point is that she was so wrapped up in her feelings for the prince that she missed everything around her.”

----

So, as she was missing everything around her, her heart never missed a beat. It caught every pose that the Prince Siegfried could make. It melted at every single smile he never smiled. It laughed at every joke that he never told.

Funny how a name could do that. One minute, he was a faceless doll, beautiful without much to say. And then he became Siegfried, the fairytale prince who could rescue and princess from any fate. He could use his charm anywhere he wanted, with any lass he wished, but he always chose Annabel. She won him over; she didn’t know why, but he always wanted to be with her.

“Siegfried,” she whispered, testing the name on her tongue. It was light, and easy to say. She sat next to him and grabbed his hand, sitting on the floor of her room, “No other prince likes to sit on floors, do you know that?” she asked him. She leaned forward, eager to hear his answer.

He smiled and said something clever about how sitting on the ground promotes better thought. She agreed absolutely. No one knows exactly what he said, and no one but Princess Annabel ever would.

----

Three days later, she hadn’t left her room. There was no real need. Everything she ever wanted was right there with her, promising to never leave. Maids brought in food, changed her clothes, read her stories, and gave her baths. She only went out on special request. She didn’t need anything. Love took care of it all.

“Princess Annabel!” a voice called out in singsong that morning, as a maid threw open the door to see a woman still her nightdress, “Princess! It’s nearly afternoon. Should you not get dressed?”

“Do you need me, Natalie?” the young woman asked, not wasting time on a lot of words. She learned that from her dearest prince. She sat up on her bed and nudge Siegfried gently, to wake him up. They slept in again. That was nice. Just innocent, perfect, sleepy days in bed. Nothing to worry about; No kingdoms, no wars. It was just the two of them.

“You have a letter,” the maid then rushed happily, running the letter over to her and placing it into the princess’s hands, “I think you’ll be pleased,” she then said, biting her lip to hold back a smile. She was holding a secret. A secret that made her want to dance and giggle like she did in her youth.

But she could not let her princess see. She had to let the woman read for herself. So she bowed, still biting her lip anxiously and scuttled out of the large room, stifling back a laugh of joy.

This is because this letter brought hope to everyone in the castle. Perhaps soon their princess may wake up before noon again and see something other than her lover’s glass eyes.

The woman sat on her bed, kicking back her covers and running her fingers through her long strands of hair. She stared at the folded piece of paper for a long time, sealed with a red ribbon, “I wonder,” she then said to Siegfried, “Do you want me to read it to you?”

He responded that he didn’t care either way, though he loved the sound of her voice. She blushed madly, smiling ear from ear as she unraveled the ribbon and opened the letter, feeling the smooth paper between her fingers as she read it to her prince:

“Dearest Annabel,

War is cold, even in the hottest of summers. I can’t explain the chill one gets staring at the battlefield. You cannot see the blood, only the bodies. You cannot see the swords, only the guiltless debris that they have left behind. It’s as though everyone is slowing trying to forget what happened, even a few hours after the fact. Forgetting is a technique of fools. And ignorance is the bliss of the blind.

But I am not blind anymore, which is why I strive on. I know that there is nothing I can do to make you look towards the sky, wondering if I am looking at it as well. There is nothing I can do to make you dream of roses from me. But I still feel full when I face the field. And that’s how I know, it’s all for my country, for my honor, and for my love. For you.”

She paused before adding, “It’s unsigned.”

She stared at the letter for a moment before crawling out of bed and putting it on her nightstand, smoothing out the creases in the parchment, staring at the penmanship. She thought she knew whom it was from. She felt this sick feeling as she stared at the paper. But then she heard:

“So you know my secret,” in a tiny whisper, coming from the bed. Annabel turned around with a tiny smile, tilting her head, inquisitively. The puppet stared upwards thoughtfully, too embarrassed to look at her.

“You wrote it?” Annabel asked, trying to sound less relieved than she really felt. She could hardly hide that smile, “You do not like war, do you Siegfried? I know you wish to fight for my country,” she said, sitting next to him, softly stroking his arms, “But I can not risk losing you.”

He said nothing. She rested his head on her chest, looking out towards her bedchamber window, “You write lovely letters,” she then added, softly, hoping his wooden ears could not hear the doubt in her voice.

----

“So let me guess,” she said, squeezing a lemon into her water. I didn’t want to mention how restaurant lemons were often unsanitary. I knew her; she would not touch another lemon for two years if I said a word about it, “The letters continue, and she believes they’re from Siegfried,” she said, her voice dipped in sarcasm.

Her tone hurt me slightly, but it was light pain nothing like what happened next, “Exactly,” I said, ignoring her sarcasm, “Isn’t that the beauty of play-pretend. With enough elastic dreams, you can stretch an imagination anywhere.”

“Anyone could talk one minute with you and tell that you’re a writer,” she added. She said this a lot, probably because there was some truth to it. I liked stories and I liked to speak in metaphors. It’s what I did. It’s what I still do.

I just stole a tomato slice from her salad and nodded blankly, “Each note was more lovely than the last. But she never wrote back,” I continued, turning my attention to my food, carefully playing with it and successfully avoiding eye contact, “She always thought she didn’t have to. She would just tell Siegfried her responses, so she never had to write it down.”

“It was the knight, right? Why did he keep writing?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed with the first real smile of the afternoon, “Perhaps he just couldn’t let go; or perhaps, more likely, he knew that somewhere, his feelings were seeping in. He might have kept writing with that single hope that she would smile every time she received one of his letters, whether she knew the author or not.”

“That’s silly.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, taking a pause in her trying to break apart my resolve to chew. She patted her mouth dry before she spoke again, “Did she smile?”

I answered that with a smile of my own, taking a giant bite of my burger. I bit off more than I could chew, so it took a while to get back to the story. Actually, I’d even dare say that one line just summarized my whole life; but it may be a stretch.

----

Princess Annabel looked at the large clock in her room, sitting in a chair by her door. She fiddled with her dress and looked eagerly back at Siegfried, “You said you sent a letter today,” she reminded him, looking through the crack in the door eagerly. She sighed with muted frustration, “I don’t know why you can’t just give them to me. You always play games like this.”

She thought she felt him stare at her; she could not tell for she was still looking anxiously at the door. He laughed at her gently, “I love you Annabel,” he then said, blankly. He so cold, even as he spoke in that soft voice that always sounded like the wind. He was so stiff, almost like…

“Princess! Princess!” the old maid shouted as she bustled down the hall. The young monarch looked up, with wide eyes, “Princess Annabel!” the woman repeated, flailing her arms around uselessly, holding a piece of paper in her hand.

Annabel didn’t care about flailing, or her name being repeated over and over. She had her letter from her saucy little prince. She looked over at him, grinning in her. The young woman reached up helplessly towards the maid, looking at her with big eyes, “Please,” she hen said as politely as possible.

The woman looked at her, frowning with her eyes. Finally, she sighed and handed the letter over, with nowhere else to turn in the matter. The woman lingered for longer than she though she would, stealing a long glance at the prince, sitting against the bed in a casual matter, a heap of wood and strings laid with love.

Annabel,

It has been a few months and alas, I haven’t heard from you. I like to think that letters have been lost in delivery but I know this is not the case. I have decided it was for my own good to stop putting my head in the clouds. I think that the idea of writing letters and hoping you might love them has turned me into a puppet to my own devices. And I can’t have that anymore.

However, I want you to know that this is still my path. Perhaps mine will meet yours again someday. Yet if they don’t, know that your smile has always been warmer to me than any blood spilled by a sword. That’s all you’ve ever needed to know.

Postscript: Do you love him so much?

Annabel looked up; dry mouthed and wide-eyed, turning her head to face her prince. She looked at Siegfried carefully and got on her floor, crawling over to him gently, curiously. Her eyes were as wide as a child’s as she stroked his face and looked at his glassy eyes, “You never wrote those notes, did you?” she whispered, “Not a single word. Not a single emotion was yours, was it?” she asked, shaking slightly, just staring at him. Her eyes began to burn as dust entered them, unable to blink. For she knew if she blinked, the tears would tumble out.

He said nothing. The she finally blinked. Then the blink turned into a sniffle, and suddenly there was a light sprinkle of tears. The storm was rolling in; one could tell by the clouds in her eyes.

“Please, smile for me,” she said quickly, a small lump in her throat, making her words muffled and choked, “Just say that it’s okay. Please tell me it’s okay. Please tell me you are here…” she paused.

He wasn’t going to say anything. He was going to stare. A heap of stings and wood lying against her bed. She lay down next to him, a heap of confusion and emotion. She looked at him one last time before staring out blankly, holding the letter in her hands. She did not say a word.

----

“And there she stayed, becoming a puppet to her ignorance and her love. It was only then she realized that she could not move without the strings of emotion tugging her around. So she simply stopped obeying, and became a lifeless puppet, too afraid to do anything else. Too afraid to love anything else,” I finished off, setting an empty glass of water in front of my plate.

She waved down the waitress for the check and looked back at me, “I give up Mike,” she finally said, with a small and nervous giggle, “Why did you tell me this? Surely you invited me for lunch for something more than story hour,” she said practically.

I nodded a little halfheartedly in agreement. However, I leaned over the table casually and looked her in the eye, “Aren’t you ever afraid of becoming the puppet?”

She looked at me, the pieces falling together, “What? Mike, if this is about George…” she started in a warning. But it was, and she couldn’t stop me now.

“Savannah,” I said, in a low register, “He can’t love you. He can’t do anything but lay in that bed and suck food through a tube,” I shook my head, “Actually, I take that back; he can also make you cry, and tug those strings forcing you into helping him.”

She gaped at me for a while, incredulous at my words. She wet her lips and sucked in breath, “I can’t believe you,” she whispered, “This is my husband you’re talking about. He’s not some puppet for…”

“No Savannah, he is,” I insisted, staring her in the eyes, “You just don’t want to see the puppet he’s made out of you. You never come out anymore. Do you realize what it took for me just to invite you to lunch? You’re a hospital lackey, and a jointed doll for this…vegetable to control.”

She laughed in a way I never wanted her to laugh at me. Then she stood up, shaking her head softly, her curls tumbling onto her face, “I have to get back to the hospital,” she said, digging in her purse and pulling out money to split the check with me.

I stood up to watch her go, “Do I even need to tell you that you’re making a mistake?” I asked, trying one last time, “Can he tell you stories? Can he take you out for lunch?”

She put on her coat and looked at me, not needing to answer my question, “I think you’re the one who’s afraid of puppets,” she then said softly. Always calm. Always benign. I knew I loved her for a reason, “The fear of letting something go is too much and you can’t help but dance to your puppeteer’s whim.”

I opened my mouth to say something, perhaps to argue with her words. But nothing came out until well after she looked at me as she walked away and she told me, “We’re all puppets Mike. You’re just too blind to see your strings.”