Royal Wedding - Meg Cabot Page 0,44
the help of a crisis management team—neither the voters nor the press is going to make a big deal out of . . .”
My voice trailed off because I’d turned to the page with my sister’s photo on it.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
Grandmère nodded knowingly. “Yes,” she said. “Now do you see the gravity of the problem, Amelia?”
“It isn’t a problem,” I said. “Except maybe to some people, who might be surprised to see that she’s . . . she’s . . .”
“Black,” Grandmère said.
Seriously, sometimes I can’t even deal with her.
“African American,” I corrected her.
“She’s not African,” Grandmère said. “She was born in New Jersey, and her father is Genovian.”
“Yes, Grandmère, but today people say—”
“That makes her American Genovian,” Grandmère went on, blithely ignoring me. “I suppose you’ll argue that the proper term is biracial, but in Europe they’ll call her black, just as they’d call her uncle a ginger.”
“No one but you would call her uncle that,” I said. “And hopefully in Europe they won’t call her anything but Olivia Grace, which according to this is her name.”
“Do you really think that’s what your cousin Ivan is going to say when he finds out?” Grandmère asked acidly. “I highly doubt it.”
It would be nice to think she’s wrong, and that we live in a world where no one notices things like skin color (or hair color) and that prejudice and bigotry don’t exist. Certainly many people claim they “don’t see” these things, and that we live in a “post-racial society.”
But I don’t need a crisis management team to tell me that this is untrue.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, in Cousin Ivan’s case, it might have been better if she were a redhead—”
“Bite your tongue!” Grandmère cried, horrified.
We didn’t get to finish our talk, though, because at that moment we both heard loud male voices from the hallway outside Grandmère’s penthouse condo. Curiously, they appeared to be singing a popular Genovian drinking song, which goes, roughly translated:
Oh, forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk,
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk,
Forgive me, Mother, for I am drunk again!
(Repeat)
It is possibly the most annoying song of all time (besides Boris’s “A Million Stars”), but its annoying qualities multiply times infinity when you realize that it’s being sung by your father, who you’ve just found out has been lying to you (by omission) about having another child, and who only a few weeks earlier got arrested for recklessly speeding his race car in Manhattan.
“What’s he doing here?” I hissed, hurriedly closing the dossier.
“Oh, he’s been downstairs in his own suite this entire time,” Grandmère said, “with your fiancé.”
“What? Michael?” Suddenly I recognized the second male voice. “When did Michael get here?”
“I believe he arrived while you were imprisoning Rommel’s bride-to-be in the kitchen,” Grandmère said drily, “to try, as he put it, to straighten out this wedding nonsense. I sent him to speak to your father. It sounds like the two of them have been celebrating your impending nuptials. You can keep that.” She pointed to the dossier. “I have my own copy. But I wouldn’t allow your father to see it.”
“Wait . . . Dad doesn’t know you know?”
“Of course he doesn’t. You know how sensitive he is. Ever since he was a little boy, he never liked me knowing his business. I remember when he was at school, he used to collect comic books—the one who dressed as a spider, what was his name? Well, whatever his name was, your father loved him, but he never wanted me to know about it. Why do you think your father would be so ashamed of loving a spider man?”
“I don’t know, Grandmère,” I said, shoving the dossier into my bag, which was fortunately large enough to hold it since it was my carry-on. I hadn’t yet had a chance to unpack from my trip, so I was still carrying around all my clothes and bottles of sunscreen. “Maybe because he secretly wanted to be Spider-Man. Anyway, we have to talk about this with him. He can’t go on keeping his own daughter a secret.”
“Of course he can,” she said with a sniff. “At least until after the election. He’s done it for twelve years, he can do it for three more months.”
“But he can’t allow Olivia to be taken overseas!”
“Why not? The press will have a much more difficult time finding her there than in New Jersey. And this is