Free Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead Page B

free this mighty blade from yonder stone? Are you destined to become ruler of the realm?”
    “You bet!” says Tim.
    Tim’s daughter Amber, who has rejected Sandy’s offer to hold her up so she can see better, stands on tiptoe and whispers, “My dad is really strong.”
    Sandy suspects she’s right. She had met Tim the previous afternoon on the artificial white sand beach by one of the pools at the hotel, the pool that Chloe and Harry love because it has waterslides made out of big, fake rocks. Except for his ponytail, he reminds herpleasantly of the frat boys she used to date: burly, soft in spots, sunburned. Tim is a carpenter, divorced and in the middle of a weekend-long attempt to bribe Amber into forgetting she has anything to be unhappy about. Chloe, barely deigning to watch as Tim makes a show of pushing up his sleeves and pretending to spit on his palms, says, “He’s not going to do it. I’ve seen this before.”
    “He can do it,” Amber says desperately. Her father braces one foot on the stone, grasps the sword’s hilt, and pulls. Nothing happens. Tim crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Most children in the audience laugh but not Amber.
    “Your dad’s being funny,” Joan tells her.
    Sandy and Joan planned this trip months ago. They envisioned it as part girls’ getaway and part last hurrah before the kids start first grade—two nights in a hotel, two days split between the park and the pool, no husbands. They had planned so well and so far in advance that when Sandy decided she was tired of Joan and didn’t want to go anymore, it was too late. Chloe would have been crushed, and Gary wouldn’t let her lose the cost of the hotel room, which was already paid for. “Plus,” he said, “Joan’s a good friend for you to have.” She had not asked what he meant because she knew he imagined this weekend would be a good chance for her to observe how Joan stayed so thin (Sandy already knew: no food, surreptitious cigarettes) and that she would come home twenty pounds lighter, as though from a summer at fat camp.
    Amber folds her arms over her small chest. She is a chubby, demanding child with small, suspicious blue eyes and a bushy crown of tight black ringlets. “No, he isn’t. He’s pretending he can’t do it, but then he’s going to.”
    “They need to get a little kid,” Chloe says sagely. “Only kids can do it.”
    “Why?” Harry wants to know.
    Chloe tsks with irritation. “Because. That’s the joke.”
    Tim finally lets go of the sword and wipes his brow, shaking his head. Merlin pats him on the back. “Valiant knight,” he announces,“you have tried nobly, but you are not meant to be ruler of the realm. Perchance there is another who wishes to try?”
    As Tim makes his way back through the crowd, Merlin chooses a Japanese boy in shorts and a pirate hat. Tim lifts Amber onto his hip, and when the boy draws the long blade from the stone, his mouth falling open in astonished joy, Amber begins to cry. “It’s not fair,” she says. “He cheated.”
    “I bet you would have been able to pull out the sword,” Tim tells her, tucking her curls behind her ears.
    Her mouth and eyes have all but disappeared into her plump cheeks. “I wanted you to do it.”
    “I told you,” Chloe says. “Only kids can do it.”
    “Zounds!” says Merlin. “Good knight, you have proven yourself worthy to wear the crown. I hereby proclaim you ruler of the realm!” Instead of a crown, he takes a small medal on a blue ribbon from his robe pocket and hangs it around the boy’s neck, sweeping into a deep bow. The boy clutches the medal and gazes down at it. Gently, Merlin grasps him by the shoulders and gives him a light push, sending him stumbling back to his family.
    Amber squirms in Tim’s arms like an unhappy cat while he juggles her twisting limbs, trying not to drop her. “Amber! It’s okay !” He grimaces at Joan, of course, not Sandy, even though Sandy was the one to invite him along.