Falling for Hamlet

1



Zara leans in, looking like a schoolgirl sharing a secret. Her eyes bright and wide, she asks, “You spent a great deal of time with the royal family. What were they like?”

“Oh, you know… royal. Fairly proper. Serious. And, uh…” Ophelia looks off camera and adds, “But nice, I guess.”

Hamlet’s father had the kind of laugh that made wineglasses vibrate and clink if the staff set them too close together, and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, loved to hear it so much that she went to great lengths to provoke it. At this moment, she was telling a story and proceeded to launch herself out of her chair to act out the punch line. The king cheered her with a “bravo,” and we all clapped. She took a little bow before kissing the king and nodding to his brother, Claudius, who was smiling but not laughing. He never seemed to laugh.

As many times as I had been in the family’s private dining room, I would always be slightly surprised to see Gertrude relaxing in track pants and without her characteristic French knot. Gertrude’s gaze met Claudius’s, and her face suddenly grew pinched. She quickly looked back at her husband as she fluffed her blond hair and sank back into her giant pink-and-gold dining chair.

Claudius glowed. “You tell a wonderful story.”

“Indeed, indeed,” the king agreed, his eyes fixed on Gertrude. The king missed Claudius winking at Gertrude, who blushed but pretended to take no notice.

I acted as if I hadn’t seen it, either. From the time I could speak, my father had told me this was my role: silent observer and keeper of secrets. He said it was the only way to survive living so close to the royals.

Claudius was creepy and seemed to dislike everyone but Gertrude. He was so different from the king, who was funny and youthful despite the wrinkles and graying hair. When Hamlet’s dad had time, he tried to see movies that Hamlet liked or listen to some of the bands we talked about. I’m sure he hated a lot of it, but he tried, you know?

The adults turned to one another to converse about some associate who told the most dreadful stories, which left Horatio, Hamlet, and me to chat. The three of us had been friends for as long as we had been alive. Horatio’s parents and my father had been advisers to the king, and we had grown up in the castle.

Ever since we were in elementary school, Horatio and I had been invited to dinners with the royal family. As an only child, Hamlet grew bored at the table, and it annoyed his parents endlessly that he couldn’t sit still and be quiet while they ate. Once we were in high school, our invitations were limited to Sunday dinners. Since the king often missed dinner with his wife and son during the week, his staff knew that Sunday was to go untouched whenever possible. In a matter of weeks, Hamlet and Horatio would leave for their second year of college, making these last Sundays more precious for us all.

“You’ve got to come visit this semester,” Horatio said to me.

“I’ll try, but you know my father.”

“And your brother.” Hamlet rolled his eyes. “Laertes is going back to grad school soon, I hope.”

I nodded. “Tomorrow, actually.”

Hamlet replied with a sigh of relief.

“He’s not that bad,” I said.

Hamlet picked up his knife and pretended to stab an invisible figure, so I added, “He’s not. Hamlet, you know I love my brother. Please don’t do that.”

Hamlet leaned over to kiss me, but I pushed him away. He grabbed my wrists and kissed me anyway. “Jerk,” I grumbled.

“Are you two dating again?” asked Gertrude from across the table, her voice dripping with disapproval.

Hamlet and I looked at each other. We had been together all summer, and it seemed odd that she hadn’t noticed. She had been so distracted during the past few months, and I fleetingly wondered again if it had something to do with Claudius.

“Are we?” I asked, somewhat amused.

“Are we?” he answered back.

“For now,” I answered, looking at Hamlet rather than Gertrude.

“What kind of nonsense is that?” bellowed the king, which made everyone except Claudius roar with laughter.

“It means, sir, that your son likes to be unencumbered when he is at school,” I answered when we had all quieted down.

“To being unencumbered,” Horatio toasted, and I threw my napkin at him.

Horatio and I would play our part in the light repartee, but both of us knew how many hours he had spent comforting me after the tabloid exposé that had led to my breakup with Hamlet in the spring.

Gertrude knitted her brow and looked at me squarely. “And where does that leave you?”

“Unencumbered as well, I suppose.”

“And have you been seeing anyone else?” she asked, tapping her sculpted fingernails on the table, her eyes narrowed.

I shifted in my seat. She was not only the mother of the only guy I had ever loved but also someone with the power to kick me out of the castle, which made the question all the more awkward. “Well…” I stalled, grabbing my glass of water and sneaking a sip before she could ask another question.

She sat very still, which I knew was the only reply I was likely to get. Gertrude had never liked my dating Hamlet, and she hated that I had hurt her son’s feelings more. When I broke up with him the last time, it took her weeks to even look at me, and Hamlet had to convince her to let me sit at her table again.

“There have been other…” I swallowed hard and didn’t look at Hamlet. He cleared his throat as he ripped a dinner roll and dropped half of it onto his bread plate, clattering the butter knife. Still feeling his eyes on me, I told her, “I’ve been asked out.…”

“But you have never brought anyone here,” she said.

I couldn’t figure out if she was being serious or not.

The king interrupted. “Gertrude, can you imagine how that date might go? Between the guards and you, I’m not sure which would be more intimidating.” The king laughed, and she joined him but eyed me suspiciously as Hamlet snickered into his wineglass, which was nearly empty.

The king turned his attention to Hamlet and said, “You are just lucky, my boy, that your flirtations have not angered your subjects. Luck can only last so long.” He jutted out his sharp chin and glared ever so slightly at Hamlet.

I looked down, a familiar hurt washing over me. I tried to push away memories of last April’s multipage spread of Hamlet and a girl sunbathing at an exclusive resort, images some of the girls at school were only too happy to have on hand for weeks afterward. Hamlet had said the pictures were taken out of context, but I still wasn’t sure how out of context a girl draping herself across him could be. Months later, my desire to punch him for whatever the context was had only slightly diminished.

Hamlet leaned back in his chair. “I’ve never cheated, and you all know it. How can I help it if the public wants to believe that I have?”

His father squinted at him. “You should know as well as anyone that perception is all. If your subjects believe you’ve cheated, you’re a cheat. They won’t trust a liar as their leader.”

Hamlet reached for the wine bottle, and his mother slapped away his hand.

“Enough talk of cheating,” she declared, her brow furrowed and her cheeks ablaze. “Why don’t we retire to the sitting room?”

We all stood and wandered toward the cozy, overstuffed couches in the next room. Hamlet put an arm around me and kissed the top of my head. I shoved him away, pretending I was kidding but taking the moment to pull myself back together. More than anything, I was kicking myself for giving credence to the whole thing. Lots of people had reasons to sell inaccurate, inflammatory stories to the press. It had happened to us before. Hamlet said it wasn’t true, and I knew I had to stop letting such things bother me if we were going to have a future together. And as for being grilled by his parents, if one planned on spending time with the royal family, one couldn’t be overly sensitive.

Hamlet pulled me onto the couch next to him and put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned into the curve of his body, and Horatio plopped down next to me.

“There are other chairs,” the king said, smiling.

“We can’t stand being apart. You know that,” answered Hamlet.

Gertrude sighed.

Hamlet’s father said, “Horatio, your mother tells me you’ve chosen a major.”

“Yeah. Political science.”

“Bah, politics.” The king waved his hand as if clearing the air of something foul. “All of that power, deceit, and corruption.”

“You’ve done well with politics,” Claudius said, his eyes narrowing at his brother.

The king shifted in his seat. “As have you. But we were born into our roles. If you had been able to make the choice, wouldn’t you have done something other than work for me?”

Claudius leaned forward, scratching at his beard, which was short enough to be considered overgrown stubble. “I would have been king.”

Hamlet’s father raised his eyebrows. “You know, being in charge is no picnic.” When Claudius merely sniffed, Hamlet’s father sighed and added, “Don’t be bitter. It was an accident of birth. I’m older, so I’m king. What can we do?”

Claudius ran his fingers through his thick dark hair as he glared at his brother. Then he rose and poured himself a drink.

“Dad, what would you have chosen to be?”

The king looked right at his son and said, “A florist.”

Hamlet began to laugh, and his father joined him with a sound so loud that a security guard poked his head through the door. The king waved the man away.

When he’d settled down, he asked, “Ophelia, is your passion still art?”

“No, it’s Hamlet,” whispered Horatio, and I poked him in the ribs.

I nodded at the king.

“I have that painting of yours hanging in my study.”

I took a moment to think. “The one of the unicorns and the rainbow?” I asked, amazed he still had that thing. I’d presented it, with great solemnity, when I was in the second grade, and he had received it with a bow. “I should make you a new one.”

“I look forward to it.”

The clock chimed ten, so the king excused himself to go back to his office, as he did each evening. Gertrude rose and pecked him on the cheek without comment, which was peculiar. For as long as I could remember, the king’s long hours had driven her nuts. How many times had I heard her say that her husband worked too hard, that he neglected her, and that another few hours wouldn’t change the kingdom one way or another? The tension had been worst right before Hamlet went to college. But then, to my surprise, a few months after he left, she stopped bringing it up as often, at least publicly. I wondered why.

The king’s departure was, as always, the cue for the “young people” to leave. Gertrude and Claudius would stay up talking and, even if it had not been exceptionally boring to be with the two of them, we were not welcome. What she found so fascinating about the king’s reptilian brother, I couldn’t understand.

We got in the mirrored elevator that would stop first at my floor and then continue down to Horatio’s family’s apartment. “I really meant it,” Horatio said. “You’ve got to visit Wittenberg this semester. It’s always so much more fun when you’re around.”

“You really should,” said Hamlet.

“We’ll see,” I said, walking out on my floor. “You coming?” I asked Hamlet, reaching out my hand.

“Is your brother there?” he asked, poking his head out, pretending to be scared.

“She’s right,” said Horatio. “You are a jerk.” He pushed Hamlet out with his foot and yelled, “Good night, sweet prince!”—a mockery of how I sometimes said good-bye to Hamlet. We both turned around and shushed him, laughing.

The king’s Cabinet was expected to live within the castle, as were other high-ranking officials and their most vital assistants. The two-hundred-year-old marble, gilt, and stone portion of the castle was reserved for state dinners, meetings among diplomats, and the like. That part acted as a grand facade to a twenty-story black glass building that loomed over it. The modern section housed the royal residences and included a rooftop pool and gardens, ten floors of meeting rooms and offices, and nine floors of apartments. Upper-level staff, like my father, had apartments on the north side of the building, which looked out at Elsinore’s spectacular skyline, as well as its sparkling river and harbor.

Staff apartments were on the floors directly below the royal residences. Ours had no grand lobby into which the elevator opened. By some strange design, there was not even an entry-way. The elevators just opened into our sitting rooms. Everyone in the castle knew this to be the situation, so people were careful about which buttons they pushed. In addition, one needed a code to go anywhere above the tenth floor.

Even so, with an ever-rotating staff that was often overworked or preoccupied, the chances of an error were great, so one never got the feeling of complete privacy. When we were younger, Hamlet, Horatio, and I found it funny to push all the buttons and see whom we could find in nightgowns or mid-argument. It took a few groundings to teach us that it wasn’t worth it. Every so often I was tempted to do it again but never did.

With the elevator doors closed and Horatio’s laughter fading away, Hamlet and I stood silently, checking whether it was safe to proceed. City lights streamed in through the high windows, giving the large sitting room and open kitchen an eerie blue glow. We listened a minute at the entry to my father’s hall, which branched off to the right of the elevator. We could hear my father’s snore through his closed door, and I tried not to laugh. His bedroom and study were at the opposite end of the apartment from Laertes’s and my hall, so I led Hamlet the other way. We paused again, and since we heard nothing, I kept going. Hamlet shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and sauntered behind me. Laertes’s door was open, but the light was off, so we continued into my room.

“Finally,” he said when we climbed onto my bed.

I kissed his shoulder, then his neck, then his cheek.

But he pulled back and asked, “So, who have you been seeing?”

“What?”

“You told my mom you’ve been dating other people.”

“Leave your mother out of this room, please,” I said, trying to kiss him again, but he stopped me.

“No, seriously. Who?”

“It was nothing,” I said, trying to sound casual, which is precisely what it had been, anyhow. He kept glowering at me. I added, “No one you would know.”

It wasn’t true. Hamlet knew Sebastian from the lacrosse team in high school. He knew that Sebastian was in my circle of friends and that Sebastian and I were always in the art studio together. But Hamlet didn’t need to know that Sebastian took me to hear a band called the Poor Yoricks and asked me out several times afterward. I wanted to torture Hamlet after all he’d put me through, but he didn’t need details.

“That’s—”

“Hey, we agreed: Don’t ask about last semester. This is what you wanted, so—”

“Well, I hate it.”

“Oh, you hate it? Then I am tremendously sorry,” I said with exaggerated sympathy. “Last spring, I totally should have been thinking about your feelings in case we got back together.”

He bit back a smile but then furrowed his brow and looked genuinely troubled, so I added, “Hamlet, it was nothing. If you want me to trust you, then you have to trust me. It’s not easy for me, knowing that once you’re back at school, you’ll have those girls in little skirts fawning all over you. I’m not supposed to give that any thought?”

He sat back on his haunches. “I don’t like any of them like I like you. I’ve broken things off in the past because I have been tempted… because I never wanted to cheat or lie. But honestly, Ophelia, there’s no one else for me.”

My stomach jumped a little, but I didn’t want to get too excited. I was trying to keep my emotions more in check this year. I had to protect myself.

“I think…” he started, “I want to stay together.”

Again I felt fluttery, but I could not allow myself to trust the sincerity of the sentiment. “Hamlet, you always do this. You decide one thing and then change your mind. It’s hard to know what to believe.”

“Believe that I love you.”

“I do.”

“Let’s try then. Let’s commit to being together.”

“If you say so,” I said, picturing Horatio’s “I told you so” face if Hamlet broke my heart again. But then Hamlet kissed me, and my fears evaporated. I sighed with happiness, thinking that this time things between us would work.

Francisco: So you were tight with the royal family.



Ophelia: We spent a lot of time together.



Barnardo: How much of that time did you spend plotting against them?



Ophelia: None. Why would I—



Francisco: Okay. Different question. You were alone with Hamlet constantly, yet your father, from what we understand, was very protective of you.



Ophelia: My dad was too busy and too tired to notice what I did a lot of the time.



Barnardo: So you took advantage of his schedule and his position?



Ophelia: (pause) No more than any other teenager.



Francisco: So that’s a yes?