Alycia was seven years old when we met. Her picture was in the papers all the time. She attended Broadway openings. She was at Met galas. Any little girl likes to dress up. All children are thrilled to be out late at night. Little twitches of adulthood. But mostly kids have childhood. Missing that is death as sure as having your lungs and liver cut out.
One day I heard Mrs. Crann talk about her daughter to an interviewer. “We have long discussions about what she’s going to wear. I never push her. This is what she wants.” And the kid said nothing. Just looked at herself in the mirror, tried on a little powder, as if she didn’t hear.
As a huntsman, I watched the animals. Like in the tales, they spoke the truth while people lied. Mr. Jimbo was the springer spaniel, brown and white that followed the kid around. Alycia had named him when she was three. Whenever the mother put her hand on her daughter’s mass of careful curls, the dog tensed. I understood what he was saying: he had taken on a job that made him feel bad inside.
Another time Mrs. Crann told someone, “I talk to Alycia in ways I never had anyone talk to me. It’s amazing. I come into her room the first thing in the morning and we discuss what she has scheduled for that day.” Queen Milly was the Persian cat. She got up from Alycia’s lap where she was sitting and slunk out of the room. I understood: even the cat couldn’t stand to listen to this.
The parakeet actually spoke, of course. “Hi gorgeous!” it said to Edith Crann.
She gave her scariest smile and asked, “Who’s the fairest in the land?”
“You are!” said the parakeet. “Lady. You are!”
Then the bird flew into the next room and lighted on the little girl’s shoulder. “Hi gorgeous,” it said and whistled.
“Fairest … ” it started to say and fell silent as the mother appeared. Her face was like a mask. But the eyes behind it were wild with anger.
Two things finally did it for me. First was seeing Alycia trying to skip like every seven year old does. Except she was wearing high heels and tripped. The second was the picture of her in a leather outfit. She was posed in what was supposed to be a worldly and sophisticated way. The idea, maybe, was to be cute. But her eyes under false lashes looked lost and desperate.
In fairy tales, everyone’s a prince or a princess. Stepmothers move in to perform wicked deeds. In real life, no one’s a princess and parents do their own dirty work. The parts of the stories are just that, parts. They’re all shaken up and reassembled when you actually encounter them.
What Edith Crann was doing was stealing her daughter’s most precious possession, her childhood. Seeing her parents, I knew that Edith herself probably hadn’t had one. They were a loveless pair of sticks. I almost felt sorry for Edith. Alycia didn’t like those grandparents either. I know because we talked all the time in the car. She sat up front with me. Going to her mother’s parents, she’d fall silent. They’d look at her and wouldn’t crack a smile.
With her father’s side of the family it was different. Harris Crann’s family had gotten bigger and dumber with each generation. Harris was six foot tall and Ivy League. Waspy and stiff as a board. If he saw what was being done to his kid, he never let on.
His parents were, maybe, five-foot-six, but big on museum and opera boards. And they had established a charitable foundation. In the city, they had this huge co-op up on Riverside Drive, several floors, countless rooms. Kind of pretentious. But when they saw their grand-daughter, their eyes lit up.
Once I took her up there and they weren’t home. Alycia smiled which she didn’t do a lot and beckoned me down a hall like she was showing me this great secret. We went up some stairs and into this whole separate apartment within the larger one. That’s where I met her great-grandparents.
Theodore and Heddy Kranneki were ancient and tiny. They had founded the family fortune long ago. They spent part of the year in the Homeland. They had done lots of work for the independence movement there. Probably they were little to start with but now they were no bigger than their grand-daughter. They were entertaining some friends equally old and small. And smart still, with amazingly bright eyes behind bifocals. They looked at the kid in her leather outfit as she tottered on heels to hug them. Their eyes met mine and we all understood exactly what had to happen.
So now we had the wicked stepmother and the magic little people in place. And the huntsman. That’s all the identity the story gives. He’s a royal employee, as I see it. One day he’s told to take the little girl out in the woods, kill her and bring back her liver and lungs as proof he’s done it.
The boss’s wife has given him the orders. But he looks at the little girl and she’s so beautiful he can’t. Thinking that the wild animals will kill her, the huntsman lets her go and brings back a young boar’s liver and lungs. These the queen has the cook boil in salted water then eats. I’ll be fair to Edith Crann, she was into more sophisticated dining.
The day came when I was supposed to drive Alycia up to the Hotel Pierre. Edith’s parents were going to meet her and take her on vacation. Alycia wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
Under everything her mother had done to her, she had the beauty that’s given to all kids, however the world may bend and warp it. When we were in the car together, we used to sing songs like I do with my own kids now. Old corny stuff. “Singing in the Rain” when it was raining. “A Little Help from My Friends,” when one of us was down. Or I’d tell her stories.
That particular day I told her “Snow White.” Not because she didn’t know the story, but for the same reason I’m telling you: to make it clear in my own mind what led up to this situation and what will happen afterwards.
Alycia understood. She was crying when I came to the part about the huntsman and the woods. We got up to the Pierre and there was a delivery truck broken down right in front of the hotel just as I’d been told there would be. As instructed, I parked down the block. The kid got out and stood on the curb while I went around to get her bags out of the trunk. In their prime, Ted and Heddy Kranneki must really have been something. I turned away and on a grey morning there was a flash like sunlight reflecting on a passing rearview mirror. Magic. When I turned back, Alycia was gone.
It was THE hot New York story for a couple of weeks. Cops grilled me. Reporters wanted my story. The question was whether I was an idiot or an accomplice. I had expected that. Alycia’s picture was in the papers and on TV. Posters were everywhere. The thing was, Edith Crann couldn’t help herself. The picture she used showed the kid in a slinky dress and a tortured expression.