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“Let’s hear it,” I say and make myself comfortable. When she looks like that, it means we’re in for one of her lessons.
She drops down next to me and waves her mother over. She doesn’t blink at the paint now dried and smeared on her mother’s body. She’s used to finding us like this.
Beth sits on Ella’s other side, and we let her hold court.
“Well… since they can use their magic to turn Ariel into a human, they could have turned Eric into a merman. Then they could have spent some time with her family and some with his. But, she’s never going to see her daddy again. Do you think that’s fair?” she asks looking back and forth at us with genuine horror. I give Beth a ‘this is all you’ look. I haven’t even read these stories.
Beth scowls at me before she looks at Ella and contemplates her for a second.
“Well, sweetie, I think if Ariel hadn’t wanted her legs so badly and didn’t love the prince so much, then maybe it would feel like giving up those things was unfair. But she found her true love,” Beth says.
Ella nods thoughtfully.
“So, you mean losing her voice, him almost marrying someone else, all of that is okay because in the end they get to be with their true love?”
I laugh at the incredulity in her voice and lean back waiting for Beth to answer. That earns me a glare from my wife. Then she grimaces and taps her chin like she’s thinking.
“Okay, think of it like this. Remember how I loved pomegranate?”
Ella nods.
“Yes. But they stopped selling it, right?”
“Nope, they stopped selling it ready to eat. I could still buy the pomegranate, but it would have meant that I had to get all those seeds out myself. And I didn’t love it enough to do all that work. So, not all love is the same. Not all love is worth the work. Now, if they stopped selling mangoes ready to eat, I’d buy those. Because they are worth the work.”
“So…Daddy is like a mango?”
“Yes. Daddy is my mango,” she says, beaming down at our daughter like she just solved a quantum physics equation.
“Well, when I fall in love, I’ll just skip to the part where we kiss and get married.” Ella is scowling at the book like it’s caused her great offense.
I laugh. Oh, to be seven again.
“Trust me, the kissing will be so much better if you don’t skip those hard parts. Just read it. No skipping,” her mother says.
She pouts. “Can’t I find something else?” she says in a plaintive voice and turns her eyes to me. “Please? I just don’t know why Ariel has to suffer so much first. Tell me your story.”
She crawls into my lap. She winds her little arms around my neck and presses her soft, round cheek to mine.
When it comes to knowing and exploiting my weaknesses, my daughter has had a most excellent teacher—my wife.
“Oh, Ella, our story has plenty of heartbreak in it,” Beth says.
She pulls her face away from mine and glares at me.
“You must have done it because Mommy would never break your heart,” she says in a scolding voice.
I guffaw.
Beth frowns. “I resent that laugh.”
“I resent my broken heart.”
I pick up the book Ella abandoned and inspect the spine.
“Ah, I see the problem now. This is a fairy tale. That’s different from a love story.”
“Nuh-uh…she gets married.”
