The Cinderella Theorem (3 page)

Over the salad, I learned my
father is the king of E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land.
[11]

“You
see, Lily,” he said, “because there is so much magic in fairy tales, myths, and
legends, the characters, places, plots, and story lines were able to channel
that magic and become living as well.”

“That
isn’t possible,” I interrupted. “You’re talking about fictional characters,
right? They are not alive, and therefore cannot create anything.”

Tub
Man chuckled. “Straight to the hard questions. You weren’t kidding, Ginnie,” he
smiled at my mom. “She’s bright.” He looked back at me, “That’s a deep,
philosophical question, Lily. We aren’t sure why they’re alive, living ‘happily
ever after’ in E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land, but they are. The impossible is
sometimes possible.”

“That’s
not possible. The laws of physics are concrete. They don’t change. A ball is
always going to fall downwards. It is impossible for it to fall upwards.”

“Except
in space,” Tub Man argued. “If a place exists where gravity doesn’t work the
way it does on Earth, can’t there be a place where what I’m telling you is
possible? For the sake of our discussion, let’s just assume that what I’m
saying is true and possible.”

“Fine,”
I took a deep breath and realigned my thinking.

Math,
however lovely and wonderful, could not explain this situation to me. No equation
was going to balance out the things my father was saying. No equation could
explain tub travel. And if I couldn’t form an equation to explain something,
then I simply needed more data. Solid questions were the only way I would be
able to gather enough information to understand this bizarre birthday dinner
conversation.

“Who
is E. G. Smythe? Why isn’t he the king?” I asked.

“E. G. Smythe is not a person,” Tub
Man explained. “E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land is an anagram for ‘fairy tales,
myths, legends.’”
[12]

“Oh,”
I said. “That actually makes sense.”

My
parents smiled at each other, thrilled their ‘Little Lily’ was finally catching
on.

“So,
you’re the king?” I poked at a cherry tomato.

“I’m
not just the king, Lily.” His tone was serious, and he lifted his chin. “I’m
the Protector of the realm. Fairy tales, myths, and legends only survive for
two reasons: The first is that they are loved and reread and retold. The second
is that, since the very creation of E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land, someone
from the Sparrow family has been their protector. I am the
only
protection against our enemies in Uppish Senna.” He paused, “And, as my
daughter, Lily, one day you will also be the Protector of the land.”

The
tomato I had been trying to stab skidded across the table. “I’m going to do
pure mathematics research at a major university or be a code breaker for the
National Security Agency.” I’m not going to
not
be a brilliant
mathematician so I can sit around in the world through the bathtub protecting
stupid Rapunzel and her seven dwarfs.

“Lily,”
Mom began in a patient tone, “the day that you take over the Protectorate is
still a long way off. It’s not like you’re moving to Smythe’s SFL
tomorrow
.”
She laughed.

I learned
two key points from this motherly speech:

(A) Smythe’s
SFL must be a shorter way of saying E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land. And

(B) While
I am sure that my mother meant to be helpful in making this comment, she was
not. It sparked a new and scary thought in me: if I’m not moving to Smythe’s
SFL
tomorrow
, when am I moving there?

My
father continued, “Exactly my thoughts, darling.” He smiled at my mother, who
began serving the next course: mashed potatoes, pork chops, green beans, and
biscuits.

After
taking a bite of pork, and wondering how my father knew what my favorite meal
was, I asked, “Why haven’t I seen you for fifteen years? Why did Mom tell me
you were dead?”

My father sipped his iced tea. “There is an ancient
law in the oldest records of Smythe’s SFL concerning the heir to the throne. It
says:

‘If both be Smythe, you can live with.

 If one be not, then you cannot–

Until the time of fifteen years,

Has passed away like drying tears.

Else the babe will never see

The salty land of Smythe’s E. G.’

“Basically,
the law says that if one of the parents of the heir is not a Smythian, then the
heir and the Smythian parent must be separated for fifteen years. Otherwise,
the child will never be able to enter Smythe’s SFL. Since it was so vital that
(a) I remain in the land to protect the characters, and (b) you be able to come
in as heir later, we felt this was the only option.”

What?
What kind of law is that?

However,
on the brighter, mathematical side of things, I enjoyed the way my father
delineated his points–(a) and (b). That’s a very mathematical approach to
arguing. But on the negative side, he did appear out of nowhere in my bathtub.

“So,
you had to live in the Salt Land—”

“Smythe’s
SFL,” Tub Man interrupted.

“Whatever,”
I continued, “you had to live there and not see me until I was fifteen or else
I wouldn’t be able to come later?”

“Exactly,”
he said. “It’s a very ancient law, likely created to discourage royalty from
marrying outsiders. Plus, it sets up a very “fairy tale” scenario: a new
parent, forced to never see his child for fifteen years, a secret princess, all
the waiting and hoping. It’s what good fairy tales are made of. So your mother
lived in the castle with me until it was almost time for you to be born. Then,
when it was unsafe for her to still be in the kingdom, she came back to this
house.”

“Oh,”
I said, resisting the urge to make an equation out of this. “Has the, uh,
‘door’ to Smythe’s SFL always been through the upstairs tub?”

“No,
it hasn’t,” Tub Man answered. “It can be anywhere. We chose to have it from
this house, because this is where you and your mother were going to be living. When
my father was the King-Protector, the door was in the attic of his favorite
theatre. My grandfather entered this world through the janitor’s closet at a
county courthouse. But the strangest entry of all was my
great-great-great-grandmother’s portal. She came in through the hold of a ship.
She could never be certain where she was going to arrive. She would be off the
coast of Jamaica one time and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean the next.”

I
interrupted. “You’re saying that the hold of a ship is stranger than the
upstairs tub?” I rapidly created an equation:

Regarding
strangeness in arrival areas from E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land:

the hold of a ship > upstairs tub.

“You
think the tub’s stranger?” he asked.

I
just looked at him. “What if I had been
going
to the bathroom instead of
just brushing my teeth? What if someone was in the shower when you wanted to
portal yourself to the real world?”

“Oh!”
My father said suddenly, understanding what I was meaning. “On the Smythe’s SFL
side, there’s a dial that tells you when the upstairs bathroom is occupied and
what the person is doing.”

“
What
the person is doing?
”

“In
general terms, Lily.” My mother jumped in. “The settings on the dial are for
shower, toilet, washing face, and brushing teeth.”

“What
if I was changing clothes?” I asked. I am sorry, but I do not think that a dial
on a door explaining what I am doing in the bathroom is conducive to a happy
home environment.

“Then
the dial would just say
other
.” My mother said patiently, stacking our
empty plates. “People in Smythe’s SFL do not use the door without permission
from the King, and never unless the door says
unoccupied
.”

“Or
brushing teeth.” I mumbled a little sarcastically.

“I
was so excited about seeing you, that I portaled over anyway.” His face
crumbled like an unsound theorem. “I didn’t think that—”

“Of
course, you didn’t,” My mother said, quickly. “I’ll get dessert. Lily, Come help
me.”

I
excused myself and went into the kitchen.

“Lily
Elizabeth Sparrow,” she began.

I
sucked in my breath. By all mathematical laws, three names is bad news.

“I
know that this has been a very stressful day and that you are confused, but you
are not going to make your father feel bad because he came in through the tub
while you were brushing your teeth.” She said all this while furiously filling
three bowls with cake and ice cream.

I made
a huffing sound. “I’m in trouble because you lied to me all my life, and my
father appeared magically in my bathtub, followed by seven little rainbow
people carrying food, calling me princess, and—”

“Lily,”
my mother interrupted. “Try to understand. This has not been the ideal birthday
or the ideal situation for you. We know that. We know that you are confused and
that things seem very odd, very strange, and
very
unmathematical. But
you can be confused
and
still have a good attitude. Now,” she handed me
a bowl of ice cream and cake, “Happy birthday.” She carried the other two bowls
into the dining room, leaving me in the kitchen.

Back
in the dining room, my parents were smiling and eating ice cream. I sat down
and noticed that everyone had a different kind of ice cream. I looked at my
cherry vanilla. I looked at my father’s chocolate. I looked at my mother’s
cookies and cream. There had only been one carton of ice cream in the kitchen
that my mother dipped from.

“Why
are there three types of ice cream and only one carton?” I asked.

My
father smiled brightly. “It’s Marvelous Midas Cream. Do you remember King Midas
from the story?”

“Sort
of.” I have to confess that, although my mother is a writer of fiction stories,
and my father is apparently the ruler of a magical fairy tale world, I know
almost nothing about fairy tales. In my recollection, I think Midas could spin
straw into gold or something.

“Well,”
he continued, “Midas took the properties of his golden touch and made them
marketable in ice cream.” (Apparently, Midas was the one with the golden touch.
At least I got the precious metal right.) “So when you buy a carton of Marvelous
Midas Cream, you get in your bowl whatever kind of ice cream you want.”

“That’s
convenient,” I said, trying to have a good attitude and be positive.

“It
really is. My grandfather knighted Midas for creating such a useful invention.”
My dad smiled brightly, savoring his chocolate golden touch ice cream. “It was
very handy when the delegation from Olympus came last month.” He chuckled. “Can
you imagine worrying about which god you will annoy because you didn’t have their
favorite ice cream?”

No,
I could not. And do you know why? I can only think of one god from literature:
Zeus. And here’s another reason: I wouldn’t be entertaining a delegation from
Olympus–because they’re not
real
.

I
just smiled serenely and had a “good attitude” as I took another bite of my
magical ice cream.

Even though I am only allowed to have one math class,
I was glad (for once) to be able to get to school. For me, school now equals normal.

School now = Normal, because of yesterday, because of
my weekend plans, and because my father
stayed the night at our house
.

If I turn out seriously deranged, I will not be
surprised at all.

On
my walk to school, I thought about how I could not possibly tell anyone a shred
of truth about my birthday.

Oh,
wait.

I
can tell them what we ate, right up until the magic ice cream.

Last
year, my friend, Corrie, thought her life was ruined because her four-year-old
brother ran through her birthday party–stark naked–screaming about poopy. Corrie
is clearly clueless as to what ruins a birthday.

Before
yesterday, I planned to work on some equations from an old math book over the
weekend. Now, I am going to E. G. Smythe’s Salty Fire Land to be formally
introduced to the populace. Great. When Corrie asks me what I’m doing this weekend,
instead of saying, “Nothing really, just some math,” I’ll now be able to say,
“Nothing really, just getting away with my formerly dead father and liar mother
to the parallel kingdom in our bathtub to be introduced to a bunch of fairy
tale princesses and talking animals.”

I’m
going to be very distracted in school today. Little people in berets keep
coming down the stairs in my mind. I’m also distracted by the fact that my
parents win the award for the World’s Strangest Marriage. When Mom told me my
dad was staying the night, I thought,
Oh, well maybe the door only works
once a day or something, so he can’t get back tonight
. That was a false
assumption. Any good mathematician knows that false assumptions can destroy an
otherwise sound theory. It turns out they
wanted
to sleep in the same
bed again. As I passed my mother in the upstairs hallway, I asked a very
rational question about this.

“Don’t
you think having him sleep in your room will be weird, since you haven’t seen
him in fifteen years?”

Mom
smiled. “
You
haven’t seen him in fifteen years, Lil. I’ve seen him
nearly every day since you were born.”

Of
course. This makes absolute perfect sense. Why shouldn’t she have seen him? I
mean, my goodness, the man rules a fairytale kingdom and travels through a bathtub.
Why wouldn’t he have time to see his wife?

Mom
continued, “When you were a baby, he’d come over during your naps and later,
when you started school, your father would come over while you were gone. We’d
spend the mornings together. Or, sometimes I’d go to Smythe’s SFL to see him. Then,
he’d run the kingdom in the afternoons, and I’d get some writing done.”

“Oh,”
I said. “It’s nice that you not only lied to me, but had secret trysts with my
father every day, too.” I started to walk away.

“Lily,”
Mom called. “It wasn’t like that. You know he couldn’t see you until you turned
fifteen.”

I
turned around in the doorway of my room. “I understand, Mom.” I said
impatiently. “I’m going to go to bed now–or is there something weird about my
bedroom you haven’t told me? Do the three little pigs live in my closet?”

“Of
course they don’t, Lily. They live in the Fourth Wood.” Mom sighed. “Look. Things
are weird now. I know that. Will you just try to be understanding?” She moved a
little closer to me. “You’re lucky, Lily. You aren’t stuck living a plain-old,
normal life. You’re going to get to experience so many things that people will
never be able to imagine.”

“Or
believe.” I closed the door to my room.

I
cannot fathom why my mother thinks I’m lucky. And
what
, exactly, is
wrong with being normal? In statistics, there is a whole equation devoted to
the “normal” way data is distributed.
[13]
Speaking of statistics, my parents have obviously not seen any on teenagers. Otherwise,
they would know that being normal (not being royal) is the single most
important factor in the equation of high school.

When
I got to school Friday morning, I waited by the east door for Corrie. Corrie
always arrives at 7:40.
Always.
This is because Corrie’s father is
obsessed with punctuality and order. He leaves for work at the same time each
day, and since he drops her off, she is always here at the same time. It’s a
simple equation.

Usually,
I formulate some equations about the number of kids at the door before and
after she arrives, but before the bell rings at 7:55. Sometimes I estimate how
many will arrive before her or what percentage will be wearing a certain color.
But today, I didn’t really feel like doing math.

Not
feeling like doing math = a clue that something is seriously wrong in my life.

“Happy
birthday!” Corrie gave me a clumsily wrapped present. “I would have given it to
you yesterday, but—”

 “But
you were busy faking sick to get out of your math placement test?”

“I
really did have an upset stomach!”

“From
freaking out about the test. I can’t believe you missed the first day of school
just to have an extra day of study.”

Corrie
is obsessed with history. She can’t get enough of Henry VIII and Czarina
Alexandra. Her history obsession has led to her being a tad deficient in the
mathematical areas of the world. I think it’s a little strange to be so
captivated by dead people, but she thinks it’s equally strange to spend your
free time reading books about ratios and proportions.

“It’s
called test anxiety, Lily. It’s an epidemic.”

Corrie
is in what I think is a very easy math class. If I were in her class, my only
anxiety would come from knowing that I could teach the class in my sleep. But
since dead people are her forte, I guess that’s okay. To each her own.

I
opened the present.

“Do you
like it?” Corrie gets very excited by birthdays. The present was a biography of
Isaac Newton. Mr. Laws of Motion, himself. “I think it is a nice compromise
between history and math.”

I
smiled. Did I like it? I had only been hinting to my mother about this book for
three months. And instead of mathy goodness in the form of the life of Sir
Isaac Newton, my parents gave me a book of fairy tales. Yeah, I was thrilled by
that
gift.

The
value of Corrie’s present to me was incredibly > the book of little kid
bedtime stories.

“I
love it. Thank you very much, Corrie.”

“So
where did you go for dinner last night? Did you see any famous writers like you
did last year?” Corrie flipped her dark hair behind her shoulder.

Last
year, when we were out for my birthday, Mom bumped into a group of famous
writers. They all wrote poems and little story things for me about my birthday,
right there in the restaurant.

“Well….”
What am I supposed to say? “We didn’t go out. We just had my favorite meal at
home.” There. My answer to Corrie = truth (sort of).

“You
ate at home? You never eat at home for your birthday.”

See?
Corrie understood the mathematical quandary that yesterday threw me into. She
understood the
normal
way of celebrating my birthday.

“I know.” Was there anyway I could change the
subject? “My mom just wanted to celebrate quietly at home. She’s been kind of
busy since the last book tour.” Also truth. Mom did finish a big promotional
tour in July.
Of course
, she’d want to be alone with her only daughter
for her daughter’s fifteenth birthday–alone, with her living (non-deceased)
husband and seven small people carrying food.

“Bummer.”
Corrie genuinely understood my birthday disappointment. I mean, she did have
the naked, four-year-old poopy screamer last year. “Well, what did you get?”

Hmm.
What did I get? Nothing much, just my father, access to another world, and a
book of barely believable children’s stories.

“A
book.” Truth again. Stats on truth-telling: Lily = 100%.

“Not
the book I gave you?” Corrie was horrified that she might have accidentally
made my birthday worse.

“No.
I guess Mom was too distracted to notice all the hints I left about Newton.”

I
think Corrie would have asked what the title of the book was if the fight hadn’t
started then. Kelly Stewart and Trista Anderson started fighting over who was
stealing whose boyfriend. Mr. Hatfield, our principal, and several other
teachers ran over to stop the girls. I was blissfully swept away for the moment
in a normal high school routine.
[14]

My
first class was Legendary Literature. I realize that it is only the second day of
school, and I further realize that two days do not equal sufficient time to
form an opinion of a class. Nevertheless, I do not like that class. And after
today’s assignment, I know I never will.

“We
are going to analyze fairy tales this semester!” (Everything Mrs. Fox says
seems to possess an exclamation mark.)

I
rolled my eyes. Not more fairy tales. It’s like I’ve made an error at the
beginning of a long equation and now I can’t get the answer to make sense. When
did my life become so full of fairy tales?

“Who
wrote fairy tales?! Why have they survived?! Why do we enjoy them so much?! These
are some of the questions we are going to answer!” Mrs. Fox continued on and
on. “Let’s go around the room and share our favorite fairy tales!”

Panic.
Let me again point out: I do not know any fairy tales. After quickly examining
my options, I decided to just copy someone else’s answer.

“Why
don’t we start with……” Mrs. Fox looked around the room for a victim, while her
sentence hung there waiting for its exclamation mark. “Lily!”

I
should have known. Was it mathematically possible for Smythe’s SFL to be
working its magic against me even at school?

Wait.

There
could be no answer to that question because I had not yet proven that Smythe’s
SFL was mathematically possible. Therefore, the question of whether or not–

“Lily?!”
(How is it possible to ask a question
and
make an exclamatory
statement?)

“Uh….well….I….”
I hate fairy tales. They have turned me into incoherent mush. I tried to recall
anything my father might have said about a fairy tale last night. “Oh! I like
that King Midian guy.”

A
few people in the class snickered.

Mrs.
Fox looked puzzled for a moment, then, “Oh! You mean King Midas! An excellent tale!”
She raced to the board to write
King Midas
. (The woman even moved like
an exclamation.) “Becky! Tell us your favorite!”

Becky pulled Rapunzel out of the air. Isn’t she the
one that slept for a hundred years?

I
stopped paying attention shortly after this, and was in a happy state of
solving for
x
in my head, when Mrs. Fox exclaimed, “For your homework
over the weekend, I want you to read
The Little Mermaid
and write a few
sentences in your fairy tale journal about this wonderful tale! For extra credit,
tell why you think this tale made Anderson so famous!”

Who
is Anderson? Was the Little Mermaid the one with the evil stepmother and the
poison apple? And what is a fairy tale journal? But, on the brighter side of
things, I now have something to talk to my father about while we portal to
worlds beyond the plumbing.

The
rest of the day was an unmathematical event not worth remembering. The
substitute in history never found the lesson plans to give us an assignment. She
let us do whatever instead; I read about lovely Mr. Newton.

No
one was home when I arrived. Normally, I would have thought this strange, since
Mom works at home, but my ideas about stangeness have shifted somewhat since
yesterday’s festivities. Figuring Mom and “Dad” were off gallivanting in the
Salt World, I got my pretzels and decided to do my biology homework. I had just
answered a question about DNA and its importance to all things living, when the
little brown man from the night before crashed onto the dining room table in
front of me.

“Hi,
Your Highness!” he said, as a voice from above starting shouting:

“You
weren’t supposed to let her see you!”

I
looked up. The woman in all purple was sitting on the chandelier, where I
suppose the brown man had just been.

“We’re
so sorry, Princess,” she continued, though she didn’t really sound sorry, as
she started in on Mr. Brown. “Geez, Peridiom, all you had to do was stay up
here, and she would never have known we were here.” She sighed, jumped and
landed on the table, also.

“Um,
why
were
you up there?” I asked, very logically.

“Her Majesty sent us through the tub to make sure
you had an afternoon snack. After we put in your pretzels for today, Peridiom
said,” she paused here and looked hard at poor Mr. Brown, “that he wanted to
climb up the light. Then, you came home, and we were stuck, and stupid Peridiom
fell on your homework.”