QUOTE : FAIRY-TALE Suppose they really did live happily ever after. Suppose Cinderella was a good wife – and she could have been. I daresay she was reticent, timid, not one to make a fuss, or rock the boat, accustomed to orders and quiet in company. Suppose he was a good husband, the haughty prince, coddled from the cradle up. He might have pulled it off. He was in love after all, and love covers a multitude of offenses. Perhaps it wrapped up her social poverty and rough edges and lack of table manners in velvet and smoothed everything and the royal lovebirds got along just fine after all. Suppose that Belle forgot the beast-horns, the stamped image of his face framed with fur. Suppose she one day wrapped around his neck and felt only man-flesh there. Suppose Snow White stopped having nightmares about old women peddling apples, hook-nosed, cloaked, warted and long-fingered on her doorstep in the dusk. Suppose her prince one day learned to sleep the nights through, his fingers in her hair, no fear of jerking eyes wide to her screaming. I retain my right to believe in happy endings.