This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  “Is it entirely appropriate”—Rosie directed this toward Dwight Harmon—“for kindergarteners to be discussing penises so…?”

  “Willy-nilly?” Penn was nervous.

  The principal just managed to suppress a smile in front of the district representative but declined to answer the question.

  “Do you have answers you’d recommend?” Rosie asked Victoria Revels.

  “He should tell the truth.” She was a TV lawyer giving advice to someone wrongfully accused.

  “Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what that is,” said Penn. “He has no idea why he wants to wear dresses and jewelry. Do you?” Miss Appleton fingered the gold birds hanging from each ear but said nothing. “Like all of us, he has no idea why he is who he is or why he wants what he wants.”

  “I imagine the specific answers are less of an issue,” Dwight suggested, “than the tenor of his reply. As long as he can be calm and open—”

  “And remember to use the nurse’s bathroom,” interrupted Victoria Revels.

  “—and remember to use the nurse’s bathroom, he should be fine.”

  “As long as he doesn’t bring peanut butter for lunch,” said Rosie.

  “Or jelly you’ve dipped your peanut butter knife in,” Miss Appleton added. “Like if you were eating peanut butter over the weekend or something.”

  * * *

  Carmelo came up for the holidays armed, grandmotherly, with gifts. She brought Roo and Ben an apparatus to turn the dining/homeworking table into a dining/homeworking/Ping-Pong table. She brought Rigel patterns to knit a bowling set—balls, pins, bowling slippers, and drink cozies. He was excited but disappointed he couldn’t knit the lane as well. She brought Orion a Sherlock Holmes costume, so he spent the whole break investigating mysteries. Since there were no mysteries as such, he had to plant clues to discover himself. Soon fingerprints smeared all the mirrors, and scraps of scribbled-on paper accidentally fell behind desks, and rugs were helped to fray in suggestive and incriminating ways until Rosie put an abrupt stop to that particular line of investigation. Carmelo brought Claude a new tea-length dress because he’d outgrown the other one. She brought him a giant bag of new school clothes for a new year—skirts and casual dresses and cute cardigans with frilly tanks to go underneath and tights to keep his legs warm. She brought a pair of wings you donned simply by slipping your arms through the straps like a backpack, no more or less monumental than that. For New Year’s, she brought supplies to make brownies, banana splits, and noisemakers, never mind no one celebrating anything anywhere had noisemakers louder than the children themselves.

  Rosie and Penn went out, their first New Year’s Eve out since the one before Roo was born, the difference now being basically everything, inclusive of the fact that they lacked the organization to have made a reservation or the energy to stay up past 9:45. They wound up at a coffee shop, where they drank tea with the grad students who had stayed in town over the holiday and made dinner out of two muffins and a chocolate-chip cookie.

  Rosie didn’t feel hungry anyway. Rosie wasn’t sure she would feel hungry ever again. She gripped her temples and tried to decide whether, if she let go, her face would crash into the table or her head would float up through the ceiling into the sky like a balloon, smaller and smaller until it disappeared forever. “Remind me again why we’re doing this.”

  Penn didn’t need to ask which “this” she meant. “We asked him. This is what he said he wanted.”

  “He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s only five.”

  “In order to be happy,” Penn added.

  “He can’t possibly understand, never mind weigh, what’s going to happen when he goes to school dressed as a girl.”

  “A fairy.”

  “A girl fairy.”

  “True.”

  “Next week,” Rosie added, just in case he was missing the enormity of the situation.

  “Also true.”

  “Why would we ask him what he wants anyway? He wants to sleep in the crate with Jupiter. He thinks high heels are comfortable. This is clearly not a human whose judgment should be used to make major life decisions.”

  “You’re not wrong.” Penn’s face felt frozen in a pose he hoped suggested concerned optimism rather than panicked mania. He remembered their first date, all those little lifetimes ago, another evening when he could not calm his racing heart or make his face do as he wished. If this worked out just a fraction as well as that had, it would be okay. He wanted also to believe that because that evening had worked out as well as it had, perhaps they were protected, perhaps nothing could go all that wrong. But maybe it was just the opposite.

  Rosie felt only fear. Rosie felt deafened by the voices howling in her head that she was mad to consent to this, that it was her judgment which was not to be trusted. And underneath that cacophony she could just make out the narrator who pointed quite peaceably to the fork in the road before them. The path on the right was paved and shady, rolling gently along a childhood filled with acceptance to an adulthood marked by requited love, grandchildren, and joy, whereas the other path was rock-strewn and windblown, uphill both directions, and led she had no idea where. Here she was at the crossroads letting her baby boy run blindly down the path on the left (in a skirt and heels) while the narrator looked on reprovingly.

  “It just seems like such a hard road”—she took deep breaths until she felt herself inflated to the brink of bursting—“such a tough life. This is not the easy way.”

  “No,” Penn agreed, “but I’m not sure easy is what I want for the kids anyway.”

  She looked up at him. “Why the hell not?”

  “I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah, I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on TV. But if I can’t have everything, if I only get a few, I’m not sure easy makes my wish list.”

  “Really?”

  “Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in,” said Penn. “Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.”

  “Easy probably rules out having children,” Rosie admitted.

  “Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world’s problems, overcoming your own. I don’t know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there’s not much of it I’d trade for easy either, I don’t think.”

  “But it’s terrifying,” she whispered. “If it were the right thing to do, wouldn’t we know it?”

  “When was the last time something was bothering one of the kids or he was acting strange or he wasn’t sleeping or doing well in math or sharing nicely during free-choice time, and we knew why?”

  “Knew why?” Rosie said.

  “Knew why. Absolutely knew what was wrong and what should be done to fix it and how to make that happen.”

  “As a parent?”

  “As a parent.”

  “Never?”

  “Never,” Penn agreed. “Not ever. Not once. You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.”

  “Sure there is,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Birth control.”

  “I think that ship has sailed.”

  “So the comfort you can offer me about sending our son to scho
ol next week dressed as a girl fairy is that it seems like a good guess.”

  Penn shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “It would be nice to be a little more certain.”

  “Then we should have gotten a dog.”

  “We did get a dog.”

  “Instead.”

  “Happy New Year.” She leaned across the table to kiss him.

  “It’s 9:15,” he said, but he kissed her back.

  * * *

  Three nights later, the one before school started up again, Penn had a full set for storytime. More and more lately, it was just Claude, Rigel, and Orion, but this night, everyone was anxious—anxiety being as contagious as anything Rosie saw in the emergency room—and when Penn opened the door to Claude’s room, he found five boys, ages five to thirteen, piled on the tiny single bed.

  Since Grumwald had been joined by a night fairy princess named Stephanie, Claude and the twins had been making a persuasive case against the notion of bedtime as a calm, peaceful winding down before sleep. It was more like the floor of the House of Commons. Rigel and Orion only wanted to hear about Grumwald; Claude only wanted to hear about Princess Stephanie. Fortunately, they had decided to work together and help each other out. Not Claude and the twins. Grumwald and Stephanie.

  “She couldn’t help him be a prince really,” Penn explained to his subdued brood. “There was nothing she could do to lessen all the ribbon cutting and baby kissing and peasant mediation that came with the job. She couldn’t ease the student government love triangle either—the secretary simply would not see reason. But Algebra II? Now that she could do something about. She didn’t have much of a head for numbers herself because she was magic, and magic people have no need for math, but she thought that trick—magic—might work for Grumwald too. She had quite the toolbox, but unfortunately, the only way to see what worked for any given problem was trial and error. He got a C minus on the quiz where he kissed the frog she gave him. He got a B minus on the test where he kept the eye of newt in his pocket, and that was better, but a B minus still wasn’t very princely in his father’s opinion. He couldn’t even answer half the problems on the homework assignment he did while rubbing a lamp Stephanie thought might be magic. Crying on the grave of a would-be fairy godmother she pointed him toward yielded a please see me on the imaginary numbers worksheet (Stephanie’s question was if they’re imaginary who really cares, but the answer to that, unfortunately, was Grum’s algebra teacher). In the end, what worked was what she should have known all along: magic wands are good for practically anything. Grumwald was delighted. He could rejoin Mathletes.

  “He had a harder time helping her out though. He was asleep while she was doing stars. Without wings, he couldn’t reach anyway. In the end though what he could give her was better than magic wands and magic frogs and magic lamps. Better and more magical. What he gave her was moral support and unconditional love. He promised to be there for her always, even times when the sky proved too vast and the night was dark because she couldn’t kindle all the stars. He would light her way instead, he promised. He would be her Polaris, her celestial navigator, her astral guide. And whenever she came back to Earth, Grumwald promised, he would be there, waiting.”

  Roo looked his father in the eye. “That was so cheesy, Dad.”

  “See, this is why it’s better when it’s just a prince.” Orion rolled onto the floor. “Princesses are so corny.”

  “It wasn’t Stephanie who got all emotional.” Claude stood up on the bed, hands on nightgowned hips. “That was Grumwald. Stephanie was cool with her gadgets like James Bond.”

  “James Bond has nothing in common with Princess Stephanie,” said Rigel. “James Bond would never use a magic wand for algebra.”

  “Algebra II,” said Penn.

  But after everyone else left, Claude sat then scooted down the bed to hug Penn hard. “I got it, Daddy.”

  “Got what?”

  “You’ll always love me and support me no matter what. Even if it goes bad tomorrow, you’ll be waiting for me at home.”

  “Not true,” said Penn. “I’ll be waiting for you on the playground at school.”

  * * *

  No one slept well, and breakfast was a sleepy affair. Rosie considered whether it would be good parenting or bad to pour coffee all around. Claude came down, a little pale maybe, in a brown denim skirt, brown tights, a pink sweater, and penny loafers. He had pink barrettes in his still very short hair. His wings stood gauzy, arched and defiant on his back, and he wouldn’t take them off even when it meant he had to eat breakfast standing up. He nibbled the crusts off a couple pieces of toast and handed the middles to Rigel. Rosie couldn’t admonish him to eat without eating something herself, and she couldn’t imagine doing so.

  She wanted to go to school with him. She wanted to don a gang jacket and sit in the back of the classroom with a bat so that everyone understood what would happen to them if they messed with her kid. She wanted to go in and give a speech she’d actually rehearsed over and over in her head. The rest of you may be gender-conforming children, she’d say, but you’re not nearly as smart, funny, or interesting as Claude, so you tell me which is better: awesome, dynamic boy in a skirt, or tiresome, whiny child with a runny nose who has nothing to offer but compliance. Instead—and this was probably for the best—she had to go to work.

  But Penn went. That was another thing Claude wanted when asked. Yes, he wanted Penn to come to kindergarten for the day as long as he sat in the back and said nothing and left at lunchtime. So that’s what Penn did. He sat on an impossibly tiny chair, knees up by his shoulders, heart up in his throat, and sweated. It was three degrees outside.

  “Welcome back, boys and girls. How was everyone’s break?” Miss Appleton enthused without waiting for any response. “I’m so glad to see your smiling faces. I hope everyone had fun, and I hope you’ve come back to school ready to learn. We have so many wonderful tasks and treats ahead. Now, I know a lot happened to some of us while we’ve been away. Susan lost her first tooth. Davis went with his grandparents to New York City. Carrie got a haircut. And Claude is going to be a fairy girl! We have so much to learn from one another, boys and girls.”

  Everyone looked around at Susan, Carrie, and Claude. (A week in Manhattan seemed unlikely, even to kindergarteners, to yield anything interesting to look at.) Susan peeled back her bottom lip and stuck out her jaw like a monkey then helpfully pushed her tongue through the hole where her tooth had been. Carrie touched the back of her hair where her ponytail used to be. Claude smiled weakly at his shoes. The children wiggled.

  “Does anyone have any questions they would like to ask? I would love to hear from boys and girls with their hands raised nicely who are sitting quietly on their pockets.”

  Every hand in the room shot up but Claude’s.

  “Let’s see,” said Miss Appleton. “Marybeth is raising her hand nicely.”

  “Did the fairy come?” said Marybeth, and it took Penn a moment to understand that the fairy in question pertained to Susan’s tooth not Claude’s wings.

  “Yup.” Gap-toothed Susan grinned. “She left me two dollars and a comic book.”

  “Ooooh,” said the kindergarteners appreciatively.

  “Next question,” said Miss Appleton. “Jason?”

  Jason turned to Claude. “Are tights itchy? They look itchy.”

  Claude flushed and shook his head.

  “Very nice,” said Miss Appleton. “Who’s next? Alison?”

  “Will Claude get long hair?” Alison asked her teacher.

  “I don’t know, honey. Let’s ask him. Claude, do you plan to grow your hair out long like Alison’s? Or will you have medium hair like Carrie and Josh? Or will you keep your hair short like right now?”

  “I don’t know,” Claude told his shoes, barely above a whisper.

  “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see,” said Miss Appleton. “We have time for one more question. Elena?”

  “Did you see the Statue
of Liberty?” Elena asked Davis.

  “No,” said Davis.

  Miss Appleton clapped her hands together. “Boys and girls, you asked good questions, and you asked them nicely and quietly, so I’m putting a cookie token in our cookie jar to help us earn our cookie party. Now, let’s all find our math partners for Math Trays. Blue table, you may get up and get your math trays.…”

  And that was it. No one looked askance at Claude. No one whispered something nasty. Claude’s brown jean skirt and wings were no more or less interesting than a trip to New York or a haircut or certainly an ordinary lost tooth (teeth got lost like tourists among the kindergarten set). They were, bless them, too self-involved to be invested in Claude’s identity crisis. They were too much five-year-olds to give a cookie token about anyone but themselves.

  As he got in line for lunch, Claude sidled by Penn’s mini chair to whisper, “You can go home now, Dad.”

  “You okay, baby?”

  “Yup.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m proud of you, Claude.”

  “I’m proud of you too, Daddy.”

  * * *

  The next morning Claude asked at breakfast, “How long will it take to grow hair down to my butt?”

  And Rigel said, “How long will it take to grow hair on my butt?”

  And Orion said, “Hairy butt, hairy butt.”

  Claude was wearing a purple corduroy jumper over rainbow-striped tights. And he had shed his wings.

  Naming Rights

  The kindergarteners were unfazed. Very little is unalterable as far as five-year-olds are concerned. Very little doesn’t change. One day those squiggly lines in books transmute into words. One day actual pieces of your mouth start falling off. One day your beloved resolves into a kind of ratty stuffed animal, and for the first time in your life, you feel fine about leaving him home. One day, like magic, you can balance on two wheels. That one day you could be a boy and the next become a girl was not out of their dominion.

  But the older kids had some questions. And they did not always ask them kindly. On the playground at recess, third-graders demanded, “Why are you wearing a dress?” Eight-year-olds pointed at Claude in the cafeteria and sang, “Boooooy girrrrrl boooooy girrrrrl,” like police sirens. Fellow fifth-graders sneered at Rigel and Orion, “Your gay little brother is so gay.” And when Claude tried to jump rope or use the monkey bars or the slide, there was a constant barrage of “Are you a boy or a girl? Are you a boy or a girl? Are you a boy or a girl?” from kids older and bigger and stronger than he. Because he didn’t know the answer, he said nothing. And because he said nothing, they kept asking the question.