When It Happens to You

by Molly Ringwald

  Zipping along on his bicycle, he circled back to Marina for a third time, nudging her forward like a sheepdog. “You don’t have to wait for me, honey,” she said, kissing him on top of his curly head. Then she told him she would be waiting for him on the park bench under the silver maple, and watched him pedal away, the scarf flowing behind him. For a moment, she thought of calling him back and taking the scarf away, or at least retying it, for fear of it getting caught in the spokes. But she didn’t, and this reflection would later haunt her.

  There was only one witness. A young girl screamed, but when Marina looked up and saw that it was not Oliver, she quickly went back to working on her layout. The girl ran to her mother, crying in Spanish, and Marina noticed that the woman looked alarmed as she cried out to her friends, mothers and nannies all around. Someone yelled “911.” It was only then that Marina realized that she couldn’t see Oliver anywhere.

  Joining the throng of adults and children running in the general direction of the bushes that bordered the bicycle path, she pushed her way through a small crowd that had gathered. In the center of the crowd lay her son, inert and disoriented. He was tangled in the brush, his hair matted with dirt, his clothes torn, and blood on his face. Nearby, the rear wheel of his upended bicycle spun listlessly. Marina dropped down and took him in her arms.

  “Who did this to you?” she cried. “Oh God.” She looked around at the crowd of curious spectators. “Who did this to him?” she screamed.

  After some prompting from her mother, the little girl explained that she saw older boys hurting him. They ran away after the girl had screamed. It was ascertained that they were around twelve years old. A couple of the fathers went off in search of the boys while the police were called. Marina held Oliver in her arms and tried to comfort him.

  “Shhh,” she whispered to him, “shhhh.” It was mostly from habit, since it was actually she who couldn’t stop weeping.

  Hours later, in the dim twilight of her bedroom, Marina watched over Oliver as he lay sleeping in her bed under a mound of blankets. His breathing was calm and steady. He had been given a mild sedative, a “sleep aid” as it was called by the courteous ER doctor who had examined him. Now, after being bathed and dressed, he lay peacefully asleep, and it almost seemed like any other night. The only evidence of the brutality inflicted upon her son was a half-moon slash across his right cheek that the doctor told her, as reassuringly as possible, he was doubtful would scar. Doubtful, not certain. With all of her desperation, she willed it to disappear, knowing how the scar would serve as a constant tormenting reminder that she hadn’t been there to stave off his attackers.

  Until today, she had been unwavering in her belief that she was doing the right thing by her son, by letting him be who he was—even as it brought him closer to the other gender, transforming him daily, step by step, from a son into a daughter. But now, staring at the half-moon mark on his cheek, she looked ahead to the continuum of what life held for her child with dread. If a six-year-old could inspire such savagery, what would he endure at sixteen? At twenty-six? It seemed to her then that the world was a place of dark and wet menace, like some underground cave, and as a parent she had done nothing more than thrust her child into its mouth, lanternless, and wish him the best. “There is such a thing as being too liberal,” she had once overheard a mother sneer to her friend as she and Oliver strode past them on a school tour. Oliver had insisted on wearing his “Cinderella” slippers and crown that day, and he held on to her hand oblivious and confident even as he had teetered on the plastic heels. Before, Marina had taken these people on, challenged them to say more. But now the troubling thought occurred to her: What if they were right?

  As she walked out of her bedroom, her eye caught the floral scarf hanging on the back of the door, the same one that Oliver had wrapped around his waist that afternoon. She held it in her hands for a moment, feeling the fear and anger rise up inside of her, and then she stormed into the kitchen and grabbed a giant black trash bag from under the sink. She stuffed the scarf in the bag. Then, with bag in hand, she walked upstairs to Oliver’s room. Every dress, tunic, and skirt went into the bag. Sweeping through the room with grim precision, she threw away the tiny pots of lip gloss and nail polish that had been lifted from her drawers. Next came the plush unicorns, stuffed ponies, and kittens. Anything pink, purple, sparkling, glittering, or heart-shaped was taken. The last items she put in the bag were the princess dresses, the matching jeweled plastic heels, and his wand. When she was done, she sat on the floor of the barren room, breathless, feeling as her mother must have felt when her little brother’s room was stripped clean after a life-threatening asthma attack. “It’s for his own good,” her mother had said when Marina’s little brother cried for the stuffed goose he had cuddled since birth. “Safety first.”

  Most nondeciduous plants can survive without light for a few days. But after a week of halted photosynthesis, the chlorophyll dwindles to a disastrous level, the plant’s leaves brown and fall off, and soon the plant withers and dies.

  Upon finding his world stripped of every trace of femininity, Oliver initially responded with incredulity and outrage. He railed against his once true ally with a frightening furor, only to be met again and again by Marina’s steely resolve. He cried, cajoled, and negotiated. He threatened with sustained bouts of holding his breath until he swooned. And then, like the maple leaves that burn the brightest before they lose their color and fall to the earth, so did Oliver languish.

  It was following a particularly ragged battle over a shell-pink angora sweater with an embellished rhinestone collar that Oliver had obviously stolen from a classmate and then hidden behind his headboard that Marina lost it. Overwhelmed by frustration when Oliver refused to return the sweater and apologize, she used the last vestige of power she felt she wielded over him. She threatened to cut his hair.

  Oliver stared at her, disbelief mingling with fear.

  “Please don’t, Mommy,” he pleaded. “I’ll give it back. I’ll say I’m sorry. And I won’t fight anymore. I promise.”

  He was true to his word. He stopped fighting—but he also stopped being. He became complacent and absent. Marina felt as if her child had been taken from her, replaced by this mild, compliant ghost. And though Marina was a woman who had spent the greater part of her life resolutely single, for the first time she felt the ache of being truly alone.

  “It’s your turn!” Charlotte called out after swinging herself across the rings. She had finally grasped the concept of momentum and how it carried her from ring to ring like a bird in flight, and her face glowed with the rush of triumph. Oliver sat a few feet away, pointedly ignoring her as he traced random shapes in the sand with a stick. He wore khaki shorts and a solid gray T-shirt like a wrongly convicted prisoner facing a life of incarceration. Regardless of the fact that Marina had purchased an entire new wardrobe for him full of interesting graphic shirts in vibrant colors, Oliver deliberately sought out the same shorts and gray T-shirt every day, even taking them out of the laundry hamper before they had gone through the wash, as if to announce his resignation and reproach to Marina.

  “Come on, Ollie!” Charlotte stood in front of him with her bare feet planted in the sand.

  Marina knelt down and rubbed her son’s back through his gray T-shirt. He swatted her hand away and went back to his shapes.

  “I think you should maybe just go again, sweetie,” Marina told the girl who was now impatiently hopping on one foot in front of Oliver. “He’s going to sit this one out.” Charlotte glanced from Marina to her father, who stood a slight distance away.

  “Go on, Charlotte,” Phillip said. “Oliver is taking a break.”

  Marina had been avoiding Phillip for weeks, but she had been caught by a phone number that she didn’t recognize and mistakenly thought was her pharmacy. In her hurry to get off the phone, she agreed to a playdate with Charlotte but insisted that they meet at another park, without explanation. It was clear that Phillip intuited her re
luctance to engage; Marina just let him assume that it was due to the kiss, which now seemed to her embarrassingly inconsequential.

  Phillip walked over to Marina and sat down in the sand next to her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t we let them play together and we can go catch up?”

  “They are playing together,” she replied without looking at him. “If you want to sit down somewhere and make phone calls, go ahead. I can watch the two of them.”

  Phillip leaned back in an unconscious protective move. “No, I’m fine. I don’t have . . . I just meant . . .”

  “I’m staying here,” she said.

  “Daddy!” Charlotte hopped up, trying unsuccessfully to reach the rings on her own. “Help me up!” Phillip stood and lingered for a moment beside Marina, who was hunched over Oliver like a shell.

  “Daddy!” Charlotte whined.

  He shook his head slightly and walked over to give his daughter a boost. She swung across the rings again, grinning; when she reached the end, he held up his arms and she fell into them.

  “Oliver doesn’t want to play with me anymore,” Charlotte said, ostensibly as a secret but loud enough for her friend to hear.

  Phillip glanced over at Oliver, who kept his head down. If he heard, he gave no indication.

  It was Marina who spoke up. “That’s not true, is it, Ollie? You want to play with your friend, don’t you?” Oliver shrugged. He reached out his hand, erasing the shapes he made in the sand, and then began drawing them again.

  “Ollie,” Marina urged, “if you don’t play with Charlotte, she’s going to think that you don’t want to be friends.”

  Oliver shrugged again, remaining silent.

  In the weeks since his surrender, it felt to Marina as though she were watching him die. In a way, she was. She had effectively killed Olivia by excising her from their lives, though the husk of the living, breathing body of Oliver remained. She was reminded of attending her great-grandmother’s open-casket funeral as a child. Marina had stared in bewilderment, transfixed by the immobile body of the woman who had been teaching her how to crochet just days before. She waited for her great-grandmother to move and break the spell, until at last her parents nudged her along, embarrassed by her behavior.

  “I was waiting for Nana to move,” she had explained in a voice a little too loud.

  “Don’t be silly,” her mother had whispered. “Nana isn’t there. It’s only her body. Nana’s gone to heaven.”

  Now Marina stared at her son with the same equivocal hope, willing him to return to her, fearing that in her resolve to save his life, she had effectively extinguished it. Where had her son gone to, she wondered, and how could she call him back?

  On a Saturday morning in August, she left Oliver at home with the neighbor girl, a sweet-natured teenager whom Marina had known since she was a girl, and took the opportunity to run errands. She was waiting at the coffeehouse counter after having placed her order when her eye happened upon a dress in the shop window next door. It was a children’s clothing store named Bees and Buttercups. A broad gilded sign hung above the entrance featuring a plump bumblebee grasping a flower in his anthropomorphic hand. With the school year beginning, all of the clothes on display were imbued with the hopefulness of the new and unknown. The dress was light cotton, with petal sleeves, a pin-tucked bodice, and a silk ribbon tied at the waist. A pair of red leather Mary-Janes were set on the vintage suitcase display next to the dress, delicately crossed at the toes as though in an expression of girlish flirtation.

  Marina stepped back into the coffeehouse and took a section of a newspaper that had been left on a table by the door. As she maneuvered her way through the crowd of people, she happened to see Phillip hunched over a too-small table with a woman who, even from the back, Marina could tell was his wife.

  Before she could find a suitable hiding place, Phillip’s eyes met hers. He blinked and raised his arm in a half wave. His wife spun around and looked to see where he was waving.

  Marina took a deep breath and stopped by the table. She deliberately looked at his wife first.

  “Hi. How are you?”

  Phillip’s wife ran her hand through her hair, and Marina could tell that she couldn’t recall her name. She waited a second to see if Phillip would introduce her. He didn’t.

  “I’m Marina. Oliver’s mom. Charlotte’s friend?”

  Phillip’s wife smiled and nodded. “Yes. Charlotte talks about Oliver all the time,” she said. “I’m Greta. I know we’ve met, but . . . nice to meet you again.”

  Marina glanced over at Phillip who stared down dully at his empty coffee cup.

  “Large Americano for Marina!” the young man behind the counter called out. “Marina!”

  “That’s me,” Marina said, turning to leave. “Have a good weekend, you two.”

  Phillip looked up at her then. “Thank you,” he said.

  She walked out with her coffee in hand and straight into the shop next door. Up and down the aisles she strode, trying to find something that might please Oliver. She held up a little T-shirt with the Ramones on it, hoodies with PRAY FOR SURF hand-embroidered on the sleeves, small porkpie hats for parents who, she supposed, wanted to fashion their male offspring to look like the Rat Pack in miniature.

  A mother stood at the back of the store outside the fitting room while the elderly saleswoman folded a brightly hued sweater. They chatted about when the new collection was expected and if it was worth waiting for everything to go on sale. After a moment, the mother poked her head behind the plum velvet curtain.

  “Do you need any help in there, honey?”

  “No. I can do it myself!” came the insistent reply from behind the curtain.

  The mother laughed and retreated. She picked up a catalogue and thumbed through it. “She’s always been so independent,” she said. “From the time she could speak, I swear to God!”

  The curtain parted and out stepped the little girl. She shyly tucked her dark hair behind one ear and modeled the white eyelet dress, turning this way and that while the women sighed and ahhed as though they were seeing the girl in her wedding dress for the first time.

  The mother clapped her hands together. “That will be just perfect at Mom-Mom’s party, won’t it?”

  The girl beamed. “I love it, Mommy. I love it!”

  While her mother handed over her credit card, the girl happily examined the charm bracelets and other trinkets, holding them up to the light and then putting them back.

  “I didn’t think we would find the perfect one so fast!” the mother told the saleswoman. “I just hope she doesn’t grow out of it before the party!”

  Marina approached the saleswoman as the pair exited the store hand in hand.

  “May I help you?” the saleswoman asked Marina.

  “Yes,” Marina said. “I’d like to buy the dress in the window.

  “Of course,” the saleswoman said. She walked to the display and stepped up on the platform to retrieve the dress.

  While the saleswoman removed the dress from the mannequin, Marina glanced around the shop, marveling at the striking combinations of color, cut, and cloth. Look at all this prettiness, Marina thought. Look at all this light.

  “I knew this wouldn’t last up there long,” the saleswoman said as she smoothed out the fabric of the dress. “It’s just darling. Would you like it gift wrapped?”

  She brought the dress to Marina, who touched the soft silk of the ribbon between her thumb and finger.

  “Yes, please,” Marina said. “It’s for my daughter.”

  URSA MINOR

  FOR THE GREATER PART OF his twenties and half of his thirties, Peter Layton’s longest-standing relationship was with a young male polar bear named Pooka. Pooka was not a real polar bear but an animated one, and though Peter’s life was inextricably linked with Pooka’s, Peter and Pooka never actually met. Theirs was an intimate relationship consummated in postproduction by a team of highly skilled computer animators. Peter worked
with a script in front of a “green screen” while a director and skeleton crew guided Peter from gaffer-taped mark to mark on the concrete sound stage in Queens, New York. But to all the children of the world the places that Peter and Pooka visited were legion.

  Of course, when Peter first arrived in New York City upon graduating from Yale Drama, the last thing he had on his mind was children’s television. His turn as Trigorin in The Seagull had been hailed as “superlative” (according to the college newspaper), matched only by his interpretation of Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross, in which local reviewers found in Peter that intangible fusion of intensity and irresistible insouciance—in short, the elusive charisma that is the golden ticket for any young actor. He moved into a Williamsburg loft with a couple of his former classmates and gave himself a year to concentrate on his indisputably promising acting career before even considering a day job.

  At first, everything seemed to go as planned. He landed a respectable off-off Broadway job within a month of living in New York. It was an original play written by a young playwright (and former Yalie), produced by a theater company comprised of moonlighting Hollywood actors with serious theater pretensions. The play was middling at best, but Peter was extremely well received and clearly shone above the other considerably more experienced thespians. Though the play was not financially lucrative, it managed to secure him representation with a small boutique agency specializing in theater, and New York magazine chose his picture to front a featured article showcasing young talent.

  And then nothing.

  He got plenty of auditions and a respectable amount of callbacks, but the feedback was always frustratingly difficult to decipher. “Too intense.” “Uncommitted.” “Distracted.” “Too good-looking.” “Not good-looking enough.” Among the most maddening was when a ginger-haired, pockmarked casting director, pressed by Peter’s agent as to why he hadn’t called his client back for a bit part in an independent movie, confided, “He just didn’t sparkle.”