This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  “Ladies don’t wear rumpled, dirty dresses.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No, they wear clean, pressed ones.”

  “All ladies?”

  “Well, real ladies,” said Rosie. She’d been tongue and cheeky—and exhausted already with a long day ahead—but this one came back to haunt her.

  “Oh,” said Claude. “Okay.” And he toddled off to his room to change into a sweatshirt and jeans.

  But in the car, his little voice piped up from the backseat. “Mama?”

  “Yeah, baby.”

  “I need another dress. A short, informal one for school.”

  “Okay, love. We can talk about it when you get home.”

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Sure, honey.”

  “And Mama?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Will you to teach me how to do the washer and dryer and iron?”

  “That’s Daddy’s job,” said Rosie.

  “No, it’s mine,” said Claude. “For my new dress. Real ladies wear clean, pressed dresses.”

  Didn’t you know then, the doctors said later? Weren’t you listening?

  Losers

  That night at bedtime, Claude was worried. “Daddy, is this too formal for bed?”

  Penn looked up from cajoling Orion to brush the backs of his teeth too. Claude was wearing Rosie’s nightshirt, lavender with lace around the collar and hem. On Rosie, it came down just to the bottom of her underwear, which meant that every time she reached for something or moved too quickly or rolled over in bed, the nightshirt gave up the goods, at least a peek at the goods. On Claude, it came down to just above his ankles.

  “It’s tea length,” Claude added, looking worried.

  “I don’t think there’s a dress code for bed,” said Penn. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Orion, molars are teeth too, my friend.” Orion was wearing a-size-too-small green footy pajamas with the footies cut off so as to resemble as much as possible the Incredible Hulk. Rigel streaked by the bathroom in nothing at all.

  “Boys,” Penn called. “It’s Monday. Roo’s room,” and from every corner of the house, seemingly from every corner of the Earth, naked, half-naked, and oddly dressed boys tumbled longways onto Roo’s bed, backs against the wall, shoulders pressed together, knees and elbows where knees and elbows aren’t meant to go, layered like lasagna.

  “Get your bare ass off my pillow,” Roo shrieked at Rigel.

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo.”

  “But it’s on my pillow,” said Roo. “Where my head goes.”

  “Get your bare ass off his pillow, Rigel,” said Penn. Rigel scooted his ass down the bed like Jupiter did along the carpet, which in fact seemed worse, but Roo was mollified.

  “Your hair smells like bananas,” Ben complained to Claude.

  “It’s no tears,” Claude explained.

  “Just close your eyes,” said Ben. “Then you can use big-boy shampoo and not smell like bananas.”

  “I don’t want to be a big boy,” said Claude.

  “I don’t want to smell bananas during stories,” said Ben.

  “Banana Boy Hulk smash!” Orion jumped up from his spot in the middle and began smashing his brothers indiscriminately in the face with Roo’s pillow.

  “Ew, it smells like Rigel’s ass,” said Roo.

  “My ass is awesome,” said Rigel.

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’” said Penn.

  “Banana Ass Hulk smash!” said Orion.

  “Enough!” Penn shouted, which was the signal to plug mouths with thumbs, pull blankies out from underneath brothers, and settle in. Penn was continually amazed, night after night, year after year, that everyone was still up for storytelling, now Ben was eleven and Roo was twelve, practically a teenager, now every one of them could read himself. Still, they were all of them happy to put their own books away to listen to the continuing—really continuing—adventures of Grumwald and his own indefatigable storyteller in shining armor instead. Not just happy. Expectant. Which was, Penn thought, after all the point of storytelling. “Where was I?”

  “Grumwald was using fern leaves to capture the night fairies who came to his window every night—”

  “And lit up green and blue and pink like the neon sign at that pizza place where Rigel puked that time—”

  “Because he needed neon night-fairy hair to make a potion for the witch—”

  “Who was all like, ‘Grumwald! I need that hair! If you can’t get me that hair, I’m going to place a spell on you!’”

  “But the fern leaves kept ripping open, and the night fairies kept escaping, even though he promised he wasn’t going to hurt them and just needed to give them a little trim—”

  “Which they could use anyway because they were kind of scruffy fairies, but they wouldn’t listen—”

  “And Grum was wary of how to make a night fairy tarry—”

  “And other things that rhymed.”

  “Yeah, and other things.”

  His Greek Chorus of sons. No wonder this was the best part of his day. Except …

  “Can we have a girl tonight instead?” Claude interrupted.

  “Instead of night fairies?” said Penn.

  “Instead of Grumwald,” said Claude. “I’m bored of a prince. I want a princess.”

  “Grumwaldia?” said Penn.

  “Yeah! Grumwaldia!” said Claude.

  “Grumwaldia sounds like a lake in Vermont.” Roo had never been to one but was right about that anyway.

  “Princesses are boring,” Rigel whined.

  “Girls in fairy tales are losers,” said Roo.

  “No they aren’t,” said Claude.

  “Yes they are. Not like losers. Losers. Girls in fairy tales are always losing stuff.”

  “Nuh-uh,” said Claude.

  “Yuh-huh. They lose their way in the woods or their shoe on the step or their hair even though they’re in a tower with no door and their hair is like literally attached to their head.”

  “Or their voice,” Ben put in. “Or their freedom or their family or their name. Or their identity. Like she can’t be a mermaid anymore.”

  “Or they lose being awake,” said Roo. “And then they just sleep and sleep and sleep. Boooring.”

  Claude started crying. “A princess could do cool stuff. A princess could be better than Grumwald. She wouldn’t have to sleep or lose her shoe.”

  The boys’ emotions looked divided between worried they’d get in trouble for making their baby brother cry and antsy about how much storytime had passed and how much was left and how no story was yet being told. Worried about getting in trouble and antsy were in fact the boys’ predominant emotions. Well, maybe not worried. More like chagrined after they’d already gotten in trouble and antsy to get in more trouble.

  “It’s no fair,” Claude whined. “We never get a princess.”

  “It’s no fair,” Rigel and Orion whined. “We’ll never find out what happened with the night fairies.”

  “It’s no fair,” Claude added. “They always get their way because there’s two of them.”

  “Enough!” Penn said again. “We can do both at once.”

  “We can?” Ben was unconvinced.

  “Yes, because those night fairies the witch was making Grumwald capture? They had a night fairy leader named Princess Grumwaldia.”

  “Stephanie,” Claude corrected.

  “Princess Grumwaldia Stephanie,” Penn amended.

  “What was she wearing?” said Claude.

  “She was wearing a lavender nightgown but short, not tea length, so as to leave her legs free for fleeter flight. And she thought Grumwald was a big baby because he was so whiny about having to rule over his little kingdom and at the same time study for Algebra II, which he thought was really hard. He also had a lot of extra student government work to do since the secretary dropped out after the treasurer took the social coordinator to homecoming. Princess Stephanie, as a night fairy, didn’t go to high school
, obviously, but her kingdom was much, much vaster than Grumwald’s. His stretched from the north fork of the forest to the horizon of the east sea. Hers … well, Stephanie was in charge of the night sky.”

  “All of it?” Claude was impressed.

  “Not all of it—”

  “See?” Rigel and Orion: Captains, Team Grumwald.

  “Just the stars.”

  “Wow.” Claude snugged up against Penn, a kind of thank-you.

  “It was Princess Stephanie’s job to oversee the night fairies, and it was the night fairies’ job to manage the stars.”

  “This is starting to sound like reality TV,” said Roo.

  “You didn’t think the heavens just managed themselves, did you? You didn’t think all the night fairies did their whole lives was tease poor Grumwald? They had to see that the stars came out on time, sparkled as appropriate, dimmed so the moon didn’t get pissed off when it was full, fell just when wishers were watching. This was a stressful job—way more stressful than SGA president or even prince—because there are a lot of stars out there, and Stephanie was in charge not just of making sure they were behaving properly but also that they were happy.”

  “How do you keep stars happy?” Claude whispered.

  “Well, exactly,” said Penn. “It was a big job. A big, big job. Stephanie and the other night fairies started every evening at dusk, and it often took until nearly dawn to get everything set. ‘Look alive there, Sirius. A little more light, please, Centauri. How do you feel, Ross 248? Anything we can do to make you more comfortable?’ So by the time dawn came, Princess Grumwaldia Stephanie was exhausted and ready for bed. Just like all of you.”

  Ben and Roo went off to finish homework, but the little ones were ready, and Claude was already mostly asleep. He stirred when Penn transferred him to his own bed to ask, “Can I stay up till dawn too, Daddy? To help with the stars?”

  “Sure, sweetie.” In the few seconds that passed while Penn fumbled with the nightlight, Claude was already fast asleep, lavender nightgown bunched up around his waist, not so tea length after all.

  Absent her usual nightshirt, Rosie came to bed that night in a button-down of Penn’s which, like Princess Stephanie’s, was short enough to leave her legs free for fleeter flight. And like two-fifths of her sons, she had nothing on underneath.

  * * *

  Through that whole winter and spring, Claude came home every day from preschool, shed his clothes, and put the princess dress back on. And there at the beginning, after the first afternoon or two, no one—not Claude, not his brothers, not his parents—gave much thought to his dress, for he was still and always just Claude, and was it any stranger, really, than Roo performing a séance in the downstairs bathroom or than Rigel licking the spine of every book in the house to prove he could taste the difference between fiction and nonfiction? It was not.

  Then summer arrived and with it the boys’ grandmother, and everything got even better. Improbably, Rosie’s mother’s name was Carmelo.

  “Like the candy bar?” Penn had asked the first time.

  “Not Caramello. Carmelo,” said Rosie, as if the former were ridiculous but the latter as reasonable as Anne or Barbara.

  Roo, because he was the eldest, had an opportunity to intervene and rechristen her something normal. Instead, he’d gone with Carmy, some combo of Carmelo and Grammy, which truly sounded like something chocolate-covered. But she was not a chocolate-covered sort of grandma. She did not bake. She did not inveterately hand out sweets. She loved from a different place than that, better for the teeth. She was always threatening to move to be nearer to Rosie and the boys, but Wisconsin was—obviously, nonnegotiably, self-evidently—too cold. So she stayed in Phoenix and held the weather to her heart as a talisman, clutched to her breast against all counteroffers.

  But she came up for the summers. Phoenix’s weather need not be clutched to the breast for June through September. Every year, she rented the same rundown lake cottage from a colleague of Rosie’s who couldn’t be bothered to fix it up enough to rent to tourists. She stood on its front porch and watched the sun rise over the lake every morning and smoked Camels. She was the only grandmother any of the boys’ friends knew who would have been willing—never mind able—to take out six or seven of them at a time in the ancient green rowboat that came with, and perhaps predated, the house. She swam every day out to the glacial rock in the middle of the lake that felt like it had very lately been glacier itself, hauled herself onto the mammoth slab, sunned the chill out of her bones, and then swam back. She was the most glamorous thing the boys had ever seen.

  It was one of those hot, humid, buggy Wisconsin summers where it went from snow to sauna in a week and a half and stayed there. The boys spent it perpetually wet from the lake, the sprinkler, a surprisingly durable water slide Roo built out of trash bags on his grandmother’s front lawn. Carmelo taught Rigel to knit. At first, she thought it was the resemblance of the needles to something a ninja might own that appealed to him, and maybe it was, but he fixed on it like sand to sunscreen and spent the summer trailing training scarves everywhere, dropped stitches unraveling like plot threads. Ben used practice tassels as bookmarks. Jupiter used abandoned projects as bedding. Orion employed them as bandanas, sweatbands, do-rags, tube tops, cummerbunds, and toga tails, coming down to lazy summer breakfasts as Bruce Springsteen and Julius Caesar (equally ancient in his mind), 50 Cent and Fred Astaire. But Claude wore them as long, flowing hair—tresses that cascaded down his back or could be attached via headband then rubber-banded up like a real ponytail. Roo began a practice he would hone to an art in the years to come: pretending he wasn’t related to any of them.

  Carmy let Claude try on her dresses and jewelry and shoes. When Claude made tea to go with his tea-length dress, she pulled out cookies or cheese and crackers to go with it and changed out of her T-shirt and shorts so that Claude didn’t have to be fancy alone.

  Only once, early on, did Claude wonder, “Carmy?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Will you love me even if I keep wearing a dress?”

  “I will love you even if you wear a dress made out of puppies.” Carmelo nuzzled his neck, and he giggled. “I will love you even if you wear a hat made out of toe cheese.”

  Claude wrinkled his nose. “You will?”

  “Of course.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause I’m your grandma. That’s what grandmas are for.”

  “Loving you no matter what you wear?”

  “Loving you no matter what.”

  Claude considered that distinction. “Is that why you still like Orion?” who was at that moment wandering through the kitchen wearing an unspooling umber pot holder as a loincloth.

  Carmelo squeezed her eyes shut. “No matter what.”

  Carmelo was also the one who took Claude to buy a bathing suit as a preschool graduation present. She let him pick it out himself, which is how Rosie arrived home from work one day to find her youngest son running through the sprinkler in a pink bikini with white and yellow daisies.

  “Where did that come from?” She bent from the waist to kiss him way out in front of her so she would stay dry.

  “Isn’t it great?” Claude looked lit up. At first she’d taken him to be sunburned, but in fact he was glowing. “Carmy got it for me for graduation.”

  “Graduation?”

  “’Cause next year I’m going to kindergarten.”

  “I see.”

  “I picked it out myself.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  At the least, he was beautiful in it, his body lean and flat as the piano, which hadn’t been tuned since Roo switched to flute, and covered in the little nicks and bruises that showed he was doing a good job of being almost five.

  “Sorry.” Carmelo shrugged when Claude had run off again. “Once I told him he was old enough to pick out his own suit, there was no going back.”

  “Empowering children.”
Rosie sighed. “Always a mistake.”

  “Are you worried?” Was Carmelo asking because her daughter looked worried? Or because she thought she should be?

  “No?” It came out as a question. It was a sweltering almost-evening, no clouds, no wind. Rosie squinted against late-afternoon sun glinting off the water genuflecting from the sprinkler. Was it time to worry? Was the dress one thing but the bikini another somehow? Gnats danced lines and crosses just above her eyes, but she was too tired suddenly to wave them away. “Maybe a little worried,” she admitted to her mother.

  “Fiddlesnicks.” Carmelo dragged hard on a cigarette Rosie hoped might induce the gnats to dance elsewhere.

  “Fiddle snicks?”

  “Poppyrock.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘poppycock.’”

  “Bullshit then.” Carmelo was not a woman bogged down by semantics. “He’s fine. Look at him! He’s ecstatic. He’s euphoric.”

  “For the moment.”

  Carmelo looked at her daughter. “For the moment’s all there is, my darling.”

  “Spoken like an indulgent grandmother,” said Rosie. But deep down she knew that wasn’t it. It was spoken like someone whose baby didn’t get to grow up.

  “He’s happy,” said Carmelo as if that settled it, as if it were just that simple. “Happy, healthy, and fabulous. What more could you ask?”

  “Other kids will make fun of him.”

  “What kids?” said Carmelo.

  “I don’t know. Kids.”

  “Kids don’t care about stuff like that anymore.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. And why do you?”

  “You do realize,” Rosie turned to her mother, “that I’m supposed to be calming you down about all of this, not the other way around? I’m the one who’s supposed to be talking you off the ledge. You’re supposed to be panicking and dragging him off to church or something.”

  “So few Jews at church these days,” said Carmelo.

  “You’re too old to be open-minded and tolerant,” said Rosie.

  “I’m too old not to be.” She sucked coolly on her cigarette again, then waved it at Rosie to punctuate her point. Not for the first time, Rosie envied smokers their rhetorical device. “I’ve lived life. I know what’s important. I’ve seen it all by now. You think he’s the first boy I ever saw in a bikini? He’s not. You think your generation invented kids who are different?”