These were Penn’s second through twenty-ninth concerns. He felt bees buzzing behind his rib cage. But before Penn could settle on a parenting path, Claude slipped out of his chair, padded upstairs, and emerged again wordlessly, defrocked and de-barretted, Penn’s skirt-shirt gone, only his own remaining over a pair of navy shorts. Claude shouldered his peanut-free purse, and everyone went off to school. When he got home at the end of a much smoother day, he went straight to his room and pulled Penn’s shirt back on under his own, stuck the barrettes back in his hair, added a pair of Carmelo’s clip-on earrings, and sat down at the dining-room table to homework with everyone else. Penn bit his bottom lip. The outfit itself didn’t much worry him—it ranked in the high thirties, maybe—but its persistence was starting to creep into the top ten. Instead, he turned to homeworking.
Penn was in charge of homework, and he had rules. Homeworking never commenced—even complaining about homeworking never commenced—until after snack. And it had to be a good snack. Penn recognized peanut butter on a celery stick for the bullshit it was. Blueberry pancakes. Chocolate banana pops. Zucchini mini pizzas. These were snacks. Then the dining-room table was cleared, wiped down, and requisitioned for work. All boys—Penn included—sat down and got to it, homeworking quietly, asking questions or for additional help as necessary, calming so that others could concentrate. Homeworking en masse made it more fun. Penn recalled hours in his room as a child, slogging through math problems or write-ups of science experiments or memorizing the words for things in French. Downstairs, his parents would be watching TV or laughing together about their day while upstairs he suffered the isolating boredom and nagging insecurity of passé composé. At his dining-room table with his cadre of boys, however, he could approach homework, aptly, like dinner—everything shared, the trials and triumphs, each according to his abilities, everyone pitching in to help. Roo might say, “Can anyone think of another way to say ‘society’?” or Ben might say, “Is there even a word for ‘soufflé’ in Spanish?” or Rigel and Orion might be building a rocket together while their father hoped it was for a science project and not just for the sake of blowing stuff up.
Over the years, kindergarten homework had gotten more … Rosie said “intense”; Penn said “asinine with an emphasis on the ass.” When Roo was in kindergarten, there was playing with blocks and in the sandbox. There was learning to sit quietly on the rug and listen to a story. Now Claude had kindergarten homework of his very own. On this second night of school, it was to draw a picture of himself and write a sentence about what he hoped to learn this year. Claude’s sentence was “I hope to learn about science including stars, what kind of frogs live in Wisconsin, why oceans are salty, air currents and other winds, and why peanut butter is not allowed at school.” Penn marveled at his youngest son. So many children seemed somehow to age the littler ones more quickly, like some kind of obscure Einsteinian law of physics. Claude’s picture was of the whole family, and Penn could not decide if it was wonderful or alarming that, assigned to draw himself, Claude drew them all. Penn and Rosie and Carmelo stood with lanky arms around one another’s lanky shoulders, heads grazing the clouds just above them, the blue of the sky creeping occasionally over the outline of their faces so that their cheeks were smeared with the firmament. In front of them, sitting crisscross-applesauce all in a row in the grass, were five brothers: Roo’s hair curling out wider than his body; Ben’s glasses owling huge, dark eyes straight off the page; Rigel and Orion with ears unfairly cocked at right angles from pointy, parallel heads. And small in the corner—because he’d run out of room? because he got lost in his overlarge family? because he felt insignificant in the face of the vastness of the universe?—Claude had drawn himself in his tea-length dress with ruby slippers and wavy brown hair down to the ground, held back off his face with a dozen barrettes that snaked colored ribbons in all directions, cascading over his brothers, over his parents, over the clouds and the trees and the grass and the sky, a small, windblown child in his own personal tempest, puzzling over air currents and other winds and his place in the world, which, it struck Penn, was right about there, right where he’d imagined it. Penn’s concern over the drawing subsided into the high teens.
The picture went without comment by Miss Appleton except for a hastily penned and not very convincing “Nice work!” plus a sticker of a grinning check mark (because, Penn wondered, actually making a check mark was too much effort?). So did the lunch purse as long as it didn’t contain peanut butter. And Claude, for his part, merely changed clothes four times a day: PJs to a dress when he woke, then into school clothes after breakfast, then back into a dress and heels and jewelry when he got home, then back into PJs before bed.
Saying good night one night, smoothing the hair back off Claude’s forehead, listening to him tell them sweetly, sleepily, about his day, Rosie squeezed Penn’s hand for support and took a deep breath. “Does it make you tired, all that changing of clothes?” she asked gently.
Claude’s forehead wrinkled. His tiny shoulders shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“You know,” Penn said carefully, so carefully, “you could wear a dress or a skirt to school if you wanted. It would be okay.”
“No it wouldn’t,” said Claude.
Rosie felt her eyes produce actual tears of relief that Claude didn’t leap at this chance immediately. But she persisted anyway. “Sure it would.”
“The other kids would make fun of me.” Claude’s eyes were full too.
“That’s true,” Penn admitted. “They would. But that would be okay. They wouldn’t mean it. They would make fun of you for a day or two then forget all about you and make fun of something else.”
“They would never forget. They would make fun of me every day forever.”
“We would help you,” said Rosie. “We could think of things to say back. We could think of ways to ignore them.”
“We could not.”
“We could talk to Miss Appleton.”
“Miss Appleton doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she does!”
“No, she thinks I’m weird. And if I wear a dress to school, she’ll think I’m really weird.”
“You wouldn’t be weird. You would be you in a dress. Smart, sweet, kind, funny you in a dress. It would be okay.”
“No,” said Claude, “this is okay. Real clothes at home, school clothes at school. I can just change.”
That “real” reverberated around in Penn’s brain until it was deafening. “Well that’s okay too, of course. But you should be able to be who you are, wear what you like. The other kids, your teacher, your friends, everyone would be fine. Everyone loves you for who you are.”
“No one but you,” said Claude. “No one but us. We are the only ones.”
We are the only ones. This was the part that haunted Rosie, hunted her. It supplanted quite a few other concerns to leapfrog up to number three or four. Rosie was gratified that Claude felt so supported at home. Rosie was horrified that Claude felt so precarious outside of it. But Rosie was also used to conflicting emotions, for she was a mother and knew every moment of every day that no one out in the world could ever love or value or nurture her children as well as she could and yet that it was necessary nonetheless to send them out into that world anyway.
Rosie’s number-one concern was: what would make Claude happy?
Penn’s number-one concern was: what would make Claude happy?
But happy is harder than it sounds.
Halloween
So Claude changed clothes, his parents worried and did a lot of laundry, and a couple months of kindergarten passed without further incident. With five kids in school, Rosie took more day shifts at the hospital, worked fewer nights. Penn put more DN words on pages. They weren’t always good ones, but they occurred, and that was something. The weather turned cold. The air smelled of snow, the house of fires in the fireplace and soups on the stove. There was a lull as everything froze over, froze in place.
For Hallow
een, Roo wanted to be a pirate which was easy enough, and Ben wanted to be Roo which was easier still, and Rigel and Orion wanted to be conjoined twins which they practically were anyway. Everyone waited for Claude to say he wanted to be a princess or a mermaid or Miss Piggy. But Claude could not decide what he wanted to be. It was breakfast conversation for many chilly weeks running.
“Everyone else was a pumpkin in kindergarten,” Rosie offered. For a few years there, they’d gotten away with passing costumes—or at least costume ideas; often the costumes themselves did not survive the day—to the next brother down. “You would be the cutest pumpkin.”
“I could knit you a stem,” Rigel offered, “or a leaf, but the orange part would take forever.”
“I could make you a policeman,” said Orion. “Or a fireman. Or a fisherman. I have supplies for all of those.”
“Police officer,” Rosie corrected. “Firefighter. Fisher … person? Mariner? What do you call that?”
“Girls don’t fish,” said Roo.
“Sure they do,” said his father.
“Not for a living,” said Roo. “And Claude is a man. So if he were a police officer, he would be a policeman.”
“Claude is a boy, not a man.”
“Policeboy,” said Orion. “Fireboy. FISHBOY!”
“Why doesn’t he just dress up as a girl?” said Roo, as if his brother weren’t at the table with him. “That would be easy. He does it every day anyway.”
“Do you want to be a girl for Halloween, Claude?” Rosie was careful to keep her voice exactly neutral. If he were going to wear a dress to school, Halloween was the day to do it. Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe he’d get it out of his system.
“Girl’s not a costume,” Claude said reasonably. And then, “I want to be Grumwald.”
“Grumwald?” said Penn.
“Yeah. Grumwald.”
“You can’t be Grumwald.”
“Why not?”
“Grumwald doesn’t look like anything. Grumwald’s only a story we made up. Grumwald doesn’t exist corporeally.”
“Core what really?” Claude was still precocious, but he was only five.
“Grumwald doesn’t exist except in our heads,” Penn revised.
“That’s good,” said Orion. “Easy costume.”
“I don’t need help,” said Claude. “I’ll make it myself. What does he look like, Daddy? In your head?”
“He looks like you,” Penn said.
“Why him?” said Roo.
“Well, he used to look like you,” Penn told Roo. “He looked like each of you. He looks like all of you really.”
The morning of Halloween was the first one in months Claude came downstairs in anything other than a dress. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt and a crown he’d cut out of red construction paper. It took Rosie a heartbeat to place him. It had been so long since he’d come down to breakfast looking like her little boy.
“Arrr, that’s not a costume.” Roo popped up the moss-stitch eye patch Rigel had knit him to look at his baby brother.
“Yes it is.”
“You’re just dressed as you.”
“Without the girl clothes,” said Ben.
“Claude as Claude instead of Claudette is not a costume,” said Roo.
“Dad said Grumwald looks like me,” said Claude.
“No one’s going to give you candy without a costume,” said Rigel. Penn suspected that was not strictly true, but he did worry (number seventeen or so) Claude would feel left out at school when everyone else was dressed up.
“This isn’t all of it,” said Claude.
“Where’s the rest?” said Orion.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Well, get it!” everyone said.
Claude grinned, clomped upstairs, clomped back down again. In his hands, a foot, maybe more, taller than he was, Claude held a cardboard cutout, crude but recognizably human: circle head atop rounded shoulders, no neck, sloping into too-long, uneven arms with tiny hands—Claude seemed to have traced his own and cut them out—a torso attached to thick legs with feet sticking out in opposite directions at right angles, the toes all stacked atop one another as if viewed from above, all of it covered head to toe in aluminum foil. A hole was cut out for the mouth with a balloon taped underneath. Glued all over the balloon were words he must have cut from catalogs, for the scraps read things like “Available in size S, M, L, and XL,” and, “Order by Dec. 21 for guaranteed Christmas delivery!” and “Choose from honey lavender, meadow sage, pumpkin orange, or heathered denim,” and “Now with leak guard technology!”
“What the hell is that thing?” said Roo.
“Roo!” Rosie and Penn said together, though it was not an unreasonable question.
Claude propped his cutout up against the kitchen wall and stood on his tiptoes to peer around the balloon into its mouth, and it dawned on Penn like sudden sun: Prince Grumwald peering into the armor outside his bedroom to release infinite story, words without end, the ceaseless narrative of catalog shopping. Tears came to his eyes immediately. It was the most perfect Halloween costume he had ever seen.
“That’s gay,” said Roo.
“Roo!”
“It’s creepy,” Rigel and Orion said together.
“It’s Halloween.” Claude shrugged.
“That’s true,” they agreed.
“How will you hold that thing and your candy?” Roo asked.
Claude grinned, produced a hollow plastic pumpkin also covered in aluminum foil, and hung it from a hook taped to the back of the knight’s right hand.
“No one will know who you’re supposed to be,” Ben warned.
“No one ever does,” said Claude.
There was a party at school in the morning, then a parade through the neighborhood so all the parents and grandparents could stand along the streets and shiver and take pictures, then a dance, the elementary-school version of which was that everyone wiggled around on the blacktop drinking hot cider and eating bat brownies and pumpkin bars and doing the Monster Mash. How that song was still in circulation, Penn could not fathom. Roo and Ben had their own Halloween dance, the alarmingly grown-up kind, at the middle school, which suddenly seemed impossibly far away. Penn had deliberated what sort of fatherly advice might be most appropriate and useful for an almost teenage dance and finally decided that the greatest assistance he could give them was not making a big deal about it. Still, he was glad he didn’t have to watch. Instead, he stood and chitchatted with the other elementary school parents and watched his little ones. Rigel and Orion, stuffed together into an XXL T-shirt, looped ear to ear by a custom-knit extra-wide orange-and-black headband, were fighting about whether both of them or neither of them wanted more cider. Claude was off by himself under the basketball hoops, slow dancing with his tinfoil knight, the catalog text balloon bouncing lightly against the top of his head.
“You still here?” said a voice by Penn’s shoulder. Dwight Harmon. The principal.
“Afraid so.”
“Rosie at work?”
“Halloween. Big day for emergency rooms.”
“I can imagine,” the principal said. “How are the boys?”
“Which ones?”
“Roo and Ben. How’s middle school?”
“So far…” Penn trailed off. He’d meant to add “so good,” but he wasn’t sure. He and Dwight went back a long way—they were on their fifth boy together after all—and Penn knew better than to bullshit the principal.
“Big dance today?”
Penn nodded.
“You got out of chaperoning?”
“I had to be here, didn’t I?” said Penn.
Dwight grinned. “That why you keep having kids? So you never have to go to the middle school dance? Lucky bastard.”
“You too.” Penn smiled. The superintendent’s office had wanted to promote Dwight to middle school principal, but he liked where he was.
“Speaking of dancing, isn’t he sweet?” The principal n
odded toward Claude and his knight errant. “Your youngest grooving with his robot.”
“First love,” said Penn. “Breaks your heart. Every time.”
“What’s he dressed up as? An engineer? An inventor?”
“Honestly?” said Penn. “He’s not dressed up as anything.” That crisp fall afternoon—not too cold, still bright, the air sweet with cookies and cider and leaves about to die—was very nearly the last time that was true.
“Is he doing okay?” said the principal. “Is he happy?”
Penn’s first concern. He tore his eyes from Claude to look over at the principal. “I think so?”
“I’m not so sure,” Dwight said gently.
“Is he … acting out? Falling behind?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. He’s smart. He’s bright. He’s well behaved. He’s a good little student.”
“But?”
“But for a five-year-old, he’s awfully quiet.”
“Sensitive?”
“Yeah, maybe. But he doesn’t seem to have many friends.”
“Shy?”
“Yeah, maybe. But his pictures give us pause. He does not draw himself as we would expect from such a bright child.”
“Lacks artistic talent?”
“Yeah, maybe, but he’s just fashioned a larger-than-life robot out of cardboard, tinfoil, and a balloon.”
“It’s a knight,” said Penn. “And I love it, but I don’t think it bespeaks artistic ability. Maybe the kid just can’t draw.”
“Maybe,” said the principal, “but I’d bet not.”
This Is How It Always Is Page 7
