This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  Rosie and Penn were angry he was fighting. They were angry the school hadn’t noticed he was fighting until there was a gushing head wound. They were angry he’d implicated all his brothers in his cover-up. They were angry that when they’d asked about the various scratches and bruises and red marks, he’d made up stories about gym class or joining fencing club or wrestling with Ben (this last may not have been a lie).

  Even though he’d gone to lengths to hide it, Roo was angry anyway that they hadn’t noticed he’d been getting his ass kicked. He was angry they hadn’t noticed that sometimes he was the one doing the ass kicking. But mostly, he was angry they didn’t care what he was fighting for.

  Angry all around, they went straight to West Hill Family Medical Center. Roo wanted his own doctor. Roo did not want to be treated by his mother. But Rosie was more confident in her own ability to stitch up her son’s forehead than her son’s GP or whomever happened to be staffing whatever emergency room. And though Penn worried that she was so upset her hands were shaking, that was only so until she had Roo on the table in the treatment room. Then her hands steadied and her eyes focused, and she laid a line of stitches at which even Howie, when he came to check on all of them, whistled in appreciation.

  In some ways, it did not seem fair to have this conversation while she had both Roo’s bleeding head and a needle in her hands. In some, it was the only way.

  “Hold still.”

  “Mom, wait, I—”

  “I said hold still. I know you have trouble with authority Roo, but even you must see this is a time to listen to your mother.”

  “I don’t have trouble with authority.”

  “Have you been fighting?”

  Roo paused to consider whether it was too late to convincingly lie about this and concluded it probably was. “Obviously.”

  “I don’t mean today.” Rosie irrigated her eldest son’s gaping head wound. “I mean was today the first time?” She looked at his eyes. “And don’t lie.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been getting in fights. Some.”

  “For how long?” She sterilized Roo’s head.

  “I dunno. A few weeks?” The question mark at the end was for whether he was going to get away with the timeline.

  “A few … weeks?” Penn shrieked, and Roo was glad he lied.

  The first time had been the second week of school—the year before. Derek McGuinness was an asshat. Derek McGuinness called him—and a couple dozen other kids—gay and faggot and fucking fairy. Derek McGuinness called him these things precisely because he thought Roo wouldn’t fight back. It was the fact of Roo’s unlikeliness to fight back that made him those things and that made it safe for Derek McGuinness to call him them. Which meant kicking his ass killed two birds with one stone. How to explain to his parents that there were some things worth defending, some things worth standing up for?

  “Why?” said Rosie.

  “Why what?”

  “Why were you fighting?”

  “You don’t understand, Mom. It’s different for guys.”

  “Please.” She rolled her eyes.

  “You have to be a man.”

  “You’re seventeen.”

  “You can’t be, like, a wuss.”

  “Roo, in this family of all families, you’d think you’d have a better handle on the absurdity of gender stereotyping.” Her needle went in and out, in and out at the slow, steady pace of a heartbeat much calmer than anyone’s in the room. “Remember when your father walked away from Nick Calcutti? That was the bravest, manliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah.” Roo shrugged, winced. “But Nick Calcutti had a gun. Derek McGuinness isn’t even fast.”

  “Don’t move. Who started it?”

  Roo was still. He couldn’t quite answer that question. He had thrown the first punch, it was true. But it was more complicated than that.

  “Roo.” His mother moved her gaze from his forehead to his eyes.

  “He begged me to do it, Mom.”

  “He’s hitting kids,” she said to Penn, as if Penn weren’t right there and hadn’t heard himself, as if Roo weren’t lying beneath her busy hands. “He’s seeking out and beating people up now.”

  “He called me … something bad.”

  “What?” said Penn. “What could he possibly have called you that warranted violence?”

  “He said. He said I was gay.” Roo went with the serenest epithet. He didn’t want to say “fucking fairy” to his mother while she had a needle in his forehead, even if it was a quote.

  She went white above his eyes. “That’s why you beat him? That’s the horrible, tragic insult you simply could not abide? Gay?”

  Roo’s head and mouth held still. His eyes nodded.

  “Roo,” his father breathed, “that’s not even…”

  “True?” said Roo. “I know it’s not true.”

  “Mean,” Penn finished. “It’s not even an insult. All you have to say is, ‘None of your business,’ or ‘No, I’m not actually,’ or ‘What’s it to you?’”

  And suddenly Roo was laughing. He tried to look at his parents to see if they were serious, but his mother was clenching his jaw almost as tightly as her own.

  “You think I beat him up because I’m homophobic.” Not a question. An accusation.

  “Isn’t that what you’re telling us?”

  “No. I beat him up because he’s homophobic. He’s out there calling anyone he doesn’t like faggot and pussy, like being gay is the worst thing he can think of. Some kids actually are gay. Or they have gay parents. How do you think they feel? I beat him up so he’d stop being an asshole.”

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo.” Penn was trying—and failing—to keep relief out of his voice.

  “But your history project.” Rosie finished her stitches, tying off the thread but not the issue.

  “What history project?”

  “The one last year. The one you failed.”

  “That was so long ago, Mom.”

  “It was antigay.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “It was about the problems with letting LGBT soldiers serve openly.”

  “Yeah. Problems the military should address. Responsibilities they’re, you know, shirting.”

  “Shirting?” said Penn.

  “Redshirting. Benching until they’re ready to deal with them.”

  “Shirking, I think,” said Penn.

  “But that stupid voiceover.” Rosie mimicked Roo mimicking a movie trailer: “The navy is navy. Gay soldiers don’t belong.”

  “Exactly,” said Roo. “The navy should be rainbow-colored, but it’s totally not. Gays should feel like they belong, but they don’t. The army can’t just change the rules and think their job is done, problem solved. That’s what the video showed. That’s why there’s violence and abuse. They have to change the rules, but then they also have to help everyone make them work.”

  Penn was so relieved, he was light-headed. Roo wasn’t a bigot. Roo had a smart, nuanced, important point. Absent the gushing head wound, it was good news all around.

  “Roo!”

  “What?” Why was she still mad?

  “Roo, that project was terrible,” Rosie shrilled. “We watched it. Mrs. Birkus watched it. We all concluded you were some kind of homophobic zealot. It would be one thing if you had nothing to say. But you have a message to spread, an important one, one you are uniquely positioned to impart in an environment where it’s crucial that you do so, and it’s buried under all this stupidity—fighting and cursing and shit videos. If for no other reason—and there are many, many other reasons—you must do better work.”

  “You’re going to lecture me about speaking out about gay rights?” said Roo. They were back to this again. “You’re the one who’s ashamed Poppy’s trans. We all think it’s fine. No one else cares.”

  “We all?” said Penn.

  “Ashamed?” said Rosie.

  “All of us,” said Roo. “Ben, Rigel, Orion, and me all think—
”

  “And I,” said Penn.

  “Ashamed?” said Rosie.

  “You seem ashamed of her.” Roo pressed tentatively at the bandage Rosie had affixed atop the stitches. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so afraid to tell people. I’m not homophobic. I’m not antitrans. Are you though?”

  “We’re not ashamed.” Penn stood so his supine son could see his face. “We’re proud as hell of her. All things being equal, we’d shout it from the rooftops. But all things are not equal. First and foremost, we have to protect her. There are lots of Derek McGuinnesses in the world. You can’t beat up all of them.”

  “Any of them,” Rosie corrected. “You can’t beat up any of them. What about college?”

  “What about it?”

  “How will you get into college with suspensions on your record and Fs in history?”

  “I’m not the smart one,” said Roo. “Ben’s the smart one.”

  “Roosevelt Walsh-Adams. You are smart. And you have important things to say. And for damn sure you need help learning how to say them clearly and appropriately. You need to learn something about responsible decision making, cause and effect.”

  “Why?” said Roo.

  “You are bleeding from your head,” said his father.

  “You need to go to college,” said Rosie. “So you also need to knock this shit off.”

  Maybe it was the strain of the day, the sympathetic blood loss that came from watching it seep out of your child. Rosie felt punished because he was punished. Penn felt relief that he wasn’t their worst nightmare, hateful and intolerant and prejudiced. Rosie was alarmed that he was in pain, alarmed that he had inflicted it too. Penn was worried Poppy somehow felt like Roo did, that they were keeping her secret from shame rather than shelter. Maybe it was that they were still angry, still had much to be angry about. Maybe it was the layer-upon-layering of all of the above. Whatever the reason, they missed it again, Roo’s warning, Roo’s wisdom, Roo’s mysterious ability, myopic though he was, to see far down the tracks to what was steaming inexorably ahead.

  Fire

  It was June before anything else broke. When it did, it wasn’t as obvious as a gushing head wound, but it was less easily repaired.

  Ben and Cayenne were at the beach celebrating the end of school, becoming seniors at last. They were rushing the season. Right on the water, Alki was often cold even on an August afternoon. On an early June evening, it was freezing. But that was part of Ben’s plan. If it were cold, they’d have to build a fire, which would be romantic. If it were cold, they’d have to get under a blanket and press their bodies together for warmth.

  Ben had only thought to bring one blanket, so they had to lie in the sand, the quilt tented above them on a piece of driftwood and tucked in at the sides. They had their phones in the way of mood lighting. Ben was anxious that the bonfire not alight the blanket. Cayenne drew circles in the sand with her toes and said, “How much do you love me?”

  Ben stopped thinking about the blanket. “Tons.”

  “Prove it.”

  “How?” He tried to ask this nonchalantly, but it seemed to Ben that knowing this one answer would unlock all the others the universe held.

  “Tell me a secret.”

  “What will that prove?”

  “It’ll prove you trust me. Here: I’ll start. My dad wears tighty-whities. It’s, like, totally gross.”

  The former wasn’t much of a revelation. The latter was self-evident. If this were the kind of secret that would prove his love, Ben imagined it would be easy. “So does mine?” he tried.

  “Eww.” Cayenne seemed pleased with this confession. “What else?”

  “Roo and I wear boxers. Rigel and Orion wear boxer briefs.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Tell me another secret.”

  “It’s your turn,” Ben pointed out.

  “My sister wore diapers to bed until, like, last year.”

  “Aggie?”

  “Do I have another sister?”

  “No but … Poppy never said anything.”

  “Why would she?” said Cayenne. “Anyway, Aggie’s sneaky. When she has sleepovers, she makes a big show of walking around naked, and then she puts on pajamas, and then she sneaks out of bed later to get a pull-up in the bathroom.” Ben let that one sink in until she prompted, “Your turn.”

  “Um. Once, in Wisconsin, before we moved, my parents almost got shot.”

  “Really?”

  No. “Really.”

  “What happened?”

  “Poppy was at a playdate, and the dad pulled a gun so she called my mom, and when my parents showed up, he threatened them.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh.” Ben found it was difficult suddenly to breathe. “Well. I don’t know. He was just mad I guess.”

  “But what did he say? Why was he mad?”

  “He … didn’t say anything.” Was the blanket too tight? Could enough air get in? “He wasn’t mad like angry. He was mad like crazy.”

  Cayenne propped herself up on her elbow in the sand. She shone her phone on his face. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are,” she pronounced. “You have another secret. A good one. I can tell.”

  “I don’t,” Ben said. “I swear.”

  “If you loved me,” Cayenne lay back down in the sand and pulled Ben’s hand onto her stomach underneath her shirt, “you would tell me.”

  “I can’t tell you,” Ben said, “but I do love you.”

  “Aha!” said Cayenne. “I knew it.” They made out for a while in the sand under the blanket. Her stomach was warm and yielding and held much promise for what lay above and below it. Then she said, “Tell me.”

  “Really, I can’t.” Ben tried to catch his breath. “Doesn’t it show you what a good guy I am that I have something I’m not supposed to tell so I’m not telling?”

  “I guess so,” Cayenne admitted, “but then, I don’t really care if you’re a good guy.”

  They made out some more, and every time he put his hand slowly, tentatively higher under her shirt, she’d let it go a little farther. She let him touch the edge of her bra and then put her hand on his to stop him there. Then she guided his hand to its clasp before she hit the pause button. Then she let him finger the top of her skirt. That time, she put her hand on his but moved it down instead of up. “There,” she said, and smiled at him and he smiled back and then, hand still over his, then she said, “I promise, whatever it is, I’ll never ever tell anyone ever no matter what cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Ben was a smart guy, yes, with an off-the-charts IQ and a double-stacked bookcase, but he was still sixteen. And he’d been patient for a very long time. That and he saw something his parents did not, which was that when something was this significant, this consequential, you didn’t keep it from someone you loved, even if that someone was Cayenne Granderson.

  Hedge Enemies

  Fall was good for the DN. Penn found it hard to stay inside and write during Seattle’s sunny days because there just were not enough of them. Though Carmelo had yet to find a rundown lake house to rent, Seattle summers were worth sleeping over her daughter’s garage for, so she still came up every year. In contrast to Phoenix, it was pleasantly warm and sunny every day rather than sole-meltingly hot (she’d lost a pair of flip-flops to the asphalt in a grocery-store parking lot one May and taken it as a sign to come north a month earlier), and she could sit in the backyard with a gin and tonic and smoke and read a book until after ten in the evenings and still have light enough to read by. She came to see her daughter, and she came to see her boys, but mostly, she loved to be with Poppy.

  Penn wondered whether Carmelo was mentally subbing one Poppy for another, her granddaughter now at ten the age of the Poppy she lost, but he didn’t wonder much—Poppy had always been close with Carmelo, even when she was Claude. In the early Poppy years, there’d been a lot of shopping together and manicure dates and trips to the salon, girly indu
lgences they’d been desperately missing (Rosie refusing them both), but now Poppy mostly sat out back barefoot and read books with her grandmother or told stories or listened to hers. Still, never mind the addition of two adult hands, there was the subtraction of school, which, combined with the sunshine, made it hard for Penn to get enough done in the summer. Now Carmelo was back in Phoenix, the kids were back at school, the sun was generally wayward, and Penn promised himself this was the year: this was the year he’d finish the DN, get it done, get it good, get it off. It was time. It was past time. It was time.

  Every day, he wrote. At the homeworking table, Roo and Ben applied to college, and Rigel and Orion worried over their namesakes and labeled star charts, and Penn decided to start part two all over again in the first person and see if that helped, and Poppy said, “Who’s the hedge enemy?”

  “Badgers,” Rigel said promptly.

  “You’re such a Wisconsin kid,” said Ben.

  “Badgers eat hedges. They love hedges.”

  “That’s hedgehogs, you idiot,” said Orion.

  “Hedgehogs don’t eat hedges,” said Ben.

  “Then why are they called hedgehogs?”

  “They eat in hedges—bugs and snails and stuff—and they have a snout. Like a hog.” It sometimes seemed to all of them that Ben knew basically everything.

  “Sweet, are you studying hedges or hedgehogs?” Penn tried to get back to the point.

  “We’re studying what we want to be when we grow up,” said Poppy.

  “You want to be a gardener?” said Roo.

  “You want to be a hedgehog?” said Orion.

  “I said I want to be a baseball announcer, but Jake Irving said I couldn’t because I’m a girl. He was all like, ‘Girls aren’t allowed in baseball because they take forever to get ready and they have too much hair,’ but Mr. Mohan said women could be baseball announcers, it’s just that they usually aren’t, and I said why not, and Mr. Mohan said it was because of the hedge enemy.”

  “Ahh.” Poppy’s vocabulary no longer towered over her age. “Hegemony. Hegemony means when one group has control or authority or dominance over another.”