This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  But the low lighting was too tempting to turn down. The low lighting plus Ben’s point that nothing—not a guy in a dress, not a girl with a penis, not a shorn, world-traveling, jungle-dwelling weirdo—was more awkward than a fifth-grade Valentine’s dance. Especially one where everyone (not just the guy in the dress, the girl with the penis, or the shorn, world-traveling, jungle-dwelling weirdo) had been made to dress up. At first she wasn’t compelled by his argument that the entire evening was sure to be uncomfortable, embarrassing, humiliating, and tense. Who would be compelled by that? Then she saw his point: her reentry was going to be uncomfortable, embarrassing, humiliating, and tense anyway; the question was only if she wanted to be the only one.

  Aggie was apparently not talking to her. Poppy had tapped on her window her first night home, and every night since, but Aggie’s curtains had not so much as quivered. Now that they knew to though, Natalie and Kim said all the things they hadn’t in the cafeteria that terrible day those terrible months before. They knew who she really was. They saw her and loved her anyway, loved her more even. They had stuff that was weird about them too. They sometimes didn’t know who they were either. They did not care what was under her pants or her skirt, whichever it was. They told each other everything. Even the one thing.

  She huddled in a tight knot against a wall with the two of them. Everyone was huddled in a tight knot against a wall—it was hard to imagine there’d be very much dancing—but at least she had her own knot. The gym overheads were not just low but off. Poppy supposed they had only one setting: basketball blazing. But there was some kind of spastic bulb-and-mirror apparatus strung from the ceiling so that dim flashes lit here and there unpredictably as bats, illuminating a pack of students like lightning then plunging them back to blessed darkness. Poppy occasionally made out faces she knew, their eyes often already staring at her when they flared, but much more often, her sleepy recognition lit but not her memory. I know that kid from … somewhere, as if she’d been gone years, not months, as if she’d become an old woman while everyone else froze in place like people in photographs, as if she’d become an adult, or at least less like a child, while everyone around her was just a fifth-grader allowed to wear eye shadow for the night.

  Kids broke from their knots and wandered by hers occasionally. “Hey, Poppy.” Neither nasty nor apologetic, cruel nor welcoming. Not even curious or appalled. “Hey,” she said back, careful in case it was a trick, their “Hey, Poppy” a prelude to taunting or worse.

  Then she saw Jake Irving. She saw him because he was walking right toward her. He got up from where he was slouched against the opposite wall and walked right across the gym and right up to her. Everyone saw. Every single eye in the gym, every single eye in the school, maybe every single eye in the world was on him, but he either did not notice or did not care or did a really good job of pretending not to care.

  “Hey, Poppy.”

  “Hey.”

  “You’re back?”

  Was she supposed to answer that? Obviously she was back. If she weren’t back, how could he ask if she were back? “Yeah.”

  “I heard you went to Taiwan.”

  “Thailand.”

  “Oh. Did you get my text?”

  The one he sent a million years ago? The one he sent before time had stopped for him and sped for her? The one she deleted practically without reading? “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  The questions were weird, but at least they gave her something to say—

  “Sorry again,” Jake added.

  —whereas she had no idea what she was supposed to say to him now. It’s okay? It wasn’t okay. I understand you think I’m a disgusting freak, and you’re probably right, but my parents are making me go to school anyway, so please be nice to me? That was true, but she wasn’t going to say it. If only he would go back to the inane questions, at least she would know what to say.

  “So. Wanna dance?”

  She had no idea what to say.

  She looked at the completely empty middle of the gym where nobody—nobody—was dancing. The music was so loud she could feel it through her shoes, but no one was so much as wiggling to it. He looked up from his toes for the first time all night (month, year, lifetime, eon) to follow her gaze to the uninhabited, masquerading-as-a-dance-floor basketball court. He grinned—like the Jake Irving she’d sat next to in third grade who brought his grandma in for show-and-tell—and said, “We’ll be the best ones out there.”

  How could she say no to that?

  The song that was playing as Poppy followed Jake Irving onto the dance floor started to end, and she closed her eyes and willed Mr. Menendez not to play a slow song. She was a woman of the world now and saw that this was exactly the sort of move adults liked to make. Here were two lonesome souls, braving a wilderness together—what could be cuter than to put on some sappy slow song and do a little experiment in sociological torture? Don’t. You. Dare, her brain told Mr. Menendez’s brain at the telepathic volume of a howler monkey. And she was in luck, not because Mr. Menendez did not indeed think it would be lovely to put on a slow song for this fine young couple, but because his kid had preprogrammed the playlist, and the principal had no idea how to do anything with his phone but make phone calls.

  So she regular-danced with Jake Irving. It was hard because everyone in the entire world was watching them, but it wasn’t that hard otherwise. You moved your feet one way and your hips the other and kept your arms mostly at your sides and your eyes mostly on the floor.

  Jake said, “So.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How was Thailand?”

  “Kind of amazing,” said Poppy. “I got to teach little kids.”

  “Really? What?”

  “English.”

  Jake looked impressed. “I mean, I speak English, but I wouldn’t know how to teach it.”

  “You figure it out.”

  “I guess. I bet you were a good teacher.”

  “I guess. What makes you say that?”

  Jake shrugged and looked back to his toes. “You’re nice. You’re smart. I remember when you helped me with that report on dolphins in second grade.”

  “You’re nice and smart too.” Poppy said it mostly only because she didn’t know what else to say, and when someone says something nice to you, you’re supposed to say something nice back.

  “I’m smart”—Jake frowned at his toes—“but not very nice.”

  She remembered in fourth grade when he let Owen Gregg win the fifty-yard dash at Field Day because Owen’s parents were getting a divorce. She remembered in third when Aggie dropped her brownie at the Halloween party, and Jake just handed her his without even waiting to see if there were any extras. “You’re nice,” Poppy told her own toes.

  “Not to you.”

  She shrugged. “Not once. But other times.”

  “I’m really sorry, Poppy. I really, really am.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  She made herself look up at him. “You asked me to dance.”

  Then a slow song came on. He looked up at her too. “Wanna get some juice?”

  * * *

  Rosie and Penn had replied to the email asking for volunteer dance chaperones at the speed of sound. Then they spent forty-eight hours vowing to their youngest child that they would not talk to her, look at her, take pictures of her, intimate knowledge of her, stand near her, offer her food or beverage, or address her in any way. Should the building catch on fire, they would not approach her but would allow her to find her own emergency exit and then seek one—a different one—on their own.

  They had not, however, promised not to dance. In fairness, this was because Poppy, in her wildest nightmare scenario, had not conceived that she would dance herself and certainly had never considered the horrifying possibility that her parents might. But that’s just because she was still a little jet-lagged. Presented with a cheesy
slow song in an elementary school gym decorated for Valentine’s Day, her parents were obviously going to dance to it.

  As she took her husband in her arms, Rosie also took a moment to savor the smell of him, the feel of his hand in her hand, the way in which he was hers, for sure and forever. She remembered the high school years when she didn’t have a boyfriend and the college years when she had one but he was mean to her and the first years of med school when she was sure she’d never be in love again, and she remembered the feel of the wall on her back at the middle school dances when her friends got asked and she didn’t and the boy she liked chose someone else, and she felt how it was all worth it if it earned her, if it won her, if it resulted, karmically, narratively, miraculously, in Penn at last, Penn forever, Penn who was always and only and always hers, certain as sky.

  As he took his wife in his arms, Penn also took a moment to remind himself he was in the presence of ten-year-olds. Don’t touch her ass, don’t touch her ass, don’t touch her ass.

  “Thank you for coming home,” he whispered into her hair.

  “I’m so proud of you, Penn.” She drew back from his shoulder to meet his eyes. “Author-Husband. I never doubted this day, not since the first time you took me to bed.”

  “I am very persuasive in bed.”

  “But your getting published is not why I came home.”

  “I know.”

  “Was there ever any doubt in your mind?”

  “Never. But that doesn’t mean I am not grateful.”

  “After all these years,” she said, “what made you finally write it down?”

  “It wasn’t finally.” He pulled her closer. “But it was time.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve always been living a fairy tale, Rosie. From the moment we met. From the moments before we met. We have this perfect love story. We have this love story that feels like a fairy tale and must be because how else to explain something so magical? But the problem with fairy tales is that they end, and quickly too. The lead-up is everything. Then you get transformation, love, and happily-ever-after all in one breath. That story’s nice, but it’s not big enough to hold us. There’s no room for the hard parts. There’s no room for the transformations and the loves that come next and next and next. In a story, nothing is unalterable, but nothing is alterable either. After the magic, there’s no more change.

  “That’s no way to live, but I was trying to anyway. Make sure Poppy stays a little girl. Make sure Poppy stays a secret. Change her so she’ll never change. Metamorphosis to ward off transmutation. It makes no sense; that’s what I realized when you went away. So instead I tried the opposite: write it down, carve it in stone. Or, if you like, paper’s just as permanent once you send it out into the world. It seems like it closes the story, settles on one ending eliminating infinite possibilities, fixes it in place, in voice, but no, it does the opposite. You write it down so others can read it, and then it can grow. You nail it to a moment so it can pass through time. A book is just a foundation. Like us. You write it down to build upon. Our love, our magic fairy-tale love, is what supports the rest of it. It doesn’t mean the kids can’t grow—of course it doesn’t—but it lays down a place for them to do it from. That’s what story’s for.”

  “That’s very pretty, Author-Husband.”

  “Thank you … uh … Doctor-Wife.”

  “But it doesn’t answer the question.”

  “What question?”

  “All the questions,” said Rosie. “Closet or rooftop? Blockers or puberty? Surgery or hormones? Both or neither? Girl or boy or in between? Today or tomorrow? Next month or next year? Fifth-grade meanies or homeschooling in her turret by the sea? DN or fairy tale?”

  “It’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “It doesn’t answer the question. But it opens possibilities, and that’s even better, possibilities we never saw before, possibilities no one ever saw before. And it promises that when the time comes to decide, we’ve built someplace solid as ramparts from which to do it.”

  Rosie was quiet for a while. Then she buried her face in Penn’s shoulder again so Poppy wouldn’t see her jubilation. “Can you believe she danced?”

  “Of course I can.” Penn held her closer still. “Because you know what’s even better than happy endings?”

  “What?”

  “Happy middles.”

  “You think?”

  “All the happy with none of the finality. All the happy with room enough to grow. What could be better than that?”

  “For a while,” said Rosie.

  “A while’s a long time,” said Penn.

  * * *

  Poppy could not actually stand there and watch her parents dance, so she finished her juice and told Jake she’d be right back. She remembered the bathroom of her own at the fish spa in Chiang Mai, the nurse’s bathroom they’d made her use in Wisconsin, all the stalls she’d changed in over the years when she took swim lessons or went to the beach with PANK or it was pool day at summer camp. Sometimes being her was difficult and complicated. Sometimes only the bathroom was.

  When she emerged from the stall, Aggie was leaning against the sinks, her hands tucked into her armpits and squeezed into fists. Poppy’s stomach did the same. She was so happy to see her, she thought she might start crying. She was so nervous to see her, she thought she might start crying. There was some chance she was also angry, but Aggie was her best friend in the entire universe so probably not. There was some chance that traveling halfway around the world to work with poor, often sick, sometimes orphaned children had given her a mature perspective on humanity that was going to help her handle this situation. But Aggie was her best friend in the entire universe. So probably not.

  “Hi,” said Aggie.

  “Hi.” Poppy remembered the first time Aggie had ever tapped on her window, the night they met, the night they became rival neighbor princesses. That conversation had started the same way—“Hi,” “Hi”—shy but full of promise, a million good things to come. Poppy had to admit that “Hi,” “Hi” wasn’t that uncommon a way to start a conversation and therefore probably didn’t reveal some fated belonging, but for one grace-filled moment, it felt like that anyway.

  But then the spell was broken because Aggie’s mouth said, “How was Thailand?” but Aggie’s tone said, I could not even care less about anything you have to say ever again. Aggie had followed her in here though, so maybe she meant something else altogether.

  “Hot. Crazy. Kind of amazing. How was here?”

  “Sucky. Stupid. Totally boring.” Then, with a sneer, “Did you make a new best friend?”

  “No.” Poppy thought of the friends she made in Thailand—her little students who showed her all about the Buddha and how school changes your life and how to tell stories and how to love your family, K who showed her how to be in between and live in the middle. “Did you?”

  Aggie snorted in answer to this question. “Are you even allowed to be here?”

  “School?”

  “The girls’ bathroom.”

  Oh. “I guess,” Poppy said to her toes. “My parents told Mr. Menendez at the beginning of first grade. He said I was allowed.”

  “You told Mr. Menendez but not me?”

  “I didn’t,” Poppy said lamely. “My parents did.”

  “Maybe you aren’t allowed anymore.”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Everything’s changed,” Aggie said but not mean. Sad.

  “Why?” Not just sad. Heartbroken.

  “We can’t be friends anymore.” Was that why everything had changed? Or how?

  “Why not?”

  “How can we?” Aggie was almost yelling. “What are we going to do together? We can’t have sleepovers anymore. We can’t talk about all the things we talk about anymore. We can’t be rival princesses. We can’t do plays.”

  “Because you don’t like me anymore?”

  “Because I don’t know you anymore.”


  “I’m the same,” Poppy cried. “I’m exactly the same as ever. We can still have plays and princesses. We can still have sleepovers.”

  “I don’t even…” Aggie’s face looked like she was trying to do long division in her head. “Poppy, if I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Are you a boy or a girl?” said Aggie.

  “No.” Poppy made herself look up at her best friend in the entire universe. She thought of the fairy tale she’d told her students in Thailand, how much easier this would be if she had magic and a wand. “I’m not.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Aggie made a face. Then she softened it. Then she asked, “What are you then?”

  “I don’t know. Something else instead.”

  “What else is there?” And for the first time all night, Aggie sounded like the question she was asking was actually the question she was asking.

  “I’m all of the above.” Poppy couldn’t help smiling, which was kind of like magic because then Aggie couldn’t help smiling back. “And I’m also more to come.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s complicated.” Now that Aggie had smiled at her, she felt almost giddy. She realized she was dying to talk to her about all this. “I guess I’m complicated. I’m hard to explain. I’m kind of a weirdo.”

  “You’re not the weirdo,” Aggie said. “I’m the weirdo.”

  “True,” Poppy admitted. “Very true. Then I guess we’re both weird. Maybe that’s why we like each other so much.”

  “We’re too old for princesses anyway.” Aggie was full-on grinning now. “We can be rival neighbor weirdos from now on.”

  * * *

  Everyone was still up when they got home.

  “Did Mom and Dad dance?” Ben’s face was pure commiseration.

  “Yup.”

  “Eww.” A chorus.