This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  “Slow dance?” said Rigel.

  “Yup.”

  “Eww.”

  “Did he touch her ass?” said Roo.

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo.” Penn was looking for ice cream.

  “Eww, Roo, gross,” said Orion.

  “But he did, right?”

  Poppy squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of something else.

  “Your mother has a great ass,” Penn conceded from the freezer.

  The ewws rose to a cacophony. Which was just where he liked them. He found ice cream as well as fudge to heat and cherries pinked by some brine that could probably provide fuel in the event of an apocalypse.

  “What did you guys do all night?” Rosie started slicing bananas. No reason not to impart at least a few vitamins.

  “Kept our hands to ourselves.” Ben got out bowls and spoons.

  “Worse luck for you,” said his father.

  “If Dad touching Mom’s ass is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you at your first school dance, you’re doing pretty good,” Roo congratulated his sister. “Ben went to the eighth-grade Halloween dance as a robot with those fake arms coming out of the front of his robot body, and when he asked Cayenne to dance, they totally groped her. First time he got to second base, and he missed it because they weren’t his real hands.”

  “What about the time Alexie Gawersky asked you to retie her sash-thingy at the Spring Fling?” Ben could play this game all night and never run out of embarrassing Roo stories. “You tied it to the balloon rainbow as a joke, and she pulled over the entire thing plus the sound system when Andy Kennedy asked her to dance.”

  “For our eighth-grade Christmas concert”—Orion didn’t even look up from the sprinkles he was sprinkling—“everyone had to wear a white top and black pants, but Rigel showed up in this yellow shirt.”

  “What does this story have to do with school dances?” Rigel took off his socks and threw them at Orion’s sundae.

  “It has to do with a time you embarrassed yourself.”

  “That shirt was off-white.”

  “It was the color of a banana.”

  “It was beige.”

  “So Rigel had to borrow a shirt, but the only person who had an extra was Mandy O’Lackey, and it was all gathered and padded and girly at the front so it looked like Rigel had boobs.”

  “Where’d she get it?” said Poppy.

  “And his solo in ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ was, ‘Two turtledoves,’ and he had to sing it twelve times, and every time he sang it, everyone cracked up.”

  “Eleven times,” said Ben.

  “Duh. It’s the twelve days of Christmas,” said Orion.

  “Duh. The first day she gets a partridge in a pear tree and nothing else.”

  “How do you know it’s a she?” said Poppy.

  “Guys don’t want a partridge in a pear tree for Christmas,” said Roo.

  “No one wants a partridge in a pear tree for Christmas,” said Poppy.

  “That’s where these gifts fall apart for you?” said Ben. “You think this person—regardless of gender—had ten lords a-leaping on his or her wish list?”

  Rosie smiled at Penn. She felt that truly she could be perfectly content sitting at her kitchen table eating ice cream with her family and listening to this conversation go on forever. These kids, her multitudes, they could grow up. They could move Away. They could—they would—become new, become changed, become actual adult people in progress, people she wouldn’t recognize, people she could not imagine. People remade. They would undergo miracles. They would transform. They would make magic. But they were her story, hers and Penn’s, so however wide they wandered, they would always be right here.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said to her husband while their progeny debated the relative merits of maids a-milking versus swans a-swimming.

  “What?”

  “It’s your happy ending.”

  “I told you.”

  “You did.”

  “But this isn’t it.”

  “It’s not?” She smiled at him. She couldn’t stop smiling at him.

  “Not even close.” He couldn’t stop smiling back.

  Author’s Note

  The question writers of fiction get asked most often, ironically, is this: “Is it true?”

  I hate to make you wait, so let’s get this out of the way. Yes, it’s true. Also, no, I made it all up.

  Sorry, did that not answer the question?

  It’s true that my child used to be a little boy and is now a little girl. But this isn’t her story. I can’t tell her story; I can only tell my own story and those of the people I make up. I didn’t make my kid up. She’s a real person, so she’s the only one who can tell her story. This story is fiction, pretend. It’s not about my kid. It’s not about her experiences. It’s not even about my experiences. Writing a novel is like making soup. The base is a broth we make up wholesale—for instance, I have one child, not five, and am not only not a doctor but, in fact, am made woozy by paper cuts. Then, to that entirely made-up broth, we add a sprinkling of research, some chunks of childhood memories, a handful of sautéed morsels overheard at the playground, a few diced bits we weren’t planning on but turned out to need for depth of flavor, and some finely chopped pieces of our own lives. Simmer until all the disparate parts mellow and blend but still enhance and augment one another. This is how you cook a novel. Some made up, some real life, all true.

  Sometimes people ask that same question like this: “What inspired this book?” by which they mean, “Is this really your own life with the names changed, or what on earth gave you this idea?” which in this case might be an easier question to answer.

  The novelist in me was inspired in the first place by the debate about treating trans kids with puberty blockers, by the way loving, open-minded, well-intentioned people could reasonably come down on what seem to be opposing sides of this issue. Hormone suppressors are miracles for kids who simply cannot live in the body into which they were born. I would not suggest otherwise. Trans and gender nonconforming kids and adults suffer a suicide-attempt rate of more than 40 percent. Drugs which avert that qualify as miraculous indeed. But that doesn’t make them the only miracle on offer. Wider ranges of normal make the world a better place for everyone. To me, both those positions seem self-evidently true. Other people frame them as opposites. That’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to write a book.

  The novelist in me was inspired by the metaphor too, how no matter the issue, parenting always involves this balance between what you know, what you guess, what you fear, and what you imagine. You’re never certain, even (maybe especially) about the big deals, the huge, important ones with all the ramifications and repercussions. But alas, no one can make these decisions, or deal with their consequences, but you. High stakes plus unknowability equals great writing fodder.

  The novelist in me is inspired by how much raising children is like writing books: You don’t know where they’re going until they get there. You may think you do, but you’re probably wrong. Corralling and forcing them against their will to go where you first imagined they would isn’t going to work for anyone involved. Never mind you’re the one writing and raising them, they are headed in their own direction, independent of you. And scary though that is, it’s also how it should be.

  So at the beginning of this project, the novelist in me felt pretty great. But the mama in me was panicked. The mama in me was watching her little boy transform into her little girl before her very eyes. In some ways, that wasn’t any weirder or scarier or more unbelievable than watching kids grow up ever is. In other ways, it was a little weirder and scarier and unbelievable-er. I’d written many, many words before I figured out exactly what it was that was so much scarier about this transformation than any of her other ones. The answer had nothing to do with her. It had to do with everybody else.

  I am so proud of my kid, but I am terrified about how others will respond to her—t
oday and next year and down the very windy road ahead. I am every day amazed by how bright and wise and strong and sure she is but petrified by the fear and ignorance she’s likely to encounter along her way. I fret about her every moment she’s out of my sight (and many of the ones when she’s in it), so in some ways, all this does is make a little longer an already very long list of worries. One of the differences between your novel and your life, at least as regards parenting, is you want the former to be perilous, unpredictable, full of near misses and heartbreak and disasters narrowly averted. The latter? The latter you want to be as plot-free as possible.

  So here’s what’s true: This book is fiction. My child is neither Poppy nor Claude. I am not Rosie. Do we share some things in common with them? Yes. But this book is an act of imagination, an exercise in wish fulfillment, because that is the other thing novelists do. We imagine the world we hope for and endeavor, with the greatest power we have, to bring that world into being. I wish for my child, for all our children, a world where they can be who they are and become their most loved, blessed, appreciated selves. I’ve rewritten that sentence a dozen times, and it never gets less cheesy, I suppose because that’s the answer to the question. That’s what’s true. For my child, for all our children, I want more options, more paths through the woods, wider ranges of normal, and unconditional love. Who doesn’t want that?

  I know this book will be controversial, but honestly? I keep forgetting why.

  Acknowledgments

  It is my blessing, my joy, and my honor to call Molly Friedrich and Amy Einhorn mine. Thank you, thank you to you both from the top, middle, and bottom of my heart.

  Thank you too to Lucy Carson, Alix Kaye, Kent Wolf, and Nichole LeFebvre; to Bob Miller, Caroline Bleeke, Marlena Bittner, Amelia Possanza, Liz Keenan, Ben Tomek, Molly Fonseca, Karen Horton, Emily Mahon, Steven Seighman, Kerry Nordling, Marta Fleming, David Lott, Lisa Davis, Rachelle Mandik, Stacy Shirk, Martin Quinn, and all the amazing people at Flatiron Books I am only just getting to know and am thrilled to be working with; to Marion Donaldson, Vicky Palmer, Caitlin Raynor, Hannah Wann, and everyone at Headline Books, and to all the wonderful teams working on editions around the world; to Jennie Shortridge, Katherine Malmo, Julianna Baggott, Karen Hogue, Preecha “Ping” Jokdee, Songsri “Ling” Jiwarattanawong, Barbara Catlin, Clare Meeker, Kevin O’Brien, Andrea Dunlop, Jeff Umbro, Garth Stein, Maria Semple, Elizabeth George, Ruth Ozeki, Marion Donaldson, Hedgebrook, and extra piles of thanks to Carol Cassella, novelist and physician extraordinaire, who is the only reason I am at all able to write about doctors.

  Thank you to my parents, Sue and Dave Frankel, who have so totally supported this, me, and mine always. Thank you to Dani who is, in so many ways, an inspiration: I am so proud of you. Thank you (the underest of understatements) to Paul (the greatest of humans) for more wonderful things than I can name (or even have names for).

  * * *

  Recommend

  This Is How It Always Is

  for your next book club!

  Reading Group Guide available at www.readinggroupgold.com

  * * *

  ALSO BY LAURIE FRANKEL

  Goodbye for Now

  The Atlas of Love

  About the Author

  Laurie Frankel is the author of two previous novels, The Atlas of Love and Goodbye for Now. She lives in Seattle with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Part I

  Once Upon a Time, Claude Was Born

  One Date

  Residency

  Bedtime Story

  Things They Told Doctors

  Losers

  Air Currents and Other Winds

  Halloween

  Maybe

  Invention

  Naming Rights

  Push

  Shove

  Mapping

  Part II

  One Thing

  Rival Neighbor Princess

  Everyone Who?

  Strategically Naked

  Stalls

  Fifty-Fifty

  Annus Mirabilis

  Preventative Madness

  Transformation

  Red Roo Rising

  Fire

  Hedge Enemies

  Who Knows?

  Parenting in the Dark

  I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

  Vagina Shopping

  Part III

  Exit Rows

  Away

  Aid Ambiguous

  Novice

  Bonesetters

  Oral Tradition

  Under Pants

  The Color of Monday

  An Ending

  Part IV

  Ever

  After

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Laurie Frankel

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS. Copyright © 2017 by Laurie Frankel. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.flatironbooks.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-08855-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-11852-3 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781250118523

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: January 2017