This Is How It Always Is(14)

“What’s tea length?”

“It means the dress comes down to your ankles. That would make it hard to run around on the playground. Aren’t your friends’ dresses pretty short so they can play?”

“But it’s my only one,” Claude whispered. “I didn’t know it was too formal.”

“And you’ve been wearing this dress all weekend. It’s dirty.”

“No it’s not.” Claude was still sniffling, still looking at the floor.

“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—”