This Is How It Always Is(56)

“Why?” said Rosie. “There’s plenty that’s weird about her.”

“Exactly,” said Poppy. “She’s the weird one. I’m the normal one. That’s the way we like it.”

Late that night, after a movie and a skit and toenail painting and LEGO building and thirty-six rounds of Hangman, Aggie took off every stitch of clothing she had on, wandered around naked looking for something she might wear to bed, and eventually donned, commando, a four-sizes-too-big swimsuit cover-up of Cayenne’s. Poppy took her nightgown out of her bag, balled it up in her arms, and headed toward the bathroom.

“You can just change in here,” Aggie assured her. “I’m not embarrassed.”

“Oh,” said Poppy. “Thanks.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Embarrassed?”

“No. But … Roverella’s watching me.” Roverella was Aggie’s family’s six-pound Chihuahua. Penn called it a hamster. It followed Aggie everywhere.

Aggie giggled. “Roverella is a watchdog. She watches everything. She loves to see people in their nudies, so I guess you better change in the bathroom.”

Poppy went off, relieved and pleased with herself. It was years before it struck Aggie as strange that someone would be embarrassed to change in front of a dog.





Stalls

In fact, for many years, accommodating Poppy boiled down really to the two percent of her life when she wasn’t wearing underpants. Even Claude had always peed sitting down, but everything else in that department involved an El Capitan–esque learning curve. Penn joined a listserv. Penn joined an online support group. Penn followed blogs and Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and Instagram accounts, YouTube channels and podcasts. There he learned the secrets to protecting secrets. He learned where you could buy penis-masking underpants (hell, he learned there were penis-masking underpants) to parade around in during sleepovers with everyone else so you didn’t have to blame the dog. He learned which ballet schools required bare leotards and which allowed wrap skirts overtop. He learned which day camps didn’t have swimming. He learned that he could tell Poppy’s principal, Mr. Menendez, just in case, but still insist that Poppy be allowed to use the girls’ bathroom. He learned that he could tell Mr. Menendez but say no when the man recommended also disclosing to the teachers, resource specialists, substitutes, aides, school nurse, and cafeteria staff. He learned that Poppy was entitled to join girls’ T-ball, girls’ soccer, girls’ tennis, girls’ swim team. If she did join swim team, he learned she was entitled to use the girls’ locker room. The best thing about girls’ bathrooms, so far as Penn could tell, was that stalls were requisite. Maybe lots of girls changed in the middle of the room, but everyone peed in a stall, and if you had to pee anyway, it only made sense you’d change in and out of your suit in there as well. Penn learned the Girl Scouts would have her even if they did know, but he didn’t tell them anyway.

Penn could never get to the bottom of all there was to read about kids like his online—there was no bottom—but unfortunately, he tried anyway. This ate into his writing time. In the beginning, it had seemed Seattle would be great for the DN. There were wonderful bookstores and booksellers, libraries and librarians, writing classes and critique groups by the dozens. Because Rosie worked days instead of nights, he could work when she did instead of sleeping. And the weather in Seattle lent itself to novel writing: moody with low, gray clouds layered thick and full as a down comforter. He wrote lovely dark, wet prose that matched the weather.

But unfortunately, sometimes he wore that dark, wet mood around the house as well because there just were not enough hours in the day. Elementary school didn’t start until nine thirty. High school got out at two. And in between, he also had laundry, also had a house to take care of, also had doctors’ appointments and grocery shopping and his writers’ group and to run Poppy’s cleats to school when she forgot it was a soccer day or Rigel’s permission slip when he forgot it was a field-trip day or Orion’s lunch when he forgot it was a lunch-eating day. Because the other thing that had changed when they moved was Rosie’s job security. UW Hospital knew her well, loved her much, and owed her more. Here, like the rest of them, she was the new kid again. She had to be impressive. She couldn’t take sick days or time off. She had to stay late because she couldn’t go early. Working days meant she wasn’t home during them to help. Penn was glad to pick up the parenting slack. But it did not leave much time to write. Especially when he couldn’t stop researching penis-masking underwear and its conceits.

*

At work, Rosie might have told their secret but did not. There was no reason not to really. It was a small practice, and people who work in a medical office are nothing if not trained at keeping both personal data and body particulars under wraps. Yes, those wraps were made out of waxy, mortifying paper with strings no one could manage to tie, and yes, they gapped over exactly the bits patients wanted covered up. In the ER, you cut people out of their clothes or treated them over top, depending, so maybe it’s just that she wasn’t used to unwrapping patients like packets from the deli. But the gowns weren’t the only thing about West Hill Family Medical Center that required getting used to.

The Monday after she survived Poppy’s seventh birthday, Rosie’s first patient of the day was three-year-old Bristol Wonks. Really it was Mrs. Wonks. Never mind her move to family practice, Rosie stuck by her refusal to call patients’ parents “Mom,” but she was required instead to use “Mrs.” She wondered what kind of mother would be offended that her kid’s pediatrician used her first name—it was like relocating to a nineteenth-century novel—but she settled for what she could live with. In fact, the whole job was like that. There was much that seemed pointless but was easier to consent to than fight, easier to adjust to than starvation owing to unemployment. The Wonks also fell into that category of people where Rosie couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t use the wife’s last name instead. Tradition is one thing, but who wanted to send her kid through life with a name like Bristol Wonks? There were so many things that befell your children you could not control. Why wouldn’t you do something about the one you could?