This Is How It Always Is(62)

“I wasn’t humiliating anyone.” Barely audible. To his belly button.

“Never mind the message”—Rosie triaged the situation and began with the most straightforward, most apparent symptom—“did you imagine you were allowed to use language like that?”

“That’s how soldiers talk,” Roo moped. “And I bleeped it out.”

“Did you imagine you could simulate sex, violence, rape, I don’t even know what else, and that was going to be okay with your teacher or your parents?” Rosie continued.

“You don’t get it. It’s not like when you were a kid. Sex and violence are what’s popular nowadays.”

Rosie closed her eyes. “Why didn’t you just redo the project when Mrs. Birkus asked you to?”

“I already did it.” Roo sat up only in order to be able to cross his arms over his chest. “If she didn’t like it, that’s her problem.”

“No, I think it’s yours,” Penn said. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, “Do you even believe the argument you were making?”

Roo rolled his eyes. “Would I have made it otherwise?”

“You think LGBT soldiers in the armed forces pose a problem?”

“Obviously,” said Roo.

Rosie shook her head. “I hate too cool for school.”

“What the ass does that mean?”

“Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo,” Penn said resignedly.

“It means,” Rosie overlapped, “that if you’re going to try, try. If you’re going to work hard, do it. Don’t work hard to make something that only looks like you don’t care and you didn’t try.”

“That doesn’t even make sense—”

“You’re sixteen,” said Rosie. “You’re too old to think saying bad words and showing plastic dolls naked makes you cool. It’s not cool to pull stupid shit just to get a rise out of everyone. It’s one thing to blow off the assignment. It’s so much worse to belittle everyone else’s.”

“Oh, of course.” Roo’s sarcasm rose to a rhapsody. “I should have known. You’re not upset about my work. You’re upset about what everyone else thinks. I’m stunned.”

“You can be as snotty as you like, Roo.” Penn had talked himself down a bit and was trying for icy calm over screeching hysteria. “We’re going to finish this conversation.”

“That’s all you ever care about. What other people think of you. What other people think of your kids.” Roo’s face mirrored the ones who’d laughed at Penn derisively in the school parking lot. Apparently, this was what he was learning in tenth grade. “Well, I don’t care. Unlike everyone else in this family, I don’t lie about who I am or what I do.”

Penn’s face turned red—so much for icy calm—and his mouth opened, but Rosie beat him to it. “You were asked why your report card listed an F in history.” She made sure to keep both the fury and the triumph out of her voice. “You said it was a typo. Was this the truth?”

“No.” Roo pouted.

“Did you miss a quiz while you were at the dentist, which you made up after school but which had not yet been graded?”

“No.”

“Did you, in fact, deserve the benefit of the doubt?”

Roo shrugged his crossed arms.

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Then it seems to me you do lie about who you are and what you do,” said Rosie.

To which Penn added shrilly, “And that is not acceptable in this household.”

“You guys are such hypocrites,” Roo muttered under his breath.

“I’m sorry?” Penn said. “I couldn’t hear you,” even though he could.

So Roo screamed. “How can you give me shit about lying? You two lie all the time. You lie every second of every day. Your whole stupid-ass life is a lie. You’re all ‘my daughter this’ and ‘my daughter that’ and, ‘At last! The perfect little girl I always dreamed of.’ You’re all, ‘Oh just don’t tell anyone about your sister, and that will be the truth.’ Well, it’s not the truth. It’s a lie. You’re lying to everyone you know. You’re making the rest of us lie too. You’re forcing your whole family to cover up your stupid-ass lies every single day. So I don’t know how you’re going to stand there and scold me for lying.”

“We’re not going to scold you.” Rosie made herself speak calmly even though she was shaking like a windup toy. “We’re going to punish you.”

“Living in this house is punishment enough.” Roo stormed down into his room.

“Wishful thinking,” Penn called after him.

*

It was a soggy, sullen weekend. On Monday morning, Rosie was hyperventilating through the rain on the way to work. The perfect thing about the pink turret house was that it was only exactly 1.1 miles from work. Unfortunately, 1 mile of the 1.1 miles was straight up. She spent the climb gasping into the phone most days anyway, however, because otherwise when would she find time to talk to her mother?

“Roo’s a homophobe,” she was sorry to report.

“That doesn’t sound right,” said Carmelo.