Penn knew in his heart that Claude should be who he was. But he also knew that Claude would be happier if neither his clothes nor his sandwich nor the bag it came out of attracted anyone’s attention because another thing his heart knew was this: it was more complicated than that. Five years of Orion wearing all manner of weird stuff to school had occasioned not so much as a raised third eyebrow from anyone. “What an imaginative boy Orion is,” his teachers said. “His spirit brightens everyone’s day.” If an eyeball sticker was creative self-expression, surely Claude should wear what he wanted to school. How could you say yes to webbed feet but no to a dress, yes to being who you were but no to dressing like him? How did you teach your small human that it’s what’s inside that counts when the truth was everyone was pretty preoccupied with what you put on over the outside too?
These were Penn’s second through twenty-ninth concerns. He felt bees buzzing behind his rib cage. But before Penn could settle on a parenting path, Claude slipped out of his chair, padded upstairs, and emerged again wordlessly, defrocked and de-barretted, Penn’s skirt-shirt gone, only his own remaining over a pair of navy shorts. Claude shouldered his peanut-free purse, and everyone went off to school. When he got home at the end of a much smoother day, he went straight to his room and pulled Penn’s shirt back on under his own, stuck the barrettes back in his hair, added a pair of Carmelo’s clip-on earrings, and sat down at the dining-room table to homework with everyone else. Penn bit his bottom lip. The outfit itself didn’t much worry him—it ranked in the high thirties, maybe—but its persistence was starting to creep into the top ten. Instead, he turned to homeworking.
Penn was in charge of homework, and he had rules. Homeworking never commenced—even complaining about homeworking never commenced—until after snack. And it had to be a good snack. Penn recognized peanut butter on a celery stick for the bullshit it was. Blueberry pancakes. Chocolate banana pops. Zucchini mini pizzas. These were snacks. Then the dining-room table was cleared, wiped down, and requisitioned for work. All boys—Penn included—sat down and got to it, homeworking quietly, asking questions or for additional help as necessary, calming so that others could concentrate. Homeworking en masse made it more fun. Penn recalled hours in his room as a child, slogging through math problems or write-ups of science experiments or memorizing the words for things in French. Downstairs, his parents would be watching TV or laughing together about their day while upstairs he suffered the isolating boredom and nagging insecurity of passé composé. At his dining-room table with his cadre of boys, however, he could approach homework, aptly, like dinner—everything shared, the trials and triumphs, each according to his abilities, everyone pitching in to help. Roo might say, “Can anyone think of another way to say ‘society’?” or Ben might say, “Is there even a word for ‘soufflé’ in Spanish?” or Rigel and Orion might be building a rocket together while their father hoped it was for a science project and not just for the sake of blowing stuff up.