*
Penn wanted to call Dwight Harmon and raise hell. They had a responsibility to make sure his child wasn’t bullied or picked on. And they weren’t going to pressure Claude into declaring a gender-or-anything-else identity just because it made it easier for the district to refer to him in the third person. Rosie wanted to model for Claude an attitude of brushing off insults like dog hair and laughing with wry but wise amusement at hapless administrators. Rosie, like most parents, had learned this approach when she had a second child. When Roo fell down at the playground, she’d swoop in cooing, “Are you okay? Show Mommy where it hurts. Oh my poor baby boy.” And he’d cry like the brokenhearted. By Ben, she’d learned to keep her seat and call, “You’re all right.” And so he was.
“If we don’t act like it’s a big deal, he won’t feel like it’s a big deal,” said Rosie.
“But it is a big deal,” said Penn.
As usual though, while they were trying to map the appropriate course, Claude charted his own. At dinner, he announced he was changing his name to the cocoa channel.
“The cocoa channel?” said Ben.
“Like a TV station with nothing but chocolate,” said Claude.
“You mean Coco Chanel.”
“What’s Chanel?”
“Her last name. She invented perfume.”
“Chocolate perfume?” said Claude.
“Maybe.” Ben shrugged. He didn’t know much about perfume. He did know his little brother couldn’t go around calling himself the cocoa channel. Or Coco Chanel.
“You can just be Claude,” said Penn. “Is Miss Appleton giving you a hard time?”
“No.”
“They can’t make you change your name. You can keep your own name and still wear whatever you want.”
“I want to change it. I don’t like Claude.”
“Me too. I want to change my name. Orion is the name of a star, not a boy.”
“Orion is the name of a constellation, not a star,” Ben corrected.
“Easy for you,” said Roo. “You got the normal name.”
“Roo’s a normal name,” said Ben.
“Yeah, for a kangaroo,” said Rigel.
“Let’s get a kangaroo!” said Orion.
“We’re not getting a kangaroo,” said Rosie.
“I’m changing my name to Kangaroo,” said Orion. “That’s what I want to be called from now on. Kangaroo Walsh-Adams.”
“At least you got a constellation,” said Rigel. “I got a foot.”
“My foot,” Orion said proudly.
“Your foot,” Rigel agreed morosely.
“No one is changing his name,” said Rosie. “Names aren’t something you give yourself. Names are something you get from your parents. Claude, if you want a girl’s name, you can be Claudia. Everyone else keeps the name I gave him.”
“Why?” Roo was using his tongue to remove the last bits of turkey from a carving knife.
“Because children are bad decision makers,” said Penn.
“You’re letting Claude decide to be a girl,” said Roo, “which is way worse than letting Orion name himself Kangaroo.”
“Roo!” said Rosie and Penn together.
“I don’t want to be Claudia. Claudia’s too much like Claude.”
“You could be Not Claude,” said Ben. “The Absence of Claude. The square root of negative Claude. A Claude Hole.”
“Claude Hole, Claude Hole, Claude Hole,” said Orion.
“Everyone out,” said Rosie. It was easier to do all the dishes herself for the next hour and a half, which is what it would take, than to listen to her family for one more minute. She realized she was teaching them that if they were enough of a pain in her ass, she’d take over all their chores. She’d live to regret it, but at that moment, nothing she could think of sounded more luxurious than doing seven people’s dinner dishes all by herself.
Penn stayed and helped and didn’t say a word. She was grateful for his help. She was more grateful for his silence. Rosie was up to her elbows in soapsuds, the entire front of her soaked with dishwater, when Roo came downstairs to sulk at the now cleared dining-room table.
“He wants his name to be Coco Chanel,” he said sullenly. “Doesn’t that worry you?”
Rosie turned the water up higher, but Penn left his towel and sat down with his eldest. “He liked the idea of a chocolate television station. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” said Roo. “You keep pretending it isn’t, but it is. What about his … you know.”
“Penis?”
“Yeah.”
“We aren’t worried about that yet. Maybe this is a just a phase. Maybe it’ll pass.”
“But if it’s going to pass, why are you encouraging it?”
“How are we encouraging it?”
“You’re letting him wear girl clothes and play with girl things and grow out his hair.”
“Right, we’re letting him, not encouraging him.”
“Say no.”
“You’ll perhaps have noticed,” said Penn, “that that’s not how it works in our household. When we can, we say yes. To all of you. When we say no, you better believe it’s a serious no. We say no when you want to do something that might hurt you. Otherwise, we mostly say yes.”