By April though, Claude was gone, and Poppy, hair finally grown past his ears into a short but inarguable pixie cut, had taken over. His self-portraits became solo affairs: only Poppy, not his whole family, Poppy in a golden ball gown, Poppy in a purple tiara with matching purple superhero cape, Poppy wearing flip-flops, yoga pants, and a sports bra, sitting in full lotus, grinning enlightenment off the page. He came down to breakfast every morning bubbling over, grinning before his feet hit the kitchen, laughing with his brothers, soaring really, and it was only then his parents realized just how sullen mornings had been when having to change out of the breakfast dress before school had been hanging over Claude’s oatmeal. He used the nurse’s bathroom. He made himself—and his brothers—sunflower-butter sandwiches, which was all it took to win the unflagging love of Miss Appleton.
Rosie and Penn were slower to adjust. They say it is what you never imagine can be lost that is hardest to live without. Rosie had always assumed this referred to postapocalyptic scenarios where what you had to live without was power or water or Wi-Fi, but in fact, it was deeper sown than that. It reminded Penn of the French toddlers whose family had rented the house next door the summer he was sixteen. It was très irritant how much better French they spoke than he did, and it was even beaucoup plus irritant that they remembered, without even trying, which nouns were masculine and which were feminine when he could not, even though he’d spent a thousand hours studying and they weren’t even potty trained yet. Now his whole life was like that. Sometimes he called Poppy “he” and sometimes “she.” Sometimes he called Roo and Ben and Rigel and Orion “he” and sometimes “she.” Sometimes he called Roo “Ben” (wrong kid) or “Rufus” (wrong name) or “Rude” (not a name at all though, increasingly, not necessarily untrue either). Sometimes he called Rosie “he.” Once he introduced her at a party as his husband. He called the mailman “she.” He called the guy who fixed the brakes on the van “she.” He called the newspaper “she.” Neither Claude nor Poppy seemed bothered one way or the other, but Penn felt something essential in his brain had been severed. Whatever link you got for free that picked the appropriate pronoun whenever one was called for was permanently decoupled, and suddenly Penn’s mother tongue was foreign.
They all went to Phoenix for spring break. Poppy went to the mall with his grandmother, shared cinnamon pretzels in the food court, and threw pennies into the fountain to make a wish. He wished everything would always stay exactly like this because suddenly, for the first time in either of his lives, all the kids wanted to be his friend. Shy, all-alone Claude was replaced by laughing, gregarious Poppy, who saved his allowance to buy a fairy calendar on which he recorded all the requests he got for playdates.
Rosie hated that calendar. Penn adored it. To Penn, it represented a triumph, difficult things overcome and implemented. Maybe the transition from Claude had been daunting and fraught, but here was Poppy, loved, friended, present, no longer disappearing off the page. He considered the calendar a hard-won trophy. To Rosie, it bespoke people’s cloying, pandering, PC bullshit and a strange Poppy cachet. Having status, she warned Penn, was not the same as having friends. Maybe parents just wanted their kids to invite Poppy over so they could gossip to their own friends or make a big show of being open-minded and tolerant. Maybe the kids wanted to play with Poppy because they were curious about him rather than because they liked him. And what would they do about invitations to sleepovers? What would they do when these kids stopped being sweet little kindergarteners and started being hormone-crazed, mean-spirited, cruel-intentioned, peer-pressuring, pill-popping, gun-toting teenagers?
“Gun-toting?” said Penn.
“Or something,” said Rosie.
“I think you’re worrying prematurely.”
“If you don’t worry about something until it’s already a problem,” said Rosie, “that’s not worry. That’s observation.”
The little girls who invited Poppy over had pink rooms and pink LEGOs and pink comforters over pink sheets on their pink beds. They had crates—actual crates!—of tutus and high heels and dress-up clothes, stuffed animals who themselves wore tutus and high heels and dress-up clothes, Barbies and clothes for the Barbies, jewelry, nail polish, fairies, and baby dolls. They liked to draw and trade stickers. They liked to put their stuffies in strollers and give them a bottle and push them around the block. They liked to have a lemonade stand. They liked to chase each other around the house but in tutus and high heels, and when they caught you at the end, they just hugged you and giggled and laughed together instead of making a big thing about who was a loser and sitting on your head and farting. Poppy could not understand why everyone in the whole world didn’t want to be a girl.
Rosie was starting to have the same question. She was used to picking children up from playdates with bruised elbows and scraped shins, torn pants and reports of broken things and borderline behavior. She wasn’t used to her youngest having playdates at all, never mind coming home from them all smiles, suffused with quiet, almost private, joy. The moms would beam at Rosie. “She’s such a good girl.”
“Who?” Rosie asked the first time.