Then she showed them the video.
It was a family affair. It starred a great many of Poppy’s dolls and stuffies dressed in Orion’s costumes and Rigel’s knitting projects. Ben was the puppet master, wiggling each character before the camera in turn, his hand creeping occasionally (Rosie imagined, guiltily) into the shot. It began with Roo’s best movie trailer impersonation: “In a world where the US Army is the greatest fighting force on Earth, gays do not belong. The navy is navy, not rainbow-colored. There’s no trans in the air force, no lesbians in the marines, no bi in the sky.” The particulars of the plot were hard to follow, but eventually a camo-clad Alice and Miss Marple spent some time rolling around in a sandbox with guns (Penn was guessing pretzel rods) and then rolling around in a bed together until an apparent superior officer (a roll of paper towels in a naval cap of Orion’s decorated with a few of Ben’s debate ribbons) burst in on them screaming. “You [bleep]ing [bleep]ing [bleep]s don’t belong in this man’s army,” the paper-towel roll opined. “The [bleep]ing government in its [bleep]ing wisdom may disagree, but they’re not [bleep]ing running things around this [bleep]. I am. So they can suck my [bleep].” In the next scene, three Barbies dropped incendiaries (Penn was guessing raisins) from F-15s, destroying LEGO villages below, but when one of the Barbies donned men’s dress blues for a party that evening, five plastic soldiers Penn had never seen before in his life (they were Aggie’s) came out of nowhere, stripped the Barbie, and attacked her. Given the limitations of the medium, the precise nature of the action was not clear, but though TransBarbie eventually kicked the plastic soldiers’ bleeps, it was not without more language bluer than his uniform.
“At least he bleeped himself out,” Penn offered.
Mrs. Birkus was unimpressed.
In the school parking lot, Penn was incredulous. “Roo can’t be homophobic. He can’t be antigay. He can’t possibly be antitrans and living in our household.”
“Maybe that’s why,” Rosie said softly.
“Does he need therapy?” Penn wasn’t listening to her. Penn wasn’t even listening to himself. “An intervention? A stint in the military himself?”
“Maybe he didn’t mean it.”
“It seemed pretty clear.” Penn was not keeping his voice down.
“Did it?” It had seemed like an embarrassing mess to Rosie.
“What is wrong with this boy?” Penn asked no one in particular. Milling-around high-schoolers stared at him disdainfully.
“Let’s go home and ask him,” said his wife.
At home, they sat Roo down at the homeworking table.
“We saw your video.” Rosie dove right in. She didn’t want to give him another opportunity to lie to them.
“Did you like it?” Roo sneered. It wasn’t the video that was going to cause his father to end his Annus Mirabilis. It was the smirk.
“Did you?” Penn tried not to shriek. Roo’s left shoulder more shuddered than shrugged. The rest of his body curled into itself like a comma. “Because it seemed like a lot of work. Long way to go to make idiot points and stupid jokes.” Roo cringed, maybe at the idiot, maybe at the stupid, maybe at his father screaming like a lunatic. “Long way to go just to humiliate people.”
“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—”