That January, as his grandmother had predicted they would, Roo’s needs arose. Roo needed understanding. Roo needed comforting. Roo needed his parents to realize what he was fighting and why, to see his hurt and confusion, to sort his legitimate anger from the other kind, or, if you prefer, his ordinary teenage angst from his more particular teenage angst. He needed them to take deep breaths and look at the big picture, but all Rosie and Penn could look at was the gash weeping blood from his forehead. Mostly what Roo needed was stitches.
It was a cold, wet Monday morning, and Rosie was running Howie-late as usual. She preferred Seattle January’s rainy forty degrees to Madison’s snowy four, but she also thought her toes might be growing mold from walking through the constant damp. Yvonne didn’t even look up from her computer when she arrived, red-nosed and sodden. “Fourteen minutes late.”
“I had to stop at the top of the hill to catch my breath.”
“For fourteen minutes?”
“Getting out of the house is hard.”
“Maybe you should drive.”
“Think of the environment. Did they wait for me?”
“Nope.”
“Shit.”
“Yup.”
Howie ostentatiously stopped Monday Morning Meeting mid-sentence when she opened the door to the break room. “Ah, Rosie, thank you so much for joining us.” His opening move was the same every week as if passive-aggression were his own invention. “We can’t tell you how honored we are you could make it.”
Rosie didn’t even look at him. “What’d I miss?” she said to James.
“Nada.”
“Quite a bit actually.” Howie glared back and forth between them. Elizabeth pretended to look at her (blank) notebook. “We’re almost done. Since you weren’t here, we decided in your absence to put you in charge of the staff-appreciation breakfast again this year.”
“It shouldn’t be me,” said Rosie.
“Why not?”
“It won’t get started until lunchtime.” She grinned at James.
“The rest of us have families too, you know,” said Howie.
“I was kidding.”
“The rest of us manage to balance work and family.” He wasn’t yelling; he was scolding, which was worse. “It’s not fair that we should suffer because you are incapable of doing so.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “How are you suffering, Howie?”
“I have to recap Monday Morning Meeting before I’ve even gotten through it. And I have to take shit if you’re asked to do one thing outside seeing patients.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the one taking shit, but I’ll be in charge of breakfast again.”
“Attagirl.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Come on time.”
“By which you mean early.”
After her first patient of the morning, she found James in the break room.
“Why do we persist in pretending we work for Howie when we’re all equal partners and he’s basically a grass stain?”
“Grass stain?”
“Annoying, probably permanent, essentially harmless. Kind of ugly.”
“You’ve been doing too much laundry, Ro.”
“Penn’s in charge of laundry.”
“He’s equal, but he’s senior. He hired you.” James stirred more sugar into his coffee than it seemed like it could absorb and still remain in liquid form. “Myself, I was skeptical after your interview.”
“You were?”
“Five is a lot of children. I thought you were probably some kind of fanatic or in a cult or something.”
“James! You can’t make hiring decisions based on how many kids an applicant has.”
“The whole time you were talking I was humming, ‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.…’ Point is, Howie fought for you. You owe him your job.”
“Maybe, but he’s not my mother. He doesn’t get to scold me for being late. I’m an adult. And not his employee.”
“No, but it’s worth keeping him happy, or at least not pissing him off, especially when it’s easy.”
“Taking his condescending shit is easy? Taking on the jobs no one else wants because I was fifteen minutes late to a meeting I said I’d be fifteen minutes late to? That’s not easy.”
“Sure it is. Pick your battles. Don’t you do this all the time at home?” James and his husband no longer went to the opera. Instead they had one-year-old twins. “I feel like that should be the subtitle. Parenting: Pick Your Battles.”
“That’s why I shouldn’t have to do it here.”
“Think of it as a power grab. Pick your battles rather than having them thrust upon you. He’s antsy. You know he gets this way every few years, so he’s overdue. He wants to start an office blog. He wants to chart a fifteen-year plan. He wants to put together a humanitarian mission to Thailand.”
“I can’t go to Thailand. I have a job and a life.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, kid. Buy some doughnuts for the staff and come even earlier for Monday Meeting, and you won’t have to.”
The door opened. Howie poked his head in and heaved a huge sigh in Rosie’s direction though clearly he had been looking for her and clearly he had found her. “Rosie. We need to talk.”
“Sure,” she said lightly. “But I’ve got a patient in ten minutes.”
“It won’t take long,” said Howie, “but we have to—”
Rosie’s cell phone rang. The high school. “Mrs. Adams?”
“Dr. Walsh. Yes, this is she.”
“Roo’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“This is Franny Plumber up at school. I’m afraid Roo’s been suspended. You’ll have to come get him.”
Christ. “Kid emergency,” Rosie half-apologized to Howie. “I have to go pick up Roo, but I’ll be back this afternoon. Tell Yvonne to reschedule my appointments until after lunch.”
* * *
If it weren’t for the gash in his head, he’d have kept getting away with it. In fact, Roo and Derek McGuiness had been fighting during recess on and off for years. It felt more like an ancient feud than a tussle at this point. Ben knew this and left Roo to it. Ben saw where his strengths lay, and it wasn’t hand-to-hand combat. If Roo had asked for his help, he’d have provided it (strategically if not muscularly), but Roo did not ask, and Ben knew to respect that too. Rigel and Orion knew it but couldn’t do anything about it. For one thing, they were only fourteen. For another, ninth grade was on a different schedule. They had English every day while Roo was getting his ass kicked. Even Cayenne knew it, and maybe she even found it sexy, and that might even have played a part in why Roo was still doing it. But, well trained in the art of secret keeping, Roo had managed to keep it from his parents for a year and a half and counting.
Rosie and Penn were angry he was fighting. They were angry the school hadn’t noticed he was fighting until there was a gushing head wound. They were angry he’d implicated all his brothers in his cover-up. They were angry that when they’d asked about the various scratches and bruises and red marks, he’d made up stories about gym class or joining fencing club or wrestling with Ben (this last may not have been a lie).
Even though he’d gone to lengths to hide it, Roo was angry anyway that they hadn’t noticed he’d been getting his ass kicked. He was angry they hadn’t noticed that sometimes he was the one doing the ass kicking. But mostly, he was angry they didn’t care what he was fighting for.
Angry all around, they went straight to West Hill Family Medical Center. Roo wanted his own doctor. Roo did not want to be treated by his mother. But Rosie was more confident in her own ability to stitch up her son’s forehead than her son’s GP or whomever happened to be staffing whatever emergency room. And though Penn worried that she was so upset her hands were shaking, that was only so until she had Roo on the table in the treatment room. Then her hands steadied and her eyes focused, and she laid a line of stitches at which even Howie, when he came to check on all of them, whistled in appreciation.
In some ways, it did not seem fair to have this conversation while she had both Roo’s bleeding head and a needle in her hands. In some, it was the only way.
“Hold still.”
“Mom, wait, I—”
“I said hold still. I know you have trouble with authority Roo, but even you must see this is a time to listen to your mother.”
“I don’t have trouble with authority.”
“Have you been fighting?”
Roo paused to consider whether it was too late to convincingly lie about this and concluded it probably was. “Obviously.”
“I don’t mean today.” Rosie irrigated her eldest son’s gaping head wound. “I mean was today the first time?” She looked at his eyes. “And don’t lie.”
“Yeah. I’ve been getting in fights. Some.”
“For how long?” She sterilized Roo’s head.
“I dunno. A few weeks?” The question mark at the end was for whether he was going to get away with the timeline.
“A few … weeks?” Penn shrieked, and Roo was glad he lied.
The first time had been the second week of school—the year before. Derek McGuinness was an asshat. Derek McGuinness called him—and a couple dozen other kids—gay and faggot and fucking fairy. Derek McGuinness called him these things precisely because he thought Roo wouldn’t fight back. It was the fact of Roo’s unlikeliness to fight back that made him those things and that made it safe for Derek McGuinness to call him them. Which meant kicking his ass killed two birds with one stone. How to explain to his parents that there were some things worth defending, some things worth standing up for?
“Why?” said Rosie.
“Why what?”
“Why were you fighting?”
“You don’t understand, Mom. It’s different for guys.”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes.
“You have to be a man.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“You can’t be, like, a wuss.”
“Roo, in this family of all families, you’d think you’d have a better handle on the absurdity of gender stereotyping.” Her needle went in and out, in and out at the slow, steady pace of a heartbeat much calmer than anyone’s in the room. “Remember when your father walked away from Nick Calcutti? That was the bravest, manliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah.” Roo shrugged, winced. “But Nick Calcutti had a gun. Derek McGuinness isn’t even fast.”
“Don’t move. Who started it?”
Roo was still. He couldn’t quite answer that question. He had thrown the first punch, it was true. But it was more complicated than that.
“Roo.” His mother moved her gaze from his forehead to his eyes.
“He begged me to do it, Mom.”
“He’s hitting kids,” she said to Penn, as if Penn weren’t right there and hadn’t heard himself, as if Roo weren’t lying beneath her busy hands. “He’s seeking out and beating people up now.”
“He called me … something bad.”
“What?” said Penn. “What could he possibly have called you that warranted violence?”
“He said. He said I was gay.” Roo went with the serenest epithet. He didn’t want to say “fucking fairy” to his mother while she had a needle in his forehead, even if it was a quote.
She went white above his eyes. “That’s why you beat him? That’s the horrible, tragic insult you simply could not abide? Gay?”
Roo’s head and mouth held still. His eyes nodded.
“Roo,” his father breathed, “that’s not even…”
“True?” said Roo. “I know it’s not true.”
“Mean,” Penn finished. “It’s not even an insult. All you have to say is, ‘None of your business,’ or ‘No, I’m not actually,’ or ‘What’s it to you?’”
And suddenly Roo was laughing. He tried to look at his parents to see if they were serious, but his mother was clenching his jaw almost as tightly as her own.
“You think I beat him up because I’m homophobic.” Not a question. An accusation.
“Isn’t that what you’re telling us?”
“No. I beat him up because he’s homophobic. He’s out there calling anyone he doesn’t like faggot and pussy, like being gay is the worst thing he can think of. Some kids actually are gay. Or they have gay parents. How do you think they feel? I beat him up so he’d stop being an asshole.”
“Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo.” Penn was trying—and failing—to keep relief out of his voice.
“But your history project.” Rosie finished her stitches, tying off the thread but not the issue.
“What history project?”
“The one last year. The one you failed.”
“That was so long ago, Mom.”
“It was antigay.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“It was about the problems with letting LGBT soldiers serve openly.”
“Yeah. Problems the military should address. Responsibilities they’re, you know, shirting.”
“Shirting?” said Penn.
“Redshirting. Benching until they’re ready to deal with them.”
“Shirking, I think,” said Penn.
“But that stupid voiceover.” Rosie mimicked Roo mimicking a movie trailer: “The navy is navy. Gay soldiers don’t belong.”
“Exactly,” said Roo. “The navy should be rainbow-colored, but it’s totally not. Gays should feel like they belong, but they don’t. The army can’t just change the rules and think their job is done, problem solved. That’s what the video showed. That’s why there’s violence and abuse. They have to change the rules, but then they also have to help everyone make them work.”
Penn was so relieved, he was light-headed. Roo wasn’t a bigot. Roo had a smart, nuanced, important point. Absent the gushing head wound, it was good news all around.
“Roo!”
“What?” Why was she still mad?
“Roo, that project was terrible,” Rosie shrilled. “We watched it. Mrs. Birkus watched it. We all concluded you were some kind of homophobic zealot. It would be one thing if you had nothing to say. But you have a message to spread, an important one, one you are uniquely positioned to impart in an environment where it’s crucial that you do so, and it’s buried under all this stupidity—fighting and cursing and shit videos. If for no other reason—and there are many, many other reasons—you must do better work.”
“You’re going to lecture me about speaking out about gay rights?” said Roo. They were back to this again. “You’re the one who’s ashamed Poppy’s trans. We all think it’s fine. No one else cares.”
“We all?” said Penn.
“Ashamed?” said Rosie.
“All of us,” said Roo. “Ben, Rigel, Orion, and me all think—”
“And I,” said Penn.
“Ashamed?” said Rosie.
“You seem ashamed of her.” Roo pressed tentatively at the bandage Rosie had affixed atop the stitches. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so afraid to tell people. I’m not homophobic. I’m not antitrans. Are you though?”
“We’re not ashamed.” Penn stood so his supine son could see his face. “We’re proud as hell of her. All things being equal, we’d shout it from the rooftops. But all things are not equal. First and foremost, we have to protect her. There are lots of Derek McGuinnesses in the world. You can’t beat up all of them.”
“Any of them,” Rosie corrected. “You can’t beat up any of them. What about college?”
“What about it?”
“How will you get into college with suspensions on your record and Fs in history?”
“I’m not the smart one,” said Roo. “Ben’s the smart one.”
“Roosevelt Walsh-Adams. You are smart. And you have important things to say. And for damn sure you need help learning how to say them clearly and appropriately. You need to learn something about responsible decision making, cause and effect.”
“Why?” said Roo.
“You are bleeding from your head,” said his father.
“You need to go to college,” said Rosie. “So you also need to knock this shit off.”
Maybe it was the strain of the day, the sympathetic blood loss that came from watching it seep out of your child. Rosie felt punished because he was punished. Penn felt relief that he wasn’t their worst nightmare, hateful and intolerant and prejudiced. Rosie was alarmed that he was in pain, alarmed that he had inflicted it too. Penn was worried Poppy somehow felt like Roo did, that they were keeping her secret from shame rather than shelter. Maybe it was that they were still angry, still had much to be angry about. Maybe it was the layer-upon-layering of all of the above. Whatever the reason, they missed it again, Roo’s warning, Roo’s wisdom, Roo’s mysterious ability, myopic though he was, to see far down the tracks to what was steaming inexorably ahead.