Just an Ordinary Thing

Miss Caroline made light of it, "It happens sometimes, they get fixated on one thing, one activity area or one friend. He'll branch out eventually. You'll see."

But Harry wasn't so sure she had it right. It wasn't just one friend, or one area in the colorful playroom. It was one costume, a pale blue dress covered with silver sequins, Cinderella on her way to the ball, complete with plastic slippers. Robert had added the Fairy Godmother's magic wand.

Now every morning when they walked through the swinging doors, the little girls stood ready, waiting for Robert to run to them.

"He's quite a character. All the girls love him," Miss Caroline said excusing herself to divert a boy who was aiming a plastic tube and going, "Tat, tat, tat, tat, tat."

She motioned to him to lower his weapon.

"Now let's see? What else could this be?" she said gently, setting off a chain reaction of ideas, transforming the tube into a giant flute, then a baton, and finally a crutch. By the time she turned back to Harry and Robert, the shooter was happily hobbling around the room.

Some of the other little boys were playing dress-up, too. A towhead, with eyes the white-blue of a Siberian Husky, was an astronaut. A plump Asian kid with a bowl cut had squeezed into an alien space suit.

Harry ruffled Robert's hair, leaving a tuft sticking up. He reached over to smooth the silky cowlick back down. "Hey, buddy. How's about the Lion King, what about Roger the Ranger for a change?"

But Robert squirmed to get away, grabbing the blue dress from a girl named Raquel. She handed it over like a dresser, preparing an actor for his entrance on opening night. Robert pulled the dress over his head, shed his shoes, stepped into the slippers and waved the magic wand.

"All he needs is a tiara and pearls," Harry muttered under his breath.

"What was that you said?" Miss Caroline asked.

"You're right. He certainly gets along well with the girls."

Harry hadn't told Maureen about it, not yet. He wasn't sure why. Fear would have been his best guess, although later on, he would admit there was no basis for it.

She'd shared her war stories; the corporate infighting, the hostile takeovers, the co-opted deals, the climbers who tried to hit on her when she was on the road. He'd told her about the neighbor who showed up one afternoon with a bottle of vodka and a dirty video while her two-year-old was down for a nap. They'd never kept secrets from each other before, but this was something different. Something that, in those first few months when he still wasn't sure, he worried could change everything in their neatly ordered lives. But it was still just a suspicion then. What had she expected him to do, greet her at the door with, "Hi honey, how was your day, and oh, by the way. . . ."

He'd been fine with the househusband thing. But this wasn't the same. Staying home with Robert had been his choice, their choice actually, because Maureen couldn't work out of a back bedroom. He could just as easily write his books and articles at home, and now that Robert was off to preschool, his days were free again.

Robert had been reluctant at first, clinging to Harry's leg the first morning or two, but then he'd given in to it. Now he rushed forward, anxious to greet the pack of little girls waiting for him in the dress-up area.

Harry tried to stop himself from looking for signs. Robert was just like any other little boy. He slept in a bed outfitted with dinosaur sheets, in a room painted deep blue, the ceiling sprinkled with glow-in-the-dark stars. He played with trucks, for Christ's sake, and stuffed animals, just like any other kid, except maybe that one time Harry found him tottering down the hall in a pair of Maureen's high heels, but he was barely three then.

"He's fine," Harry kept trying to convince himself, "He's perfectly fine."

At dinnertime Harry would feed Robert one of his favorites, Spaghettios—without the meatballs—or ravioli, then head outside to play catch. When she wasn't traveling, Maureen made a point of being home by seven. She usually pulled up while they were out in the yard, and Robert would run to her as soon as he saw the silver Audi roll into the driveway. The three of them would stand around on the pavement playing three-way for a while. Harry loved her for that, the way she never bothered to change, how she just joined right in, still in her suit and shoes.

Back and forth, around and around, they tossed the ball. Harry had to admit, for a little kid, Robert had a pretty good arm. His aim was dead eye. But Harry found himself looking for something else, something in the way Robert moved, following the arc of Robert's arm when he threw, scrutinizing the gait of his run.

At bedtime, they'd snuggle up, the three of them, to read the books he and Robert borrowed from the branch library every Tuesday after story-hour, boy books mostly: Tommy the Tank Engine, Treasure Island, James and the Giant Peach. But it was The Little Prince Robert asked for again and again. It was a simple drawing of that beautiful blonde boy Robert was so drawn to, and one passage of text, opposite the illustration, at the bottom of page ten.

"Read the part about how he learns to draw a sheep," Robert would plead in his surprisingly gravelly voice.

His face was so like Maureen's; head to head their colors merged, his hair like hers, straight and thick, almost auburn, her cheeks like his, the color of the blush on a perfect peach.

"The high color of the Irish," Harry called it.

"Read it again," Robert would demand. Then he would run his hands over the full-page picture, tracing the curving lines of the Prince's coat with his fingertips as Maureen read.

Maureen. She had something Harry had never had, something he didn't really want or need. Drive, an addiction to upward motion, to change, or at least, that was how Harry perceived it at the time. He was content with his books, a pair of well regarded treatises on the Japanese writers, Mishima and Kawabata, a couple of contracts to write journal articles, lectures now and then, an income from his trust. The money and the platinum Patek Phillippe strapped to his wrist were all he had left of his own father, a king of commerce who dumped his mother when Harry was 12; then, as if to prove her point that "he'll be punished by a higher power," promptly dropped dead on the racquetball court.

When it came to Robert, it had been an easy decision to make. It wasn't as if he were stuck cleaning house or doing laundry. The Merry Maids came twice a week in their red polo shirts embroidered with cartoons of a smiling lady leaning on a vacuum cleaner. Harry couldn't ignore the irony of that. The maids were most often men; an army of three, brandishing Hoovers, buckets, mops, and spray bottles full of something that left the house smelling like a dryer sheet.

They led a comfortable life, he and Maureen, perfectly at ease with one another, as if, having the good fortune of such ease was just an ordinary thing. Harry counted on the predictability, the dependable rhythm of it. He'd read all the books and articles about the tensions and problems, the perils of turning the rules around, the toll they might expect it to take, but so far the ride had been toll-free. So far.

"It's the twenty-first century," Harry tried to tell himself. "The witch hunts are over. Why worry about it?"

He was the expert, wasn't he? Hadn't he just finished writing an article on Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, about his struggle with it, about how Mishima knew so early on. Harry knew all about what that kind of repression could do, what kind of a man it could turn a boy into.

But what he knew and what he feared were different things. This was his son, his beloved little boy, not one of his scholarly studies, and as hard as he tried to tell himself that it wouldn't matter, he knew that on some level it would, if it turned out that Robert really wasn't just an "artistic" kid, but was, in fact, more comfortable as a girl than a boy.

More often now, during the day, while Maureen was at work and Robert was at school, Harry found himself spending time, too much time, surfing the web. The first pages he found were disturbing, Dr. Laura smiling her toothy grin, warning, "Hate Crimes Hurt Families" in a word-bubble pulsating next to her head.

What he wanted to read was that it was just a passing phase, but instead he got page after page of support groups for things he'd never even heard of before. Robert was still just a child, and so young. There were so many possibilities, each with its own twisted name, trans- this and cross- that, such a confusing mass of conflicting information, and then, of course, there were the other pages. Hundreds of them, all those sick people out there looking.

He caught himself thinking that maybe it was time to talk to Maureen about having another baby. He told himself it was time to get a grip, but then he convinced himself again. What harm could it do?

It was the night before parents' night at Robert's school when Harry asked her, "What do you think about trying for number two?"

They were in the bathroom. He was sitting on the closed toilet seat watching her get ready for bed. She looked at him as if he were crazy. As she wiped a gob of cleansing cream off her face, her mascara and eyeliner trailed along, leaving a smeary streak. Harry stood up and pulled a tissue out of the wicker box. Cradling her chin, he gently tissued the streak away. She laughed and pecked at his lips.

"I thought we'd agreed to wait?"

Harry dropped the crumpled tissue in the wastepaper basket next to the sink and sat down again.

"It was just a thought."

"I think you've got a bit of the empty nest syndrome," Maureen laughed as she wiped off the last of the cold cream, leaned over, and kissed the top of his head.

Harry waited for her in the crepe-paper and balloon-festooned entrance to the preschool. She was wearing her red suit. The gold buttons beamed. Her hair bounced, a sleek chestnut helmet as she hurried up the stone path, click-clacking her black patent leather heels. Harry bumped his head on the low hanging placard that declared "Welcome Parents" as he stepped forward to meet her.

As soon as they pushed through the inner doors, Robert ran to them. Other mothers and fathers followed their children, fussing over papier-mâché pilgrims and tinfoil cornucopias, saying, "How darling! How nice! Did you make that all by yourself?"

Robert led them first to a wall of turkey hand-prints, then to the water table where they donned plastic aprons and splashed around, and finally to the dress-up area where seats were set up, row upon row of miniature chairs. Harry knew he should have told her. He knew he should have said something before Miss Caroline caught up with them.

"Wait until you see the show. Robert's quite the little impresario. He put the whole thing together, insisted on it, and all the other girls and boys wanted to do it, too. There was no stopping them. Frankly," she said, winking at both of them, "it's quite amazing."

Robert had run off to call the other players together. Soon all the parents had taken their seats, awkwardly squatting in chairs fitted to five year olds.

Maureen turned to Harry. He thought it was surprise he read in her face, but when he reflected on it later, he realized it was alarm.

"You didn't tell me they were putting on a play," she said.

A band of little girls dressed in a pastiche of scarves, too much jewelry, and oversized skirts, hats, and gloves, skittered into a row. Boys in mismatched capes and plumed hats gathered off to one side. They stood, waiting, until Robert emerged from behind a bank of cubbies. He was wearing the dress and the shoes and was waving the magic wand when he said, "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight the Orange Group presents 'Cinderella'."

From then on it was, as Miss Caroline had promised, quite amazing. The other boys and girls were really only there for window dressing, stumbling through their parts as the wicked stepmother, the ugly stepsisters, the prince, and his courtiers. It was Robert who clearly stole the show, an ingenuous Cinderella, acting the part, effortlessly strutting back and forth, surprisingly nimble in the high heels.

It wasn't until the very end that Harry dared to look at Maureen. She was slumped in the mini-seat, her knees jutting up at odd angles, her arms hanging slack by her sides, her fingertips touching the floor. She looked tired, terribly tired. When she turned toward him and smiled, just the slightest upturn at the corners of her mouth, he knew. She'd been watching just as he had, not just tonight, all along. She had been waiting too.

Later that night, when they were alone in their bedroom where the color of the light would seem to have shifted from a softer to a harsher hue, they would talk about it. They would talk about all of it, late into the night that night, and for many nights to come.

She would say, "I wasn't sure. I thought maybe I was just imagining it."

And he would say, "I didn't want to worry you. I didn't want to overreact to something that might turn out to be nothing at all."

They would admit to each other that they had both been afraid, then try to reassure each other. There was nothing to fear.

Maureen would ask, "It's too soon to know, isn't it, too soon to know for sure?"

And Harry would answer truthfully, "Yes. Yes it is," knowing that when the time came, when they did know for sure, they would feel that stab of pain again, but they would move past it, and go on.

But that night there were still too many things they didn't know when they turned back to the makeshift stage where Robert had already rearranged the players and was motioning with a confident sweep of his hand for the lineup of little boys and girls behind him to bow. Everyone laughed when a bright green hat cartwheeled across the floor. Applause. Then Robert stepped forward.

In time, Harry would be grateful the moment came when Robert was still so young, that he and Maureen would have so much time to understand it, adjust to it, accept it, time for it to become just another ordinary thing.

But in that instant, that evening in the preschool, they sat stunned until someone in one of the rows behind them began to clap. Harry never discovered who. It started out slowly at first, then picked up speed as they joined in, pulling the rest of the parents with them, as Robert, lifted by the power of the applause, flourished the magic wand with one hand, held out the spangled blue skirt of the dress with the other, smiled broadly, and took bow after bow after bow.