This Is How It Always Is

Rosie and K become closer. Rosie works up the courage to ask K, who is transgender, about her life. K tells her about meeting her partner, and how they have adopted several children whose parents died at the hospital. K encourages Rosie to embrace the “middle way” in life. Rosie replies that there is no middle way in the United States, that there is just male and female. K clarifies, “Not just middle way between male and female. Middle way of being. Middle way of living with what is hard and who do not accept you” (289).

Claude reflects on his observation that the Buddha looks like a girl. Claude gleans from the Buddha’s renderings that the Buddha was born a boy, achieved enlightenment, cut off his hair, and ended up looking like a girl. During a festival to celebrate the king’s birthday, Rosie and Claude learn that in Thailand, yellow is the color of Monday. Rosie tells Claude that he was born on a Monday. “Makes sense,” Rosie muses. “Yellow’s what you paint the nursery if you don’t know whether the baby will be a boy or a girl” (295). Rosie tells Claude that she misses Poppy because she misses seeing her child happy. In the fish market, they find a unisex bathroom.

Rosie receives several missed calls and cryptic messages from Penn, but she cannot find steady Wi-Fi for almost 24 hours. In the meantime, she fears the worst: that her mother or one of the boys has had an accident or fallen ill. To her surprise, when she finally reaches Penn, he has good news. He has sold his book, though not the novel he has been working on for years. He has sold the fairy tale of Grumwald and Princess Stephanie. When Rosie laments missing the ending of the story, Penn replies, “Grumwald and Stephanie got an ending for the moment, an ending for everybody else. That’s all” (302). Rosie decides it is time she and Claude go back to Seattle.

At the end of his story, Penn reveals that Grumwald is Princess Stephanie; Grumwald transforms into her at night. Grumwald realizes that he does not want to choose between being Grumwald and being Princess Stephanie. He wants to be both. The witch in the story, who has the power to grant this wish to Grumwald, calls this “betwixt”: “Betwixt a prince and a night fairy is neither-nor as much as both and. You see? Something new. Something more. Something better” (311). The witch encourages Grumwald to share his secret. When Grumwald protests that the secret is too complicated, the witch replies that life itself is complicated. 

Poppy returns to school in time for the Valentine’s Day dance. Jake Irving, one of the classmates who bullied her, apologizes and asks Poppy to dance. To Poppy’s horror, Rosie and Penn also dance. Penn tells Rosie that their whole love story was a fairy tale, but that fairy tales are not long enough to contain the hard parts and the transformations of life. He shares with her his philosophy that stories are meant to expand beyond the writer themselves: “You write it down so others can read it, and then it can grow” (318). In the bathroom, Aggie confronts Poppy once more. They agree that they can be friends again as “rival neighbor weirdos” (321). The night ends with Rosie, Penn, and their children huddled around the homework table laughing. Rosie calls this their happy ending. Penn smiles and tells her, “Not even close” (324).