An Illusion of Control

One:

It’s Just a DRESS.

Francis “Franco” Douglas Jeffries was born on August fourteenth at three-oh-seven in the afternoon and therefore just missed meeting his father by two minutes.

The reason for this?

Franco’s father Doug, in his hurry to reach the hospital before the birth of his son, neglected to employ his brakes at an intersection that truly only ever experienced traffic on the rarest of occasions. 

In fact, nearly nine out of every ten vehicles neglected to employ their brakes at that particular intersection because two- thirds of the stop sign was actually hidden behind an overgrown bit of shrubbery.

Had Franco’s father been in a car, he most likely would have survived the collision, but alas, he was on a motorcycle.

A black crotch rocket with silver detailing.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet.

If one were to summon the very darkest type of humor—and if one were to then turn the lights off on that particular type of humor, thus making it really exceptionally dark—it might also be said that his wife’s location at the time of the accident (on a gurney at East Waterford Hospital) was almost rather convenient. 

Such a thing would be incredibly inappropriate to say, though… which is why no one has ever voiced the thought out loud. 

At the age of six, Franco has turned out relatively normal despite the fact that he’s grown up without a father. His mother, who was given the name of Kerribeth at birth but now chooses to go by Astrid, is patient and loving and liberal and—by the standards of some folks—just over the line of eccentricity. Her dark hair reaches almost to her waist and she hardly ever thinks to shave beneath her arms; she refrains from wearing makeup, dresses primarily in patchwork, and carries a distinctly unique aroma that is equal parts patchouli and toasted sugar. The former is due to a simple love of patchouli. The latter is the effect of forty hours per week spent in Lake Caywood, Pennsylvania’s, one and only bakery, Piping Hot. 

More than two decades ago, a very fat man named Luca and his pleasantly plump wife Roxanna moved to town, opened a little shop that specialized in scones and cinnamon rolls, and very quickly realized that in order to keep up with the demand of the locals, they would need to hire more hands for the kitchen. Back then, all those very many years ago, it was Jan Rummel who measured out flour and sugar and salt and baking powder and yeast, combining everything in a big mixer and creating some of the most delectable concoctions a person could imagine. Jan, with her stumpy fingers and terrible overbite. Jan, who had a wart on the tip of her nose from which a single grey hair sprouted. Jan, who had a knack for baking lemon-poppyseed muffins that were so moist a person never felt thirsty after consuming one. 

When Jan’s gout became too painful and she could no longer stand for long stretches of time, the residents of Lake Caywood worried that Luca would never be able to find an assistant quite as good as she. Roxanna, after all, was more a salesperson than a baker, and while she could sing the praises of the establishment’s sticky buns and white-chocolate cheesecake (drizzled with melba sauce!) better than anyone, it was unusual for her to manage a batch of chocolate-chip cookies without burning the bottoms. 

For a while there, Luca was the only one manning the kitchen.

For a while there, Lake Caywood residents worried Piping Hot might be forced to cut its hours. 

But then Astrid Jeffries arrived in town.

At first, folks were reluctant to trust someone who had not one extra ounce of fat on her body. “Does she even bother to taste what she prepares?” some dared to wonder aloud. “Does she ever eat what she puts together, or are we expected to take the risk via our own wallets and taste buds?”

As it turned out, Astrid Jeffries, despite being not much wider than a string bean, actually was a skilled baker… and so Piping Hot remained—and has continued to remain—Lake Caywood’s premier bakery. 

Now, three years after moving to town, Astrid’s son Franco has become Lake Caywood’s premier dress-wearing child.

Not dress-wearing child, she corrects herself, staring hard at the letter sent home by his principal. Dress-wearing boy.

Dr. Zachariah Craig has written, “Lake Caywood Elementary’s dress code clearly states that ‘revealing, immodest, or distracting clothing’ is not to be worn to school, and if it is, ‘the student will be asked to change his/her attire so as to not affect the learning environment of his/her peers.’ In the case of your son, Francis’s recent attire has proven to be a distraction to his classmates and I kindly ask that you refrain from sending him to school in a dress. Thank you for your time and please do reach out if you have any further concerns.”

With an exasperated sigh, Astrid folds the note once again into thirds and returns it to the envelope in which it arrived, then folds that in half and tucks it into her purse. “What’s it say, Mommy?” Franco wants to know, furrowing his fair brow so as to mirror the expression his mother currently sports. “Is it bad?”

“Not bad,” Astrid informs him, “but it’s not great either.” She does her best to sound more chipper than she feels because the truth is that needle pricks of moisture stab at the backs of her eyes and tickle her sinuses, an onslaught of tears on the brink of a spill. Astrid, for all her bravado and bold independence, is still very much that meek Kerribeth who was once picked last for gym class and frequently ate alone with her book in the cafeteria. 

As a child, her creativity had been squelched. 

As a teen, she’d been misunderstood. 

As a young adult, she’d found herself pregnant and in love and seen for what felt like the very first time in her life.

And as a twenty-three-year-old, she had been unexpectedly abandoned and left to navigate the world of parenthood with absolutely no one to guide her or experience the journey by her side. 

Alone, Astrid had rocked Franco through the night.

Alone, Astrid had witnessed the infant’s first smile.

Alone, Astrid had seen her son take his first steps.

Alone, Astrid had heard his first word—“Cat!”—spoken aloud.

Alone, Astrid had pondered the little boy’s love of dresses. 

Alone, Astrid had made the decision to pack up her tiny family’s belongings and move four hours north, settling in a town she had mistakenly thought to have a fair-minded school board, finding work at a beloved bakery, and renting a home at the end of a quiet street called Sycamore Drive. 

Now, Astrid understands, she had been wrong. 

Now, at the age of twenty-six, she wants nothing more than to climb the steps to her bedroom, curl up under her heavy down comforter, and close her eyes on the letter from Dr. Zachariah Craig and the day as a whole and the direction that her life has somehow managed to take.

Kerribeth, she knows, might have done just that… but Astrid is stronger than Kerribeth ever was, and so she forces the muscles in her face to form a smile and turns to her son, saying, “I brought a half dozen chocolate-toffee cookies home with me from the bakery today. How about we walk over to Pippa’s house and see if she and her mother have time for a visit?”

Enthusiastically, Franco agrees.

👗

In the backyard, beneath a young maple that stands no more than five feet tall and boasts an unnatural assortment of crimson leaves not at all fitting for the still-bitter bite of March, Franco Jeffries tosses a squishy grapefruit-sized ball to his playmate Pippa. She fumbles the ball, momentarily dropping it at her feet, and then scoops to retrieve it before promptly lobbing it back to her friend. 

Both children wear dresses. 

Pippa’s is a dusky-lavender hue printed with tiny white sailboats. On her feet she wears green Converse sneakers—high- tops, with sparkly pink laces—and on her head, helping to contain her abundant dark curls, is a grey baseball cap adorned with a plaid lobster. 

Franco’s attire isn’t quite as mismatched as his peer’s, seeing as he has always preferred a monochromatic palette. His dress is made of a heavy cotton, charcoal in color, that falls just below his knees. Its sleeves are long, the collar simplistic. To some, the child may appear to be wearing an oversized t-shirt… but instead of pants, he wears tights. Black tights that are both thick and warm. Franco’s sneakers, however, resemble the sneakers of many male classmates. Made by Nike, they are black with black swooshes outlined with white. Every night before bed, he dampens a paper towel and scrubs the day’s dirt from their soles, preserving the foot attire’s newness to the best of his ability. 

Inside, Astrid observes the children’s game while nursing a mug of hazelnut coffee prepared by her host. She sighs, wishing she could experience a single moment as carefree as the one being lived by the six-year-olds outside. But alas, her son prefers dresses to pants, and so for whatever reason, this means her life is meant to contain more stress than someone whose child has no qualms about wearing gender-appropriate clothing. 

“But what constitutes ‘gender-appropriate clothing’?” Lucy Campbell asks, causing Astrid to realize she’d inadvertently voiced at least part of her desire aloud. “The Scots wear kilts and that’s fine, so why can’t Franco wear a dress? I don’t see the problem. It’s not as if his behavior is hurting anyone.”

“I know,” Astrid murmurs. “I know. But we ran into the exact same problem at our last school—and that was preschool! People don’t like the idea of boys wearing dresses. It’s ‘distracting,’ I guess. Distracting and just, you know… different.” She sets down her coffee having not taken a sip. Her voice wobbles as she says, “Different is apparently bad.”

“Different is not bad,” Lucy counters. “Different is different and that’s all. You do remember that Pippa didn’t speak for the first four years of her life, right? That was different, but it wasn’t bad. And you realize that my husband is only ever home for maybe two- thirds of every year? Again: different, but not bad. So what if our marriage isn’t the same as someone else’s? It works for us. And that mentality can sure as shit be applied to Franco as well… So what if he prefers dresses to pants? It works for him, right?”

Astrid wishes she could laugh, but can’t muster the energy. She settles for a lopsided smile instead. 

“The thing is,” Lucy continues, her tone no longer lighthearted, “I don’t think this request-slash-demand is actually coming from Dr. Craig. I think it’s coming from the current school board. How they got voted in? I don’t know… but it’s pretty clear what their agenda is.”

Astrid arches her eyebrows, silently asking, What’s that? 

She hadn’t voted in the last local election. Is it actually her fault that her son’s being targeted? Her stomach turns, making her wish she hadn’t split that chocolate-toffee cookie with Lucy.

“They’re out to get the LGBTQ community.”

Lucy’s expression is grim. She stares hard into her half-empty mug of coffee, swirling the lukewarm remains. A choppy lock of white-blonde hair slips out from behind her ear, but she doesn’t bother to tuck it back into place. Instead, she says, “At the secondary level, their priority is books, preferred pronouns, and bathrooms. I got the scoop from my friend Jane. She’s got an eighth-grader who loves to read, so I’ve been hearing a lot about what’s going on at that end of the spectrum. Book-banning is a major priority.”

Astrid feels suddenly heavier than she should, as if the contents of an entire pail of pebbles has been tumbled down her esophagus, settled in her stomach, and is now anchoring her to the earth. Her shoulders slump; her head droops. “But that’s wrong,” she says, her voice so quiet she almost doesn’t hear herself. “Book-banning is wrong. So is targeting an entire community of people.” 

Lucy’s nod is a knowing one, for although the women have children who are the same age, she is nearly thirty years older than her neighbor. Therefore, her wisdom is different. Therefore, her experience is vast. “They’re going after To Kill A Mockingbird,” she says. “It’s Bas’s favorite. When he gets back from touring and I fill him in, he’s gonna be livid, but I haven’t said much about any of it yet. The band is in Europe right now. They’re operating in a different time zone. The fact that he still calls most nights to read Pip a bedtime story before she goes to sleep? That’s what I care about. I’ll brief him on all this school-board shit when he gets home.”

There are a million and one questions that Astrid could likely come up with in response to this information:

• When will Sebastian be home?

• How long has he been gone?

• Might the band carry sway with the school board?

• How is the board going after preferred pronouns?

• What do you mean by ‘the board’s priority is bathrooms’?

• Are Franco and I going to have to move again?

She asks none of these things, however, choosing instead to wonder, “Why To Kill A Mockingbird? That doesn’t have anything at all to do with the LGBTQ community.”

Not as voracious a reader as she’d like to be, Astrid thinks back on her own high-school curriculum and considers her tenth-grade year in Mrs. Englewood’s class. They’d read The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, and To Kill A Mockingbird. All she can remember of the story is that there had been a man of color who’d been wrongly accused of a crime and a white man who had defended him. In the movie, this white man (Atticus Finch, wasn’t that his name?) had been played by Gregory Peck, and Astrid had found him to be exceedingly handsome. 

“It uses the N-word,” Lucy informs her, “and though the board hasn’t actually said it, I sort of think that umbrella of ‘profanity’ is essentially a foot in the door for some other issues.”

“Like..?” Astrid prompts.

“Like same-sex relationships,” Lucy says with a shrug. “They’re not just out to protect Lake Caywood’s children from scenes with sex in them, but also scenes containing profanity. It’s completely fucked up, if you ask me… but nobody did.”

Now Astrid does laugh.

And then she promptly begins to cry.

“Hey,” Lucy says, reaching over to wrap an arm across the younger woman’s shoulders. “This isn’t over yet, right? There’s a board meeting scheduled for next Tuesday. You’ll go. I’ll go with you. So will Jane.” She smiles, silently willing her friend to do the same. “You’re not alone in this, Astrid, and if Franco wants to wear a dress, he should absolutely be allowed to wear a dress. The Lake Caywood School Board has no right to discriminate against anyone—let alone an entire community of people. Right?”

“Right,” Astrid manages. “Thank you.”

👗

Much later, finally curled under the heavy down comforter that she’s been craving for hours, it occurs to Astrid that she actually doesn’t agree with all of what Lucy Campbell had said. 

Of course, an entire group of people shouldn’t be discriminated against… but Franco isn’t a member of the LGBTQ community!

Is he?