Beezus on literature

[kinglearisstupid]

Rossi has never had kids, and as much time as he spent with various nieces and nephews, he's never actually had to deal with one on a daily basis. So he is never quite sure where Beezus falls on the scale of kid behavior, whether she's in the safe end of Kids Will Be Kids or rapidly spiraling towards We Need to Talk About Kevin.

"She's . . . spirited," her kindergarten teacher says, though the "spirited" took so long to come out that for a moment, Rossi was convinced that he was going to say "evil."

"At least you don't have boys," Bridget says. "They're on a mission to destroy everything you own. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU, YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO PLAY BASKETBALL INSIDE. JONATHAN! LUCAS! Hang on, I have to deal with this."

"Boys, sure, they wreck stuff," Rossi says. He knows; he used to be one. It was a long time ago, yes, but he has personal experience and he does remember breaking a lot of things, accidentally and on purpose. "But they more or less leave your soul intact. Girls mess with your head and shit all over your heart."

"That must be why King Lear is so upset all the time," Emily deadpans.

Old age is scary, Rossi acquiesces, but having three daughters must be fucking terrifying.

"Who is King Lear?" Beezus asks. She is wearing her pajamas with the feet, which Rossi admits make her look tiny and adorable and reminds him of better times, when she was immobile and couldn't speak, but it also means they can't hear her coming.

Which is also terrifying.

She holds out her arms to Rossi, who obligingly totes her up and seats her beside her mother.

"King Lear is a man in a story who was really sad," Emily says. "Because he had three little girls and they fought over his land."

"Why do they want land?" Beezus asks. "Are there ponies on it?"

"I don't --- well --- I guess there could've been ponies."

"Then why didn't he just give them each a pony and say, 'No fighting, or I will kill you all.'"

Rossi exchanges a look of alarm with Emily, concerned that this is heading down the path of We Need to Talk About Beatrice. "The King is a nice king," he tries. "Not a great decision maker when it came to estate-planning, but he's not going to kill his daughters. He's just really old and afraid he's going to die, so he thought he would give his land to his daughters to take care of after he dies, but they kept arguing about it and it made him very sad. Especially when it rained."

"Then he should've said, 'If you girls can't share nicely, none of you get to keep the land!'"

"That is very smart, Beezus," Rossi says. "I don't know why he didn't think of that."

"He's a stupid king, isn't he?"

"Beezus, don't call people names," Emily chides.

Beezus flashes her a look of indignation. "He's not a real person, Mom. He's in a story."

"You shouldn't call people names whether or not they're real. It's very unkind."

"Well, the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood was not real and we call him the Big Bad Wolf, and everyone thinks it's okay. Because he was bad and when the Woodsman killed him and cut him open, everyone cheered and said, 'Yay, the Big Bad Wolf is dead!'"

"That's a little different because he's a wolf," Rossi tries, but his daughter is on a tear and not going to let him get a word in.

"Then there's the witch in Hansel and Gretel. She was also bad and she was also really stupid because Hansel fooled her into thinking he wasn't getting any fatter, and after they killed the witch, Hansel and Gretel said, 'Haha, that bad and stupid witch is dead.'"

Emily does that lip thing which means she knows she's in a dug herself into a hole and will need to talk her way out. "I don't think that's exactly how the story is worded."

"A witch is not a wolf and so it's okay to call her stupid, because she was stupid, and --- and ---" Beezus pounds her fist against the top of the island, "and a king is not a wolf so if he's being stupid, you can say, 'He is a really stupid king.'"

"I don't really follow your logic," Rossi tells her, "but I'm not going to question it."

Emily puts her arm around him, pressing a kiss against his shoulder. "I'm starting to understand your theory about King Lear."

"And kings are just really stupid, usually." There's no stopping that kid when she is on a roll. "There's that king who didn't wear any clothes and then there's that king who tried to kill Baby Jesus."

"That was Herod," Rossi points out. "He was real."

"He was really stupid to try to kill Jesus," Beezus continues. "Because you can't kill Jesus. And, like, he asked his soldiers to find Joseph and Mary and they didn't look very hard, did they? Because if they did, they would've found them in the stable. The shepherds found them. Even the wisemen found them, and it was a really long time ago, so they didn't even have Google Maps ---"

"Google Maps?" Emily repeats incredulously.

"So these soldiers were either really lazy or really stupid, and I think they were really stupid because a stupid king who tries to kill Baby Jesus would only have stupid soldiers, because the smart ones work for God."

"Fine, Herod is stupid," Rossi concedes. "Can we talk about something else?"

"No, because now I'm really mad," Beezus says.

"King Lear is also stupid," he adds. "Is that better?"

Beezus taps her fingers against the granite countertop and says, after a moment, "A little better." She holds her thumb and index finger less than half an inch apart and says. "This much better. And, I want to know, what happened to all the land? Did his daughters learn to share?"

"If I told you what happens, then where would be the surprise?" Rossi asks, because even for him, master at bullshitting and knocking UNSUBS off their game, it is difficult to come up with a child-friendly ending to King Lear.

Beezus glances up, rapt with attention. "There is a surprise?"

Yes, kid. Spoiler alert: they all die.

"Is it a good surprise or a bad surprise?" Beezus asks dubiously. "Because some surprises are good and some of them are bad. Like what happens when you give Mudgie prunes."

"That was definitely a bad surprise," Emily says, and Rossi nods in agreement.

"Well, you'll just have to find out in AP English Lit," Rossi tells his daughter. "And all that stuff about King Lear being stupid? You could write lots and lots of essays about it. It's brilliant stuff. Your teacher would be astounded."

"I will get five gold stars?" Beezus asks. "Like on my project about my family?"

"You sure will, sweetheart," Rossi says, tapping Beezus on the nose. "And hopefully, I wouldn't have to do most of it."

"Mommy wouldn't let me use scissors," Beezus says pointedly.

"Not after what you did to Henry's hair," Emily says.

Henry's hair --- well, that's more Kids Will Be Kids. Rossi is fine with that.

Beezus protests, gesturing wildly, "He wanted me to do it because he didn't want to have hair that looked like a girl's!"

"Hey, what did we say about name-calling?"

"This is an entirely circular argument," Rossi mutters to himself, since nobody is listening to him anyway.

"But it's not a bad thing to be a girl. That's what you said yourself, Mommy. So it's not really name-calling."

"You know who looked like a girl?" Rossi says, changing the subject. "King Lear."

"Well, he was stupid anyway," Beezus says. "Kings are just really stupid. What do kings do anyway? Besides count taxes and kill babies?"

Emily turns to him. "I don't even know how to respond to that."

". . . I mean, Bob is a builder and you know that because his name is Bob the Builder. Dora is an explorer because her name is Dora the Explorer. Mommy is an FBI agent because her name is Agent Prentiss. And we know Joseph is a carpenter even though it's not in his name, because the bible said so, but I'm not sure what a carpenter does."

"They make furniture," Emily explains.

Beezus's sigh is full of contempt. "No one makes furniture, Mommy. We just buy it all from IKEA."

Apparently having had enough of this conversation, she slinks back onto the ground and trots to the den with Mudgie following at her heels. Rossi watches her disappear, feeling utterly defeated.

"It's a good thing we stopped at one, didn't we?" he asks Emily.

"Poor King Lear," Emily agrees. "Poor old, stupid King Lear."