Patrick locked eyes with Clara. “I’m not.”
“You’re both morons,” she said.
“It’s my decision, Clara,” Greg told her. “I know what I’m doing.” And then, to Patrick, “Beautiful speech. Thank you. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t have done it.”
“Remember what telemarketers called Patrick when he would answer the phone?” Clara asked, softening.
“Ma’am?” Greg asked.
Clara confirmed. “Uncle Ma’am,” she said, repeating the joke to herself.
The kids ran by on a third loop and this time Patrick nabbed them. He got down on one knee and sat Grant on his leg.
“You’re Uncle Toilet,” Grant charged.
Patrick looked up at his sister, doing his best to mask any regret. He knew this was an audition, a callback for network execs—the last hurdle before landing the role.
“Let me tell you something. Both of you.” He ushered Maisie in, too. “As a professional who has studied comedy. Bathroom humor is cheap. Okay? Guncle Rule number three. Is it an easy laugh? Yes. But it’s lazy. It’s not the laugh you want. But, I think you’ll find if you work harder, dig a little deeper, find the joke that lies beneath the obvious one, that’s when your comedy will really shine. Understand?”
They both nodded.
“Okay.” Patrick slid Grant off his knee and stood up, resting his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. He was loath to employ his own catchphrase, but this situation called for a special exception. “And that’s . . . how you do it.” He winked at Clara, knowing it would drive her a particular kind of insane.
And then Grant had to spoil his triumph by yelling, “You’re Uncle Sewer!” before running off to find his grandparents.
Greg laughed heartily, which caused those standing nearby to turn. “Well, you told him to dig deeper.”
Patrick buried his face in his hands and grumbled. “Commedia dell’farte.” Grant may have won this battle, but Patrick was determined to win the war.
The clouds above darkened in a way they didn’t in Palm Springs. A thunderstorm was imminent. Clara motioned toward the car and signaled her husband that it was time to go. She had no desire to lose an argument with her brothers and get drenched.
FOUR
“Ith that an island?”
Patrick peered across both Maisie and Grant to look out the airplane window at what lay thirty thousand feet below them. “That’s a cloud.”
“It lookth like an island.” It didn’t matter the cards he was dealt, Grant apparently always doubled down.
Patrick turned to Maisie, whose legs dangled below her seat in a way that made it look like she’d grown three inches since takeoff. “There’s only one state that’s an island, do you know what that is?” Maisie raised her hand. “And don’t say Rhode Island, because they just threw that in there to fuck with you.” Maisie dropped her hand back in her lap.
“You said a thwear.” Grant’s eyes looked wide as Frisbees.
“Okay, this is going to be a really long summer if we’re going to track every time that I say a swear.”
The goodbyes had been awful. Greg did his best to explain his situation without burdening them, but the children were, in the moment, inconsolable. They had just said goodbye to their mother and they were being, what—sent to live with a stranger? Even to Patrick it seemed needlessly cruel. Greg cried, the children sobbed, and Patrick did his best to remain stoic. Deep down he didn’t think this was any better an idea than they did, but someone had to appear certain; someone had to be captaining this ship. More tears were shed at the airport. Patrick pulled his cap down so far over his eyes, he had to look up to see past the brim. Maisie and Grant each had two checked bags; he never knew children came with so much stuff. They ate quietly at the airport Papa Gino’s, but none of them had much of an appetite for cardboard pizza or, really, for anything else.
“Can we watch YouTube?”
“What? No. There’s no Wi-Fi on this plane.”
“Why not?”
“One of the advantages of being on an airplane is that we’re disconnected from everything going on beneath us. We’re in a metal tube in the sky. It’s a time to reflect, read a book maybe, to be with ourselves.” Patrick was lying about the Wi-Fi and wasn’t sure why. His insistence, perhaps, that there was more to appreciate about planes than staring blankly at a screen, doing something you could readily do on the ground. He carried a torch for air travel from the 1960s, before he was born, when flying seemed glamorous and stewardesses looked like Dusty Springfield or Petula Clark, served chateaubriand off of a cart, and came by every so often to light your cigarette. But since Grant and Maisie weren’t old enough to enjoy an in-flight martini, was this really necessary? Shouldn’t he loosen the reins, or would that set a bad precedent—would he lose all sense of authority before this experiment began? “You guys packed a few books, right?”
“Does your car at least have a DVD player?” Maisie asked.
“I’m Uber only.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told you I don’t drive. I have a Tesla, but I keep it in the garage.”
Maisie furrowed her brow. It was hard to know where to tear at her uncle’s logic when he spouted so many unfamiliar words. “What’s a Tesla?”
“It’s like a spaceship.”
Grant turned his head at lightning speed.
“Not an actual spaceship, but it might as well be, as I don’t know how to use it. It’s just a fancy car.”
“Why do you have a fanthy car if you don’t drive?”
Patrick closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to make it ninety hours, let alone days. “It was a gift.”
“Someone gave you a car?” Maisie was incredulous.
It was the studio. They gave them to the main cast when they signed a contract extension for two final seasons. “That happens sometimes when you’re famous.”
“You’re famouth?”
Patrick peered into the aisle to make sure no one was listening. “I used to be.”
Grant kicked his feet lazily, hitting the seat in front of him. Patrick reached over to stop him. “We should have taken Mommy’th car. Mommy’th car has a DVD player.”
Patrick wished he could go back in time, maybe to one of the nights he and Sara drank 40s in the lounge on their dormitory floor, when they were doing something nonsensical that amused them, like trying to pronounce the word noodle in as many accents as possible, to tell Sara that one day she’d be driving a minivan with a television inside. “Well, I don’t really leave the house much and I have a TV at home.”