“How do you know?” Maisie was genuinely asking, each word syncopated like discordant jazz. “How do you know we’re going to get through?”
Patrick thought long and hard about how he could make them understand, settling on a quote he had selected for his high school yearbook, one that became eerily prophetic. “‘It’s not the tragedies that kill us; it’s the messes.’ Dorothy Parker.” As soon as this passed his lips he knew it was the wrong fit. Not because they wouldn’t understand it or know who Dorothy Parker was—although they wouldn’t and didn’t—but rather because, what was this if not a mess? Sara’s death was a tragedy, sure. But Greg’s addiction was a mess, his asking Patrick to step in was a mess, his thinking Patrick would know how to handle a situation like this was a huge mess of epic proportions. So, he went straight for the truth. “I know what it’s like to want someone back, too.”
Grant, in a moment of reversion, removed the paper towel from his mouth and sucked on his thumb. His face was tear-streaked and somehow even his hair was wet.
“What if something happens to you?”
A pounding on the door startled them all and Patrick immediately banged three times back. “It’s not going to, Maisie.”
“How do you know?” Her voice had never sounded smaller or more frail.
“Sir?” It was the flight attendant. “Sir, open up!” She was clearly not there to ask if they wanted chateaubriand.
“In a minute!” he yelled angrily.
“GUP?” It was Grant now, needing an answer to his sister’s question.
“Because I do.” And then he added, “Because I’m not famous enough to die young.” How’s that for the unvarnished truth? “Here. Splash some water on your face. You’ll feel better.”
More pounding on the door.
“IN A GODDAMN MINUTE!” He looked Grant in the eye; he was still standing on the toilet. “Yeah, I thwore, tho what.” He winked and Grant smiled.
He helped them wash their faces and dry their tears. Slowly he opened the door and ushered Maisie out before helping Grant jump down from his perch. Patrick looked at the frustrated flight attendant, who clearly did not earn enough to have to deal with the likes of them. She did not look like Dusty Springfield, she did not look like Petula Clark. She looked, in short, annoyed. “Sorry. Tooth emergency. We’re headed back to our seats.” Together, like a family of ducks, they waddled back to their row, Patrick’s blood pressure slowly returning to normal.
“Here,” Patrick said when they were situated in their seats. “Let’s look at my phone.” He pulled his credit card out of his wallet.
“But the Wi-Fi . . .”
“They fixed it. Didn’t you hear? There was an announcement when we were in the bathroom.” He mussed Grant’s hair and smiled as he handed over his phone. “Why don’t you show me what’s so great about YouTube. Just don’t . . . Guncle Rule number five: If a gay man hands you his phone, look only at what he’s showing you. If it’s a photo, don’t swipe. And for god’s sake, don’t open any unfamiliar apps.”
FIVE
The scream pierced the darkness and Patrick sat bolt upright. Jesus Christ. Again?! He had just drifted off to sleep in his own bed—finally—and was going to have to reason with these monsters that it was possible, preferable even, to grieve without causing one’s own ears, or (more to the point) someone else’s, to bleed. He jumped out of bed and ran smack into his bedroom door, forgetting he was still wearing his skin-rejuvenating, silk charmeuse weighted sleep mask. His own scream was deeper, annoyed, and mercifully brief.
He pushed the mask up his forehead. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and confirm that, yes, after two weeks he was finally back in his own room. Yes, the air had just kicked on. Yes, the door was where it was supposed to be. No, this was not the dreadful hotel by his brother’s house. No, the noise was not drunken gamblers stumbling off the bus after a day at Mohegan Sun. He stepped out in the hall to find the source of the ruckus. Thankfully he’d had the foresight to sleep in gym shorts instead of his preference for, well, less. “Maisie? Maisie is that you?”
It wasn’t Maisie, but Grant, shaking in the hall outside the guest bath.
“What is it? Your mom? Your dad? Another tooth? What happened?” Patrick crouched down to put his arm around his nephew’s shoulders. He followed the boy’s gaze into the bathroom. “Do you need to use the potty again?” They had been through this once before bed. Grant said he usually had help “wiping” and Patrick stood back aghast; it was something Patrick didn’t even do for himself since he installed two eleven-thousand-dollar Japanese toilets (sorry, washlets) he’d read about in Consumer Reports.
“The toilet . . . moved.”
“What do you mean it moved?” He didn’t have the clearest view from his vantage point, but it seemed to be exactly in the place that it should be.
“The lid.” Grant finally mustered the courage to look at his uncle. “There’s a ghost.”
Up until now, their first night had mostly been a success. The kids were enamored with the house (“You have a hot tub?!”) and made themselves more or less at home. There was some awkwardness with their bedtime routine. Maisie thankfully showered herself, but Grant insisted on a bath, while bemoaning the lack of bath toys (the pool noodles Patrick had were too large for the tub), and there was a small meltdown about their uncle’s baking soda toothpaste being too paste-y. (He argued that children’s toothpastes with their bright colors and bold flavors probably caused cavities, but relented, saying he would buy one specifically labeled for kids.) Maisie and Grant agreed to share a guest room, at least to start, and Patrick laid in the king-sized bed with them, improvising an elaborate story about a roadrunner and a jackrabbit named Meep and Moop and their adventures in the desert. The kids complained about the metal sculpture that hung over the bed; it was too angular and Grant feigned a fear of rectangles. Neither of them knew their sleep numbers, laying waste to the guest mattress’s smartest feature, but eventually, exhausted from the day, they all nodded off. At some point before midnight Patrick awoke and extracted himself, even though he was surprised to find sharing was not horrifically unpleasant.
“Oh, no, no, no, Grant. It does that. The toilet. When you get close to it, the lid rises automatically. That’s what it does. It’s called a feature. You pay extra for those.”
“But there was a light inside.” Grant leaned in to whisper in his uncle’s ear. “Glowing.” He was clinging to his conviction that there was some otherworldly presence at play.
“A night-light. Isn’t that great? So if you have to use the bathroom in the night, you don’t have to blind yourself with the overhead light.”