“Now you! Now you!” Grant screamed, pointing at his uncle.
“Oh, no. There are enough nighttime serums and potions on this face to stock a Bergdorf Goodman beauty counter, so you don’t want to get it wet.”
“GUP!” Maisie protested, pronouncing his name with, like, seven u’s.
“Oh, all right, but just once.” He leaned forward only so far before activating the water. He’d done enough in the way of stage combat in college to act like he’d been hit in the face with a geyser, while missing the brunt of the stream. He threw his arm over his face as he retreated, spinning into the towel rack. The kids laughed and laughed and then he, too, broke down in fits of uncontrollable giggles. It was so stupid, but it was a release, a ray of sunshine bursting through the dark cloud they’d been under.
“My turn!” Grant roared, and he stepped forward and bowed over the washlet.
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Guncle Rule number six.” Just as Grant turned his neck to look up at his uncle, Patrick let fly with a jet of water, hitting him right in the ear. Grant squealed again, equal parts shock and glee. “Never let your guard down!”
“Me! Me! Me!” Maisie jumped up and down, begging for another go.
“Well, okay, but there is a drought. So let’s not go crazy.” But as Maisie stood freshly soaked, wiping water out of her eyes, Patrick realized washlet humor was a kind of toilet humor he could get behind.
When Patrick marched the kids back to their bedroom, Grant tugged on his shorts. “Uncle Patrick? The tooth fairy hasn’t come yet.”
The tooth fairy. Patrick had forgotten. He was now grateful for this middle-of-the-night interruption, imagining the epic morning meltdown that was in store if the tooth fairy failed to make her rounds.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep for her to come?”
“Yes,” Maisie answered before Grant had the chance to.
“Are you asleep now?”
“No,” Grant mumbled, admitting defeat.
“Well, then. I suggest you hop to it.” Patrick tucked them in before summoning his inner fairy and scouring the house for loot.
SIX
Maisie swiveled on a barstool as Patrick stood across the counter from her, waving a spatula. “What’s the matter? You haven’t touched your pancakes.” The seats were made of seafoam upholstery with a low walnut back floating on top of pneumatic height-adjusting chrome stands, a jackpot find from a local thrift store. Maisie languidly kicked her feet against them as if they were from Ikea and somehow deserved her scuff marks and replied with only a yawn.
It was almost two in the morning when they finally conked out, allowing Patrick to slide the tooth fairy’s offerings under Grant’s pillow, so he could sympathize with Maisie’s exhaustion if not her apparent lack of appetite. It was rare his modern kitchen was used for anything close to food preparation on one of Rosa’s days off (unless coffee, protein shakes, or cocktails counted as food); this should be an event. He even, for the first time, used the griddle that sat atop the duel-fuel, JennAir self-venting stove he was forced into purchasing when it became clear a hood would interrupt the flow of the open kitchen.
“You don’t eat breakfast? Are you doing intermittent fasting?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Maisie replied.
“Really? Everyone’s doing intermittent fasting it seems. What’s the problem, then?”
“Mom made our pancakes look like Mickey Mouse.”
Patrick shook his finger. “We’re not doing that.” Goddammit, Sara.
“She came! She came!” Grant tore around the corner holding Patrick’s Golden Globe statue. He hopped up on the barstool next to his sister and plunked his prize down on the counter. “What is it?”
Patrick was horrified. “MY GOLDEN GLOBE?!”
“The tooth fairy left it for me.”
“Like hell she did!”
After the kids had gone back to bed, Patrick poured himself a nightcap while he waited for them to fall asleep. He remembered struggling with what to leave on the tooth fairy’s behalf. He might have even had a second drink, but there was absolutely no way, short of him being roofied, that he put his Golden Globe under Grant’s pillow.
“That’s mine. It has my name on it. ‘Patrick O’Hara, Best Supporting Actor—Series, Miniseries, or Television Film.’”
“Tho?” Grant’s eyes were on this prize and he wasn’t easing up.
“So? Is your name Patrick O’Hara? No, it is not. Have you been in a series, miniseries, or television film? No, you have not. You took that off my shelf and you know it.” He pried the statue from his nephew’s hands before the boy could get anymore of his sticky fingerprints on it. “If this house catches fire I’m saving this before either of you. You do not touch it. Understand?”
Grant bobbed his head up and down.
“Now, let’s go see what the tooth fairy actually left you.” He took Grant by the hand and marched him back to his bedroom with Maisie tagging along behind. He pulled something from underneath his nephew’s pillow and handed it to him feigning surprise, as if the reward had not come from his personal collection. “It’s a Playbill from the 2012 Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess. SCORE!”
Grant flipped through the program’s pages. “Where’s the money?”
“It’s better than money. It’s signed by Audra McDonald.”
The kids stood silent, the who? heavily implied.
“Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald?”
“What’th a Tony?”
“Oh my god. You’re from Connecticut, so I can understand your not knowing what a Golden Globe is. But a Tony Award? You live right next door to New York!”
Maisie chimed in, a public defender taking on Grant’s case. “The tooth fairy is supposed to leave money so that kids can buy toys.”
On some level, Patrick knew this, but he didn’t keep cash in the house. He had found a few pennies in a junk drawer and some loose change Rosa had collected from his pockets near the washing machine, but knew last night that wouldn’t be nearly enough. “It’s different in California.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes the tooth fairy runs out of cash after visiting the East Coast kids, and by the time she gets to the West Coast she has to leave prizes. Look, if you’re not happy with it, I’ll buy it from you. How does fifty dollars sound?”
Maisie’s jaw almost hit the floor. “Fifty dollars!”