Goose and Patrick

by David Connor

  “I recognize that stance,” I said, picking up my cellphone from the table and sticking it in my pocket. “I’ve stood like that a lot. Everything about me started to change when I met this one, though, including my posture.” I pulled out one of the patio chairs for Carrie as Patrick set down the popcorn and more juice.

  “I’ve never dressed like I want to in front of people.” When Carrie set down the unicorn, she still held a ninety-nine-cent tiara in her hand. “It feels right and weird all at the same time.”

  “You’re safe here,” Patrick promised.

  “He’s good at that…making the people around him feel safe.” I kissed Patrick’s bearded cheek, and then fixed his glasses, which I’d left all askew.

  Carrie’s next smile seemed easier. “I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you face to face, Goose.”

  “Am I everything you expected?” I asked.

  “You know what?” She moved her arms away from her body to reach for the snacks. “You look exactly like a man named Goose with a dog named Wilbur should look. I thought that when I saw you on TV, and it’s even truer now.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I picked up the crown she’d set down and stepped up beside her. Carrie tensed again. Seeing anyone else do that when someone came near hurt my heart. “It’s okay. I just think our little snow night party could use a queen.”

  “Nah.” She waved me away. “I knocked it on the floor and picked it up. I wasn’t really going to put it on.”

  “I think you should. If you’ll let me. If I can reach.”

  “You have my vote.” Patrick stood, and then lifted me up, putting me at just the right height to place the crown on Carrie’s head.

  “Perfect.”

  She smiled.

  Another gasp-worthy moment had Patrick laughing at me as my feet touched floor again. “You know what else a queen needs?” I could barely contain myself. The idea that developed was that good. “A queen needs a castle. Follow me.”

  What party poopers! They were still at the table when I turned back halfway to Paper Goods.

  “Come on!”

  Finally, my excitement was contagious. Carrie ran to catch up and Patrick was grinning ear to ear as he followed.

  Huge bundles of paper towels made beautiful castle walls in the center of aisle twenty-one. Patrick was better at stacking them than I. His walls were perfectly straight, whereas mine were just a bit wonky. By the time we finished, the structure was seven feet tall, its roof a sawtooth design created by leaving a space between smaller packs of toilet tissue lined up around the perimeter. Patrick called it crenellations.

  “It’s a word and pattern I learned in my nerdiest of days, your majesty, whilst playing Dungeons and Dragons.”

  While he worked to make them precise, I rushed up front for the perfect throne. “Be right back.”

  Carrie was looking out one of two windows in her palace when I putt-putted back on the mobility scooter I’d gotten from the area where we kept the carts.

  “The seat’s nice and cushy,” I said.

  The back of the castle was open for easy access, but hardly spacious enough for the three of us. We bowed as Carrie’s footman, then exited the same way I’d entered as she took her seat, her face lit up and carefree.

  “Music. We need music for a proper coronation.” I turned it back on just in time to hear the intro to “Open Arms” by Journey.

  Patrick bowed again. “May I have this dance, Your Highness?”

  “I don’t know how.” Carrie looked at her socked feet.

  “It’s all one, two, three. One, two, three.” One arm up, the other angled so she could fit in front of him, Patrick motioned to Carrie. “You’ll get it. One, two, three. One, two, three.”

  “In the show I’m doing, it’s one, two, three, and, one two three, and.” Carrie tapped the beat. “The ‘and’ is important. The dialogue says so.”

  Patrick appeared pensive.

  “The King and I.”

  “Yes,” Carrie told me.

  “At school?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re right,” I said. Taking Patrick’s right hand, placing his left on my back, I filled the space he’d left for Carrie. “This is three quarter time. One, two, three. One, two, three. ‘Shall We dance,’ from the show, isn’t a waltz. It’s a polka.”

  My sweet Patrick and I waltzed around the small space a few times, then made our way to the much wider cross aisle to continue.

  “Your turn.” I ducked under Patrick’s elbow, grabbed my phone from the shelf with dozens more packs of Charmin, and filmed as he and Carrie finished out the song. “By George, she’s got it.” I did my best Henry Higgins and clapped. Neither Patrick nor Carrie knew who that was, so I explained. “Maybe your school will do My Fair Lady next year.”

  “And maybe I’ll try out for the title character.”

  “That would be awesome. Holly Golightly is her name. You can hit me up before auditions. I know the show backwards and forward.”

  Patrick suggested a tea party inside the paper palace as our next activity, but Carrie had other plans. She reigned as the queen of her castle barely five minutes, before the decision came to board the scooter to ram through the walls and knock the whole thing over.

  Patrick and I took a turn after that, setting up toilet paper stockades and plowing them down. When that became tiresome, we moved on to snow forts. We each had our own, plus a supply of cushiony soft but strong snowballs from a pack we tore open and would add to our tab. Pelting one another, we giggled and screeched, until Wilbur grabbed a roll and ran off.

  “Hey, you!”

  Down the center aisle all four of us went, past Automotive on one side, Camping Gear on the other. Wilbur continued to push the TP with his nose, somehow managing to unfurl a long, perforated trail to mark his path along the way. With most of it unwound, seventeen aisles worth, he collapsed on the carpet way up by number four, near Lighting and Clocks, using what was left to rest his head.

  We joined him there, right down on the floor. It was hard to decide who was having more fun as the four of us worked to catch our breath.

  I was the first one up again, after exactly ten minutes. Two dozen clocks told me so. The music called to me, “Come on Eileen.” I had to dance, despite my name being Goose.

  Carrie tried to teach us the “In Your Feelings” moves from the previous summer. She was good. Patrick picked it up, but I was a hopeless cause, possibly because we were trying to dance to Drake while listening to Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

  Over in Plumbing, we bowled, using plungers for pins and a basketball from Sporting Goods to knock them down.

  “Gutter ball!” At this, I was better than Patrick. Standing behind, pressed against his back, I helped him with his release on his second throw in the third frame.

  “Strike! Everything’s better when we do it together.”

  At the end of the round, Carrie was ahead of me by three plungers. I needed a strike myself to pull ahead, and devised a plan, just in case I blew it. “Here, Wilbur.” He was watching off to the side but jumped up when I called. “Get the ball!” I stepped up, reached back, and threw. “Strike!” What my ball hadn’t knocked down, Wilbur had. “I win!”

  “You cheat!” Carrie yelled with a smile.

  “Disqualified! The winner is Carrie!” Patrick grabbed her a trophy, a pink toilet brush with the head of a flamingo.

  There was a free-standing hoop over where we’d gotten the ball. A pick-up game of basketball was inevitable before we put it back on the shelf. Carrie kicked our butts, even though it was two against one.

  “Swish! Twenty-one to four!”

  “NBA, here she comes,” I said, bending over to breathe.

  Carrie corrected me. “WNBA.”

  “Absolutely! Sorry.” I had to sit, right there on the floor again, my back against a shelf laid out with tennis rackets. She’d worked us that hard.

  “It’s okay, Goose. I know you didn’t mean anything
negative.”

  “Do you play in school?” I asked her, swiping at my forehead to mop up some sweat.

  “Yes.” Carrie joined me down on the floor. “I kick ass, and I don’t expect that to change in college, after I start transitioning.”

  “What else are you into?” Patrick asked, still dribbling the ball.

  “I get good grades. I’m in the choir and band.”

  “And Drama Club. What part are you playing in The King and I,” I asked.

  “Lun Tha. I’m the first African American in the part at our school. We started rehearsals right after Christmas vacation and open in April. Of course, I wish I was playing Tuptim, but…”

  “I love that show. I can’t wait to come see you.”

  “I was going to put up a poster in the break room.”

  “Absolutely! Do it.”

  “Goose sings like an angel.” Patrick reached down to rub the back of my neck.

  “I sang with my angels,” I reminded him, “in my vision earlier. Hey. Let’s do the duet. I’ll be Lun Tha, and you be Tuptim? I bet I can find the song on YouTube.”

  Carrie beamed. “Cool! I wish we had a piano.”

  We gasped in unison. Patrick barked. Then, Wilbur did.

  “We do have a piano!” Carrie and I both squealed it together.

  There was an upright just off Electronics, plus some portable keyboards, an electric guitar and a sax on display. Several woodwind and brass instruments were locked in a case. We wouldn’t need those, anyway, I figured.

  Carrie played beautifully, as we sang together, both “I Have Dreamed” and “We Kiss in a Shadow.” Once done, we went back and sang each one again, while Patrick recorded us on his phone.

  “Brava! Bravissimo!” He gave us a standing ovation, which got Wilbur on his feet and made him bark again.

  “How did you learn to do that?” I asked Carrie, attempting a two-finger rendition of Chopsticks. “All by ear?”

  “My mother signed me up for lessons when I was six. My teacher always yelled at me for playing by ear, but I got pretty good at both.” She pulled at the cuffs of her top. “They’re not all bad. My parents, I mean.”

  “Maybe they’ll come around,” Patrick said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Watch this.” To keep the mood light. I pulled up “Climb Every Mountain” on YouTube while Phil Collins sang “You Can’t Hurry Love” over the PA system. The Sound of Music solo became a quartet, when I sang, Wilbur howled, and so did Patrick and Carrie.

  “Ahhhhooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!”

  As Phil faded, finally, ZZ Top popped up in the rotation. “Yes!” While Patrick ran for Jefferson and Calvin, I jammed on air guitar, on a real one, actually, sans the amp. On my knees, I serenaded them a bit, then the three of us strutted up the DVDs and CDs aisle, like Naomi Campbell and four Zoolanders. I couldn’t think of any other male models in my head, so Patrick, Jefferson, Calvin, and I were all the same one.

  With one arm around each mannequin, Patrick declared, “We should take our act on the road!”

  I reached for Carrie, who’d collapsed back onto the piano bench with laughter. “Want to go for a ride?”

  She took my hand and stood. “A ride?”

  “The superhero ride,” I said to Patrick.

  He made that face, consternation, concern.

  “We’ll be careful. To the Bat Cave, also known as the storage room!”

  I had Carrie tie the smallest blanket from her bed, a red throw, around her neck like a cape, then sent her up the rungs of the rolling stock ladder with her unicorn in her arms and the tiara on her head.

  “Not all the way and hold on tight.”

  “He’s sweet but very worrisome,” I said, patting Patrick’s tummy. “But, yes, hold on tight.”

  Once the bed had been moved to give us access through the door, the path was clear to speed from the back of the store to the front. Carrie’s cape flew behind her as we raced around the whole store until both Patrick and I were out of breath from pushing.

  “I never got a turn.” He wasn’t too tired to pout, as he explained to Carrie what had happened earlier.

  She took pity on him, “Here,” and handed over the cape. “What do you say, Goose?”

  I stretched with a grunt. “Anything to make my man happy.”

  We hauled ass, Carrie and I pushing Patrick, which got us to wondering what would win in a race, the utility ladder or the scooter.

  “Right down the center aisle, from the storage room door, all the way to the front entrance,” I instructed, once we’d set everything up. Our starting point was marked by a row of paper towels, the finish line a yellow paper streamer from Cards and Stationery I’d stretched from one side of the front of the store to the other and attached to two anti-theft detector checkpoint towers up there. “Winner gets bragging rights.”

  Carrie was on the scooter. Patrick would be pushing me on the ladder.

  “Take your mark,” I called. “Get set. Go!”

  The scooter started off quite slow. I thought we had it. Twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two, the aisle signs sped by. Wilbur yipped the whole time but was wise enough to stay out of the way. About halfway to the front, the large wall of windows now in sight, Carrie made her move, putting the pedal to the metal.

  “What took you so long?” Her wait hadn’t been that long, but Patrick and I definitely came in second.

  “I really thought we’d be faster,” Patrick said.

  “Two out of three?” Carrie asked.

  We switched drivers for the second round. Carrie wanted to push me, which put Patrick on the scooter.

  “Come on!” He lost again, this time by a good four seconds. “Maybe it’s me.”

  When I tried the scooter, Carrie got me, too. She seemed to have the right stuff, whether pushing the ladder or riding the mechanical vehicle.

  “Okay. Enough of that.” My body was starting to remind me I wasn’t a teenager. “Let’s get everything back where it belongs,” I said, still out of breath. “We are guests here, after all.”

  We tidied up, then Carrie listened right away when I suggested she crawl into bed and get comfortable. I’d shut off the satellite radio and moved the air mattress over to Electronics, right in front of the huge TV on display. The remote was between the unicorn and her pillow. One of the higher channels was playing an old Fred and Ginger movie. That was what she’d settled on, though she really wasn’t paying much attention.

  My sketchpad beckoned. When Wilbur and I returned with it, Carrie and Patrick were having a serious discussion about hormone therapy. Carrie had a ton of questions, many of which Patrick was able to answer. I joined him on the padded bench off to the side of the bed, and Wilbur settled at my feet. Jefferson and Calvin were with us, too, in mannequin form, just a couple feet away where we’d left them after “Sharp Dressed Man,” in front of the huge display of movie DVDs and music on CDs.

  I did sketches of Carrie and Patrick flying, and then grabbed a box of crayons and two clipboards across the aisle in Office Supplies, so they could color their comic-book-like portraits as I started on another, one more true-to-life. True to life, but whose? This time, I had no idea who I was drawing.

  “You’re so good!” Carrie said when she looked at herself and Patrick as superheroes. “I wish I had a talent.”

  “I’ve heard you sing,” I told her. “And play. There are two talents right there. Plus, you can dance, play sports, and run and drive faster than both of us. I bet we discover many more as we get to know you better.”

  As the details of a face came to light in my third drawing, I began to wonder who she was. Jefferson was always with me, whether it was obvious or not. He was helping me then.

  “Can we see?” Patrick eventually asked, sliding closer to kiss me on the cheek.

  “Sure. I think it’s—” The moment I turned the book toward him and Carrie, she cut off my words and reached out to touch the paper.

  “It’s my grandmother. She died.�
�

  “Oh.” To me, the sketch was Ruth Porter. “Oh! Your last name is Porter.”

  “Yeah. How did you…?” Carrie’s hand was still on the work I’d created, the visage of the woman she was convinced was a relative, even though Ruth Porter would have been far too old to be who Carrie claimed.

  “I don’t honestly know,” I admitted.

  “Is she talking to you?” Carrie met my eyes, but only a moment, then it was back to the picture.

  “I’m not sure. It’s all new, honestly. Maybe she was, through my drawing pencil.”

  “She lived in Tennessee.”

  “Your grandmother?” I got a chill, and then a second one, when Patrick touched the top of my hand. “That’s where we were when I first started hearing from ghosts.”

  “The tree thing,” Carrie said. “I knew it was somewhere down south, but I couldn’t remember exactly where.”

  “Do you have more family there?”

  “Yeah. Great aunts and uncles, some cousins.”

  I wondered for how many generations. “Maybe your grandmother came through to show she supports you. Here.” I tore the page out and handed it over.

  “She always did. I got to play with dolls at Gramma’s, not at home. I wish she was still here.” Carrie chewed on her lip a moment. “She’s not saying anything else?”

  “I don’t really have a handle on it,” I said again, “like Long Island Medium or Tyler Henry seem to.” I’d been watching every psychic and medium show I came across since the previous October. “Maybe someday I will. I’m pretty sure either your grandmother or Jefferson—or someone else—wanted us to help you tonight.”

  “Wow.”

  I agreed.

  Carrie yawned. “Can I have this?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think I’ll turn in.” She flicked off the TV. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done tonight.”

  “It was fun.” I got down on my knees to give her another hug. “We’ll be in the breakroom, if you get nervous or something. If you can’t sleep, whatever.”