“And your drinking. Their father’s in rehab and you can’t not drink for a few months?”
“You drink in front of your kids, I’ve seen you do it! You think pinot grigio is a food group.”
“Their father’s not in rehab!” Clara traced the edge of Patrick’s counter with her finger, stopping just shy of the Post-it with his reset passwords that Cassie had left sitting next to a potted succulent. It wasn’t China. He was hacked by Maisie.
“You’re not taking them, Clara, and that’s final,” he said, stomping out of the room. Patrick sank into his sofa, pulling a coaster from the stack on the surfboard coffee table for his drink. It featured an old photo of a woman sporting a beehive hairdo and a caption that read love your hair! hope you win!
“Think about what they need.” Clara leaned against the bookcases on the far wall to keep her distance. She knocked a ceramic bowl to one side with her elbow, then awkwardly returned it to its proper place.
“I am thinking about what they need. You know what you told me when Joe died?”
“No, Patrick. I don’t know. What did I say?”
“‘It’s not like you were married.’” Patrick punched the pill-ow, scraping his knuckles on the appliqué. “I hate this fucking thing.” He stuffed it in the trash bag with the wrapping paper in a huff, tied the bag tight, and headed for the garage through the kitchen.
Patrick discarded the trash in the bins in his garage, then made a chore of restacking the extra lawn chairs until he gathered his cool in the heat. In the corner he found a croquet set and pulled it out to play with the kids. The orange ball came loose and rolled across the cement floor; he caught it just before it rolled under the Tesla, which sat like a lump under a dustcover. Why did he let his sister get to him like this? He’d long ago untethered himself from his family, from everyone. He shouldn’t care this much. But it was the continued suggestion that he was nobody, and the nagging feeling that she was right.
When he returned, Clara stood at the counter. They fussed in silence, Patrick sloshing the last of his vodka back and rinsing his glass in the sink. Finally, he couldn’t take the silence. “You take them and we’re through.”
“Through with what? What are we through with, Patrick?”
“God help me, I mean it, Clara. Through. Finished. Done.”
“Patrick.” Clara gestured to encompass the room. “Look at where you live. You’re not part of this family anymore. You’re not part of life anymore. You’re already done. Now it’s time for them to come home.”
Patrick spun the glass in his dish towel so quickly, not only did it dry but the towel seemed to also.
Clara put her hands in her pockets and studied her toes. “I got a pedicure for this.”
“This argument?”
“This trip.”
Patrick didn’t know what to do with that information. “Someone should give you a medal.”
“Oh, god. You’re insufferable. I wish I could chalk it up to your own grief over Sara—the sister you never had—but you’ve always been this way.”
“The sister I never—?”
“Please. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Our names even rhyme. It’s like you recast me with her the moment you met.”
Patrick opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t. Following his own advice, he had to at least acknowledge that Clara felt that way, and it didn’t require much thought beyond that to understand those feelings were probably valid. So instead he kept his mouth shut.
Clara seemed to respond favorably to his silence. Her tone shifted. “Did I really say that? About Joe? I didn’t really say that.”
Patrick dried his hands on the dish towel, and fished a clean spoon out of the drawer. “Not when he died. Maybe six months later. It was in the context of . . . It was in the context of something else, some other point you were making. For me to get on with my life. But, yeah. You said it.” He pulled open the freezer, took out a pint of expensive-looking ice cream, pried off the lid, and took a bite. “This is awful.”
“What is it?”
“Buh-her bwickle.” Patrick swallowed. “I sound like Grant. Butter brickle. Maisie picked it out. We tried them all and she only likes old-lady ice cream. Did you see her earlier? She had a date shake.”
Clara recoiled. “I thought she said grape.”
“No, date. Like prunes.” Patrick pointed at the freezer. “We probably have some Neapolitan, if you prefer.”
“Let me try.” Clara opened the drawer for her own spoon and took a bite. “Oh, god.”
“Right?”
“You know who would like this?”
He shrugged.
“Greg.”
Patrick rubbed his eyes. “Oh my god. Remember when we were kids and all he wanted was rum raisin? Nothing chocolate. No peanut butter. Rum raisin.”
“Do you think he thought there was actual rum in it?”
“Always the addict?”
Clara smiled as she set the ice cream down and rinsed her spoon in the sink. “We should bust him out.” She meant it as a joke, but as soon as it was out of her mouth it seemed plausible. “We could do it together. It’d be fun.”
Patrick had an image of the two of them dressed as cat burglars in the shrubbery, tossing pebbles at Greg’s window until they saw a light turn on. “It would be.”
“Just for the night. If only to get some some better ice cream.”
Patrick agreed.
“If I said that to you about Joe, I’m sorry.”
“You did say that to me about Joe.”
“Would you let me apologize?” Clara blurted before lowering her hackles. “I liked Joe.”
Patrick opted for silence again; he reached for the butter brickle before remembering he hated it. He pushed it away from him so hard it tipped over. “I did, too.”
Clara looked out the window, but since it was pitch-black she only saw her own tired reflection staring back at her. “I’m almost fifty years old. Can you believe it?” Her voice was pinched, thin, sad.
Patrick covered the ice cream with its lid, pushing until he was certain it was on tight. It was one of those practical tasks you do when you don’t know to do anything else. “You think I’m selfish. You think everything’s about me. Me, me, me. Always have. But you know what? Self-love for gay people can be an act of survival. You think it made me unserious, while you toiled away in the nonprofit world, or raised money for any number of causes. But when the whole world is designed to point out that you’re different, it can be a way to endure.”
Clara looked down at the counter and flipped through a stack of Patrick’s mail.
“I’m teaching these kids. I have something to offer that others—frankly, you—don’t.” He hoped this would close the door on this ridiculous notion of them leaving with her.
Clara held up a letter. “Who is Jack Curtis?”
Patrick sighed. Once again, she wasn’t listening. “I am.”
Skeptically she replied, “You are.”
Patrick smiled and held out his hand in the way he remembered Jean Seberg doing once in a movie. “Enchanté.”
“See? I don’t know who you are. You preach self-love, but I doubt you really know, either.” Clara pushed the mail aside as if it were toxic and reached for her purse. She dug through the bag before giving up and emptying the contents on the counter until she found some lip balm. Patrick caught the tickets out of the corner of his eye. He reached out, grabbing them before she could stop him. “Give those back.”
“These are airline tickets. Three return tickets.” Patrick was dumbfounded. “This has nothing to do with parties or my drinking or YouTube. You were planning this all along.”
“Patrick. I came prepared. You want to put me on trial? That’s the markings of a good parental guardian. Preparation. Frankly, the fact that you weren’t prepared for so
meone else stepping in, the way you’ve been carrying on? It just goes to show how unqualified you are.”
“Oh, god. And you make a show of asking my permission, pretending I had some say!”
“Calm down, Patrick. We can talk about it again in the morning.”
Patrick seethed. “We’re done talking.” He flipped through the airline tickets until he found the one in Clara’s name. He handed it back to her while tucking the other two tickets in the pocket of his shorts. “You’re not taking the kids. One more word about it, and I’ll show you exactly who I am.”
He turned off the kitchen light, leaving his sister alone in the dark.
SEVENTEEN
They rose up, the three of them, in the rotating cable car, suspended far above Chino Canyon. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway on the north edge of town was a tourist destination, a point of interest in the Coachella Valley, taking visitors to the peak of Mount San Jacinto; Mountain Station, their destination, was more than ten thousand feet above the valley floor (at least according to the pamphlet that was imposed upon Patrick when he purchased their ride tickets). It was also thirty degrees cooler—relief they all needed in the wake of Clara’s rocky departure. Patrick’s insides were jagged like the craggy cliffs, and they were only a few thousand feet into their ascent. Hadn’t he just lectured Maisie and Grant on the importance of siblings? Didn’t he promise to demonstrate that by example? Instead, Clara snuck in to say goodbye to the kids before he was even up, the creak of the front door and the sound of her cab driving away down his quiet road is what woke him.
“Why did Aunt Clara leave so early?”
“Why?”
“Yeah,” Grant added. “Why?”
“Work emergency.” Patrick ushered the two of them in front of his perch at the tram window. “Can you see my house?” The cables above them were suspended from towers; they were approaching the third tower of five and they were in the perfect spot in the car’s rotation to see the valley floor. The view below was incredible, brown, mountainous, and then endless dusty flats; it was like looking across the arid moonscape of distant, orbiting rock.
“What does she do again?” There was no cell reception here, but Maisie’s bullshit detector was pinging.
“I don’t know. Something with nonprofits.” He leaned down over her shoulder and pointed. “Look at the midpoint of the runway, see how it sits on a diagonal? Now follow that over and to the right. Somewhere in that area.”
“But what for nonprofits specifically?”
“Raising money. That sort of thing. Nonprofits always need money because they don’t have any . . . profits. Why the sudden interest?” Patrick wanted off the topic of Clara before they reached the top. Today was about clearing the air, returning to some semblance of normal, moving on. Mostly, he wanted to settle his guilt.
“That’s where your house is?” Grant asked, looking at the dotted horizon.
“YES.” Finally. Some traction. “That’s where you’ve been living.”
The car operator announced they were passing over tower four and advised everyone to hold on for support. Patrick guided Grant’s hands to the guardrail; Maisie already had a tight grip.
“Whoa.” Grant looked up at his uncle as the cable car swayed back and forth. “It tickles my tummy.”
“Mine, too,” Maisie added.
Patrick was about to intercede, but in the wake of Clara’s departure recognized he needed to work on letting things go. Besides, tummy was fine if you were six. “Mine three.”
“What are we going to do at the top?”
“Hike!”
“HIKE?!” They complained.
“Oh, come on. You know where PopPop took your father and Aunt Clara and me? Battlefields. Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields. I take you to see dinosaurs, to the zoo, swimming, on this tram—all of it much more fun. Believe me, you’d rather hike the ridge of these mountains with me than haul ass all over Pennsylvania to see Valley Forge, or Maryland to see Antietam.”
“Why?” To Grant it all seemed equally horrible.
“Because of the views! You know what Maryland has? Crabs. You know what Pennsylvania has? The Dutch.”
Maisie and Grant shook their heads at one another and they rode the rest of the way to Mountain Station in silence.
* * *
“It’s cold up here.” Maisie kept her arms crossed, partially in protest, partially to keep her body heat contained.
“It’s seventy-five degrees!”
“It is?”
“Yes, this is what summer feels like in Connecticut. You’ve just gotten used to it being a hundred and five.” They forged ahead on the easiest trail Patrick had scouted; it was a loop with five scenic overlooks that ran just over a mile. The forest floor was littered with enormous pine cones, the size, almost, of Grant’s head. Birds were chirping, chatty but unseen, and the ground was soft with pine needles. It took less than ten minutes in the cable car to get from the Valley Station to their destination, but they were a world apart.
“Look, a lizard!” Grant was beside himself with joy.
“Where, bud?”
“Thunning himthelf on that rock.” He pointed to a sunny patch that formed between two trees.
“Good eye.”
“Ith it dead?”
“No, just sleeping.”
“Are you sure?”
Patrick took Grant’s hand. “I’m positive.”
Grant ran toward a cluster of trees to study the pine cones that lay beneath them until he was far enough ahead to make Patrick uncomfortable. “Slow down, Grantelope!”
Grant picked up a pine cone and studied it. “Can I keep this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Bears eat them.”
Grant looked skeptical. “Bearth eat pine cones?”
“You know what else they eat?” Patrick picked Grant up in one sweeping motion and threw him over his shoulder. “Grantelopes.”
Grant laughed and squirmed. “What’s a Grantelope?”
“You are. Like an antelope, but a Grantelope.”
“Or a cantaloupe,” Maisie observed.
“I’M NOT A CANTALOUPE!” Grant protested more and Patrick set him down on the ground.
A term of endearment, Patrick thought. That was new.
They stopped at the third outlook and sat on a rock that mimicked a bench to sun themselves like lizards. Patrick closed his eyes. It was nice to feel sunshine as comforting warmth and not scorching heat. Although they were ten thousand feet closer to the sun. Shouldn’t it be hotter? Science, he thought. Not to be understood. “Isn’t it strange how the higher we get the cooler it is? It’s the opposite of what you might think.”
Maisie toyed with one of the giant pine cones between her feet. “Not really.”
“No?” Patrick opened one eye and looked skeptically in her direction.
“As air rises, the pressure decreases. Lower air pressure means lower temperatures.”
Patrick looked at Grant.
“You know this, too?”
“Yeah,” he said, but it was clear that he didn’t.
“How’d you kids get so smart?”
“School,” Maisie said. She gave the pine cone a swift kick and it went sailing over the ledge. “I heard you two fighting.”
“Who?” Patrick feigned innocence.
“You and Aunt Clara.”
Patrick looked at his fingernails. They were getting long. He remembered accusing Sara once of neglecting her appearance after she had kids, but now he understood—there simply wasn’t time. “Families fight sometimes. There’s a lot of history.”
“Mom and Dad used to fight,” Grant offered.
“Oh, yeah?” Patrick’s curiosity was piqued, but it wasn’t the right time to pry. “Your mother was a fighter.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t mean it in a bad way. She was spirited. You know. Passionate. That’s a good thing. The reason you had her as long as you did. When she was first diagnosed they gave her a year, and she held on for three.”
“I didn’t like it,” Grant said. “When they would fight.”
The sky seemed bluer up here, the air cleaner, sharper, as if there was more oxygen in it, not less.
“People who love each other fight. The opposite of love isn’t anger. It’s indifference. When people stop fighting, that’s when you should be worried.”
Patrick wasn’t sure how much he believed that, at least as it applied to Clara. He felt for her, but he wasn’t sure how much of a relationship they had to save—and if it was even worth saving. It was truer, he supposed, with Sara. They’d had epic fights. One of their biggest was at the Grand Canyon.
* * *
Patrick’s decision to move from New York to Los Angeles came quickly; Joe had accepted a job at UCLA and Patrick didn’t see the point of waiting a respectable amount of time to follow, especially with pilot season on the horizon. To make this relationship work, he would need a job, too, so he might as well go all in on getting a job on TV. Despite his deep love for Joe, his feelings for Los Angeles were less clear, and moving coasts just to wait tables seemed at best like a lateral move. Joe had gone ahead to scout for apartments while Sara had agreed to accompany Patrick on the cross-country drive.
The trip started well enough. They stopped at Graceland and braved inconceivable crowds; Sara asked a woman in line for a tour if it was always like this. “It’s Elvis’s birthday today,” she had said with a Midwestern twang, kind on the surface but with just enough judgment underneath to express she thought they might be mentally impaired. They took New Orleans by storm and drank Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s, suffering a hangover for the record books, then went to the School Book Depository in Dallas and eyed the grassy knoll. For six hours they made it their life’s work to solve the Kennedy assassination beyond any reasonable doubt, but lost interest as hunger set in and wound up at a BBQ place and then later that night at Billy Bob’s, a honky-tonk in Fort Worth. They learned to two-step and line dance and swayed to the music until they were bathed in sweat. They went to Carlsbad and hiked deep underground into a cavern large enough to hold a commercial airplane, and to Roswell to eat Alien Jerky. And then to the Grand Canyon, where they walked to the South Rim only to find the canyon socked in with fog. So they fought. About nothing, about everything.
The Guncle Page 18