“Shall we go to Las Vegas?” Patrick asked. He had a vision of himself in LA, a cliché of West Coast living, of going to the gym and drinking green tea and perhaps being a vegetarian. He thought a martini and a bloody prime rib dinner for $4.99 would be the perfect way to bid adieu to his old New York self—even if a classic Vegas martini was half vermouth. Sara, however, was not game for such nonsense and in fact had her eye on Sedona and a massage, perhaps, with hot stones.
“You’re already changing.”
“What? No I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re leaving me alone and I already don’t know who you’ve become.”
“I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving New York. And we both know you won’t be alone.” Sara by then was dating Greg, which left Patrick feeling unnerved.
“You said that didn’t bother you.”
“Of course it bothers me, brother-fucker.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
Patrick didn’t know how he was supposed to be. “You have a replacement me lined up!”
“Well, I’m sorry you’d rather I be a spinster, pining for you from afar.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Because there are absolutely no men in New York, so it’s either my brother in Connecticut or being an old maid.”
Sara walked closer to the rim of the canyon, a ghost barely visible through the fog. It reminded Patrick of their rooftop adventure in college, how nervous it had made him, her standing so close to the edge. How he promised he’d never let her fall. How times had changed. He lifted his hand, curled his forefinger to his thumb, and then pretended to flick her over the edge. She turned just in time to see it.
“Did you just flick me off the edge?”
Patrick did it again. This time he added a sound. “Pfft.”
Sara charged over toward him, away from the edge. “What is your problem?”
“What is yours?”
“You chose this move. You don’t get to offer opinions any longer on how I live my life!”
“But Greg? Really? It’s gross. It’s like you’re trying to have me, my worldview, my upbringing, my DNA, but in a different . . . sack.”
Sara was appalled.
“Well, body didn’t seem to convey my level of disgust.”
Sara ran her fingers through Patrick’s hair and he flinched. “I’ll bet you have the same sack.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Seriously, though.”
“Now you’re being vulgar. Don’t say another word about his sack.” Patrick ran away and Sara chased him until they ran in circles like dogs. “Or mine,” he added, laughing this time. They both stopped when they realized the fog obscured the canyon’s edge.
Sara put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “All this way and we can’t even see it.” She carefully approached the edge and looked down, then picked up a pebble and dropped it, watching as it was swallowed by the mist.
“This sucks,” Patrick said, but it wasn’t clear if he meant the weather or the situation.
“I’m just doing to you what you’ve been doing to me. Pushing you away to make this breakup easier.”
“That’s not what I’ve been—”
“You just flicked me off the edge!”
He instantly saw the connection. It was true. He was done with the city, with loneliness, with the claustrophobia of concrete all around him. The endless jackhammering of midtown that made his teeth rattle when he emerged from the subway for work. But he would never be done with her. The thought of Sara not being a presence in his everyday life unsettled him deep in his core. The only way to survive was to disengage. And it was breaking his heart.
But, then.
“Look, look, look.” Patrick spun her around and pointed. The fog was lifting rapidly, a thick curtain raised, dissipating into nothingness. And the most incredible thing they had ever stood in front of revealed itself like an enormous, delicious pastry in a thousand flaky layers.
“Oh my god.”
They crept closer to the rim, holding on to each other in astonishment. The canyon was the color of every mineral and ore, thousands of years of sediments in rusts and greens and yellows and grays, and there seemed to be no bottom, the mist along the river basin the very last to lift. The world was so much bigger than they were, more mysterious; they were comparatively insignificant to the millions of years of work and splendor that lay before and beneath them.
“Water did all this. Can you believe it?”
The vista continued to sharpen. People ran from the direction of the parking lot, others oohed and aahed. Patrick and Sara, however, backed slowly away, as if they were in danger of being swallowed—two figures moving slowly backward against the tide of a world spinning forward.
* * *
Patrick treated the kids to lunch at the Pines Café at Mountain Station. Grant threw a fit when a bird grabbed someone’s french fry from one of the tables on the deck, so they sat inside, securing a spot by the window. They each had a slice of cheese pizza; the kids didn’t ask Patrick for pepperoni—they weren’t up for the fight—and he ordered the three of them a sad-looking salad to share.
“What should we do?” Maisie asked.
“With our afternoon? I don’t know. I thought this would take longer.” Patrick took a bite of his pizza, which was doughy and lukewarm, the sauce dry under a heat lamp. As much as he would have preferred actual food—a salad with genuine greens rich in nutrients, or any array of options available to him on regular ground—he was in no hurry to reboard the tram. “We could just hang out here among the trees.” Like the air, they were lighter up here, floating above the stressors that waited for them below.
“There’s nothing to do here,” Grant griped.
Patrick glanced up to see a sign announcing Wi-Fi, the magic answer appearing out of the mountaintop’s thin air. Without thinking he handed his phone to Maisie. She snatched it from him and, much to Patrick’s dismay, already knew his password.
“Hey, did you guys upload our video to YouTube?”
“What?” Maisie feigned innocence.
“The one from dinner. With the cotton candy.”
Maisie refused to look up at her uncle, as sure a sign of guilt as there was.
“What did I say about that? About it not being appropriate? Your aunt Clara saw that and blamed me.”
They both picked uncomfortably at their pizza; Grant stretched his cheese like it was bubble gum as Patrick pieced together their scam. The passwords were on his counter and he’d been giving them a wider berth with his phone.
“It’s okay. I’m not . . . mad. I can handle your aunt Clara. It’s just. If I make rules, they’re to protect you. Okay? You have to respect them.” Patrick opened the salad he’d ordered and picked off bits of blue cheese. The lettuce appeared wilted, like their energy; they were all three in need of a boost. “Well, pull it up so I can see how it looks.”
Excitedly, Maisie opened the YouTube app and tapped in a few key search words.
“I have the YouTube app?”
“I downloaded it.”
Patrick shot her a look, which she absorbed and shot right back. Maisie found the page and handed Patrick his phone to show him. “EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND VIEWS?”
A family at the next table turned to look. Patrick pulled his ball cap down farther over his eyes.
Maisie took a bite of pizza. “You already had a channel, so we have lots of subscribers!”
“I have. I have lots of subscribers. We don’t have anything.” Patrick let the video unspool on his phone. The kids looked good, happy. Even if it was just a snapshot, a moment.
“Are we famouth?” Grant asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
“That’s a lot of views,” Maisie clarified. “So I’d say a little bit.” She was developing a bit of a
n attitude he wasn’t fond of, but today he would cut her some slack.
The video ended and Patrick absentmindedly handed Maisie back his phone as if it were hers. “Interesting.”
“Can we watch thomething elthe?”
Patrick tried to pierce his lettuce with a plastic fork, but the lettuce wasn’t having it. He set his fork down and pushed his tray aside. “Sure.”
“Can I choothe?” Grant asked.
“No. I want us to watch something specific. I want to see clips from a show. Tillamook.”
“Till-a-muck?” Maisie struggled to understand.
“Terrible title. Tillamook. Like a cow says.”
“It thounds like what a cow makes.”
Patrick turned to his nephew. “That’s very clever. Let’s get some chocolate moooooook.” He tickled the boy and Grant squirmed and shrieked. “It’s a town in Oregon. And also a cheese, I think. And the name of a teen drama on that network I should, because of my advanced age, be too embarrassed to watch.”
“Here it is.” Maisie handed the phone back to Patrick so she could break off another bite of the pizza crust.
“Is this lupper?” Grant asked, lifting up his pizza as if there might be something more appetizing underneath.
“It’s a lack.”
“What’th a lack?”
“Lunch-slash-snack. Eat up,” Patrick replied.
“Is it really?”
“It’s certainly lacking,” he said without looking up from his screen because there he was—Emory—his face clean-shaven and smooth with makeup. Patrick’s heart, while not skipping the proverbial beat, did (against his will) pound a little harder. His finger hovered nervously over the thumbnail. What was the hesitation? Three days ago he’d barely heard of this person. And he’d had, over the years, plenty of these little affairs without giving a single one so much as a second thought. So he pushed play.
And, voilà—magic. Emory, alive on his phone in a glorious close-up, that familiar sparkle in his eye, until the camera pulled back to a two-shot to reveal he was talking to . . . a girl.
“Can I see?” Maisie asked. She set her pizza crust down on the paper plate on her tray and leaned across the table to watch; Grant likewise snuggled into Patrick’s side. He found them, in this moment, to be an intrusion.
“He wath at the party!” Grant declared.
“Can’t slip anything past you.” Thank god Emory was wearing more than when Patrick saw him last.
“He’s on TV?!” Maisie asked, clearly impressed.
Patrick hit pause and looked at the menu board for strength. It confirmed Patrick’s original appraisal: this pizza was the least awful choice. “You do realize I was on TV?”
The kids shrugged and Patrick threw his head to the side, hitting the café window.
“Ith he your boyfriend?”
“What?” Patrick spun around to face Grant. “No. Don’t be silly.”
“Yeah, Grant,” Maisie piled on. “Don’t be silly.”
Patrick raised his gaze to challenge Maisie. “Why is that silly?”
Maisie said nothing. Instead she spun the pizza crust on her plate, like they were playing Twister. Right hand on Emory.
“Is it because he’s too young? He’s older than he looks. I checked Wikipedia.” He didn’t inherently trust Wikipedia, but it was right about his own age. Unfortunately.
The crust came to a stop. “Is he your age?”
“Maisie.” Patrick exhaled, defeated. “No.”
“Why do you like boys?” Grant asked sourly, but with slightly more boredom than judgment.
“I don’t know, why do you like pizza?”
“Because it tastes good in my mouth.”
Patrick wasn’t about to go anywhere near that.
“Not everyone thinks that. Some people don’t like pizza. To them it does not taste good.”
“Why?” Grant asked.
“Why does it taste good to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you just like it, then,” Patrick explained.
“Yeah!”
“Sometimes it’s hard to articulate why we like something. We just do. We’re programmed that way.”
“Do you want me to like boys?” Grant asked.
“I don’t want you to like anything.” Patrick slunk in his chair as a woman walked by dragging two kids of her own. She glanced over at Patrick in solidarity. “Let me rephrase that. I want you to like whatever it is you like.”
“I like boys.”
“Congratulations.”
“As friends,” Grant clarified.
“Bravo. As you should. Boys can make excellent friends. And if anything changes, you’ll know as you get older. Grantelope.”
Grant beamed at his uncle. Patrick had a memory from first grade, around the time he was Grant’s age. It was the last week of school and a heat wave upended a Connecticut June. Classrooms were sweltering and there was no central air. His teacher told the boys that if they were wearing undershirts, they could unbutton their top shirts or remove them altogether. The kid who sat three desks over from Patrick was named Charlie and, man, there was just something about him. He had a twin sister in the other first-grade class—Heather, perhaps, or Leeza—they were the only set of twins in the school, which gave them a certain mystique, and both of their names sounded like low-cost department store fragrances. Charlie was blond. He was tall for his age and the other kids hung on his every word. His shirt was Western-style, popular back then, and had mother-of-pearl-colored snaps. As Charlie undid his shirt, each snap made a sonic boom in Patrick’s ears; he peeled it off and leaned back in his chair in a white Hanes T-shirt, looking like some sort of peewee prototype, a pint-sized Tab Hunter or Marlboro Man. He was effortlessly cool and Patrick knew he would never be that comfortable in his own skin. Not around other kids. As other boys removed their shirts, too, Patrick consciously buttoned his higher, as if removing it would expose him as an impostor. But he looked at Charlie that afternoon with his Steve McQueen swagger and thought, That’s what a man looks like. He remembered that thought distinctly; both of them were at most all of seven.
“Do you like being gay?” Maisie asked. It caught Patrick by surprise.
“I used to.”
“You don’t anymore?”
“It used to be cool. Being gay. Counterculture, you know. Rebellious. Now it’s all gay marriage, gay adoption. Assimilation. And some of that’s good. It’s progress. But I liked it more when it was different. Now everyone’s in a hurry to be the same.” Look at me, Patrick thought. Even I have kids.
“What’s wrong with being the same?”
“Nothing. It’s just not for me.” He reached for the napkin dispenser and held out a napkin for each kid. “You done?” Maisie nodded, and they all wiped their hands.
Would it be much different, Patrick wondered, if Joe were still here? Did part of his aversion to cultural absorption stem from jealousy? From being alone? He thought of his friendship with JED. They’d found a way to be together and not the same. Why couldn’t everyone else? “Never mind me. I’m just cranky today. It’s fine. Being normal. Especially for kids your age. As you get older, you will find the freedom to be exactly who you are and eventually no one will care.”
He pulled his phone closer so he could focus on Emory. The sexual tension was palpable; Patrick just wasn’t sure if it was between Emory and the girl on the screen, or Emory and the man watching YouTube in a mountaintop café.
Grant reached up and touched the scar on Patrick’s forehead and held his finger there for longer than Patrick was comfortable with. “You look like Harry Potter.”
Patrick took Grant’s hand and placed it back by his side. “That’s rude.”
“Why?”
“Because Harry was a Gryffindor and I’m clearly a Slytherin.�
�� He hissed for emphasis.
“I’m going to call you Uncle Scar.” Thcar.
“Like Lion King!” Maisie added.
“No.”
“Uncle Thcar!”
“Stop.” He turned to Grant to show he meant business. “That’s homophobic.”
“Why?”
“Because they threw him off a cliff!”
“That was Mufasa!” Maisie crossed her arms, and Grant copied his sister.
“Yeah. Thcar was the lion eaten by hyenas.”
“Oh, yeah, I liked him. Misunderstood.” Scar wasn’t into assimilation, he was simply a power-hungry tyrant. Still, he wanted the attention away from his physical reminder of Joe. “Okay, watch this.” Patrick, the magician, pulling a sleight of hand. “I’m going to show you something else.”
Maisie leaned in, excited, and Grant crawled under the table and popped up on his uncle’s other side with a grin.
Patrick was grateful for the audience. “We’re going to watch a few clips of me.”
EIGHTEEN
It was Rosa who answered the phone. “Mr. Patrick!” She cupped her hand over the receiver as she waited for her employer.
“Who is it?” Patrick implored as he entered the kitchen, two paper bag puppets, one elephant, one dog, over his hands. It was a craft he used to do with Clara and one he was re-creating this morning with the kids; in terms of activities, he was scraping the bottom of the barrel. While grateful for the interruption, no one ever called the house phone except for telemarketers, and Rosa knew better than to bother him with solicitors.
“Tu madre,” she answered, looking worried.
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