“YETH!” Grant hollered.
“It was our idea! And GUP’s,” Maisie declared, running over to Patrick. “His idea, too.”
Greg gave his brother a gentle wave. Patrick waved back, cupping his hand slightly, like the queen.
“Dad, the toilets here have remote controls.”
“Washlets,” Maisie remembered.
“They do?” Greg asked.
“Yeah! They thpit at your butt.”
At least he’d be remembered for something.
Maisie grabbed her father by one arm while Grant grabbed the other, and they dragged Greg slowly toward the kitchen for pie.
* * *
The kids fell asleep before they were even in bed, secure in having their father back under the same roof; it was like they’d been holding their breath for three months and were finally able to exhale. Greg carried Grant to his room while Patrick carried Maisie to hers. It made him queasy, the idea that neither Maisie nor Grant had slept well the entire time they were in his care. Maisie in particular, with one eye on protecting her brother. But then Maisie started snoring shallow, gentle breaths, like a kitten might, and Patrick’s worry dissipated. He’d made it through. He had delivered these kids alive. Over dinner, as the kids had recounted the summer for their father, Patrick even softened his own harsh self-criticism. Perhaps he’d accomplished something after all. With them. Alongside them. For them. For him, even. And now his job was through and he could sleep, too, really sleep, perhaps for the first time in years.
Patrick and Greg collapsed on the sectional, splayed across the couch like two stoned teenagers overwhelmed by the size of the world. “How was your time in the paddy wagon?”
Greg groaned. He looked at the plates on the coffee table with the remains of pie-a-palooza; the sugar crash would come, but now he was riding the only high left available to him.
“What does that mean?” Patrick asked. He pushed a plate with crust and whipped crème to the center of the coffee table with his toe to keep it from tempting Marlene. “You’ve got to give me something more than a groan.”
Greg propped himself up on his elbows. “Do you want the real answer? Or the bullshit one?”
Patrick gave this actual thought. Did he want to know if this was indeed behind his brother? Was it going to require a second stint to take? Would the kids be his again next summer, and perhaps the one after that? He fixated on the ceiling, as if the answer might reveal itself there. Instead he only saw a recessed bulb that needed replacing. “Real answer.”
“It was hell. At least at first. I know in reality, it was a long time coming. Sara had been sick for years. But inside it felt like one day I had a happy family—a wife and two kids—and then the next day I had nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“They gave me slippers,” Greg offered. “But otherwise, it felt like nothing. It was like a reverse Wizard of Oz. I was living a full Technicolor life, and then woke up trapped in a nightmare that was devoid of all color, with a cyclone bearing down.” He smirked. “You have a lot of time to think. It’s easy to get maudlin.”
Patrick placed both palms against his eyes and pressed hard. “That’s because everything in there was beige.”
“It was so confusing. I was there against my will, even though it was my will that I was there. I don’t know how to make that make sense. It had this smell.”
“I was there. I smelled it.”
“I’m not sure that you did. It creeps inside you, slowly, over time, until you feel like you can’t take it. Your nose is burning, and your lungs are on fire, and you’re screaming, but no one can hear you because it’s all on the inside.”
Greg reached behind his head to fluff a pillow. Patrick was grateful he’d tossed the sequined pill-ow at Christmas so that Greg wasn’t confronted with its tackiness. “And then?”
“I don’t know. Around day nineteen it clicked. It was like for eighteen days everyone was speaking a foreign language. I was determined to keep my head down and just power through, convinced I could go back to my old habits afterward and just handle it better this time.”
“That’s addiction talking.” Patrick writhed to reach an itch between his shoulder blades. “So what happened?”
“On day nineteen I woke up fluent. Everything people said just started making sense. I didn’t understand every word, not at first. But certainly enough to get by. To have it mean something. I started to listen. And I recognized myself in everything they confessed. The lying, the hiding, the excuses. The shame.”