“Can we watch YouTube?”
“What? No. There’s no Wi-Fi on this plane.”
“Why not?”
“One of the advantages of being on an airplane is that we’re disconnected from everything going on beneath us. We’re in a metal tube in the sky. It’s a time to reflect, read a book maybe, to be with ourselves.” Patrick was lying about the Wi-Fi and wasn’t sure why. His insistence, perhaps, that there was more to appreciate about planes than staring blankly at a screen, doing something you could readily do on the ground. He carried a torch for air travel from the 1960s, before he was born, when flying seemed glamorous and stewardesses looked like Dusty Springfield or Petula Clark, served chateaubriand off of a cart, and came by every so often to light your cigarette. But since Grant and Maisie weren’t old enough to enjoy an in-flight martini, was this really necessary? Shouldn’t he loosen the reins, or would that set a bad precedent—would he lose all sense of authority before this experiment began? “You guys packed a few books, right?”
“Does your car at least have a DVD player?” Maisie asked.
“I’m Uber only.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told you I don’t drive. I have a Tesla, but I keep it in the garage.”
Maisie furrowed her brow. It was hard to know where to tear at her uncle’s logic when he spouted so many unfamiliar words. “What’s a Tesla?”
“It’s like a spaceship.”
Grant turned his head at lightning speed.
“Not an actual spaceship, but it might as well be, as I don’t know how to use it. It’s just a fancy car.”
“Why do you have a fanthy car if you don’t drive?”
Patrick closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to make it ninety hours, let alone days. “It was a gift.”
“Someone gave you a car?” Maisie was incredulous.
It was the studio. They gave them to the main cast when they signed a contract extension for two final seasons. “That happens sometimes when you’re famous.”
“You’re famouth?”
Patrick peered into the aisle to make sure no one was listening. “I used to be.”
Grant kicked his feet lazily, hitting the seat in front of him. Patrick reached over to stop him. “We should have taken Mommy’th car. Mommy’th car has a DVD player.”
Patrick wished he could go back in time, maybe to one of the nights he and Sara drank 40s in the lounge on their dormitory floor, when they were doing something nonsensical that amused them, like trying to pronounce the word noodle in as many accents as possible, to tell Sara that one day she’d be driving a minivan with a television inside. “Well, I don’t really leave the house much and I have a TV at home.”
“Does it get YouTube?” Grant hollered.
Patrick shushed him. “Inside voices.”
“We’re outside. The thky is outside.”
“The what? The sky?” Patrick resolved then and there to spend time with Grant working on his lisp. “The sky is outside, the plane is inside. I’ll toss you out the window if you want to know the difference.”
“He means is it a smart TV.” Maisie stepped in to de-escalate.
“What is there to watch on YouTube, anyhow?” Patrick didn’t understand the obsession.
“Kid vlogs.”
“What on earth is a kid vlog? You know what? Don’t answer that. My TV has TV.”
“We don’t like regular TV.”
Patrick mimed a dagger going into his heart. “You realize I was on TV.” What was wrong with kids today? Not liking television. Television was everything when he was young, it’s why he wanted to be on it. The most mind-blowing day in his life was the day he discovered other children could see Mister Rogers, too. “Hawaii, by the way, was the answer to my question. Hawaii is the only state that’s an island.”
“Oh,” Maisie said.
Oh. He was about to ask if they wanted to go; they could stay at the Four Seasons in Wailea and sit in reserved deck chairs and order virgin pi?a coladas. But they didn’t like TV and they weren’t impressed with Hawaii. What did it take to amuse them? “Fun fact about your uncle Patrick. When I was your age I thought Alaska was also an island because they always stuck it with Hawaii in the bottom corner of maps.” He thought he could win them over with this; how stupid to think a state that was mostly tundra and ice was an island in the South Pacific. It landed with a thud. “Maybe when you’re ten that will be funnier.”