“Here,” Patrick said when they were situated in their seats. “Let’s look at my phone.” He pulled his credit card out of his wallet.
“But the Wi-Fi . . .”
“They fixed it. Didn’t you hear? There was an announcement when we were in the bathroom.” He mussed Grant’s hair and smiled as he handed over his phone. “Why don’t you show me what’s so great about YouTube. Just don’t . . . Guncle Rule number five: If a gay man hands you his phone, look only at what he’s showing you. If it’s a photo, don’t swipe. And for god’s sake, don’t open any unfamiliar apps.”
FIVE
The scream pierced the darkness and Patrick sat bolt upright. Jesus Christ. Again?! He had just drifted off to sleep in his own bed—finally—and was going to have to reason with these monsters that it was possible, preferable even, to grieve without causing one’s own ears, or （more to the point） someone else’s, to bleed. He jumped out of bed and ran smack into his bedroom door, forgetting he was still wearing his skin-rejuvenating, silk charmeuse weighted sleep mask. His own scream was deeper, annoyed, and mercifully brief.
He pushed the mask up his forehead. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and confirm that, yes, after two weeks he was finally back in his own room. Yes, the air had just kicked on. Yes, the door was where it was supposed to be. No, this was not the dreadful hotel by his brother’s house. No, the noise was not drunken gamblers stumbling off the bus after a day at Mohegan Sun. He stepped out in the hall to find the source of the ruckus. Thankfully he’d had the foresight to sleep in gym shorts instead of his preference for, well, less. “Maisie? Maisie is that you?”
It wasn’t Maisie, but Grant, shaking in the hall outside the guest bath.
“What is it? Your mom? Your dad? Another tooth? What happened?” Patrick crouched down to put his arm around his nephew’s shoulders. He followed the boy’s gaze into the bathroom. “Do you need to use the potty again?” They had been through this once before bed. Grant said he usually had help “wiping” and Patrick stood back aghast; it was something Patrick didn’t even do for himself since he installed two eleven-thousand-dollar Japanese toilets （sorry, washlets） he’d read about in Consumer Reports.
“The toilet . . . moved.”
“What do you mean it moved?” He didn’t have the clearest view from his vantage point, but it seemed to be exactly in the place that it should be.
“The lid.” Grant finally mustered the courage to look at his uncle. “There’s a ghost.”
Up until now, their first night had mostly been a success. The kids were enamored with the house （“You have a hot tub?!”） and made themselves more or less at home. There was some awkwardness with their bedtime routine. Maisie thankfully showered herself, but Grant insisted on a bath, while bemoaning the lack of bath toys （the pool noodles Patrick had were too large for the tub）， and there was a small meltdown about their uncle’s baking soda toothpaste being too paste-y. （He argued that children’s toothpastes with their bright colors and bold flavors probably caused cavities, but relented, saying he would buy one specifically labeled for kids.） Maisie and Grant agreed to share a guest room, at least to start, and Patrick laid in the king-sized bed with them, improvising an elaborate story about a roadrunner and a jackrabbit named Meep and Moop and their adventures in the desert. The kids complained about the metal sculpture that hung over the bed; it was too angular and Grant feigned a fear of rectangles. Neither of them knew their sleep numbers, laying waste to the guest mattress’s smartest feature, but eventually, exhausted from the day, they all nodded off. At some point before midnight Patrick awoke and extracted himself, even though he was surprised to find sharing was not horrifically unpleasant.
“Oh, no, no, no, Grant. It does that. The toilet. When you get close to it, the lid rises automatically. That’s what it does. It’s called a feature. You pay extra for those.”
“But there was a light inside.” Grant leaned in to whisper in his uncle’s ear. “Glowing.” He was clinging to his conviction that there was some otherworldly presence at play.
“A night-light. Isn’t that great? So if you have to use the bathroom in the night, you don’t have to blind yourself with the overhead light.”
“It’th not from another dimenthion?”
Dimension? Where do they learn these things? “No. Well, yes. But only Japan.” Patrick ran his fingers through the boy’s hair. “Where’s your sister? I suppose she’s awake, too?”