“You don’t eat breakfast? Are you doing intermittent fasting?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Maisie replied.
“Really? Everyone’s doing intermittent fasting it seems. What’s the problem, then?”
“Mom made our pancakes look like Mickey Mouse.”
Patrick shook his finger. “We’re not doing that.” Goddammit, Sara.
“She came! She came!” Grant tore around the corner holding Patrick’s Golden Globe statue. He hopped up on the barstool next to his sister and plunked his prize down on the counter. “What is it?”
Patrick was horrified. “MY GOLDEN GLOBE?!”
“The tooth fairy left it for me.”
“Like hell she did!”
After the kids had gone back to bed, Patrick poured himself a nightcap while he waited for them to fall asleep. He remembered struggling with what to leave on the tooth fairy’s behalf. He might have even had a second drink, but there was absolutely no way, short of him being roofied, that he put his Golden Globe under Grant’s pillow.
“That’s mine. It has my name on it. ‘Patrick O’Hara, Best Supporting Actor—Series, Miniseries, or Television Film.’”
“Tho?” Grant’s eyes were on this prize and he wasn’t easing up.
“So? Is your name Patrick O’Hara? No, it is not. Have you been in a series, miniseries, or television film? No, you have not. You took that off my shelf and you know it.” He pried the statue from his nephew’s hands before the boy could get anymore of his sticky fingerprints on it. “If this house catches fire I’m saving this before either of you. You do not touch it. Understand?”
Grant bobbed his head up and down.
“Now, let’s go see what the tooth fairy actually left you.” He took Grant by the hand and marched him back to his bedroom with Maisie tagging along behind. He pulled something from underneath his nephew’s pillow and handed it to him feigning surprise, as if the reward had not come from his personal collection. “It’s a Playbill from the 2012 Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess. SCORE!”
Grant flipped through the program’s pages. “Where’s the money?”
“It’s better than money. It’s signed by Audra McDonald.”
The kids stood silent, the who? heavily implied.
“Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald?”
“What’th a Tony?”
“Oh my god. You’re from Connecticut, so I can understand your not knowing what a Golden Globe is. But a Tony Award? You live right next door to New York!”
Maisie chimed in, a public defender taking on Grant’s case. “The tooth fairy is supposed to leave money so that kids can buy toys.”
On some level, Patrick knew this, but he didn’t keep cash in the house. He had found a few pennies in a junk drawer and some loose change Rosa had collected from his pockets near the washing machine, but knew last night that wouldn’t be nearly enough. “It’s different in California.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes the tooth fairy runs out of cash after visiting the East Coast kids, and by the time she gets to the West Coast she has to leave prizes. Look, if you’re not happy with it, I’ll buy it from you. How does fifty dollars sound?”
Maisie’s jaw almost hit the floor. “Fifty dollars!”
Patrick was confused. Was that not enough? “Well, how much is fair?”
“I used to get one dollar.”
“Fine. One dollar, one dollar!” Patrick yelled on his way back to the kitchen, like a game show contestant when everyone else had overbid.
“No, fifty!” Grant knew a good deal when he heard one.
“Fine, but you have to share it with your sister.” The kids hopped back up on their stools and Patrick slid Grant’s plate in front of him in exchange for the Playbill so they wouldn’t get syrup on Porgy.
Grant picked up a fork skeptically. “Mom used to make them like Mickey Mouse.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “So I heard. Look, you don’t want to eat ears. Even pancake ones. They’re filled with wax and, I don’t know . . .” He thought back to what his own father used to say. “Potato bugs.” It was day two of this misadventure and he was already resorting to dad jokes.
Grant laughed, and Patrick squeezed some extra syrup on his plate as a reward.
“Further, Disney owns everything. They don’t need to own brunch, too.”
“Why is this brunch and not breakfast?” Grant asked.