Patrick looked up for a glimpse of Venus, usually the first light to appear in the gloaming, but quickly abandoned his search. It was getting harder and harder to see without his glasses, which he largely refused to wear on principle ever since his eye doctor suggested it was about time for progressives, which, as far as Patrick could tell, was a fancy way for him to avoid saying bifocals. Besides, tonight they were not there just to count the lights and the shimmering stars as they made their appearance in the sky. Patrick had an agenda, developed from the book he’d ordered himself on grief. He took a long sip of his drink for courage. “I was wondering if either of you were missing your mom tonight, because I know I was—missing her—and I thought we might talk about it.” His reading had suggested he find a way to communicate his own grief to light the way forward. And when it came to his own grief, oh, where to begin.
Grant sculled across the water, using his cupped hands as oars. Maisie kicked her legs until they broke the surface.
“C’mon. You gotta help me out here. You don’t talk to me about this stuff. I’m not sure if you’re waiting for me to talk to you. We can’t waste the whole summer being polite.” Patrick had been wondering of late if Clara hadn’t been right. He could clothe them and feed them and keep them alive, amuse them with a playful remark. But was he really what they needed in this fraught situation?
Grant propelled himself back to Patrick’s side and sat next to him, placing his small hands on his uncle’s shoulder. He whispered in Patrick’s ear. “You mith Mom?” It was as if the concept took him completely by surprise.
“They were friends, dummy,” Maisie said.
“Hey, hey, hey. No one’s a dummy.”
A bat flew by overhead and Maisie screamed.
“It’s just a bat. They’re friendly. They eat bugs.”
“Bats are for Halloween.”
“Well, in the desert they’re for summer, too. But they never bother anyone. They just do their thing.” Patrick respected them for that and, almost to prove a point, he traced the bat’s flight path with his finger across the sky.
“You and Mommy were friends?” Grant asked. He knew the answer of course, but this was also part of what he needed, Patrick reasoned—reassurance. Wanting to hear old stories again and again and again, sifting through them for gleaming new details like a prospector panning for gold.
“We were. Good friends.” For a moment he resented them both, perhaps for the clarity of their grief. People understood the horror of losing a mother. They understood who Sara was to them. People didn’t know what she meant to Patrick. Or if they had, they had long ago forgotten. “Ironically, better friends before she shacked up with your dad. But that’s, you know, just the way of the world. You meet someone and you spend all your time with them and see less and less of your friends. Even if that someone is your friend’s brother, you simply can’t compete.” He still remembered the way Sara protested when he met Joe.
* * *
“I never see you anymore.”
“You see me. You see me right now!” Patrick exclaimed. It had been a year since they graduated and they were sharing an apartment in New York.
“Lucky me,” Sara said. “You must have run out of clean underwear.”
Their Chelsea apartment was too small for arguing, which was one thing that made their living together a success. He’d even bitched to Joe on their second date that the closet where he’d kept his clothes was too narrow and he had to bend his wire hangers forty-five degrees. Joe’s jealous reply: You have a closet? Joe, a native New Yorker, was the wrong audience for his complaint.
“Sara, I gave you the bedroom. I sleep on the couch. You can’t get mad if I want to go to Joe’s just to sleep in an actual bed.”
“So this is about furniture.”
“Yes. It’s about furniture. Hard. Wood. Furniture.”
Sara threw her moccasin at him just because.
“What was that for?”
“Lying to me.”
“What lie?” Patrick bent down to pick up the slipper. He ran his finger over the red and turquoise beads sewn across the vamp that made a tiny, glorious bird.
“Oh, please. You’re not going there to sleep.” She flashed him a devilish grin and ducked just as Patrick threw her moccasin back.
“I am!”
“You don’t look the least bit rested.”
Patrick glanced in the small mirror by the door. “Don’t say that. I have an audition.”