“Can you do Paw Patrol?” Grant asked.
“Paw Patrol Pancakes?” Patrick took a long sip of his coffee. “I like the alliteration. What’s Paw Patrol?”
“They’re search and rescue dogs,” Maisie explained.
Patrick glanced over at his phone. “Hey, Siri, what’s Paw Patrol?”
“I found the following results for prawn petrol.”
“Oh, for god’s sake.” Patrick reached for his phone, knocking the wooden spoon resting across the bowl of pancake batter onto the floor. He looked down; it would be easy enough to wipe up off the terrazzo floors.
“Aren’t you going to get that?”
“It’s fine. Just remind me to clean it up so Rosa doesn’t have to.”
“Who’s Rosa?”
“Oh, you’ll love Rosa. She comes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She’ll make us a real brunch. Do you like chilaquiles?” The kids didn’t know how to answer. Patrick unlocked his phone and typed Paw Patrol into Google and scrolled through the results. “Produced in association with TVOntario, which is owned by the government of Canada. Good one, Grant!” He gave his nephew a high five. “Canada is harmless and the prime minister is a total snack, so we can do Paw Patrol. But another time, because we have to move beyond brunch and start planning our day. What are you guys thinking, do you have anything on your calendars?”
“We don’t have calendars, either,” Maisie said, annoyed.
“No people, no calendars. How do you keep track of your meetings, appointments? Do you have assistants at least?” Patrick threw her a smirk.
“No.”
“Well, neither do I. Not anymore. Just Rosa on every other weekday.” Since he was mostly pulling their legs, Patrick didn’t go into detail about how he preferred it that way. That assistants and agents and publicists often created just as much work as they fielded. (One of his past assistants had reorganized his closet unannounced and sent a shirt that had belonged to Joe to dry cleaning. Patrick had to race across town and beg them to give it back uncleaned; it had long since lost Joe’s scent, but that was not the point.) Instead, he picked up his phone and pretended to open his calendar app. “Well, look at that. I have a light day, too. So . . . what should we do? What do you guys do with your friends?”
“What do you do with your friends?”
Patrick grew wistful. It had been a long time since he had spent any time with his friends. “We drink rosé and talk about Best Actress Oscar winners. Is that what you do?”
“No.” Maisie drew her chin into her neck until it all but disappeared.
“Not even with Audra Brackett? It’s fun. Like, who is your favorite Best Actress winner?”
“I don’t know.” Grant shrugged comically, as if he should actually have an opinion.
“Well, that’s a bit of a trick question, because there’s really only one correct answer and that’s Faye Dunaway, 1976.”
“That’s before we were born,” Maisie protested.
“That’s before I was born, but I still know this stuff!” Patrick paused, doing a quick calculation in his head to see if that was a lie. “I would also accept Isabelle Huppert, 2016, even though they awarded her Oscar to Emma Stone.”
Grant rested his head on the counter as if he were terminally bored. “We want to do something.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, what is there to do?”
“You guys visited once before. You don’t remember what there is to do?”
“I was just a baby!” Grant protested.
“Dinosaurs!” Maisie bounced up and down on her stool with excitement. Patrick had taken them to see the Cabazon dinosaurs featured in the movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Together they looked at the giant T. rex and brontosaurus sculptures and dug in warm sand for “fossils” (fake bones you could trade in for prizes). The wind had caused the sand to kick up in their faces, but there was a water table where you could “mine” for gold, and it was there Patrick learned how much kids responded to water. Whatever the activity (washlet spritzing, for instance), the wetter the better.
“I was thinking something closer to home. Maybe we could swim in the pool and then this afternoon we could play a game?”
“POOL!” Grant hollered.
“You can each pick a pool float and I’ll inflate them while you dip yourselves in sunscreen. I’ve got a flamingo, a unicorn, a Jeff Koons balloon dog, a slice of pizza. A diamond ring, but that’s meant to be ironic.”
“Why do you have tho many?”
“For you guys, silly. Also, companies just send me this garbage because I have a pool and a lot of Instagram followers. I even have a lobster your mother gave me one time. A New England thing, I guess. To remind me of my roots. But that’s more Maine than Connecticut.”
“Can I put my face in the water?” Grant asked.
“If you don’t, I’ll put it in for you.”
“Can we bring the toilet?”
“What? No. Why? Pee in the bushes like a normal person.”
“To squirt each other with.”
“Are you crazy? It’s attached to the floor with a wax seal. But we’ll get Super Soakers or something later and you can squirt each other to your heart’s content. Until then, we’ll use the hose.”
Grant grinned wide, all teeth (minus one) and gums.
“Just put your plate in the sink.”
Grant jumped down from
