“Grant? Pizza?”
“I don’t want anything!”
Patrick looked back over his shoulder for a way out of this. Three tables over was a party of silver-haired men in tragic Hawaiian shirts celebrating a birthday. At the center of their table was an enormous martini glass containing a mountain of pink cotton candy. He motioned for their waiter as he was passing by. “Excuse me, we’re going to start with one of those.” He pointed to the cotton candy.
“You’re going to start with dessert.”
“That’s right. We can’t seem to decide on a main course, so we’re going to start with dessert. When you have a moment.”
This seemed to get Grant’s attention.
“Look, it’s not right for me to film you and put you on the internet. That’s a decision that your father should be a part of and I don’t want to hear any protest out of you. But let’s see what you got. Okay? When the cotton candy comes, I want you to do as many goofy things with it as you can think of. I will record you on my phone. Think of this like an audition for YouTube.” Patrick sat back in his chair to consider this. Could he use this to their advantage? For better or worse, they were part of a self-documenting generation at ease in front of a camera. Perhaps he could get them to open up by filming them. Get them to talk about their grief in a way that they simply couldn’t manage face-to-face. Maybe they needed the camera between them as a barrier, a neutral arbiter who wouldn’t judge or ask questions or try to define their feelings or shape the way they expressed them. It would simply record their feelings for posterity. Perhaps it was the perfect therapist. “Deal?”
Grant had his elbows on the table and put his hands under his chin to think about this. If only elbows on the table were Patrick’s biggest concern. “Goofy things like what?”
“I don’t know, kid. What would you do on your vlog?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that sounds like a rather dull viewing experience. Two kids staring sadly at candy.”
“Eat it!” Maisie offered.
“Meh.” Patrick shrugged. “I don’t think it’s fun to sit around and watch other people eat candy when you can’t enjoy any yourself.”
“But why do we have to be goofy?”
“People love goofy. Goofy bought me my house. There’s already a first wave of kids with followers. You’re second bananas. Like I was. You gotta ham it up to grab eyeballs.”
“Bananas, ham.” Maisie scowled.
“Eyeballth,” Grant added, grimacing.
The waiter returned with the cotton candy, and when it was placed on the table it towered over all of their heads, a pink Matterhorn made entirely of billowy clouds. “Here you go. I’ll give you a few minutes and check back to see if you’ve decided on dinner.” He winked at Patrick. Flirtatiously, conspiratorially, or just in recognition; it wasn’t clear.
“Here, let’s start with an easy one.” Patrick used two hands to pull at a strand of cotton candy until it came loose. He pinched it in the middle and curled the ends, then held it between his upper lip and his nose like a mustache. Except for its pink color, it looked not unlike John’s.
Grant instantly perked up. “I want one!”
“Me too!”
“Do you think I’m stopping you?” Patrick pushed the cotton candy to their side of the table so they could tear off the makings for mustaches. He tucked his under his nostrils, and he could feel it melting the littlest bit against his warm skin and the room smelled suddenly sweet, a spun sugar wormhole opening, beckoning, transporting him back to a happier time.
“Look at me!” Grant hollered.
“I am looking at you.” Patrick felt like an old-timey railroad baron, his voice affected by the snarl he projected to keep his mustache in place. He nodded to Maisie to make certain she knew he was watching her, too. “Okay, let me get my phone.”
Patrick opened his camera and his finger paused without selecting video. “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s take a selfie for your dad.” He pushed his chair back, careful not to disturb Marlene, and slid around between them. He crouched and put his right arm around Grant and held the phone out in front of them. “Squeeze in!” They were cheek-to-cheek, and for a moment Patrick’s heart skipped—for a fraction of a second it actually felt like it stopped beating—and he took in a sharp breath of air. It was so, he didn’t know—saccharine. And yet deeply genuine, profound; he felt something he hadn’t in a long, long time. He closed his eyes.
I love you, he said silently in his head, to himself, to the kids, to Joe, to Sara, to no one. To everyone.
“Uncle Patrick!”
He blinked his eyes open and fumbled with the camera like he was caught, as if everyone in the restaurant had been reading his mind.
He’d never felt more exposed.
“Say bananas!”
“NO!” Grant yelled.
“Say cotton candy, then.” This seemed more agreeable.
“COTTON CANDY!”
He snapped the photo, a keeper on the first try. He swung around back to his chair and looked at the picture. It was deceptive, a perfect moment of happiness in the middle of an otherwise tense meal; three sneers employed to hold their pink facial hair in place, when in fact it was the first time in days they were smiling. It was also artful; a column with luminescent tile perfectly captured the light, blotting out the disapproving woman behind them with blues and turquoises and pinks that picked up the color of their mustaches. He looked back in his phone to find his last text chain with Greg, scrolled and scrolled until at last there it was. Their last text, before Sara died, about something inconsequential—a pictorial in National Geographic about a climber who free-scaled El Capitan; Greg mentioned planning a
