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By the time Patrick gets to the school, it's ten to noon. He'd gotten held up at the studio and then even after living in L.A. full time for three years the traffic never does what he expects. He has to park two blocks away because the parking lot is teeming with proud parents and grandparents, so he books it back toward the school. He’s huffing a bit by the time he gets there, but his red face and loss of dignity are far preferable to Moira’s disappointment if he should be late.
As he nears the door, he meets Ms. Roth making her way into the main building from the portable classrooms on the edge of the parking lot. She’s carrying a stack of six pumpkin pies and Patrick jogs a little bit to get the door for her. She smiles and says, “Thank you, Mr. Stump,” and he reaches out to take the top three pies off of the wobbly stack. He’s pretty sure he told her to call him Patrick at the last parent-teacher conference, but he says, “Patrick, please,” again, and he smiles at her.
She smiles back, and blushes a bit. She’s very young; she just finished her student teaching last year and it’s obvious she knows who he is. Not many people recognize him now that he works in the studio full time, which makes Patrick think it’s possible she was once a Fall Out Boy fan.
“So, where are we taking the pies?” Patrick asks, and Ms. Roth leads him down a series of hallways. The walls are covered in turkey paintings made by tracing tiny hands and most of the classroom doors have fall leaves and cornucopia decals on the glass. They pass a teacher leading a line of older children back to their classroom and two boys sitting sullenly on a bench outside the principal’s office before reaching a set of swinging doors. Patrick can hear the clamor of young voices coming from behind it, shrieking and giggling, and then a man’s voice calling out, “1, 2, 3 eyes on me!”
Ms. Roth says, “Sorry, Mr. Stump. No family allowed in the dressing room before the show!”
Patrick smiles. “Well, I would hate to ruin the surprise. Can you point me back to the auditorium?”
Ashlee is already there, sitting center in the second row. There’s an empty seat next to her and she’s craning her head around, looking for Patrick, no doubt. He waves to catch her attention and then works his way around the bleachers and through the maze of chairs set up in front of the stage.
Ashlee has gained some weight this year, but she’s still strikingly beautiful. She’s wearing some sort of pumpkin necklace that looks like it was cut out of construction paper and is hung from her neck by brown yarn. It’s easily the size of Patrick’s outstretched hand, and it says ‘Happy Turkey Day, Mommy’ in red crayon. He’d recognize Moira’s blocky printing and backwards ‘k’ anywhere.
There’s only one empty seat next to Ashlee, and Patrick bends down to kiss her cheek asking, “What about Joe?”
“He called this morning. He’s stuck in Chicago because of an ice storm.”
Patrick says, “Damn,” softly, and Ashlee swats him on the arm.
“Kiddie-appropriate, Patrick, please!”
He says, “I meant, ‘darn’!” and rubs his bicep. “No need to get violent!” He gives her his best reproachful glare, but she just laughs. It never works on Moira, either.
Ashlee leans forward and says in a low voice, “The old lady behind us already yelled at me for having my cell phone ringer on. I’d hate for you feel her wrath as well.”
“I’m glad you’re watching my back, then,” Patrick says. He slides out of his denim jacket and settles it across the back of his aluminum folding chair.
“Joe said to tell you that he’ll make it out here as soon as he can, maybe as soon as tonight, so don’t get grumpy.” Ashlee reaches over and pats Patrick on the knee. “There was just no way he was going to make the play.”
Joe and Marie are in Chicago full time now, but Joe was supposed to spend Thanksgiving in L.A. while Marie was on a business trip. Patrick has been looking forward to the visit; he hasn’t seen Joe since Patrick’s last visit to Chicago in August. Andy’s new band has been touring for 14 months and they’re playing in Australia right now so most of the time it’s just Patrick out here, and he misses his guys.
“You told Moira?”
“Yeah, we had a little temper tantrum about it on the way to the bus stop. I promised her that you would be here for the whole thing, though, so I’m glad you weren’t late.” She looks up from where she’s rooting around in her bag to give him a pointed look. “I was starting to wonder.”
Patrick says, “Yeah, I got held up at the studio.”
“Held up like held up, or held up like you lost track of time?” She pokes him in the side. “I know how you are.”
“Held up for real this time, I swear. My employees were conspiring against me.”
“Ah, here it is!” Ashlee sets her bag down and holds up a camcorder. “Now if I could just remember how to work it…there we go!” She holds the camera out in front of herself and smiles into the lens, saying, “Hi, honey! This is your kindergarten Thanksgiving play. It’s…November 23rd, 2016.” She waves at the camera with her free hand. “I think the play is going to start in a few minutes.” She turns the camera to point at Patrick.
“And here’s Patrick! Say hi to Moira, Patrick!”
Patrick waves and says, “Hi Moira! I can’t wait to see your play, sweetie.” He feels a little bit stupid, smiling at the camera, but Ashlee catches his eye and gives him a big grin, making a ‘keep going’ gesture with her free hand. He says, “I like your mom’s necklace, it’s very pretty. I think you must have made it for her.”
Ashlee says, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and turns the camera off, handing it to him to hold. She digs around in her bag and pulls out another necklace. This one is a bright red leaf, bigger than the pumpkin, strung with yellow yarn, and it says ‘Gobble Gobble, Patrick!’ in big green letters. Patrick takes off his hat and slips it over his head. Ashlee makes to turn the camera back on, but before she can thumb the power button Ms. Roth comes on stage to start the performance.
The play is very politically correct, much more so than what Patrick remembers from when he was in school. According to Moira, casting was to be kept a secret from the parents until the day of the performance.
Last Saturday, when Patrick came by to return the drill he’d borrowed from Ashlee, he’d knocked on Moira’s bedroom door to say hi, and she’d shrieked “Go away! I’m practicing my lines and you’re not allowed to hear!”
Ashlee had just shrugged and said she’d caught Moira tiptoeing from the arts & crafts cupboard to her bedroom earlier that week, arms full of glitter and Elmer’s glue.
When the class troops out on stage, Moira’s dressed as an ear of corn, wearing a yellow t-shirt under some sort of green construction paper vest drenched in glitter. She’s managed to give the whole outfit a Wentzian twist, though, by wearing neon pink legwarmers over her jeans.
The kids take turns narrating, with Ms. Roth crouched off to the side of the stage, ready to prompt them if they forget their lines. One little boy fumbles his lines so badly that Ms. Roth ends up reading his whole part loud enough for the audience to hear before letting him scurry back to his place in line. Ashlee leans over and whispers, “That was Jackson Mitchell,” in Patrick’s ear.
Patrick nods sagely. “Ah, the boyfriend,” he whispers back. The woman behind them hushes him, and Ashlee tilts her head down to hide her smile.
When it’s her turn, Moira marches up to the front of the stage like a drill sergeant and says her lines at the top of her lungs, right into the microphone. Patrick can see some of the audience flinching at the volume.
“Then the pilgrims said to each other, ‘Wherever will we find food to survive the winter?’” she pauses after the question to give an exaggerated shrug, lifting both hands, palms up, into the air. The laugh this earns only encourages her and Patrick stretches his arm across the back of Ashlee’s chair and whispers, “Your kid is such a ham,” in her ear. She leans her head on his shoulder, and when he looks down, he can see she has tears in her eyes.
She whispers back, “She didn’t get it from me.”
Patrick kisses the crown of her head and curls his hand over her shoulder. Despite the weight, he can still clearly feel her bones, delicate beneath his fingers.
“I miss him,” Ashlee whispers. “He should be here for this.” Patrick pulls her closer into his side.
“Hey…” he says. “Hey, look at your baby, huh?”
Ashlee sniffs and sits up. “You’re right,” she says, even though nothing Patrick said called for agreement. He moves his arm from her shoulder to the back of her neck, and she squeezes his knee.
On stage, Moira’s saying, “We are very cold and hungry,” and giving a very energetic shiver. She rubs her hands together and blows into them, then grabs at her belly and groans. The audience cracks up.
They’re supposed to hold their applause until the end, but Ashlee claps anyway when Moira finishes her lines. Moira stands at the microphone, smiling at the crowd, until Ms. Roth says, “Moira, sweetie, it’s Devin’s turn now.” Several people in the audience chuckle, and Moira skips to the back of line, waving at Ashlee and Patrick.
When the play is over, instead of coming down the stairs at the side of the stage, Moira calls, “Patrick, Patrick!” and launches herself off the front. Patrick takes a quick step forward and catches her with an “Oomph”.
He sets her down on the ground and says, “You were great, honey!”
Ashlee has the video camera out again, and Moira smiles her goofiest, toothiest grin and bounces around in front of the lens, saying, “Did you see me, Mommy? I was a corn!”
“You were corny, you mean!” Patrick says, and Moira sticks out her tongue at him.
There’s a party in the kindergarten hallway, with pie and apple cider, and Patrick and Ashlee mill around with the other family members. Moira grabs Patrick with one hand and Ashlee with the other and she drags them on a tour of her classroom, showing off her desk and her book cubby and Mr. Pokey, the class turtle.
After 20 minutes, Ashlee has to leave. Wednesday’s are one of Patrick’s afternoons with Moira, so he helps her collect her stuff for the long weekend and he makes sure to thank Ms. Roth and wish her a happy Thanksgiving on their way out.
Moira holds Patrick’s hand the whole way back to the car, swinging it back and forth between them. She says, “Now we go for ice cream, right Patrick?”
“I don’t think you need ice cream, Moira-Bean,” Patrick says gently. “You just had pumpkin pie.”
“Pie’s not as good as ice cream. Everyone knows that. Also…” and Patrick recognizes that wheedling voice, “…also, pumpkin is like squash, right?”
“Right,” he drags the word out, squinting down at her and raising one eyebrow. She giggles.
“So pumpkin pie is like a vegetable dinner! And ice cream is like a dessert!”
Patrick says, “Hmmm…” which seems to satisfy her, probably because she knows him well enough to recognize that it’s pretty much a yes. She grins up at him and bats her eyelashes in a move that’s so familiar it makes Patrick’s chest ache every time he sees it, and he reaches down and smoothes her hair back from her forehead.
“We’re having a play at Christmastime, too, Patrick!” she says. “Ms. Roth says it’s a holiday play! I hope I get to be Santa Claus! Or the dreidel!”
Patrick fakes a frown and asks, “Do you think you can spin like a dreidel?” and she’s off. Patrick keeps a hold of her hand and she twirls under his arm, trying to spin and keep walking forward, dark hair flying everywhere. She doesn’t stop all the way to the car, where she spins herself into the bumper and then slumps over the trunk. Patrick unlocks the back door and tosses her backpack in, then holds a hand out to her.
“You okay there, Miss Dreidel?”
“I’m so dizzy, I think I need ice cream to fix me!”
Patrick laughs and gets her strapped in. She always complains that she’s old enough to buckle her own seatbelt, and Patrick always tells her to shush. He likes doing it, strapping her in and knowing she’s safe, and he usually sneaks a kiss on her cheek while he’s leaning over her. Today her face is sticky with cider.
On the drive--to the ice cream parlor, because Patrick’s a softie--Moira talks about the play, about how Madison P. messed up her lines and Brody knocked the microphone over. Then she says, “Brody’s mom is getting married on this Saturday.”
Patrick says, “Oh, really. Well, that’s nice for Brody’s mom.” He trying to decide whether or not he should brave the 405.
“You should marry mommy, and then we could be a family.”
Patrick stares at Moira in the rearview mirror and almost rear ends the white Corolla in front of him. After he’s slammed on the brakes, he looks back at her reflection, and she’s staring up at him with big dark eyes.
To be honest, he has no idea where to start.
“Moira, sweetie. We are a family. You and me and your mom, and Uncle Joe and Uncle Andy.”
“You can’t have three daddies in a family, silly.” Her voice is too loud, and when he glances back, she’s scowling out the window.
Patrick sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He signals right and pulls into the parking lot of a dental office, then turns off the car. He feels like he should have been expecting this--feels dumb and caught off guard because he didn’t see it coming and he doesn’t know the right answer.
He can’t say, “Someday your mom is going to want to marry a man she's in love with.” Ashlee has only just started dating again, and she hasn’t introduced any of her dates to Moira yet, so that would just be borrowing trouble.
He can’t say, “I have a girlfriend,” because Moira hates Stephanie. The last time he brought Stephanie to dinner at Ashlee and Moira’s, Moira threw spaghetti at Stephanie and called her a shit head, and the whole thing had resulted in a lot of crying (from Ashlee and Moira), and a lot of yelling (from Stephanie, who didn’t appreciate being asked to wait in the car), and a long after-hours phone session with Moira’s therapist.
He can’t say, “You already have a daddy,” because she doesn’t remember Pete. Ashlee and Patrick used to talk to her about him all the time, tell her what her daddy was like, tell her that he’d be proud of her. Lately, though, she’s going through a phase where she won’t hear it.
At Patrick’s Halloween dinner party this year, Ryan Ross had sat down next to Moira and said, “One year your daddy dressed up like me for Halloween.”
Moira had shrieked, “No he didn’t, because I don’t have a daddy!” loud enough to silence the whole room.
Dr. Tremont says it’s normal, that they should be patient with her, that she’s angry at Pete for abandoning her.
Some days Patrick can’t believe that this is his life, that he has a child psychologist on his speed dial.
He thinks Moira’s not the only one who’s angry.
But right now Moira’s in his backseat, a little emotional minefield, and Patrick doesn’t want to make it harder, not for her, so he tries to let go of the weariness and the frustration and the anger.
He tries to come up with the right gesture, the right words.
In the end he says, “Hey, come up here,” and she shakes her head stubbornly, hunching down in her seat. He leans around until he’s peering into the back seat. “Moira, please. At least look at me.” She’s got her shoulders pulled up high, and her skinny arms crossed in front of her chest, and she looks so defensive and defeated that it breaks his heart a little bit.
She kicks her feet and says, “I’ll come up front, but I won’t look at you.”
“Okay,” Patrick sighs, because he knows enough to take what he can get. He can feel the muscles in his neck knotting.
She unbuckles her seatbelt and scrambles over the console and into the passenger seat, where she sits with her eyes clenched shut, and Patrick can’t help but chuckle at her theatrics.
He says, “Hey, Lacey didn’t have to marry anyone, and she’s part of your family, right?” Lacey is Moira’s big orange tabby cat.
“Lacey is married to Hemmy, duh.” And, actually, Patrick thinks he might have officiated at the ceremony, back in August. He definitely married someone to someone else in Moira’s playroom down in the basement; she had made him put on a top hat for the occasion.
“Okay.” He tries again. “Sweetie, sometimes you can choose who’s in your family. Like, if you love someone a lot, and you wish hard enough that they were part of your family, then they are. Just because you wished it.”
Moira cracks one eye and looks at him. “But that doesn’t make a mom and a dad and a kid.” She sounds wary, like she thinks he’s trying to pull one over on her.
“No. But it could make a Mommy and a Moira and a Patrick, if you want.” He says it carefully, keeping his voice calm even while his fingers clench tight around the steering wheel.
Moira opens both eyes and kneels up on the seat. Patrick holds his breath. He wishes he were better at this stuff. He wishes--in moments like this--he would give anything to have Pete here. He misses Pete other times, of course. Always, really--in the studio, and when he’s at the bar with Andy and Joe, and on birthdays (his own, Ashlee’s, Moira’s, Pete’s). But looking at Moira right now, he misses Pete so much it’s like a knife in his throat, and he’s so furious at Pete that it’s like a knife in his belly. He’s furious at Pete for killing himself, for leaving his beautiful baby girl and his beautiful wife, for leaving Patrick, for leaving all of them. For leaving all of them to muddle through without him.
He swallows the anger down, tries to blink it away. He can’t let Moira see it in his eyes, and it’s so futile anyway.
Moira’s biting her lip, and she asks, “Do you love my mom?”
“Your mom is my best friend,” Patrick says. “I love her very much.”
“Hey!” Moira squawks.
“And you,” he continues smoothly, “you, Moira-Bean, are my other very, very best friend.”
“And best friends can be family?”
“Absolutely,” Patrick says, and Moira has finally uncurled from her defensive huddle, so he reaches out and pulls her into a hug, pressing his nose into her hair. She smells like pumpkin pie.
“But Brody says that getting married means you promise.” And Patrick finally feels like he knows what to say, thank god, and he pulls back and takes her hands in his.
“Hey, babygirl, I promise. You and me and your mom will always be a family. Forever and ever. I promise. Okay?”
She says, “Okay,” and she sighs, a big sigh that moves her little shoulders up and down. “Patrick?”
“Yes?” he says, wary.
“…can we get ice cream now?”
Patrick laughs. “Yes, this definitely calls for ice cream.”
“Can I stay in the front seat?”
“Nope. You know it’s not safe because of the airbag.”
She clambers back over the console. “Can I get rainbow ice cream?”
“Yes. If you buckle your seatbelt.” He watches her fumble with the strap until he hears a click, and then turns the key in the ignition.
“Will you get rainbow ice cream?” she asks.
“I don’t know. You know I like the coffee flavor.”
“Is coffee your favorite color? Because rainbow is my favorite color. That’s why I like rainbow everything, like ice cream, and suckers, and clothes.”
“You know my favorite color, don’t you?” Patrick asks.
“Um…green!”
“Yep. Green is my very favorite color.”
“Will you stay for dinner when you drop me off at home tonight? We’re having…green beans!”
Patrick laughs. “You made that up!”
“We might be,” Moira says. “Patrick, we might be! You don’t know.”
He’ll have to make sure it’s okay with Ashlee, and cancel dinner with Stephanie, which probably isn’t going to go over well. But he looks at the kid in the back seat, and she’s still wearing the green paper vest, she has pie in her hair, and she’s laughing. She’s laughing Pete’s stupid donkey laugh.
She says, “Please eat dinner with me!”
And Patrick says, “Hmmm…” and that seems to satisfy her. Probably because she knows it’s a yes.
Later, after dinner, after Moira’s bed time, Patrick drives the 35 minutes back to his house. Stephanie is waiting for him, curled on his sofa watching reruns of CSI, and she says, “How’s the wife and kid?”
It’s an old joke between them, not cruelly meant, but tonight it makes his head pound right behind his eyes.
He rubs his temples and says, “Run away with me?” and she laughs softly.
“Sure thing, babe. Where to?”
“Someplace exotic,” he says, dropping his keys on the side table. “Fiji? Bali? I can’t decide. You choose.”
She turns off the TV. “I think you just want to get me into a grass skirt.”
“You know it,” Patrick says and attempts a leer, but he can tell it’s worn around the edges. Stephanie reaches for his hand.
She leads him to the bedroom and makes love to him, and afterward he lies for a long time with his face pressed between her shoulder blades.
After a while he whispers, “I can’t run away,” and she murmurs and rubs his forearm where it’s wrapped around her waist.
At one a.m. he gets up and pulls on sweatpants. He heads down to his mini-studio in the basement where he turns on the stereo and the small reading lamp on the corner of his desk.
Patrick never listens to Fall Out Boy anymore; he doesn't want to hear Pete's words. Maybe that’s unhealthy avoidance; maybe it’s just a phase and he’ll get over it. He doesn’t know. Tonight he puts on Leonard Cohen.
He sits in his rolling desk chair and leans his chin on one hand and he looks at the pictures standing framed on his desk. There’s a candid shot of him and Joe and Andy at a Cubs game last year. There’s Moira’s kindergarten picture. Then there’s the picture taken the day Pete and Ashlee brought Moira home from the hospital for the first time. They’re all in the living room of Pete’s first L.A. house, and Pete is holding a bundle of pink cloth, smiling goofily down at Moira’s bald head. Patrick and Ashlee are on either side of him, both looking at Pete’s face, both smiling at his expression.
Patrick remembers that day, the awe in Pete's eyes the first time Moira wrapped her little hand around his finger. He remembers Pete pushing him down on the couch and then thrusting the baby into Patrick's arms.
Patrick had said, "You know, I always figured I'd beat you to the picket fence deal."
"I'm sure you'll be next, man," Pete had chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. "And then you can, like, move in down the block, and our kids can play together all the time and shit. Oh! And we will have the awesomest neighborhood 4th of July parties ever."
"I call fireworks!" Joe had yelled from the kitchen.
"It's my house and my party, Trohman, I'm in charge of the fireworks."
"We'll hire someone to handle the fireworks," Ashlee had said, reaching over to ruffle Pete's hair when he pouted up at her. "We can't have you getting hurt, babe. You've got a daughter to think about now."
Patrick can still remember the way Pete had beamed up at her.
Sometimes he doesn't know what the fuck went wrong.
He folds his arms on the desktop and leans forward to rest his chin on top of them. It will be better in the morning, he knows--it's always better in the mornings. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving; Ashlee's taking Moira to Grandma and Grandpa Simpson's, and Patrick and Stephanie are cooking for Joe, if he ever makes it to L.A.
For tonight, he reaches out and switches the lamp off. The song changes to Famous Blue Raincoat and Patrick closes his eyes. Every few lines, he sings along.