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“A hospital waiting room is no place for a three-year-old.”
“My house is no place for a three-year-old.” David gestured towards the framed wedding photograph on the end table. Kids and glass didn’t belong together.
“Our house. We’ll shut all the doors we can and keep him in the living room. We can put on a cartoon and feed him Kraft Dinner. It’ll be fine.” Patrick moved the picture to the bookcase’s highest shelf.
“It’s just, we had other plans! It’s Valentine’s Day!” They didn’t have reservations, but Patrick had promised brownies and a Queer as Folk marathon. “He can’t go to Elmdale with them?”
“No. Roland said last year it took hours because of all the food poisoning and candle burn victims, and after Rollie made train sounds for ninety minutes straight, the receptionist strongly encouraged them to leave him with a neighbor in the future.”
“Oh god.”
A car honked in the driveway. “They’re here. Buckle up!”
“I never should’ve taught him how to use that,” Patrick said, as Rollie hit the remote control’s pause button over and over. On the screen, Elsa walked up two ice stairs, stopped, walked up two ice stairs, stopped, walked up two ice stairs, stopped.
“Rollie! Let her sing the whole song,” David pleaded. Rollie hissed at him, loudly, like an aggrieved cat, but started Elsa up again before throwing the remote behind the armchair. “Hey!” David bent over the back of the chair to look. “Patrick, can you get this?” he yelled over the music.
“Can you not reach it? Your arms are longer.”
“It’s covered in cheese sauce and dust mites. Maybe we should just buy a new one.”
Patrick leaned over to retrieve it. “It’ll wash.” He turned down the volume. “Let’s do something else. Does anybody like to color?”
Of course Patrick was the one to suggest coloring, but it was David who had to go through the art supplies looking for things to sacrifice. His watercolors? No way. His pencil crayons? Nope. Gel pens? Eh. Charcoal? Absolutely not.
“Finding anything?” Patrick called up the stairs. “We’ve got pajamas on and clean hands, and we are getting fussy.”
“We,” David muttered. He imagined Patrick and Rollie in matching flannel. It was not sexy. He settled on the markers they’d bought for labeling moving boxes and paper from the printer.
“Markers?” Patrick asked as David set them on the coffee table.
David tried to understand the implied judgment. “Not enough colors?” There was red, black, and blue. “Many a country’s vexillographer has done incredible things with this combo.”
“It’s okay, you’ve got red, so we can make valentines. Will you find scissors?”
Maybe markers were a bad idea. Maybe Jocelyn eating coconut macaroons in some misguided show of affection was a bad idea. “I just don’t understand—Rollie! The paper, color on the paper, not me.” David cut out two more hearts, one for his card and one for the kid’s. “Why risk it? She does this every year? And Roland knows she’s allergic?”
“He does now, anyway.” Patrick tapped the paper. “Rollie, if you can’t stop drawing on people, I will take that away and you will have to do cutting instead of coloring.” Handing Roland’s child scissors also sounded like a bad idea.
“When I ate that peach pie, the allergist said not to risk it again—and I miss peaches, and the years of mouth itching weren’t too disconcerting—but the throat closing? Wasn’t she told the same thing last year?”
“Probably. Maybe she just loves coconut?”
“Coconut. Write ‘coconut.’” Patrick wrote the word ‘coconut’ on Rollie’s paper, which was turning into a list. Of things he loved, perhaps? So far it said Mommy balls trains boat Elsa trains pizza coconut.
David gluesticked one of the hearts and handed it over. “Here. Make it a valentine card. Is this for Mommy? We could add ‘get well’? Two birds one stone?”
“Birds. Write ‘birds,’” he said to Patrick.
“Well, that was a lot of fun,” Patrick said as he closed the door behind the Schitts.
“Really?” His smile did seem to be genuine. “Even though we’ll both be hearing that earworm of a song all night in our heads?”
“Sure. Worth it. It was an adventure, something different.”
“Different? Like my arm, now, with this semipermanent blue streak?” He held it out in illustration. Good thing he’d had the foresight to take off his sweater before he’d approached the child.
“Alcohol will take that right off.” Patrick grabbed his hand with both of his and pulled him nearer. “I like a challenge. Rollie’s a challenge and always surprising. It’s fun, once every couple of months. And it feels good to do something for someone. Thank you for helping me watch him.”
Well, it wasn’t like he had a choice. But he liked that smile on Patrick’s face, and he liked the way Patrick’s eyes lit up. It made him really happy to make his husband happy. He would do stupid things to see that smile. “You’re welcome. Hold on, let me finish something?” He hurried back to the coffee table and wrote Patrick balls smiles brownies EpiPens sweaters art husband Patrick on his paper full of hearts.
“What’s this?” Patrick asked, as if it weren’t obvious, accepting the card.
“A valentine.” He leaned in for a kiss. “Now, do you think it’s too late for baking and television?”
Patrick made a big show of looking at the time. “I think we could do one episode, but the idea of brownies?”
“Yeah?”
“I think you’re going to have to let it go.”