Page 16 of A Happy Catastrophe

It’s dim in the hallway when I open the door, and I hear the soft murmur of voices. When I go into the living room, a silence falls. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. And then I see: there, sitting on the living room couch is a woman with curly black hair and a serious look on her face, wearing a frilly sundress and stiletto high heels.

And Patrick is standing by the fireplace looking pale and rather like a specter of himself, formal and uncomfortable. He casts me a miserable look, but I can’t study him now, because my eye is caught by a little girl who is sitting next to Bedford on the floor, a child wearing a blue sunsuit and a backward Yankees baseball cap, who now leaps up and starts jumping up and down, rather like there’s an invisible pogo stick attached to her, and she’s singing some tuneless chanting thing.

A little girl! I love little girls.

But this one. It takes me a moment to realize that there’s something even more interesting about this one, and then it hits me that—oh my God, she is the spitting image of Patrick.

I can’t stop staring at her, and I’m smiling so hard my cheeks are hurting. I might be just about to drop the rotisserie chicken. I actually feel a bit wobbly, I think, and Patrick moves swiftly across the room, and he takes the chicken out of my hands, and he puts his mouth next to my ear.

“This is the very craziest thing,” he says. “You’re not going to believe . . .”

He stops talking because the little girl is hopping over toward me on one foot, and Bedford follows her, wagging as hard as he can.

“Hi, hi, hi!” she says, jumping up and down, her cap flying off. A bunch of Patricky brown hair flops against her forehead just like his does. “Are you Marnie, the matchmaker lady? Do you want to see me do a cartwheel? I can do twelve in a row! And guess what we just found out: Patrick is my real bio-daddy! And that’s why we’re in Brooklyn, which I so did not know until one hour ago. I thought we were here to go to Coney Island and see the Statue of Liberty, but that was just what we were doing while my mom figured out what to do! So that means I have known for one whole hour that I have a real daddy who is alive! And I already texted my friend Gaia and she texted back NO WAY all in capital letters because that means she’s yelling.”

“Fritzie,” says the woman on the couch. “Sit down.”

I swivel my eyes over to the woman, and she looks back at me without smiling.

“This is Fritzie,” she says with a dry little laugh. “And I’m Tessa. Sorry for the surprise here. I’m from the past.”

“Would you like some chicken?” I say.

CHAPTER EIGHT

PATRICK

Why, yes, just as Patrick suspected, they would like chicken. That would be so nice, Tessa said.

And oh, she then wanted to know, had Marnie gotten that chicken from across the street, by chance, because she and the kid had just been over there. Such nice men running that store. They’d told her which house was Patrick’s.

Patrick couldn’t believe all this was happening, all this comfortable chatter. Chicken? Seriously? This proved what he’d always suspected, that women were four steps ahead of men when it came to knowing what to do, even in untenable situations. Like this one.

So apparently, when you were facing your former accomplice from a meaningless two-night stand and her daughter, it was food that was needed. Chicken, then.

He was almost always clueless. When the doorbell rang, he’d actually thought maybe Marnie had forgotten her key, or perhaps Paco was running over, as he sometimes does, with some new creation for Patrick to taste.

Instead, he’d flung open the door—he might have even been smiling—and there was Tessa Farrell standing in front of him, looking at a kid who was hanging off the side of the stoop, swinging her bare, mosquito-bitten legs back and forth and fighting to hold on to a small pink rolling suitcase and a piece of dirty white fluff.

“Patrick!” Tessa said. She turned and smiled at him. “Surprise!”

He was caught off guard. He said hi and then didn’t know what to say.

“Do you know who I am?” she said. She crinkled up her eyes at him, enjoying her moment of power here.

He nodded. But would he have recognized her if he hadn’t heard from Elizabeth that she was in Brooklyn? He’s not sure. Their association had been so brief, after all. And mostly in the dark. He remembers the curly black hair and thick eyebrows that looked like they might have been painted on with a magic marker, and the English accent. She still had all that, of course. But she’d changed. She looked more upholstered somehow, and older. Perhaps a bit gloomier. She hadn’t changed as much as he had, of course, a fact that he saw in her face even as she tried to hide it.

“You’re in shock,” she said. “I’ve startled you. But—well, here we are. This is my daughter, Fritzie.” She smiled and gestured to the little girl to come over to her. The little girl—a blur of blue with a slim pale face and straight brown hair—stuck her fingers in her mouth and leaned against her mother and regarded him seriously.

“This is Patrick, honey,” Tessa said. She was giving him an appraising look, followed immediately with a big, artificial smile. It was Reaction Number Four of the reactions he could not bear: the one that said, You look absolutely tragically horrifying, and I feel so sorry for you that I’m simply going to pretend that everything is normal, and I hope you will, too. But there was another way, too, that she didn’t seem shocked by his features. That’s right: Elizabeth said she’d told Tessa.

They seemed to expect to be invited in, so he let them inside, which meant that he had to pick up the little pink rolling suitcase and guide it over the step. It had a decal of the Little Mermaid on it.

“Do you like The Little Mermaid?” he asked the little girl. Frisky? Frenzy?

“No,” she said and looked right in his eyes. Unlike her mother, she didn’t seem sorry for him, not in the least. “I think she was very stupid, what she did.”

“What did she do?”

“She gave up her whole voice so she could get a pair of legs.”

“What?” he said, startled. “Why would she do that? I thought she was a Disney princess and therefore smart and beautiful.”

“Yeah, the Disney princesses do dumb things. She gave up her voice just so she could get some guy to like her.”

He led the way into the living room and placed the suitcase near the door. “Well,” he said, amused in spite of himself. “Disney has some explaining to do on that one. Voices or legs? You don’t hear of guys having to make that kind of choice, do you?”

“No, you don’t,” the kid said. “Lots of Disney stories are like that. I’ll show you them if you want.”

He felt a little pulse of alarm. Were they . . . staying? Had he missed something in the conversation with Elizabeth, zoned out at the part maybe where it was being explained that Tessa had a kid, and that both of them were intending to stay with him and Marnie? Or maybe he had somehow been signed up to take them around Brooklyn. He absolutely would not be a tour guide. No way. He’d explain, if necessary, that he is in the first stages of working on a painting, and now he needed to go back across the hall to the apartment containing his studio and get back to it. But here they were, in his living room, looking at the books on the shelf, the art on the wall (much of it his). Bedford came out from the kitchen, wagging all over, but wise old Roy made a beeline for one of the bedrooms. He hated company almost as much as Patrick did.

quo;s dim in the hallway when I open the door, and I hear the soft murmur of voices. When I go into the living room, a silence falls. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. And then I see: there, sitting on the living room couch is a woman with curly black hair and a serious look on her face, wearing a frilly sundress and stiletto high heels.

And Patrick is standing by the fireplace looking pale and rather like a specter of himself, formal and uncomfortable. He casts me a miserable look, but I can’t study him now, because my eye is caught by a little girl who is sitting next to Bedford on the floor, a child wearing a blue sunsuit and a backward Yankees baseball cap, who now leaps up and starts jumping up and down, rather like there’s an invisible pogo stick attached to her, and she’s singing some tuneless chanting thing.

A little girl! I love little girls.

But this one. It takes me a moment to realize that there’s something even more interesting about this one, and then it hits me that—oh my God, she is the spitting image of Patrick.

I can’t stop staring at her, and I’m smiling so hard my cheeks are hurting. I might be just about to drop the rotisserie chicken. I actually feel a bit wobbly, I think, and Patrick moves swiftly across the room, and he takes the chicken out of my hands, and he puts his mouth next to my ear.

“This is the very craziest thing,” he says. “You’re not going to believe . . .”

He stops talking because the little girl is hopping over toward me on one foot, and Bedford follows her, wagging as hard as he can.

“Hi, hi, hi!” she says, jumping up and down, her cap flying off. A bunch of Patricky brown hair flops against her forehead just like his does. “Are you Marnie, the matchmaker lady? Do you want to see me do a cartwheel? I can do twelve in a row! And guess what we just found out: Patrick is my real bio-daddy! And that’s why we’re in Brooklyn, which I so did not know until one hour ago. I thought we were here to go to Coney Island and see the Statue of Liberty, but that was just what we were doing while my mom figured out what to do! So that means I have known for one whole hour that I have a real daddy who is alive! And I already texted my friend Gaia and she texted back NO WAY all in capital letters because that means she’s yelling.”

“Fritzie,” says the woman on the couch. “Sit down.”

I swivel my eyes over to the woman, and she looks back at me without smiling.

“This is Fritzie,” she says with a dry little laugh. “And I’m Tessa. Sorry for the surprise here. I’m from the past.”

“Would you like some chicken?” I say.

CHAPTER EIGHT

PATRICK

Why, yes, just as Patrick suspected, they would like chicken. That would be so nice, Tessa said.

And oh, she then wanted to know, had Marnie gotten that chicken from across the street, by chance, because she and the kid had just been over there. Such nice men running that store. They’d told her which house was Patrick’s.

Patrick couldn’t believe all this was happening, all this comfortable chatter. Chicken? Seriously? This proved what he’d always suspected, that women were four steps ahead of men when it came to knowing what to do, even in untenable situations. Like this one.

So apparently, when you were facing your former accomplice from a meaningless two-night stand and her daughter, it was food that was needed. Chicken, then.

He was almost always clueless. When the doorbell rang, he’d actually thought maybe Marnie had forgotten her key, or perhaps Paco was running over, as he sometimes does, with some new creation for Patrick to taste.

Instead, he’d flung open the door—he might have even been smiling—and there was Tessa Farrell standing in front of him, looking at a kid who was hanging off the side of the stoop, swinging her bare, mosquito-bitten legs back and forth and fighting to hold on to a small pink rolling suitcase and a piece of dirty white fluff.

“Patrick!” Tessa said. She turned and smiled at him. “Surprise!”

He was caught off guard. He said hi and then didn’t know what to say.

“Do you know who I am?” she said. She crinkled up her eyes at him, enjoying her moment of power here.

He nodded. But would he have recognized her if he hadn’t heard from Elizabeth that she was in Brooklyn? He’s not sure. Their association had been so brief, after all. And mostly in the dark. He remembers the curly black hair and thick eyebrows that looked like they might have been painted on with a magic marker, and the English accent. She still had all that, of course. But she’d changed. She looked more upholstered somehow, and older. Perhaps a bit gloomier. She hadn’t changed as much as he had, of course, a fact that he saw in her face even as she tried to hide it.

“You’re in shock,” she said. “I’ve startled you. But—well, here we are. This is my daughter, Fritzie.” She smiled and gestured to the little girl to come over to her. The little girl—a blur of blue with a slim pale face and straight brown hair—stuck her fingers in her mouth and leaned against her mother and regarded him seriously.

“This is Patrick, honey,” Tessa said. She was giving him an appraising look, followed immediately with a big, artificial smile. It was Reaction Number Four of the reactions he could not bear: the one that said, You look absolutely tragically horrifying, and I feel so sorry for you that I’m simply going to pretend that everything is normal, and I hope you will, too. But there was another way, too, that she didn’t seem shocked by his features. That’s right: Elizabeth said she’d told Tessa.

They seemed to expect to be invited in, so he let them inside, which meant that he had to pick up the little pink rolling suitcase and guide it over the step. It had a decal of the Little Mermaid on it.

“Do you like The Little Mermaid?” he asked the little girl. Frisky? Frenzy?

“No,” she said and looked right in his eyes. Unlike her mother, she didn’t seem sorry for him, not in the least. “I think she was very stupid, what she did.”

“What did she do?”

“She gave up her whole voice so she could get a pair of legs.”

“What?” he said, startled. “Why would she do that? I thought she was a Disney princess and therefore smart and beautiful.”

“Yeah, the Disney princesses do dumb things. She gave up her voice just so she could get some guy to like her.”

He led the way into the living room and placed the suitcase near the door. “Well,” he said, amused in spite of himself. “Disney has some explaining to do on that one. Voices or legs? You don’t hear of guys having to make that kind of choice, do you?”

“No, you don’t,” the kid said. “Lots of Disney stories are like that. I’ll show you them if you want.”

He felt a little pulse of alarm. Were they . . . staying? Had he missed something in the conversation with Elizabeth, zoned out at the part maybe where it was being explained that Tessa had a kid, and that both of them were intending to stay with him and Marnie? Or maybe he had somehow been signed up to take them around Brooklyn. He absolutely would not be a tour guide. No way. He’d explain, if necessary, that he is in the first stages of working on a painting, and now he needed to go back across the hall to the apartment containing his studio and get back to it. But here they were, in his living room, looking at the books on the shelf, the art on the wall (much of it his). Bedford came out from the kitchen, wagging all over, but wise old Roy made a beeline for one of the bedrooms. He hated company almost as much as Patrick did.

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