They shared memories of Joe, but they could only speak a few key words out loud. Wretched, putrid and sub-par conjured a telephone call Joe had made to a hotel in San Diego to complain after a disastrous stay. Clams casino, a weekend with food poisoning that was only funny now. Jim jinlet, the way he would try to pronounce gin gimlet after consuming two or three. Full stories were painful and unnecessary. The memories were fresh, the history recent. They played out like little movies on a screen inside their brains. Fleshed-out memories would come later, when the edges started to soften in the fog of memory, when the details needed to be spoken to be recalled.
“You lied to me,” Patrick said when they were sufficiently drunk. The laughter had subsided and things, once again, looked starless.
“I’ve never lied to you,” Sara protested.
Patrick stared into some middle distance. The lie was a long time ago. “You told me life would be easy.”
Sara thought about this. “It still might.” The way she said it, offhandedly, completely dismissive of the pain they were both currently in, was exactly what Patrick needed to hear. Not because it was true—they both knew it wasn’t. But because they were still them. And it was something at least for him to hold on to. A reason, on that day at least, for him to continue.
* * *
When the visitors’ lounge door creaked, Patrick spun, his heart in his throat. Greg appeared in the doorway, his hand gripping the knob as if it were the only thing holding him up, looking calm and rested and . . . pale. Did they not let patients outside? Wasn’t the restorative nature of sunlight one of the key selling points of detoxing in the desert? Patrick locked eyes with his brother, much as they had in the Hartford airport right before this misadventure began. Neither of them said a word. Greg’s eyes nervously darted, in search of the kids, Patrick supposed. They took each other in warily before moving in for a tight hug. Patrick grabbed a fistful of his brother’s shirt, lifting it halfway up his back, and pushed his head into the meaty part of Greg’s shoulder; the facility obviously had a gym and Greg had been making full use of it. Their chests pressed together, Patrick could feel his brother’s heart beat.
“The kids okay?” Greg grabbed Patrick’s arms and pushed him back so he could see the answer on his brother’s face.
“Yes. Good. Good. They’re fine.”
Greg stared as this sank in. “I was crawling out of my skin after the earthquake. First Clara, and now this? It took the whole facility to calm me down, everyone advocating for me to stay focused on my recovery here. They promised me if you lived in Southern California, you had experience riding them out and you would call if anything was seriously wrong. Eventually I passed out, from exhaustion or from worry.”
“Yeah, we . . .” Patrick made a gesture with his hand like a boat sailing smooth waters. “Rode it out.”
“And the Clara thing? You’re putting me through the wringer.”
Patrick wanted to point out that neither an earthquake nor his sister’s actions was his doing, but he simply let it go. “I took care of it.”
He nodded and Greg nodded again, until his nodding dissolved into an inquisitive smirk. Then why are you here? There were twenty-four days left of his treatment, both had the exact number down. Greg thought it had been pretty clear they wouldn’t see each other until then. The facility was family-friendly, visitations were allowed. But Greg was adamant; he did not want his children seeing him here. It would hurt, the separation, them and him, but then it would pass—the ripping off of a Band-Aid. Their time apart would soon be forgotten as the kids forged a new sense of normal, free of knowing, until they got older, that their father was an addict.
“So, they just let you walk around in here? Unescorted?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah. What did you think?”
Patrick wasn’t sure, but had pictured Greg being frog-marched into the lounge wearing leg irons. “I thought I would be on the other side of some partition. And we would speak over telephones and hold our hands meaningfully up to the glass.”
“This isn’t prison, Patrick. I’m here voluntarily.”
Patrick looked around the room, taking a second catalog of everything, his gaze landing on his coffee. The powdered creamer had congealed into several disturbing islands dotting a caramel sea. If internment here was voluntary, he didn’t see the appeal.
“Where are the kids?”
“With JED.”
“Who’s Jed, your friend? Is he responsible? Up to watching both kids? They walk all over new sitters, you know. It can take more than two hands to keep them in check.”
Patrick stifled a laugh. “JED’s got it covered.”
“Then why are you here?”
“It’s good to see you, too.”
Greg looked up and to the left, away from his brother. You think it’s not good to see you? It exuded from every pore in his face.
Patrick took a deep breath and began. “Clara was right. She was right all along. I’m going to ask her to take the kids for the last three weeks. Yes.” Patrick agreed with his own words, as if this were perfectly settled. “Clara can take them back-to-school shopping and do those types of chores. You know. Get them ready. It’s for the best.”
Greg stumbled backward until his legs hit a chair and he sat down. “Ready for what? I was counting on you.”
“I know and I’m sorry. It’s just. They’re all you have left. They’re all you have, and seeing Grant the other night in the hospital, and sitting by his bedside, in that moment, I was right back with Joe and I promised myself then that I wouldn’t put myself in this position—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You said Grant was fine.”
“He is fine.”
“Then why was he in the hospital?”
Oh. “There’s a sculpture over his bed I didn’t have properly secured. It fell during the quake and hit him in the head. You know they were suspicious of that thing all along? Anyhow, he’ll be bruised. Slight concussion. Small cut.”
“Oh my god.”
Patrick paused, as if the details were just beyond his grasp. “I told him his scar would match mine.”
“Scar?!”
“Or maybe not. He’s young. He’ll probably heal much nicer. If not, I’ll find a guy.”
“To do what?”
“Get rid of it. Maybe he can work on your marionette lines. A twofer.”
Greg stood and raised his voice. “You think this is funny?”
“No, I don’t think it’s funny! You have no idea what I’m dealing with! Maisie wants a husband, Clara wants a wife. I can’t do this anymore. The earth is literally shaking underneath us. If that’s not as clear a sign as anything that I’m messing everything up—”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
“I can’t be the only one standing between you and having nothing left at all.”
Greg grabbed his temples and rubbed them so hard Patrick thought his fingers might crack his skull. “I need a drink.”
“Can . . . Can you do that? I mean, if your thing was pills?”
“My thing is pills, and no I can’t do that, you dim-witted twat.” Greg gnawed at his cuticle like he was working on a particularly irksome hangnail while he took a beat to calm down. “They have these smoothies here. Pear. Spinach. Ginger. Avocado, probably. Isn’t avocado mandatory in California? That’s all I drink anymore.”
“That sounds pretty good.” Patrick could even imagine it with vodka.
“Not sixty-six days in a row!”
Patrick agreed, bringing his hand to his mouth before realizing he was just copying Greg. It was uncomfortable. He’d never made his brother angry. Greg had never yelled at him so nakedly. “I took Mom to this restaurant once in LA after a taping of the show. This was years ago when she would actually fly. Upscale place. I thought it would be a treat. She took one look at the menu, slid it across t
he table at me, and complained that it was in another language.”
“Was it?”
“No! I told her, ‘That word is avocado—you know that!’”
Greg smiled weakly. Making fun of their mother was always safe terrain.
“It might have also said crudo,” he conceded. “That’s Italian, I guess. So maybe she was right.
“Patrick,” Greg started and stopped. “Do you know why I asked you take the kids?”
“My ebullient personality?” He offered a weak smile.
“Christ. I know you’re not over Joe. You float through life determined not to get attached to anyone or anything.” Greg crossed over to the window and watched a family visit in the courtyard. “This is as much for you as it is for them, Patrick. As it is for me.”
Patrick was appalled. “You gifted me your kids? To what, to fix me?”
“No. I knew they would be best off with you. But it was . . . What did you just call it?” Greg traced the lines that ran from each side of his nose to the corners of his mouth. “A twofer.”
Patrick scoffed.
“You think you’re so complicated. That you exist on a higher plane above everyone and everything else, thinking we can’t understand you. But you don’t and we do. You promised yourself you would never get that close to anyone again? And now all these years later you have allowed yourself. Or maybe not even allow—kids don’t give you much of a choice. But you feel something, and you’re scared and you’re trying to run from it and, goddammit, I won’t let you.”
“You’re going to stop me, locked up in here?”
Greg turned around and pressed his finger to Patrick’s sternum, hard. “Fuck you.”
“FUCK YOU!” Patrick took a seat on one of the sharply-angled chairs and waited for his anger to pass. “The stairwells in our college dorm. That’s what this place smells like. I’ve been racking my brain since I walked in here.”
“The stairwells?”
“Musty, mixed with old paint. Sara would get it.” Patrick scratched his head. “I don’t know how that’s possible, how it smells wet. The average rainfall here is nothing. It’s like Sara’s following me.” Patrick started to cry. “I should have come to see her.” The words hurt when he said them out loud. “I reasoned every moment I spent with her I was taking away from you and the kids.”
“She knew that. She understood.”
“She wasn’t mine anymore.”
There was a long silence before Greg spoke. “She knew that, too.”
Patrick turned and slapped the concrete wall with his open hand and it stung, reverberating through his wrist and arm. There was so much he had never processed. “I don’t know where that comes from. My anger. There’s a well, deep inside me. Most of the time I’m not even aware that it’s there. But then it comes bubbling up . . .”
“Remember the house in New Hampshire?” Greg asked.
“Our house? That new construction? Barely. We only lived there, what, a year?”
“Do you remember why?”
“Dad got transferred back to Connecticut.”
“No. It was the well. They dug and they dug and they dug and could never find enough water. Every night we shared an inch of bathwater, the three of us. I don’t know what Mom and Dad did. Spritz themselves in the sink. We had like the second deepest well in New Hampshire. There was a cabin I think on Mount Washington that had one deeper, but only because they were digging into a mountain.” Greg cracked his knuckles, a habit that drove Patrick mad. “Eventually Dad and some others in the development took them to court and the builder was forced to buy the homes back.”
Patrick looked out into the shady courtyard. Too many trees. It was preventing the residents from getting sun.
“How am I the only one to remember this? I was the baby.” Greg stood behind Patrick and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Your well is in a mountain,” he said.
Patrick broke, his eyes filled with tears. Already Greg understood grief better than he did. This fucking place. What were they teaching? Maybe he should call Clara for real and then check himself in here, too. He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it and smoothing it to one side again. “Dad probably made that up. Like the Siamese twins who were drafted.”
“Only one twin was drafted and that was real.”
“HOW DOES EVERYONE KNOW THIS BUT ME?” Patrick felt his mouth twitch and the corners of his lips spread into the widest smile. It was like his face was putty and someone was pulling his skin out and then up, stretching it against his will until it was so wide it might snap. Greg smiled, too, which set Patrick off further. “Stop.”
“What?” Greg was honestly bewildered.
“Just don’t.” Patrick put both hands to his face and pushed it back into a neutral expression.
“Oh, good lord. Are you worried about the lines on your face? Just smile once in a while and enjoy it. Earthquakes happen, Patrick. It’s not your fault. You should probably bolt your shit to the wall, but it’s not your fault. What’s more, I don’t buy that you think it is. I think this is all because you’re in spitting distance of sending them home. Of my taking them back to Connecticut. And you don’t know what your life is going to look like after they leave.”
Patrick stacked a few magazines before fanning them across the table in a perfect display of healthy living.
“So, come back with them. With us.”
Patrick put his finger over a headline that read “Take Down the Flu, Naturally.” “To Connecticut? Oh, hell no.”
“Why not?”
“It’s cold. You call yourself nutmeggers. You want me to go on?”
“I’m going to need a sober companion.”
“Pass.”
“Don’t you even want to hear what it entails?”
“Does it entail being sober?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Pass.”
Greg turned away. He knew they were joking, but the sting of rejection was real. “Do you think this is fun for me? Locked up here alone with my thoughts? Awake at night because they won’t give me anything to sleep? Do you know how dark it is? I’ve never seen more stars and been so lost. It’s awful. I’m confronted with my every failure. I was taking her pills, Patrick. At the end. Her pills. That’s how bad it was. That’s how small I am.”
Patrick was always surprised how quickly rage traveled through his body. After the accident that took Joe, he was given morphine. He remembered how it flushed cold through his veins, from limbs to fingertips, into each miniscule capillary, not an inch of him left unrewarded. One instant, pain; the next, blessed relief. This was that but in reverse. Molten anger all the way into his toenails. He started to sweat and his hands clenched into fists.
“It wasn’t at her expense, I swear. Refills were easy to come by. There was always more than enough in the house. She never went without.”
Patrick crossed over to the window and leaned on the sill. The mountains rose in the distance. His well was in a mountain. He let himself breathe, but it was the first time their looming presence around the valley’s edge felt invasive, and not like protection. They were encroaching, holding him in, threatening to suffocate him instead of keeping danger out. “Celestial navigation. It’s a sucker’s game,” he said, recalling Greg’s comment about being lost.
So many nights Patrick had looked up at the desert night sky trying to find meaning, trying to locate himself. He would always come back to the same thing: stargazing was time traveling. He’d looked it all up, read every book in the library. We see the sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago. Alpha Centauri—the next closest star—was 4.3 light-years away. When he looked at Alpha Centauri, he saw light that was generated when Joe was still alive. He even remembered the time, 4.3 years and a day after that fateful night, when he looked up at the sky to see the first light generated after Joe had died
; he wept like a child. The North Star? Three hundred and twenty light-years. Its light was generated long before either he or Joe existed. It was a sucker’s game, he repeated, this time to himself. How can you tell where you’re going when you’re always looking up at the past?
“Go home, Patrick. Be with the kids. Show them your grief. Talk to them. Show them your grief and help them navigate theirs.”
Patrick had a thousand questions; chiefly, what if he said the wrong thing? “And then what?”
Greg smiled. “I’ll see you in twenty-four days.”
Patrick looked back down at the magazines; there was no headline screaming “10 Former TV Stars That Will Help You Live a Healthier Life.” The very thought of it, ridiculous.
Greg pulled his brother in for a hug. “Maisie wants a husband?”
“That’s what you got from all this?” Patrick rested his chin on Greg’s shoulder.
“I’m just surprised, is all.”
Patrick squeezed. “Don’t you dare hold her to it.”
“All I will ever want is for her to be happy.”
They stood there and held each other. As little kids, they would hug every night before bed. Patrick wondered when that stopped, when intimacy between boys became something to be mocked and not celebrated.
“The dog takes a pill for allergies. Is that going to be difficult for you to be around?”
“The what?”
“The dog. She takes a pill for her skin. I’m just trying to be sensitive. I don’t want you popping them when you get back to Connecticut.”
Greg stood dumbfounded; he could only fight one battle at a time.
Patrick couldn’t read his reaction, so he shrugged—they could figure it out later. He took one last sip of his coffee before spitting it back in the cup.
TWENTY-TWO
Maisie and Grant had taken to wearing their bicycle helmets to breakfast. All day, really, except sometimes while swimming, as they worried about drowning. Despite Grant’s injury, they acquiesced at night and slept without them because wearing a helmet to bed was impractical. But come daylight? The helmets were strapped tightly under their little chins like they were inspectors on a construction site, there to assess the structural viability of his house. All they were missing were coffee thermoses and a tube of blueprints. The previous day, Patrick had filmed a video of them clanking their helmets together like battering rams, a test, of sorts, of their own emergency system. He’d even handed his phone to Maisie afterward and left the room, tacit permission to post the video to YouTube. There were now several such videos on Patrick’s channel. The first two; a video of the kids running an obstacle course he’d made around the pool that mimicked the one television show they seemed familiar with—some sort of ninja warrior challenge—along with his ongoing critical commentary; one where Patrick had hooked bungee cords around their arms and pretended to control them like marionettes; and one in the hospital they’d filmed in the style of a talk show, except they each held their tongues down with depressors. Patrick got a perverse kick out of the online response, although he didn’t altogether understand it. Likes and subscribers and comments came rolling in. First on YouTube and then on his old photos on Instagram. It was like people were remembering he was alive, discovering him all over again, blood flowing in the circuitry connecting him to the outside world.
The Guncle Page 24