“That’s good, right?”
“Everyone there was an addict of some kind, and I mean everyone. The receptionist, the cooks, the janitors. There wasn’t a single person on the inside I didn’t have everything in common with. They all had crazy stories. I mean some things that would make your eyes pop. But I listened to them all. And if I hadn’t done it, or experienced it, I would have done it. I would have gotten there the way things were going. There was no question in my mind.”
Patrick listened, but didn’t have anything to add that didn’t take something away. He could point out something about Joe, about Sara, and how he was fluent in the language of grief. But why do what he’d always done—pull focus from somebody else?
“How am I going to explain this to others? Like, how will Clara ever understand?”
Clara. “Well, I helped your cause there. At the moment she’s angrier with me.”
“Aren’t you angry with her?”
“Aren’t you?” Patrick imagined what it must have been like to receive court documents in rehab and not be able to do much about it.
“You said you’d handle it, and I guess you did. I still don’t really know what happened.”
“That makes two of us.” It would be easy to assign Clara the blame, but he didn’t. He relented. “I went too far. I pushed her buttons.”
“You always push her buttons.”
“Yeah, but something was different this time. I think she was coming to me for help.”
Greg’s head flopped to one side like a rag doll’s. “What do you mean?”
“She’s going through some stuff.”
Greg kicked a leg in Patrick’s direction, but the couch was so vast he didn’t come close to making contact. “We’re all going through stuff.”
Patrick tilted his head back over the side of the sofa until he was looking at the Christmas tree upside down. It started with a point and broadened out from there, an upside-down pink triangle, glimmering with soft light.
“Can you make it right?” Greg asked. “I’m sort of in an all-hands-on-deck situation here.”
Marlene glanced up from her perch behind Patrick’s knees. She seemed concerned about this new arrival, unsure what Greg was about. She struggled to keep alert until she had a better sense of his agenda. Patrick stroked her behind the ears.
He wanted to make things right, but in the moment he didn’t know how. He tore his attention from the tree, pulled himself back up on the couch, and shook the dizziness from his head. Greg looked healthier than he did at the funeral, less gaunt. He’d gained weight, in a good way; the result, he guessed, of having regular, healthy meals prepared for him and people ensuring he ate them. “She feels betrayed, but she’ll get over it. She doesn’t love Darren.”
“What? That’s crazy.” Greg lazily tossed a throw pillow at Patrick, who tucked it into his chest and hugged his arms around it. “How would you know?”
“I have a hunch.”
“You have a hunch she doesn’t love her husband.”
Patrick and Greg had once shot Clara with a BB gun when they were kids. Not Clara, exactly—a rock at her feet. But the BB ricocheted and stung her ankle like a yellow jacket. It was an accident; they were boys being stupid. But the vitriol that came at them, the historical grievances that they had to bear—paying the price for violence perpetrated against all women from seemingly the dawn of time—made it believable that there was no way she would ever be able to forgive mankind enough to forgive even one man. “I’ll help her through this,” Patrick said, suddenly eager for a new Sisyphean task. “I failed Sara. I can do better for Clara.” Tomorrow, though. Right now, he wasn’t getting off his couch.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Greg protested. “Hold on. How did you fail Sara?”
“She would have expected more out of me. From this summer. With the kids.”
“The kids love you, Patrick,” he declared. “It’s so obvious from the way they look at you.”
“Oh, god, I hope not.”
Greg leaned forward and punched his brother just below the knee. “What is wrong with you?”
“Ow!”
“Seriously.”
“That was my shin.” Patrick massaged his leg for sympathy.
“I’ll punch you in the other shin.” Greg made a fist before abandoning it, and then let his hand drop to his side. “Your whole life is about being loved. By strangers, by everyone. Why not my kids?”