“Dad, it is important to me that you continue to live.”
“I am living.”
“But there is a direct correlation to happiness and joy and life span, and like you said, this has been shitty and horrible, and our family went from four to three and, like, if we lost another person that would be horrible. We can’t lose another person, Dad.”
“You’re not gonna lose anyone,” he says in this way that brushes off everything I just said, and I start to cry.
“Would you please just go to one session?” I beg him.
“No.”
It’s a losing battle. I drop it.
Silence.
“Dad, why didn’t you wanna go with us to LA?”
“Because I didn’t wanna be there.”
“You don’t wanna be a part of anything,” I say critically.
“No, I just didn’t wanna go there and be in the house and see all the places and all that. I just didn’t wanna do it.”
“I just think you feel responsible. I wish you wouldn’t feel responsible.”
He sits forward as if he’s tiring of the conversation.
“If you feel responsible, then, I should feel responsible—” I start to say, but he cuts me off sharply.
“No, no, no, no. That’s the least true thing you’ve said. You were a kid helping a kid. You weren’t his mother. You weren’t his father. You were a close friend, but you weren’t responsible for raising him. You were brother and sister. Very close, but you didn’t raise your brother. I hope that doesn’t upset you.”
“I just feel like you’re saying you didn’t talk to him enough, and you didn’t have a good relationship with him, but I talked to him a lot, and I had a relationship with him, and he still killed himself. That’s what I’m saying, Dad. I don’t think anybody could have changed that.”
He considers this. “Well, that very well may be—”
“Harris wanted to be sober, but he just—I mean, I wish you coulda been there to hear the therapist from the sober living place. The British guy. He said they offered Harris a Vivitrol shot three times, and he turned it down every time. He never really said, ‘Hey, I have a problem.’”
“No, he never did. You’re right about that.”
“And that has nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t, Dad.”
“Okay. Well, thank you, Freud.”
“I want you to talk to me.”
“Okay. Well, we talked. We had a good talk. Anything else you wanna talk about? I’m worn out. How much do I owe you for this session?”
“This one’s free. I love you, Daddy.”
• • •
The rally in Washington is in two weeks. Mom has made plans to go by herself; airfare and hotel are booked. Dad isn’t on the reservation. I walk him to the door that night and ask once more if he’ll reconsider and go. Once more, he says no.
But something happens on the eight-minute drive from our house to his. When he gets home, he asks her to book him a plane ticket.
20 Before
November 2014
After leaving rehab number two, in Oregon, Harris started an outpatient program in LA, four days a week for three hours a day. I checked in with him regularly during those first few weeks, but as October passed, he responded less frequently to my texts. I knew what it felt like when he detached. The same thing happened the first time he got out of rehab. After a while, the check-ins and doing greats became less frequent. The response time between text messages grew longer. I would go days without hearing from him, sometimes weeks. Every once in a while he’d send a request for an Iris video, but that was about it.
In one text, he told me he planned to go see Phish two weekends in a row at the end of October. The last show would be in Vegas on Halloween. Not even out of rehab thirty days, which is such a vulnerable time, and he planned to go to a musical drug den where he’d taken copious amounts of drugs in the past to, as he explained, “just listen to the music.” I begged him not to go—too many triggers and temptations—but he’d always done what he wanted to do, and this was no exception.
One time, he hosted an epic Fourth of July party at his house in Los Feliz that culminated in an angry letter from the homeowners’ association. In it, Manager Glenn explains:
It has come to our attention that you had a large crowd of guests in the front of your home on the 4th of July shooting off an arsenal of fireworks. In fact, the following day, there was a debris field in front of your property of spent shells, casings, and gun powder stains in the street. It is unfortunate that LAPD had to be called twice to control the situation and that a warning from the Post Patrol guard was also ignored for a party that did not disperse until 3 AM Friday with guests loitering in the front yard and street.
Harris gave no fucks about this letter. In fact, he proudly posted it on Instagram like a badge of honor.
I wasn’t sure if he planned to go to Phish this time around specifically to use drugs or if he would use drugs as a result of being back in that environment. Either way, it was a fucked-up, self-sabotagey thing to do, especially now that he’d been given an opportunity to play the role of Aziz’s best friend on Master of None. It was a substantial acting role, which is what he always wanted. Acting was his big dream. He loved playing Harris, the animal control guy, on Parks and Rec, and he wanted more of that. So why not chase that high? Why rock the boat now?
• • •
It was November 6, 2014, a week after Harris’s Halloween Phish binge. Our kitchen and living room were crowded with a dozen overstuffed trash bags of hand-me-down baby clothes from a friend. I was sorting and folding them into piles on
