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?”
Patrick felt his throat closing from an allergic reaction to . . . attachment. He swallowed three times for air. “I walked away from all that. Adoration.”
“And none of us understood why.”
In the moment, Patrick wasn’t quite sure he understood, either. He never wanted other people to see the sadness. He was so afraid people wouldn’t laugh if everyone knew how twisted he looked on the inside. And then the show ended and he didn’t feel like making people laugh anymore. To play other roles—serious roles—he would have to access parts of himself, and . . . he didn’t want to do that, either. “Turns out it’s painful to be loved. Intolerable even, at times.”
Greg nodded, still in the throes of his own intolerable mess. “This was all Sara’s idea, you know.”
“What was?”
Greg made a gesture to encompass the room. “All of this. I came clean to her a few weeks before the end. About my addiction, the pills. Everything. Typical Sara. Sprang into crisis mode. By the end of the afternoon, she had cooked up this plan.”
“For me to take the kids?” Patrick propped himself up on his elbows in disbelief. “She didn’t think I’d screw it up?”
“I think she most definitely thought you’d screw it up.” Greg smiled before adding, “But kids are resilient.”
It felt like a betrayal of sorts, the benefaction of her kids. How dare she see him so clearly in need. They weren’t friends like that. Not anymore. Not at the end. And yet, her last act was a gift? None of it made any sense.
Greg snapped to get Patrick’s attention. “Was she right? Sara? Did she do the right thing?”
Patrick stood up, his head spinning. “All of you and your endless questions. All the time. ‘What would happen if we didn’t have any elbows—how would people eat soup?’ And it’s like, the fuck do I know? Do you eat soup with your elbows now?”
Greg laughed.
“It’s not funny!”
“We do eat soup with our elbows,” he declared. “Kind of.”
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FAMILY?”
“If you don’t have any elbows, how the hell are you going to bring a spoon to your mouth?” Greg locked his arms straight like a zombie in an attempt to prove his point.
Patrick scrambled from the couch, Greg in pursuit, slowly, grunting like the undead. He followed his brother to the bookshelves, where something caught his eye.
“Your Golden Globe is dented.”
“Yeah.”
“My kids do that?”
“I’ll put it on your tab.”
Greg grimaced. He had no idea what a Golden Globe statue cost, but it couldn’t be cheap.
“It fell in the earthquake,” Patrick said, letting his brother off the hook. “And I was just kidding about your rotten kids. Of course I love them, too.”
Greg pulled his brother into a tight hug; Patrick extricated himself before things grew any squishier. “You got affectionate in rehab.”
“Is it too gay?” Greg winked at his brother. Patrick made a playful fist.
He led the way to the kitchen and retrieved a few of the pies from the fridge. Together, they eased back the plastic wrap and picked at a few bites. Chocolate, banana crème, coconut, lemon, key lime. They stood there in comfortable silence; only with family can total silence be this agreeable.
“Save some of the lemon for Rosa. She’ll like that. She’s always asking for lemons from my yard.”
“Okay.” Greg scraped his fork through some of the banana filling before letting it sit on his tongue. “How am I going to do it?”
Patrick reached for a bite of coconut, bent his elbow (newly aware of its importance), and brought the pie to his mouth. He let it melt, buttery and soft, until it reminded him of yellowtail sushi. “Grief orbits the heart. Some days the circle is greater. Those are the good days. You have room to move and dance and breathe. Some days the circle is tighter. Those are the hard ones.”
Greg stabbed aimlessly at the banana pie. “They’re all
