“Come here,” he said after it was clear there was nothing in Greg’s stomach to empty. He helped his brother up half a flight to the next landing, away from this scene and, maybe, hopefully, closer to the car. He dragged his suitcase behind him, disgusted by what he might be dragging it through, knowing already he would burn it and buy new luggage upon his return home.
Greg wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grabbing the railing to steady himself. “How did you survive this? With Joe?”
Patrick stopped cold, as if caught in a horrible lie. He pinched the bridge of his nose (where he could still feel the scar from the accident that took his boyfriend) and inhaled sharply. I didn’t, he thought. Survive. That was always his first response. But he was here, wasn’t he? He was the one still standing in the face of loss anew. He pointed up the rest of the stairs. “Let’s look for the car up there.”
They walked the aisles of this new level, Patrick having relieved Greg of the key fob and clicking it every few feet to listen for a telltale honk or to spot a set of flashing taillights. They ambled up one aisle and down the next for four or five rows before either of them said another word.
“What are you doing here?” Patrick asked.
“Huh?”
Patrick stopped to look at his brother. Why wasn’t he with the kids? “Greg.”
Greg stopped, turned back to face him, but didn’t answer.
“I thought Dad was picking me up.”
“I’m a drug addict.”
The cross talk was almost comical; Patrick tried hard not to laugh. It was one thing for Greg to employ humor as a coping mechanism for grief, but it was another for Patrick to come off in any way cavalier. So instead he just said, “Is this where you meet your dealer?” He looked up at the nearest post, which said 4e. “Should we pick up some catnip before we go home?”
“It’s not a joke.” Greg sat himself down on the bumper of a white passenger van, gently, so as not to set off an alarm.
“I’m not laughing,” Patrick said. A man in what he thought must be tap shoes walked quickly down the aisle behind them. “I’m confused.”
“What’s not to understand?”
“Like, heroin?”
“WHAT? No. Pills.”
“Pills. What kind of pills?”
“Vicodin, oxy, fentanyl, tramadol. I think I once took diet pills I found in my assistant’s desk drawer.”
Patrick was half horrified, half intrigued. “Did they work?”
“Did what work.”
“The diet pills.”
“You mean, did I get high?”
“No, did you get thin.” Greg didn’t answer and the silence dragged on, but Patrick thought, Good. He was angry now on top of everything else, and no longer wanted to be as quick to comfort. In fact, he was now questioning his brother’s dry heaves. “How could you let this happen?”
“Half the country is addicted, don’t you watch the news?”
No, Patrick did not watch the news. No good ever came from the news. “How long?”
Greg shot his brother a look. That look, the one he picked up in law school and fine-tuned as a junior associate. “Three years, Patrick. It’s been almost three years. Since the diagnosis. Since I started gunning for partner. I couldn’t do everything. I couldn’t . . .” He reached for the words to continue. “Be what everyone needed me to be.”
Patrick rested his forehead on the side of the van, absorbing the cool from the metal. Jumping forward three hours in time meant it was pitch-dark, even though he was wide-awake. “Are you high right now?”
Greg glared at him with disgust until Patrick pulled his head away from the van.
“Does Mom know?”
It took Greg a moment to answer. “No one knows. I’m telling you first. Look, can we go somewhere, please? Even . . . I don’t know. McDonald’s?”
“Why, do you have the munchies?” Patrick responded with snark, even though he couldn’t remember the last thing he’d had to eat. Perhaps some sort of snack bar on the plane.
Greg stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt jacket before looking down at his shoes. “So we can talk.” He looked up at Patrick. “I need you to take the kids.”
“Okay. Whatever I can do to help.” The family would need him to do any number of tasks this week, so he might as well step up to the plate. “Take them where?”
“Take them, take them.”
“I don’t underst—WHAT?” He scanned Greg’s eyes for any sign he was kidding. “Oh, hell no.”
“Patrick.”
“You are high. That’s absurd. You’re being absurd.”
“Patrick!”
“On its face it’s preposterous. I turned down a chance to present Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at the Emmys two years ago. You want to know why? It was too much of a commitment. No. You’re asking the wrong person.”
“There’s a facility. In Rancho Mirage. Only ten miles or so from your house. There’s usually a waiting list, but I called this morning and they made a space for me. Extenuating circumstances, and one of the named partners at my firm knows someone on the board.”
“So, I’m not the first person you told.” Patrick didn’t know everything about addiction, but he knew enough to start tracking lies.
“I told work. I had to.” Greg sighed. “I have to do this now.”
Patrick thought back to when he smoked, in part to stay TV-thin, and how trying to quit right as his show was being canceled led to several relapses. And how a cigarette sounded so good right now in the face of this news, this new cancellation. “But is now the best time?”
Greg started shaking, determined to close the sale. “The kids are going to need their father, not half the father they’ve had for the past few years. Now is the only time.”
Patrick’s head buzzed with logistics; the walls of the garage felt like they were closing in, the floor and the ceiling about to pancake. The cars, and they along with them, would be crushed and discarded, junked. “I only brought two pairs of pants.”
“I want you to take them back with you to Palm Springs. The only way this is going to work, the only way I’m going to be able to do this, is if I know they’re nearby. They’re my strength. They’re all I—”
“Stop it. Stop it now.” Patrick didn’t know if he meant Greg’s shaking or the preposterousness of the request.