Archive of Our Own

Natalie still tried to dump the bottles, rooting around in cabinets until she found even the cooking sherry. What she didn't dump she would hide, squirreling away in hard to reach places.

Carmy? He hid from the bottles.

At first it wasn't even a conscious decision. Mikey had a habit of leaving the room when Mom got too far into the cups and Carmy, the obedient little brother, would trot after him. Soon repetition became habit. Out comes the bottle, out goes Carmy. Even after Mikey left, after Natalie left, when it was just Carm and Mom in the explosively small house…especially then, Carmy learned to leave after the second glass.

Most of the time he just tried not to be home at all. Once Natalie left—she was packed for her college dorm room all summer, emailed the school in July to see if she could move in a week earlier—their little family buckled. Mikey, always bouncing around, had landed in an apartment with Richie and Tiff. And Carmy learned to linger elsewhere.

His favorite place was the library, where he didn't have to buy anything to stay until closing. He started in the fantasy section, mostly out of habit. It's where he saw other kids his age, fifteen-year-olds who looked younger, scrawny boys with glasses and thick books that came with maps and glossaries. Carmy read a few books about dragons but kept getting annoyed at the names: too long, too many to keep track of. So he wandered.

It was probably inevitable that he got to the cooking section. He'd been bugging Mikey about working at the Beef for months now. It was hard to get places to hire an under-sixteen-year-old but he figured Mikey could slip him a few dollars and he could learn to make his favorite sandwiches. It was their most repeated argument.

"Don't come in here with that question again, Carm, this business is no place for kids."

"Then why you got Cousin manning the counter?"

He started drawing the sign for the Bear bent over coffee table books about elite restaurants, shading under the vaulted ceilings of the main branch of the public library. He read some cookbooks, drinking in the plates depicted in the glossy pictures, but he loved the behind the scenes of kitchen life, how every author described it as a slog, as hellishly hot, as backbreaking hours, as work people got thrust into; he loved Anthony Bourdain's irreverent Kitchen Confidential and Boulud's Letters to a Young Chef and as he read these men (they were almost all men) he felt, a little, like they were talking to him, caring about him, seeing him in these fast, loud, abusive, gorgeous kitchens.

That's where the idea came from. Sitting in the library. Hiding from Mom.

And it worked. For months it worked. Carmy made himself scarce and Mom made him pasta and left it in the fridge. He'd find her drinking in front of the television or smoking on the porch with a wine glass in her hand, laughing it up with the neighbors. When Natalie called on Thursdays what could Carmy say to her? Yeah, Mom's good. She's fine, it's all good.

"She's fine? She's okay?"

Carmy could hear the sounds of Natalie's roommates in the background. They were watching a vampire show on TV. Thursdays were Girls Nights, which meant Natalie made dinner while the vampire show was on. Carmy kept telling her to watch the show with the other girls, let someone else make dinner this week, but Natalie thought vampires were dumb. Besides, she missed cooking.

"Is that Natalie?" Mom yelled as she slammed the front door. "Is she asking if I'm okay?"

"Want to talk to Mom?"

"Absolutely not. I can hear her, you know. How many has she had tonight?"

"Not many. I don't know. I just got home to talk to you."

"You've got an iPhone, Carm. Use it."

Yeah, he had a phone. Somewhere. Sometimes things just...fell out of his head. Out of his pockets. He was taking notes in biology which turned into drawing a picture in biology which turned into taking out his phone to remember what, exactly, a bear looked like, which turned into leaving his phone in biology. Probably that's where it was.

"You call home on Thursdays," Carmy said, leaning against the kitchen counter. "So I'm home."

"And he's only home on Thursdays!" Mom raised her voice but continued to mumble in that way she did, like she wanted you to hear but wanted to pretend it was a whisper. "I make all the food around here and he just comes in for dinner. Not even a 'hello, Ma' for me. At least Mikey says 'hello, Ma' even if he does eat me out of house and home..."

In a dorm room too far away, Natalie sighed. "Everything doesn't sound fine, Carmy."

"No, no it's all good. Look, you finish making dinner for your friends."

"Don't mix up the salt and sugar this time!" Mom yelled.

"I've told exactly zero people here that story," Natalie muttered.

Carmy flinched when Mom banged pots together. Why was she banging them? Who needed pots at eight pm on a Thursday? These were not questions that would register in this household. "Listen, I should go," he said.

At the same time, Natalie said, "Did you read that stuff I sent you?"

"I didn't get anything from you."

"I texted it to you. That website. The meetings? I was talking with some girls here..."

"You haven't told them the sugar story but you're telling them about—" The pots again. Carmy jumped.

"College is...I don't know. We talk about that. There's a couple near the house."

Carmy was pretty sure Natalie wasn't thinking this all the way through. Sure maybe these self-help meetings were supposed to be anonymous or whatever but how the hell was a scrawny fifteen-year-old who looked thirteen supposed to sit through one of those meetings without someone getting super suspicious? And was he supposed to tell them about Mom? About whatever the fuck was going on with Mikey? He had an alcoholic mother and a brother whose greatest ambitions seemed to be to start fifteen businesses and sell drugs. Not suspicious at all.

"Yeah, I got it, Nat."

"Did she ask you if you were okay?" Mom yelled even though they were only four feet apart. She had another glass of wine. "Sugar, aren't you going to ask Carm if he's okay?"

"Are you okay?" Natalie whispered, and, fuck, Carmy started blinking and blinking. He really missed his big sister.

"Sure. Yeah. I'm okay."

He hung up the phone. And turned to face the dragon.

"Why are you avoiding me if I'm the only one to ask about you?" Mom was chopping something on the counter. Onions? She pointed the knife at him and he flinched. "No one else asking about you, they're all asking about me, and I'm here keeping an eye on poor baby Carmy..."

"You don't have to keep an eye on me, Ma."

"And not even a thank you!"

"Thank you, Ma. Thank you. Can you put the knife down?"

Instead she used it to gesticulate, pointing at appliances, at the ceiling, at Carmy. "Who do you think is keeping the lights on around here? Not even a thank you and not even coming home!"

"You're right. Do you..." Carmy ran a hand through his hair and tried not to look at the knife. "Do you want me to get a job?"

She turned around, chopping the onions wildly. Who needed onions at this hour? "I keep the house running without any help from any of you."

"Let me help! Okay, I'll do the onions." Why do you need onions? He didn't ask, just slid next to his mother, reached for the knife.

She smacked his hand away with the blade and threw the onions on the floor. For good measure, she threw the knife after it—it just barely missed hitting both of their feet, the blade landing tip-first. That's dulled, Carmy thought. And then he looked at his hand.

The cut was short but deep, slicing his palm. He curled his fingers instinctively but the blood still dripped onto the floor.

"Look at the mess you made," Ma said. Her hand shook as she picked up her omnipresent wine class. "Now who's going to clean that up? Me?"

"No, I'll do it." He kept his eyes down. He avoided looking at the bottle. In those books that he used to gravitate towards there were spells, cursed potions, trials that changed people forever. It was a child's way of viewing the world, but the curved glass bottle stoppered with cork...the mother transformed in the kitchen...it seemed so topsy-turvy, these evenings that Carmy went to such great lengths to hide from. So fantastical.

"Don't bother. I'll clean up your mess. I've cleaned up all your messes, Joe."

Carmy staggered over to the sink, keeping his head bent. Joe. If Mom's calling him his dad's name, the night's pretty much unsalvageable. He should have just stayed at the library. He should have kept track of his cell phone and called Sugar from the stacks.

"Get out of my kitchen."

"I'm just washing my hand, Ma, it's—"

"Get out of my kitchen! Get out of my house!" Her fists beating against his back, slaps and punches. Carmy pinned his hand against his stomach and ducked around the kitchen counter.

"Look what you made me do, Joe!" Mom yelled as Carmy grabbed his backpack. Some blood smeared against the doorpost. "Look what you made me do!"

He'd remembered his school backpack but not his jacket so he tried to tuck himself into the scant protection of the screen door. Thursday night. Mikey and Richie and Tiff were all out. They could be back in an hour or five. Carmy's cell phone was, hopefully, languishing in the drawer of his biology teacher's desk but that wasn't any use to him right now. The bleeding had mostly stopped on the walk over but every time Carmy tried to open his fist another gush came out. It made him a little sick to think about or look at, so he kept his fist closed.

Option A: Wait for Mikey to come home. Risks included freezing in the late October chill.

Option B: Find a pay phone? Were there even pay phones anymore? And was Carmy 100% positive he knew Mikey's number by heart? Even if he managed to track a phone down, would Mikey pick up a call from a strange number?

Option I'm Truly Fucked: He could go back home, spend the night in the garage and hope Ma cooled down in a few hours.

The knife. The name. Maybe this is what all those presentations meant, at school, when cops and social workers tried to talk about feeling safe at home.

He slumped in the doorway and opened up his backpack. Maybe past-Carmy had tucked an emergency sweatshirt in one of the pockets. But all he had was some granola bars, a brown banana, lots of stray pens. And some library books.

There was a light on the porch. Carmy tucked his hands against his chest and flipped the pages with his left hand to keep the blood off the page.

"Woah, kiddo. Whatcha doing freezing out here?"

Carmy scrambled to his feet, Julia Child's biography falling onto the warped porch. "Nothing! I'm just—I'm looking for M-M-M—" he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Mikey's catching the game at the bar," Richie said patiently. Mikey liked to have a go about Carmy's stutter sometimes but Richie never, ever did. He just waited Carmy out, or gently finished the sentences for him. "Our cable's out again. Did you knock? Tiff should have let you in."

"Nah, I'll just g-g-go."

Richie had already scooped up the book and the backpack, opened the door, thrust Carmy through it. "Tiff? Babe? Oh, right, fuck, she picked up a double tonight. You're fucking freezing! Look at your hands shaking—"

The whirl of motion stopped. The front door shut behind them. The lights on. A knitted blanket draped on Carmy's back. And Richie in front of him, holding his bleeding hand.

"Hey." Richie grabbed his chin, lifted his face up to the light. "You good? You hurt anywhere else? Christ, there's blood down to your elbow. What happened? You get jumped?"

"I just cut myself."

"You cut yourself and came running over here? Come on, let's get this cleaned out. Oh yeah, it's going to sting. Open your fingers."

Richie's hands were rough but careful. He splayed out Carmy's fingers under the lukewarm water, pressing Carm against the sink. And Carm remembered, suddenly, being very small, two or three, and going to the bathroom at a Cubs game. Mikey and Richie were tasked with helping him, keeping an eye on him, but Mikey got distracted trying to find quarters on the floor so it was just Richie who patiently waited for Carmy, who lifted him up so he could reach the sink, who made him hold both hands out, palms up, under the water.

That was, fuck, more than ten years ago, and Richie was still here, cajoling him to open his hands to catch the soap.

"This is pretty deep, Cous. If this happened at work we'd do some stitches."

"So do some stitches."

"The hand's hard. All nerves. It might be hospital time."

"No!"

Richie nodded as if he'd expected his answer. "Then I think our best bet is to wrap it tight. You got school tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's Friday."

"So...yes?"

"Yes, I go to school on Fridays."

Richie smirked at Carmy's clipped tone. "If it starts to burn, or looks infected, or smells, you go see the school nurse. Go take a shower and then we'll wrap it up for the night. If you're going to lie to me about how you got that cut, you might want to think of a damn good one in the shower."

Carmy rolled his eyes and dragged himself over to the shower which, thanks, probably, to Tiffany, was stocked with fresh, fluffy towels and several kinds of soap. He just sat under the spray for a while, trying to come up with some version of a story that didn't sound like the most obvious lie. I tripped and fell...I ran into a door...

He barely had the towel around his waist when Richie opened the unlocked bathroom door.

"Woah! Cousin, a little privacy, please?"

Richie put a small stack of clothes next to the sink. Sweats and a Beef shirt, of course. "Thought you'd need a loan." But instead of ducking out Richie stayed. Stared at Carmy's bare body. His eyes roaming.

Faint, frantic alarm bells in Carmy's mind. His skin prickled at being seen. "That's some real pervy shit you're doing, Cous."

Richie backed out of the door then, and Carmy locked it after him, wondering what the hell that could have possibly been about.

He was swimming in the Beef shirt but at least he was warm after the shower, though the cut had reopened in the steam. He didn't want to go back to Richie after the weird staring in the bathroom, but what choice did he have? Wrapping a hand took...well, an extra hand.

Luckily, Richie wasn't the type to let awkward moments fester. He was waiting, perched on the edge of the couch, and sprang up as soon as Carmy walked into the room. "I swear I wasn't...you know I'm not..."

Carmy held up a hand to put Richie out of his misery. "I know, Cous."

"I wanted to see if you were hiding some bruises," Richie said. "Because. Well. Because I used to hide a lot of shit under my clothes."

Carmy didn't at all know what to say to that. Richie, outspoken, loud-mouthed Richie, was incapable of keeping any secret. He blabbed about surprise parties and sexual exploits and fights. He couldn't have been wearing a secret on his skin without anyone finding out. And who could have given that to him? Any bullies he faced he would have faced with Mikey by his side. Any bully except...

"Was it your Ma?" Richie asked, his voice a whisper in the room, as if he was afraid saying it would invoke that fantasy curse. "Your back, too, Carm. That's why you didn't run home. Cuz it's your Ma."

But Carmy was already shaking his head. "No. No no no. I slipped, Cous. I slipped and fell, and I was closer to here than to home, I just didn't have my stupid phone on me."

Richie continued as if Carmy hadn't said anything, "Has it happened before? That black eye last month?"

"You've got it so twisted, Cous!"

"You can stay here. We've got a couch."

"Just for the night, Richie, then I'm going to go to school and I'm going to go home because everything is fine, okay? It's fine!"

Richie scrubbed a hand over his face. He reached behind him on the couch and pulled up a First Aid kit, which he must have grabbed while Carmy was in the shower. "Come here. It'll sting, you know."

Carmy had warmed up so much in the shower but Richie's hands were warmer still, and again he had that sensation of being very young as Richie coaxed open his fingers and began to work on cleaning out the cut all over again.

"You know I love your family, Carm. I think of your Ma as my own mother. My house was a rough place to be when I was, oh, a little younger than you. Dad lost his job when I was ten. He was home all the time, drinking all the time. He took up so much space, and I wasn't as small anymore, couldn't figure out how to be small enough that he wouldn't notice me. So I took up residence in Mikey's room."

Carmy knew parts of this. He was so young, and Richie had always been so present, that it took him a few years to work out that Richie wasn't, in fact, a cousin. Things had smoothed out a few years later, after his father found another job and got more sober (though never completely on the wagon) and, helpfully, after Richie grew eight inches in one summer and started looking more like a man and less like a target.

"I love your Ma," Richie said, pressing gauze onto the cut and pressing it, holding it, "but she's hard to live with. She's hard for you to live with."

"She called me Joe again," Carmy admitted.

Richie nodded. "You look the most like your dad."

Then the bandage was on, and Richie didn't need to be holding his hand anymore, but he smoothed the bandage again and again anyway and Carmy didn't move away. He was tired and cold. He needed to go to school in the morning, if only to find his phone. He would go to the library and get more books. He would begin the long trudge home.

Later. Tomorrow. Tonight someone was holding his hand. Carmy wasn't good at being close to people. He stuck around Mikey so that his big brother could be good at that for him. When he was little he'd assumed it was automatic: you go to school, you find a best friend But Carmy had never found his own Richie.

Maybe because he already had one.

He was the first one awake in the morning. Now that they were creeping through autumn school started before dawn. He grabbed his backpack and found a note tucked half into the front pocket. Richie's half-capitalized scrawl: "We've always got a place for you."

Taped to the note was a key. Richie's own key. He'd take Mikey's down to the hardware store later to make a new copy, but he didn't want Carmy to leave without one. He knew how important it was to have a way to come back home.