Bottled Up (18 page)

“Hey, I don't piss in a cup for just anybody.”

“You don't say much about yourself. You don't give a lot of details and you never talk about your family.”

“Why do you want to know about them?”

“It's not
them
I want to know about—it's you. Who do you go home to when you leave here? Do you like them? What's it like where you live? How do you get along with your brother and how'd you get the job of taking care of him so much?”

The pictures were speeding through my head—crazy stuff like the pill bottle in Mom's pocketbook, her sleeping on the couch, getting my first driving lesson from my father, Mikey on top of the refrigerator, me in handcuffs.

“I never said much about
my
family when I was growing up either,” Claire said.

“You had to go to counseling?”

“No. But if anybody asked—even my girlfriends—I wouldn't answer. And I never let anybody come to my house.”

“Why not?”

“My two sisters, my mother, and I lived with my grandparents. My grandfather was a big boozer. He drank every day but Sunday. Whiskey, rum, wine, anything he could get. He was sloppy, he smelled, he sang the dumbest songs, and sometimes, you never knew when, he got real mean.”

She looked up at the ceiling for a second as if she was seeing it all in her head.

“At the end of the week he put on his Sunday best and served as the church usher, smiling at everybody like he was the most regular guy in town.”

“Nobody knew he was a drunk?”

“It was our secret. My family always said what happened in our house stayed in our house. It wasn't anybody else's business.”

I knew that rule.

“Did you want to tell your friends about your grandfather?” I asked.

“I wanted to tell somebody. The crazy thing is you'd think my sisters and I would have talked to each other. We didn't. One of us would get a slap in the face and no one would say a word about it.”

“Why?”

“Somewhere along the way we all learned that it wasn't all right to talk about certain things. After working through my own stuff, letting out all the secrets and becoming a counselor, I realized that the reason we didn't talk about it was because we were ashamed. We even thought in some way that maybe it was our fault—that we should have been able to stop his drinking.”

“How?”

“If we were prettier or smarter, kept the house cleaner, or got better grades.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“A lot of things don't make sense in an alcoholic family.”

I looked at my palms for a second. They were red and sore. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what.

“Your face just changed when I said that. What were you thinking?”

“Nothing,” I said.

But she could have been right. Maybe my face did change a little. Something hit me when she said that word.

Alcoholic.

“Do you smell something burning?” Claire asked me on our way into the waiting room. She took a big sniff and looked around the place.

I smelled it. But I didn't have to look around. All I had to do was look at Mikey. He had my pack of cigarettes and was trying to light up. He couldn't do it right, though, because he didn't know he was supposed to inhale.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, grabbing the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Nothing.”

I took the matches out of his hand and stuffed the pack of cigarettes into my front pocket. “I told you to stop touching my stuff.”

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him up. Hard. “What's the matter with you? You stupid or something?” I yanked on his shirt. I was ready to let him have it. Six years old and he's trying to light up a cigarette! He could have started a fire or burned himself.

“Pip.” Claire put her hand on mine to get me to let go. “Take it easy,” she said.

My face was hot. I was breathing hard and I felt as if I wanted to smash him.

“He keeps doing crazy shit like this,” I said, and took a step back from him.

Mikey pulled his shirt where I grabbed it and looked as if he was trying not to cry.

“Let's go into my office and talk about this,” she said, and put her hand on Mikey's back to get him down the hall.

I stood in the waiting room for a second. I didn't want to go back in there. I didn't want to talk to her anymore. Everything had gotten worse since I'd started going to counseling. Nothing was better. I was done talking, and she thought I'd never even started.

But I had to follow them. It was one of those choices I didn't have.

In Claire's office Mikey flopped into my chair and she nudged me to sit in the one across from him. She got in her desk chair and let out a deep breath.

“Mikey. Do you understand why your brother got so angry with you?”

He nodded his head.

“Could you tell me why you were trying to light the cigarettes?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and all I wanted to do was kill him.

“He's doing stupid stuff like this all the time,” I said. “The other day he's in the closet trying to open a bottle of scotch. Then for some stupid-ass reason he's on the top of the refrigerator last night. Want to know why I was late this morning? Because the baby here was throwing a little fit because his daddy wouldn't go the zoo with him.”

I looked back at Mikey. “I told you he wasn't going—”

“Shut up, Pip, you stupid—”

“Don't tell me to shut up.” I started to get out of my chair. “I'll pop you one right here.”

“Pip,” Claire said, louder than I'd heard her speak before. “Have you ever had anybody threaten to hit you, call you stupid, or yell at you like this? I don't think it makes a person feel like talking. Do you?”

I sat back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. I was sick of this—all of it. Mom, Dad, Mikey, Claire, Giraldi, everybody. I was going to get out of there and get higher than a kite the first chance I had.

“He's just like Daddy,” Mikey said, staring at me as if
he
wanted to kill
me.

“How's that?” Claire asked him.

“What you just said. Yelling, hitting, saying stupid.”

“You think I'm like Dad?” I said. “You're saying that crap again?”

“Why does that upset you so much, Pip?” Claire asked.

I couldn't believe it. I was the one who took care of him, and I was getting put on the same page as Mr. Hyde. Screw him.

“I'm getting out of here,” I said. “Walk home yourself.”

“Pip, sit down.” Claire sounded pissed. I wasn't sure what she'd do if I left. I didn't want her calling Giraldi, I knew that much.

I sat back down.

“Mikey, why did you try lighting the cigarettes?”

He didn't say anything. He put his head down so his chin was almost in his stomach.

“Mikey?” Claire put her hand on his leg, and he started crying.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

The kid was blubbering so hard, I could hardly make out the words.

“It's okay,” Claire said. “Just tell me why you did it.”

He was hard to understand behind all of that crying. But I heard his answer when he got it out. He said it and then looked right up at me.

“I wanted to be like him,” he said.

 

 

 

Claire said she thought Mikey should be talking to somebody the way I was—or wasn't—talking to her.

I wasn't so sure.

I let up on him a little when we got out of there. I'm not sure why, but I didn't feel like killing him anymore.

I threw out the burnt cigarettes that were on the couch in the waiting room, and told Bugs to grab his backpack. I opened the door for us to leave, and almost bumped right into the last person I ever thought I'd see at a counseling office.

We stared at each other for a second, said a quick hi, and then we both just took off where we needed to go.

“Who was that?” Mikey asked when we got to the street.

I shook out the last cigarette left in my pack and lit it.

Shit.

“Just a girl from school,” I said.

The last girl I wanted seeing me at a counselor's office.

I couldn't get out of the house after we got home. Being grounded sucks.

Everything in me wanted a joint. I needed something to take the edge off so bad, just enough to catch some z's. Not that I would have been able to sleep anyway. The Grinch started screaming at around midnight.

They could fight about anything. He was yelling about some check she'd written, and she was yelling back at him about how he yells too much.

It got loud. I heard a couple of things get thrown. Mikey never came into my room. After listening to Mr. and Mrs. Crazy for a while, I went to see if the kid was all right.

He was curled up under his covers, but I could tell he wasn't sleeping. I could hear him sucking on his thumb.

“You okay?” I asked him.

I thought I saw him nod his head, but my eyes might have been playing tricks on me in the dark. His Bugs Bunny doll was by his feet with his Superman cape around its neck. I put it on his pillow.

“No thanks,” he said, then pushed Bugs Bunny off the bed.

“What's with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

I stood there for a second, trying to figure him out. He wasn't acting right—not like himself. He wasn't saying much. He didn't come in my room looking for me like he always does. He let Bugs Bunny hit the floor.

“You tell Mom and Dad about the zoo?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Why not?”