Chapter Text
Malcolm’s mind is constantly working, several thought processes going at once, ideas overlapping each other, math problems being solved, homework—his own and his brothers’ -- being mentally corrected, that letter of intent to Harvard being endlessly revised. It has maybe a little less to do with being smart and a little more to do with some part of him being constantly restless and agitated no matter how exhausted he is.
In any case, for all of the loops and knots that make up his brain, his thought process of having what he could (but doesn’t) equate to a ‘breakdown’ at the kitchen table is simple:
Reasonable crying in front of his brothers isn't a problem. He's cried in front of his brothers when pets have died, girls have dumped him, things like that. Things that really suck and they all know really suck. So long as it wasn't over something stupid like chick flicks or getting punched in the face (Though Dewey had deliberately wailed over the latter a few times to convince them to stop hitting him, and for no reason they could think of they sometimes actually did.), it was all right for them to cry in front of each other. Outside of the obvious--pets dying, girls dumping-- it doesn't mean anything's wrong.
Reasonless crying by himself isn't a problem. He calculated the hours once, and between the summer he stayed in bed (fortunately taking up the bulk of his total) and the nights he’s used sobbing as a sedative, he’s spent a few collective weeks crying by himself. It's true that that had never necessarily done him any good. And it also probably isn't normal, which admittedly bothers him. Regardless of normalcy and regardless of goodness, he can't classify it as a problem. It isn't like he's going to give himself grief over it. There are no potential consequences. It still doesn't mean anything's wrong.
Reasonless crying in front of his brothers is a problem. The only outcome to this is bad. Dewey and Reese will sock him and, if whoever was in the bathroom last forgot to flush, Reese will probably hold his head in the toilet. And while he's gasping for air between dunkings, he will think it's amazing that Reese can't remember multiplication tables but can always remember if the last person in the bathroom flushed or not. Reasonable crying in front of his brothers might result in them all finding a distraction together. Reasonless crying by himself might result in personal catharsis. Considering the fact that the only relief to come from reasonless crying in front of his brothers is the knowledge that pee is sterile, it quite possibly means something's wrong.
Then Reese’s hand is on his shoulder.
Reese is comforting him.
Well, that cinches it.
There is officially something wrong with him.
It’s not that the thought hadn’t occurred to him. But he’d at best ignored it and at worst actively buried that particular ache deep beneath other thoughts and feelings and actions. First, because he really is normal. Seriously. Second, because it was something he wanted to keep to himself. It was embarrassing; guilt inducing; and something he needed to keep from his family, alternating between being for their sake and his. Third, he suspected telling his parents he thought he was (maybe, who knows, just a little, not enough to be mentally disturbed) depressed would get an, “Oh, Honey… of course you are! You’re a teenager.” from his mom and a “You want to get some ice cream?” from his dad. And he’d been pretty sure that, if he were to admit something was wrong, he wouldn’t be able to take it being dismissed.
But now, here it is. True.
And no one’s dismissing it.
His stomach seizes up.
That’s not any better.
:--:--:--:
There are some truths that are as simple but undeniable as the necessity of air, water, food. The fact that he’ll never be caught up on his bills. That he’ll never be able to buy a car that’s younger than all his children. That he hates his job. That he’s having to wear his reading glasses more and more often. That his heart’s like his father’s and he should cut back on greasy foods. These things are all easy, one-sentence truths. Truer than these, and simpler than these is that his family is the greatest accomplishment of his life. And even truer than this, simpler than this is that he loves them more than he’s ever loved anything or could imagine loving anything. Those are the simple truths that make up Hal’s life: He’ll never be out of debt, he’s getting old, and he loves his family.
Normally his days at work are filled with half-heartedly doing his job and whole-heartedly playing Tetris. That’s far more productive than what he‘s doing now.
He has his kids’ photos in his wallet. It used to be, when his sons were young, he’d be the photographer. It’s still this way for Francis, whose photo is slightly older and more dog-eared than the rest because his picture in Marlin's uniform just didn't look like him and there haven't been official opportunities since he's been emancipated, and Jamie, who‘s too young to have his picture taken anywhere but home.
But for the others there’re only school photos. Grumpy faces against the default gray background because they couldn't pay for color. Still, sour expressions and bleak backgrounds and all, the photos are proudly tucked away and ready to be whipped out and shown to anyone with passing interest in his family. He has all of these photos spread out on his desk, now. He worked for precisely two minutes and attempted to play Tetris for another two before he pulled them out and started staring at them.
The clock on the wall is ticking loudly.
He‘s filled awkwardly with emotions that are both fighting and giving in to each other. With love. With pride. With anger. With worry. With fear. With despondency.
He looks at their pictures and he wonders what it'd be like to have to skip over a name, for there to all of a sudden not be an oldest, a youngest, a middle. Or to not skip over a name, because he doesn't think he could even if everyone thinks he should.
Nothing's happened and he's still more afraid than he's ever been in his entire life.
He calls home.
He’s about to run out of the office and drive back to the house when Dewey says, "Hello?"
"Don't you kids ever answer the phone?"
"It rang once; I don't think I could've picked up sooner."
He changes tracks immediately, gushing his love for Dewey for as long as his son allows. Dewey doesn't bother trying to talk to him; he just hears a distant, "It's Dad." as the phone is passed over.
"Dad."
"Malcolm!"
"Dad?"
He rushes out the same amount of love. Malcolm is more restless about it than Dewey was. He can hear his son pacing and exhaling loudly, and his words are overriden with Malcolm trying to get him to hang up: "Reese doesn't even want me to use the phone."; "It's crazy, this whole thing--" ;"I'm sorry."
Finally he has to take a breath, so Malcolm cuts in with, "You aren't allowed to make personal calls."
"Of course I am."
"No. I read the worker's manual for you, remember?" Malcolm makes an awkward, high-in-his-throat sound that sounds a touch more tired than aggravated. "Do you want to talk to Reese?" and passes him off before he can answer.
He starts to say something, but Reese, too, cuts him off:
"Dad. Don't worry. We've got it under control."
Reese hangs up on him.
Reese telling him 'We've got it under control.' is very rarely reassuring. Normally it means something akin to, 'Now would be a good time to evacuate the house.'. Only under circumstances like this, when it comes to taking care of problems within the family, not problems caused by the family, is it something he's grateful to hear.
:--:--:--:
Nothing really happens for a while.
Malcolm eventually suggests they watch T.V., mostly so his brothers might stop staring at him.
Reese surprises himself by asking, "Did you finish your homework?"
Malcolm waves his hand dismissively. "I'll do it later."
That one question completely sapping any interest he may have in school, Reese shrugs and sits on the couch. His brothers join him; Dewey on the right, Malcolm on the left.
Dewey shoves his hand between the cushions and starts snacking on whatever he pulls out. Only loose change, which he dutifully shoves into his pockets, is safe from being shoved into his mouth.
He pauses, looks at his brothers, and holds his hand out in offering.
Reese takes a fuzzy mint from his palm.
Malcolm just stares at him.
Dewey takes that as a 'no' and retracts his hand.
There's nothing particularly violent on in the middle of what should be a school day. Antique price estimation for old people and brightly-colored talking dinosaurs for preschoolers.
Somewhere in the middle of something with a singing overdue library book, Malcolm falls asleep.
Instinct takes over:
Once they notice, Reese and Dewey start talking conspiratorially about what to do.
Permanent markers?
Mom's lipstick and nail polish?
This is where Dewey remembers.
Strip him naked and dump him on the front lawn, then lock the doors?
This is where Reese does.
They sit back quietly.
When Reese is scared, he takes it out on other people.
When Malcolm is scared, he makes himself out to be better than other people.
When Dewey is scared, he asks for help from other people.
But Reese has never been the one Dewey goes to for comfort and now doesn't seem the right time to give Dewey a hard slug in the arm, so they just sit and watch in silence.
:-:-:-:
When his mom had called and said, “I want you to come down here. We need your help.”, Francis had replied, “My help? My help? You need my help with something? The great matriarch needs the help of a lowly commoner?”
In truth he’d already started packing, tossing necessities into his bag while he’d held the phone between ear and shoulder, but he’d prided himself on showing some restraint. If it were his dad calling, he’d have already been in the car.
He’d been happily thinking he’d get to lord this over her for the rest of his life and even more happily thinking he’d get to spend time with his family when she’d said it plainly, “Malcolm tried to kill himself.”
Francis had stalled as he’d folded a shirt. Along with ’I may as well start buying you casts instead of clothing, seeing how much you like wearing those!’, ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed!?’ had always been one of his mom’s go-to responses when he or his brothers acted idiotically.
This meant the words themselves were par the course of any kind of ridiculous behavior. It was her tone – serious and deliberately empty – that made a cold, wet, tangible heaviness buckle his stomach. And still it took him a minute to fully figure it out. He said, “You’re kidding.”, blank, nothing, to take up the time required for the meaning to sink in. Then he’d exploded with a multitude of things, swears and questions and a momentary, hands-shaking gasp of relief for it only having been ‘tried’, and more swears, climaxing with the accusatory, “How didn’t you know?! You’re his mother!”
Dead silence.
They’d both known he’d made a mistake.
To her credit, she wasn’t baited into arguing about her parenting skills or lack thereof. In a sick way, it would have been easier if she had. They knew that fight. One they could sometimes almost enjoy.
To his credit, as much as he had wanted the conversation to be twisted back to normalcy he had apologized immediately.
Somehow, he had lost track of his entire life for a while after that.
He’d made it to the car and driven long enough to have had to make a pit stop.
And now, several hours on his way home, is when he comes back to himself.
He thinks about how he misses out on so much, being so far away from home. He thinks about how much more he could miss out on. He thinks about missing his grandpa's funeral. He thinks about how that day was the last time he talked to his family on the phone
Francis doesn't like thinking about that, about how his family could wind up in the hospital or die without his being there, could arrange everything and grieve without him being there. That rips away too much control of his life. So, instead, he thinks about how he can fix everything.
Honestly, he’s read about this kind of thing. And heard about it. Because a couple of the guys in his A.A. meetings talk about how down they got; how that’s why they started drinking and how that just made everything worse. Because when he applied (and was accepted!) for the job as a camp instructor full of emotionally disturbed kids, he got loaded down with brochures and pamphlets and booklets, just to make sure he understood what he was getting into; the interviewer had given him such a large pile that he couldn‘t see past it to look at her when she said “God have mercy on your soul.”. And he’d read them all, and a few of the books had dealt with this exactly. Heck, he had even done a bit of research on his own, just to prove he was ready (considering what supposedly well-adjusted girl scouts had done to him, he figured he should do all he could to be prepared.)
So Francis thinks he’s in a unique position to handle this. He thinks he’ll say ‘I’m you’re older brother and I love you. If you want to talk, I’ll listen.’. Don’t push, just leave doors wide open. He thinks he’ll be able to design a game plan, write down steps to take, set up schedules, all of that.
He's ready.
:--:--:--:
Things at their house have a way of happening all at once.
One, Francis comes home. Francis isn't mad until he is, until he sees the house and realizes everything's fine. Technically. Everyone's alive, no one's in jail, no one's in the hospital. Everyone's home like they should be. And, suddenly, he's mad.
He’s in such a rush to add his two cents to all of this that he parks on their front lawn and storms up their walkway, leaving his car door open in his wake.
Being reamed out by Francis is like being reamed out by Mom. It’s harder to get Francis mad, but once he’s mad he hits on exactly the same points, albeit with big brother vernacular: ‘dink’ and ‘dork’ and ‘nerd’ thrown in between accusing idiocy and selfishness and thoughtlessness. And there’s no way you can actually argue with either of them; doing so just makes them increase volume. It’s better to just stare gape-mouthed back at them, unless they tell you to stop impersonating a fish, in which case there’s exactly no move you can make.
So he's gape-mouthed and trying not to get crushed beneath Francis' accusations. Because they're true, okay, but if he admits they're true he'll probably just crawl under the covers to keep from facing them.
Francis stops mid-word, says, "Dude, were you crying?" and shrinks back.
It takes Mom on her worst day to make Francis shrink back.
This is when Dad pulls up, driving like a maniac. Apparently using the lawn as a garage runs in the family, because he narrowly avoids tearing Francis’ door off its hinges. Dirt sprays up from beneath the tires and coats windows until the boys can no longer see out of them. By the time he's through, it looks like Mother Nature threw up on their house. It’s really no wonder they don’t have any grass in their yard.
Their dad runs in, lets loose a grateful sob, falls dramatically to his knees. He shuffles over, still kneeling, to Dewey, and hugs and kisses him. He gets up to give hugs and kisses to the rest of them, left-to-right. He pauses at the end of the line, and then goes back through them right-to-left. He stands straight and looks at all of them. Used to having four boys in the house at a time, it takes a second to dawn on him that he's forgetting Jamie.
Hal gasps in absolute horror at the thought that maybe forgetting Jamie for those two seconds could be the catalyst for something awful in fourteen years. He forcefully shoves his other sons out of the way to get to the boys' room, reassuring, "Oh, no, Jamie, Daddy loves you, too!"
Francis and Reese cast Malcolm a 'See what you did to Dad' look. It's not quite as harsh as the 'See what you did to Mom' look, simply because Mom's harder to break than Dad is, but it's still awful.
It's even worse when they purposefully retract it to spare his feelings.
Dewey just wanders after his dad to inform him that Jamie's at the babysitter's.
Then, the trifecta, Stevie comes over.
He's the only one to opt for using the sidewalk.
He knocks politely.
Malcolm ducks his head and leaves to open the door.
Just as Stevie has gotten the fronts of his tires across the threshold, Reese stalks over. He slams the door shut hard, successfully sending Stevie rolling backwards into the street.
“Reese, you can’t keep him from coming inside,” Malcolm says.
“We could put in stairs."
It seems to be an actual, serious suggestion, and Reese’s eyebrows are furrowed and his eyes dark, and Malcolm has no idea what’s going on. So Malcolm speaks in his Reese-calm-down voice; each word clearly-enunciated and said more sweetly than normal. “We have an assignment. Stevie is my partner. It‘s due Monday.” He gestures soothingly, hands close to his heart. “This way you won’t even have to deal with me. Stevie and I’ll be out of your hair and you can do…whatever.”
“You tell him you were thinking about it?”
Malcolm blinks. “What?”
“He’s not coming in if he knew.”
“He didn’t know.”
Reese’s fingers loosen and lame around the doorknob. He and Malcolm stare at each other a second longer before Reese withdraws his hand and Malcolm pulls open the door.
Stevie rolls inside with an air of indignity. He and Malcolm start heading to the boys' bedroom, but Reese stalls Stevie with a firm hand against his chest and a sharp “You!”
Reese continues with, “How fast can you call for help?”
Stevie glances up at Malcolm.
“Don’t worry, he doesn’t want to beat you up or anything,” Malcolm assures. To Reese he adds sharply, “And you know how fast he can yell for help.”
Reese nods. “Not fast enough. I gave him an Indian Burn and two Wet Willies before he called Mom on me last time.”
“Yeah, but remember how fast he yelled with the Nipple Cripple?” Reese starts to retort, but Malcolm puts his hands up in defeat. “Listen, if you want to stay with us, then whatever. I just figured you’d like a break from me. Okay?”
“Not that long of one,” Reese says, surprisingly cryptic to the innocent bystander.
A deep inhalation breaks their concentration.
“…What…the hell?”
:--:--:--:
Malcolm cracks his heel against the leg of the chair and there’s a sharp surge of focus. This is a relief in the way scratching a bug bite is a relief; a second of pleasure before the itch seems to reappear, spread out.
He forgets why he was so anxious to get Stevie in the house. There was a brief, legitimate flutter of excitement when Stevie was at the door. But now, though they've only just gathered at the table, he already knows he wants Stevie gone.
Actually, Stevie can stay wherever. Do whatever. He wants himself gone. He wants to get away from his family and Stevie and people in general. He's tired. He needs to do something, keep himself from realizing how tired he is. He needs to move, or plan, or talk, or something, just keep busy somehow so maybe he can squash everything else down for a little while. Take a break so that when he has to come back to thinking about it maybe he can solve it. But he doesn't feel like actually doing any of that. He feels like sleeping.
Malcolm sags across the table.
Francis opted to leave them alone after declaring that this would give him time to get his plan together.
Reese is standing in the corner as if he's a body guard; his arms folded, his face drawn tight, his eyes burning a hole into the possible threat (which, in this case, is seemingly Stevie. Which sort of feels like a rabbit being a threat to a Rottweiler.). Just the way they make the secret service do in movies.
Dewey isn't Reese and therefore isn't going the 'The World Would be a Better Place if Stevie Kenarban was Dead' route; he's not watching for a threat and is instead watching for clues. He's also, again unlike Reese, using every trick he knows from having been a little brother to be utterly unobtrusive; within seconds Stevie and Malcolm forget he's there.
Their dad flits in and out, not sure what to do with himself.
The first time, he gets two feet into the room, spins around, and leaves. Stevie looks at Hal, but Malcolm doesn’t notice. When giving Malcolm a befuddled look doesn’t urge Malcolm to clear things up, Stevie changes topics:
"Are you still... in your pajamas?"
Malcolm bristles. "Yeah, so? There's no school."
His face burns as he remembers he thought there was. He has to pull it together. That can be how he stays busy. He can just focus on pulling it together. He drags himself towards the chair. Sit straight. Sit straight.
The second time Hal comes in, Stevie glances at him, glances at Reese, glances at the kitchen table they're sitting at instead of the usual desk in Malcolm's room, stares at Malcolm. "You...in trouble?" he asks, amused because that's typical.
Malcolm shrugs. "Ye--."
But then his dad's virtually on top of him, petting his hair. Overriding his voice with, "No! No, no trouble. You're not in trouble." Ended with a high, anxious laugh and a kiss on the top of his head. Which is great, Dad. Subtle.
Stevie quirks an eyebrow, what on earth was that?
Malcolm shrugs, it's my dad, you know.
That it's my dad shrug really shouldn't be used so often that it's an acceptable explanation, but Stevie nods.
The third time Hal comes in is precisely 53.5 seconds from the last time. Malcolm knows because he checked his watch six times in the interim. This time, at least, Hal finally does something. He asks in a desperate way if the boys want something to eat.
Malcolm says no. Even though 'I'm not hungry' seems a legitimate excuse, he's suddenly paranoid his dad will take it to mean more than that. Maybe it is more than that, eating’s seemed a chore for a while, but he doesn't want it to mean anything. So he makes like it's due to being a charitable host, "Stevie's allergic to everything we have."
Which is true, actually.
His dad backs off, breezes out of the room.
Except he can't be a charitable host. Stevie's eyes narrow and he wheezes, "You're never... polite."
"Gee, thanks."
Reese stirs at his sarcasm.
Stevie continues, "Because you...act like...I'm normal."
That's discomforting, too close to a compliment. Malcolm shrugs, looks away, and dismisses it.
Stevie just sits there and breathes for a minute.
A whole, literal minute. Filled with nothing but Stevie's wheezing breath.
"I haven't...seen you in... a month."
Malcolm's gaze rolls around the room. "You know, if we're going to finish, we should probably start--"
"You didn't even...invite me... to your... birthday."
Right. His birthday. 17 exactly 28 days ago. Go for defensive. “You didn't come last year, anyway."
"I was in...the hospital!"
Scoff. "Like that's an excuse."
Although it probably says good things about their relationship, it's too bad that Stevie knows how he deflects things, how he acts when he's bothered. It means there's a slim-to-none chance that Stevie will ever wheel out on him for being a jerk when confronted.
Malcolm moves with exaggerated annoyance. His voice comes out fast. "Look, we didn't even do anything, it's not a big deal, sorry I didn't invite you, can we just get started?"
"I had to...call your mom… to even...come over."
The not seeing each other part is untrue, in the strictest sense, since they have classes together. The calling Mom part is definitely true. 'Stevie's coming over Friday, but, honestly, Malcolm, I'm not your secretary. Take your calls yourself.' is how she put it.
“Well, sorry." Malcolm says. "Okay? Sorry. Can we get started now?"
It's weird. He mostly is sorry. He feels guilty about it, when Stevie puts it like that. But his words are still upset, sarcastic, loud. And he feels guilty about that, too.
That part he doesn't apologize for, because it feels awkward and he’s tired of apologizing.
He bows his head over his work, eyebrows tightly-knit, and starts writing before Stevie can say anything.
:--:--:--:
When Stevie leaves, Reese sees him off gleefully. He waves and shouts and even pushes Stevie's chair to the end of the drive. He strides back to his brothers with a bounce in his step.
"What're you so happy about?" Dewey asks.
"Nothing." Reese sidles a bit closer to Malcolm.
Francis re-emerges with his idea.
Francis having an idea is nothing less than amazing. It's guaranteed to be good by default. And this is an idea that he actually seems to like, which knocks it into all-out awe-inspiring even before its revealed .
He presents it proudly.
'It' is a pocket-sized notebook with several smiley face and rainbow stickers and, drawn by Francis, a unicorn which looks quite a bit more like a deformed horse with a massive facial tumor, are all over the cover. Above the unicorn in bold, multicolored letters, are the words 'HAPPY THOUGHTS!!'
He passes it over to Malcolm.
Malcolm looks at it blankly.
Francis smiles smugly. "Each day I want you to write one good thing about yourself."
His brothers stare slack-jawed back at him.
"...And?" Malcolm asks.
"That's it!" Francis says, smiling and bouncing excitedly.
Reese glances over at Malcolm. "He's not a girl," he says slowly.
Malcolm looks at Reese, decides this is as good an argument as any, and nods in agreement.
"This took you two hours?" Dewey asks in an incredulous screech.
Francis ignores Dewey completely.
"I'm serious. I know it sounds stupid, but if you're having bad thoughts, it helps to have something positive to counteract it. Right? So--" he taps the notebook. "In comes the book. To help you remember, and make you think about more good things, even if you don't want to. And stuff like that. "
Malcolm keeps looking at it.
On the one hand, he knows this has real roots in cognitive therapy.
On the other hand, his mind is empty when it comes to this. Good things about himself. He can think of only, 'Does well in math', which he figures is a lot like saying 'Fits well in lockers'. And from the look on Francis' face, it's supposed to be no big deal, it's only supposed to take a second each day, it's supposed to be easy. He can't admit that it's not. "And then, what? You're going to read it, psychoanalyze everything I wrote? No, thanks. I'm normal. I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me."
"I didn't say anything was wrong with you. I'm not going to read it, but you are going to write it."
"How would you know if you aren't going to read it?"
Francis gets that look that he doesn't use often. The one that is alarmingly close to paternal (for most families--close to maternal for theirs--), grown from being a babysitter for years. "I won't. But this isn't for me, it's for you. So it seems to me you'd at least give it a shot."
:--:--:--:
Dinner is suitably awkward, as it was the night before.
"Well," says their mom, "Francis. I'm glad you're here."
"Yeah. Me, too," Francis agrees.
Nobody says anything for a long while.
Their mom's the first to come up with something, naturally.
She takes a deep inhalation, as though she's surprised to have a topic. They all look up at her.
They set down their forks and knives and spork.
Respectful.
They're actually being respectful.
"Did I tell you about Stevie Kenarban?" She asks, directing her words specifically towards Hal.
He latches on eagerly. "No, you didn't!"
"The poor boy, both his tires went flat not even a block from our house.”
“That’s a shame,” Reese says. His glee is barely contained, the corners of his lips twitching.
Dewey glances at Reese with a quirked eyebrow.
Their mom looks over at him, too. This is something she punishes over. It’s true there’s no proof, but circumstantial evidence is equally damning in her courtroom. But then she blinks. She retracts a little and continues, “Probably would've crawled home on his belly like a worm if I hadn't been driving home just then."
Reese looks legitimately disappointed now.
Their dad mumbles something vague.
Malcolm watches as his family returns to eating.
He's usually not the one to start hurling potatoes or sticking his hand into the pitcher of lemonade to yank out an ice cube. That's Reese's forte. But all of a sudden he wants to be. He wants to do the things that Reese goads him into doing. He wants to do the things that make his mom mad and his dad stifle grins. He doesn't care if it ends awkwardly. If it ends with him slathered in creamed corn, yelling like a monkey while his family just stares at him gape-mouthed without participating. He just wants to do something to get a reaction.
But he's already done something to get a reaction; this is his reaction.
He has, quite successfully, with one action, ruined his family.
He doesn't think he has it in him to try anything after that.
:--:--:--:
Their dad makes them watch home movies that night.
Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey hadn’t known there were so many until they had snooped in the garage and found boxes of tapes labeled ‘FRANCIS’; ‘WEDDING/FRANCIS DAY 1’, ‘FRANCIS DAY 1 (II)’, going on like that until Francis was six months old. Their dad had chuckled when they’d brought it up, saying he’d had to make their mom knock it off.
None of the boys had believed this, their mom not being particularly sentimental, so they’d watched one. Malcolm had fortunately warned that ‘WEDDING/FRANCIS DAY 1’ probably meant they’d see their mom giving birth, so they had watched ‘FRANCIS 5 MONTHS 12 DAYS (III)’ instead.
It had, indeed, had their mother acting... doting. Sweet. “Oh, Francis, you’re so cute!” and, when his arms had given out, sending him flat on his stomach, after his first attempt at crawling, “Oh, my gosh, Francis, did you hurt yourself? Hal, we should take Francis to the hospital. His tummy’s so tiny, so sensitive!” Hearing their mom like that had been enough to scare them into being white and shaking, so they had ejected that tape and replaced it with the one that they‘d been in themselves, calming down when it got to a part where their mom started screaming.
In spite of the boxes filled with tapes of Francis, they only have a single tape with Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey growing up, with Jamie taking up precisely two minutes at the very end. Half a tape, actually, filled with several events over the years, the most important minutes of birthdays and Christmases, sometimes a year or two or three skipped simply because it was forgotten.
When they sit down, this is the one tape they watch.
Dewey and their dad are the only ones who really enjoy watching tapes; they like nostalgia. Their dad was the favorite kid to their extended family, grandpa included, but had gotten shuffled around in the enormous mass of siblings and cousins and uncles and aunts, not including the friends and strangers their grandpa had over for parties all the time. Dewey doesn't have enough things from his childhood to hold onto outside of his memories, for, to a large degree, the same reason; too many people, too little time. So they both like seeing what they have.
It has Reese’s fifth birthday, when he runs his brand new remote-controlled car into everyone’s heels so often that his dad resorts to setting up chairs around the house and hopping from safe-zone to safe-zone. It has his mom confiscating the remote and saying, “There! It’s just a big Hot Wheel, now! Enjoy."
Once she got all the recording out of her system, their mom realized she mostly has a good memory for both the truly wonderful and truly awful things. She doesn't need to watch tapes. Besides, she rarely has the time to actually sit and watch.
It has Dewey’s first birthday. The week before, Reese had gone shopping with their mom and bought a rattle. Which their mom had thought was adorable. But, carefully, without her knowing, he’d taken the peas out and put it back together before giving it to Dewey as a present.
Their mom yells at Reese when Dewey starts crying over the soundlessness and Reese lets rip with an absolutely maniacal giggle. Dewey's screech was honed to perfection over the years, but his pure shrillness was at its best when he was a baby. Eventually his crying sets off enough of the neighborhood dogs that their mom has to ignore Reese to try to shush Dewey with murmured 'It's okay's.
Their dad, Mr. Cameraman, just tries to stay out of the way.
Reese rolls his eyes and stalks off. After a few minutes, right after Dewey has quieted enough for their mom to calm down, he comes back into frame with a wicked smile on his face. Their dad starts to say 'Ah, Reese--' but he can't get anything significant out before Reese passes Dewey a lidless can of spray paint. Dewey babbles happily, waving the can up and down. Their mom is furious, and she snags the can from Dewey’s fingers. Dewey starts crying again. This time she lets him, focusing on Reese; her face contorted and red, eyes ablaze.
Reese was never good at knowing when to just shut up.
.
Instead he exclaims, “What?! It rattles!”
All that happened after this was Reese had to scrub the toilet with his toothbrush. Still, even knowing what happened, their mom turning to the camera and saying, "Hal, turn that off," with deadly calm does make it seem more ominous than that when the screen goes black.
Francis says it's a bad idea to have video evidence of things the statute of limitation hasn't run out on. What he really means is he doesn't want to watch the fights he had with his mom when he was a rebellious teenager because he's growing up, he's still hoping to earn her respect, and he can't do that when she hangs onto the past. Not that he'll never admit any of this. He also won't admit he's just as likely as his mom is to pick fights over things that should've been forgotten.
It has Francis’ fourteenth birthday which doubled as an acquittal. And the New Years that Richie drove a car into the tree in their front yard, surprisingly not because he was stoned or drunk, just because he said he wanted to and Francis had said ‘Sure, why not?’
It has thirty seconds of a Christmas when the entire family behaved. It went so smoothly that they had absolutely nothing to record.
Outside of skulking around in the background moodily and one rather stirring conversation that has Francis declaring his manhood, their mother saying 'You'll be a man when you stop folding your underwear like a pig!', Francis asking, 'How do pigs fold underwear?' and their mother answering, 'They don't .'., that’s mostly all there is of Francis on this tape.
Reese likes living in the moment too much. He doesn't particularly remember anything that's on the tapes unless he kept mementos, something he can touch. A scrap of singed fabric or a box of his hair from when he had to be shaved for surgery. Holding something tangible like that, he can relive the emotions without sitting through the details. Seeing it all over again just inspires restless boredom.
And, there. Not the end, but close to it. Almost exactly a year ago: a strange few minutes of Malcolm's sixteenth birthday. Their dad's the cameraman, like he almost always is. He's holding the camera a little low, thinking he's just turned it off instead of on. So the viewpoint is half-above-half-below the table, where Reese, Dewey, and Malcolm are all seated together; they're cut off at both shoulders and knees. Malcolm's still wearing a coconut bra and a grass skirt; he's taken the lei off and put in on the table because he nearly caught it on fire blowing out the candles on his cake.
"Dad's trying to sneak a peek up your skirt," Reese says, and they all laugh.
Malcolm crosses his legs with exaggerated girlishness, fingers laced and hands held protectively over his knees, and they all laugh harder.
Malcolm doesn't mind watching his family; if he was there, he remembers the event vividly, but he can get caught up in the filmed emotions easily enough. But he hates watching himself. He doesn't mind having his picture taken, doesn't mind being recorded, but he inexplicably hates seeing himself afterwards. His voice sounds weird. His mouth moves strangely when he talks. His face is asymmetrical. He's embarrassed by himself.
He feels his dad’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing.
He turns his head, meets his dad’s eyes. Forces a smile.
:--:--:--:
They can hear their parents talking because they aren’t. They’re laying still and silent and breathing deeply when usually they’re talking and plotting and laughing back and forth and sometimes leaning into the open space between their beds to smack each other or exchange high fives or talk more conspiratorially in spite of the fact that there is no one to hide their words from. Theirs is a relationship that has always had the closeness of claustrophobia and only recently gained its discomfort.
They can hear their parents talking, voices cutting through walls, and it’s awful.
“You should’ve known? I should’ve known; I’m his mother.”
“And, what, I’m just his father?”
There‘s presumably an exasperated, loud breath here, but it‘s too low to be heard. “Oh, Hal, I’m not saying that.” A pause. “You know that game they all played when they were little? ‘Guess What Awful, Disgusting Thing I Have in my Pockets.’ I never guessed. I always knew.” Another pause. “I know.” and then a gross gasping sound, and they know their mom‘s crying. They’ve only heard their mom cry a handful of times, but it’s still a handful more than they’ve ever wanted to.
“It’ll be okay,” Dewey tells the ceiling.
“Sure,” Reese says.
Francis claps his hands together and says, "How 'bout we listen to some music, huh, guys?” This is one of his more family-friendly suggestions of distraction.
They on a whole listen to astoundingly little music, so they're stuck listening to a soundtrack from one of Jamie's T.V. shows. Within seconds a big, pink elephant named Hernandez is singing about how stealing is a 'Mucho bad, bad thing'. Malcolm has always been annoyed with this—‘That’s poor English and Spanish!’ but this time he doesn’t rant about it. Jamie rolls in his sleep at the familiar song but doesn’t wake.
Malcolm contributes nothing.
:--:--:--:
He and Dewey are, again, the last two to go to sleep.
It sort of figures. Dewey's that kind of little kid. If he thinks something bad will happen when he's not watching, he'll watch. Once he latches on to an idea, he doesn't give it up easily. He's patient, which is unique in their family.
He also has an amazingly tight grip.
"Are you awake?" Dewey whispers.
"Yes, Dewey, I'm awake. Just like I was two minutes ago."
"I don't see why you're mad at Francis."
"I'm not mad at Francis."
"He's only trying to help."
"I know."
Dewey remembers having a conversation almost exactly like this the day they went to the zoo. He remembers that by the time he was about to see the tigers they were fed up with each other, so he stops. He starts again, this time sympathetic. "I think the notebook's a dumb idea, too."
Malcolm shrugs.
"But I bet it'd be easy to do, so you might as well, huh?"
"Right."
"I mean, get him off your back."
"Right."
"Because it's not like you hate yourself or anything, right?"
Honestly Malcolm’s not that good of a liar, especially when put on the spot, so he answers uncomfortably, "I don't know."
"What?"
"I don't know, Dewey, maybe....Yeah, sometimes. So what? Nobody likes themselves all the time."
"I do," Dewey answers.
There's a beat.
He's annoyed by Dewey's idealism at the best of times. He and Reese have no problem trying to cripple it. But he can't do that when it comes to something like this. He's wondering how he can backtrack when Dewey cuts him off. Justifies his thought for him. "I bet you're just worried you won't be able to think of anything to write. That's okay. I can think of a bunch of things. I don't know if that's cheating, but we don't have to tell Francis, and I bet it'd be a lot of fun, anyway..."
Dewey keeps talking, babbling. He leans out over the edge of the bed to grab the notebook off of the floor without once letting go of Malcolm's hand. He flips open the notebook to the first page, slides the pencil from the spiraled spine, and writes something down. He puts it back on the floor.
:--:--:--:
Sometimes he can barely wake up at all. He can sleep and sleep and crack his eyes open and feel so heavy that more sleep seems like a reasonable solution.
Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous.
There’s never a good reason for it, at least not one he can figure out so late in the night. It’s just a sudden, pointless churning in his stomach that says his immobility is bigger than just sleeping, is all-consuming, and he should get up and do something to get moving again
Malcolm has at his disposal a slew of defenses against anxiety. Except it’s not really against anxiety, per se. They’re just things he does to keep it from feeling like he’s somehow breathing wrong, air piling up outside of his lungs and pressing down on them instead of filling them up. Or to keep his stomach from feeling like it’s eating itself. Thinking it might be because of anxiety, which is a legitimate problem, and not to ward off some nameless stomach cramps or reasonless inability to breathe right, makes him more anxious (except not actually anxious). So he doesn’t think about that.
He used to chew his nails. He gave that up by himself by stuffing his hands under his armpits for a week. When kids teased him for doing that, he’d pretended he was just being cool and aloof.
After nail-biting came pacing. He stopped that one when his grandma told his mom, “Look at him! Like an elephant, tromping around! No wonder your carpets are such crap.”
After pacing came tooth-grinding. His mom decided to get him a night guard with the humiliating intention of making him wear it around the house during the day, since that was when he actually prone to grinding. That was enough for the habit to subconsciously end itself.
Talking had always been there, but after tooth-grinding it came to the forefront. Talking was a safe bet. Talking was part of personality. People might tell him to shut up, or avoid him, or yell at him, but there were few who would actually out-and-out tell him to change his entire personality.
So. His jaw is sore, tight, and keeps popping as his teeth drag against each other.
He intermittently chews at the nails of his free hand until three of his fingertips are dotted with blood.
Talking to himself out loud always feels strange so he doesn't try it, but his brain's whirring madly.
And he still feels like hurling.
He looks at the clock and it’s 12:15 and that’s too late, too late. He glances down-and-over at Dewey.
Normally what happens when he wakes up like this is: he gets up, gathers his homework to trick himself into thinking he's being productive, goes to the kitchen, and sits down. He manages to work for three, four, five minutes, aware of every. Single. Passing. Second. Frustrated. He'll get up, probably peer into the fridge even though he's not hungry, walk around the room, sit down, work. Lather, rinse, repeat. An hour or two and he'd have something finished, though he'd avoid reading it over just in case he hated it, and he'd be able to go back to sleep.
He couldn't do this last night. That would have been endlessly more embarrassing than not-peeing in front of Dewey.
He unlaces his fingers from his little brother’s. Waits a second to see if Dewey will wake up.
Dewey used to beg to hold his hand all the time whenever they had to walk together. Dewey had only ever begged for him, probably because, while Reese had let it be known that he wasn’t against punching whiny little hand-holders, he had only complained, rolled his eyes, and opened up his palm for Dewey’s.
Dewey had always been a grabby kid, always picking things up, touching them, but he’d given up on hand-holding by himself a little while after he turned ten. Thank God.
Malcolm wonders dully how long it’ll take to break the habit this time.
He carefully steps over Reese, who Francis shoved from the bed, grabs his stuff, and heads to the kitchen.
He hesitates in the doorway.
He watches his dad, sitting at the table.
He’s taken a small step backwards when his dad looks up.
"Malcolm."
"Dad."
He can't remember a time they were so awkward with each other.
"Sit down." Eager. Excited. Tired. Sad.
"That's okay, I was just..." He goes over and sits down. It's his dad's face that makes him. It looks old. Eyes red, maybe from not sleeping, maybe from crying, Malcolm doesn't really want to know. "Dad."
His dad pats his hand and he wants to pull away. He's never wanted to pull away before. But this kind of love is smothering. He drops his backpack on the floor and the thud is magnificently loud. His dad flinches at the sound.
"Dad," he says again. "It's okay. I'll figure it out." He will. He will because he's smart, right? He's a genius, this is nothing, he can find a solution.
His dad looks at him seriously. Considers him.
He isn't reprimanded by his dad often, and he's not sure that's what's happening now, but that's what it feels like. A sharp stab of fear. An ache of embarrassment, of guilt. He wants to apologize, wants to leave but wants to get it over with, whatever 'it' is.
Hal's looking at his son, seeing the little boy who let him kiss scraped knees. Who still slept with a teddybear after hours of playing with his chemistry set. Who said 'I love you, Daddy!' without being prodded into it. Who made a raggedy father's day card on the same piece of paper he'd solved some of Francis' math problems on. A happy, healthy son who he knew would go on to do great things.
“If you ever feel…that way again, would you tell me?”
Malcolm curls his fingers in towards his palms and stills his bouncing knees, subconsciously, self-consciously. His pencil rolls from his hand. He looks down at his knuckles. “I guess so.”
“No,” his dad says, not loudly but so sharply that it makes him look up. “No guessing. Would you or wouldn’t you? There‘s no,” a meaningless gesture, “wrong answers here. Just yes or no.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you,” he says.
His dad sink back into his chair, relaxed.
Malcolm's guts twist up tighter, pushing the sick feeling up higher, and he presses his palm to his stomach in a lame attempt to calm it.
“We never had to worry about you,” his dad says.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
His dad had explained it to him this way, right after Jamie had been born: Francis was the oldest and was always getting into trouble, Reese was….Reese, Dewey was smart but not freaky smart and, anyway, had been the youngest for so long it seemed natural to still see him that way, and Jamie really was a baby. They were lucky to have one son who didn’t need looking after all the time.
It’s a weird thing to be proud of, but it always meant that when his parents overlooked the problems he told them it wasn’t just because he was the middle kid, or the least important kid, but at least in part because he was the kid who didn’t need his parents to fix things for him. He pauses, frowns, suddenly guilty that he needs them to fix it now.
"So. Why're you up?"
He sees his dad glance over at the silverware drawer, but he pretends not to. "Homework."
His dad gives him a disbelieving expression.
"I do it this late all the time."
It's all the time now, now that he can't bother finishing the majority of his work before he leaves school. But even before, between school, work taking up the bulk of his weekends, college prep courses, extracurriculars to pad his resume, going over Reese and Dewey's schoolwork, and still squeezing in time for something he actually wanted to do, doing his own homework got pushed into the late hours of the night or crammed in during lunch breaks. It wasn’t so bad. He’s smart. He’s lucky. He’s expected to make sacrifices. His mom’s told him that plenty of times.
“Let me help you,” his dad says suddenly.
“What?”
“Let me help you, it’ll be fun.”
“Dad, there’s a reason you haven’t helped me with my homework since kindergarten.”
“Kindergarten? Whoo! Well, then it’s been too long. Huh?” His dad says excitedly, cuffing him on the shoulder. His dad chuckles, high up in his throat, and it’s awkward and nervous and desperate so Malcolm relents.
“Yeah. It’ll be fun.”
It takes about fifteen seconds before ‘helping’ turns into ‘shouting encouraging words from the sidelines’. His dad gets so into it that it eventually wakes his mom up.
She pads out to the kitchen ( hair a mess, face still lined from sleep), folds her arms, and just smiles at them.
It’s not fun. The action itself makes him feel exposed; bared and vulnerable and self-conscious.
But his mom and dad seem happy and so he doesn’t mention it.
If this is the sort of thing that will convince them he’s not screwed up, he’ll do it. If this is what it takes for them to get back to ‘normal’, such as it is, he’ll do it. He can fake being all right. He’s been faking being all right. Maybe if he fakes it long enough he’ll start to believe it as truth, himself.
Even if he doesn’t, it isn’t worth it to break his family just to put himself back together.