The Rules of Survival

  I made it all the way back to bed with the cookie. I was beneath the sheet, in a little tent, with the cookie flat on my palm and my nose pressed to it—when she whipped back the covers.

  “Thief!” our mother yelled. “Cookie thief!” She burst into giggles.

  She had the big kitchen knife, and it was pressed to my throat. And as she laughed, I could feel it shake in her hands, and push against my skin.

  She cut me that night. Just a little.

  Just to teach me not to steal, and not to sneak.

  This is what I think happens when you live with fear, and I think it happened to me, to Callie, and to you, even though you were so little. I think the fear gets into your blood. It makes your subatomic particles twist and distort. You change, chemically. The fear changes, too. It becomes not your helper, but your master. You are a slave to it.

  Obviously, I am not a scientist. I’m not even sure I would have passed eleventh-grade chemistry if Callie hadn’t helped me study. But I know that I am not who I was supposed to be, who I could have been, and I know it’s because I was too afraid for too long. It made me think about things I never should have.

  I learned to live with the fear. I learned to function with it. We all did. Maybe that was what I recognized in Murdoch that night. Maybe that was what drew me to him. He wasn’t afraid. Or—if he was—he took action anyway.

  Yes. Where most people would have done nothing, he acted.

  Anyway, I stood in that convenience store on that hot summer night and stared after him, and I thought: I have to know that man. There is a word for this feeling, Emmy. It’s called obsession.

  I was obsessed with Murdoch, Emmy, for months before our mother ever dated him. In fact, if not for me, she never would have met him.

  3

  MY FIRST MEMORY

  I must have been about four, and that means Callie would have been two, or a little older, sleeping across the bedroom in her crib. Emmy, you didn’t exist yet.

  I don’t know what time it was. It was the middle of the night, and suddenly I was awake. My every muscle was rigid. I was listening while, at the other end of the apartment, our mother began, without speaking or yelling, to smash one of the kitchen chairs repeatedly against the wall.

  And then another one.

  Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what she was doing, exactly. The next morning, I would go into the kitchen to see the chairs in splintered pieces all over the floor, beneath the gaping hole in the plaster of the wall. In the night, though, I didn’t know what was happening, or why, or even exactly where. But I knew who was doing it: Mom. And that was all that mattered.

  I don’t remember any feeling of surprise. What I remember is the awareness that I had a job to do. Callie had already woken up and started whimpering, and I knew she would start screaming soon. Our mother would hear her—and remember us.

  I slipped out of my bed. I worked the mechanism to lower the crib’s slatted side, and I clambered up and over it. I grabbed Callie and held her. I whispered, “Shhh, Callie. Shhh.”

  Holding Callie as she thrashed and yelled into my shoulder, and, eventually, quieted, I felt hope. This wasn’t over yet, but I was doing well. I was making sure Callie’s yowls couldn’t be heard outside our room, over the methodical, determined smashing from the kitchen. If we were lucky—I remember thinking—Callie and I would be left alone, unremembered, and it was my job to try to make that happen.

  That particular night, I did it. I kept us out of the way, unnoticed. So, in fact, you could say that my very first memory is one of success. Of triumph. Of watching Callie go back to sleep safely, because I had made sure she hadn’t called attention to us while our mother was angry.

  I did this many times for you, too, Emmy. So did Callie.

  4

  SEARCHING FOR MURDOCH

  I looked for Murdoch for the rest of my thirteenth year. The first thing I did was go back to the convenience store to ask the teenage clerk if he had seen that man before, or if he knew whether he lived nearby, or if he knew anything at all about him. But the guy didn’t have a clue, and he started to look at me funny, so I couldn’t ask him to please call me if he saw him again or learned anything about him. In my pocket, I curled my fist around the piece of paper I’d prepared with my name and phone number, crumpling it. But I wasn’t discouraged.

  I thought Murdoch might be one of the new, young, wealthy people who were moving into our neighborhood, attracted by its nearness to the beachfront, the airport, and the center of Boston. Our mother and her friends complained bitterly about these people, who were cramming the tight city streets of the old neighborhood with their Land Rovers and BMWs. Their presence had driven up housing prices and pushed out most of the old-time working class Irish-American population. We’d have been among those forced to move far out of Boston, according to Aunt Bobbie—who lived alone downstairs in the second-floor apartment. But our grandfather had bought the triple-decker house back when prices were much lower.

  “The only good move he made in his entire life,” Aunt Bobbie said. “Besides dropping dead before he could gamble the house out from under us.”

  In those days, every now and then, Aunt Bobbie would talk wistfully about what the house was worth, about how its three apartments could be gutted by a real estate developer and turned into condominiums with walk-in closets and gleaming hardwood floors. But our mother wasn’t interested in selling and moving away from the city. Since she and Bobbie had inherited the house jointly, Bobbie had to content herself with raising the rent on the first-floor apartment, where three or maybe even four UMass-Boston college boys were always crammed in, and with her daily monitoring of Southie real estate prices in the newspaper.

  I didn’t think Murdoch had grown up in Southie. The woman he’d been with had certainly had the local look and sound, but he hadn’t. I prayed he hadn’t just been visiting her. I hoped he was one of the new people. If he wasn’t, I might never find him again.

  I went on long walks, scanning every passing face. I visited the convenience store as often as I could. When I could manage it, I showed up there on Saturday nights for at least a few minutes between eight and nine. I took you, Emmy, and we rode the local buses at rush hour so I could stare out the windows at the crowds. I made you and Callie spend long hours with me at Castle Island, next to the port of Boston, because nearly everyone in Southie went there to walk the causeway or fish off the dock or get a tan on the beach or buy an ice cream cone at Sullivan’s.

  In the early days, I saw Callie watching me as I scanned the face of every man who was about the right height and shape, and eventually she said to me, quietly, “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” I nodded. Neither of us had to specify who was meant by “him.”

  “Why?” Callie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Then: “I just want to know him.”

  Callie nodded.

  But summer ended, and then fall, and then we went through one of the most bitter and miserable winters imaginable—and I don’t mean just the weather—and I did not find him.

  And so, as spring inched back into Boston and green buds appeared on the neighborhood’s few trees, I turned fourteen and, to celebrate my new maturity, I gave up.

  5

  MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT

  It was a May afternoon, and Callie, now twelve to my fourteen, pounded up the stairs and burst into the bedroom I used to share with her and you. You were working with your sticker book on the lower bunk while I did some school reading about the rainforests of Brazil and imagined a struggle between our mother and a python.

  “Matt! Look!” Callie was practically hopping up and down. She thrust a piece of paper toward me.

  It was a print screen from an online telephone and address directory. Murdoch McIlvane, it said. 892 East Tenth Street, South Boston, Massachusetts. And there was a phone number.

  The address was only a few streets away, near the beach. How had Callie—

  “It’s him, Mat
t,” Callie was saying. “I found the address last week, and I’ve gone over to East Tenth Street every day after school since then, and I hung out and waited. I didn’t want you to be disappointed. But today, finally, I saw him.”

  I was speechless.

  “It’s a birthday present, Matthew. Just a couple weeks late.” Callie’s voice was filled with joy and pride.

  I found my own voice. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  It took me a minute before I could take her hand and squeeze it. “How’d you find him? This is incredible.”

  She hopped from foot to foot. “Well, of course I was looking for him everywhere I went, like you, just hoping to get lucky. But then last week, I realized I could look for him online.”

  “But without a last name—”

  “Not a problem.” Callie dropped my hand and spun around three times on the carpet. “Guess why not.”

  “Callie. Just tell me.”

  “C’mon, dummy. Guess!”

  “Callie.”

  It turned out Callie had simply gone to an online phone book, typed “Murdoch” in the first name field and “Massachusetts” in the state field, and then methodically gone through the alphabet for the last name, Aa to Mc. “It wasn’t like he was named John—or Matthew.” She grinned, proud of herself. “There was only one other person named Murdoch in the whole state. Of course, I stopped when I found our Murdoch. I’m really glad his last name didn’t begin with a W.”

  “You’re a genius,” I said.

  She said eagerly, “So, tomorrow’s Saturday. What time do you want to go over to East Tenth and meet him?”

  My jaw dropped.

  “I think we should just go ring his doorbell,” Callie said. “If he’s home, we could invite him to go for a walk on the causeway with us. Tell him we want to be friends.”

  So much for genius. Callie didn’t understand how to act. “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because . . .”

  I hadn’t actually thought past finding Murdoch. I didn’t know what my next move should be. Maybe to do what Callie had, just hang around on his street and watch for him. Follow him—learn more. Then try to engineer a meeting. The right kind of meeting.

  “I want to go slow,” I said. When Callie scowled, I waved the piece of paper and added, “Look, is this my birthday present or isn’t it?”

  “Well, it is, but—”

  “Then I get to decide what I do with it, right?”

  Callie rolled her eyes. “The address is your present. Not the man. I want to be his friend, too.”

  “Callie.”

  “Oh, fine. Do it your way. Just don’t come running to me for ideas when—”

  We heard the apartment door open. Footsteps followed—our mother’s. She called our names. Once. Again. Louder.

  And then, there she was. In our room, leaning over my shoulder, and reaching out with interest to take the piece of paper with Murdoch’s name and address on it from my hand.

  “What are you kids up to? And hey, what’s this?”

  6

  NICOLE (NIKKI) MARIE O’GRADY WALSH

  God’s honest truth, Emmy: I don’t think I was ever able to look at our mother and just see her. Instead, I’d see in my memory the things she did over the years and the expression on her face when she did them. So I could never quite believe that strangers didn’t run screaming down the street at the very sight of her.

  But they didn’t.

  What they saw when I was fourteen and she was thirty-five was a pretty woman, I guess. She was of medium height, with pale skin and a good figure—okay, a great figure—that she liked to show off. She changed her hair color all the time, from the palest shades of ash blond to darker blond mixes, and sometimes all the way over into red. Once it was even a Halloween orange.

  My father, Ben, says that when they were young and in high school together, Nikki’s hair was a wonder, hanging to her waist in long, lustrous, rich-brown strands. He says it floated around her when she walked. I remember this hair, because when Callie went to kindergarten and came home saying she had learned there were twelve inches in a foot, Nikki grabbed a tape measure and stretched out on the living room carpet, her hair flowing above her. She made Callie measure it, roots to ends. It was less than a full yard long, I remember. This made Nikki very, very angry. She ended up cutting Callie’s hair almost to the scalp to show her how important hair was to a woman. Callie hid her head under baseball caps the rest of that summer, so that the bald patches wouldn’t show.

  Ironically, shortly after that, Nikki cut her own hair to shoulder-length. I guess that made it easier to dye.

  She preferred to wear tight jeans, or her favorite, black leather pants. She always chose tops in vivid colors like green and purple, in slinky or clingy fabrics. With her jeans, she always wore the same belt, which had a chunky, heavy brass buckle ornament in the shape of a Celtic cross. She liked wearing high heels, too, and boots.

  Nikki wore lipstick and eyeliner every day. You had to work hard to see her eyes. She always had a sweep of hair in the way, and then she’d lift her hand and pretend to brush it back.

  Do you remember at all, Emmy? Her eyelids folded up into their sockets so neatly that it looked like she didn’t have any.

  7

  PORTUGUESE SEAFOOD PAELLA

  Our mother took the piece of paper from me. There was no point trying to keep it from her. Just before she came into the room, it had flashed into my mind to shove the address into my pocket, to protect it until I knew what I wanted to do with it. But I hadn’t. I wasn’t sure why not. She read aloud, breezily, “Murdoch McIlvane, 892 East Tenth Street. So, who’s this guy?”

  “Nobody,” Callie said. “It’s just—he’s just this guy.” She stopped, at a loss. She looked at me.

  “You wouldn’t like him,” I said to our mother.

  She didn’t pursue it, not yet, anyway. She shrugged and leaned over toward you, Emmy, pulling you backward up off the bunk and into her arms. “Emmy! Is there a big hug for Mommy from her baby? A big kiss for Mommy?”

  The piece of paper was now bunched up in her hand against your butt. Meanwhile, your dangling left arm was being squeezed between our mother’s body and the edge of the upper bunk—maybe deliberately, maybe not; it was hard to tell. You looked at Callie and me from over our mother’s shoulder. You had a sticker on your cheek, a little bee. Your lower lip was trembling. I hoped you wouldn’t try to wriggle out of the embrace, because in fact our mother seemed to be in quite a good mood. She was humming.

  Cocaine? New man? There were a few possibilities, and I didn’t care which one it was. Maybe we’d have an okay evening. As for Murdoch’s address . . . well, we’d see.

  Nikki was dancing you around the room, so at least your arm was free, though I could see a red crease mark running across it just above the elbow. “We’re celebrating tonight,” our mother said. “Rachel at work quit. I was thinking about making Portuguese seafood paella. I brought home everything we need. Unless paella would be too sophisticated for you kids? I hope you’re going to appreciate all the work that has to go into it.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, while at the exact same moment, Callie said, “Whatever you want.”

  Murmuring “Yum yum yum!” our mother waltzed you—and Murdoch’s address—out of the bedroom.

  Callie gripped my arm. “I’ll print you out another one,” she whispered.

  “I already memorized it,” I whispered back.

  “She won’t—” Callie stopped. “I don’t know, go meet him?”

  “She’ll do whatever she does,” I said. “Let’s go after them.”

  But Callie still had my arm. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I could have memorized the address and just told you.”

  “And I could have hidden it. I guess I wasn’t fast enough.” I shrugged. I tried to pull my arm away, but Callie said, “Wait a second. Uh—what’s paella?”


  “Callie,” I said, “I’ll know when you know.”

  We hadn’t been even a minute talking, but by the time we got to the kitchen, chaos was well under way. Emmy, you had been dumped on the floor, and our mother was tearing into two paper grocery store bags, tossing their contents onto the counter and table, and balling up the remains of the bags and throwing them in the general direction of the garbage can. I stared at what she was putting out on the counter. Along with a package of frozen peas and some cans of soup stock, there were big clear plastic bags of shrimp, mussels, and clams. And some other grayish seafood-type thing I didn’t recognize. Ugh.

  Okay, Callie and I would choke down whatever, but Emmy, that was when you ate hot dogs, plain macaroni, Cheerios, baby carrots, cheese toast, grape Popsicles, and (if I bribed you) fish sticks.

  Callie had gone to scoop you up, Emmy, so I leaned down to pick up the grocery bags from the floor. Whole Foods, the store near the medical office building where our mother worked. I got a look at the checkout slip. It was $128.63, for two bags of groceries that contained nothing a picky little girl would eat.

  “Matthew?” Our mother was scowling at me, her hands on her hips. “What exactly are you doing?”

  I knew my face was still perfectly bland. I nodded at the crumpled paper bags and receipt in my hands. “Just throwing these out.”

  A moment of silence. Then: “I’m warning you. I want to celebrate tonight. I could have gone out with my friends, but I thought it would be good to do something nice for my kids.”

  A familiar airless feeling had entered the room, the way it always did, suddenly and out of nowhere. From the corner of my eye, I saw Callie retreat a few steps with you in her arms, positioning herself near the doorway so she could get the two of you out of the way if necessary.