The Kitchen

The boy watches. He always watches. It’s what he does best.

His father, Jimmy, is slouched at the kitchen table, bottle between his knees, glass in his hand. Bourbon—cheap, dark, a stink that fills the room and seeps into the walls. He drinks the way some men breathe. His eyes are small and mean, but dull from years of this, decades maybe. He’s muttering something about respect, something about how the world used to be different. The boy only half-listens. The words don’t matter. The rhythm does. A lullaby of collapse.

His mother, Carla, is draped over the couch in the next room, barely visible from the boy’s perch in the doorway. A track mark peeks out from the crook of her elbow, fresh and angry. The TV is on but muted, the blue glow making her look waxy. Her breathing is slow, deep, like she’s sleeping underwater. She probably is.

And the boy, sitting cross-legged on the linoleum, absorbing it all like a sponge, like something born to be soaked in it.

Jimmy takes another drink, wipes his mouth with his sleeve. The bottle tips, spills a little on the table. He lets it drip onto the floor.

“Come here,” he says. His voice is rough, like he’s chewing on gravel. The boy hesitates. He knows better than to move too fast or too slow. He gets up, drifts over. Jimmy holds out the glass.

“Try it.”

The boy is eight, maybe nine. Not that it makes a difference. He takes the glass, lifts it, sniffs. He doesn’t wince. He learned that already. He takes a sip. It burns. He swallows anyway.

Jimmy nods like that means something. “See? Makes you strong. Makes you a man.”

The boy sways a little. His body protests, but his mind clings to it, studies it. He’s learning. Everything here is a lesson.

In the living room, Carla shifts, mutters something in her half-sleep. The boy glances at her, then back to his father.

Jimmy laughs, short, sharp. “Don’t end up like your mother.”

The boy doesn’t answer. He stares at the floor, at the stain spreading from the spilled liquor, soaking into the tile, becoming part of the house. The house that has never been just walls and a roof. The house where lessons unfold in ways he can't ignore.

Tomorrow, he will sneak a sip when no one’s looking.

Next week, he will start talking like his father.

Next year, he will hit someone for looking at him wrong.

One day, he may realize where his path began.

But tonight, he drinks.