Home is Where the Hurt Is

Lucy Cunningham-Schultz can hardly believe her eyes. Curt Stevens is in the Odyssey Public Library, standing in the reference section of all places, and he says he is doing research. When Lucy teases him loudly enough to earn a shush from the librarian, Curt admits what he is after: the phone number of the Macadamian Publishing Company. He wants them to mail him a math textbook. Not just any math textbook, either. He wants the teacher's edition, the one with all the answers printed in the back, so he will never get another math problem wrong again.

Lucy tells him plainly that it is cheating, and that no publisher will simply hand a teacher's edition to a kid who asks. Curt makes the toll-free call anyway. The woman in educational sales seems to assume she is speaking with someone from Odyssey Middle School, and she agrees to send the book. Curt gives his own name, his address at 561 Potters Park, and his phone number, and learns that the copy is free because his school already uses the text. He hangs up delighted with himself. All that is left is to mention it to his father.

At home, Frank Stevens is unexpectedly there, tired and short-tempered, still annoyed that Curt left the dishes undone the night before. Curt apologizes twice, offers to make sandwiches, and slips in the news that a package is coming. His father wants to know what it costs. Nothing, Curt promises - and it will earn him straight A's in math.

Meanwhile, at Whit's End, Lucy asks John Whittaker whether he has ever known someone who never learns from his mistakes. When she explains Curt's scheme, Whit starts to laugh, then stops. Macadamian Publishing is owned by Universal Press, which is Whit's own company, and he knows exactly how those editions are delivered: not by mail, but by a salesman who brings them to the door in person. Lucy is horrified. She wants to warn Curt, but when she reaches for the phone book she realizes she does not know his father's first name, does not know his number, and has never once been inside his house. Every time she has asked to visit, Curt has had an excuse ready.

She catches him after school the next day and tells him, and Curt bolts for home. Lucy follows him to Potters Park, which turns out to be a trailer park, and Curt begs her to go home before she can come inside. Then the door opens. His father has already been woken by a book salesman asking for a teacher named Curt Stevens, and he orders his son into the house. As Lucy leaves, Frank calls her Linda.

For a whole week afterward Curt avoids her, so Lucy goes back to Whit, this time to say the thing she is afraid to say. Curt's father had trouble seeing her, she explains, and his words were sloppy. Slurred, Whit says. He warns her that she is speculating about serious things, but he agrees to drive out and visit.

At the trailer they find Frank alone, friendly and talkative, warm in a way that unsettles Lucy because he does not remember meeting her at all. Curt, he says, has gone fishing, the way he does every Saturday, while his father sleeps off a night shift at the Holman factory. Whit says little, but Lucy can tell that something has just fallen into place for him.

They find Curt at a pond in the woods, coaxing fish with rubber worms. He deflects at first, joking, then insisting the trouble with the math book was only some yelling. Yelling, and falling over the furniture. When Lucy presses, the truth comes out in a rush: his father is an alcoholic and will not admit it, his mother left when Curt was small and never told them where she went, and Curt has kept all of it hidden his whole life because he cannot stand the thought of anyone saying poor Curt. What happened at the trailer, he tells her, was his worst nightmare coming true.

Whit steps out of the trees and takes the blame off Lucy. He tells Curt that his father has a problem millions of people share, and that with help he could get better. Curt says his father does not want help. So Whit asks a different question: does Curt want some help? Curt insists he does not need any. He has handled it a long time. He has built his defenses so well that when Whit gently asks whether it hurts, Curt answers that he feels nothing at all, and asks them please to stop making him talk about it. He just wants to fish.

They let him. Walking away, Lucy is frustrated that he would not open up, and Whit explains that nobody drops a load that heavy just because a friend asks. Curt has spent his entire life building those walls, because keeping secrets is how some children survive an alcoholic home. What Lucy can do now, Whit says, is pray for Curt and for his father - and he intends to take Frank up on that invitation to visit again in a few days. Lucy says Curt must be awfully tough to have carried this alone for so long. Whit is not so sure he is as tough as he wants them to believe. Behind them, at the water's edge, Curt calls out to the fish and keeps on fishing by himself.