When Sydney Adamu still has her mother in ways she will not remember, Carmen Anthony Berzatto—six years old, achingly, openly affectionate, so slow with learning that his mother asks him bitterly if he's a retard—is only beginning to realize the absence of his father. He lives just a few miles from the Adamus; a different neighborhood, but the same city. His older brother Mikey is not yet his entire world, but the love he feels for him is already more potent than any other feeling Carmen has.

Carmen Berzatto dislikes:

—When his mother is upset

—When his older sister Nattie forces him to do his spelling homework

—How too big his home seems at night now that they've moved to the suburbs

—The headaches he gets after he cries real loud

—When he runs out of paper to draw on and has to wait for Nattie or Mikey to get him some more

Carmen Berzatto likes:

—Dinosaurs

—Soda pop

—The feel of his jeans when he rubs his hands against them

—The sound his coloring pencils make against the paper in his math workbook

—When Mom is out late so Mikey makes dinner and Nattie reads him a fairy tale before bed

In many more years what Carmen likes and dislikes will shrink away from him, removed like a sentence written in pencil and then erased. He'll know spite and anger and loneliness, and, away from his mother, he'll develop another intimacy with degradation. The similarity between what he left in Chicago and what finds him in New York will confuse him and make him think his pain is a comfort.

One late spring morning Carmen wakes with a shout from two hours of fitful sleep and barfs in his bathroom toilet. It's mostly water since he hasn't been eating. He feels the urge again on the way to work and wishes New York had alleys so he could duck in one. Instead he stops in the middle of the sidewalk and turns to face the brick wall of a building. He isn't blocking anyone's path, and so everyone walking by ignores him. It's something he loves about this city, that there's not much he can do that'll make him feel exposed. Though he's standing still, he's dizzy. His stomach is so empty. He likes it that way, because it means he has control over something elemental, his own hunger. The emptiness in his stomach deadens every other impulse he has, but even so he wants to punch something. His hands are the only important things about him, though. He needs them. He shuts his eyes tight and thumps his forehead hard against the wall, once, twice, three times, so that the impact gets through his skin, through his skull, through his pulsing organs and to the very core of him. The act clears his head and cleanses him of every filth—he is emptied of fear, of panic, of anger, of pity, of want, and of sadness. He is pristine. When Chef inspects him tonight he'll have nothing to fault him for, except his worthlessness.

Carmen doesn't know this is the day that will change his life irrevocably. It blends into the rest of his time in New York as one long stretch of silence from his brother paired with his head chef breaking him down nightly and fitting him back together wrong, sculpting him into something new and unrecognizable, like Frankenstein's monster. Chef makes him better than every person he works with. Chef makes him better than where he came from and better than his brother, who doesn't even want him. Carmen mostly only feels misery, and he welcomes it, because he knows it goes hand-in-hand with his excellence. If he were able to feel anything else, Carmen would want. He'd be near insatiable with wanting. He'd want food, but he'd also want someone who wants him, who'd have him. He'd want someone who wouldn't leave him, who'd return if they did leave, even if he's ugly, even if what he suspects is true, that there's something repulsive in him.

But like the girl who rode the north wind all the way to the ends of the earth to win back her bridegroom, Sydney comes to him at The Beef while he's unwitting to the history already between them. And she brings them back to him, his likes and dislikes. She is the first thing he recognizes he likes, and then, after months by her side liking her, then liking her more, and more, and more, he realizes what else he likes—black plates on black tables, Mondrian and Josef Albers, Dr Pepper late at night, Nat, Syd's dad, a life without his mother. The Bear. His and Syd's kitchen. Their crew. Talking about Mikey. And Sydney. Always, he returns to Sydney. He loves these things; he loves her. Beside her, he is better than he was when he received his three-star call. There are moments she makes him feel like a kid again. He stands next to her plating or shooting ideas for their kitchen back and forth or hand-feeding her the chicken they've just roasted together, and he gets such a strong memory of what he felt when he was five and drawing a brontosaurus to hang on the kitchen fridge, and he's grateful, because he remembers he's experienced the joy Sydney brings him before, and it's not something he's discovering for the first time, but something he's returning to and learning again.

When he and Sydney are married Carmen will tell her how he'd wished for her before he knew her, wished for her even when he didn't believe in wish-making. He'd wished for her without knowing what he was wishing for, because nothing in his imagination could have come up with her, or prepared him for her. She is all the things he's been told to want—pretty, smart, funny; but also the things that make him cleave close to her in ways it's hard for others to understand—intimidating in her brilliance, frenetic in her energy and speech, and with an ambition that is matched only by the strength of her loving. Carmen gives himself over to Sydney, and in return he gets the most vulnerable parts of her, which he holds with careful, steady hands.

She tells him about her mother. Together they wonder if they're like her in how eagerly they pursue their work. It intrigues Carmen, the first time he learns that Josette was an artist. It makes sense to him because Syd is an artist herself, she thinks like one, and also because, Carmen thinks to himself, Josette had become what he'd wanted to be as a kid. It's something else that draws him to Sydney, makes him feel like he's hers.

One of his favorite of Sydney's head scarves is black and covered with hands of all shades, fingers encircling dark eyes. It's trimmed in blue and has little red triangles between the hands. He likes it so much 'cause it makes him think of community and the hard work he's done to become a part of one. It reminds him that he can't do this—The Bear, and loving, and life—alone, that he doesn't want to or have to. When he learns from Sydney's father that it's actually a miniature replica of Josette's largest piece, he falls completely in love with it.

Josette named her piece 'Helping Hands.' When Carmen first sees it, its intricacy, dynamism, and sheer size remind him of El Anatsui, only Josette worked with textile, not ceramic or found material. For 'Helping Hands' she used a wide variety of over 40 different fibers, including silk, cotton, yak, wool, alpaca, and linen. On Sydney's scarf the hands and eyes are two-dimensional, but in Josette's piece they seem to be alive, touching each other and reaching out to touch the viewer. It's astonishing. Carmen appreciates its beauty and technical proficiency, but what he feels most is a thankfulness to Sydney's mother for her daughter and awe at the kismet of it all, that Syd's mom made something so perfect for the place he and his brother'd dreamed up so many years ago, and which only became a reality because of Syd.

Together, he and Sydney carefully take 'Helping Hands' down from Emmanuel's wall. They roll it up and take it to The Bear. They hang it on their largest wall so all their patrons know when they step into The Bear and eat their food, they become part of what he and Syd create together, a life of passion and joy.