Beetle Boy (12 page)

“Sit down, everybody,” Clara instructs.

But nobody moves. Clara puts the teapot at the center of the table, steps back from the table, and giggles. “I know it's strange,” she says, “but I'm so glad you guys came over. We both are.”

“Strange?” Liam repeats, teasing her. It is immediately obvious that he owns the room now. “What's strange about it?” Then he laughs too, but not nervously. Intimately. Slyly.

“We were glad to be invited,” Mom says. “Even if it is a bit strange. And we weren't sure how Charles would feel about it.”

Then there is silence, everyone waiting for me to say I feel great about it. When this doesn't happen, Clara begins pouring tea into the four waiting cups. She notices I've broken mine but says nothing. I am still the only one seated.

Liam's voice is now thick with sympathy. “Sorry to hear you tore up your leg, Charlie. Bummer. We had no idea.”

“Guess I should have called.”

“Nobody is saying you should have called,” Liam snaps back.

With my other thumb, I press more blood from the cut in my palm.

Clara says, “I
told
him he should call you guys, like, so many times!”

“Never mind,” says Mom. “There have been many … lost opportunities. But here we are, all together today. One kitchen. Both my sons. I am very grateful for this moment.” Then she looks very, very directly at me and adds, “You don't have to be glad we are here, Charles. I understand if you aren't.”

At first I don't know how to respond to this. But then I decide to be honest. “Today is only possible because I can't run away.”

“Oh, he's just kidding,” Clara giggles. She looks desperate around the eyes.

But Mom doesn't flinch. “I'm sure that's true, Charles.” she says. She takes a sip of her tea. “The tea is very nice,” she says to Clara.

I sip mine too. It's too strong, very bitter. I add sugar.

Liam is having a hard time sitting still; he begins to roam the apartment, uninvited. This makes me remember what a fidgety kid he was—one of the things that got him into trouble in school. He was always “disrupting class” and “ruining quiet time.” Maybe this is part of what he brings to his musical performances, the same energy that made him scamper and howl in the old apartment, desperate to be noticed by the babysitter. He comes back into the kitchen and meets my eyes, his expression challenging now. He must hate me so much. Would he try to hurt me if we were alone?

Something Clara is telling Mom makes me suddenly return my attention to them. Clara is saying something about the medical bills—not at all a safe topic. I lean forward in alarm at the table, making the teacups clatter. Everyone looks at me.

“My insurance covers everything,” I say, my voice suddenly loud and insistent. “I have plenty of money, and I'm going back to work in a month or so.”

None of this is true, but my urgency silences Clara.

“Where were you working?” Mom asks.

“At Bodacious Bikes. On Morton Street. They have really good insurance for all their employees.” I send Clara a warning look. She gets it.

Mom nods, but I have the distinct feeling she knows that we are refusing to involve her. Liam breaks the silence again. “I really like your house, Clara. Pretty cool to have your own house. When I go to Interlochen in the fall, I'll be living in a dorm. I hope I can stand living in a small space with a bunch of other crazy musicians.” He looks at me then, meaningfully. Was this his way of reminding me that he is not stuck, not a fuck-up, not a cripple?

The cheeriness has come back into Clara's voice at Liam's news. “That is so great, Liam. God, Mrs. Porter, won't you miss him?”

I cannot believe Clara has said this. It is a new high in the absurdity of the gathering. The woman who ran away from her children? A streak of cruelty surfaces in me, uncontrollable: “Yeah, won't you miss him …, Mom?” I echo.

Mom turns to face me. She wears her hair in a plain ponytail with bangs, the same hairdo I remember from before I started school. She has deep creases from her outer nose to the sides of her mouth, frown lines. She is a frowner. I will probably have the same lines soon. Her eyebrows are invisible behind her glasses. But her eyes are a dark, stony blue. My eyes. She says, “Yes, I will miss him.”

Oh, the things I could have said then! The dark places I could have pushed her into. Right into the dreams, where a giant beetle is waiting. But I look away and clench my jaw.

And then suddenly, appallingly, Clara chimes in with her sunniest voice, “Maybe we should have a going-away party for Liam!”

“Great idea,” Liam drawls, after a beat. There is a gleam of triumph in his smile.

They leave soon after this. Liam tells Clara he has a violin lesson back in Grand Rapids. He tells her he is preparing for his big audition at Interlochen, a scholarship waiting if he does well. As they leave the apartment, I stay rooted to my chair, letting Clara handle the good-byes. My leg is throbbing; I need to move. As soon as they are gone, I lope around the apartment, flexing my uninjured leg, putting a little weight on the bad one. Clara comes back into the kitchen and watches as I do this. “Did you cut yourself?” she asks, looking at the stain on my pants.

“It's nothing,” I insist.

She looks away. Perhaps it is dawning on her that I am a gloomy, prone-to-injury boyfriend with too many secrets.

Before sleep that night, Clara comes to the side of the sofa bed and leans close and strokes my hair.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks.

I am, but I ask, “Why would I be mad at you?”

“I don't know. Maybe today wasn't such a great idea.”

“Too late now.”

“But, Charlie, didn't it go better than you expected?”

“I don't know what I expected.”

“No tears anyway. No threats. Nobody screaming or swearing, right?”

“Is that what
you
expected? That one of us would start screaming? Are you disappointed? Not enough drama for you?”

She sits up. “You
are
mad at me. I knew it. Don't shut me out, Charlie! I admit it was a little strange. I felt stressed out by it too. I don't know how to make it right.”

“Well, here's a start. Promise me that you will not make any further plans to see my mom or my brother without thoroughly discussing it with me first.”

She said, almost too quickly, “Promise.”

“No, I'm serious. Really, really promise me. No exceptions.”

“I heard you, Charlie. I won't do it again. I promise.” But her tone is fretful. She is disappointed in me for always being so negative. Nothing can be done about it.

“I'm glad you came to my house again, Charlie, because I've been needing to tell you something. I've been invited to several author events this spring, and I said no to every single invitation. And it felt good. So I've decided that I won't be coming to any author conferences ever again. And I also think that I will enjoy what's left of my life more if I stop pretending that I'm writing something of value.”

We are on Mrs. M.'s porch; she had poured us lemonade. I sip mine. It is divine. “Are you sure, Mrs. M.?”

“I'm very sure.”

I wasn't surprised. But I felt suddenly terribly sad. Perhaps my sadness showed on my anemic, rashy face.

“No moping, now,” Mrs. M. said. “You can come over and visit me anytime. We'll share a glass of champagne on my front porch.”

“Mrs. M.,” I said. “I'm ten.”

She smiled. “Why do I sometimes feel like you're the same age as me?”

I thought a moment. “Maybe because we both hate being authors together. It's our bond.”

She smiled. “Right you are, Charlie. My point is that you can come over and see me any time you need to. Any time you need to escape your … situation.”

My situation. Who else knew about it? Who else knew how difficult it was, living with the two amigos, hating them both, hating school, having no friends, and being the world's youngest and most neurotic and annoying and unloved children's book author.

“Why don't you bring that brother of yours over here sometime?” she asked. “I would very much like to meet him.”

“Oh sure,” I agreed. But thinking,
Never
.

The very next Saturday, I knocked on her door again. When she opened it, I said, “Any champagne left?”

This made her laugh. Mrs. M. laughed! Her laugh was an explosion of craziness. More of a bark than a laugh.

I had brought my Beetle Boy costume with me in a plastic grocery bag because I had decided that I was also going to retire. If it was making Mrs. M. happy, maybe I could get happier too. Mrs. M. could see right away what I had brought with me—the pipe-cleaner antennae were curling out of the bag.

“Were you planning on performing for me?” she asked.

“I was planning on burning it in your fireplace.”

She asked me if I'd had dinner. She said she'd made a meatloaf. I'd never had meatloaf before. That was the night of the bonfire in her alley. She thought my costume would make too much smoke for the house, so she rolled an empty metal barrel away from her garage and put in papers, kindling, and her own black cape. Then my costume. Then she went back into her house and came out with the red wig on her head and a folder of half-finished firefly stories. Everything went into the barrel. We were laughing and hollering, and one of her neighbors actually yelled out the window for us to keep it down. That made us laugh harder. When it started getting dark, she offered to take me home before somebody called the cops on us for disorderly conduct.

“I don't want to go home,” I said. “I'll have to tell my dad I don't have a costume anymore. He'll kill me.”

Then there was a long silence—no more laughing. “Does your father ever hurt you, Charlie?” Mrs. M. asked. “You need to tell me if he does.”

“He doesn't hit me,” I said, and it was true. I wasn't counting the yanking and pushing and grabbing. Or the names he called me—
idiot, retard, pussy.
“He just gets me to do whatever he wants because … because … he just gets people to do what he wants. I can't explain it. He just always has crazy ideas, and we have to go along with them. That's how it's always been.”

“But you are planning to tell him that you won't be Beetle Boy anymore, right?”

I shrugged. I was suddenly feeling a deep sense of defeat. What was I thinking? “Maybe I'll just tell him I lost the costume.”

She shook her head, disagreeing. “He'll get someone to make you another one, Charlie. You know that. You're going to have to be more clear than that.”

“I hardly get any jobs anymore anyway,” I said. “Dad says I'm getting too old, and it's spoiling the effect.”

She listened with grave concern. “It sounds like you're just hoping that the whole Beetle Boy thing will just go away by itself.”

I nodded. It honestly did seem vaguely possible. Because of my size. Because of my actual age. Because my voice was changing. Because I wasn't cute anymore.

“You're forgetting someone,” Mrs. M. said.

I didn't answer.

“Charlie, you're forgetting someone.”

“Can we just … can we please talk about it some other time?” I asked. “I think I'm getting sick from inhaling fumes.” We had been laughing only a few moments ago, but now I was feeling a terrible burden. “Can you please drive me home?” I asked.

She looked away, shaking her head. We walked back into her house in silence. “Get your jacket,” she said. “It's in the front hallway.”

She made a meatloaf sandwich for Liam and drove me back to Grove Street. Before I got out of the car, with the sandwich in my pocket, she said, “Will you come back and see me whenever you need to?”

“Right, Mrs. M.,” I said numbly.

“And one of these times, will you bring your brother?”

“Okeydokey,” I agreed. I was under such a black cloud of dread and guilt that I wasn't sure I'd ever see her again myself. It was that bad.