Beetle Boy (20 page)

Again, it is Clara who breaks the silence. “Maybe, you'd better go after your mom, Liam. She can't exactly go anywhere without you.”

My head is still lowered. I clench my jaw, wondering how Clara knows that my mother doesn't drive when I didn't tell her that my mother doesn't drive.

“Right you are,” Liam says. “Gotta run. Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Morrison. Have a great dinner. Some other time, Clara, thanks for the invite. Good to see you, brother. Take care of that leg!”

And he is gone. I take a deep breath and raise my head and look at Clara. She is looking off to the side, staring away from our table, observing another family. Her mother is patting her hand in confusion. Clara will not meet my eyes. Her dad begins to drum his fingers on the table, preparing to speak.

“You know,” he begins, “I was under the impression that …

Just then, Marie comes back to the table. “Was someone going to join you?” she asks cheerfully.

“Absolutely not,” I insist.

“Well, then, are you folks ready to order?”

The Morrisons order. I order last. I ask for the chicken pasta without the chicken and hand Marie my menu, giving her a big fake Porter smile. Sue and Don are watching me, waiting for an explanation for what just happened. I say, “I have no idea why they were here, and I don't know why my estranged brother was being so … overly friendly.”

“Estranged?” Sue echoes. “Are you estranged from your brother, dear?”

“Yes, I am. He is not to be trusted.” I am looking at Clara as I say this.

“Well,
that's
too bad,” Sue decides.

“I thought you said you don't have other relatives living around here,” Don grumbles.

“I don't,” I say. “They live way on the other side of Grand Rapids, and I try to avoid them. My brother tricked my mom into coming with him to this restaurant today for some reason that I do not know. Do you know, Clara?”

Clara looks at me, finally. Her eyes are sad, but not sad for me. She looks suddenly ten years older, a disappointed woman. A woman who is giving up on something.

Back at Clara's house, I am sitting on a stoop at the back door, unwilling to go inside, unwilling to talk, unwilling to leave, trapped with my anger at Liam—and at Clara—trapped with the knowledge that I will be needing another place to live soon, a huge complication since I have no job and no money.

I sit alone with my head in my arms until Clara comes out and sits beside me on the step. She has been crying a long time, but her voice is firm.

“We have to talk, Charlie. I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. I did
not
invite your brother to Casey's tonight. I would
never
have invited him without asking you. I was just as surprised as you were when he walked in.”

I don't believe her. I can't even look at her. Liam got to her. Liam found out from her about our dinner. There was no other way for him to know. I lift my head and ask, “Did you ever like … meet up with him? Since that time they were here? Like just the two of you somewhere?”

“Why would I do that, Charlie? You asked me not to, remember?”

“Did he ever ask you to meet him somewhere? Alone?”

“Well … he did that once, when he first called me, but I made up an excuse. I knew you wouldn't like that.”

My mind darkens. He tried to meet with her alone.

“Charlie, he's fifteen. He's really immature. He doesn't know the rules. He just wants to get closer to us, like any normal brother would.”

Like any normal brother. Suddenly, it's like Clara is wearing a sign on her forehead that says
NORMAL PERSON.
It is why she is so completely trusting and gullible. It's why she wants to include Liam in our relationship. It is why she got mixed up with someone like me in the first place.

I want her to see once and for all that she is not dealing with normal people. There is nothing normal about the Porter family. So I look her squarely in her red-rimmed eyes, and I say, “Here's a little something you don't know about my family, Clara. The last babysitter we had—Ruby—she wasn't really a babysitter. Dad called her our babysitter, but really she was this crazy messed-up teenager that my dad got interested in. Interested as in having sex with her. Like, constantly. Because having sex with a goddamn kid made him feel young again. It was one of the reasons I begged Mrs. M. to let me live with her. I left Liam behind, and I never once went back to the apartment. I never saw him. I never called him. I never checked on him. And he hates me for that, Clara. He hates me for that, and I don't blame him, but now he's trying to get back at me. That's why he's been calling you. He wants to hurt me like I hurt him. That's why he brought Mom to Casey's. That's why you should never have told him we would be there.”

There is a long and dreadful silence. I add, bitterly, “So sorry your little experiment was a flop.”

Clara stands up.

“You think I would do something like that just for an experiment? You think I would lie to you? Charlie,
you're
the one who has lied and lied and told crazy stories and left out important facts—and now you're calling me a liar? You know what? You know what? I don't think I can do this anymore. I don't think I can be your girlfriend. I can't stand finding out all this horrible stuff about you in these horrible ways, where I ask and I ask and I ask and finally it comes out of the blue and hits me in the face and it's always bad. It's always really bad, Charlie. Your dad was sleeping with the
babysitter
? No, I really, really can't take it anymore.”

“Look, I come from a different universe than you,” I admit. “And mine keeps sucking me back down into the dirt. My brother, my mom, my dad, all these memories and stupid dreams about beetles, everything piling up …”

“Wait,
what
? You have dreams about beetles? Like the beetles you wrote books about?”

“Not cartoon beetles, Clara. I'm talking about giant insects trying to find me and kill me. I had one last night. I was back in the old apartment where I lived with Dad and Liam and there was a huge beetle hiding under Liam's bed and I couldn't do anything about it and—”

She covers her ears. “Stop!” she cries. “You said your nightmares were from the meds, Charlie. You said it a million times! Why are you still having nightmares? Why couldn't you tell me before now? It's too late, Charlie. It's too late. It's over. Do you hear me? It's over. I don't want to know anything else about you.”

She goes back into the house. I hear a noise then, coming from inside. It has an ancient, eerie familiarity, the faint, watery vibrato sounds of someone sobbing uncontrollably from a distant room.

The next few days are filled with icy silences and general misery. I sleep on the sofa. Clara leaves for work without saying good-bye. She doesn't ask me if I'm hungry. She's basically not speaking to me at all, but at one point, while I am looking through local job notices on my laptop, she comes into the kitchen and asks me where the photo of that girl is. The one that used to be on the fridge. A crushing question, since I had never mentioned to her that Liam has twice broken into her house. It seems a terrible idea to tell her about it now, with the subject of Liam like a ticking bomb between us.

So instead, I make a show of getting up from the kitchen table, looking at the fridge door with a puzzled expression—where could Rita have gone? And while I am performing this charade, I notice that the Michigan Wonderland calendar is right beside the empty space where the photo of Rita used to be. And right on this calendar—in plain view of all intruders and terrorists—it is written that Charlie and Clara will be having dinner with the parents at Casey's Bistro on a Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m.

A terrible regret washes over me. I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. Clara would never lie. But she's right. It's too late. Too late to take back my accusations. Why was I so sure that Liam had gotten to Clara? Why didn't I believe her? Was it because I feel so much like I deserve Liam's treachery? I turn to look at her, she looks deadly serious, and my hopelessness must be showing on my unshaven face.

“Oh, don't give me that pathetic look, Charlie. Just tell me where you put that photo. Did you put it back in your precious box?”

I simply cannot find the words to answer her. I feel like there is a mountain of ash between me and all the things I still need to tell her and I will never get around it, never. She shrugs, unsurprised by my reticence, and leaves the room again. After a moment, the landline rings, and it is her mom. Clara takes the call into another room. Muffled tones. Her mom is calling every day, asking her how “the Project” is going, “the Project” being getting Charlie the hell out of her house, now that Clara's time of slavery to my needs is over, thank goodness for everyone involved. The Morrisons are anxious to help. They are ready and willing with the truck. Not that a truck is in any way necessary. I have almost nothing to pack. The only piece of furniture I own is a desk that exists in another location, from another lifetime.

What would I do with a desk like that?

On day three of the Project, I drag myself off the sleeper sofa after Clara has left for work, and I see through the living room picture window that there are two large boxes on the front porch. At the front door I notice that a note is taped to the top box, folded in half. I pull it off and I unfold it, knowing in advance that it will upset me. The note, if you can believe this, is from a scratch pad with a Sam Church image of Beetle Boy sitting back on his wing parts, squinting through his glasses, reading a book. Dad must have made personal stationery for Liam/Charlie. Under the cartoon beetle, a line of text reads: from the desk of Charlie Porter, World's Youngest Published Author.

And under this is Liam's message: “I'll bet your girlfriend is dying to read these. You should warn her, though, they suck.”

Mother of God. The last thing in the world I want to deal with right now. But an idea comes to me—I go back inside, look up an address in Grand Rapids and get dressed and call a cab—expensive, but I have no choice. When the cabbie comes, I am waiting for him in front of Clara's house, two boxes on the curb.

“Hey, I been thinkin' about you since I bumped into you last week,” Sam Church says from behind the counter at Printing Express. “I felt kinda bad with what you said to me about your childhood.”

Sam and I take the boxes and carry them to the back of the shop. I've been inside the copy store for ten minutes, and the fumes are already getting to me. No wonder Sam looks old before his time. Today he is wearing a baseball hat with a scraggly gray ponytail pulled through the loop at the back. The whites of his eyes are way too yellow.

“Your dad was my friend, Charlie. We had some good times. I always figured you boys were okay, having such a funlovin' dad. And I guess I just assumed you were as much into the whole bug book thing as he was.”