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  Instead, I mumble, “Sorry, sorry, overreacting, can’t help it.” I hold out my arms to her guiltily. She shakes her head through her tears, refusing my hug.

  If you’re my boyfriend, then this is my business, Charlie. That’s how it works if you want to be in a relationship with me.

  “I’m already in a relationship with you! I’m doing the best I can! I’m trying to tell you I’m not ready for this, Clara. You won’t listen to me.”

  I listened to you. I am totally here for you. But I just think—

  “You think everything is so simple. God, you think people can just … forget the past if they all sit down and eat cookies together! Well, it’s not like that with the Porter family! Nothing good will come of this visit. It is not a good idea!”

  She has listened to this, but now she wipes her eyes, calm again, back in charge.

  Well, Charlie, I invited them, and I can’t just uninvite them. We have to go through with it. If it doesn’t go well, we won’t have to ever do it again. And for your information, I do not think everything is simple. I know there’s a lot of sad stuff in your past that you don’t want to talk about. I’m trying to be patient. But the opportunity arose for a visit, and I decided to be open to it and make an effort, just like you made an effort with my family. Now, would you just please tell me … does your mom drink tea or coffee?

  “Clara, I swear to God, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know if my mom drinks coffee or tea. And I don’t care.”

  But then later, maybe because of the questions, I start to remember little things. I remembered a teapot. It was china blue and had some significance—someone in her past had given it to her—her own mother? My mom drank tea. A special tea for her asthma. Another tea for her nervous stomach. And then I remembered that she was a vegetarian and that my dad hated her cooking and sometimes went out for fast food by himself after she had cooked something healthy for him. And I remembered that she made her own soap and put almond oil in our bathwater. And that she played hymns on the guitar, but only when we were in bed, so that I would sometimes hear her singing as I was falling asleep. I did not want to remember these things. They were pointless details of a lost time. They added to my dread. I was pinned.

  Mrs. M. came to her front door in an unrecognizable form. She was wearing a baggy blue cardigan over a white blouse and ordinary jeans. No wig! Her hair was very short, as short as mine, and gray-blond. She did not look like a witch. She looked completely normal, like somebody’s plain old grandmother. She also did not look particularly happy to see me.

  “What in the world? Charlie? How in God’s name did you get here?”

  “Dial-a-Ride,” I said. “Easy, breezy.”

  “Who told you where I live?”

  “You’re in the phone book, Mrs. M.! I can use a phone book, I’m nine years old. May I come in?”

  “You may … you may … come in,” she said warily. “But why do you want to come in?”

  “I brought you something,” I said. I patted my pocket, where the diamond pen rested. I pressed myself through the door and walked past her, into her house.

  “Is your brother home alone?” she asked. A pattern was forming; she often asked me about Liam, and I didn’t like it.

  “He’s fine. He’s with the new babysitter.”

  Her house was surprisingly normal—a one-story ranch with a small, shady front porch and a fenced-in backyard. As she led me from the front door to the kitchen, I craned my neck like an owl, taking it all in—the wooden floors, the colorful throw rugs, dark red pleated shades on the windows. It was really nice. Comfortable. Not trashed, like our apartment, but also not too clean. Kind of busy. Cozy. Mrs. M. had projects—knitting baskets, sewing baskets, stacks of books, a jigsaw puzzle on a table, halfway done—hummingbirds in a garden. I noticed that her furniture looked old, but not dirty. Her kitchen had beautiful wallpaper and a skylight and the kitchen windows had white curtains. White curtains! I was acting nonchalant, but the details of her house filled me with happiness. Mrs. M. invited me to sit at her corner breakfast nook—green vinyl seats and a paisley tablecloth. I plunked down and smoothed the fabric in front of me with both hands. Amazing. Clean. I was very hungry, but I sensed I might be pushing it to ask for food.

  Mrs. M. was watching me. “Is everything all right today, Charlie?”

  “Oh sure. Everything all right with you?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I told you, I brought you something. And you weren’t at the last author conference. That big one in Grand Rapids. I looked for you.”

  “Did something bad happen to you at that conference?”

  “No! It was fine. I didn’t have to do anything. I signed some books. And my dad said I didn’t have to wear the costume until my rash gets better.” I pulled down the collar of my jacket and showed her.

  “That is one nasty rash,” she said.

  I pulled a couple of crumpled brochures out of my pocket. “I brought you some information about the conference.”

  I put them on the table. Then I said the thing I had come across town to say: “I was worried when you weren’t there. I haven’t seen you since that time you were onstage with me.” I pulled out the pen, wrapped in a paper towel; put it on the table; and said, for the third time, “I brought you something.”

  Mrs. M. lowered herself into the chair across from me. She touched the bundle and slowly pulled the paper off it. The pen looked especially dazzling. She smiled at me and said, quietly, “This is a pen fit for a queen.”

  “Everyone really missed you at the conference,” I said.

  One eyebrow lifted. “No need to lie, Charlie.”

  “Were you not invited?” I had been worried that my dad might have had something to do with her absence.

  “I was invited, but I’m not going to very many conferences this year. I’m looking for a new direction.” She smiled again and rubbed the top of her head.

  “You’re hair sure is short,” I observed. “Does this mean you won’t be doing any school visits either?”

  “Not for a while. I’m in semiretirement. Have you been forced to do many schools lately?”

  “No schools are calling. My dad is really pissed off about it. Dr. Naturo says the schools don’t have any money, but we might get some action in the spring.”

  “Ah, the spring,” Mrs. M. agreed. “Author hell.”

  “So I guess we’re both taking a break, right Mrs. M.?”

  “I guess so. A very good idea for you, my friend. Take a break. What grade are you in? Fifth? Be a fifth-grader. Make some friends.”

  She might as well have told me to learn to fly. Who would want to be friends with a rashy, nail-biting beetle? “Do you have any friends, Mrs. M.?”

  “My very best friend died two years ago. Her name was Helen. I miss her every day.”

  “Wow, that makes two people that you miss. Your husband and your friend.”

  “That’s right. Two sorely missed people. Who do you miss, Charlie?”

  I was silent a moment. What a question. I skipped over the obvious answer, the biggest absence. “I miss Rita,” I confessed. “She was my first babysitter. I keep a picture of her in my wallet. Want to see it?”

  I had never before shown anyone my photo of Rita. It was her sixth-grade school picture; fake fireworks were exploding behind her braided head. The photo didn’t do justice to her beauty, but every time I looked at it, emotions swirled inside my chest, a great longing for someone far away. Mrs. M. studied Rita’s pale face for what seemed like a long time. Then she asked, “Where did she go?”

  “She moved away. To Indiana with her mom. Her mom was crazy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess she made Rita move all the time. They never stayed anywhere. That’s why Rita hated her. But at least …” I fell silent, holding back my thought.

  “At least…what?”

  “At least I got to have her be my babysitter for a little while. Man, she was the gr
eatest.”

  “And now you and your brother have a new babysitter?”

  “Right.”

  “And how is she?”

  “Julie? She’s okay.” The truth was that I had left Liam alone. “I should probably call Dial-a-Ride,” I said. “Julie only stays until six.”

  “Let me make you a sandwich first,” Mrs. M. said, taking charge. “And then I’ll drive you home myself.”

  The offer astounded me. Me in a car with Mrs. M.?

  “It’s kind of far,” I said. Also I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see where I lived. But the sandwich part …

  She stood at the nearby kitchen counter and made two ham sandwiches. “One for your brother,” she explained. “In case Julie forgets to feed him.”

  “I think I need to eat mine right away,” I said weakly. “No lettuce please.”

  She put one on a plate and wrapped one tightly in Saran Wrap while I watched from the table, speechless with gratitude, my stomach contracting with love.

  THIRTEEN

  I am in a gymnasium at a book conference, but instead of books to sell, I am selling sandwiches; there are stacks of sandwiches all around me, and everybody else is selling books. I feel conspicuous and humiliated, but I keep making the sandwiches—ham and Velveeta and mustard. I decide to yell, “Sandwiches for sale!” but the room is so noisy with teachers and authors and everybody talking at once that my voice is drowned out and nobody notices me. From across the room, I see my dad; he turns away from the woman he is talking to, and the crowd parts, and he is staring at me. Then he shakes his head very slowly at me, very slowly, while his face collapses into tears; he is so upset that I am selling sandwiches instead of books. He covers his head with his arms and starts to cross the gymnasium, stumbling and weeping. I want him to stay away. I don’t want to see his tears or hear his voice or smell his breath.

  “Stay back!” I command. “I’ll give you all the sandwich money if you stay back!”

  I wake up. I hear Clara sigh and turn over in her bed.

  When I was ten, there was this crazy blowout conference in Flint, Michigan, of all places—this one was called Kids in Love with Books—I’ll never forget that name. Dad was really excited about the invitation and worked hard to get me involved in as many things as possible during the two-day affair. He was trying to “get my career back on track.”

  Somehow, for the Kids in Love with Books Conference, Dad arranged for me to be included on a six-author panel of experts about getting published. Me! The kid who had published each one of his ridiculous books on a copy machine. What advice could I have possibly given anybody that day? How to become the world’s youngest published author? Have an insane dad who tells anybody who will listen to him that you’re the world’s youngest published author.

  So there I was, sitting beside Mrs. M., also on the author panel, jiggling my knee so hard under the white tablecloth that she grabbed it and pressed it still. We were both bored. While the other real authors pontificated and explained the details of their publishing tricks, we sat in complete silence for the entire hour. Nobody asked either one of us a single question about getting published, probably because the four other authors were all being so chatty and enthusiastic. Not us. We knew the score. We were burnouts.

  Afterward, we had tea and a cookie in a dark corner of the conference hotel restaurant. I was hiding from Dad, thrilled to be in a shadowy booth with Mrs. M. She seemed completely exhausted, but not as crabby as usual. “Would you be all right with not seeing me anymore at these events, Charlie?” she asked.

  “Oh sure,” I said. “I’m quitting too.”

  “I worry about you, Charlie.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I insisted. But then asked curiously, “Why do you worry about me?”

  “Well … I wasn’t very nice to you when I first met you. I’m sure you remember those first few conferences. But you either didn’t notice or didn’t care. You followed me around like a little puppy.”

  I nodded, accepting this description of myself. “So … I shouldn’t have done that?”

  “I’m glad you were persistent, but you’re missing my point. In the future, you need to seek out people who treat you with kindness. You need more kindness in your life, not crabby sarcasm.”

  “You could be more kind to me,” I suggested.

  “I am already being as kind to you as I can stand to be. How old are you now, Charlie?”

  “Ten. People think I’m younger. My dad says to tell them I’m still six.”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “I get crushes on girls sometimes, Mrs. M., but they always move away.”

  “Don’t be discouraged. You do have a certain charm, Charlie. And you’ll be handsome when you grow into your head.”

  I was stung. “Where are you going with this, Mrs. M.?”

  “Well … I guess I want you to promise me that you’ll seek out kindness when you have more friends. Including female friends. Choose a girl who is nice. She doesn’t need to be a door-mat, just a nice person. Will you promise me that, Charlie?”

  I asked, anxiously, “Are you going somewhere, Mrs. M.?”

  “No, Charlie. I’ll be here. You know where I live.” She broke into a song then, something that I had never heard her do before, something about seeing me in all the old familiar places.

  “Stop it.”

  She didn’t stop.

  “You’re really weird, Mrs. M.”

  She stopped singing and waved me away. “Go on, now,” she said. “Find your dad and sell a few of your awful books.”

  “Oh that’s real kind,” I said.

  FOURTEEN

  I am standing at one of six sinks in the lavatory of my old elementary school in Hudsonville. To my horror, Mom and Liam come into the bathroom; they don’t know it’s me at the sink, but I know it’s them. They come to either side of me to wash their hands. I am afraid to look up from my own sink. My own hands are covered with mud, and no soap will come out of my dispenser. I look at Mom’s hands—they are translucent; as she washes them, they turn a deep frozen blue. I am even more afraid to look at Liam’s hands. Beside me, Liam starts to sing. He sings an old lullaby of Mom’s in the voice of a little girl—very creepy—he is singing “Hush, Little Baby.” I look at his hands. Very bad, very, very bad idea—his hands are beetle claws, which he is cheerfully lathering as he sings. Water washes over the sides of his sink and begins to cover the floor of the lavatory, soaking my shoes.

  I wake up with a start. I am on my back. My feet are dry. My hands are clean. I look at the clock. It is 4:30, on the morning of the day that Mom and Liam are—God help me—coming for tea.

  I am sitting in a chair at the kitchen table when they arrive, and so I do not see their actual entrance or the first few moments of their time in Clara’s house. I hear Clara’s voice, bright, welcoming, and then I hear another woman’s voice, soft, uncertain, and impossible. The voice says, “Here we are.”

  Here we are. After an eternity—here she is. I close my eyes and clutch the table edge, wishing I could run away. How in the world can this be happening? The voice had said “we,” so I knew that Liam was there too, but so far no sound has come from him. Then he speaks, and the tone of his voice is assured, confident, and strangely like my voice, except that I never sound confident. He says, “Wow, great house, Clara.” His tone is congratulatory, like they have had many previous conversations about houses.

  “Thank—thank you, Liam,” Clara stutters.

  The china loop that is the handle of the teacup I’ve been clasping snaps off. One jagged edge leaves a shallow cut on my palm.

  “Come on into the kitchen. Charlie and I made tea.” But I hear an unfamiliar note of uncertainty in her voice; perhaps she is questioning the wisdom of the event already.

  Then they appear. The hidden injury to my hand has settled me a bit. And at least I do not have to get up. I am a complete cripple today, my leg propped up on a chair. No fake hugs are possible. The thr
ee of them pause a moment in the kitchen entryway, unsure. Mom is looking at me; Liam is watching Mom. Then he is watching Clara’s back; she has come into the kitchen to stand at the counter, fussing with the teapot. Then he looks directly at me. Then back at Clara.

  Liam is a young man. His shoulders are broad. His hair is long and almost white-blond. He is movie-star handsome. His expression, as he watches Clara, is disbelieving.

  I turn from this and catch my mother’s eyes. She is still staring at me. I look away and then back, and still she stares. Her hair is sandy-colored, slightly gray in the front. She is wearing granny glasses, and she has age spots on her temples. I was not expecting her to look so much older. Would I have recognized her on the street? Finally, she turns away. I look down at my hand, clenched into a single fist on my lap. A circle of blood has bloomed on my plaid pajama leg. We are all so very, very trapped.

  “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.