Beetle Boy Read online

  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 neve
r 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.

  FIFTEEN

  It is early, the morning after the big visit, and Clara has come to my bed to wake me. She is excited about something, and I am having trouble waking up after a long night of tossing and turning.

  “Rise and shine, Charlie,” she says. “Are you getting excited about where we’re going today?” She pounds my chest and belly lightly, determined to get me moving.

  “Stop it.”

  “Are you forgetting you might get some good news today?”

  “There is no good news in the forecast.”

  “Charlie! Remember what today is?”

  “Don’t you have to go to work soon?”

  “It’s my day off, remember? I took today off because of your big doctor’s appointment.”

  She is right. This is why she is excited. It could possibly be the day they remove my cast and replace it with the walking boot. Remembering this, I feel a fluttering of excitement too at the prospect of no more cast and being able to walk without crutches. I smile at Clara hopefully, thankful that she kept track of my appointment, but she doesn’t return my smile.

  “Charlie, please tell me why you moved your boxes out of my closet.”

  I hadn’t thought she would notice—at least not right away. I had underestimated her yet again. I decide in a flash to give her an answer, albeit a dishonest one.

  “I thought they might be taking up too much room.”

  “Oh, really? Really, Charlie? Your few little boxes taking up too much room in my big old closet? How considerate of you. Where did you move them to, Charlie?”

  I meet her eyes. I so completely do not want to tell her where I put the boxes that for a long moment, I can’t speak at all. My tongue is paralyzed. I shake my head, trying to communicate wordlessly how impossible it is for me to tell her where the boxes are. She attacks from a new direction.

  “Tell me more about that cousin who died.”

  Oh God. The damn cousin who died. An old lie, coming back to bite my ass. I don’t want to add to it. I take a deep breath. “Not my cousin,” I say. “Don’t know why I said it was a cousin. Just a girl I knew. Someone. From a long time ago, nobody important.”

  She is rightly bewildered. “So did the girl actually die?”

  Another long pause. “No. She just … went away. Look, I don’t know why I said she died. I felt embarrassed. I didn’t want to have to explain why I still have her stupid picture.”

  “Why do you still have her stupid picture?”

  “There’s no reason. There’s nothing to tell. It meant something to me once. I guess I loved her. I don’t know. She was my babysitter. I was like seven years old.” I add, pleadingly, “I had a really fucked-up childhood, okay? You’ve figured that much out, haven’t you?”

  She nods. “I feel so sad for you right now.”

  “Don’t say that. Please. Don’t feel sad for me. Please. I can’t stand having people feel sad for me.”

  “But everything I learn about you is sad, Charlie. Every single thing.”

  “That’s not true. You just think that because you had a happy childhood. It’s no big deal, Clara. Quit making it so hard. Lots of people are like me.”

  Now a longer pause. Clara is recalculating her opinion of me. I can actually see it happening in her eyes. Finally, she speaks. Her voice is cold. “So I’m the one making things hard, is that it?”

  “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  “Where did you put the boxes, Charlie?”

  I swallow hard. “They’re in the garage. Behind some old vases. Please, could you just leave them there for now?”

  “We have to get ready to go to the doctor’s. We should leave in about half an hour. But first, I want you to bring me that picture. The one I already saw. Of the little girl who didn’t die.”

  She is looking hard at me, harder than ever before. But I look back at her, and I am hard too. It feels like a standoff. It feels like something where one of us has to give in. Me. I ask, “If I do, will you promise to leave my boxes alone?”

  It sounds so stupid! Leave my boxes alone. It sounds like we are in preschool! I could almost start laughing, it sounds so stupid. But I am completely serious. And so is she.

  “I promise to leave your boxes alone if you bring me that picture.”

  So I go out to the garage and move the vases and pull one of the boxes off the shelf and open it. I come back into the kitchen, where Clara is waiting, and I hand her the tiny, pathetic, ridiculous picture. She takes it from my hand, looks at it a moment, and then fastens Rita to the fridge with a magnet.

  “Why are you putting her on the fridge?” I ask.

  “Because it’s something real about you.”

  Something real about me. I guess that’s true—Rita was real. She’s not something I dreamed or invented or stole. “We better hurry,” I say. “I don’t want to be late for my appointment.”

  “We won’t be late. I’ll
be ready in ten minutes. Just please don’t lie to me about your childhood anymore.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  I went six years without going back to Mrs. M.’s house. Why? Was it because I was mad at her for being so concerned about Liam? Was it because I had to do three final author gigs without a costume? Did I blame her? Did I feel abandoned? I don’t know. I just let it get away from me. I think, in some ways, I made this decision not to think any more about her. Not to need her. She became another woman I refused to need.

  The first year, my first year in middle school, was a terrible time for me because even though there were basically no more author jobs, Dad was still moving full speed ahead with new Beetle Boy books—the final two. These books were, if it’s even possible, the worst ones we had done. Sam Church was no longer interested in illustrating them, and it showed. He had never been paid for the previous two books, and some of the drawings looked like he had forgotten to finish them—Beetle Boy often appeared without antennae or missing his spots or his eyeballs. And unlike the first set, there was basically no background—they were just dead bugs on a blank page. I’m no artist, but even at age eleven, I could see that they were bad. But Dad was still operating on blind ambition, refusing to give up his dream of easy money on the author circuit, probably because he had no idea what he would do instead.

  Ever since I burned the costume (I told him I lost it), he must have sensed that his days of manipulating me were numbered; I was building up the courage to defy him completely.

  Everything came to a whimpering halt one afternoon at a school book fair in Nunica, where I was the featured guest author. There was no fee, so the gig depended entirely on book sales, a surefire disaster since the new books were so lame and I was surrounded by real books at lower prices. That day Dad was openly angry at me, a new and barely controlled anger that was obvious to everybody from the way he glared at me, dragged me by the elbow into the school library, pushed me into the book signing chair, and then stormed out of the room. In the car afterward, he threw several books at my head, one at a time.