Beetle Boy

by Margaret Willey

  Dad was losing it. He was losing his charm. He was losing his looks—getting bald, getting paunchy. He was way less successful with women. His dad still sent him a check from time to time, but he basically had no other income.

  But there was one thing he still had—another son. A younger, cuter, smarter, and completely available son. Once he shifted his focus onto Liam, I was off the hook. Or, I should say, I was off the hook for author gigs. I was still hanging by my neck off a big meat hook of guilt, another reason I couldn’t face Mrs. M.

  I was now in seventh grade. Perhaps because I wasn’t ugly or obnoxious, I was pretty much left alone by my peers. I was a loner. None of the teachers at the middle school knew I had ever been Beetle Boy—not that it would have impressed them. Nothing else about me stood out. I was quiet. I sat in the back. I was medium-sized with no physical presence. I got Bs and Cs, and nobody was checking my report card. I drifted from seventh grade to eighth grade to ninth grade in a lonely fog.

  Dad started making Liam do the author visits. He did two or three of them a month, a fact I tried hard to ignore, since it was pretty obvious he hated doing it just as much as I had. Right around that time, Ruby started in as our babysitter. It was Liam who found Ruby; she lived with her grandmother in Green Grove No. 15. At first she ignored me and I ignored her—I thought I was way past caring about babysitters. She ignored Liam too. She had more mature tastes.

  The months passed. The years passed. During those years I did not miss Mrs. M. because I could not imagine myself back in touch with her. I wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t approach her like a child; I knew better. Meanwhile, in our apartment, life was turning into a bad made-for-TV movie, and I was feeling more and more like I had to get away.

  The lost years. Before I found within myself the initiative to make a deal with my old friend, the only person I knew who could get me out of my new hell.

  We are at the Grandville Surgical Clinic and I have had an amazingly successful appointment and I am minus my cast and have been properly fitted for a walking boot and I am actually walking in it. We are both thrilled, and so there is no stopping Clara from approaching the billing and insurance station and taking on the issue of my surely astronomical and overdue medical bills, which I have been avoiding.

  “Hello, I’m Clara and this is Charlie Porter and he is a patient here and we’d like to set up a payment plan for his medical bills.”

  As if any sort of payment plan was remotely possible.

  The medical receptionist is elderly and finds my file after a slow search and a lot of frowning. Then she squints past Clara, looking at me. “You are Charles Allen Porter?”

  I nod, bracing for the news that I will be sent to debtor’s prison.

  “You’re all paid up, Mr. Porter,” she says. “Nothing currently due.”

  Clara and I exchange glances.

  “But, ma’am, ma’am,” Clara sputters, “We haven’t actually paid for anything yet. We never even got any bills.”

  The receptionist glances at the page again. “Your balance was forwarded by request to a Mrs. Martha Manning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Your grandmother.”

  “His grandmother?”

  “O-KAY!” I jump in, needing to quickly get us both out of the building. “Okay, keep us posted, thanks so much!”

  I take Clara’s arm and lead her away as best I can with my new, crutch-free gait, the walking boot clunking noisily on the tiled floors of the building. Clara is silent, scowling in deep thought, letting me pull her along, until we are out of the clinic and in the parking lot. Then she shakes her arm free. “Excuse me! EXCUSE me! You have a grandmother who pays your bills? And you never once mentioned it?”

  “She’s not my grandmother. Honestly, Clara, she’s not.”

  “Then who is Martha Manning?”

  “She’s a friend,” I say. “She’s old and she was really sick and I didn’t know … I didn’t know … I thought she was dead.”

  “Oh, here we go again. Somebody else conveniently dead.”

  “No, seriously. Because she was really sick the last time I saw her. And then later I found out she was dying.”

  “Well, apparently she’s alive enough to be paying all your medical bills! Which is kinda strange, if you ask me. What is this all about?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s … unbelievable!”

  “Is she superrich, this Mrs. Manning? And how did she even know about your injury?”

  “I have no clue! She moved to Iowa a year ago. To her sister’s. Her sister was going to help her … you know … die.” I stop walking. I wrap my arms around my head. “But she didn’t die,” I groan. “She’s not dead.”

  “Oh my God, are you upset? Oh, Charlie, you’re really upset.”

  Clara has never seen me cry. She is stunned, silent for the rest of the walk to the car, the rest of the drive to her apartment. When we are parked beside her house, she comes around to the passenger side to help me. “Can you get out of the car okay with the boot, Charlie? Do you need a crutch to lean on?”

  “No, I’m okay. Just let me go slow.”

  She steps back. I get out, awkwardly, and she takes my arm.

  “Look at you! No more crutches! No overdue bills! And your old friend isn’t dead. This is a good day, isn’t it, Charlie?”

  “It is.” I am weak—my other leg is already sore but stable. Clara stays close. I reach for her and pull her close and kiss the top of her head hard, trembling with gratitude, tearing up again. She is still with me. I look around the driveway. I am here. I am okay. I am Charlie Porter without crutches, without bills, and with my girlfriend by my side. Someone who was dead is not dead. I am blinking in amazement at the bright sun.

  SIXTEEN

  I am in Mrs. M.’s kitchen, waiting for her to wake up and have her coffee. I’ve put her cup of coffee on her placemat at the breakfast nook, from where she will be able to watch the birds. I hear the sound of her getting up, and I look proudly at the cup I’ve prepared for her, when to my horror, I see a large, black disconnected claw resting at the edge of the table. I pick up the claw—it’s hard and shiny and surprisingly heavy. Mrs. M. enters the kitchen in her purple robe and her wig and she finds me holding the claw.

  “I keep finding them around the house,” she says. “It looks like we’re pretty badly infested. Do you know how to get rid of them?”

  “No,” I say. I throw the claw into Mrs. M.’s open garbage canister, noticing that there are half a dozen shiny claws already in the bottom of the bag.

  I come out of the bathroom, after a shower that includes standing briefly with my weight on both legs, a hamstring stretch under the hot spray, and brief, expert masturbating. A great shower. I am in the best mood I’ve been in for a long time, and I wander shirtless into the kitchen in my sweatpants with one leg cut out to fit over my boot. And there I find my brother, Liam, sitting at the kitchen table, with—I kid you not—Clara’s teapot and a fucking cup of tea.

  “Liam—Jesus! How did you get in here?”

  “Window,” he says. He points to Clara’s open kitchen window. The screen is leaning against the wall beneath it. The windowsill is dirty from his shoes. He is wearing black jeans and a T-shirt that says Fear the Violins. He grins at me, proud of himself.

  “You … you can’t do that, Liam!” I sputter. “This is Clara’s house. Jesus, we have a door. What happened to knocking on the door?”

  “I did knock on the door. I thought you might be asleep. I decided to come in anyway. I took a chance you might be happy to see me when you woke up.”

  “Jesus, Liam!”

  “What, you aren’t happy to see me?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not happy to see you because you fucking broke into my girlfriend’s house, Liam!”

  He shrugs. “If you want, I can go back outside and knock on your door and you can open the door and say, ‘Little Brother! What a pleasant surprise!’”

  “Liam, what are you doing here?”


  “But you wouldn’t say that, would you, Charlie. It’s not a pleasant surprise to see me, is it? I saw the way you looked at us when we were here.”

  “How did you get all the way over here by yourself? Did you drive?”

  “I can’t drive by myself yet. I rode my bike. Took me a couple of hours. I’m in great physical shape, in case you haven’t noticed. And I can totally chill about school now. Did you hear I won first place at that audition last week?”

  I close my eyes and speak through my teeth. “That’s really great. Way to go.”

  He scoffs. “You don’t give a rip. Don’t pretend you do. You probably can’t believe I’m good at anything, right? Since I wasn’t so good at being you.”

  He has caught me off guard. I don’t know what to say in reply. I rub the back of my head and say, “It was a bad situation.”

  “A bad situation. Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” A long pause. Then, “Have a seat.” He points to the chair across from him.

  But I don’t want to sit down. Sitting down means a conversation. Sitting down means looking him in the eye. I remain standing and ask, “Did you come all the way over here just to tell me you won the audition?”

  “No. I was thinking maybe we could talk about Mom. She’s gonna be by herself when I go to Interlochen. Sometimes I feel bad about that. She’s still such a loner.”

  Now, I do sit down. I need to make myself very clear. I say, “Liam, this is the first time we’ve had a conversation in how long?”

  “Two years.”

  I note the fact that he has kept track. “Let me get this out there right now. I am not interested in having any sort of relationship with Mom. Now or ever. Seeing her the other day made that all the more clear. You need to just accept that.”

  “Oh, I need to accept it? Really? Why do I have to accept that? Because you’re older than me? Because you have things all figured out?” He is smiling when he says this, and it is a dazzling smile. But menacing.

  “Liam, I’m trying to tell you how it is with me.”

  “Hey, maybe we could talk instead about that old lady who let you live at her house. That was sure nice of her. I showed the house to Mom on our way back from having tea with you and Clara. It had a For Sale sign on the front lawn. It looked empty.”

  The idea of them doing this—checking out Mrs. M.’s house—makes me suddenly nauseous with guilt.

  “What was her name anyway? Was she some kind of teacher?”

  “Her name was Martha. She wasn’t a teacher. She doesn’t live around here anymore.”

  “Mom said she wished she could have met her. Not me, though. She never did shit for me.”

  I think then of all the sandwiches and snacks that Mrs. M. gave me for Liam, none of which he ever saw. Of how she always asked questions about him, none of which he ever heard. The kitchen seems suddenly darker, full of trouble, a storm settling over us. I say softly, “Liam, God, I just really had to get away from Dad.”

  “Oh, right. Right. You had to get away.” A pause. “I didn’t even write those books, Charlie. You wrote them. But I had to lie all the time and say I wrote them. Dad told me my professional name was Charlie.”

  “Look, Liam, I couldn’t help it that Dad made you do that. You know I couldn’t help it. It was every man for himself with Dad.”

  Liam is staring out the window in the kitchen now, and he says without turning around, “The thing I hated most was that I had to say I was you. That was worse than having to recite those idiotic stories.”

  Is he about to cry? I’m not sure. I stand up again, in alarm. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of witnessing Liam’s tears. But he turns back to me, and his expression is almost cheerful.

  “Matter of fact, I had somebody who helped me too. I mean, before Mom came back for me. My fifth-grade music teacher, Mrs. Davis. She got me a violin and paid for my lessons. She saw right away that I had talent.”

  “I’m glad someone helped you too,” I say, with some urgency because I really mean it. It seems like a way that we can reconnect.

  Liam takes a noisy slurp of tea. “Your girlfriend is hot,” he reports.

  I flinch but say nothing.

  “No girlfriends for me right now. Not that I don’t have girls interested. Especially older girls. I guess you know what I mean.” He laughs, a strange, brittle sound—it occurs to me that I have never heard this adult-Liam laugh. There is a familiar meanness in it. I resist the impulse to cover my ears.

  Liam is watching me, reading my thoughts. “Ever hear from Dad?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “You?”

  “Oh God, no. No idea where he is, but he’s not allowed to come anywhere near me. Mom put a restraining order on him because of the whole Ruby thing. It got pretty insane. You missed all the fun. Lucky you, right?”

  I desperately want him to leave now. Does he sense it? I meet his eyes; they are a hard, bright blue under thick white-blond eyebrows—Dad’s eyes. Then he takes a final slurp of tea and stands up and looks around the kitchen one more time. Something catches his eye on the refrigerator. “Why do you have a picture of Rita Dean on your refrigerator?”

  “You remember Rita?”

  “Course I remember her. She was the worst babysitter we ever had. She was a total bitch to me.”

  “She was just a kid, Liam. Just a kid in a bad situation, like us.”

  He looked at me, his eyes round, as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “Whoa. Is that why you have her picture on your refrigerator? To remind you of what a super-concerned person you are about people caught in bad situations? Holy crap. Keep telling yourself that, Charlie.”

  He strolls out of the kitchen. I hear him pause at the front door. “See you around,” he calls. The door slams. When I go into the living room to make sure he is gone, I see a scrap of paper on the floor. Shit. Shit. It’s an old note in my own handwriting. Liam has left it on the floor for me. The same note I left on the floor for him, the day I moved out of Green Grove, leaving him behind.

  There were no slammed doors that day; mine was a stealth departure. I basically didn’t take anything with me; I had a trash bag full of clothes and a box of books and papers for school, and that was it. No prolonged and visible moving out. By that time, I was used to coming in and out of the apartment without anyone talking to me. It was a Saturday. Liam was there, still in bed. Dad was in the kitchen with Ruby.

  I heard them talking in low voices. “You would love Jamaica,” Dad is telling her. “I have to figure out a way that we could all live down there.”

  Ruby’s voice, breathless with excitement. “Would your dad really let us all live with him? You said his house is huge. Wouldn’t that be so cool?”

  A big house was unlikely, but I was not surprised that Dad had told her this. He was always talking big about hitting up rich Grandpa Ned. Liam and I barely listened anymore—neither of us had ever met the man—but Ruby was a novice. She added, still breathless, “Won’t he disapprove of our relationship, Dan?”

  “He can kiss my ass,” Dad growled, suddenly angry. “It’s about time he did something for me.”

  “I don’t want to go if he won’t approve of me,” Ruby complained. “I get enough of that from everybody else around here. Especially Charlie. He looks at me like I’m some kind of monster-girl.” This was a lie. I made a point never to look at her. She started to cry. I heard him taking her in his arms, their pajamas rustling. He said, comforting her, “Charlie’s an idiot.”

  I had an impulse before I left—a guilt impulse that I couldn’t ignore. I felt compelled to say something to Liam. Something that would help him to make sense of having no more brother. So I wrote him a note. A pathetic little note, not a real explanation or a real good-bye. Just a few stupid sentences in my terrible handwriting: I found a better place to live. Dad doesn’t hate you as much as he hates me. I’ll be seeing you. Good luck. Charlie

  I am so happy to see Clara when she gets home from work that I almost break into
a run to greet her at the door. I stop myself, remembering that I can’t run yet. She opens the door, sees me grimacing, and thinks something new is wrong with me.

  “What is it, Charlie?” she cries. “Did you have a fall?”

  “No, I’m good. I was moving a little too fast because I was just … I’m just so glad to see you, that’s all. C’mere.”

  She is carrying a plastic bag of groceries, and she sets it down and comes close and lets me hug her. “Was it a good day? Do you want to take a little walk?”

  “Let’s take a drive,” I say. “I want to show you something.”

  “Really? Something important?”

  “Something important.”

  “Okay, great. Just let me put these few groceries away. Then we’ll go. But, Charlie, I don’t think you should drive yet.”

  “I want you to drive. I want to talk. I want to show you where I was living last year.”

  “I’ve seen the motel, remember? I moved you out of it.”

  “No, before that. When I lived with Mrs. M.”

  “You mean … Martha Manning?” she asks, thrilled. “Her house? Will we be able to go inside?”

  I don’t answer this question. I am thinking I’ll decide what to do when we get there.

  SEVENTEEN

  Clara and I are standing beside the For Sale sign in front of Mrs. M.’s single-story ranch house. The windows are dark; the green exterior is freshly painted; there are still two white Adirondack chairs on the porch—our chairs. I have not been in this neighborhood since the day I ruptured my Achilles tendon running away from what I had learned inside the house, collapsing curbside into a puddle of mush. Mrs. M.’s next-door neighbor saw me fall and called 911 on his cell phone; he kept calling me Chris and telling me to calm down. I was trying to get up, but I couldn’t get my leg to stop screaming. I think I also might have been screaming, literally, just a little, until an ambulance came and two guys put me on a gurney. I remember telling the doctor in the emergency room that I am apparently a person who is not supposed to run, ever. He said, “Now, now, this could have happened to anyone.”