Beetle Boy

by Margaret Willey

  She looks at me as she says this, stops nodding, and looks me straight in the eye. “A journey of healing,” she repeats somberly. Then asks, “Is there some way I can help you, Charles? Do you need money for your trip?” And I think, Mission accomplished.

  With cash in my pocket, I drive back to the street corner closest to the café, where Clara had told me she would be waiting after one hour. She is standing under a streetlight, and when she sees me driving her car, she waves to me, but the gesture is a bit defeated. I wonder if Liam might have stood her up. But when she gets into the car, she says, “You were wrong about me convincing him, Charlie. He wants to talk to you. He wants you to call him tonight.”

  “Did he at least seem interested?”

  “I would say yes. But he also seemed worried about leaving your mom. He said they had planned to do some things together before he moved up north. Since he won’t be coming home to see her on the weekends.”

  Then she is quiet, and I wonder if she is considering offering to go with me to Iowa if Liam won’t go. An offer I would definitely say no to. It would be a mercy trip, and she has shown me enough mercy.

  “Mom will let him come,” I say. I am sad, realizing that any sort of trip with Clara is now impossible. We never got to hit the road as a couple. We never really went anywhere together. Most of the time I couldn’t get off the sofa without her help. It was a pretty miserable excuse for a romance, such as it was.

  Clara asks finally, “Charlie, if Liam does agree to go, will you promise me that you won’t let him drive my car?”

  “You don’t think he would be a good driver?”

  “There’s just something about him. He’s so jittery. Does he have ADD? Has he always been like that?”

  A sigh escapes me. “I won’t let him drive.”

  “And one more thing. Right before I left him at the café, he asked me if I knew about your dad and Ruby. I acted like I didn’t know anything, and he told me I should ask you. But I’m not going to ask. I’m just telling you that Liam brought it up.”

  “Clara, Ruby was the babysitter who—

  “Had a thing with your dad, I figured that much. Seriously, I don’t want to know. I think it’s just another way that Liam is trying to … make you look bad. Make things harder for you. Like when he was calling me. And when he brought your mom to the restaurant.”

  And when he broke into your house, I add silently.

  She sighs wearily. “I just hope you two don’t kill each other on the way to Cedar Rapids. When are you going to call him?”

  “I’ll call him right now.”

  Clara leaves to run a bath, probably needing to wash away the muck of the Porter men.

  Liam picks up immediately.

  “It’s Charlie,” I say.

  “Okay, wait just a minute.”

  I hear the sound of a sliding door. The balcony. I can picture him sitting on the deck chair in the darkness with his cell phone.

  “Clara says you’re looking for a road buddy,” he drawls. “She was practically begging me. I don’t get it. Why don’t you just take her?”

  “She has to work,” I say. Then, being more honest, “Mrs. M. wants me to bring you.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good one,” he scoffs. “Since when does she give a rip about me?”

  “Since the beginning, Liam.”

  “Quit lying, Charlie.”

  “Not lying. She asked about you, pretty much from day one.” I pause and then, “She gave me food for you. She asked me to bring you to her house. Like dozens of times. She told me not to forget you. But I didn’t listen. Obviously.”

  There is a long silence. I would have thought that Liam had hung up on me were it not for the crickets chirping in the parking lot under the balcony. Finally, Liam echoes, “Obviously.”

  Another cricket chorus.

  Liam asks, “So us going on a road trip deal wasn’t your idea?”

  “No.”

  “Clara made it sound like it was your idea.”

  “Look, Liam, I know it’s a strange request all around. But this woman saved me. The same way that your music teacher saved you.”

  “My music teacher? I never said Mrs. Davis saved me. She gave me a violin, true. She gave me free lessons, true. She helped me get into Interlochen, true. But she didn’t save me. I saved myself. Once I told Mom I would live with her, I saved her too. She’s a different person now. She’s happy.”

  I was fresh from my earlier conversation with Mom, and I pictured her frowning face, her trembling hands. It occurred to me that maybe there is something about me that makes her crumble. Is it because I am the son who was already gone when she came back? The one who made his own solitary escape? The one whose forgiveness she hasn’t earned?

  Liam interrupts these thoughts. “So suppose I agree to go with you to meet this woman who—now you tell me—gave a rip about me; that would take time away from my last two weeks with Mom, right?”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Then there’s something I need you to do. In exchange.”

  I brace myself for whatever he is about to require.

  “You need to start visiting her after I leave for Interlochen. Take her to lunch. She likes going out for lunch because then she doesn’t have to drive in the dark. Twice a month would be good. Do we have a deal?”

  “I don’t even know if she’d want that, Liam. I make her really nervous, haven’t you noticed?”

  “Just bring Clara. Everything goes better with Clara.”

  I ignore this and let my thoughts linger on the earlier part about Liam knowing what Mom likes. Is he the only person on earth who still knows this? No wonder he’s worried about leaving her.

  “Okay, Liam,” I agree. “Twice a month. Even if she hates it.”

  “And we’ll for sure come back on Wednesday?”

  “We have to. Clara needs her car back.”

  “She’s letting you take her car? Awesome! We can take turns driving. I have a learner’s permit, but I never get a chance to drive on highways.”

  I keep quiet on this one.

  “You need some money for the trip? I can ask Mom. She has a little more money now from an aunt who died. But she said after I leave for school, she might look for a job.”

  Impossible to imagine. “Seriously? Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. She said she wants to work with kids.”

  Work with kids? Is there no end to the irony of my life?

  “She gives me anything I ask for,” Liam says. He is gloating now. “She basically can’t say no to me.”

  I tell him that I have the cost of the trip covered. If he finds out it’s because Mom already gave me money, so much the better. “Come over to Clara’s on Sunday at nine.” I tell him. “Don’t be late.”

  “Wish Clara was going with us,” he says, and I cannot mistake his implication. Just a few days ago, this would have made me hang up on him in a rage. But at the moment, it strikes me as so flamingly immature, and also so transparent, that rueful laughing ensues.

  Liam hears me snorting with laughter. “What’s so funny?”

  “Don’t you get it, Liam? We’re still fighting over the baby-sitter. We’re like a couple of little kids—‘like me the best, like me the best!’ It’s so stupid, Liam! You’ve got to start seeing how fucking stupid it is. Or else neither one of us will ever have a chance at a real girlfriend.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liam grumbles. “You have a real girlfriend, and I can have one any time I want.”

  I let him have the last word. At least, for once in my life, I gave him some brotherly advice.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Clara turns out to be an absolutely expert packer for road trips, apparently from dozens of road trips all over the United States with Don and Susan. On Saturday afternoon she gets out a large and a small cooler, two coffee thermoses, a GPS device, maps of Illinois and Iowa, several different emergency kits (are we climbing mountains?), a travel
bingo game (are we twelve?), a stack of magazines, and a bag full of energy bars and fruit cups. All of this is piled onto her kitchen table.

  “You have to stop this, Clara,” I say. “You have to get control of yourself. I’m not leaving the country.”

  “I know,” she says. Then admits, “I can’t stop. I have to help you.”

  Her mother calls every few hours, hoping to talk her daughter out of letting two unreliable misfits take her car out of state.

  “They don’t understand,” she explains. “They think you’re trying to use me.”

  “I am using you. But I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

  Late in the afternoon, Don comes over and tunes up Clara’s car, giving me many looks of scorn because I don’t know the first thing about tuning up a car—I’m a bike man, remember? Before he leaves, he says, “Time to get a move on, son. Time to stop taking advantage of people who are too nice to kick you out the door.”

  “Clara did kick me out the door, actually,” I remind him. “I’ll be moving into my own apartment when I come back.” I say this as though it will happen easily, all planned, although I have no idea where I will be living. One thing at a time.

  “You and your brother better just be damn careful with this car. No monkey business.”

  “I’ll be very careful, Mr. Morrison. Thank you so much for taking a look at it before we go.”

  I don’t know why I am even conversing with him; he so clearly doesn’t like me. Maybe it’s an old persistence—ingratiating myself with people who tell me to get lost. As scowling Don drives away in his truck, I feel a wave of happiness that I will soon see Mrs. M. again, the original “get lost” person in my life. Perhaps I will hug her; I never hugged her good-bye. My old friend. And I am not stressed about sharing her with Liam anymore. What difference does it make? Now that he is going away. Now that I am going away. Now that she lives far away.

  Then it is Saturday night, and we are packing up the car. It is a new experience for me, but Clara is very good at it—knowing which items to keep close at hand and which to put in the trunk. “Charlie, does Martha Manning even know you guys are coming tomorrow?”

  “I told her it would be soon,” I say. “I’ll call her in the morning and tell her we’ll be there before dark.”

  “Aren’t you even a little worried that Liam won’t come over when he’s supposed to?”

  “He’ll come,” I insist.

  “I want to hear all about it. Will you call me from the road?”

  I am about to remind her that I don’t have a cell phone, when I remember that Liam has one. “Sure,” I tell her. “I’ll let you know how everything goes.”

  “You seem so calm. I’ve never seen you this calm before.”

  I take a chance that she is feeling fondness toward me, and I touch her hair, cupping the side of her head. I am wondering if she might let me sleep in her bed for old time’s sake before my departure. I am wondering if she will let me kiss her.

  She grimaces sadly and says, “Charlie, please. Don’t.”

  But she doesn’t kick me off the couch. We watch TV together for another hour, and then she helps me unfold my bed. She goes into her room alone. I stay up a little longer with the TV off, staring at the walls, saying good-bye to Clara’s house.

  We are all going to Iowa, the four of us leaving in the darkness, like escapees, taking a rowboat instead of a car. I am nervous, but both Clara and Lucinda insist that it’s safer if we travel by boat. Lucinda is wearing her Mary Poppins sweater. Clara is wearing her lab coat. Her bright red hair is in two stiff braids. Liam is a child, dressed like a pirate, running around on the pier and waving a wooden sword.

  I notice that there is a large cardboard box in the boat’s hull. A box of books. Beetle Boy books. I protest to Clara and Lucinda that Mrs. M. doesn’t want my books; nobody wants my books. But Lucinda says something was needed for the front of the boat for balance because something heavy is missing.

  “What is missing?” I ask, but I already know.

  Clara has begun to cry softly. She says through her tears, “He finally just crawled under my bed and died. I’ll have to clean up the mess when we get back.”

  I tell her she doesn’t have to clean up the mess. I promise to do it. I beg her, “Don’t do anything else for me.”

  Clara says, “I can’t stop myself.”

  Lucinda says, “We had a big one in our apartment too. Liam stabbed it with his sword.” She looks at him; he is fidgeting around in the boat, oblivious to the rest of us, and she adds, “There is something wrong with your brother.”

  “Stop talking,” I tell them. They are upsetting me, and I need to focus on getting us to Iowa. I need to row. I see that there is only one set of oars.

  Clara is digging into her purse for something. She pulls out a map of the midwestern states, our path in red—Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. There is a photograph of Mrs. M., an inset on the map’s border, and I recognize the photo—it is the same photo that was on the back cover of all the Franklin Firefly books, Mrs. M. in a fake, bookish pose, looking up from a still-blank sheet of paper at her antique desk. Her face changes; she is smiling at me. I see she is holding the diamond pen.

  “Clara will be our navigator,” Lucinda says. But she sounds afraid. I am afraid too. Afraid of getting lost, even with the map, even with Clara. Liam cries out, “I want to row! Let me row!”

  I awake with a start and hear Clara, talking in her bedroom. I can hear from the strange timbre of her voice that she is dreaming too. I get up to look at her, make sure she is okay. She rolls from one side to her other side as I watch her settle back into sleep. She murmurs, “Can I help whoever is next?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In the morning, as planned, I call Mrs. M. I wait until the last minute, because it is an hour earlier in Iowa, and I remember that she wakes up slowly. Her sister answers on the third ring.

  “Why are you taking so long?” Helen demands. “I need someone to help me right now.”

  She sounds so urgent. I am startled. “Well … I’m coming tonight,” I say, “with my brother. She said I should bring him.”

  “What?” she exclaims. She is near tears. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Charlie Porter. I’m Martha’s friend. She knows we’re coming. We won’t stay at your house. We have—”

  “Oh. Oh. I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you. I thought you were the funeral home director. Martha died in her sleep last night. I found her this morning. I’m sorry. I can’t tie up the phone right now.”

  “No wait, no wait—I talked to her last week. She said—”

  “She’s dead, Charlie. So there is no reason for you to come.”

  My mind is spinning. I can’t find my voice. I manage to croak, “Won’t there be a funeral?”

  “She did not want a funeral. There will be no funeral. I really have to go.”

  “But wait, but wait—did she say anything about me? Anything I should know?” Her past words of advice were flying through my head: find a nice girl, be a fifth-grader, make some friends, bring your brother.

  “There were no last words. No good-byes. It’s very hard. I’m so sorry to have to tell you.” She was choking up. “I have to go now. Someone is here.”

  She hangs up. I am still holding the phone, but I have fallen to my knees. The room is shrinking. Someone is howling uncontrollably from the end of a long tunnel.

  Clara hears from the curb and comes running in. I cover my head with my arms, not wanting her to see this, my unbearable disappointment. “What happened?” she exclaims, coming closer. Then she says, “Oh God. She died, didn’t she? She died before you could see her. Oh, Charlie. Liam and your mom are here! What should I tell them? I don’t know what to tell them! Oh no! She died!”

  I put my fists in my eyes, and the howling resumes.

  “Charlie, they can hear you!” She hurries to the front door to tell them why I am freaking out. I hear her voice through the
breaths between my sobs. She starts speaking matter-of-factly but soon becomes hysterical. “Because Charlie is upset. Charlie is very, very UPSET.”

  Liam comes bounding in. Mom stays frozen at the front door. She looks like she is about to die herself. Her face is as pale as I have ever seen it. Her hand is at her heart, fingers splayed. Liam comes right up to me. He puts a hand on my shoulder. His voice is oddly cheerful. “Hey, hey there, Charlie-boy. Hey, now. Come on. It’s not so bad. It’s not the end of the world. She was old. She was sick. Am I right?”

  I say through my tears, “You idiot. You fucking idiot, you don’t know.”

  “Hey, we can even go somewhere else if you want. Right, Clara? Right, Mom? Here, get up and come on over to the couch and take a load off.”

  His words jolt me from my grief. They stun me. My brother is being a good Porter man, digging deep into our shared past. I wipe my tears with both hands and look at him. I manage to say, “God, Liam. You have no idea how this feels.” But then I realize that of course he does. He does know. He’s forgotten, but he knows.

  “Hey, I’m just saying we can go somewhere else.” He is actually smiling his dazzling Porter smile. “I’ll drive. Not a problem! Back on Wednesday! Let’s do it!”

  I see him so clearly then, all his damage, his resemblance to our dad, despite his time of healing and ascending. It’s as though Dad is suddenly in the room with us, talking Charlie-boy and Leemster out of their motherless pain. Liam is upset, and he is trying to help me in the only way he knows how. I look past him, and there she, is our mother, standing in the doorway. She shakes her head at me slowly, and I think maybe she is disagreeing with Liam’s advice—don’t take a load off! Don’t go! But I am not sure. Not sure that she can handle this any better now than how she handled things back then. I do not know her well enough to be sure; that is the chasm between us. Clara is standing beside her with one arm around Lucinda’s narrow shoulders. Lucinda she can help. She does not know how to help me. I can see in her face how excruciating this is for her. I have distressed them so deeply, each of them, with my display of uncontrolled grief. But my mind grasps at something, and I think, At least none of us are children anymore.