Beetle Boy (16 page)

It reads thus:

Dear Mrs. M.,

In exchange for letting me live at your house for 9 months and telling people that you are my grandmother, I hereby swear to

1. 1.
   Take out your trash as often as needed.
   
2. 2.
   Shovel your porch and sidewalk through the winter months.
   
3. 3.
   Do all yard work.
   
4. 4.
   Do all your grocery shopping.
   
5. 5.
   Be your driver during nonschool hours.
   
6. 6.
   Sleep in your empty basement room.
   
7. 7.
   Have no friend or girlfriends over. [Easy—no friends, no girlfriends.]
   
8. 8.
   Never disturb you while you are writing. [Easy, she didn't write anymore.]
   
9. 9.
   Never enter your upstairs bathroom. [Unnecessary, toilet and shower in the basement.]
   
10. 10.
    Be out of your place no later than May 31, end of senior year. No exceptions.
    

“Geez, I see what you mean about making yourself irresistible.”

“I don't know why I kept it. Maybe because she signed it with that big swirly signature like that. With her diamond pen.”

“Her what?”

“Oh … she had a special pen … I bought it for her. I still have that, too. She left it on the desk on the top of the note. I put it in my jacket pocket before I broke into a run.”

“Can I see it?”

“It's in a different box. It's just a pen.”

“Charlie?”

I head back to the garage and come back with the pen, but now I am uncomfortable, remembering the nine-year-old me who had bought the pen, remembering why I bought it—the near-hallucinatory state of gratitude I had been in at the time. Buying that pen for Mrs. M. was such a huge deal for me. It wasn't just a thank-you gift. I think I was asking her to please keep helping me. To keep
me
.

The sight of the pen makes Clara laugh. “Wow, pretty fancy-schmancy, Charlie! Diamonds! You never bought me anything with diamonds.”

“I haven't been able to do much shopping lately.”

“Good excuse, right? But there's something else I've been wanting to ask you about. It's not about Mrs. M. It's about your books. What in the world happened to all those cute books you wrote?”

“Clara, I don't know and I don't care.”

“Come on! They must have meant something to you at the time, even if you don't care about them anymore. They were your very own creation, Charlie! You were an author! I'd love to see them. Does Liam have them?”

“I don't know.”

“Can I ask him?”

“I would prefer that you don't talk to Liam, Clara. Like, ever.”

“But, Charlie, what if he calls me?”

“Why would he call you?”

“I don't know. Just … it would be awkward. I would have to say
something
.”

“No, you wouldn't. If he ever calls you, you just hand over the phone to me. I deal with Liam.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever, Charlie. But ask him if he has any of your old books, okay?”

Oh sure,
I agree silently.
I'll ask him the next time he breaks in.

I am in Clara's bed, surrounded by Clara's popsicle-colored underpants, but instead of Clara beside me, Liam is sleeping on his back, with his violin resting on his chest. I am afraid to move because I don't want to wake him up, I don't want him to see Clara's underpants and ask me about them. I keep very still, until something catches my eye. Something is moving around inside of Liam's violin; something is making the wood pulse and strain. I watch in alarm as a small, black, probing leg comes out of the S-shaped sound hole. I realize that Liam has a large bug inside of his violin. But it can't get out—the sound holes are too narrow. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if I should tell him. I wonder if it is partly why he plays the violin so well. I lift myself onto one elbow to ask him, but he cringes in his sleep and recoils from me, wrapping his arms tightly around his violin. “Liam,” I say, “there's something I need to tell you about your violin!”

“Charlie!” Clara barks. “You're talking in your sleep again. Stop it!”

I had fallen asleep in her bed after unusually successful sex. But the dreams came anyway, following me into Clara's bed, making sure I don't forget to bring my beetle friends to the party. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, Clara. At least no screaming this time, right?”

“Shut UP! I have to go to work early tomorrow.”

“Don't kick me out,” I murmur. I'm pretty sure she won't. She is too nice. But I think to myself before I fall back to sleep,
Definitely not as nice as she used to be.

Clara is gone, and I look at the clock. I have slept in until nearly ten. Usually Clara wakes me to have breakfast with her. Then I remember that she said something in the middle of the night about going in early. She has let me sleep in. I get up and see that she has put bread and cereal on the counter for me. Coffee in a thermos. She still loves me. I eat the breakfast she has left for me and let the memories come.

I am back in Mrs. M.'s neighborhood after six years of not seeing her, ringing her doorbell. At first she didn't recognize me. She asked, “Can I help you?” in a puzzled voice, keeping the screen door locked.

I waited for her to figure out that it was me. I noticed that her gray hair had grown out into curls around her face and was actually kind of pretty for an old person's hair. I asked, helpfully, “Read any good bug books lately?”

She said, “Charlie Porter, as I live and breathe.” She unlocked the screen door and opened it wide. I had already decided that I was going to ask her if I could live in her basement, but I had promised myself I wouldn't bring it up that first visit. Didn't want to overwhelm her. Instead, I followed her into her kitchen, where I sat down and told her that I was sorry that I hadn't come over in six years.

“My life got complicated.”

“Everybody's life is complicated,” Mrs. M. said. “Your life was insane.”

I asked her something I had sometimes wondered during those six years. “Did you ever wonder how I was doing?”

“Of course,” she said. “Routinely. Are you still living in the apartment on Grove Street?”

“Same sitch, no improvements.”

“Well … I saw something in the paper a couple of years ago that deeply concerned me, Charlie. I almost called you. It was a bookstore ad for a book signing—a talented young author named Charlie Porter was signing his books at the new children's bookstore in Grandville. With a photograph of a boy who clearly wasn't you.”

“Yeah, I know. Guess who got the job after I quit?”

“As I feared he would. And he actually had to tell people he was you? Nice. So is he still doing Charlie Porter author events?”

“No. He's thirteen now; he's too old. But he didn't seem to mind it as much as me. He doesn't come back from the author gigs and cry on his bed for an hour like I used to. Or get hives. Or have panic attacks. But we actually never talk about it. We don't talk in my family. We don't share.”

A silence. Mrs. M. asked me if I was hungry, which I was. “You've grown taller than I would have expected,” she said. “You were small for your age.”

“I grew into my head,” I said, a comment I had never forgotten.

She chuckled, remembering it too. “And no scars from all those rashes on your neck. That's good. What grade are you in now?”

“I'm sixteen, but I'm heading into my senior year. I started school early because my mom thought I was advanced.”

A pause. It was rare of me to mention my mother. Finally she asked, “Were you?”

“Probably, but I'm not anymore.”

She smiled, “So how are your grades these days, Charlie?”

She had never before asked me anything about school. It was such a normal thing to ask; it heartened me. It made me feel like maybe our relationship could be very simple—a teenager living with his nice grandmother. I felt even more hopeful about it. It was hard not to bring it up and ask her on the spot. I had already written the contract. But I knew it would be better to play it cool and save it for my next visit. Before I left, Mrs. M. said, “I hope you won't wait six years to come over again.”

“I'll be back soon,” I said. “Real soon.”

One week later, Mrs. M. sat beside me on her front porch, reading the contract. I was clutching the arms of the Adirondack chair, sweating bullets. She was surprised that I would ask her for something so huge—a place to live during my senior year. Her eyes were round as quarters behind her reading glasses, and she was scowling. But I remembered that a scowl from Mrs. M. didn't necessarily mean she would say no.

She finished reading, put the paper onto her lap, and looked away from me. There was a part of me that wanted to wrap my arms around her knees and beg her to take pity on me. But another part of me that knew this request had to be a business exchange—no drama—or it would never happen. “Tell me something, Charlie,” she asked finally. “What will your dear father think about you moving in with me?”

“He won't care,” I said. It was true; he had no use for me. He was completely distracted by a certain female teenager. And thirteen-year-old Liam hated me. I wouldn't miss either one of them. My mind was made up. If I could just live somewhere else, just start over, reinvent myself. If I could find a job, make a little money, finish high school, hide. If I could just not be connected in any way to any other Porters. Especially my dad, his insane mix of ambition, blindness, and meanness. I had a hunger for a few normal friends, maybe even a girlfriend who wasn't a fantasy. The chance to wake up anywhere, anywhere, but in that place, that bedroom I shared with Liam, that apartment, that drama queen Ruby, that sorry excuse for a father.

Mrs. M. interrupted my tortured thoughts. “You will not like living with me,” she said, “especially under the conditions of your contract.”

“Would you please just think about it, Mrs. M.?”

“You will be bored out of your mind here. And I am not fit company for most hours of most days.”

“I already know that about you. But you're the only person on the whole planet that I could ask. Look, my dad is sleeping with a teenager, okay? It's making my home life really depraved. Really depraved, Mrs. M., worse than ever before.”

This silenced her for a long minute. “Have you had any recent contact with your mother?” she asked.

“No, I have not.”

“And you wouldn't consider asking her if she could help you with this situation?”

“I think you already know the answer to that question, Mrs. M.”

“Charlie, moving in with me is a bad idea.”

“Well, it's my only idea. You're my only hope. I swear to God I won't be any trouble.”

“Well, I'm certainly not going to swear that
I
won't be any trouble! You won't like living with an old lady. It will drive you crazy.”