Beetle Boy (7 page)

Another author had set up camp on the other side of my table—a young guy named Dr. Naturo, who didn't have a book at all. He had a DVD of songs, and he had brought a guitar with him. His DVD was called
Nature—It's a Natural!
His poster said that he had visited schools all over the state and that he had a website full of fun activities for kids. My dad moved his chair over behind Dr. Naturo's table and talked to him for a whole hour, leaving me alone. I knew that Dad was getting ideas from him—he called it networking—and I was nervous. I wanted so badly to bite my fingernails, but Dad told me before we left the apartment that if I bit my fingernails in public he would make me wear gloves like a girl.

Dr. Naturo didn't get any school invitations that day, although a few people took his card. We only sold six books in two hours. Mrs. M. wasn't selling books either; I watched her. I overheard Pink Turtleneck telling another organizer that none of the teachers or librarians had as much money this year and that only about half as many teachers came to the conference. My dad had stepped away from our table to get a plate of food for us from the lunch buffet. When he came back, he sat down beside me with a plate and two forks and said to several organizers within earshot, “What a nice conference this is. Good job, everybody.” He was forcing a smile, hiding his disappointment at our sales.

I wanted to tell him what I had just overheard, but now he was busy making serious eye contact with Pink Turtleneck. She came closer. “Your son is adorable,” she said. “I read about him in the paper—what an enterprising little guy—writing books already!”

My dad widened his eyes at me, and so I said quickly, “I was born to write.”

“He's just getting started …,” Dad prompted.

“Two more on the way!” My voice cracked when I said this though, because I was tired. But Pink Turtleneck didn't notice; she was still batting her eyes at my dad.

He didn't say anything else about Mrs. M. until we got into our car. Then he said with a snarl, “I cannot
believe
the nerve of that bitch in the cape. She stole our mojo, son! She muddied the water! But she'll be sorry she messed with me. Oh, she'll be sorry!”

“Well, actually,” I began explaining, “I heard that the reason that the teachers weren't buying was—”

“Next time we see her we'll squash her but good!”

“Like a bug,” I said, trying to make him laugh.

“Hell
yes
, like a bug.” he roared. He stuck his thumb high in the air and brought it down onto the dashboard, squashing Mrs. M. but good for ruining our day.

So weren't you and your little brother ever close, Charlie?

“Um…no.”

Weren't you at least close when you were little guys?

“Not really.”

It's just really hard for me to figure this out because … well … my whole life I wanted a little brother. I used to beg my parents for a little brother. I still want one! It's so hard for me to imagine having one that you don't even stay in touch with.

Of course she was confused. It wasn't normal to be out of touch with my only brother. But I couldn't begin to explain all the ways that I had hurt Liam. He lives with Mom now, irony of ironies—Mom moved back to Grand Rapids after I moved out of Green Grove. She got custody of Liam and put him in a private school. And here's another irony—turns out Liam is a musical genius. He's fifteen, a sophomore, and he's going to transfer to a school for musical geniuses any minute now. How do I know this? I read it in the paper. Liam started playing the violin a few years before I ditched him. Some teacher took pity on him and hooked him up with an instrument and a private teacher in Grand Rapids.

Clara is waiting for me to respond. I move my hand to the springy ponytail at the back of her head, burying my fingers in the hair around the ring of elastic. I put my face close to the nape of her neck and sniff deeply. Her hair is fragrant, musky, and female. I don't want to talk anymore about Liam. But she pulls away, out of reach, and I am stuck in my cast and can't recover her.

Charlie, he's your brother.

“We went through a really bad time,” I say. “And then we just couldn't be normal brothers anymore.”

Because of your mom abandoning you?

I had never used that word:
abandon
. It surprises me to hear it spoken by Clara, but I nod. Although I had been thinking that the reason we couldn't be normal was more about me—because I mocked him. Worse, because I didn't protect him. Worse, because I left him. If I was Liam, I would never forgive me.

But he has obviously forgiven Mom after she came back to Michigan and took Liam away from Dad and Ruby. Have I mentioned Ruby?

Clara said once, “I know I'm not your first girlfriend. I know you've been in other relationships.”

“Not like this,” I said, and I meant not in a sane way. More in a depraved, pathetic, crippled way. A string of babysitters, ending with Ruby Mandarino. A pastiche of pretty girls to pester and woo with my premature charm and my lonely heart. But Ruby was hired primarily to deal with Liam, since I was beyond needing a babysitter. I never really got her attention. She liked Dad a little too much. She was the beginning of the end of the three amigos.

Young Dr. Naturo was a fountain of information for Dad; I guess they totally hit if off once he learned that Dad had a run-in with Mrs. M. at the Author's Jubilee. According to the Doctor, Mrs. M. had a reputation for being negative and unreasonable at the local author conferences. I guess one time Mrs. M. asked the Doctor why he even considered himself an author when all he ever wrote were bad songs that nobody ever heard except kids in school who were trapped into it. He told Dad that she was jealous because he was making so much money on his school visits, during which he could sometimes sell over a hundred homemade CDs at ten dollars a pop.

All of this Dad relayed to me with great excitement—he saw instantly that our future was in school visits. But I was more curious about Mrs. M. “Then why is she even invited to those author deals?”

The Doctor told Dad that she won some big book award, so now everybody feels obligated to include her, and she keeps showing up, pissing off the organizers with her demands. According to the Doctor, she was a total has-been.

I had never heard that term before, and I asked Dad what it meant. “Someone who used to be important. So everybody is just playing along at the conferences, but nobody really gives a shit about her stupid books anymore.”

When I heard this, I thought to myself,
Maybe someday no one will give a shit about my stupid books either.
The thought filled me with a shiny, piercing hope.

The next time I saw Mrs. M. was at another Saturday morning author celebration, this one in a high school gymnasium. I was half a dozen tables away from her and her
Franklin Firefly
books; I couldn't stop myself from wandering over to her while my dad was out of sight.

“Not you again,” she said. “Shouldn't you be home watching cartoons?”

“I'm here because I'm the—

“World's youngest published author, I remember. But aren't you supposed to stay away from me?”

“My dad went for coffee with one of the organizers,” I explained. “He said he won't be back for fifteen minutes.”

“Probably looking for a closet.”

“What?”

“I'd hurry back to your table if I were you.”

I wasn't eager to go back. “Can I ask you something? Why does your firefly have teeth? Don't you know that fireflies don't have teeth?”

She looked down at me, one of her eyebrows arched way up. “Where is your mother, World's Youngest Published Author? And why haven't I ever seen her at any of these meat markets?”

The question caught me off guard. I confessed abruptly, “She's gone.”

“Dead?”

“No. Just … gone. We can't … we don't talk about her.”

“Who is ‘we'?”

“Me, my dad, and my little brother, Liam.”

“And how long exactly has your mother been gone? A few months? A year?”

“Let me get back to you on that,” I said.

Back at my table, I watched Dad come back into the gym with a couple of teachers. One of them was wearing a white lacy top that you could see her black bra through.

“Here's my boy!” Dad exclaimed, presenting me and the books. “Say hello, Charlie. These wonderful ladies wanted to meet the world's youngest published author.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Did you get any new ideas while I was gone?” Dad prompted.

“Oh, I find inspiration everywhere,” I said, another totally phony thing I had been coached to say.

“Well, isn't he something!” Visible Black Bra said. She picked up a copy of
Meet Beetle Boy,
opened it, scanned a few pages, and exclaimed, “This is too cute!”

The other woman was middle-aged and seemed more skeptical. She was reading
Beetle Boy Crawls Again
. “Your son is how old?”

“Seven, going on fifteen—ha-ha.”

“Does he have an agent?”

I wasn't sure what an agent was. I looked at Dad; he was stuck in a private smile with VBB. She said admiringly, “Seems like you two are doing okay without one!”

They bought five books between them. Then I had a lull. Dad went off to look for more pretty teachers, and I took out a small pad of scratch paper and counted up the number of months I had lived since Mom left. I included the month before she actually moved out because I hardly saw her that month. Fourteen months. It was the first time I had allowed myself to tally up this terrible number. Then I just had to tell someone. I waited until Dad left the conference hall to hit the deli across the street from the conference hotel, and then I left my table and scurried back over to Mrs. M.'s table. “Fourteen months,” I said.

She didn't miss a beat. “Well, well. Right around the time these books started materializing.” She looked away from me and said to no one in particular, “What a miserable profession this has become. Broken, broken people.”

“Excuse me,” I objected. “I am not broken. I've sold eighteen books today, and my dad said I only had to sell fifteen.”

“Well, at least your pimp is having a good day.”

“What?”

“Go back to your table. You're not supposed to talk to me.”

“They're her stories,” I blurted. “They're the stories my mom used to tell us at bedtime. To help us get to sleep.”

Mrs. M. sighed. “The pimping deepens.”

“What?”

“Oh, we're all pimps, Charlie. Pretending to care about our sad little readers. Pretending our silly stories help them.”

“I don't think they help,” I said, another huge confession. “They sure aren't helping me.”

She looked down at me again, and her eyes were not as hard and beady as usual. She looked almost kind. I wanted to ask her if we could talk again sometime. I wasn't even sure she liked me, but she was the only person in my life who knew a little bit of what was happening to me.

But I was also afraid of what would happen if Dad saw me talking to her. So I said, “Well, okay, gotta go. Good luck with your writing.”

Mrs. M. called as I hurried away, “Good luck with your childhood.”

It's Saturday morning. We both slept in, and I'd had no nightmares. I feel more refreshed than usual, and Clara decides to make ginger pancakes, which I'd never even heard of until I met her and which now seem like another of her many generosities. She stands at the stove in a short blue bathrobe with her feet bare and her toes turning slightly in. I watch her and think about maybe trying to have sex with her after breakfast, lying across her bed on my good side with very little movement and the entire beautiful back of Clara inspiring me onward. It might work. Right after breakfast.

But Clara ruins my mood with her next statement, spoken while handing me a plate of perfect pancakes.