Beetle Boy (19 page)

When I get back to the apartment, I am terribly anxious. It is that feeling again—too many things coming together at once. Clara has left the index card with Mrs. M.'s phone number taped to the kitchen counter. Does she expect me to call Mrs. M.? Just pick up the phone and call her? Does she have any idea how hard it would be for me to do that? Mrs. M. might not want to talk to me. Or her sister might answer and tell me she just died like an hour ago. There is absolutely no way that I can dial her number. I pull the card off the counter and hide it in a drawer.

Clara's parents have picked the night and restaurant for our gathering; I'm sure they can't wait to grill me about when I am planning to stop being a deadbeat. Clara keeps insisting that they like me.

“No really, they want to celebrate that you're doing so much better. Come on! It'll be fun!”

She writes the occasion down on the small Michigan Wonderland calendar she keeps on the fridge: “6:30 dinner with Mom and Dad at Casey's Bistro.” One week from today. With a smiley face. She is using Mrs. M.'s pen again. My life is insane.

I am waking up from a nap when I hear someone walking around in the kitchen. At first, I think I'm in a beetle dream, but then I realize I'm not dreaming; I'm hearing the sounds of someone in the kitchen who is not Clara, someone making no effort to be silent. I hear cups and saucers clattering. After a moment, I hear the whistle of the teakettle. I groan into my pillow.

I lurch to the kitchen without my boot. The kitchen window is open again. The screen is on the floor again. Liam is pouring water into the teakettle. “Hey, Big Brother!” His smile is ear to ear. I hate that smile, that slick Porter smile. “Rise and shine! Don't you ever get tired of sleeping all day?”

“I don't sleep all day,” I say. “And you broke into Clara's house again. This is not cool, Liam.”

“I'm just making tea,” he says. “Black tea. A little caffeine to help you wake up. You need to get some better tea, bro. Mom only uses loose tea; she's kind of a fanatic. Your hot girlfriend scored major points with her, making her tea.”

“Don't talk about Clara. And stop calling her at work. It's really bothering her. She doesn't like it.”

“Oh, no, she likes it. We've had some really nice conversations. She's very curious about me, very impressed.”

“No, she isn't, Liam.”

“Actually, she is! I invited her to my next concert—at Aquinas College—a very big deal—but then she never called me back so, I thought, why not just head over there and talk it over with Charlie. Over a nice cup of tea. I really think you need to come, bro. I think you might be sorry if you don't.” He is smiling, but it is clearly a threat.

“Jesus, Liam. What is wrong with you? You can't just sneak inside Clara's house like this and you can't call her and you can't threaten me into going to one of your goddamn CONCERTS!”

Suddenly we are both yelling.

“Oh, are you THREATENED? Am I THREATENING you? Are you SCARED?”

“GET OUT OF HERE! Go back out through the window like the CRIMINAL you are!”

We stand head-to-head, facing each other. It feels like a very bad dream. I am waiting for a beetle to come clicking and clacking around the corner. Liam is breathing heavily. He is clenching and unclenching his fist. He looks like what he wants to do most in the world is punch me. What I want is to push him headfirst back out the window. But a part of me, maybe the more adult part of me, realizes that we both have to calm down. We can't fight. We can't be screaming at each other. It's too dangerous.

I hold up my hands, a truce gesture. And I say, more calmly, “Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lost my temper. But you're trying to freak me out on purpose, breaking in like this when Clara's not here and calling her and inviting her to concerts and it's working, Liam. It's freaking me out, and I want you to stop it.”

Liam's eyes narrow. He says, “You don't deserve her.”

“I know I don't deserve her. I am the first person to admit it. But you can't be playing games with her to get back at me.”

“Get back at you?” he sneers. “Why would I need to get back at you?”

I admit, with a huge effort, “For all the shit I did to you … back then.”

I think it catches him off guard. Almost an apology. Almost. He lets it sink in. Then he asks calmly, “You mean before you left? Or after you left?”

“I mean … I mean … all of it. All of it, Liam. Please, I know you hate me, but you have to quit playing these games with Clara.”

“I'm not playing games, Charlie. I don't have time for games. I'm leaving in a month for Interlochen. You won't be seeing me for a while once I move up there. So relax! Drink some tea with me. Sit down. How's the leg?”

Warily, I sit down. He slowly and carefully pours me a cup of black tea.

“Mom has this really old blue teapot. I guess it was her gram's. Do you remember it?”

He looks up at me as he pours his own cup, gauging how I will take this mention of Mom. I say, quietly, “I remember it.”

“She sure drinks a lot of tea. She is going to be drinking it completely by herself after I leave. I've been telling her she should look for a roommate. Or join a church again or something.”

“She quit going to church?”

“Oh yeah. Long time ago. Still prays all the time, though. Mostly for you.”

“Jesus. Don't tell me that.”

“You should come over and see her. Come after I'm gone. I know you like to pretend I don't exist.”

“I told you how I feel about this already, Liam.”

He takes a final slurp of tea and walks away from the table. The photo of Rita, still on the fridge door catches his eye. He looks at it for a moment, then snatches it off the fridge, tears it into two pieces, and throws it in the trash on his way to the front door.

I am in the Green Grove apartment at the doorway to my bedroom. Liam is already asleep, under the covers on his side of our bedroom, surrounded by knives and guns. I realize from this that he knows about the giant beetle living in our house. He has figured it out without me telling him. I am glad he knows, and I am not the only one afraid. I think that I will borrow a few weapons from his bed to keep on my side of the room. But as I approach him, I hear a loud, raspy breathing sound coming from under his bed. One gigantic leg is sticking out, the claw on the end of it, flexing and unflexing, like a metal hook. I am thinking, I can crush its leg with my walking boot and then it will be crippled. I can do that. I can do that for Liam.

But I can't move and I can't move and the whirring gets louder and I stand frozen in my old bedroom and it is my own raspy, tortured breathing that finally wakes me up.

I was right—it is not as intense to be with Clara's parents in a restaurant. We are seated at a four-top in a quiet corner of Casey's, a local family eatery, and it turns out that our waitress Marie is an old high school friend of Clara's and so there is an initial exchange of happiness and amazement and I am introduced to Marie by Clara as her boyfriend, a word that never fails to astound me.

Don tells Marie to put the tab on one check and then aside, he says to me, “You're probably going to want a big old steak, eh Charlie?”

“Charlie's a vegetarian,” Clara says brightly. “I told you that before, Dad.”

Don gives me a fleeting look of bewilderment. Then he smiles coldly. After we put our dinner order in, he turns back to me with renewed determination to find out what the hell is wrong with me. “So, Charlie,” he begins. “You seem to be getting around pretty well with that boot thing. When will you be headed back to the office?”

“He works at a bike shop, remember? Bodacious Bikes near where I work.”

“My apologies, you did tell me that, but it slipped my mind.” Back to me, “So when do you see yourself starting back to work at this bike shop?”

“Soon as the boot comes off, Mr. Morrison. It really limits my mobility, and we do so much kneeling and squatting and lifting, you know, working on the bicycles.”

“That makes sense, Don,” says Sue.

“He's a little better every day. Aren't you, Charlie?”

“I sure am.” And right after I say this, right after I agree without any irony or deceit that I'm doing better every day, I hear a familiar voice call my name and I look up from the group and I see Liam coming toward us in the restaurant and I realize in a flash that a few steps behind him, looking extremely uncomfortable and trapped, is my mother, Lucinda. Liam and Mom. Mom and Liam.

My mom hangs back, but Liam walks up to our table, stands behind Clara, puts a hand on one of her shoulders and gives it a squeeze. Like they are best buds. Clara meets my eyes. I recognize her fear from the first meeting with Mom and Liam, and I can see it growing.

“I'm not late, am I?” Liam asks, clapping his hands together, and again, I feel as though I am caught in a dream; will a long black leg poke me from under our table?

A round of Morrison sputtering ensues. Clara finally begins speaking in sentences. “We weren't expecting you, Liam. But since you're here—okay—Mom, Dad, this is Charlie's brother, Liam.”

“Really nice to meet you.” He stretches his long arm across the table to shake hands with Don and Sue. Then he turns to Mom, who is still hanging back a few tables away. She looks as though she is about to pass out from shyness. She is wearing an ancient shirt—a shirt I remember from before she left—buttoned up to her chin and one of those triangle kerchiefs covering her hair, like she's Amish. She looks like she's wearing a costume. I recognize every symptom of her terror at finding herself in the middle of a grotesque show—the centerpiece of someone else's scheme. Another trap. And she is blaming herself; somehow I know this. Liam actually steps away from the table, takes her hand, and pulls her toward us.

“And this is our mom, Lucinda Porter,” he says. He looks directly at me. Our mother is his weapon.

“Hi, Mrs. Porter. These are my parents, Sue and Don Morrison.”

“What are you folks doing here in Hudsonville?” Sue asks, obviously confused. “Are you visiting?”

“We just live over in Grand Rapids,” Liam says. “Not far at all.”

Lucinda takes a step away from the table, away from us. She has realized the situation's impossibility, and she is making her move, reaching beyond her shyness to make a clean getaway. She says, with what I can see is a superhuman effort, “Very nice to meet you all, hope you have a nice dinner.” Then she turns on her heel and retraces her steps through the maze of restaurant tables, exiting without once looking back at Liam.

Liam looks aggravated. Thwarted. There is an incredibly long, awkward moment during which I am looking at my lap, feeling blood pulsing angrily through my neck and face. There is not one safe person for me to look at right now in the entire universe. I am bracing myself to look at Clara, but part of me is afraid to lift my head, because if Liam's hand is still on her shoulder, I believe I will fly across the table and break his nose.