Beetle Boy (23 page)

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.

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?”