Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me

by Gae Polisner

  I shiver, and pull my coat tighter, rewrapping my scarf around my face to keep the wind from numbing my forehead. My hands are frozen. I stupidly forgot my gloves.

  Max takes my hand. His fingers are warm. He only wears a sweatshirt, but doesn’t seem cold.

  “Here, down this way,” he says. “There’s a path, I think. If I know where I am.” I stumble, and Max catches me. “Hold on, I’ll use a light.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and shines the harsh glare ahead of us, illuminating tangles of brambles and bare branches. “Guess it’s overgrown some since I was here last,” he adds.

  He kicks away stuff with his boot, and sure enough, underfoot is a path, and soon everything opens up to soft sand and moonlit water. I stop and stare out, and he moves behind me, and wraps his arms around me, pulling me tight against him. My stomach drops. I’m pretty sure I’m about to make out with Max Gordon. Maybe now I’ll stop thinking about Ethan once and for all.

  “I’m glad you came with me, Wingfield. I would have bet money you wouldn’t have come. Not in a million years.”

  “Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t have,” I mumble through the warm, damp wool of my scarf. Bits of fibers stick in my mouth and I want to reach up and move it away, but my arms are pinned by his embrace. My stomach lurches again, knowing I’m out here alone with him. He could do anything he wanted. I’m fifteen, and no one knows where I am. I shouldn’t have lied to my mom.

  I wriggle free and turn to face him, a little terrified, but also exhilarated. Of course he won’t do that. He seems to like me.

  “I’m probably going to die of frostbite,” I say, and he loosens his grip, and pulls my scarf down off my mouth, runs his thumb over my lower lip and says, “What was that you said?”

  “Frostbite,” I repeat. “You and me, here, frozen to death. Two blocks of ice in a snowbank.”

  “Nope,” he says. “I wouldn’t let that happen. And anyway, you’re wrong. Fire, not ice.” He slides his thumb back and forth over my lip, making a current run through me, from my mouth down my body, beneath my coat.

  “Huh?” I whisper.

  He leans in and places his warm lips over mine. The kiss is so soft. So tender. It’s everything. When he straightens, he looks me in the eyes.

  “‘Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.’” His thumb is back on my lip, the touch melting me even more than the kiss, so maybe he’s right. “‘From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.’ So, see?” His mouth brushes mine, less gentle, a bit more insistent. So good, my legs are trembling. I have no idea what he’s said, but I don’t care. His words thrill me. He thrills me. I’ve never felt this ready for anything—ever—in my whole life.

  MID-MAY

  TENTH GRADE

  Max slows when he sees me—sees Ethan—stopping several yards from us, straddling the still-idling bike. Despite its low hum, the air hangs silent, a distant high-pitched ringing in my ears.

  “What’s that douchebag doing here?” Ethan asks. “No worries, I’ll get rid of him.”

  Aubrey definitely hasn’t told him anything.

  “Ethan, wait—”

  He turns, must catch my tone, whatever look is on my face, because he says, “Oh, geez. Tell me that’s not who you’re waiting for?” I don’t answer. “Seriously, Markham? That asshole?”

  “He’s not an asshole.” I want to scream, but instead I barely say it loud enough for him to hear. But I should. I should tell Ethan how smart Max is, how he recites sonnets to me, how even Hankins likes him, and how Max has stuck by me for almost three months, which is more than I can say for everyone else who says they care. But I don’t. Max doesn’t need defending. Not by me. And not to Ethan. Not to anyone.

  Ethan turns toward Max, and back to me, his face still twisted with confusion.

  “We’re dating,” I clarify. “Since February. I figured your nosy sister might have told you.” I sound mad. Defensive. I guess maybe I am.

  I walk toward the curb, and Max finally takes off his helmet, steps away from his bike, and walks to me. His hair is matted with sweat, his step heavy in his jeans, in this heat, and his lumberjack boots. His scruffy face wears a look of something I can’t exactly define, hurt, maybe, mixed with defiance, and a hint of, “I might have to kick your ass.”

  Ethan, in his tennis shorts and pale mint polo, looks baby-faced and insignificant.

  “That’s a fact, Andersson,” Max says, moving toward Ethan intentionally, veering away at the last second as he walks past. “We’re together, JL and me. I take it you don’t have an issue with that?” Max’s voice, the words he chooses, loose in the air, how he calls me by my name rather than one of his nicknames, all sound less weird and disjointed than I worried they would. They actually sound romantic and beautiful.

  When he reaches me, he drapes both arms across my shoulders, and leans in to kiss me. His lips taste like sweat and dust, and the faint hint of a pungent-sweet smoke. “Sorry,” he says, “Lost track of time. Not to mention, took a spill. Dean and me had a little collision on the bikes.”

  Finally, I notice the smear of tan dirt up his leg by his hip, and the red bruise on his cheek.

  “Yikes, you okay?”

  “Sure,” he says. “No biggie. I would have texted, but this piece of junk ran out of charge.” He waves his phone at me, and shoves it back in his pocket. “You ready to get out of here?”

  I nod.

  “Well, good for you guys,” Ethan says. I almost forgot he is standing there.

  “Good to see you, Ethan,” I say. The words burn my throat. They make me kind of sad, too, but I mean them.

  He walks to his car, and turns when he reaches his door.

  “Hey, Max,” he calls, “be good to her, okay?” He gives me one last look before climbing into the driver’s seat and taking off.

  “Pompous dickwad,” Max says when he’s gone. He buries his face in my neck and I take in the sweaty, smoky smell of his hair, of his jacket, and try to swallow past the lump in my throat that, lately, doesn’t ever seem to go away.

  LATE MAY

  TENTH GRADE

  “Not a dirt bike, Jailbait,” Max corrects me, “the Kawasaki. At least once I get it fixed.”

  We’re sitting on the floor of my room, my back pressed against him, body slipped into the vee of his open legs, watching the butterflies. He revs his lips like an engine, and puts his hands on my shoulders, steering them like handlebars, making me laugh. “This guy gave it to me cheap. It’s fast and powerful, but it needs a complete overhaul. When I’m done, it’ll have a four-stroke engine, six-speed transmission. You can’t ride a dirt bike three thousand miles to California.” I tip my head back to look at him, and he combs his fingers through my hair before grasping it into a fisted ponytail to keep it held back. “Jesus, you’re fucking beautiful,” he says, kissing my forehead, and my nose, and my lips.

  “How much will it cost?” I ask, sitting up straight, turning myself to look at him. Two of the Jezebels are out of the habitat and circle the room, their wings catching bits of light that filter in through the half-open shades. They alight on the windowsill, drawn to the warmth of the sunbaked wood.

  “I could get a crap one for like four hundred, if I wanted. A mint one for under a grand. Depends what I want to put inside her. You still need to see her. She deserves the very best.”

  I nod, my mind skirting to the pink metal boxes that have been stuck in my head, the ones I saw Mom shoving handfuls of bills into the morning after the fight she and Dad had the night of the Rainbow Room.

  “There’s also the issue of the transmission,” Max adds, “and gas, and motels, I guess, if you come with me. Otherwise, I’ll crash at a campsite, or on the side of a highway. I don’t give a shit.” He chuckles like he doesn’t believe for a minute I’ll go with him.

  But more and more lately, my head fills with the salty scent of the ocean, the image of me on the back of Max’s bike, arms clutched around his waist, the wind bl
owing our hair as we breeze past wheat fields, traveling miles and miles of open highway.

  “On the road, just the two of us, imagine it!” Max said when I first said I was, maybe, in fact, considering it.

  Of course, it’s ridiculous to think I can, and I know it. It’s a joke. I’m a joke. The idea is a total joke. I’ve barely been on the back of Max’s dirt bike—only from school to here—let alone on a four-something, six-whatever engine thing he’s talking about riding across country. Besides, crazy or not, never in a million years would my mother let me go. Forget about Nana or Dad.

  And yet there are ways—and a ripening alibi and money to execute it all—that have taken up residence in my brain. And the crazier Mom seems, and the more I fall in love with Max, and the further away Aubrey drifts, the less I can think of one good reason to stay here.

  “Why do you ask, Jailbait?”

  “Ask what?”

  “How much it would cost?”

  “No reason.” I shrug, and shake the thoughts away, watching a Glasswing emerge and lift off, flying directly at Max, landing on his shoulder for the first time since they’ve been let out while he’s here. “Don’t touch it,” I whisper, as he reaches up. He yanks his hand back, except it’s only a myth that a butterfly will die from someone touching its wing.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  “Never mind. It’s okay.” I reach over, and trace the wine-red edge of the butterfly’s wing, and it crawls away from my touch toward Max’s chest.

  It doesn’t want to leave him, either.

  “They’re going to start dying soon, I bet. I’m not even sure how long these guys live. The Jezebels can live longer, at least longer than most. Sometimes up to three months,” I say, “but not necessarily.”

  “How long has it been?” Max asks, lying down carefully, and folding his arms behind his head to watch the Glasswing that stands on his chest rubbing its legs.

  “It’s tasting you,” I say. “They taste with their feet. Middle of April is when they emerged.” I try not to count the weeks. It breaks my heart to think of them dying here, of finding them, one after another, lying motionless on the bottom of the habitat. With the Monarchs and Swallowtails, I never had to worry, or witness it, just set them free in the yard after they hatched. Sometimes, a few days later, I’d see one flying about and be sure it was this one or that.

  “I’d like you to taste me,” Max says, and I swat him, making the Glasswing take off. “Seriously, though, it’s cool. I hope they don’t die anytime soon.”

  “Me too,” I say, but my mind is racing. If they’re still alive when we go to California, who will take care of them?

  Better if they go first. It’s not like Mom or Nana will be talking to me.

  * * *

  After Max leaves, I walk through the empty house deciding, turning down the hall to Mom’s bedroom, telling myself I’m not doing anything wrong.

  I’m not doing anything at all.

  Just investigating.

  Just finding out if it’s still there.

  At her bedroom door, I change my mind and turn back to my room.

  I’m sure it’s gone. I’m sure she’s burned through it all.

  EARLY JANUARY

  TENTH GRADE

  “I kissed him, you know,” Nana says, as she moves her wrinkled finger across the monochrome face of Jack Kerouac. She tips her head back and closes her eyes, as if she’s trying to better remember it.

  The three of us are on the couch in the living room, Nana in the middle, feet up on the coffee table, the big glossy book called The Beat Generation she bought Mom open across her lap.

  “He was nearing forty by then.”

  “Robbing the cradle!” Mom says, as if there’s some glee in it.

  Nana laughs and nods in agreement.

  “Gross,” I say, rolling my eyes as she turns the page, leaning her head against Mom’s for a second. They’ve always been close, and it makes me long for a time when I felt close to my mother. I did once. At least sort of. But everything’s been different since Dad left. Even before the depression morphed into something worse, making her strange and deluded and distant.

  Although there are times she still seems normal, like her usual self, which only serves to trick me into thinking everything might be okay.

  “Oh, yes, she would have murdered me, if she knew!” Nana says, and I realize I missed some sort of question from my mother. “My mother was quite proper. You remember her. Can you imagine if she had found out?” Nana fans the air, and Mom laughs, turning more pages.

  “Now him,” Nana says, making her stop at a photograph of a man with glasses and dark curly hair, a cigarette held in his hand. Behind him, a woman looks wistfully off into the distance. “This is Allen Ginsberg. They were dear, dear friends. Wrote letters to each other for a decade. They’re all compiled in a book, I believe.”

  Even if I don’t know who they’re talking about, or care all that much if I do, I still feel happy for this evening of normalcy, them giggling together over this dumb book of photos, like you and I might over something on YouTube or Instagram. Everything momentarily feels like it was when I was little. Back when Nana would come over with Pop-pop, and all of us would play Scrabble, and Nana would tell stories from Mom’s childhood, Pop-pop complaining that she was exaggerating, and giving looks to my dad like he understood.

  “Oh, don’t listen to them!” Nana would say, winking at me. “Your mother was a wild child before she met your father. You tamed her,” she’d tease Dad. “She got that from me.”

  Then Pop-pop would laugh, and shake his head, and say that Nana’s fond memories of things were far more exciting than any reality that either she or my mother ever lived. He’d add that Mom was lucky to find Dad, and Nana was lucky to find him, to keep them both from floating away into their fantasy lands.

  “Well, think what you want, but I did, too, kiss him,” Nana would insist, swatting Pop-pop’s chest, before wrapping her arms around his neck. “You’re supposed to take my side. You’re supposed to make me sound at least as exciting as I am.”

  “I miss Pop-pop; don’t you?” my mother asks, suddenly wistful, as if she and I were thinking about the same thing.

  “More than ever,” Nana answers, softly. “We shouldn’t take them for granted. There’s something to be said for a practical man.” She flips another page, tapping a photo of Kerouac standing outside against a brick wall, a book under one arm, pulling a cigarette to or from his mouth with the other hand. “This one, though,” she says, sighing deeply, “that one time, what a thrill.”

  And Mom tips her head back and says, “Go on, tell me again.”

  SEPTEMBER 1961

  (NANA TELLS IT LIKE THIS…)

  It’s a Tuesday evening and Gunther’s Tap Room in Northport, Long Island, is dead. Maybe three tables in the whole place are occupied.

  My parents have brought me here on a weeknight to celebrate in official fashion.

  “A Bud, on tap, for me,” my father tells the waitress when she arrives, “and two old-fashioneds for the ladies.” The waitress requests my ID, and I hand her the license I pull from my purse. Until now, I’ve never been asked, but I’ve never ordered liquor before.

  The room is quiet until someone mercifully puts some quarters in the jukebox. “It’s Now or Never” comes on, Elvis’ deep and syrupy voice and the click of the clave causing me to sway in my seat while we wait.

  “Slainte!” my father says, when the waitress returns. He raises his mug into the air. I finger the highball glass the waitress has placed in front of me. Two cubes, a pretty orange-gold liquid the color of apricot, and a toothpick spearing two bright red cherries. Condensation slips like raindrops down the outside of the glass, and I move my finger up its side, drawing the initials “R.C. + B.M.” inside a heart, and wiping it away before anyone can notice.

  Bobby Masters. He and I had gone steady all through high school, and last month, citing college in Massachusetts, he had u
nceremoniously dumped me. I would have gone with him if he had only asked. Instead, I’ve spent the weeks in tears and, until last week, could barely get out of bed.

  My mother, on the other hand, has a hard time hiding how pleased she is, since he wasn’t Jewish, a fact she pointed out to me repeatedly during all four years of our romance. I don’t have the energy to point out that neither is Dad. It doesn’t much matter now.

  “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” my father says.

  “Go ahead, take a sip, Ruthie,” my mother chimes in. She must be desperate for me to stop playing the sad sack if she’s encouraging me to drink. “And you slow down, mister,” she aims at my father. “I don’t need you putting on a show.” My father is a loud and boisterous drunk, the polar opposite of my mother. As if to demonstrate, she puts her own glass down and dabs demurely at the corners of her lips. It will take her the whole night to finish one drink. Already Dad has finished his beer and is holding up a finger to order another.

  My mother gives him a sideways glance.

  I want to kill myself. This is my eighteenth birthday.

  “Don’t be such a spoilsport, Miriam. We’re celebrating.”

  I lift the glass and take a sip. The liquid is warm and sweet, and goes down easy enough, so I take a second, and third, and a few more. To slow myself down, I pull the toothpick from the glass and suck a whiskey-soaked cherry from it. An old-fashioned, then. My new favorite thing.

  It’s not the first time I’ve had alcohol, but there is something different about drinking legally, aboveboard. Being of age. And this concoction tastes particularly delicious. I quickly find myself smiling, flushed with a rush that spreads from my chest to my stomach, and mixes with the undeniable pleasure of irking my mother.