Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me

by Gae Polisner

  “I remember,” she says, brightening. She motions me over and we sit at the kitchen table. I study her as she talks. As always, she seems so normal on the surface. Just someone’s mother. My mother. The way she always was. But that’s never been the case. She’s not like other mothers, and never has been.

  “We got them for school, eighth-grade English, I think it was. I had this teacher, Mrs. Marcaras—but we called her Mrs. Maracas as in ‘shake your maracas,’ you know?” She shimmies her chest at me and chuckles, which brings me back to all the things I hate about her. For starters, her half-dressed self in one of her endless dumb kimonos.

  You should put something on, I think about demanding, stop wearing those dumb things even when company is over. But this whole moment is teetering on something dangerous and I don’t want to be the one to set her off.

  “Anyway,” she says, “Mrs. Marcaras made us take all our notes on index cards the entire year, and keep them in order in boxes. All numbered. For the whole entire school year. And everyone else had these ugly green or gray plastic boxes, but leave it to Nana to find me a pretty, pearly set of pink. I remember how pleased she was that day.” She shakes her head, her hair splaying about her shoulders, specks of flour scattered in it like the finest powdered snow. “So, I saved them. Used them for knickknacks and such, all these years…”

  Her voice trails off and I hope she won’t add more, but she does, sitting up taller as if the memory has surfaced out of nowhere. “Money,” she says. “All that stupid bonus money your father left me. I shoved it in there, hid the boxes away.” She laughs. “I didn’t want it, JL, did you know that? I’m not even sure I remember where they are.”

  My chest squeezes tight. I get up and walk to the fridge, pour myself a glass of juice, and offer her one, but she shakes her head, and gets up, and walks back to the sink. She runs the water, squeezes soap in, drops the bowls, and utensils, and rolling pin into the sink. Chunks of flour cake together, float on the surface like mini icebergs. I stand beside her and watch them as they bounce on waves created by the movement of the dishes.

  “You’re sure Dad’s coming home? This month?” I finally brave the words, and it’s only when I say them directly, out loud, that I feel the deep longing in my chest, the hope and excitement at the prospect of my father coming home to us for good. Like I used to feel in the early days when he’d visit.

  I wait for her to answer. When she doesn’t, I turn to her.

  “Mom,” I say more forcefully, “are you sure he’s coming home?”

  “What?” Her expression has fallen, as if an unseen eraser has passed over the face of the woman who was standing there a minute ago.

  “Dad. Coming home. End of June. First week in July, latest.”

  “Did I say that?” she asks.

  “Um, yeah.” I drop my empty glass in the sink, a rage moving up through me, erupting sour, bitter, in the back of my throat. The smell of burning sugar wafts from the oven; the sound of something sizzling emanates from within.

  Mom looks back at me, her face confused, her eyes blank, yet filled with fear. She wrings her hands. “Oh, yes, that’s right,” she says. “Your father called me, right? He told me. I remember.”

  And I know.

  I slip an oven mitt from the drawer and move toward the oven, but she takes it from me, and pulls out the pie herself.

  “Shit, shit!” she whispers, dropping it hard on the counter as if she’s somehow managed to burn herself.

  She tosses the mitt in the drawer, and stands forlornly in front of the not-loganberry not-a-tart pie, its edges half-burnt, her eyes filled with tears.

  “The truth is,” she says, shoving the pie into the water-filled sink, and watching it disappear under the dirty, soapy water, “I really have no idea.”

  MID-JUNE INTO LATE JUNE

  TENTH GRADE

  I slip the blue sheath over my head, adjust the belt, and stand in front of the mirror, pulling my hair up into a messy sort of cascading bun. I put on gold ballet flats, and small gold heart earrings, and stare at myself in the mirror.

  I wish Aubrey were here. I wish she were going with me. I wish she could tell me whether to do the belt higher or lower, whether to leave my hair down or up like this.

  A brief flutter ripples in my chest, and a smile spreads on my lips, because maybe she knows and she’s jealous. But it fades as quickly, and a wave of dread washes over me. Aubrey and I were supposed to go through this together.

  * * *

  The bell rings promptly at 6:00 p.m. I slip off the dress, and pull on shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t need to get a stain on it before we leave.

  By the time I get out there, my mother has answered it. Good news: She’s not in a kimono. Less good news: She’s in a low-cut black cocktail dress that might be the same one she wore the night of the Rainbow Room. She holds a pair of strappy black heels in her hand.

  For a split second, I think about going to my room to change back into my dress, but that will only make things worse. Who can compete with my mother?

  Max wears a dark gray suit with a black shirt and—my breath catches—a cobalt-blue pocket square, with shiny black shoes that I’m guessing he bought with the money I gave him. I don’t mind. He looks amazing.

  “Well, don’t you look handsome!” Mom exclaims, opening the door wide for him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Max in anything but jeans, a T-shirt, and work boots, so he seems a little stiff as he walks in. Hot as heck, but uncomfortable.

  “Mrs. Markham,” he says, “these are for you.” He holds out cellophane-wrapped flowers. Red roses with white baby’s breath.

  She drops her shoes on the floor to take them and says, “Aren’t you the charmer? My word,” then moves toward the kitchen, calling, “Let me get some water for these!”

  I give Max a shy peck on the cheek, and he hands me a plastic container with two white roses and a blue flower of some sort in between. “That’s for you. I think the blue one is an orchid. It goes on your wrist.”

  “Thank you, Max. It’s beautiful.”

  “I wanted blue for the dress, but white for you. ‘A cream-white rosebud/With a flush on its petal tips;/For the love that is purest and sweetest/Has a kiss of desire on the lips.’” He bows deeply and says, “Courtesy John Boyle O’Reilly.”

  “Who?”

  He laughs, but leave it to Max to be reciting some sonnet I’ve never heard of. When he straightens, he gives me a once-over and says, “So, you decided on wearing that?”

  I laugh now. “No, goofball, I just didn’t want to get anything on my dress. I’ll change after dinner. Come on.” I pull his arm and lead him into the living room, and we sit awkwardly on the couch, the dumb Kerouac book staring up at us from the table. I get up, and carry it to the audio cabinet and shove it away.

  “What are you doing, Jailbait? You know I love Kerouac,” he says, as Mom returns, carting hors d’oeuvres that clearly came from the freezer section of Costco, but that she has presented on a fancy white ceramic platter of Nana’s we use only on good occasions. As if she’s slaved over them. She places it on the coffee table and sits on the other side of Max, and spends the next several minutes fawning over him, and regaling him with pointless stories about her college days before she met Dad, like anyone cares. Once, she gets up and sashays back into the kitchen in her slinky dress and bare feet, for more food.

  Anytime Max—who is clearly dazzled—says anything the slightest bit funny, she tosses her head back and laughs like it’s the most brilliant, hilarious thing in the world. The whole display reeks of crazy, not that Max seems to care.

  “You didn’t tell me how smart he is, Jean Louise.”

  “I did, actually,” I say, cringing at her use of my first and middle name. “Mom, where’s Nana?”

  “She was running late. Said something about a stomachache.” Mom frowns, and I wonder if she remembered to invite her. But none of this is the worst of it, because when we move to the dining room for dinner, Mom pour
s us all wine in her fancy crystal glasses, quickly refilling Max’s, which he finishes off in barely three sips, even though I remind her we’re both underage.

  “You can’t always be so careful, Jean Louise,” she says, dismissing me with some ass-backward wave of her hand. “Sometimes, you have to live a little. In Europe, kids drink wine at dinner every night, even when they’re ten, twelve years old.”

  Max raises his eyebrows, and smiles. As if he agrees, but also like he’s starting to realize my mother is at least teetering near, if not slipped off into, the deep end.

  “Well, funny that, we’re not in Europe, Mother,” I say, sounding as snarky and petulant as I feel. But she simply waves me off with another flick of her hand.

  “Red wine is good for you. It keeps you young.”

  “Well, you sure don’t need that, Mrs. Markham.” Max holds his glass up to her. She looks away, embarrassed, insisting simultaneously that Max call her Charlotte, causing me to wish I were, in fact, either dead or in Europe.

  “Why, thank you, Max! Speaking of living a little, did Jean Louise tell you how my mother once dated Jack Kerouac?”

  “Not dated,” I mumble. “Just kissed.”

  Max sits up. “No, that’s incredible!”

  “I’ll get the food. You tell him the story, Jean Louise.” She disappears into the kitchen.

  “Jesus. She didn’t actually date him,” I say.

  “A passing fling, really!” my mother calls from the kitchen, exaggerating. “He lived near here for a time, way back when. Did you know it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Max says. “Yeah, maybe I did hear that.”

  “It’s true,” she says, returning with a large tray in her hand. “Same town I grew up in. Right around the corner from my mother.”

  Dinner is a prepared roasted chicken from Delaney’s, the gourmet deli around the corner, plus some mashed potatoes I assume also came from there, or maybe a box of instant. All on another fancy serving dish as part of some greater ruse.

  “Tell me more about this shared love for Kerouac we have,” Mom says, not helping my lack of appetite. I have to force myself to stay at the table. But maybe I’m being ungrateful. I should be happy she cared enough to have Max over for dinner, and Max seems to be enjoying it, wolfing it down with relish.

  “You know,” he says, looking up, mouth still full, “I read a lot. My mother made me when I was little, and my father doesn’t, not at all, so … Anyway—” He forks in another bite and says, “I read somewhere that the whole wrote-it-in-three-weeks story isn’t exactly true.”

  “Wrote what?” I ask, taking another sip of wine. I may not know what he’s talking about, but I’m getting better at this whole drinking thing. Half a glass and the room isn’t even spinning yet.

  “On the Road,” Max says. “Legend has it he wrote the whole thing in three weeks on one continuous scroll.”

  “Oh right,” I say, remembering. “The scroll thing.” I take another sip of wine and try not to roll my eyes.

  Mom looks up, concerned. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “The scroll part, yes,” Max clarifies, “but not the three-week part. He’d worked on it for months, writing pieces in notebooks. You might say he typed it in three weeks.” He finishes his glass of wine and pushes back his plate. “Thank you, Mrs. Markham. This was delicious.”

  She smiles at him. “You should get ready, Jean Louise. It’s probably time for you two lovebirds to go.”

  Now I do roll my eyes, but I’m happy to be done. I leave Max at the sink handing dishes to her, and go to my room to change into the blue chiffon gown. Ten more minutes and I’ll be out of here. Away from this house and my new mother, the crazy Amanda Wingfield version. And only a few days more till I’m on the road with my boyfriend. The real road, not some dumb novel I never read and don’t really care about at all.

  The limo honks. I take one last glance in the mirror, say a small prayer, and head outside.

  WINTER

  SIXTH GRADE

  “No, JL, you hold it like this.” You pour another splash of grape juice into your mom’s crystal wineglass and pick it up by the stem with your pinky out.

  “Aubs, I think that pinky thing is for tea,” I say, but you shake your head and insist, so I copy you, lifting my “wine” to my lips. “Okay, fine, like this?” I ask.

  “Yes, and you have to sip slowly, or you get plastered. Like my mother was last Thanksgiving. That’s what my dad called her. Plastered.”

  “Really?” I ask, and you nod, holding a finger to your lips as Ethan walks through the basement with a laundry basket in his hand, plowing through the center of our fake restaurant we’ve set up. We’ve named it JL Aubrey’s because that’s how clever we are.

  “What are you goofballs doing, besides trying to break Mom’s good glasses and burn down the house?” He nods at our table we’ve covered with a fancy lace tablecloth. In the center sit two lit candles in pretty silver candlesticks, the bottle of Welch’s grape juice we swiped and wrapped with a taped-on sheet of construction paper where you’ve written Aujean’s Fine Wine, a bit more clever, at least, by virtue of being a mixture of our first names. We each have a plate of tuna fish and Cheez Doodles in front of us.

  “Put on some clothes, Ethan; you’re gross,” you say, ignoring him. You’re good at that, but I’m not, especially when he’s parading around the house in his boxers, his body slim, but also kind of built from a year of working out to try to make varsity tennis. I blush a deep red as he shakes his head at us and heads off into the living room. I pray you don’t notice.

  “Anyway,” you say, leaning into me, once he’s disappeared into the laundry room, “she puked all over our cousin’s living room rug, and my father didn’t talk to her for like a week.”

  “Really?” I ask again, distracted. Even if you don’t care what he thinks of us, of all these silly games we play, I do. I want to close up shop and go upstairs and watch Ethan get ready for the ninth-grade dance, see him all dressed up in his suit and tie.

  “Really,” you answer, as Ethan emerges, the top half of him covered in a white button-down he must have gotten from the cedar closet. He’s carrying a blue suit on a hanger as he heads past us toward the stairs. “He thinks he’s so great,” you say, loud enough for him to hear, “just because he’s taking Ashley Mathers to the dance.”

  “Well, I heard my mother tell her friend that she and Dad ate these special mushrooms once, and they made her hallucinate that she was attending the royal wedding. And when she woke up the next morning, she had cut up the curtains and made them into a dress. Anyway, I’ve had real booze lots of times,” I add, because I want Ethan to know I’m not some baby who only plays pretend. “Just a few sips, though. It’s not a big deal if you have a little.”

  “Have not,” you say.

  “Have too.”

  “Prove it, Markham,” Ethan pipes up. He hangs the suit on the banister, walks around us, ducking behind the basement bar, and fishes out a bottle full of clear liquid.

  He pours some into my grape juice and says, “Go ahead. No big deal, right?”

  “Ethan!” You cover your mouth and shake your head, but I’m not about to let Ethan make me look like a liar, so I pick up the glass and swig it down. Ten minutes later I’m in the bathroom puking it up and Ethan is crouching beside me with a hand on my shoulder.

  “Remember this, kid, so you don’t brag about doing dumb things when you’re older.” He hands me a washcloth. “It’s not cool to be like that, okay?”

  Half an hour later, he’s dressed in his gorgeous blue suit, his blond hair slicked back with a little bit too much gel, and Ashley Mathers is at the door in her pretty purple dress, her parents next to her, ready to drive them to the school.

  “Promise me,” I tell you that night, when we’re curled up for sleep, you in your bed, and me on the floor in my sleeping bag we keep at your house for when I crash here. “Promise me we won’t be losers, that we’ll have dates for the n
inth-grade dance, that we’ll wear pretty dresses, and we’ll go together.”

  “I promise.”

  “No, get the list,” I say, tapping your night table drawer where I know your journal is.

  You switch on the light, and pull it out.

  “And add ‘Don’t drink too much, or show off,’” I say. “‘Or puke our brains out because some dumb boy dares us to.’”

  LATE JUNE

  TENTH GRADE

  The minute I see the limo, I know I’ve made a cosmic mistake. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to go to senior prom with Max and his friends.

  That I could handle it.

  That I wouldn’t feel like some out-of-place loser.

  The only saving grace is I still feel the wine coursing through my system. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d turn around.

  But I don’t. Won’t. Max holds tight to my arm and says, “Look at me, getting into this motherfucking fancy shit with the most beautiful girl in the universe,” so I’m pretty much getting inside.

  The windows are open and Dean and Bo and Angie and Melissa are all laughing loudly, the pungent smell of skunk drifting out. Max steers me to where the driver stands holding the back door open. I’m surprised he’s letting them smoke in the car.

  “Hello, miss,” the driver says, waving me in. Close up, he’s younger than I thought.

  “Wait, Jean Louise! Jean Louise!” My mother is running down the driveway in her slinky dress, waving her cell phone in her hand. I can feel the eyes of the two girls burning through me. “I promised Nana I’d get photos! I need to get photos before you go!”

  If I’ve despised my clueless pathetic mother more than in this moment, I can’t remember when.

  Max says, “Sure, Mrs. Markham,” and I stand stiffly next to him, trying to smile, while my mother moves her cell phone around, pressing spots on the screen.

  “Oh, shoot, hold on, hold on, I’ve got it.” She giggles drunkenly, and I wonder only vaguely if I should invite the others—why not?—in all their stoned glory, to join in.