Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me

by Gae Polisner

  * * *

  When we pull away from the curb, I relax a little. I still feel awkward, but a certain giddy excitement kicks up as the chatter sets in.

  The seats in the back of the limo face each other with some legroom in between. A mini bar is built into the door on the far side. Fancy crystal tumblers sit in cup holders, filled with some brown liquid that threatens to slosh over the sides with each turn.

  Bo passes the joint to Max, who inhales deeply, and raises his eyebrows at me. I shake my head and look pointedly at the glass divider, then back to him.

  He exhales. “Don’t worry. Dean’s brother owns the company. That’s Pete up there. Right, Pete?” Pete waves into the rearview mirror. “We have permission to have a good time as long as we don’t bust anything up.”

  “Or puke!” Pete calls.

  “Or puke in here,” Max echoes.

  Angie, whose short black hair is dotted with rhinestoned skull barrettes tonight, laughs, forcefully blowing out a drag she’d been holding in, and taps my knee, the fabric of my blue dress, with a combat-booted foot, and says, “I don’t really like this shit, either. How about a drink instead?” She smiles at Melissa, whose hair used to be a solid shade of magenta but is now blue with white-blond chunks running through.

  “Yeah, same,” Melissa chimes in, and I realize they’re both wearing combat boots with their dresses, one of which isn’t a dress but a floor-length skirt with a T-shirt and black leather bomber jacket. It looks cool, and I feel silly and out of place in my gown and ballet flats.

  “I mean, I’ll take a hit or two sometimes, but I’d rather have a rum and Coke.” She passes one of the tumblers to Melissa, and one to me. “Go slow. They’re more rum than Coke, and your boyfriend here says we need to go easy on you.”

  “Damn straight,” Max says, throwing an arm around me.

  I sip the drink down and lean back against the seat, closing my eyes as my body warms to the alcohol, and let the sounds and smells of the car begin to waffle around me. Spaces open, places for me to sink in and breathe, as if I belong.

  “Here goes nothing, chicos and chicas!” Max shouts suddenly. My eyes snap open. The driver has eased us past the ornate gates of the planetarium, tires crunching over gravel as he pulls into a parking spot and unlocks the doors. Max holds up his glass, and the rest of us raise ours, clinking glass to glass, and polishing off whatever liquid remains. “Veni, vidi, vici!” he toasts.

  “We come, we see, we conquer!” Dean yells.

  “Here come the fucking Proletariats,” they all chime in, Max closing with, “One last time to live it up big!”

  SUMMER

  BEFORE FOURTH GRADE

  “Here we are, Pippi!” Dad pulls open the car door and tugs on my pigtail, and I slide out and take his hand. “Milky Way, here we come!”

  Here is the Hager Planetarium, Mom's and my favorite place in the world.

  Mom adjusts her hat, checking her reflection in the window, before we head toward the hill that leads to the main building together, her long gossamer skirt floating up like a breeze, Dad’s giant size 12 Birkenstock sandals making their clomping swish-swash noises on the uneven cobblestone path.

  “I’m not a Pippi,” I pronounce suddenly. “She has braids and red hair and freckles.” I want to be something prettier, like Mom.

  “Hmmm, how about a butterfly? Le Papillon?” He says that last part with a flourish of his hand.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Not who. A what. It’s how you say ‘butterfly’ in French.”

  “Yes, okay, that,” I say, smiling.

  Halfway down the hill, Mom lets go of Dad’s hand and skips ahead, stopping to twirl under a cherry blossom tree releasing its last remaining pink petals, arms out, head back, hair flying out like a butterfly. The way I want to be.

  “What a perfect day!” she says, clapping her hands together when she stops. “All this, and stars and planets, too!”

  Dad laughs and calls, “And which constellation are you, Charlotte?”

  “Hmmm. How about, Cassiopeia, the Queen?”

  “Too weighty,” Dad says, catching up. “I know. Apus, how ’bout? Bird of Paradise. Never with two feet on the ground.”

  Mom laughs and takes his hand. Maybe I want to be that instead. A Bird of Paradise.

  No, papillons sound so much prettier, I think as we make our way down to the cool, quiet insides of the planetarium.

  The show is my favorite: One World, One Sky. It starts with a sunrise over a neighborhood that looks and sounds like ours, with birds chirping and children playing in yards, and dogs barking, and parents leaving for work. But when the sky grows larger and the Earth smaller, as the camera pans out wider, the yards change so there are chickens and oxen and dry desert sand, and when they zoom in again, it’s clear they’re not in our country anymore, but in China or Africa or India.

  “We are all one world, when the stars come out,” the narrator says, as daylight fades, and the whole entire room fills with twinkling stars and constellations, and you’d bet a million dollars you were floating outside in the night sky.

  When the show ends and the lights come on, Dad gets up, but Mom sits there, unmoving. Her cheeks are wet, and her eyes are glossy with tears.

  “Charlotte, really? Now?” Dad asks, impatiently, but I get it, how the stars like that, all swirling and infinite and dizzying, can make a person feel like they need to cry.

  Back out in the daylight, we make our way through the rose garden labyrinth, and Mom’s mood improves. She stops every few steps to scoop handfuls of peach and lemon-yellow and magenta petals that have fallen to the ground.

  At the stone wall that blocks us and the land from spilling down the cliffside into the Sound, Mom reaches over, Dad holding fast to the back of her blouse, to pick some sort of tall, stiff grass with a feathery bit on its end. It looks like wheat stalks, only greener. She threads the rose petals onto the stalks, and ties them into circles that she places like fairy crowns on our heads.

  Toward the back of the property, we move past the small building where the mummy is housed—Dad knows I won’t go in there—to the reptile and insect house. There, we visit the tanks of geckos, iguanas, bearded dragons, and rat snakes. Like a magnet, I am drawn to the exotic butterfly wall. Blue Morphos, Goliath Birdwings, and Giant African Swallowtails, their majestic wings pulled open to full span and pinned there, captive art against black velvet boards, behind dusty glass panes.

  Dad and I read the names aloud, debating which is prettiest, most like the papillon he thinks I am. When we turn to go, Mom isn’t here, and we find her sitting on the ground outside, knees up, crown petals at her feet, weeping.

  LATE JUNE

  TENTH GRADE

  The Hager Planetarium is magical in the gray-purple dusk. To the Prom Committee’s credit, the trees along the path down to the main building are strung with pink lanterns and tiny green and gold lights, giving the grounds an even more romantic feel.

  Max lets go of my hand, reaches into his jacket pocket, and retrieves a small silver flask. He takes a swig, and offers it to me, but I’m already buzzed, so he passes it to Bo, who drinks and passes it to Dean.

  Midway down the cobblestone walkway, Max says, “Hold up,” so I do, but those guys ignore him, cutting across the grass and disappearing behind the main rotunda.

  “They’re not going in?” I ask.

  “Guess not,” he says, and my heart sinks. I got all dressed up to spend the night behind some building drinking and smoking weed. But Max says, “Okay, let’s do this.” I look up at him, questioning, and he says, “I told you, Jailbait, I’m here to show you off, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I have no intention of following those bozos, or making this anything but a perfect night for my girl.” And with that, every fear I’ve had crumbles and disperses into the lilac–scented air.

  Inside is a different story, and a new surge of panic rises to my chest. People are surprised to see Max Gordon here—and me
with him. People know we’re dating, but it’s clear from the whispers no one thought we would ever come to prom.

  Max takes another swig from the flask and pulls me onto the dance floor. We dance awkwardly, and I have to work hard not to care who’s watching, but the floor is crowded, so we can’t do much more than move our bodies a little side to side anyway. Eventually Max takes my hand and leads me away and toward the main entrance. “Enough of that bullshit, let’s take a walk,” he says, and I follow, relieved, out into the balmy June night air.

  Halfway up the stone path, the same one I walked with my father, his large sandals clomping against the cement, I say, “When I was little I used to come here all the time with my parents.” I shake the image of rose petal crowns and Mom folded in tears by the side of a building. “I wonder if they’ll be okay when my father gets home.”

  Max turns to me in the darkness. “Probably not,” he says. “I don’t mean to be a downer, Jailbait. Just realistic. I’m not sure people were meant to be burdened with family, chained down to one person forever.”

  “As in, married?” I ask, trying not to let his words crush me. But what if he’s right? What if we’re not meant to stay with only one person?

  “Yeah, as in. Now, in love and fucking like rabbits? That’s another story,” he says, wrapping his arms around me, and pulling me to his chest. “A whole different story. Realistic and enjoyable.”

  “At least there’s an in-love part,” I say, trying not to choke on the rest, which seems to mix with the cloying scent of roses here, strong and sweet in the dense, humid air.

  When we finally reach the top of the hillside and the wall where Mom once picked wreath grass, we stand, staring out over the vista, taking in the golden glow of moonlight rippling across the surface of the Sound.

  Max moves behind me and presses his hips against me, his chin resting in the space between my neck and shoulder.

  “So, how about that fucking I was talking about?” My heart speeds up, but he adds, “This will be us—can be us—every single night in California. View included.”

  I turn to face him. “Not here, though, right?”

  “Not unless you want it to be, Jailbait.”

  He lets go of me, and leans out over the stone wall. He pulls the flask out, takes a sip, and hands it to me. This time, I take a big gulping swallow, and immediately double over, coughing.

  “God, what is that?” I ask, when I can talk past the burning in my throat.

  “Absinthe.” He laughs. “It’s deadly. You’d better not have more than a few sips.”

  He takes another, but I’m pretty sure I’m out. Already the swift burn has moved from my throat to my chest to my fingers, filling up every open space in my body.

  I move closer to him, take his hand. “You know I can’t wait, right? To finish exams and leave? We’ll be on the road for my sixteenth birthday,” I say ticking off the items I’ve counted so many times in my head. “There’s still plenty of money left, so a nice hotel. Room service, even.” I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself.

  “Sixteen, huh?” he says, capping the flask and returning it to the depths of his pocket. “I barely remember sixteen.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I remember it well. It’s the last time my mother came home. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “I’m sorry, Max. I get that.”

  “I know you think you do.” He peels off his jacket and lays it across the stone wall, and jumps up onto the wall next to it. “It’s a fucking sauna out here tonight,” he says.

  “Max—” I reach up and hold on his pant leg.

  “I’m fine.” He pulls away and spreads his arms wide. “‘One flower, holding to the cliffs, yawning at a canyon…’”

  “What?” I call up. He looks down at me and laughs.

  “Kerouac. ‘One flower, holding to the cliffs, yawning.’ Something like that. I forget. You should read him. Get to know him. Your nana should have married him.” He jumps back down and wraps his arms around me. “Fuck that. I’m drunk, and he was out of his mind. You should marry me.”

  He reaches into his pocket and gets down on one knee, and holds out a red piece of tissue paper.

  “What is this, Max?” The air spins for real now. For a second, I wonder if I’m dreaming.

  “I didn’t have a nice box or anything. I should have gotten a box. I’m not so great at making things pretty.”

  “You didn’t have to get me anything.” But he’s laughing and my head is swimming with formless, amoebic thoughts, the smell of lilacs and roses suddenly so pungent in my nose, they’re making me nauseous. I peel the paper back. A delicate gold ring with a filigree butterfly on it, with blue enamel-glazed wings, winks up at me in the moonlight.

  “It’s a Morpho, right?” he asks, and I nod, speechless and a little bit terrified because what if he’s actually proposing to me? But it’s so very beautiful I could cry. Also, my tongue isn’t working and maybe my throat has swelled, and I feel like I can’t breathe. “According to the lady in the shop, it’s an antique. Eighteen-karat gold,” he says, slipping it on my finger.

  And then he’s singing, and the flask is out again and I’m drinking even though I shouldn’t, and we’re on the ground, and his lips are on my neck, then my chest, and my voice, breathless, is saying, “Max, I want to,” and the earth reels out from under me as he hikes up my dress, and his pants are down, and my undersides are wet with damp from the dew.

  And as he pulls his underwear down, I hear myself say, “Oh god, don’t,” but it’s not because I don’t want to, and it’s not even to him, but to me. The absinthe rushes my throat, and I’m rolling away from him, my guts spilling up out onto the ground.

  Rising up out of me, again and again and again.

  Max says, “Shit! Fuck! Sorry, Jailbait. Come on. It’s okay. It’s all my fault. Let it come out. Get it over with. You’ll feel better when it’s out of you.”

  And then, even though I thought I had nothing left, I’m retching into bushes, the awful vinegar smell of puke blanketing everything.

  The sky comes and goes, the music from elsewhere crescendos and disappears altogether, and Max comes into focus, but blurs into nothingness again.

  Finally, he’s there, somewhat solid, coaxing me up, telling me we have to walk, and the sensation of being dragged, of my feet crunching gravel even though I can barely move on my own.

  The light intensifies, and we’re in the parking lot, and people can see. Someone moves out of our way.

  “Oh god, gross, look at her dress.”

  “This is why you don’t invite sophomores to prom.”

  And, Max, barking obscenities, squeezing my shoulders and whispering, “Don’t worry, Jailbait, we’ll get you cleaned up before you get home.”

  And then the buses are in front of us, and the cars and the limos, and Max is still there next to me, holding me up, holding me tight, and steering me forward to our limousine.

  Somewhere in there I hear Dean’s voice, and Angie and Melissa asking if I’m okay.

  And when Max says, “Does she look it?” one of them stifles a laugh and the other doesn’t bother, just busts out laughing.

  LATE JUNE

  TENTH GRADE

  I awaken at 3:00 a.m. to get some water and Advil, the sour taste of vomit in my mouth, and the reality of my mother, sprawled on the living room sofa, in a hot-pink kimono, surrounded by books and letters and wine, keeping me from falling back to sleep.

  I pad across the room to study her. There must be five letters strewn across the table, waiting to be mailed to no one in the morning.

  I pick one up.

  My dearest Jack.

  And another.

  My dearest Jackie.

  The words blur, and I wonder if I’m still buzzed from the absinthe.

  I’m writing you one last time to say goodbye.

  I swallow back the rising bile, and cover her with the crocheted blanket Nana made for us years ago, before t
ossing the letters in the bathroom wastebasket and stumbling back to bed.

  LATE JUNE

  TENTH GRADE

  Four hours later, I roll out of bed, sidestep the rancid blue dress that lies in a heap on my floor, and stare at myself in the mirror. I look like death. I’m an actual case study for why prom is held on a weeknight.

  I grab the dress and ball it in a towel. I’ll figure it out later. Wash it on the hand-rinse cycle, or sneak it to the dry cleaner’s.

  In the bathroom, I step in the shower and leave the water as cold as I can stand it. The reek of the night rinses from me, replaced with the crisp, fresh scent of green apple. Details reel back to me in sharp color: The dancing. The absinthe. Max on his knee, doing what?

  I glance down at my naked fingers, wondering.

  Me on the ground with my dress up. Max over me, pants down.

  Me, puking.

  I turn to the stream, mouth open, and swallow down gulps of cold water, trying to rinse away the awful, sour taste that lingers. When I step out and grab a towel, I see the crush of letters in the wastebasket.

  Mom, on the couch.

  The empty wine bottles.

  At least I escaped her scrutiny.

  Back in my room, the top of my nightstand is empty. I slide open the drawer—memory flashing—and see the small blue-butterfly ring he gave me.

  Antique store. Eighteen-carat gold, he had said.

  My eyes go to the other side of my room, to the drawer with the remaining bills in purple paper, a much smaller stack. At least he used some of it for me.

  I pull on shorts and a T-shirt, grab my cell phone and a stale granola bar from a box that has been in there for a century, and head out the door for my final. By the time I reach the end of our street, there’s a text from Aubrey:

  Hey, how was prom?

  Text photos!

  Anyway, chem final going to be brutal.