Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me - Gae Polisner Page 0,31

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