Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me - Gae Polisner Page 0,8

short months and already everything had changed. His ponytail gone, beard shaved, and every last tie-dyed T-shirt traded in for khaki pants, a polo shirt, and those god-awful sockless loafers.

But I kind of liked him better that way. It was as if he were suddenly a normal dad, one I could be proud of if he showed up at school. More like your parents. Like everyone elses.’

But my mother, she hated him for it. She wept and pummeled her fists against his chest like a child, begging him to come home and make everything the way it used to be. And now it would be eight more months instead of two.

I had called him that night, told him what a mess Mom was, asked him if there was anything he could do.

“Things change, Butterfly. The world changes,” he had said. “We all need to change with it. Why don’t you both come to LA? The schools are good. At least spend some time out here and see.”

But I didn’t want to go to school there. I had just started high school. We had. I didn’t want to leave you. Not then.

After, I’d gone to my closet and dug out the dumb old starter habitat Dad had bought me four months before, left on my bed with a note taped to the box:

Jean Louise,

My favorite butterfly,

Something to distract you until I get home.

Love, Dad.

P.S. Send photos! Let me know how it goes.

I felt happy how he remembered my fourth-grade teacher had hatched Eastern Tiger Swallowtails in our classroom, how I had hatched them on my own after that. Our class had waited and watched for weeks, until finally, a dozen or so black-and-yellow-winged beauties emerged like fragile miracles. It was the week before Father’s Day, so that Friday she’d invited all the dads to come in. We had cupcakes with butterflies on them, and released the Swallowtails out into the playground. All of them flew away except for one that took up residence on my shoulder. Dad and I stood there, amazed, as the butterfly just stayed and stayed there, its wings quivering, as if preparing to take flight, but changing its mind.

“Well, I guess it takes one to know one,” Dad had said, delightedly taking photos of me to send Mom. That butterfly must have stayed on my shoulder for fifteen whole minutes before Katy Meisler got jealous and tried to cup it in her hands, chasing it away.

I raised that first round last spring, and a second later that summer, each cycle marking time, like that first quivering Swallowtail on my shoulder, until my father would come back home to us.

But, of course, both rounds of common butterflies had come and gone, and even the Tropicals had hatched without seeing his return.

It took me coming here, to finally bring him home.

Now, he says we’ll go home together and face Mom.

But here’s the thing, Aubrey: he doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you.

And, those letters? They were only the beginning of it all.

MID-APRIL

TENTH GRADE

When Mom goes to sleep, I watch the butterflies, the splinted Jezebel I still can’t believe I helped. When it’s late enough that Dad might be home, I move to the living room couch in the soundless blue glow of the television, my homework untouched, and dial him again, missing the days when I was excited to talk to him, when every conversation wasn’t laden with an overwhelming dread.

It rings five times before he picks up. I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t; I have a bad sinking feeling in my gut.

“Hey, Butterfly.” He sounds winded, distracted. “Let me turn down the music. I’m on the treadmill.” Joe Cocker, or some other guy with a Joe Cocker–like gravelly voice, blares, then quiets in the background. “Oh shit! Be right there. I forgot I had something on the stove.”

The phone muffles, then clanks down, and I hear Dad curse some more in the background. At least he must be alone, so that’s a good thing.

My eyes shift to the coffee table, to the large glossy book, The Beat Generation, with Jack Kerouac’s face plastered all over the black-and-white cover. Repeating images of him in different squares, collaged around a larger one in the center. There’s one in the top right corner that if you added a little scruff to it, I swear would look just like Max.

I stretch my leg, using my bare toes to shove the book to the corner, then off the table, altogether. It