by Gae Polisner
* * *
If you’ve ever plugged a request for directions from Long Island, New York, to Malibu, California, into Google Maps, you’d know it’s more than 2,800 miles from our coast to theirs. 43 hours by car. 263 hours by bicycle.
Nearly a thousand hours if you wanted to try to walk from here to there.
You’d be surprised what a straight shot it is. Almost directly due west on I-80, with only the slightest sweep north through the Midwest. Illinois. Iowa. Nebraska. Another sweep south when you hit Colorado.
“We could be there by Sunday night,” I tell him. “Or I guess Monday if we want to rest, get a hotel room, and sleep. I’m going to have to call and talk to Dad at some point, make up some flight times. Check in with my mom.”
She probably doesn’t even realize I’m not at Aubrey’s.
Max nods, and the thought of my nana, worried, slips through my mind. But I’ll make it up to her, explain everything once I’m safe at Dad’s. She once kissed Kerouac. She’ll understand.
Max checks the throttle, presses the starter, shifts into first, stamps on the pedal, and the bike revs up, and we take off slowly, the terrain bumpy on the pitted back roads of his neighborhood. But soon we’re on the highway, and the road evens out, and the kilter and hum of the bike grow steady.
I wrap my arms around him, close my eyes, and press my forehead to the cool leather surface of his jacket.
I hadn’t realized how very tired I am.
* * *
Near 2:00 a.m., we stop at some deserted old gas station near the Delaware Water Gap to fill up. Max is oddly quiet, still pensive and brooding. I thought he’d be excited, overzealous even, but mostly he just watches me, checking for something, though I’m not sure what. Maybe proof that I know what I’m doing.
I don’t.
I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. But it feels right. It feels like the only choice I have.
By 4:00 a.m., I’m seeing signs for Williamsport, which I think is where they have some big baseball thing my father used to talk about. “Williamsport?” I yell, because I’m hoping Max gives a shit. I need to talk. I’m having a seriously hard time staying awake, and it’s not like you can sleep on the back of a Kawasaki.
“Nice!” Max yells back. “Little League World Series place, right?”
If Max is tired or needs a break he doesn’t say so, and when I ask that next, he yells back that he’s okay, how we should keep on moving.
“I’m going to need to sleep eventually!” I call to him.
Soon we’re passing signs for State College, and by the time the sun is rising, I’m seeing signs for the Allegheny National Forest.
I tug on Max’s shoulder, then tug harder. Every part of me feels stiff and sore from hanging on. “I have to pee!” I yell. “I have to rest. There’s a sign for a motel up there.”
Max doesn’t answer, but he obliges.
He veers Blue Morpho off at the next exit ramp.
* * *
The Shawnee Motel may be the most pathetic, least romantic place in the entire world. Its lobby sports little in the way of décor. Two threadbare blue couches, four clashing blue chairs, and walls the beige of an old ACE bandage. The place smells of dust and mildew, and a faint, sharp smell I’m hoping isn’t urine, but chlorine.
“Can I help you?”
The clerk is barely a grown-up, not much older than Max. Still, I worry he’ll be suspicious. Turn us away because of my age. Or, worse, report us.
Max squeezes my hand, and knocks near my pocket, and though it takes me a tired second, I pull a bill from my stash.
“We need a room for a few hours, for my sister and me,” Max says. “We’re on our way to Cleveland to visit our pop. We need a nap. To wash up and rest. I can pay cash if you want.”
“I don’t need a whole explanation,” the clerk says. “Cash, credit card, I don’t care. So long as you pay, you’re fine.”
* * *
If the lobby is depressing, the room is worse. Though it does have a balcony that looks out over a sorry, green pool and half the parking lot.
We drop our bags on the bed, and Max says he’s showering. I stare at the green bedspread worn down to a sheen, and vow that my first time won’t be here, not in this gross, pathetic place.
I’m too tired anyway. I’m sure Max is, too. He won’t mind. He’s waited this long. I’ll find us somewhere nicer to stay tonight. A Marriott or a Hampton Inn. Heck, I’d rather be outside, on a blanket on the edge of some scenic overlook, than here.
I listen to the shower run, unlock the terrace door, and step outside.
What is it that makes us suddenly remember, Aubrey? What makes us take notice of what is actually around us, rather than what we want to see?
Is it a janitor at a dumpster, emptying an industrial-sized gray pail, then checking his cell phone, and muttering some obscenity at the ground?
Is it a maid pushing a metal cart from one sad motel room to the next, a stack of thin white towels folded on top?
Or is it the red Toyota that pulls into the parking lot, a pretty woman, unsteady, with long black hair getting out?
Or maybe it’s not any of those, but something else, something smaller. Something simple and stupid, and momentarily sweet and soothing, but utterly jarring to the brain. The sound of your boyfriend’s voice drifting out from the shower, some lame old lyrics you’ve never heard before, spilling out and obliterating you through a half-open bathroom door.
“You can’t sit under an orange tree
In a grove full of thorns…”
Max’s voice is soothing at first, slipping out with the steam through the bathroom door. It makes me laugh even, his nutjob songs with the nutjob lyrics no one my age has ever heard before.
“You can’t pick the sweet tangerines,
When the trees to begin with ain’t yours…”
The kind of song my mother was singing. Something dumb about loganberry pie. My mother and Max, peas in a pod. Max and his apples and his tangerines.
Tangerine.
I blink at the janitor as he disappears back through the main entrance, and close my eyes altogether as the maid does the same into a room below me.
But open or closed, I can’t make it stop. Max’s voice, mixing with the details from last night. When I first came in from Aubrey’s house.
Not how Max was already there.
Not the television or wine bottles.
Not the two glasses, or Max’s leather jacket on the chair.
No. It’s the other details. Ones I missed at first.
Because I didn’t want to see.
Max, staggering, panicked. Zipping his jeans.
His T-shirt, inside out.
His feet, bare.
Shoes, I don’t know where.
And something else.
Something way worse. Through the sliver of my mother’s open door:
Her orange kimono, lying twisted on the floor.
That’s it, Aubrey. I’m not spelling it out any clearer. It’s already more than you’ll ever need to know.
More than I, or anyone, ever need to know.
Yet there it is. So now you do.
Like I said when I started this thing, it’s yours to keep, but, please, you can’t ever tell.
It would break everything. Dad coming home and Mom getting better are all the hope I have left now.
Promise me, please, it never leaves these pages.
Promise me, Aubrey. Promise me.
So, what’s left of the story, now, to tell?
Just Max.
Of course you want to know about that.
LATE JUNE
TENTH GRADE
“JL?”
The air is thick. Unbreathable. Everything moves in slow motion.
Max, walking toward me. From the sad hotel room out to the balcony.
I hear him on his way, each sound, each movement, magnified.
The shower turning off.
The towel rough against hi
s skin.
Jeans zipping.
His backpack opening, him rifling through.
He’s putting on deodorant.
He’s searching for things.
I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“Jailbait?”
The balcony door is open. We’re only two floors up. If I wanted to, I could squeeze between the bars and drop down.
If I fell and shattered, would it hurt worse than the pain I am in?
“Hey, what are you doing out—?” He stops. The tears on my face, the slump of my shoulders, tell him everything.
“I’m so sorry, Jailbait.”
I hold up my hand against his words. There isn’t really anything he can say.
“I need to go, Max,” I say, my voice clear and forceful. “I need to get to the airport and go without you. There’s a flight that leaves at six tonight, from an airport in Cleveland.”
I hold my cell phone screen out to him. I’ve already checked the times.
“Okay,” he says. He puts a hand on my shoulder, but I flinch and he takes it away. “I tried, Jailbait, I tried to, tried…” he stammers. “It was a mistake, and I was trying to tell you.” I nod through my tears. “I was wrong, really wrong, and … It was too late. I didn’t know what else to do.”
And he was trying, wasn’t he? That much is true. He had been trying, from the minute I saw him in the hall.
Certainly, once we reached his house.
“Are you sure, Jailbait?” he had pleaded. “Maybe I’m not the best—”
I had put my hand to his mouth.
I had made the admission go away.
* * *
The Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is a long three hours from the Shawnee Motel in Pennsylvania. It’s not even 9:00 a.m., so I tell Max to rest first. We’ll make it in plenty of time.
I lie down, too, on the opposite side of the bed, and watch him sleep, his breath uneven, his eyes fluttering restlessly behind his lids.
I’m in bed with Max Gordon, but not how I planned. There’s an ocean between us, and I’ll never swim back to that side.
He will take me to the airport, and my father will pick me up in California.
I am almost sixteen, and still a virgin.
Whatever else he took and gave, Max Gordon will not be the one to take that from me.
Part VI
Butterflies are covered in delicate scales that rub easily off, but they’re not so delicate they will die from the human touch.
They are more resilient than that.
JUNE 29
SUMMER BEFORE ELEVENTH GRADE
I put the pen down, but pick it up again.
I have a few more things I want to say.
Here’s a weird truth, Aubrey. I keep thinking about the Tropicals, Jezebels and “little mirrors,” and the things about butterflies that amaze me.
Did you know that some of the most beautiful species of butterflies on earth eat their own? The Blue Morpho, for instance, is one. You wouldn’t think something that pretty would do something that terrible, yet it does.
And the Black Muted Spangle, with its velvety indigo wings, was deemed extinct by expert lepidopterists until someone rediscovered them in India. Not gone, Aubrey, only missing from human detection.
And here’s a thing about butterflies that no one gets, really. We think they’re so fragile. Easily harmed or worse. But they’re not. Not really.
They’re stronger than we give them credit for.
Take that Jezebel whose wing I fixed. She was the last Jezebel standing at the end of spring. Like how a broken bone gets stronger with the healing, maybe our bruises make us tougher in the end.
But enough about butterflies. You’ll want to know what’s next for me, here, on Dad’s balcony in California. I’ll put it this way: I don’t mind if we stay a bit longer.
There’s something to be said for palm trees and sea breezes.
Mom and I should have both given it more of a chance.
As for school, Dad called and explained, gave them some bastardized version of the truth that had already been bastardized by me. Not lies, exactly, but omissions.
Some things are better kept unsaid.
Whatever he told them, it worked. They gave me till the end of summer to take my chem final online. My father is good at that, isn’t he? Negotiating deals. A master salesman.
And Max and me, well, that’s over. And the truth is: I almost feel worse for him than me.
Almost, but not really.
Not enough to take his calls, at least.
And he does keep calling me.
Calling and texting that he’s sorry.
He feels awful.
He misses me.
He loves me.
He wants me to be okay.
And there’s the matter of the money. However much of it is left. He offered to send it. But, right now, I don’t really care about that.
So I don’t answer. I can’t talk to him. I’m not ready yet.
It’s not that I hate him; I don’t. But it’s also not the kind of thing you can easily forgive.
You were right about that part, Aubrey. There were plenty of things about Max that weren’t good for me. Things I wasn’t ready for. But others I was. And, at least in the end, I stood up for myself. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a price to pay.
I do get this: I was naïve about some things, and you were trying to protect me, even if you weren’t sure against what.
Which reminds me. I used to watch this show with Max. I think you know it. A cartoon called BoJack Horseman. It’s about this horse who’s a washed-up actor in Hollywood, and in some episodes he dates this owl. It’s stupid and ridiculous, and really funny. And at the end of Max’s favorite episode, she says this thing about red flags and how, when you wear rose-colored glasses, they only look like regular ones.
So, maybe that was me. Maybe I missed the red flags because I saw Max through rose-colored glasses.
But there were things you were wrong about, too. I need to be clear. I wasn’t a slut, or a whore, or a Jezebel, no matter what I did, or didn’t do.
I’m just me, a sixteen-year-old girl, ready to move forward, and to feel things.
And I won’t feel bad about that, Aubrey. Or bad about anything I’m ready for.
You shouldn’t, either, when you are.
So, I guess that’s it. I leave us here.
Where we wind up later is a mystery.
After you read this, you’ll make up your mind.
But I do want you to know that I’m sorry. Sorry for hurting you. Sorry for not telling you about Ethan. Sorry for not trying harder to listen. And sorry for sharing our dumb old secret about a doll. I know what betrayal and humiliation feel like, and I wouldn’t wish those things on my worst enemy. I certainly wouldn’t wish them upon you.
So, I’m sorry. I hope that’s enough. Enough for us to find our way back to understanding. That we can be civil … or something even better when I get back.
Because, yes, we’re coming back. That part is true. My mom can keep baking because my father is finally coming home.
Hopefully then she’ll get better. Maybe we need to find her someone better than Dr. Marsdan.
And that’s it. End of story. I’m trusting you won’t tell anyone. It would only hurt people for no good reason. I know my mother didn’t mean it—couldn’t have meant it—simply took him for some old, dead writer.
Would it be so bad to let the truth die with him? With Kerouac?
Let it be dead to all of us.
Oh, and one more thing, Aubrey. Not sure if you noticed the date, but it’s officially my birthday. I turned sixteen today. Can you believe it was only a few short months ago that Nana insisted on getting me the Tropicals? She meant well, didn’t she? But I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different if I had stuck to the common ones, the Monarchs and brush-footed fritillaries, the garden variety I always raised, that we
re easy to set free in my own backyard.
I guess we’ll never know.
With love and hope,
JL
I put the pen down, hand cramping, and sit breathing with the pages in my lap.
JUNE 29
SUMMER BEFORE ELEVENTH GRADE
It’s less than a mile to the post office on Heathercliff Road, across from the Point Dume shopping center. I’ve passed it with Dad a half a dozen times since I got here, more than a week ago.
I change into my bikini—the one Nana got me with the neon butterflies that I somehow managed to throw in my backpack—and pull a sundress over that with sneakers and sunglasses. Dad took me shopping. I have no shortage of things to wear, summer clothes.
In Dad’s office, I find a stamp and an envelope, and scrawl the address I know by heart across the front.
As I head out to Dume Drive, west toward Heathercliff, the sun beats down unrelentingly hopeful and bright.
* * *
By the time I reach the double glass doors of the post office, I’m sweating. My reflection in the pane takes me by surprise. I look older than I did a few weeks ago. Sophisticated and brave, glamorous, even. Like I belong in Los Angeles County, California.
Inside, the blast of air conditioning envelops me, chilling the sweat on my neck, making the hairs there prickle and stand. I lower my sunglasses so my eyes can adjust to the dim gray light of indoors, and join the line of patrons waiting for their turn.
Ahead of me are six customers, and though there are three windows, only one of them is manned. The frazzled-looking postal clerk sighs. I scan to my left, to the row of blue steel boxes, to the middle one that reads: “First Class Mail. Out of Town.”
Good enough. I step out of line.
The handle is cold; the mouth of the mailbox squeaks loudly as I lower it down.
“Here goes nothing,” I say, aloud, rereading the only address on the envelope, though it takes one more breath to be sure:
J.-L. Kerouac
