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 lands on the rug with a satisfying thud.
I hate that dumb book. The letter writing started right after Nana gave it to Mom, and told us all her old stories again. She and Nana are always going on about the guy, some long-dead author who no one cares about anymore. Just because Nana met him once when she was young.
The Kerouac letters weren’t the only sign of my mother being crazy, though. There was the constant crying, the sleeping, the heavy drinking, and recently the talking to herself or, more accurately, the conversations she started having with my dad when he wasn’t there. Calling him by name, laughing with him all flirty and weird, when it was clear they weren’t on the phone.
I’d walk past her bedroom and hear her talking to him, but when I peeked in, there was no phone in sight, no laptop open. Only Mom, alone, sitting on the edge of her bed staring at the wall.
“JL? You there? I’m really sorry, hon. Did you hear what I said?”
Dad’s voice drifts back to me. When did he pick up again? And why is he apologizing?
“No.” The word sticks in my throat. I want to hang up. I shouldn’t have called. He barely checks in anymore. Not really. Not unless he has bad news.
“They extended the contract, sweetheart … nothing I could help. They have the right … two options … practically begged me … end of August, latest … swear … come out … stay the summer here.”
The room reels. I don’t want to hear the rest of his words.
Instead, I count on my fingers. It’s the same deal as last time. “But that’s four more months, Dad, and Mom isn’t doing so well.” I stop, swallow back more tears. Telling him will only make him want to stay away longer.
“I know, honey. I feel awful. This is the absolute last extension I have to honor.”
But I’m not listening anymore. I’m lost in the collage of Kerouac’s face, staring up at me through the glass square of the coffee table.
EARLY APRIL
TENTH GRADE
I drop the stack of bills and Mom’s letter in the box, right as Benny drives up, my favorite mailman. He’s been delivering our mail since I was little.
“I’ve got those!” he calls from the curb, his hand stretched out the open mail truck door. I walk over, smiling, and place them in his hand. He quickly sorts through them and frowns.
“You sure about this one?” He hands it back to me, the letter Mom gave me to mail, a sympathetic look on his face. “The addressee,” he says.
I read the name, my brain only partially registering:
Mr. Jean-Louis Kerouac
7 Judy Ann Court
Northport, NY 11768
I blink, confused, not only by Kerouac’s last name, but also by the familiar letters of my own first name—Jean Louise—preceding it. When I manage to look up, Benny says, “It’s not the first one. All last month. They kept on coming. Letter after letter to the same address.”
He disappears below the window like he’s retrieving something from under his seat, and reappears with a rubber-banded bundle of envelopes, all stamped Return to Sender.
“It would be a federal offense for me not to mail them, but once they come back … Well, I was hoping to maybe catch your mother in person.”