I take the stack reluctantly, and thumb through them.
“Wait,” I finally say. “Are these all to him? Jack Kerouac?”
Benny shrugs. “I wasn’t sure at first myself. Never read the guy so I didn’t realize from the name, had only ever heard of him referred to as Jack. But the address … well, most of us older folks, we know the famous addresses along our routes, you know? They ring a bell. So I asked around…”
I nod, wondering how many people at the post office now know my mother is insane.
“My route sub, Shauna, she grew up nearby, and recognized the address immediately.” He nods at my hand clutching the letters. “Turns out anyone from around here knows Kerouac lived over there. Same as we know Billy Joel comes from Hicksville, or Alec Baldwin hails from the South Shore. You know how it is.”
I nod again, even though I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that I’m holding some messed-up letters from my mother.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing my gaze up to Benny’s. “Thanks for this. These. Thanks for not telling anyone.”
“Hey,” he says, trying to turn his voice hopeful. “Maybe that’s not who she meant to send them to? Maybe they’re meant for some sort of relative? But, rest assured, there is no one at that address by that name. Not anymore. I could talk to her. But maybe it’s better if you do.”
“Yeah, better from me,” I say. “Thank you.”
* * *
After he leaves, I sit on the stoop, my heart sinking, and tear open the first envelope, the one she was mailing today. Maybe there’s a logical explanation. Maybe Nana knew him better than she let on. Maybe Jack Kerouac is really my grandfather! Maybe there’s some dark family secret I’m not aware of.
But if that were true, Nana would have told me. She wouldn’t have kept it from me so many years after Pop-pop died.
I unfold the letter, and force myself to read.
After a few brief lines, it becomes more than clear.
He wasn’t my grandfather.
It isn’t about Nana.
My mother is writing love letters to a dead man.
LATE APRIL
TENTH GRADE
Max lies under me, one arm folded behind his head like a pillow, my long brown hair falling over us like a curtain, shielding us from the world. I wanted him to come see the Jezebel. A few days later and you can barely tell the splint from her wing.
I lean down and kiss his eyelids and he smiles. We’ve been dating nearly two whole months already.
I think this, but don’t mention it. We’re already taking things way slower than he wants. No need to point out how long. Everyone knows Max isn’t a virgin, but I’m hoping to hold out until I turn sixteen. Sixteen seems reasonable. I know other girls who have lost their virginity at sixteen. So, it can’t be that slutty or Jezebel-like, not that I give a crap what Aubrey thinks. Even Nana says sixteen is when a girl becomes a woman.
And, not that Max is complaining. Not directly. Not yet. But I can tell he’s losing patience.
“Mmmm,” he says, grabbing my ass and pulling me tighter against him, as if reading my thoughts. He kisses me hard and shakes his head. “God, you’re—” He stops, and motors his lips, his whole body shuddering, like a dog shaking off freezing water. He reaches down, under me, and adjusts himself through his jeans. “Breaking me,” he finishes. “You’re absolutely fucking killing me, Jailbait.”
So maybe he is complaining.
“I am?” I shift my weight off him, concerned, but he pulls me back against him, so that even through his jeans I can feel him there, hard and pulsing beneath my pelvic bone.
“No, it’s fine. Stay. It’s just … See what you do to me? Think you’d be willing to finish me off?”
“Like—?”
“Hand. Mouth. Dealer’s choice. Just so you don’t leave me hanging here like this.”
“Oh,” I say, my face flushing warm.
“Never mind,” he says fast. “It’s okay. You stay here, and I’ll do it.” He closes his eyes and slides me up and down against him, up and down. I close mine, too, lost in the motion until I’m aching, feeling like I might be on the verge. If only I didn’t need to wait. “Is this all right?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I say, “yes,” and I mean it. After all, we have our clothes on, and I like the way it feels, Max hard against me, urgent and wanting me so bad. I’m lost in the rhythm, trying to imagine what it would be like if we did it right this second. It sends a thrill through me. What if I actually am ready?
“I want you, too,” I whisper back. “I swear I do. I just need a little more time.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Max, I do. Really.”
“Shhh, it’s all good.” He moves me faster, and one of his hands slips down my skirt, down the back of my underpants. I let him keep it there, trying not to think too hard about any of it. But what if my mother comes home?
“Don’t stop me, okay?” Max moans and grunts a little, which makes my stomach swirl, so there’s no way I’d even dare.
Instead, I lower my mouth over his, and let our tongues mix, and lose myself in the motion, until he shakes hard once, then again, like a series of little earthquakes are moving through him.
“Oh man, shit, sorry,” he says, sitting up. “I’ll be right back,” and he jumps up and disappears into the hall.
The bathroom door closes.
I stare at the ceiling, and smile. I did that for him. With him.
When he returns, he lies back down and rolls toward me. “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he says.
My heart soars. “And what else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Earlier, you said I am something. Besides killing you, that is.”
He thinks for a second. “Besides killing me, is there anything good left to be?” He smiles his big, cheesy smile, but I shake my head like that’s not good enough, so he says, “Okay, how about this? You’re a ‘bud of love,’ Jailbait. ‘By summer’s ripening breath.’ ‘A bud of love.’”
“Huh,” I say, satisfied, even if I have only the faintest idea what he’s talking about. He’s quoting something. A sonnet. A poem. Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, or someone.
“Shakespeare,” he says, not waiting for me to guess and get it wrong.
I lay my cheek on his chest, and listen to his heartbeat. “Tell me more.”
He strokes the side of my cheek with his thumb. “Okay, fine. How fares thee, my JL? ‘That I ask again; For nothing can be ill, if she be well.’”
I smile, my cheek warm under the touch of his thumb. “What’s that from?”
“Guess.”
“Romeo and Juliet?”
He nods. “Very good! Butchered pretty bad, but still. Jesus, don’t you kids read at all anymore?”
I kick him playfully, and roll away from him, onto my back. “I read,” I say. “Plenty. Just not Shakespeare. Yuck. Can’t understand a word of his.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I say. “Who even needs to?”