(An excerpt from Never a Cloud)

The Gathered

“In my first year of life, I walked how many miles? The annoying side of writing is description. The public side of friendship—is it conscious thought or calculation? Fast friends make slow turtles. How can I gauge a poet’s seriousness without proper instructions, or measure the pride in a handknit sweater? You see, the moon is full; it floods its brim and blinds me, momentarily, to the perfection of the stitches right before my eyes. I am at my typewriter, HELLO, and you are here for a story. 

On Hopper’s Island, where Ava was born, and again in Taos, where she spent her early childhood, I placed her playpen outside in all but the worst weather. As soon as she could speak, Ava could tell you the difference between a typhoon, a haboob, and a nor’easter. Most of the time, in Taos, I managed to get her back inside before her mouth filled with sand. I loved the vastness then, and the wavy lines, compared to New England, where everything was narrow, straight, and tight. Jack Kerouac was the reluctant godfather to the hippie movement. And I, regrettably, was a reluctant mother to anyone. 

That brings me to the hotly contested subject of Ava’s last name. When I chose to raise her solo, I had openly said to the universe: I have the liberty to do as I wish. I have followed the way of the Tao and “avoided the authorities.” Here’s my rationale. Kerouac’s family, and mine, worked and lived at the textile factories of Lowell, Massachusetts. Both were of French Canadian descent. If I had had my druthers, I would have searched Kerouac out and, quite possibly, married him at eighteen, in 1968, and we’d have had one fine year together before he died at forty-seven. Scribbled secret notebooks, unspeakable visions of Proust sipping tea, and wild, un- disciplined composing, what did Jack forget? 

“Seriously, Mom, where did you go to—what was inside your head when you picked a last name like Kerouac?” Ava had sighed. 

(I’m sure she had wailed. June Cleaver was in rare form again, baking ricotta rum-soaked raisin pies, which I appreciated, and slamming doors, which I didn’t. Sweet sixteen going on sinister seventeen.) 

At my typewriter, I hit the return key.
“Can you tell me how that makes you feel, sweetie?”
I adjusted the pencil tucked behind my ear and gave her my undivided attention.
“Put yourself in my shoes,” she said (she wasn’t going anywhere). “Reflect, if you will, on your junior year: American Authors of the Twentieth Century.” Her hands went on her hips, classic, with one exacting knee bent, as a glaze settled over her eyes. “The class breaks into the chorus of “On the Road Again,” led by your English professor, before you’re barraged by classmates asking for writing tips, cheat sheets, and a copy of my father ‘Jack’s’ autograph.” 

“I thought I was gifting you with a connection to his earthly genius.” (My tea was cold.) “Kerouac told the true story of the world, of love, of joy, of spontaneity. The jewel at rest in the center of the individual, Ava.” 

“How about this,” she huffed, then stepped outside, a stone’s throw from the beach, “out on a date with the co-captain of varsity soccer, and just before he kisses me, he asks, ‘Are you in the flow, Kerouac, freed of any syntactical inhibitions?’” 

She picked up a piece of driftwood, angry-like, and heaved it into the sea. 

“People’s names are based on actual events and people!” 

“Wow. That’s a lot of baggage, sweetie.” I handed her a tissue from my pocket. “Blow as hard as you want. Say what you want from the bottom- less well of your heart.” 

“Don’t think I’ll ever be happy about this.” 

Ava was moving away from me now, across the sand and up the hill through the dunes to our house. A buzzard circled low and lazy overhead. “I bet the Tardifs and Kerouacs are related,” I called, “distant cousins for sure. When a tight-knit tribe of the Québécoise left Canada, they did so holding hands. There were only so many Filles de Roi to go around, and not enough trappers to satisfy the choice ‘Daughters of the King.’” “That’s disgusting!” 

I wasn’t all that worried. My father always said, “Gee, I wish there was something that I could give Violet that would make her happy.” Instead, many times he never saw me, though I was right there in front of him. I had come back down the back of a mountain that he had yet to climb. Ava would wander in zigzags if she so chose. And I made a promise: I will see the sweat on her brow when she returns. When Ava Blue Kerouac learns she has gone as far as needed, she will arrive where she was meant to be. When Margot listens to her original self, not the “wife,” or “the mother,” but the one visionary voice that belongs to only her, she will grow.”