“Are you trying to turn me on?” she deadpanned.
That made Ted laugh and he appreciated it. She had received him without judgment. Then she added, “I don’t think there are answers for that. To why you’re so nowhere, or feel you’re so nowhere. Clearly you have a lot inside you that you want to get out, on a page maybe, but then what?”
“I dunno. Don’t you have things you want to get out and honor?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Why not? Can we?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Some mysteries you have to learn to accept. When you grow up.”
“When you grow up,” Ted repeated. She turned her palms up like, “This is a hard truth, but what the hell.” Ted checked for the five hundredth time—no wedding ring.
“C’mon, what’s the worst that can happen? I could get arrested for harassing an old Puerto Rican lady?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Not you, not calling you ‘old.’”
“I’m half Dominican. Uh-huh. There are worse things than harassing old Puerto Rican ladies.”
“Are you doing anything today? Again, not calling you ‘old.’”
“No, I have a day off.”
“And you don’t need to spend it with your boyfriend?”
“Subtle. You’re like a detective. A regular Nancy Drew.”
She was funny, and her insults had no sting, not like Marty; her insults felt nice, like acupuncture. How did she do that? Ted wondered. What was her mojo? He liked everything about her. This was bad. Joyce was right when he said, First you feel, and then you fall. Mr. James Joyce, that is, not Dr. Joyce Brothers. He wanted to spend the day with this Mariana Blades just goofing off. She made things seem possible. Was that her gift in general or just her gift with Ted? Was she giving this in particular to Ted or did she just give this to the world, and Ted happened to be sitting across from her today?
“Well, you could always hang around and officiate, I mean, not officiate, and not coach, it’s not a game, or referee, more like oversee, or…” The coffee was running away with his tongue. He sounded like an idiot. He feared an imminent malapropism.
“Babysit?” she offered. An insult? Kind of, but no, not coming from her.
“Bingo. Babysit. And, you know, make sure I don’t do anything stupid? Anything too stupid.”
The counterman arrived with more coffee, exactly what Ted did not need, and put the coffee and the order of plátanos on the table. Ted looked skeptically at the plate and sniffed.
“Ach, what are these, fried bananas?” He pushed them around his plate with his finger. “They are! These are fucking fried bananas! Very funny. This guy’s fucking with me. Doesn’t like the white guy with the Latin girl, right? I get the message, amigo, loud and clear. It’s 1978, okay?”
The counterman just stared impassively and repeated, “It’s 1978.”
“Oh, you’re gonna act like you don’t understand now.”
“Ted…” Mariana tried to cut him off.
“Mariana, please tell this gentleman that this is not West Side Story. This plate is gross.”
Mariana looked pained, looked up at the counterman, and said, “Mi amigo es un poco lento mentalmente en su cabeza asi que por favor perdona lo. Es inofensivo.”
“Yeah, what she said,” Ted seconded.
The counterman nodded and smiled somewhat forgivingly at Ted, apologizing. “Lo siento.”
“Hey, watch it with that lo siento, buddy, I can do this all day.”
Mariana said, “Lo siento is ‘I’m sorry.’”
“What?”
“He said he’s sorry.”
“Okay, cool, cool, tell him it’s okay. I accept. Yo accept, lo siento.”
Mariana said something to the counterman that seemed to go on a lot longer than “I accept your apology.” Then she turned back to Ted and said, “You guys are good now.”
Ted was magnanimous. “Good. Bueno.”
The counterman excused himself and walked away. Ted brought a small piece of plátano to his lips and tasted warily. It was very good.
“These aren’t fried bananas, are they?”
Mariana shook her head no. Then she couldn’t help herself and laughed so hard she almost spit some coffee on Ted. Ted started to shove more and more plátanos into his mouth.
He said, “Oh my God. I don’t care what they are. They’re fucking great.”
47.
The rain cascaded down Marty’s windows. The panthers had gotten better as rainmakers. They were now pouring water down all three of Marty’s windows that faced the street while working hard on their tans. Marty was awake but hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. He was reading Walter Benjamin’s “On Hashish.” He looked at the windows across the room and muttered to himself, “Another fucking rainout.”
48.
It was not raining. It was a beautiful late summer day that felt more like the beginning of the season. Ted and Mariana were hanging out near the apartment building they’d staked out. Sitting on the Corolla’s fender, drinking more café con leche.
“What was your mom like?” Mariana asked. “Marty never really talks about her.”
“Wonderful. Supportive. Maybe a little overprotective.”
“That makes sense.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Where is she now?”
“Dead. Dead at forty-two from cerebral hemorrhage.”
“May I…” Mariana stopped herself. “No.”
“No, go ahead, may you what?”
“It’s just a thought occurred to me that maybe with your mother gone, you have felt the responsibility to tell her story in opposition to your father, you know, keep up her fight in her absence? And maybe that inauthenticity is blocking you, getting in your way like you said earlier.”
Ted felt his cheeks flush with more anger than seemed appropriate. He clamped down on it. “I’m not telling her story.”
“Okay,” Mariana said, “it was just a thought.”
Mariana grew silent in respect for the dead and for Ted. She could see how love tore him apart. Love for his mother, for his father—there was no common ground there in the way he told it, no place for him to rest. She wouldn’t push. Nothing good ever came of pushing. They sipped their coffee. It was almost lunchtime. They’d been there for hours. They’d taken a walk around the neighborhood. Mariana showed him where she was born and where she grew up and the places she remembered and the places she still liked to go. Even if he never found the old woman, Ted was already thankful for this day.
“Why is this coffee so good?”
A woman of a certain age, who had made no concessions to time and still wore the form-fitting polyester bell-bottoms and plunging V-neck top that displayed more than ample bosom, glided by on platform heels and gave Ted the serious up-and-down once-over.
“Wow,” Mariana said. “You still got it.”
“Yeah, I’m a hit with the grandmas.”
“Maybe she looked at you that way ’cause you remind her of someone.”
“You don’t think maybe she just liked me for me?”
“Go on, Ted, talk to her.”
“She does seem like she could be Dad’s type.”
He followed her for a few moments before tapping the lady on the shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am, my name is Ted Fullilove. Marty Fullilove is my dad. Maybe you know him? Marty? Marty Fullilove? Softball?”
The woman took a step back and scrutinized Ted intently. She reapplied her lipstick, which seemed to Ted an unreadable response to the situation. She got right up in Ted’s face and smiled wide. She nodded. “Mira…” she sighed, and then laughed. “Señor Peanut.”
Ted extended his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said, “have a nice day,” and turned back to Mariana.
Over the next few hours, Ted struck out with five or six more elderly Latinas.
“Maybe we should be more subtle,” Mariana said.
&nbs
p; “More subtle?”
“Well, if it is this woman, she might not want to be found. Maybe she’s married, was married, whatever, so we may want to just observe and not just smack her in the face with it. If we find this woman, it’s no doubt a big deal for her.”
“You mean I should be a little more Nancy Drew?”
“Exactly.”
They went back to relax on the hood of Ted’s car.
“I guess they had a deal about this other woman. Your mom and dad. And you.”
“What? No. There was no deal. She didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“Maybe you both knew.”
“No, we did not.”
“Maybe you both knew enough to not want to know more, which is totally human, but the problem with getting into the habit of not knowing what you know is that eventually you lose touch with what you do know and then you no longer know what you know, which is how the majority of people walk around, and when you remember what you know, or rather what you knew, it can be an unpleasant surprise.”
The air between them stalled heavy and jangly with her words. Ted opened his mouth to reply, but it just hung unhinged. A man walked by and gave Ted a double-take.
“Was that Spanish? ’Cause I didn’t understand a word of it. I wanna argue with you, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can see why you and my father get along.”
“I think you do know.”
The double-take guy had now doubled back to them and was peering very closely at Ted, pointing his finger at him as if trying to remember something. He started to smile and nod emphatically. “Señor Peanut!”
Ted was mortified all over again. “No, no, oh no.” But the guy wouldn’t take no for an answer, he started calling out loudly to whoever’s around, “¡Hola! ¡Señor Cacahuete aqui! Señor Peanut from Jankee!”
A couple of people smiled and walked over, a little crowd started to gather, bigger than you’d think. Ted was a character at the stadium, beloved in his own special way. Something he never quite knew till this awkward moment. He was actually surprised to feel a little swell of brotherhood and love in his chest, even pride, mixed with the sharp-edged feeling of being known for something utterly insignificant in front of a woman you’d like to impress. Ted covered all that in humor, as was his wont, and stage-whispered to Mariana, “My public. What are you gonna do? The hazards of celebrity. Goes with the territory for me, but you never asked for this. Lo siento. Anybody have a pen?”
Nobody was asking for his autograph, which made Mariana laugh even harder. Mariana had one of those heartbreaking laughs of someone to whom life has dealt many unfunny blows. It looked like it was painful for her to laugh, like the laughter itself had to navigate a maze of knives to get out alive, which made Ted fall all the more for her on the spot. Some laughs were contagious, and some were moving. She laughed sincerely, but in her eyes there was the sense that she felt in danger when laughing, that she knew life likes to kick you in the ass just when you let your guard down. There was a lot of backslapping going on between Ted and his “adoring” public, but Ted was wondering what hurt this beautiful woman to make her laugh so heartrending and uneasy and pure.
As if she heard Ted’s thoughts, Mariana stopped laughing abruptly. Walking down the street near the staked-out tenement came a Spanish woman in her sixties. This was easily the best lead they’d had. Mariana elbowed Ted and pointed her out. “I don’t know her,” Mariana said, “never seen her.”
They followed a discreet distance behind her. “Nancy Drew,” Ted said sotto voce. The abuela shopped for fruit and vegetables. People in the neighborhood knew her; she’d been here awhile. Ted and Mariana closed the gap, and as the woman was sniffing at a melon, she turned and made eye contact with them. Mariana immediately grabbed Ted for a kiss, to throw the mystery woman off the scent with the charade that she and Ted were lovers. When the woman moved on, Mariana disengaged. Ted was paralyzed, stuck in the previous moment, where he wouldn’t mind staying for the rest of his natural days; he wasn’t sure what the fuck just happened, but he was sure he liked it. “That was close,” Mariana said.
Ted managed to stutter out a “Yeah, Nancy…” and ran out of words after two.
“Drew?” Mariana asked helpfully.
“Drew, yeah, Drew,” Ted said in his daze, bringing his word total to three.
The older woman disappeared into a corner bodega. They followed in half-ironic amateur sleuth mode. Inside the bodega, they could see her buying lottery tickets, paying in crumpled bills and spare change. They walked in, Ted averting his face, hoping to catch her by surprise. He managed to get right up next to her without her sensing, as she concentrated on her lucky numbers.
She felt his presence and looked up. Ted was right there. She stopped breathing, like she’d seen a ghost. Ted was quiet, just presenting himself to her. She reached out her hand to touch him, making sure he was real. She put her hand on his cheek, seemed about to cry, and said, “Tus ojos…”
Ted glanced at Mariana for the translation, which she provided. “Your eyes.”
The old woman continued, “Tus ojos … your eye, like a man. Marty. El Spleenter?”
49.
“Fuck that!” exploded through the door of Marty’s bathroom. “And fuck you!”
Ted stood on this side of the bathroom, locked out, Mariana beside him. “What have you got to lose, Dad? She wants to see you.”
“You got a lot of fucking nerve, I’ll tell you that!”
“I just thought maybe you’d like some—”
“Some what, you creep?”
Ted turned to ask Mariana, “What did you call that thing again?”
Mariana supplied the magic word. “Closure.”
“Closure!” Ted repeated at volume.
From the other side of the door came the perhaps irrefutable retort: “Closure is for pussies!”
“I gotta say, Dad, she was looking pretty good.”
“Shut up!”
“You can’t hide in there all night.”
“It’s my house, I’ll hide anywhere I damn well please!”
The bathroom door swung open suddenly and there Marty stood in a jacket and tie, cleaned up, hair combed, freshly shaven, a big, scowling smile on his face. Ted and Mariana were struck dumb.
Ted gave the old man a little payback: “Shavin’ for his lady…”
“Shut up. I look ridiculous. Like a fucking pterodactyl. Like Al fucking Lewis. Like a vertical corpse.”
“No, Marty, you look spiffy. I would be proud to be on your arm.”
Mariana offered her arm to Marty, who gave Ted a fuck-you smile, whispered in his ear, “You, sir, can suck my dick,” and took Mariana’s arm.
Off they went, leaving Ted to follow in their wake.
50.
The Corolla, that grumpy old Japanese man, refused to start. So they walked to the subway. This made Ted uncomfortable because he had kept his father in that newsless bubble, pretty much sealed off from the world, for the past few weeks. Marty had not ventured beyond the inside of the house, the inside of the car, and a daily visit to Benny’s kiosk, where the old men had helped keep the Sox bubble sealed quite expertly. Ted had managed the VCR charade extremely well and had even convinced Marty that the “A-maz-in’” Bill Mazer was on vacation, so they had stopped watching the sports recap at night. The subway and the walk to Maria’s apartment was a haphazard free-for-all in comparison. Ted was on high alert. He felt like the secret service. The Marty perimeter must not be compromised.
It reminded Ted of when Marty would take him to the park for pickup football. Football wasn’t like softball to Marty, he didn’t bet on it, didn’t take it at all seriously. So he’d allow unathletic Ted to be a part of it. Ted would have been about ten, and Marty would make sure that he got picked among the men. Ted was the only kid there and he wasn’t there because he was good. He was there because Marty was the best quarterback in the neighborhood, and if he wanted his kid to play, his kid would play. M
arty would give Ted a route to run on every play—down and out, down and in, stop and go—and Ted would dutifully run them. Nobody guarded Ted. He didn’t know, but he was playing in a game of his own. If it was five on five, Ted would be the sixth man on his father’s team. Marty would call plays in their huddle for the men and, as they’d break, he’d whisper a route in Ted’s ear. The words were magical and sometimes military, like macho spy talk—buttonhook, down and in, slant, bomb. Ted couldn’t remember if he ever got the ball thrown to him, but Marty would always look him in the eye and say, “We’re saving you for a critical moment. They’re gonna forget about you and that’s when I’ll hit you. Get open, buddy boy. You’re my secret weapon.” It never mattered that he didn’t get the ball; it was the nicest thing his father ever said to him. He was his father’s “secret weapon,” and that was more than enough. The weapon had never been deployed on the asphalt. But tonight it was. Ted was going long and really was, after all, Marty’s secret weapon.
Marty had insisted on bringing a six-pack of beer for the occasion. Ted had suggested wine or champagne; Marty was sure that beer was the right call. Marty also refused to bring his cane. Kinda broke Ted’s heart a little that Marty wouldn’t bring the cane, struggling to appear vigorous and healthy. Marty caught sight of himself in the car-window reflection, and was unable to hide his disappointment. “Whenever I catch my reflection,” he said, “I expect to see a sixteen-year-old kid and I point at it, and think, Who is that old man?”
When necessary, he leaned on Mariana for support. In solidarity with Marty, Ted and Mariana had both dressed nicely for the occasion.
As they sat in the lurching subway car, Marty saw an abandoned New York Post on the seat next to him, and he reached for it idly. Ted, the secret weapon, pounced and grabbed the paper from his father. Marty looked irritated. “What are you doing?”
Bucky F*cking Dent Page 16