Bucky F*cking Dent (23 page)

Ted pulled another photo from the pile, one in which it looks like Marty is trying to teach young Ted how to hit. Marty is standing behind Ted with his hands around his waist and they are holding the bat together, looking out at something unseen coming at them—a ball? The future?

“Look at that,” Ted said. “I don't ever remember you trying to teach me to hit.”

“El Spleenter,” Maria said.

“I don't remember it, either,” Marty said.

Maria moved on and uncovered a heroic shot of Marty pitching, as perfect as a baseball card, upon which someone with a flair pen, no doubt Maria, had drawn a heart like a schoolgirl. Marty laughed and Maria feigned embarrassment. Ted apologized to his mother in his mind, but felt prompted to ask, “Why didn't you two stay together?” Marty and Maria looked at each other, as if trying to decide who would or should take this question. Maria looked at Marty as if to ask if it was okay to talk about. Marty nodded. Maria spoke up, “I tell you sungthing. Stay together? We never get together. We were both marry.”

Ted, obviously shocked at this revelation, looked at Marty for elaboration. “I was a very moral amoral man,” Marty said.

“What about the journal?”

“You can't believe everything you read, son.”

Mariana came up to him. “Can I talk to you outside?”

Mariana took Ted from the apartment and they walked around the block. “How could I not remember my dad teaching me to hit?”

“It was a long time ago,” said Mariana.

“No, but it's, like, something that I've always been pissed about, you know, about my dad—he never had time, he never thought I was worth it, never believed in me, never tried, but look, there's evidence of him trying right there. And he was faithful? You believe that?”

“It's not important, but yes, I do.”

“Jesus, it's like I'm the one who's full of shit.”

“Not really,” said Mariana, “it's just the way you've been telling your story. That photo never fit with the story you're telling, now maybe it does. Now maybe your story is changing. Doesn't mean you're full of shit. Means you're awake and alive and open to a rewrite.”

Ted couldn't get his mind off the iconic image of father and son that he had completely erased from his own self-definition. It was like damning evidence brought in by a surprise eyewitness on the last day of a murder trial. Ted's world rolled lightly from side to side like a ship at sea. He felt his balance was a little shaky as he walked.

“Wait.” He stopped. “Why did you want to come out here? Is there something you want to talk about with me?”

“No,” replied Mariana, “I just wanted to get outside for a bit. I love the streets up here in the summer. Like a world party. Disco coming from the windows. It's like God is having a tea dance and playing disco on his own speakers.”

“God is not playing disco. God hates disco.”

“God doesn't hate any music.”

“No, he hates disco. He does. He just doesn't talk about it that much. It's the creation He's least proud of. After leeches and television. It's the worst music ever invented.”

“It's fun. It makes you dance, and it's sad, too. There's a lot of pain under the beat, if you listen—‘Oh no, not I, I will survive…'”

“It's the end of civilization. I don't wanna listen. That's why you wanted to get outside? To listen to ‘Get Down Boogie Oogie Oogie'?”

Mariana smiled with mischief. “Yeah, that. And I wanted to give them time alone.”

“Time alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that kinda time alone? Really? They're both, like, a hundred.”

“That's not the story they're telling.”

“For real?”

Ted turned around and picked up the pace back to Maria's apartment. He felt like a derelict chaperone, and wasn't sure if he wanted what Mariana seemed pretty sure was happening. They walked back into an empty apartment. No Maria. No Marty. As Ted was about to call out for his dad, he heard it, rustling from the bedroom—there was an unmistakable feeling in the room. Marty and Maria were in there. Ted said a bit too loud, “I can't fucking believe it!” Mariana sshed him. They stood there listening and trying not to listen. “I feel like I'm kinda betraying my mother a little bit.”

“Not at all. This is beautiful.”

“I'm kinda proud of my boy. It's so fucking cute, I can't stand it.”

But just then, decidedly uncute sounds started emanating from the bedroom. Rapid breaths, little moans, and a kind of purring. Mariana held up her hand for Ted to be quiet so she could hear; she repeated the Spanish to herself: “
Incluso el viejo león sigue siendo un rey
—even the old lion is still a king.”

“Ooooh. She's good. I'm no lion, more like the guy who gets eaten by the lion. Like a gazelle or a wildebeest, the unsuspecting guy at the water hole, that's me.”

“It's probably never too late to become a lion.”

“Was that something she was saying, or you?”

“Oh, that was me.” Mariana held up her hand again for quiet. “
Eso es correcto, amor, yo soy tuya, la mujer te tus sueños. Yo he estado esperando por ti, y tu has estado esperando por mi
. That's right, lover, I am your woman, the woman of your dreams. I've been waiting for you. You've been waiting for me.”

“That you or her?”

“What?”

“You translating or talking to me?”

“Translating.”

From the other room, the sounds were escalating. “Aye, Poppy, do it. Do it, Poppy. Dass it!”

Mariana dutifully translated, “She said, ‘Yes, Daddy, do it, do it, Daddy. That's it!'”

Ted raised his hand to cut her off. “That's okay. I got that, that was half in English.”

The sounds of sex from the other room had suddenly brought the prospect of sex into this room, like it might be contagious. This embarrassed them both a little, so Ted tried a joke. “Man, you Latin women, you don't fuck around when you fuck around, do you?”

“No, we take that shit very seriously.”

Maria was full-throated now: “
¡Ese culo es tuyo!
”

Mariana raised her eyebrows. “She said—”

Ted cut her off quickly this time. “
Culo
is ass, right?
Culo
means ‘ass'?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, boy. Thought so. Let's go. Let's go back outside. Time for you and me to go.”

As he hustled Mariana out the door, she said, “Your father's Spanish is much better and more colloquial than I thought it was.”

“Stop, I'm a little nauseated. I'm running now, catch up with me. I'll be in Staten Island.”

 

53.

Ted and Mariana walked around and around the block. Ted bought them both shaved ice and colored syrup from a street vendor, and as he handed Mariana hers, she said, “First, Jell-O. Now, this. Wow; you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Second date. Gotta step it up.”

“Ah, my favorite flavor—uh, aquamarine.”

Ted slurped at his. “If you put a gun to my head, I could not tell you what flavor mine is.”

“I know—isn't that the best? It's like an alternate universe where color is taste.”

“Where do they get those blocks of ice from? It's like they tore down an igloo.”

“I know. Who makes ice that big? Puerto Ricans, that's who.”

Ted wanted to ask Mariana about herself. Had she ever been married? What were her parents like? When did she lose her virginity? What were her SATs? But she seemed so happy to just be this evening, just laugh and be silly, that he held back and felt himself getting lighter too. Did any of that heavy shit even matter? It was like a dance where they both put their feet down lightly. Ted remembered an old Columbia professor of his who had said, when Ted complained that
The Waste Land
was devoid of personality and feeling, “Only those with big feelings know the need to get away from them.” At the time, he had thought it was crap and a curmudgeonly rebuke, but strolling the night with Mariana, he could feel her big feelings shadowed in her need to escape from them. There was a big there there, but it was a long way from here and would not be rushed. He wordlessly opened his heart to her wordlessness, and he had no idea how or why. He kept looking for a moment to kiss her, but felt a second too slow, kept missing the beat. Must've been the disco. Blame it on the DJ. He felt like a runner on first, looking for the third-base coach for signs, but the signs had been changed. He had missed some team meeting where new signs were adopted. He couldn't read the signals, so he stayed put, and they walked and walked and didn't kiss.

A couple of hours passed as they strolled the neighborhood just laughing and bullshitting until Ted deemed it safe to collect Marty. When they got back, Marty and Maria were dressed, sitting on the couch together, holding hands and talking like high schoolers. Fucking adorable. They all kissed and hugged Maria goodbye like the old friends that they were and weren't.

Marty, Mariana, and Ted walked in silence back to the subway. It felt like one of those perfect nights in life, there was no need for embellishment; it was sad to think that Marty had only a handful of these left. It was late and the subway was mostly deserted. As they moved underneath the water to Brooklyn, the subway car had completely emptied, so it was just the three of them alone. The car abruptly stopped, as they do, for no fathomable reason, in the middle of the river, and the lights died. Subway riders are used to these moments when you are not sure if this is just a harmless, unexplained pause, like the train catching its breath, or a catastrophic failure. The three of them sat in the quiet darkness buried beneath the millions of tons of ancient water. Ted looked over at his dad and asked, “What are you thinking?”

And Marty said, “Good ol' Walt.” Which is exactly what Ted thought he was thinking.

Ted began declaiming from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?…

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings …

Marty picked the poem up just as accurately:

It is not upon you alone that dark patches fall,

The dark threw its patches down upon me also …

Now Ted:

The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious …

And Marty:

My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

They fell silent again. Crossing Brooklyn Subway. Slightly stunned at themselves and stunned at Whitman and at the tangible presence, the sudden unannounced appearance of eternity. A sea change. The lights flicked on and off, then stayed on, and the train jumped to life.

When they had made the water crossing, and were back underneath bedrock, the Whitmania lifted, and Ted spoke up again. “How do you say ‘closure' in Spanish?”

Marty nodded at his son, glanced quickly at Mariana, and said somberly, “
Pendejo
.”

Mariana smiled broadly, and Ted intoned, “This was truly a night for
pendejo
.”

And as they rode on in silence, Ted repeated again with reverence, “
Pendejo
.” It was only years later that Ted learned that the true translation of
pendejo
was not actually “closure,” as Marty had so readily offered, no, not even close. A closer translation of
pendejo
, as the old fucker surely knew, would be “pubic hair.”

 

54.

Marty was both exhilarated and exhausted. Ted and Mariana managed to get his tie and jacket and shoes off before he collapsed onto his bed. Mariana gave him a kiss on the top of his head and left the room. When Ted stood to go, Marty grabbed his hand and asked with childlike innocence, “Was I such a bad man back then, Splinter?”

“No,” Ted said as he leaned down and kissed his father on the forehead. “You weren't such a bad man then. And you're not such a bad man now.”

Ted flicked off the light, left his father, and walked a little ways down the hall. He stopped and put his forehead against the wall and began sobbing. He had not cried like this since he was a child, deep uncontrollable spasms. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He hadn't seen Mariana standing right there. She turned him to her for a hug. They hugged, and when Ted had stopped shaking, she pulled back. They began to kiss. A kiss that began as consolation and escalated quickly into a chaos of need.

Mariana pushed Ted up against the wall and leaned into him. She grabbed his pants and started to pull them down. Ted stopped her. “My dad,” he said. He'd already heard his father have sex tonight and wasn't sure if he wanted to return the favor. You know, maybe some other night, maybe just not tonight?

She said, “Take me right here, now, before I think too much about what I'm doing.”

“No, don't do that. Don't think, stop thinking.”

He put his hands under her dress and held her ass. He could feel her wet already. He felt the room spin.

“I've never done this,” he said.

“You're a virgin?”

“No, I've never had sex in the house I grew up in, I mean, the house in which I grew up. In.”

“You're not turning me on.”

She grabbed him and pulled her underwear aside. She lifted one leg and curled it around his waist, holding him. She swayed away against him till he was all the way inside her. Ted was holding her off the ground as she grinded against him. Ted felt weak in the knees. He spoke in her ear. “I'd have to be in better shape to hold this position longer … my quads. Can we go to the floor?”

“You calling me fat?”

“No, no, no … never. You're fucking perfect.”

And down they went, horizontal. Ted couldn't believe this was happening, after he'd thought about it so much. He knew if he didn't distract himself, it would be over in a matter of seconds. He was thankful it was easy to look around his childhood home and lose the desire to come. There was that old chair his mom used to sit in and knit. Mom knitting! Perfect. Throttling down. He could fuck forever. He knew that was there if he needed to stall the moment. Worked like a charm. Uh-oh. Maybe too well. He felt himself getting distracted and distant. No more Mom knitting. He took his eyes off the Mom chair. Mariana could feel him going away, in conversation with himself, and she took it a little personally. She looked at him that way.