Bucky F*cking Dent (26 page)

They were going to drive up to Boston in the balky Corolla, so Ted had packed them each a little suitcase and was in the kitchen cutting a big roll of bologna and making sandwiches for the road.

“Dad, you ready? I don't wanna rush, don't wanna tire you out, I wanna take our time, get a motel.” Ted handed Marty a sandwich. Marty zipped his suitcase. Ted went to pick the suitcase up. “Jesus, what did you put in here? It weighs a ton.”

“Don't know how long we'll be gone, could be on the road for a while. We got the playoff, then the divisional series, then the pennant, then the World Series. Hold on, I got to call Maria.” He went off to dial his new old love. As they talked, Marty's laughter filled the house, as did his piss-poor Spanglish. Ted just smiled and shook his head. When they opened the door to leave, they saw two shopping bags of food and a note that read, “For your trip, from M.” From Mariana. Marty peered in at the food. “Wonderful. Wonderful,” he said.

“I'm fine with bologna,” Ted said.

“Take her food, you idiot. Don't you know what it means when a woman makes you food?”

“I bet she cooks for a lot of people.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I'm just saying that I bet she cooks for a lot of people.”

“What does that have to do with cooking for you? Stop being such a pussy.”

Ted picked up the bags of food.

“I was fine with bologna,” he said.

 

68.

They made it to the Bruckner Expressway in no time. And in a couple of hours, they were well out of the city and right in the middle of a beautiful autumn New England day. As Ted drove, Marty dived into Mariana's food, grunting and making almost sexual pleasure noises at the taste, washing it all down with strong café con leche. Ted said, “Hand me a bologna sandwich.”

“What? Don't be an idiot. Have some of this.”

“I said I'm fine with bologna, okay?”

Marty handed him a bologna sandwich that had all the grace and allure and taste of a brick. Ted took a bite and acted like it was good.

“Are you aware that your bologna has a first name? It's O-S-C-A-R.”

“Shut up.” Ted tried to massage the bare bread and lunchmeat down his gullet; it was like swallowing a dry thumb.

“Second name is Mayer. M-A-Y-E-R. Your bologna's a Jew.”

“Oh my God.”

“That wasn't mine. That was J. Walter Thompson. They were good. There's plenty to go around,” Marty said.

“Plenty what?”

“Plenty everything, grasshopper.”

He wagged his chin at Marty's food. “How's the plátanos?”

“Like eating the ass of an angel.”

“You are disgusting.”

“Life is disgusting, Ted. ‘Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement; for nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.' Who said that?”

“Yeats.”

“Yeats!”

“Another wild old wicked man.”

“Didn't he fuck the daughter of the woman he loved who dumped him for some dick politician?”

“I suppose you could put it that way. Maud Gonne.”

“Who cares? Who cares if Yeats was into strange? Who cares if Whitman was a homo? Or Frost an asshole to his wife? Why do we know these things? I don't want to know such things anymore. Did the W. B. in Yeats stand for Warner Brothers?”

“It did not.”

“Well, excuse me, I'm an autodidact, Ted. Unlike book-learned, sissy you.”

“I know, you always said that. I just thought it meant you knew a lot about cars.”

“Hahaha. How's the bologna?”

“Fuck you.”

They drove farther north like that. In perfect loving antagonism. It occurred to Ted that maybe Marty was like all the red and gold leaves he saw burning on the trees. In nature, it seems, things reached their most vibrant and beautiful right at the point of death, flaming out with all they had—why not natural man? His father was red, green, yellow, and gold, like a beautiful bird falling from the sky. Paradoxical undressing again. Ted coughed, and Marty's mood darkened. “You got a cold?” he asked.

“Just a scratch.”

“Wear a scarf.”

“It's like eighty degrees.”

“Driving in the car makes a wind chill factor.”

“Of seventy. Brrrr.”

“Hey, let's get off the highway.”

“Backroads? Blue roads?”

“We got time, why not?”

Ted aimed the Corolla for an exit.

“This is your world.”

 

69.

It was slower and prettier going off the beaten path. They were deeper in New England. Ted had the Dead blasting as he slogged his way through a second Saharan bologna sandwich. He kept eyeing the food Mariana had delivered. The frijoles' siren song. Finally, he could restrain himself no longer. He reached over and grabbed a handful of something and jammed it in his mouth, and then mouthful after mouthful, like a man coming out of water, gasping for air. Marty approved:

“Eat, drink, and be merry.”

“How 'bout two outta three? Where do we go up here?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“What do you mean? This is your neck of the woods.”

“No, it's not. Not my neck.”

“You grew up outside of Boston.”

“No, I didn't. Let me have more coffee.”

“We can't be stopping to pee every five minutes.” But Marty grabbed the thermos anyway.

“Said in the journal you were from just outside Boston, and as a young man you used to travel all around New England on your Triumph motorcycle.”

“Motorcycles scare me.”

“You don't ride?”

“God, no.”

“But you're from Boston?”

“Nope. Never even been there.”

“What? Then why … why are you a Sox guy?”

“I lived in New York and I like rubbing people the wrong way.”

“You're ridiculous.”

“Why? It kept people from talking to me about anything meaningful and pissed them off at the same time. Win-win.”

“Were you born in 1918?”

“What an insult.”

Ted coughed.

“Will you put on a fucking scarf?”

“What's with you and the scarf already? Don't change the subject. How much of the journal is real and how much is fiction?”

“It's faction. And that's a fact, Jack. But it's fiction. That's a fict, Dick. It's like Razzles. No one knows. History is a big fuckin' mystery.”

“Settle down, Rhymin' Simon.”

“I don't know anymore and I don't care. Don't wanna know about Yeats or Whitman and what they did with their dicks, don't wanna know about me. Just wanna…”

“Wanna what?”

“Just wanna fuckin' be. And I gotta pee. Pull the fuck over, Jeeves.”

 

70.

They found themselves in a town called Sturbridge. They got a quick meal at a Friendly's. Even though Ted loved himself some Fribble, it paled in comparison with Mariana's offering. Ted helped his father bathe and get ready for sleep. They shared a room with twin beds. They watched some local broadcasts discussing the upcoming one-game-winner-take-all playoff. It was all anyone was talking about up here. The Curse of the Babe and 1918. Ted tucked Marty into bed, turned out the light, and got into bed himself.

“That was a fun day, Teddy, thank you.”

“Sure thing, Dad. Walking around that town today, I remembered this recurring fantasy I had when I was a kid.”

“Yeah?”

“Remember we used to take the LIRR out to the island in the summer sometimes and we'd head back on those hot summer Sundays and the AC was always shit and I'd stand between the cars and watch the sleepy little Long Island towns slide by.”

“I remember those days.”

“Mostly Indian names—Islip, Wantagh, Massapequa. And of course the always mysterious and alluring Babylon. Sometimes the train would be moving so slowly, like three miles per hour, I felt like I could just step off unharmed and keep walking. And I'd think about you and Mom back there in your seats oblivious, and I could just step off and walk into a new town and become a new person. Walk up to some nice-looking suburban home and say, Hi, I'm Ted, can I be your son? You don't have to call me Ted, either, you can call me whatever you want. And I'd become new. They'd give me new clothes and I'd have a new mom and dad, and you guys wouldn't know I was gone till you hit the city and by then it'd be too late, you'd never find me.”

“That's not a very nice bedtime story, telling me how you wanted new parents.”

“That's not it, Dad. I never stepped off. Did I? I never got off the train. I always stayed with you.”

“That's true.”

They lay in silence, readying for sleep.

“And you know what, Ted, that's gonna be enough for me. That you never left. That's more than a man could ask of his son.”

“And you never left me, Dad.”

“No, I guess I didn't.”

“That's enough too.”

Marty flicked on the light. “I don't wanna sleep, Ted.”

“I get it. What do you wanna do?”

“I wanna look for trouble.”

 

71.

They made their way back out to the car. Ted and Marty just drove around aimlessly. Ted asked, “Should we look for trouble on the map, 'cause I don't know where I'm going?” There were short bursts of conversation followed by long, easy silences. Around sunset, they went looking for another motel. They weren't far outside Boston now, but it was still rural and bucolic. They stopped at a nice vantage point to watch the sun go down. Marty said, “You don't know how beautiful it all is till you're about to leave. It's actually not true that if you've seen one sunset, you've seen 'em all; more like if you see one sunset, you wanna see them all.”

Ted nodded at the still vital truth of that cliché and its corollary.

“What happened with Mariana?” Marty asked.

“Nothing. I think she just sleeps with a lot of people.”

“Good for her. Sex is great. It's the best. I'm gonna miss it when I'm dead.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You want my advice?”

“Not particularly.”

“Beggars can't be choosers.”

“Noted.”

“Who cares what she does? You like her?”

“Yes.”

“Who cares what she does? I'm dying, buddy, you think I care if your mother fucked your uncle Tim?”

“Mom fucked Uncle Tiny Tim?”

“You're missing the point. All that personal shit just falls away like meat off a bone, and all you're left with is love. All I remember is I loved your mom and I miss her. And I love Maria, too. Trust me, when you're dying, you're not gonna give a fuck who Mariana fucked. You're just gonna be thankful that she fucked you, you moron.”

They checked into the Paul Revere Motor Lodge, and got ready for bed. Ted lit up a joint; so much for quitting. Marty partook. “I really feel like I'm compromising my future,” he said.

In the dark, only the ember on the tip of the joint was visible as it passed from bed to bed. Ted took an overly ambitious toke, and coughed. Marty exploded in anger, out of nowhere. “That fucking cough! I hate that fucking cough!”

Ted nearly jumped out of bed. “Jesus, Dad, where did that come from?”

Marty regained his breath and his composure. For a moment, and then he began to cry, “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”

“What's the matter?”

“I think I figured something out.”

“What?”

“Cough.”

“What?”

“Cough.”

Ted coughed.

“Yes, goddammit, the sound of your cough makes me so angry.”

“You're angry at me 'cause of my cough? Not 'cause I throw like a girl and I'm better-looking than you?”

“When you were nine months old, you got sick, your first cold—and you're not better-looking than me, by the way—your mother and I waited to take you to the hospital. We didn't know. What did we know? We took you and the doctor looked at us like we were fools to wait. We didn't know.”

“I didn't know this.”

“No, you wouldn't remember. You weren't even a year. They gave you a spinal tap. Stuck a big needle in your tiny back, and I wanted to kill that doctor for hurting you, then kill myself. They didn't know what it was. Three days you got worse.”

Ted lay in the dark so pitch he could imagine seeing what his father was saying on the blackness before his eyes like a movie.

“The doctors couldn't figure it out. We stayed in the hospital with you, your mother and I. On the third night, your mother fell asleep and I leaned into you, right up to your beautiful little face, and I spoke to whatever disease or virus or demon that was attacking your lungs, double pneumonia or RSV or the devil himself, whatever, I spoke to it, and ordered it to come out of you and fight like a man, to come out of you and into me. It was all I could think to do. And I knew it was not enough. I knew I was powerless and you would die. And I had a vision.”

“Of what?”

“I had a vision of what the world would be when you died. That there would never be joy again, just an infinite well of sadness and pain, and I started descending into that well, deeper and deeper, and it had no bottom. I began to drown.”

“But I lived, Dad, it's okay, I lived.”

“Yes, you lived, but today when you were coughing, I just got transported right back to that time and place, and I realized that I got scared. I got scared of that bottomless darkness and pain. And I could never face it again, you dying, and loving you meant facing it again, facing the possibility of that pain again. I was so scared to lose you that I never took you back. I don't think I ever took you back all the way in again. I got scared to love you.”

“Jesus, Dad.”