“What? Wow. Okay, you win, all the marijuana goes to you.”
Marty held the joint up for close inspection. “Where have you been all my life?”
“When the student is ready, the master appears.”
Marty nodded at the old profundity as if it were new. Ted remembered something he wanted to bring up.
“Hey, you know, I wanna tell you that I’m almost finished reading your novel, and I think it’s really fine.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. It’s really good. I like how you constantly shift the storytelling POV from first to third person. Puts the reader on uneasy ground. Like a Dylan song. Like ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ Can’t wait to see what happens with the crazy Doublemint Man.”
“It’s not a novel.”
“Whaddyou mean, it’s not a novel?”
“It’s a journal, Ted, from my life of that time, not fiction. I just made it look like a novel and threw in some curveballs so your mother, in case she found it, would get off my back, the snoop, she shoulda worked for the CIA. Maybe she did.”
Ted was stunned, absolutely stunned. He felt at once like he’d lost his high, and that he was higher than he’d ever been.
“A journal? You mean it’s all true? About this Maria woman?”
Marty did not answer, which was as good as a confirmation.
“Did you love her?”
“What does the book say?”
“Why didn’t you leave, then? Why didn’t you leave for her?”
“’Cause it wasn’t right. Men don’t leave, they die. Instead, I really got into the Sox.”
“What?”
“I didn’t give a fuck about baseball, Ted. I mean I liked it, sure, but what kind of man roots for a team like it’s life and death? I just found that if I acted crazy enough about the Sox your mother would leave me alone when I was watching a game or reading the paper, whatever. I could be elsewhere. For years. Whenever the Sox were on, I could disappear. And when I disappeared, I didn’t miss her so badly.”
“I don’t even know where to begin asking questions.”
“Then don’t.”
“So the whole baseball thing is a lie?”
“What do you mean, a lie?”
“Something that is not true, Dad.”
“I guess if you wanna be literal. Started out that way, and then as time passed, I didn’t think about Maria that much anymore at all; just thought about the Sox. She became the Sox and the Sox became her. I don’t know how to put it in words. It was like Maria disappeared into the Sox and didn’t really exist for me anymore or existed in a way that didn’t hurt so much anyway.”
“So… you checked out of both worlds, hers and ours.”
“Making a choice was wrong.”
“Not making a choice was more wrong.”
“I make no apologies, son, my life was shit, and I made it that way ’cause that’s what I deserved. I was not a good man. I hate marijuana. It’s a terrible drug. I’m falling asleep on my feet. I’m asleep now. I’m sleeptalking.”
“You made your life shit? Maybe that’s what you deserved, Dad, but we deserved better from you. Mom and I, we deserved better.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“I’m not fighting. I’m just saying. There’s collateral damage.”
“Stop. I need to sleep. I can’t do anything for your mother, God rest her soul. I missed that boat. She deserved better than what I gave her, yes, and I wish I could have told her that I understood that while she was alive. But whatever you need, or whatever you needed, can’t you just make believe I’m giving it to you or I gave it to you? That’s something I’m afraid you have to do for yourself at this point. Can you do that for me? Lie to me.”
“I don’t know, Dad, I’m not sure I know how to go about even starting something like that.”
“I bet you do. Good night, Ted. May I kiss you good night?”
“Of course.”
Marty walked over and kissed the top of Ted’s scalp. “Good boy,” he said, and left to go lie down for the night.
“I don’t hate marijuana” were his final words of the evening. Or so Ted thought until Marty popped his head back in and asked, “Hey, can you take me to see that movie The Animal House?”
“You wanna see Animal House?”
“Yeah, looks good.”
“It’s not George Orwell’s Animal Farm, ya know. Very different.”
“Looks funny.”
“It does? Looks like the end of the world to me. Looks like the kids have taken over.”
“Looks funny to me. I like that Chevy Chase.”
“He’s not in it.”
“Whatever. Still looks funny.”
“I’ll take you.”
“We can have licorice and popcorn. Good night.” And this time he left and stayed gone.
Ted remained seated at the kitchen table, marveling at how big the emptiness inside him felt, and how the smallest thing, a sideways word from his father, could tear it open, and how the smallest thing, a kiss from his father, stitched it up in light. Ted wondered how he could hold on to that feeling of being kissed, even as the feeling faded. He reached for more Frusen Glädjé.
45.
In the middle of the night, Ted still couldn’t sleep. He grabbed “The Doublemint Man” and, flipping through to the last few pages, he saw Spanish, which he had not seen in the pages before, and which he could not translate. It was written in a different hand than his father’s, more graceful, curling and feminine.
El anciano tenía la piel morena, de color marron oscuro y como la piel de cuero de tantos años en el sol. Ese era su color ahora. Esta fue la evolución. Ella tambien estaba de piel morena. Y casi siempre con arena blance entre los dedos de sus pies. A el no le importaba la arena en la cama. El todavia la amaba, la amaba aún más por sus arrugas porque ellas no podian derrotar a su necesidad por ella. O su amor. Su joven lujuria se habia convertido en amor y entonces su amor volvo a envejecer en lujuria. Era un círculo. Fue en milagro. Fue la alquimia de la carne. Solo lo atrapado del mar-wahoo, barracuda y mahi mahi, y comian lo que recogian de los arboles-papaya, platáno y coco. No olviden cerveza de la bodega. Caminaban. Nada mas que ellos mismos necesitaban. Estos era ellos. Eran
And below that, what he assumed to be the English translation in his father’s recognizable hand:
The Doublemint Man was tan, deep brown and leathery from years in the sun. This was his color now. This was evolution. She was brown too. And almost always had white sand between her toes. He didn’t mind sand in the bed. He still loved her, loved her more for her wrinkles because they could not defeat his need for her. Or his love. His young lust had turned to love and then his love had aged back into lust. It was a circle. It was a miracle. It was the alchemy of flesh. They ate only what they caught from the sea-wahoo, barracuda, and mahi mahi, and they ate what they picked from the trees-papaya, banana, and coconut. Don’t forget cerveza from the bodega. They did not run, they walked. They needed nothing but themselves. This was them: They were
It ended there. Ended right there in the middle. “They were.” They were what? They were happy? They were not long for this world? They were? It was a story without an ending, and without an ending, impossible to understand. Who was the hero? The villain? Trailing off like that was too real, too much like life. It unsettled Ted, who wanted answers. He wanted art. Ted riffled through the whole book again, just hoping for something to fall into place, for a tumbler to click and the safe to open. He was about to put the old book down when he noticed on one of the last pages a phone number and an address. He ripped that page out of the book and turned out the light.