“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.
She spoke to him in Spanish now, “Venga muchacho tomame.” He didn’t know what she’d said, but he had an inkling, and the Spanish sounded good, too good.
He said, “If you’re gonna talk Spanish, nothing good will happen, this is gonna be over in seconds.”
She laughed. “No te olvides de la leche cuando vuelas el elefante.”
“Stop!”
She said, “I said, ‘Don’t forget the milk when you fly the elephant.’”
“Doesn’t matter, it sounds too sexy in Spanish. Everything does.”
“I speak French, too.”
“Don’t you dare speak French. German, maybe. Chinese could be good, too.”
She opened her mouth to speak. He didn’t know what language might come out; she seemed to have infinite capability in his eyes at that moment. She was worlds. The language didn’t matter. It was all deadly perfect. Even her breath unformed into words spoke volumes and gave him butterflies from his stomach on down.