Ted found himself rising earlier than he did at home, and he’d been awake a couple of hours when Marty came to. “I wanted you to get your rest,” he said.
Marty made an exaggerated show of sniffing the air. “Watch out for Ginsberg.”
Ted held up the notebook he had rescued from the fire. “I’m reading your novel, Dad. It’s pretty good.”
Marty spat, “You were supposed to let that piece of shit burn.” He coughed and seemed seized by pain. “Goddamn Sox lost.”
“Did you ever try to publish it?”
“Writing crap novels didn’t feed hungry mouths.”
“It’s not like you had to quit your day job. Did you write at night?”
“Ted, will you throw that away, please?”
“It’s got some excellent writing in it.”
“Sometimes when you take a shit, you admire it for a moment before flushing, right?”
“If you say so.”
“Okay, so now we’ve had our admiring moment, flush it.”
“No.”
Marty coughed harder. “Goddamn Sox and goddamn you. I’m going back to bed.”
Marty went back to sleep. Ted made himself a sandwich and some coffee, and sat down to read more of “The Doublemint Man.” There was a daughter in the book, but no son, and though Ted knew it was fiction, he still felt somewhat slighted by that. Did it represent a wish on the old man’s part for a daughter? This was the danger of reading fiction by those close to you—you kept on looking for parallels and clues, like it was a puzzle, a message in a bottle. Is this what Marty thought of Ted? Did it mean that he did not want a son at all? Or just not want Ted? It was impossible not to project. Ted felt relieved he didn’t have a son to go through his own work with such a bias. But, as a son himself, he couldn’t help it.
Around noon, that awful buzzer sounded again. He knew of only two noises at his father’s door—the sound of The New York Times out of the delivery boy’s wild hand and the knock/buzz of Mariana. He was leaning heavily toward the hope of one over the other as he checked in the mirror to see that he wasn’t wearing the clothes of a twelve-year-old. Damn, he was fat. He jogged to the front door in an effort to begin to commit to losing some weight. It was Mariana. He was panting. How could he be out of breath from running to the door? He probably looked like a serial killer. In an attempt at nonchalance, Ted said, as if he were disappointed, “You again.”
Zero for one, Ted thought, and added, like he was trying for “touché,” “Olé.” Olé? Zero for two.
“Hola. You figure out what the opposite of fifty percent is yet?”
“Nope, still working on my calculations.”
“How’s Marty?”
“Oh, you’re here for Marty.”
“Why, are you sick, too?”
“I have a little tickle.”
“Maybe you should do yoga with us. It’ll help you lose some weight.”
“This isn’t fat. This is insulation. Winter is on its way. I’m bearlike.”
“Whatever works for you. How is Marty?”
“Door-to-door full-service death nursing, that’s impressive.” Nope. Full service sounded kind of massage parlor-y. Back it up.
“Not full service, of course, nothing of the sort implied. Extensive service. Far reaching. Comprehensive. Thorough. You can stop me anytime. I’m gonna shut up now. He went back to bed.”
Ted could not read her expression. Charmed? Disgusted? Something between?
“Sox lost, huh?” she said.
“How come everybody knows how a loss affects him physically? The old guys on the corner were talking about that, too.”
“The gray panthers? That’s what your dad calls them.”
“Yeah, those guys. They say they can tell if the Sox won or lost just by looking at him.”
“It’s the way he’s telling the end of his story.”
“You mean it’s psychosomatic?”
“At some level, everything is psychosomatic. Our minds control our bodies. I’ve seen people die of heartbreak. No other ailment but a broken heart, and they just stop, they can’t go on, they die of sad thoughts, of loneliness.”
“Does that show up on the autopsy?”
“It’s easy to make jokes about faith.”
“I’m sorry, it’s a defense mechanism.”
“You’re sure it’s not an offense mechanism?”
“No. No, I’m not, now that you mention it. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me, Ted. It’s not like you called me a spic.”
Ted was genuinely caught off guard and laughed. He saw a piece of what was probably bagel, what he hoped was bagel, shoot out of his mouth and land on her lapel. He didn’t know whether she saw, whether he should own it, the bagel bit. Shit, if it wasn’t bagel, what was it? Jesus. Let’s call it bagel. He decided to let it go, but then he reached out as if tapping her approvingly in applause for the joke, and stroked the wet thing off her lapel, immediately realizing his hand was moving dangerously close to her bosom. She looked at his hand, then looked at him, and asked, “Are you coppin’ a feel?”
Ted stopped patting her, but he was still panting like a pervert, and said, “You had some schmutz.”
“Oh, then thank you.”
She patted her own lapel. He sucked his teeth and gums and swallowed what might have come off. Subtly, though. He hoped. I should floss once in a while, he thought.
“Is that a Jewish word, schmutz?”
She pronounced it “schmoots” in her Nuyorican accent. Ted did not correct her. If she wanted it to be “schmoots,” then “schmoots” it was.
“Yes, Yiddish, I think.”
“It means?”
“It means … schmutz. You know, schmutz. It means like it sounds. Schmutz.”
“Onomatopoeia.”
“Bingo. Wow, you know, I don’t know whether you’re the best death nurse in the world, or the worst, if you know what I mean.”
“I suppose you can choose which, Ted, is what I’m saying.”
Ted nodded.
“Well, if your dad went back to bed, I’ll be on my way.”
She turned to descend the steps. There was a logo on her ass, on the back pocket of her pants. She was wearing Jordache jeans, and that kind of broke Ted’s heart right there. She cared about how she looked after all, he thought. She appeared not to care about fashion and trends, but she did. She wanted to believe that we could control all stories, but she wasn’t above seeking the safety of being told what to wear, being part of something, even if it was the stupid part of American history where otherwise sane people just had to have Jordache or Sasson scrawled across their asses. She followed the herd a little, even though, oooh la la, it was the herd that overpaid for denim. He was of the tribe of Levi himself, begat by Strauss, but surely that wasn’t an insurmountable difference. Strauss and Jordache wasn’t like Capulet and Montague, was it? Maybe she would convert to the Levi clan. So their jeans could marry. Shit, they looked pretty good on her, maybe he would convert.
He became aware he was smiling. Ted was beginning to see even the weaknesses and faults of this woman in the light of her charm and vulnerability. She was human. This must be what love looks like from a distance, he thought. If my heart were a camera (if my heart were a camera?), I would constantly be looking for the best light to take her picture, but fuck, I don’t even know her, it can’t be love, even from a distance, and she thinks I’m fat and Mr. Peanut. In an instant, he realized he cared what she thought about him. That sucked. That opened up a mental space he was not comfortable with. A new self-consciousness on top of his quotidian self-consciousness. I don’t need this, he thought. He felt sick. She should go. She should go and never come back. He opened his mouth to say goodbye, but what came out was “Wait.”
Mariana turned. “What, do I have schmoots on my back?”
“I’ll do the yoga,” Ted lied.