Each morning after that, Ted rose at dawn to intercept the Times delivery. He tried to cancel the subscription, but, perversely, the fucking thing kept hitting his doorstep every morning even more punctually than before, like a spurned lover on his best behavior. As soon as it landed, Ted took it inside and hid it under his bed. When Marty woke up looking for the news, Ted would tell him it hadn’t come and curse the Sulzbergers, and the delivery boy, and the international Jewish conspiracy if he felt up to it. He told Marty that he called the Times every day to complain. “That’s my boy,” Marty said. “Give ’em hell.”
It was a good thing, too, because the Sox had hit a skid, and the Yankees were gaining on them. Not that Marty knew. Ted and the panthers kept Marty in a little bubble of Boston victory. Benny quickly became adept at switching out the sports pages, and Marty’s eyes were not so great anymore anyway. It worked. Ted went so far as to mope about when he wanted Marty to think the Yankees had lost. They were gods controlling Marty’s weather.
He had the ruse under control, and Marty was bouncing around the house some days. True to his story, the Sox were keeping him full of life when they “won.” But Ted was afraid that Mariana might inadvertently carry news like a contagion from the outside world into the news quarantine, so he decided to visit her at the hospital. Hadn’t seen her since the yoga debacle.
At the front desk, he was told that Mariana was on lunch in the cafeteria. When he entered the dining area, he spotted her across the way, a handsome man about Ted’s age in her arms while an elderly man looked on. There was a sense of mourning about them. It was almost too intimate. It was nice to see Mariana at work, see her comforting the young man, letting him get it out. Whatever it was. She had the power of empathy without sentimentality, he decided right there. And this was a considerable power. Ted wondered at the pain that had brought her to such a place where she could receive the grief of strangers day after day after day. What grief of her own might she be effacing with the grief of others? He could not imagine. But there was something hidden there, hidden deeply, that both terrified and intrigued him like no other woman ever had.
Ted continued to watch Mariana from afar as the two men left her. She rolled her neck and shook her hands like she was flicking off water, as if she were jettisoning negative energy, as if cleansing her grief palate for the next customer. She got on the food line, Ted sidled up behind her.
“Can I offer you a cup of Jell-O?” Mariana spun around a bit quickly, as if taken out of a daydream. Ted continued, “Or in Spanish, I suppose that would be a cup of Hell-O.” Nope. Just keep moving.
“Red or green?” Ted held up a cup of red Jell-O and a cup of green. Mariana pointed to the red. Ted became an aspic sommelier: “Excellent choice. I think you’ll find the red flexible, but not spineless; firm, but not unyielding; sweet, but not cloying, with subtle notes of red dye number two.”
They moved down the line. Ted grabbed a couple of sandwiches and little milk cartons, told the cashier, “For both. Like a date.”
Mariana moved off with her tray to find a seat. “I’m cheap,” she said, “but I’m not that cheap.”
They sat and unwrapped their sandwiches. “What’s on your mind, the Splinter?”
“Don’t.”
“What’s on your mind, Lord?”
“Please.”
“Ted.”
“You have a hard job.”
“I love my job.”
“Love? Is that the right word?”
“Did you come here to tell me I don’t speak correctly about my job?”
“Okay, no, sorry. So you know the Sox have been losing and the Yanks have been winning?”
“If you say so.” She seemed tired, longtime tired.
“So I hated to see how weak it was making Dad. So I’ve kinda been faking the outcomes pro-Sox, and you’re really the only other person he talks to, and I didn’t want you to blow me by mistake.”
Mariana’s eyes widened. “What?” She looked behind herself, then turned back to Ted. “You don’t want me to blow you?”
Now Ted’s eyes widened. He looked behind himself and turned back to Mariana.
“What?”
“By mistake? How could I blow you by mistake?” She asked this like she was really trying to find an answer to the puzzle.
“I said ‘it.’ I don’t want you to blow ‘it.’ By mistake.” Mariana had the slightest of smiles crease her lips.
“You don’t want me to blow it?”
Ted became aware that he was blushing. Damn his milky Scottish roots on his mother’s side. “No. I don’t want you to blow it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Not at all. And once again I assert—Freud schmoid.”
“Dios mio, you’re such a prude, Ted. We’re just body parts, that’s all we are, body parts and souls.”
Ted felt naked, felt like his body parts weren’t quite fitting together smoothly at the moment. He added milk to his Jell-O like a four-year-old, and said, “I. I. You. Shit. You make me … I’m afraid to speak.”
“Did you just call me a spic?”
“Speak! I said, ‘speak.’” Ted looked up and Mariana was laughing, at him or with him, he didn’t know and he didn’t really care. He had made her laugh. She was laughing and that was a pure good.
“Listen, Ted,” she said, “death is not a story; it can’t be faked out. Death is real. You can’t really keep your father safe.”
“I know, but can’t you just play along for a bit? If it makes his last few days happy, you know, how bad can it be? I thought the nurse of death would love the idea; it’s like we’re seizing control of the narrative and all.”
Mariana nodded and stood up to go.
“He’s your father, you don’t need my permission. I gotta run, break’s over.” Ted watched her leave to go do more death counseling. He exhaled deeply, then inhaled his Jell-O and reached across the table to finish hers, wondering if it was bad to mix red and green.