It was not raining. It was a beautiful late summer day that felt more like the beginning of the season. Ted and Mariana were hanging out near the apartment building they’d staked out. Sitting on the Corolla’s fender, drinking more café con leche.
“What was your mom like?” Mariana asked. “Marty never really talks about her.”
“Wonderful. Supportive. Maybe a little overprotective.”
“That makes sense.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Where is she now?”
“Dead. Dead at forty-two from cerebral hemorrhage.”
“May I…” Mariana stopped herself. “No.”
“No, go ahead, may you what?”
“It’s just a thought occurred to me that maybe with your mother gone, you have felt the responsibility to tell her story in opposition to your father, you know, keep up her fight in her absence? And maybe that inauthenticity is blocking you, getting in your way like you said earlier.”
Ted felt his cheeks flush with more anger than seemed appropriate. He clamped down on it. “I’m not telling her story.”
“Okay,” Mariana said, “it was just a thought.”
Mariana grew silent in respect for the dead and for Ted. She could see how love tore him apart. Love for his mother, for his father—there was no common ground there in the way he told it, no place for him to rest. She wouldn’t push. Nothing good ever came of pushing. They sipped their coffee. It was almost lunchtime. They’d been there for hours. They’d taken a walk around the neighborhood. Mariana showed him where she was born and where she grew up and the places she remembered and the places she still liked to go. Even if he never found the old woman, Ted was already thankful for this day.
“Why is this coffee so good?”
A woman of a certain age, who had made no concessions to time and still wore the form-fitting polyester bell-bottoms and plunging V-neck top that displayed more than ample bosom, glided by on platform heels and gave Ted the serious up-and-down once-over.
“Wow,” Mariana said. “You still got it.”
“Yeah, I’m a hit with the grandmas.”
“Maybe she looked at you that way ’cause you remind her of someone.”
“You don’t think maybe she just liked me for me?”
“Go on, Ted, talk to her.”
“She does seem like she could be Dad’s type.”
He followed her for a few moments before tapping the lady on the shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am, my name is Ted Fullilove. Marty Fullilove is my dad. Maybe you know him? Marty? Marty Fullilove? Softball?”
The woman took a step back and scrutinized Ted intently. She reapplied her lipstick, which seemed to Ted an unreadable response to the situation. She got right up in Ted’s face and smiled wide. She nodded. “Mira…” she sighed, and then laughed. “Señor Peanut.”
Ted extended his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said, “have a nice day,” and turned back to Mariana.
Over the next few hours, Ted struck out with five or six more elderly Latinas.
“Maybe we should be more subtle,” Mariana said.
“More subtle?”
“Well, if it is this woman, she might not want to be found. Maybe she’s married, was married, whatever, so we may want to just observe and not just smack her in the face with it. If we find this woman, it’s no doubt a big deal for her.”
“You mean I should be a little more Nancy Drew?”
“Exactly.”
They went back to relax on the hood of Ted’s car.
“I guess they had a deal about this other woman. Your mom and dad. And you.”
“What? No. There was no deal. She didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“Maybe you both knew.”
“No, we did not.”
“Maybe you both knew enough to not want to know more, which is totally human, but the problem with getting into the habit of not knowing what you know is that eventually you lose touch with what you do know and then you no longer know what you know, which is how the majority of people walk around, and when you remember what you know, or rather what you knew, it can be an unpleasant surprise.”
The air between them stalled heavy and jangly with her words. Ted opened his mouth to reply, but it just hung unhinged. A man walked by and gave Ted a double-take.
“Was that Spanish? ’Cause I didn’t understand a word of it. I wanna argue with you, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can see why you and my father get along.”
“I think you do know.”
The double-take guy had now doubled back to them and was peering very closely at Ted, pointing his finger at him as if trying to remember something. He started to smile and nod emphatically. “Señor Peanut!”
Ted was mortified all over again. “No, no, oh no.” But the guy wouldn’t take no for an answer, he started calling out loudly to whoever’s around, “¡Hola! ¡Señor Cacahuete aqui! Señor Peanut from Jankee!”
A couple of people smiled and walked over, a little crowd started to gather, bigger than you’d think. Ted was a character at the stadium, beloved in his own special way. Something he never quite knew till this awkward moment. He was actually surprised to feel a little swell of brotherhood and love in his chest, even pride, mixed with the sharp-edged feeling of being known for something utterly insignificant in front of a woman you’d like to impress. Ted covered all that in humor, as was his wont, and stage-whispered to Mariana, “My public. What are you gonna do? The hazards of celebrity. Goes with the territory for me, but you never asked for this. Lo siento. Anybody have a pen?”
Nobody was asking for his autograph, which made Mariana laugh even harder. Mariana had one of those heartbreaking laughs of someone to whom life has dealt many unfunny blows. It looked like it was painful for her to laugh, like the laughter itself had to navigate a maze of knives to get out alive, which made Ted fall all the more for her on the spot. Some laughs were contagious, and some were moving. She laughed sincerely, but in her eyes there was the sense that she felt in danger when laughing, that she knew life likes to kick you in the ass just when you let your guard down. There was a lot of backslapping going on between Ted and his “adoring” public, but Ted was wondering what hurt this beautiful woman to make her laugh so heartrending and uneasy and pure.
As if she heard Ted’s thoughts, Mariana stopped laughing abruptly. Walking down the street near the staked-out tenement came a Spanish woman in her sixties. This was easily the best lead they’d had. Mariana elbowed Ted and pointed her out. “I don’t know her,” Mariana said, “never seen her.”
They followed a discreet distance behind her. “Nancy Drew,” Ted said sotto voce. The abuela shopped for fruit and vegetables. People in the neighborhood knew her; she’d been here awhile. Ted and Mariana closed the gap, and as the woman was sniffing at a melon, she turned and made eye contact with them. Mariana immediately grabbed Ted for a kiss, to throw the mystery woman off the scent with the charade that she and Ted were lovers. When the woman moved on, Mariana disengaged. Ted was paralyzed, stuck in the previous moment, where he wouldn’t mind staying for the rest of his natural days; he wasn’t sure what the fuck just happened, but he was sure he liked it. “That was close,” Mariana said.
Ted managed to stutter out a “Yeah, Nancy…” and ran out of words after two.
“Drew?” Mariana asked helpfully.
“Drew, yeah, Drew,” Ted said in his daze, bringing his word total to three.
The older woman disappeared into a corner bodega. They followed in half-ironic amateur sleuth mode. Inside the bodega, they could see her buying lottery tickets, paying in crumpled bills and spare change. They walked in, Ted averting his face, hoping to catch her by surprise. He managed to get right up next to her without her sensing, as she concentrated on her lucky numbers.
She felt his presence and looked up. Ted was right there. She stopped breathing, like she’d seen a ghost. Ted was quiet, just presenting himself to her. She reached out her hand to touch him, making sure he was real. She put her hand on his cheek, seemed about to cry, and said, “Tus ojos…”
Ted glanced at Mariana for the translation, which she provided. “Your eyes.”
The old woman continued, “Tus ojos … your eye, like a man. Marty. El Spleenter?”