In his mind, the Dead sang “Box of Rain”: “Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there.” Over and over, like a needle stuck on vinyl. Ted drove for another hour before he began to think of how to be done with his father’s body. He decided that he’d escort him all the way into the city, back to Beth Israel; he wasn’t ready to let go of him yet, to give him up or hand him over in some strange New England suburban town. He felt like he wanted to negotiate the best terms for his father’s surrender to the afterlife, but he knew there was no real negotiation. The body would be taken and hidden from sight from the living and then buried. The living did not like the dead among it. Didn’t like to be reminded. Like a dead body was the rude guy at the party who kept flicking the lights on and off, pointing to his watch and saying, “Party’s almost over, people, start wrapping it up.”
But he wanted to talk to Mariana first, make sure that she’d be there, that she knew. He pulled off at a gas station, wondering if it was okay to leave his father in the car like that. Ted walked a few paces away to make a call. He could see the Corolla at all times, never took his eyes off Marty. The old man looked like he was sleeping. Ted remembered what his mom used to do whenever they were on a family road trip and they happened to pass roadkill—dog, cat, deer, skunk, possum, raccoon. First time, it had been a cat, and Teddy, at three or four, had been alarmed by the house cat in the middle of the highway, motionless. He pointed out the window and showed his mother, asked what was wrong with it. Why wasn’t it moving? His mother had looked at his father, who shrugged, and she then turned to the backseat with a smile, and said, “Sleeping kitty, baby, sleeping kitty.”
Sleeping kitty. Sleeping daddy.
Ted pulled Mariana’s card out and dialed again. When she picked up, Ted knew he’d woken her. “You alone?” he asked.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“He’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, Ted.”
“You know, it’s okay, it was time, it was right. It was his story to the end.”
He could hear her breathing catch.
“Where are you?”
“A gas station in New England. We’re driving back home.”
“Okay.”
“Mariana, I know.”
“You know what?”
“About her. Your tattoo. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“I get it now. I get it. I get why. I get you.”
“What do you get?”
“You’re right, I can’t protect you. I can’t erase the past and I can’t promise anything.”
“Yeah.”
Ted looked over at his father in the car to check on him. Hadn’t moved. He was reminded of that old Saturday Night Live Weekend Update sketch, Chevy Chase reporting the fake news every week with “This just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” People always seemed to laugh so hard at that, but Ted never did. Never quite got the gag. He didn’t laugh now either.
“But even though I can’t do any of those things, I still want to try, and I think that must be the definition of love.”
“Love? You love me? You barely know me.”
“I’m falling in love with the little I do know, and it makes me desperate to know more.”
“Don’t say these things.”
“I have to. It’s how my story goes.”
“Your story. Maybe it’s not how my story goes.”
“Well, how do you choose whose story wins, whose story gets to be history? My story’s a lot happier than yours, where two fine people love each other. Your story has two people fucking and then walking away lonely. I mean, objectively, which story sounds better? Shouldn’t the happier story win?”
Ted kept looking back to Marty, almost compulsively. He remembered reading about the “corpse walker” tradition in ancient China. That if a person died far from home, his family might hire someone, a professional, to “walk” the corpse back so it could be buried at home. And they didn’t rush. They walked. And you could see these figures in the countryside. A living person propping up a dead person on a road trip, stopping to eat and sleep, stopping to wander and wonder. It was not just an errand, or even a custom for the benefit of the living to adjust to the death of a loved one, it was an experience for the corpse, one that would keep its spirit from being unsettled and homeless, a final time of unconscious, undead reflection. Ted imagined hitting the road with his father now, corpse walking him around New England. He thought maybe that was his final duty as a son.
He was glad he was driving his father home now and praying his spirit would settle in at home in the city. This was not the delivery of inert flesh and bone, this was the final leg of his journey with his father. He bet that Mariana, as a death nurse, was learned in how other cultures dealt with death and must be aware of corpse walking. He made the decision then and there to drive Marty right now to Brooklyn first, then the hospital. He would corpse walk Marty’s spirit all the way home.
“I’ve always hated rewriting, but you make me want to rewrite everything, whatever that means.”
“Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever been in love before?”
“Tonight I realized that I hadn’t, no. But I know now.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my father is dead and I’m next in line. Because everything is new. And I suddenly don’t mind that you listen to disco. That’s love.”
He sang to her quietly and nicely, like a Dan Fogelberg cover of Sly and the Family Stone, “‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…’”
She laughed softly at his submission to disco. He listened to her breathing again. He was sure he would speak the right words if he just spoke the truth. That was a good feeling, just to be himself was the right thing.
“I’m afraid I’m a strange bird, Ted.”
“You don’t scare me. You’re a parrot in Brooklyn. ‘Oh no, not I…’”
“What if I don’t love you?”
“I’ll wait till you do.”
“You might have to wait a long time.”
They both got quiet. They both listened to the other breathe. They stood in different places on the exact same spot.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
There was a long pause, and then Ted said, “Waiting…”