This was Marty’s last water crossing from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Ted decided on the bridge over the tunnel. Ted knew now sometimes you had to go over it, and sometimes you had to go under it, but you had to get across. There was no choice. Ted would corpsedrive his dad over the East River accompanied by Mariana and Maria and the spirits of Whitman and Hart Crane. As they vibrated over the noisy girders of the bridge, they let Crane’s overeloquence speak for all of them, adding an oversound to what was, the past layered on the present; his wonder at man’s godmaking prowess and the steely optimism of the young century added a harmony of sorts to the dirge:
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year …
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
In this manner, on the Brooklyn Bridge, they made their river crossing.
From a couple of blocks away, they noticed a glow coming from Marty’s street. Like it was on fire, but there was no smoke, no sense of danger. When they turned onto his block, it was like they had entered a carnival; it was lit up like a street fair. Like the Feast of San Gennaro on the Lower East Side. As their eyes refocused to the bright lights in the night, Ted saw there were dozens of people milling about on the street, apparently in celebration; in high spirits, it seemed.
What Ted first recognized ahead were the remainder of the gray panthers, minus Tango Sam—Benny, Ivan, and Schtikker—standing at attention, saluting their fallen comrade, all wearing Red Sox caps and jerseys. Ted saw Benny’s kiosk, done up in crepe paper, red and white, the colors of Boston. He looked up at the apartment windows and saw an undulating sea of red, people waving Boston pennant flags. Jose, does that banner yet wave? Sí. It sure as shit does. He turned back to Mariana as if to ask whether she had told the panthers, and she nodded yes.
Ted looked around, took it all in as he drove, as slowly as a diplomatic funeral procession. Folks were dancing in the street, champagne and beer bottles in hand. This was a wake, he realized, a helluva wake. Huge banners were festooned across doorways and streetlamps. He read them out loud—“CONGRATULATIONS SOX!!!” “THE WAIT IS OVER!!!” “BUCKY WHO???!!!” “GOODBYE MARTY WE LOVE YOU.” Loving lies all in red and white, without a trace of Yankee blue. An artistic falsehood truer than the truth. Curveship lending a myth to God. Fuck you, winners. Unto us lowliest sometime sweep. Fuck you, Yankees. Fuck you, Death. Love exercising its awesome powerlessness in the face of mortality.
Because the glow from the streetlamps slow-danced through the car windows as they crept ahead, when Ted looked over at Marty, the play of light on his face seemed to make him smile. Only in darkness is his shadow clear. Ted stopped gently at a spot where the light held his father in such a smile. Marty was home. This was the end.
It was the way Marty wanted his story to be told. The way he wanted to go out.
The final hopeless, glorious charade.