OCTOBER 28, 2004
It is now the twenty-first century. It is the future and it is already the past. There is no difference. In the future, we know that. We know that now. The Dead know, too, they say, “It’s all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago.” They are all here in a sprawling graveyard, over 365 acres in the middle of the city, holding on to names from three centuries. Almost two million dead. Calvary Cemetery off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
A small group of people walks among the irritable Canada geese that chew the green and brown grass. It’s fall again already. Twenty-six years later, more than ten years ago now, and it’s fall again already. The group consists of four people, an older man and woman, and a young man and woman. Even from a distance, they feel like a family.
Come closer. The older man looks so much like Marty, you might think you’re seeing a ghost, but it’s not; it’s Ted, in his fifties now. In one hand, he holds a hardcover book, in the other, he holds Mariana’s hand. She is also older, and as captivating as ever. The years have made her a little thicker, but that just means there’s more for Ted to love. Her hair is still full and wild, now streaked with gray. One of her hands is entwined with Ted’s, and in the other, she holds the hand of her daughter. This must be their daughter. She has Mariana’s coloring and features, but Ted’s unmistakable bemused, deadpan expression. She is beautiful like her mother, but her sharp tongue can cut you in English or Spanish, sometimes both at the same time. She is holding a bouquet of flowers. Walking by her side is a young man who carries a rolled-up newspaper. Except for an untamed head of dark, wavy hair, he is Ted’s double. He looks like a young Ted in a Mariana wig. The children look exactly like what they are—Scottish, Jewish, Catholic, atheist, Communist, Ukrainian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Polish—people. New Yorkers, in other words. Americans, for short.
Come closer. The family arrives at a small, modest headstone amid the endless rows of markers.
You can read the legend on the stone:
MARTIN FULLILOVE
HUSBAND, FATHER
1918–1978
Marty always said he wouldn’t be caught dead in Queens. He was wrong.
Marty’s granddaughter kneels down, places the flowers on top of his grave, and stands back up. Mariana bends slowly, her knees are not what they used to be. She kisses the headstone. She straightens up with a groan and sigh that speak of love and time and work and gravity. Ted kneels and props the book carefully against the stone.
Come closer still. See that the book is a published novel. A sticker on it proclaims it’s a “Reissue of a Beloved Classic” and “Perennial Bestseller.” It is called The Doublemint Men, and it was written by Marty and Lord Fenway Fullilove. Two worlds made one. If we care to read the dust jacket, we will learn that Ted has become quite a successful novelist, and that The Doublemint Men was his first of nine books to be published, three of which have been made into movies and one into a popular television series.
Ted makes sure the book is balanced, steady and proud against the stone. Ted had heard that the expatriate Joyce had been so specific and true and factual in exile to his actual Dublin in Ulysses that if the city were destroyed, you could rebuild it brick by brick, using his book as a guide. Ted hoped something like that for a blueprint of his father in The Doublemint Men. That if you pulped this book, in the mulch would be the genetic code, his father’s DNA, that Marty himself, like a lost Dublin, like a lost Troy, could be reconstituted from these pages.
Finally, Marty’s grandson unrolls his newspaper and lays it flat across the grave. It is the New York Post, that blaring rag. It is October 28, 2004. And the day before, the Boston Red Sox had defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, becoming champions for the first time in eighty-six years. Eighty-six years, the span of a long and lucky life. The last shall be first.
Come now and stand with them, where all have stood and will stand, among the countless graves. Come now and read today with clear eyes what the full-page headline says. Three words, an incantation and an invitation:
Reverse the Curse