Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [88]
Marilyn sat with her arms on the table, one folded over the other. She patted the seat next to her. “Sit,” she said. “You’re probably starving.”
“I think I am,” Eberling said.
“Help yourself.”
At first he tried to eat slowly so as not to make a pig of himself, but Marilyn and the boy sat watching him as if it was the most fascinating sight in the world. Self-conscious under their attention, he began taking larger bites of the brownies to hurry things up, much to the child’s delight, wolfing them down one after the other and making animal sounds now as he chewed, Marilyn and her son both laughing now, egging him on. The wet mass of brownies threatened to choke him if he swallowed, rendering him speechless for what felt like ten minutes.
Marilyn laughed so hard she had to put her hand on his arm.
“Oh my,” Marilyn said. “You were starving.”
“You ate a lot,” the boy said.
“I guess I did,” Eberling said, then wiped his mouth. His fingers were covered with icing, so he let the dog lick them clean under the table.
“There’s more,” Marilyn said.
“No more, please. But thank you.”
The boy asked to be excused and Marilyn said yes, wiping his face before letting him leave. Then she and Eberling briefly looked at each other and turned toward the lake. A breeze was blowing in off the water. They sat quietly, staring out. A boat raced across the chop, and for a time the only sound in the world seemed the chok, chok, chok of the hull hitting the small waves, the noise it trailed fading to silence before the craft was out of sight.
“This is a pretty spot,” Eberling said.
Marilyn kept her eyes forward. “It is, isn’t it?”
He always knew what to say to women, especially when they were sad or lonely. He knew what to say to Marilyn now but was afraid.
“I should probably appreciate it more,” she said.
“Would that make it any nicer?”
“No,” she said. “But it might make me less of a bother.”
Eberling waited for her to look at him, which she did. Then he pressed his finger to the crumbs on the plate until the plate was white again. He was aware of her hands resting on the table and wanted to touch them. “I can’t imagine you being a bother,” he said.
Marilyn put her palm to her face and stared so directly that he should’ve been uncomfortable. For a moment, he imagined this was his house and Marilyn his wife and the two of them were talking of a breezy afternoon, their boy leaving them alone, and his fear disappeared.
“You know something?” she said.
“What?”
“You look like my husband.”
“Mrs. Houk says that all the time,” he said.
“You do,” she said. “But a different version.”
“How different?”
Her eyes darted back and forth across his face. “Your eyes,” she said. “Your lashes. They’re softer. Longer.”
Eberling waited.
“You have sad eyes,” she said.
“I don’t feel sad,” he said.
“No?”
“I don’t think sad things.” He smiled broadly just to show her.
“I meant sad like sweet,” she said.
It was funny, Eberling thought, how Dr. Sam was in this room now, making her sad, making her say these things, making him stay right where he was for as long as he could so he could remind her of how different he was from Dr. Sam. Which was the key, Eberling thought, to be the same, but different: to be the man her husband was, yet not. Though this wasn’t what he wanted. Otherwise, they’d always be conjoined. “You don’t look like anyone I know,” he said.
Marilyn shook her head and laughed her nasty laugh. “What does that mean?” she said.
Eberling waited for her to stop. He’d dreamed of telling her this, had imagined doing it in the very place they were sitting, and now it was happening. “It means that whenever I hear the name Marilyn, I think of you—of Marilyn Sheppard. Anyone else is just borrowing your name.”
Silence fell over the room, nailing every one of Eberling’s limbs in place. He was sure it gripped Marilyn too.
“That,” she said, “may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
They looked at each other and there was nothing else to do, he thought, except kiss this