He turned to Arthur. “Doesn’t Eleanor look like that girl on the commercial for Diet Coke? The one with the brown hair?” He spoke her name. Not everyone you met did that.
Arthur gave Benny a look. “Don’t mind my brother,” he said. “He’s a little crazy.”
“Not really,” Russell said. Maybe he was worried she’d believe this. Also, he didn’t want to hurt Benny’s feelings.
She had only been in their apartment five minutes, but already she understood this: Russell was looking for a wife. Even more, Russell’s sons wanted a mother, and he would do what he could to find them one. If she were up for it, the two of them could be married by Valentine’s Day probably.
“Do you have kids?” Benny asked.
“Three. They’re with their father today.”
A worried look came over Benny. Maybe she was another one of those mothers, like his own, who had left. “We haven’t seen our mom since I was a baby,” he said. “It turned out we weren’t her cup of tea. She wanted to ride around listening to the Grateful Dead.”
“There was probably more to it than that, Benny,” Russell said. “Your mother loved you. She just had some problems being a mom.”
“Do you have problems being a mom?” Benny asked Eleanor.
She told him she didn’t. She could have said more, but this was not the moment.
They arranged themselves at the table. Benny made sure Eleanor was sitting next to his father. Arthur held her chair out for her.
“You taught your boys good manners,” Eleanor said.
“Eagle Scout,” he told her.
Russell carried in the turkey. From the silver plastic platter on which the meat was arranged, it appeared to have been purchased, precooked and presliced, along with disposable plastic bowls of cranberry sauce and gravy.
“I found this great place that makes everything ready to go,” Russell said. But he’d made the sweet potatoes and corn bread from scratch.
“It’s called Stop & Shop,” Arthur pointed out.
They loved her pie. They loved everything about her. Over the course of the meal, the things Benny complimented Eleanor on included her hair, her necklace, her shoes, her baking, her appetite, and—when he showed her a patch he’d recently earned at Cub Scouts and asked if she could stitch it on his shirt for him—her sewing ability along with (related to this) good eyesight, as proven by her ease in threading the needle.
She was sitting at the table sewing on the patch when it came to her what this reminded her of: Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. She was Wendy.
A wave of terrible sadness came over her then. These were children without a mother, and she was a mother without children. It should be perfect.
More than anything—more even than a man who loved her—Eleanor wanted this back: the life of taking care of children the way she used to, living in a family, sharing meals like this. (Well, not like this one, but other meals. The good kind.) But it was not something you could find in the pages of the classifieds, this family life. She wanted it with her own children, not the two sweet, pale strangers who sat across the table from her, their eyes full of unconcealed longing. And in the seat next to her, the sweet, gentle Eagle Scout who would probably love her forever, if she gave him the opportunity, which she would not.
She had planned to leave as soon as she had stitched on the patch, but when she handed the shirt back to Benny he said they had a surprise for her.
“Let’s do our act for Eleanor,” he said to Arthur. They had worked up a scene from theThree Amigosmovie.
His brother looked uneasy. “I don’t think so, Benny. She probably doesn’t want to see it, and anyway, it’s kind of lame.”
“Artie’s just saying that,” Benny told her. “You should see my brother’s Steve Martin imitation. My dad does the Chevy Chase part. I’m Martin Short.”
Now Russell was the one looking embarrassed. “I only do this because they need a third person,” he told Eleanor. “I’m not very good at being funny. When I make people laugh, it’s usually unintentional.”
“Come on,” Benny said. With that odd, slightly spastic gait of his, he was clearing a space in the middle of the living room now, his floppy puppet arms flailing. Arthur got up out of his chair to join him.
“You too, Dad,” Benny said.
The three of them stood before her then, taking their positions, their best imitation of three men doing their best imitation of cowboys.
Benny started it off. “Hey, you slime-eating dogs,” he said, facing the invisible desperados.
“Hey, you scum-sucking pigs.” This was Russell’s line. He delivered it with unexpected feeling.
