Chapter Twenty

She finally went back to the table. She spent a few precious moments imagining what it would be like to dissolve into green slime and filter out the cracks in the walls like that monster she had seen in that movie, Ghostbusters. But Marge was still Marge, something she took note of drying her wet face. She took a deep breath and headed back out into the cafe.

She just wished Walt was the type to get mad. Maybe if he yelled at her for rudely leaving the table or vanishing for all those years, then she could get mad too. Anger was a language she understood, maybe because Lenny had spoken it so well. He had never raised his hand at her and barely raised his voice, but he didn’t have to. Marge could feel his current beneath every word he spoke or look he gave. There was something mad inside him, and neither he nor Marge knew what to do about it.

So, they didn’t do anything.

But Walt wasn’t angry. His face was concerned when she came back to the booth and slid back in next to Garret. She expected her grandson’s outstretched arms, or at least Garret’s sharp grunts, but Travis was still learning to play his spoon, and Garrett was still enthralled with his window. Traitors, she thought.

She waited for Walt to lead the conversation, but he didn’t. He just kept looking at her.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Whatever you feel you need to say,” he said softly. Oh, just that then, Marge thought. You couldn’t handle what I have to say. What about, “I want to gut the man who did this to me?” Or how about, “I’m sitting next to the product of something I couldn’t control, and he can’t even stand to look at me.” She knew that last thought wasn’t fair. Garrett hadn’t asked to be born, and he hadn’t asked to be made the way he was. Maybe he couldn’t stand her, but it wasn’t her fault or his. Then whose is it? played in her brain.

God’s, she whimpered to herself.

“You can’t help me, Walt,” is what she said instead. She waited for the triumphal protest in his eyes, his “try me,” mentality, but she realized she was getting it all wrong. Walt wasn’t Lenny. He knew his shortcomings.

“No, maybe not. But I can sit next to you. Will you let me do that, Marge?”

He sat next to her grandson, his eyes one shade away from pleading. As tough as it might have been to have this sit-down breakfast, it didn’t look that tough at all. Her grandson played a happy tune. Garrett found life outside his window. And Marge found life in the man sitting across from her.

“Yes,” she said as Franny set the bacon and pancakes down in front of her.