“What’s your flavor?” Troy asked me. “They have chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. You can have all three. It’s a three-scoop sundae.”
“Three? Okay,” I said. “That sounds great.”
“Two, please, Mrs. Malen,” Troy said. “With the works.”
“Coming up, two deluxe sundaes.”
“Sounds overwhelming,” I said.
“That’s what he should do, overwhelm you,” Mr. Malen said, moving closer. “Forty years ago, I overwhelmed Mrs. Malen, but not with sundaes.” He winked at Troy.
“Oh, you did, did you? Seems to me it was the other way around,” Mrs. Malen told him as she began cutting a banana. “He brags and blusters, but he was as easy to mold as this ice cream.”
“Only because I wanted to be,” he said. “The secret to a good marriage is letting your wife believe she is in charge.”
Mrs. Malen tilted her head a bit and pressed her lips together. “Wanted to be? You know how long it took him to ask me on a date? Two weeks. I nearly gave up on him after ten days and finally decided he needed a little more encouragement.”
“I was doing my research,” he pleaded.
“You were just shy.”
Troy and I smiled at each other, and then he quickly looked away.
“What class are you in, Kaylee?” Mrs. Malen asked.
“Troy’s,” I said. “Senior.”
“You just enter Littlefield? Or did it take him a few years to ask you out?” she followed, looking at Mr. Malen.
I glanced at Troy.
His cheeks reddened. “She just enrolled,” he answered for me, and for himself. “But I don’t just bring anyone for these sundaes. I do my research, too.”
“He’s picking up bad habits from you,” Mrs. Malen told her husband. “And how is your sister doing?” she asked Troy.
“I guess okay. There have been no flares shot into the sky.”
Mrs. Malen smiled. She smothered the ice cream balls in strawberries, adorned them with slices of banana and covered that with chocolate syrup before spreading the whipped cream over it all. She was neat about it, too.
“It’s a work of art,” I said when she placed mine before me. “I doubt I can finish it.”
“Eat as much as you want,” Troy said.
After she made Troy’s sundae, she nodded at Mr. Malen, and they retreated to the rear of the store, clearly to leave us to ourselves. A customer for stationery came in, and then a woman and a young girl entered to shop for a board game, so they were occupied for a while.
“I guess you’ve been here quite often,” I said.
“Yeah, sometimes I just hang out and talk to Mr. Malen. They had a son who was killed in Iraq, and they have a daughter who lives in New York City. She never got married. Works for a fashion designer. How’s your sundae?”
“Unbelievable. I might just finish it,” I said.
He nodded. “Thought so.”
“But how come you hang out here? Are you related or something?”
“Something.” He ate some more, staring ahead, looking lost in his own thoughts for a few moments. Then he turned back to me. “Let’s just say we fill gaps for each other. I have no relationship with my grandparents and barely one with my father,” he confessed. He leaned toward me so no one else would hear. “This is like an oasis in the desert I travel.”
I didn’t speak, because I had an intense urge to tell him I was traveling in a desert, too. Our conversation was in danger of becoming too heavy, and I knew where that might lead. I was happy when the Malens returned after their customers left and the conversation centered on what their youth was like. I think Troy and I circled their revelations and memories like two moths around a candle.