Mr. Peanut (28 page)

“I’m starving.”

“You’re not starving. You’re
whining.”
She grabbed ten pounds of ground beef, five packs of hot dogs, three packages of bratwurst, and three whole cut-up chickens.
It’s not like it’s a fancy meal
.

Chip began to cry. “I’m going to starve. I can’t starve, Mom.”

“Stop it,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Stop this right now.”

“Can’t I have even half of one?”

“No.”

He then tried to open the jar, and if Marilyn hadn’t been so furious, it would’ve been comical—Chip trying with both his hands and all his might to twist off the top, the act looking proportionally like a man trying to unscrew a wine barrel. Just to keep him busy, she was tempted to tell him he could have a pickle if he got the jar open, but then he nearly dropped it, and she yanked it away and placed it in the seat of the cart, which set him howling.

“Chip,” she whispered. “Stop this
right now
or so help me you’ll spend the rest of the day in your room.”

This only upped the volume. Women were passing by and shaking their heads, some sympathetically, some not.

“Enough.”

“I … want … a … pick … cull,” he gasped.

She had stopped at the freezer aisle, wider and brighter and cooler than the others. “Last chance.”

He was red-faced with screaming, now mouthing the word in slow motion:
pick-cull
.

“All right, then.” She gave the cart a hard push, just like she’d seen the boys do in the parking lot, aiming the carts into the backs of others as if bowling. The sudden speed got Chip’s attention. He immediately stopped crying and watched her, wide-eyed, as more and more distance separated them and she became smaller and smaller, Chip looking like a baby bird in a nest of groceries. A woman with her daughter in tow turned to watch the cart whiz by. “I’ll have to try that,” she said.

Chip sat in shock. “Momma?”

She saluted him and turned the corner.

She could hear him calling as she walked down the aisle, grabbing a tin of coffee and some oatmeal, trying to remember what else was on her list and feeling that odd sense of conflict, enjoying Chip’s suffering for all the times he’d made her suffer, relishing his fear like a big sister might, while simultaneously sensing her own blood collecting along her left side, as if he were magnetized and she drawn to comfort him, his terror pulling at her bones. But turning the corner she worried that rushing to his side would make him into his father’s double, confirming for him that she was at his disposal, so she hoped he might remember this abandonment, that her momentary disappearance might just once make an impact on his behavior. And then she addressed the child inside her: I could walk away from him. I could walk away from them both, from Chip and your father. But not you, love. Not you.

With a hand resting lightly on her belly, she saw a clerk standing by her cart, an old man with a dead eye, the pupil cream-clouded with glaucoma. He must be new because she didn’t recognize him. Chip was standing up in the basket but hadn’t found the courage to jump off and come find her. The stranger held him by the shirt, trying to comfort him, but his craggy, ghost-eyed appearance only made Chip more upset. Though his mouth was open, no sound at all came out.

“Is this your boy?” the clerk said.

Marilyn crossed her arms and squinted at her son. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“What’s your name?” the clerk asked him.

Chip took a deep breath and said his name, then closed his eyes again and continued throwing his silent scream, tears dribbling down his cheeks.

“Hmm,” she said. “That’s my son’s name, but this doesn’t look like my son. At least, I certainly can’t tell from his expression.” She squinted at Chip,
who was reaching out to her with both arms. The clerk held his pants while Marilyn stayed just out of reach. “Maybe I could tell if he stopped crying.”

“She says you should stop crying,” the clerk said, tugging at Chip’s pants. “Let her get a look at you.”

He stopped crying so quickly it was like he’d turned off a spigot. He was breathing so hard his little shoulders pumped up and down.

“Can you tell now?” the clerk asked her.

Chip, aghast, stared at her as if his life depended on it.

“He looks like Chip,” she said, “but he doesn’t act like him. Are you a good boy?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can you sit down in your seat?”

With the help of the clerk, he sat down.

“My son listens to his mother. Do you?”

He nodded.

“Can you stay quiet while you’re in the supermarket?”

He nodded even more forcefully, given that he had no voice. His lashes were clumped and dewy with tears.

“Yes,” she said to the clerk. “I think that’s him.”

“All right,” he said. He patted Chip’s head. “Mind your momma, now.” Then he walked off.

At the checkout line, Marilyn thumbed idly through
Screen Annual’s
promotional stills of Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart’s new Hitchcock film,
Rear Window
. The director was ogling Kelly, pretending to sneak up from behind and choke her. God, Marilyn thought, looking at Stewart,
there
was a perfect man. Wasn’t he dating Anita Colby, and hadn’t she dated Clark Gable? Good for her. And Grace, Marilyn thought, was
so
beautiful. She remembered seeing her at the Hollywood Tennis Club years ago, and she was even prettier in person. But hadn’t she broken up the marriage of her costar, the one from
Dial M for Murder
, was it Ray Milland? And didn’t she always have some new lover? Well, she might live like a man, though she seemed none the worse for wear. Maybe it was simpler than she thought. Her own father had walked away from her. After her mother died giving birth to her stillborn brother, he’d sent her off to live with her Uncle Bud and Aunt Mary, claiming terrific grief. But perhaps he simply wanted to be alone. Or he saw in his wife’s death the opportunity to start all over. And was that simply a man thing? A capacity they retained once children were in the picture that women rarely could: to walk away. She looked up at Chip. Of course she couldn’t leave him. Yet most of the time it had seemed
that Sam was simply daring her to walk away, pushing her into leaving. Why, so that the burden of breaking off wasn’t on him?

“Hello, Mrs. Sheppard.”

“Oh, hello, Timothy.”

“Having a party?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It’ll be pretty for the fireworks tonight. All weekend, in fact.”

“So I hear.”

“Hello, Chip,” the clerk said.

He looked at Marilyn for permission.

“Say hello,” she told him.

“Hello.”

“Timothy, what time do you have?”

“It’s a quarter past twelve.”

“Could you watch Chip while I make a phone call?”

She called the hospital and asked to be put through to Donna, who knew what she wanted the minute Marilyn said hello.

“He canceled his last surgery,” she said. “He left about thirty minutes ago.”

After saying good-bye, Marilyn stared at the black receiver. She saw Susan Hayes in her mind, sitting in the passenger seat of Sam’s car, waiting for him in their garage.

The truth, Marilyn thought, following the bag boy to her car, was that she’d been a fool to think that Sam could change—which was fine, if only because they’d tried. So now that they’d failed, she was going to show her husband that
she
could change. By inviting another man into her bed, or any number of them. She’d make it a sport. Hadn’t he once said as much, explaining that it was kind of a sport? She could take the Dick Eberlings and Don Aherns and Spen Houks, all of whom wanted to have their way with her, and play Sam’s game, then see how sporty he felt when it was happening to him, when the men who came to him for care had enjoyed his wife’s favors, when their
wives
knew, even his nurses and store clerks. After all, hadn’t the bedrock of her fidelity enabled him to do all this? Didn’t such behavior—as well as his appeal, his unattainability—require that things be one-sided?

Driving down Lake Road, she saw Dick Eberling’s van parked in front of the Houks’ house and thought, Why not start now? She pulled into their driveway, told Chip to sit quietly for a minute, and knocked on the door.

Esther answered, in a tizzy about getting the place cleaned up.

“I saw Dick Eberling’s van outside. I have to change an appointment with him.”

“He’s upstairs somewhere,” Esther said.

Spen, Bay View’s mayor, was by profession a butcher, and their house always smelled smoked or charred. It was dark on the second floor, close and warm, quiet and carpeted. Marilyn padded silently toward the bedroom, stopping just outside the door to watch Eberling from the hall. He was sitting on the ledge of the window, leaning back as if he were on a swing, soaping down the outside pane with his brush in figure eight over figure eight until his figure was blurred, until he appeared foam-streaked, and then skimmed it clear in the same motion of his squeegee, so he now appeared as though he’d just surfaced from the sea. He looked so much like her husband it was uncanny, though he was perhaps more handsome. He was leaner, for one thing. He’d stripped down to his undershirt, and she could make out the knots of muscle in his shoulders and stomach through the sopped fabric, could tell from just his hands that he was a strong man. Her husband’s hands were large, but they were soft, almost like a dentist’s, from all the scrubbing down. But mostly it was Eberling’s eyes that made him beautiful. They had the same color eyes, he and Sam, but Eberling’s were sad. Something had happened to him, and everything about him bespoke of this terrible event. Whenever he looked at her, it seemed he had something to tell her on the tip of his tongue.

“Dick?”

“Mrs. Houk?”

He pulled himself back inside the house. Stepping into the room, she said, “No, it’s Marilyn.”

He stared, sitting on the sill and blinking until his eyes adjusted, and then he looked down at the floor. “Hello, Mrs. Sheppard.”

Wanting to take his chin in her hand, she said, “I saw your van outside.” She was afraid to swallow.

He sat hunched at the window.

“I was thinking about next week,” she said, “and was wondering if you might come over to clean on Monday instead.” Her heart was racing. This was easier than she’d imagined. She could feel him waiting on everything she said. “Come over in the afternoon. Chip could go next door for a while. He won’t bother us.”

Eberling, still looking at the floor, was smiling now.

“Like I said, you could bring your swim trunks.” She moved closer to him. His skin was like wet copper, so dark he was almost black. “We could play.”

He stood there silently, not moving a muscle.

“Would you like that?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But … ”

“But what?”

“I wish it were sooner,” he said.

She couldn’t help it. She was whispering. Except for Sam, she’d never spoken to a man like this. “I wish it were too.” She couldn’t believe herself. “I wish it were tonight.”

Eberling seemed to process what she said, then looked up. She thought he almost looked angry.

“Mrs. Sheppard, will you tell me something?”

“Certainly.”

His exhaled loudly, through his nostrils. “You’re not lying to me, are you?”

The question made her blink. “Of course not,” she said.

“You could like somebody like me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“For a long time?”

She shrugged, feeling a flash of doubt. “Why not?”

He looked down again, smiling at the floor.

“Monday, then?” she said.

He nodded.

“I have to go.”

She walked down the stairs, thinking, that’s all it took to become someone else. When Esther called good-bye, she didn’t answer. It was sweet and mysterious what Dick had said.
For a long time
. And it was odd. Even before love started, everyone wanted to make sure it would last.

She turned on the ignition and backed out, the Houks living only two houses down. She was about to shift gears when she saw Sam’s car parked in the driveway.

She drove up slowly, pulling in next to his Jaguar, then closed the door gently after she got out. She left the groceries in the car and, Chip in hand, approached the house as carefully as if she’d suspected there was a burglar inside. She entered through the kitchen. “Sam?” she called. There was no answer. She sent Chip off to play and opened the door to the basement, calling out Sam’s name again, then closed the door and went upstairs to their bedroom. He wasn’t there, but his bed was made. The sight of this made her heart skip a beat.

Through the window, she could hear Sam down by the boathouse.

She paused on the landing above it to regard Sam through the wooden railing. The wind had calmed some, but it was breezy enough that he couldn’t hear her approach. Dressed casually, in corduroy pants and a
T-shirt, he was hard at work. He’d paired all the skis, hung the life jackets out to dry, arranged the towlines in neat coils, piled the towels together, and even brought down a garbage can for all the food and beer bottles. He’d resecured the boat to the slip and was hosing off the prow.

Hearing her when she stepped onto the dock, he turned around and, when she was close enough, took her in his free arm and kissed her neck, training the hose on the boat with his other hand. “You’ve ruined my surprise,” he said.

“Which was?”

“That I was going to have this all cleaned up before you got home. Plus the bedroom and even the bathroom. But I guess you beat me to it.”

“Not all of it.”

“Sorry I left this place in such a state. I’m glad you didn’t bother.”

“I haven’t been down here in days.”

“Well.” Sam shook his head once and then closed his eyes, as if he could fall asleep standing there.

“What is it?” she said. “What happened?”

“I don’t … ”

“Tell me, love.” She put her arms around his waist.

“A boy … got hit by a truck. He was only eight. It just backed into him. He had massive internal injuries. He came in conscious but died almost as soon as we got him on the table. The father … he really lit into me afterward.” He dropped the hose and put his hands on his knees and began to sob, covering his eyes with his hands. “I just don’t know why it’s bothering me so much.”