Mr. Peanut, page 22
“Yes.”
“Are you at home?”
It wasn’t easy talking with her because it was Donna who’d clued her in about Sam’s last fling, who’d opened the letter that Susan Hayes person had sent him from Los Angeles just a few weeks after their return and in turn passed it on to her: I was terrible when you were here, Sam. I know I was acting like a child because I wanted more from you, wanted too much too fast, but I’m still waiting, I promise. Don’t think you lost me. I’m looking at the watch you gave me right now and thinking about our actually having time together. Donna knew exactly why she was calling now, and her tone of concern had a touch of complicity in it, as if the two of them shared a secret. Donna made her feel as if she and Sam were a fraud.
“You know,” Marilyn said, “it’s not that important. We’re having the interns’ party tomorrow and I just wanted a final head count before I went shopping.”
“Are you sure? I’m happy to find where he’s got off to.”
“Really,” Marilyn said, “it’s fine.”
It was fine, she thought when she hung up. He was there. She had to believe that’s where he was because that was the trick: to suspend her disbelief, to trust her husband’s version of his own schedule, not to buy into Hoversten’s doubt. She’d go through her day confident of where Sam was because that was what he’d told her he was going to do from now on. That was the agreement at which they’d arrived. Meanwhile, there was much to do.
“Chip!” she said at the foot of the stairs. “I want you up now, please!” Not hearing so much as a stir, she went upstairs and opened his door. The mobile of black and white swans was spinning slowly in the breeze above his bed, the room so quiet she could hear their balsa forms clacking lightly against one another on the draft. Chip was asleep, on his back, the brace straps fastened across his chin and forehead. He looked exactly like Sam when he was asleep, though the brace held his mouth open slightly, and she unfastened the buckles and removed the apparatus, the belts leaving red imprints on his face that looked like tribal paint. “Chip,” she said, pressing a palm to his arm. “Chip, wake up.” He didn’t react. She poked him twice in the ribs. “Chip! Hello, Chip!” It was like he was dead, and now she had to do what she hated doing: she took him by the shoulders and shook him so hard, almost lifting his little body off the bed, that it was as if she were smashing him against a wall. “Chip, please, wake up!” The boy whined painfully—she thought he might cry—but was awake now. He opened his eyes, saying nothing, his expression sour. “Let’s get you dressed,” she said. She sat him up, pulling him by the arms so his head hung back, balancing him, then turning him around so his feet hung over the side of the bed. He stayed hunched there for a moment, his eyes still closed, his chin pressed to his chest, his palms turned up to the ceiling like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
We’ll just go about our day, Marilyn thought as she dressed him. We have a lot to do, a lot to keep on our mind, and that’s how we’ll proceed. She looked at the clock by his bed. It was almost nine forty and she hadn’t accomplished a thing, and once Chip had eaten breakfast it was half past ten and Sam still hadn’t called. Chances were he was very busy. He’d told her the night before he was booked solid, that he was going to try to squeeze in all his appointments before two, so it was best to leave him alone. She left Chip playing in his room while she straightened up the living room and the kitchen, spot cleaned the guest bathroom, then walked back down to the boathouse to tackle that job but at the sight of it turned around in disgust and thought she’d try the hospital just once more, changing her mind when she picked up the phone. She snuck another cigarette on the patio. By the time she’d packed up Chip into the car to go to the supermarket, it was eleven thirty. Backing out of the driveway, she realized she’d forgotten her list. She went back in the house, found it in the kitchen, looked at the phone, and then dialed it.
“I found him,” Donna said. “I gave him the message.”
“Thank you,” Marilyn said. She’d closed her eyes and was pinching the bridge of her nose. “Is he there now?”
“He stepped out.”
She looked at her watch. “For lunch?”
“He didn’t say.”
They waited, and any relief she felt was immediately obliterated. “Well,” she finally said, “as long as he got the message.”
“I gave it to him in the flesh.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“He just said soon.”
Later, as she and Chip drove into town, Marilyn reflected on how little she really knew about her husband’s schedule—and, in turn, how little he knew about hers. In fact, as long as she had got everything done that he expected, he didn’t give her daily movements a thought. She could go anywhere right now because she was operating under his presumption. She drove down Lake Road, studying the drivers in the oncoming lane. Where were these men and women off to? Did their husbands or wives know? Were they where they were supposed to be or was everyone sneaking around? And what if she did? She had, if anything, greater latitude than Sam, and if she chose to could enjoy even more convenient forms of deception because in the past he’d predicated his deceptions on her absences. When they lived in California and he was in med school, he’d had most of his dalliances during her trips back to Cleveland; once they returned home, he’d done most of his slinking around in the odd hours of emergency calls, at lunch hours, coming back from work. His affairs must have been so rushed, so hurried, because he’d had to fit them in only when he could plausibly claim to have been somewhere else. As for her, she could simply stay at home and do whatever she liked because Sam never gave home a thought. She considered Wednesday for a moment, when she and handsome Dick Eberling sat out on the patio. She could’ve hustled Chip over to the Aherns, where Nancy could watch him while he played with her kids, and Dick could’ve had his way with her in complete privacy and then finished cleaning, with Sam paying for the whole experience.
If Sam isn’t back at the hospital, she told herself, I’ll sleep with Dick Eberling the next chance I get.
The thought made her momentarily heady. She imagined him coming to the house next Wednesday. She’d told him to bring his swim trunks and knew he would, positive he’d do anything she said. She’d have him change in Sam’s study and let him go down to the beach and swim. Then she’d go up to the bedroom, take off all her clothes, get into bed, wait until she heard him come back in the house before softly calling him upstairs. He’d come up and be docile with her—gentle, if she told him to—and she could tell him to do anything she wanted and where to touch her, and he’d do it. And from then on, he’d always be there …
Not surprisingly, what with all the parties going on this weekend, the supermarket was crowded. Chip wanted to sit in the basket and at first she said no. He was already too big for this and it would make the cart hard to push, but her other choice was to chase him around the store, so she caved and let him climb in. And he was antsy. He grabbed items, knocking things over as they passed by, so she had to stop twice to reprimand him. Afterward, he kicked his feet, rattling the cart’s cage. She took his ankles in her hands. “Stop banging your feet, please,” she said. So he started banging her hands with his. “Chip, do you want to go sit in the car?”
He looked at her, laughed, and bent double, rubbing his forehead against the back of her hand, which made her let her guard down. “You’re not going to put me in the car,” he said.
“Oh, how do you know?”
“Because you never do.”
“Maybe this will be the first time.”
“No it won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s hot and I could die.”
“Only if I left the windows up.”
“You wouldn’t leave me even if they were down.”
“And why is that?”
“Because a bad man might take me away.”
“I think you’d drive a bad man crazy too. I think a bad man would put you right back in the car and run away.”
They looked at each other and laughed, and then Marilyn took his chin in her hand.
“Well, you’re right, and that’s why I need you to sit still.”
He thought about this, during which time she enjoyed a few efficient minutes, blacking out line after line on her list, and then Chip said, “Can’t I walk with you?”
“You can, but you’ll have to walk with me. You can’t go exploring.”
He shook his head sadly, then caught sight of something on the shelves. “Can we get pickles?”
“Yes,” she said. “Pickles are on the list.” She pulled a large jar down from the shelf.
“I want to hold them,” Chip said.
“You can hold them,” she told him, “but you can’t drop them. If you do, we’ll have to pay for them, and then there won’t be any pickles to eat.” She winced, knowing what was coming next.
“Can I eat a pickle now?” he asked.
“No, you can’t,” she said, “not until we pay for it.” She tried to take the jar, but he gripped it tightly and she relented. “Until we pay for it, they’re not our pickles.”
“But we’re going to pay for it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But you always do,” he said. His eyes were welling up. “Don’t they trust you by now?”
“Trust has nothing to do with it, Chip.” She tried to take the pickles once more and now he hugged them like a sailor gripping a mast in a storm. “This isn’t a restaurant.”
“I’m so hungry I need a pickle.”
“No,” she said, pulling down three bags of hot dog buns, “you’re going to have to wait.”
“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.
