Mr. Peanut (24 page)

“Where would you like to begin?”

“At the beginning, naturally.”

“There are many places to choose from.”

“Start that Saturday morning,” Mobius said. “July 1954.”

That morning, Marilyn Sheppard woke to the sound of a bottle rocket.

Judging by the light in the room, it couldn’t have been much past seven, but already kids were shooting off fireworks in anticipation of the Fourth tomorrow, as they’d been doing all over the neighborhood during the past several weeks. Marilyn didn’t mind, but the noise terrified their English setter, who now sat curled in the corner of the bedroom, shivering and drooling. “Kokie?” Marilyn said, and sat up in bed, slapping the covers twice. “It’s all right, Kokie. Up.” The dog sighed and stayed put, staring at
her mournfully. Of course, all loud sounds scared the poor girl. The noontime siren sent her scrambling under the kitchen table. When bad thunderstorms gathered over the lake, she pushed into the bathroom and huddled there next to the toilet, her thrumming rattling her collar. When Marilyn and Sam fought, it sent her cowering. And lately it had been an endless cycle of random terrors: the crackles of Silver Salutes, reports of Indian Uprisings, the occasional White Whirls or bursts of Red Chrysanthemums exploding over the water, followed by the fusillades tonight—a pre-Fourth show over Lake Erie—and the big finale tomorrow. Then what? Marilyn imagined another week of kids using up whatever fireworks they hadn’t shot off. Couldn’t she take the poor dog somewhere quiet? To her father’s house, maybe? But he lived an hour away and she was already short of time.

Another bottle rocket flew past the window, its little jet sounding like paper tearing, followed by a small clap. Kokie whimpered.

Marilyn got out of bed and pressed her lips to the screen. “You’re scaring my dog!” she yelled.

On the beach below, two boys in bathing suits burst from the bushes laughing, each with a quiver of missiles. The baby inside Marilyn kicked twice—or else those were spasms—and the pain was so sharp she had to rest her weight on the sill.

Please, God, let this one be a girl, Marilyn thought, if only for the company and another member of the beleaguered Girls’ Team: someone to marvel with her at Sam’s inability to do a single household chore, not simply because he didn’t want to but because he didn’t know how. Look at that bed, she thought, gazing at his unmade bed by the window. The man could crack a person’s chest and massage his heart back to beating, but for him making up the bed was an imponderable mystery. Let this one be a girl, so on days like today that consisted of housework, cooking dinner for tonight’s guests (the Aherns were coming over), errands and still more cleaning (that their son, Chip, would immediately mess up), with grocery lists to be made and then the shopping and all the things that had to get done to prepare for Sam’s goddamn interns’ cookout tomorrow (a party that would leave her land side while her husband water-skied with them all afternoon), she’d at least have a little bit of camaraderie with a daughter by her side, a little bit of help.

The pain stopped and Marilyn stood up straight.

Last Tuesday, over dinner, Sam had said, “I thought we’d do the intern thing again.”

She was in the process of cutting Chip’s hot dog into bite-size pieces. Seven years old and the boy still couldn’t manage this. “What intern thing?”

“For the Fourth. Like we did last year.”

She held her fork and knife crossed above her plate. “Today’s Tuesday, Sam.”

“Well,” he said, “I already told them it was happening.”

“Told who?”

“The interns,” he said. “Plus my family. The Houks too. And the Aherns.”

“That’s more than forty people.”

“We’ll just cook out.”

Marilyn put down her fork and knife, folded her hands on the table, and looked at her husband, who, at the moment, was concentrating on garnishing his hot dog. Along its length he ran lines of mustard and ketchup and mayo and relish as carefully as if he were laying brick. A brick, Marilyn thought, would come in handy right now.

Sam looked up. “It’s not like it’s a fancy meal.”

A smile twitched across her face. The party was, of course, an announcement as opposed to a request, though some time ago she’d demanded, upon penalty of divorce, that such would never be made again. Which had changed nothing, obviously, and made her wonder: if the small things about her husband’s behavior couldn’t be changed, how could the big things?

They could fight this out now, Marilyn thought, but once they started it would spiral out of control into things that couldn’t be resolved, only forgotten, and these memories would slam them back to where they’d been a few weeks ago, and she hardly wanted to go there. Which was the trick, Marilyn thought: not to go back.

“You’re right,” she had said.

At the window, Marilyn watched the boys run down the beach until they disappeared. Then she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, tucked her hair behind her ears, crossed her arms, and looked out over the water. It was a perfect day. Not just for the breeze or absence of humidity but also for an almost painful clarity in the light—white light, she thought, as in August. She could see
everything
, it seemed. Even down at Huntington Park, several hundred yards away, she could make out a man sitting in his white van, parked at the lot that overlooked the lake, as stunned, Marilyn imagined, with the day’s beauty as she was. On days like this their beach seemed tropically bright, the water impossibly blue, with scuffed clouds and a glare off the sand that made it hard to look at directly. When the wind rustled the leaves by their second-story window, it felt as if their house was a boat setting sail.

Where to start? she thought.

There was a thump in the next-door bedroom, then a long-drawn-out groan. Sam’s friend, Lester Hoversten, was up. The thought of spending the morning with him was so unpleasant that she’d managed briefly to forget he was here. Hearing him moan and stretch now only compounded her frustration: he was another of Sam’s announcements. “Les lost his job,” Sam had said, leaving for work on Wednesday, standing at the kitchen door with his back to her. “He’s going to stay with us for a few days.”

It was chicken to tell her this at the last second, almost a parting shot. “You invited Lester to stay with us?” she said.

“He’s a colleague, Marilyn. He needs my help.”

“Jesus, Sam, you act like we had some little disagreement.”

“In Les’s mind, that’s probably all it was.” He let the screen door close and walked to his car.

Marilyn was about to follow him out when Chip came barreling into the room and threw his whole weight into her legs, clutching at her shorts and hanging off her, stopping her progress as if he and his father were a tag team. She kneeled down to face the boy. “You’re too big to be doing that,” she said, and shook his arms.

Then Sam’s black form reappeared at the door.

“How could you be so inconsiderate?” she said.

But it was Dick Eberling, the house and window cleaner. He had her husband’s height and build, balding in nearly the same way. He looked uncannily like him, in fact. He stood at the door sheepishly—Marilyn heard it rap closed—with his head cast down.

Sam’s car pulled out of the driveway.

“Oh,” she said. “No.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry, Dick. I thought you were Sam.”

Eberling, clearly relieved, looked up at her and smiled. “I’m sorry Mrs. Sheppard, I should’ve knocked.”

Hoversten’s voice snapped her out of memory.

“Is there coffee?” he now asked through the wall.

Marilyn hurried to dress—she’d be damned if she’d let him see her in her nightclothes—and went downstairs.

Of course it was on a morning like this two years ago, Sam off to the hospital and Chip still asleep, that she and Hoversten had had their “disagreement.” A good ten years older than her husband, he’d gone to medical school with Sam in California, their enduring camaraderie maddening to her not only because Lester was an obvious screwup, a philandering alcoholic who made passes at nurses so blatantly they refused to be in a room
alone with him, but also a man who’d regularly invited Sam out on double dates whenever Marilyn was away.

That morning, she was doing dishes when Hoversten slid up behind her and pressed his nakedness against her gown, the ends of his open robe seeming to wrap around her legs like tentacles. “Need some help?” he whispered.

For a moment Marilyn was so shocked she froze.

Hoversten, taking this hesitation for consent, pressed himself into her harder, cupping her elbows in his hands and sliding them down to her wrists. He put his lips on her neck. “Come on, Marilyn,” he said. “I saw how you looked at me last night.”

She turned and slapped the soaped sponge against his chest.

“Hey,” he laughed, staggering back and looking down at the bubble-wound. His erect cock listed right, like an inchworm reaching for a leaf. “Don’t be so mean.”

“Of course I looked at you,” she said. “We were
talking.”

“No, no,” he said, and stepped closer. “I caught you staring.”

He
had
caught her. At dinner the night before, she’d stared while he spoke to her husband, at the bald head splotched with eczema, at the gathering teardrop of fat beneath his chin, at the small teeth that reminded her of a child’s, wondering if there was a single thing a woman could find attractive about him, amazed that he could sit across from her so comfortably after having flagrantly disrespected her, expecting her to write off all the other girls he and Sam had double-dated in California as bygones, trifles who didn’t mean anything. Then his eyes had darted toward hers, pinning her, and he smiled at her smugly. She cursed in her mind, looked down at her plate. And now here he was, hot with his own misunderstanding.

“Lester,” she said. “Thank you for showing me your thing.” She put her hand on her side, dismissing his penis with the sponge. “Now, why don’t you go play with it in private.”

He snorted, shook his head. “You’re a tease. You know that, Marilyn?

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

He tied his robe closed, then turned and stomped off. But he’d kept a respectful distance ever since.

Back down in the kitchen, Marilyn put on coffee and felt the craving, as the aroma hit her, for a cigarette, considered washing Sam’s breakfast plate and skillet—he’d made himself bacon and eggs, leaving her the mess—only to change her mind and decide to go down to the boathouse. She could get the place picked up, she figured, arrange all the life jackets and
towlines and skis, and steer clear for a while from the pack she’d hidden in Sam’s study. By then Chip would be awake, so she could take him to breakfast
and
be out of the house and off to the grocery store without having to see Hoversten for a second longer than she had to, if at all. This new plan appealed to her sense of efficiency. It was really the only way to get everything done in time, since there’d be no free time tomorrow. But once she thought about it, tomorrow wouldn’t be so bad. She could get a couple of the interns to help with the grilling and the serving; they’d do anything she asked, just to get in her good graces (and Sam’s), and she could get some water-skiing in herself. And if she was lucky and things went smoothly today she might find a few minutes to herself.

After walking down the long set of stairs to the slip, though, her spirits sank. The place was a complete disaster. The boat was filled with skis and damp towels and life jackets, empty beer cans and a cooler full of what Marilyn guessed was rotten food. And the boat itself hadn’t been properly tied off, its prow bumping into the pilings with every small wave. In all, it was a mess so terrible that it could have been made only out of spite.

“Goddamn you, Sam,” she muttered.

She turned and walked back up the steps to the house.

She entered the kitchen through the patio, fully expecting to see Hoversten drinking coffee and reading the paper. But the house was silent. He must’ve gone back to sleep. Walking quietly, she slipped into Sam’s study, pulled back
Cardiology
, and took out the pack of Chesterfields. There was a box of matches next to Sam’s pipe caddy, and she lit up, then came around his desk and sat down on his red leather chair. Next to the radiator were three loaded shotguns. She’d asked him twenty times to put them away. On his desk was a picture of the two of them taken many years ago, both so young it was conspicuous how they’d aged. They were sitting in his car, a Plymouth Fury. The top was down and they were facing backward, Sam’s arms around her. This was in California in ’44, the year Sam had started medical school. He was thinner then. Had more hair. Was kinder. They were in Big Sur—the Chapmans had invited them out to their ranch—and you could make out the cliffs beyond them and a light mist rolling in off the ocean. She remembered nothing of that day except how cold she was and how Sam had resisted putting the car’s top up. This picture had replaced all her memories and come to represent a time in her life when she’d thought her husband incapable of cruelty, of their future as something unfolding toward better things, as opposed to this eternal now, where every day carried with it a choice between moving forward and calling it quits.

There he is, Marilyn thought. The man I fell in love with.

She sat in Sam’s chair with her feet on the desk and tilted her head back, watching the smoke she exhaled rise to the ceiling. She shouldn’t be smoking when she was pregnant, she knew, but the cigarette enclosed her in just this moment, when nothing reminded her of anything else but that the house was quiet. She took a last drag, then blew a steady stream of smoke at the photograph.

What to do?

In the kitchen a few minutes later, staring at a legal pad list of errands, chores, and food so long it filled the page, Marilyn considered doing none of them, acting so cool for the next twenty-four hours that her husband would be amazed by her organizational ability; and then, right around the time his guests were set to arrive, she could pack Chip and Kokie in the car, drive to her father’s house, and leave for good. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and let her thoughts drift down this pleasant path.