Mr. Peanut (26 page)

“How could you be so inconsiderate?” she said, then stood up.

“Oh,” she said. “No. I’m sorry, Dick.” She looked over his shoulder. “I thought you were Sam.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sheppard. I should’ve knocked.”

“No, no,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She shook her head and laughed. She was wearing shorts and pressed her boy’s head to her naked leg. “Call me Marilyn,” she said. “Mrs. Sheppard sounds so
old.”

In the van now, Eberling rolled down his window. It was getting hot, and when it did you could smell the cleaning solutions in the back, the Fantastic and the Windex and the rags still stained with Pledge, the faint scent of ammonia and oil soap that clung to the mops. He had four houses to clean today. Everybody was having a party for the Fourth and wanted their house to look as pretty as a diamond so their guests would think it was
always
like that; that instead of the little smudge of shit on the toilet
seat or the dog hairs all over the couch or the caulk clots of toothpaste in the sink, you
always
saw your reflection in the fixtures and faucets and could eat safely off the floors. Then the envious guests would think how much cleaner and shinier and nicer this house was than their own, and therefore how much better their hosts’ lives were—and did anyone thank Dick’s Cleaning Service for his good work? Hardly. No one ever thanked him except Marilyn.

In the distance, at the Sheppard house, Eberling saw a figure appear at the bedroom window. He was sure it was her. He got out of the truck and the breeze hit him, hard and cool. From the bushes beneath the house, a pair of boys bolted down the stairs and then up the beach. It seemed to Eberling that Marilyn was looking over here, and he wondered for a moment if she could see him as well. And if she knew it was him, would she raise the window and wave? Would she give him some kind of sign?

Three days ago, after finishing up, he went and knocked on the jamb of the enclosed patio at the back of the house, looking over the lake. It was just after lunchtime and Marilyn sat at the table with her boy, eating brownies and drinking milk. She wore white shorts cut high on the thigh and a white blouse that revealed her tan skin between the buttons, and a glimpse of her white-lace bra.

“I’m all done here, Mrs. Sheppard.”

“Thank you, Dick.”

He watched her watching Chip eat his brownie and felt a sharp stab of something like hunger. “If you want, you can have a look around before I go,” he said.

“No, that’s fine,” she said. “You always do a good job.”

Eberling smiled and when Marilyn smiled back he noticed she had more green than brown in her hazel eyes. Then the boy knocked his glass of milk off the table.

“I’ll get that,” Eberling said. He pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped up the milk, staring for a moment at the kid’s fat little legs dangling from his chair, at the balsa-wood airplane down there whose wing Eberling pressed his knee against until he heard it snap. When he was done, he went to wring out the cloth in the kitchen sink. Marilyn got the milk bottle out of the refrigerator and a new glass, but before going back out to the patio she asked, “Can I offer you some brownies?”

Eberling raised his eyebrows and pointed to himself.

“I just made them this morning,” she said.

“That’s nice of you,” he said; then he waited.

“Come,” she said. “Join us.”

“All right.”

He washed his hands thoroughly and, not wanting to disturb the neatly folded towels by the sink, rubbed his palms against his pants. When he came out onto the patio, a large glass of milk was waiting for him along with five brownies on a plate, the china as white as the milk and Marilyn’s shorts and blouse, her skin sun-dark like the treats and as tantalizing and soft. Who could tire of such a woman?

Marilyn sat with her arms on the table, one folded over the other. She patted the seat next to her. “Sit,” she said. “You’re probably starving.”

“I think I am,” Eberling said.

“Help yourself.”

At first he tried to eat slowly so as not to make a pig of himself, but Marilyn and the boy sat watching him as if it was the most fascinating sight in the world. Self-conscious under their attention, he began taking larger bites of the brownies to hurry things up, much to the child’s delight, wolfing them down one after the other and making animal sounds now as he chewed, Marilyn and her son both laughing now, egging him on. The wet mass of brownies threatened to choke him if he swallowed, rendering him speechless for what felt like ten minutes.

Marilyn laughed so hard she had to put her hand on his arm.

“Oh my,” Marilyn said. “You
were
starving.”

“You ate a
lot,”
the boy said.

“I guess I did,” Eberling said, then wiped his mouth. His fingers were covered with icing, so he let the dog lick them clean under the table.

“There’s more,” Marilyn said.

“No more, please. But thank you.”

The boy asked to be excused and Marilyn said yes, wiping his face before letting him leave. Then she and Eberling briefly looked at each other and turned toward the lake. A breeze was blowing in off the water. They sat quietly, staring out. A boat raced across the chop, and for a time the only sound in the world seemed the
chok, chok, chok
of the hull hitting the small waves, the noise it trailed fading to silence before the craft was out of sight.

“This is a pretty spot,” Eberling said.

Marilyn kept her eyes forward. “It is, isn’t it?”

He always knew what to say to women, especially when they were sad or lonely. He knew what to say to Marilyn now but was afraid.

“I should probably appreciate it more,” she said.

“Would that make it any nicer?”

“No,” she said. “But it might make me less of a bother.”

Eberling waited for her to look at him, which she did. Then he pressed
his finger to the crumbs on the plate until the plate was white again. He was aware of her hands resting on the table and wanted to touch them. “I can’t imagine you being a bother,” he said.

Marilyn put her palm to her face and stared so directly that he should’ve been uncomfortable. For a moment, he imagined this was his house and Marilyn his wife and the two of them were talking of a breezy afternoon, their boy leaving them alone, and his fear disappeared.

“You know something?” she said.

“What?”

“You look like my husband.”

“Mrs. Houk says that all the time,” he said.

“You do,” she said. “But a different version.”

“How different?”

Her eyes darted back and forth across his face. “Your eyes,” she said. “Your lashes. They’re softer. Longer.”

Eberling waited.

“You have sad eyes,” she said.

“I don’t feel sad,” he said.

“No?”

“I don’t think sad things.” He smiled broadly just to show her.

“I meant sad like sweet,” she said.

It was funny, Eberling thought, how Dr. Sam was in this room now, making her sad, making her say these things, making him stay right where he was for as long as he could so he could remind her of how different he was from Dr. Sam. Which was the key, Eberling thought, to be the same, but different: to be the man her husband was, yet not. Though this wasn’t what he wanted. Otherwise, they’d always be conjoined. “You don’t look like anyone I know,” he said.

Marilyn shook her head and laughed her nasty laugh. “What does
that
mean?” she said.

Eberling waited for her to stop. He’d dreamed of telling her this, had imagined doing it in the very place they were sitting, and now it was happening. “It means that whenever I hear the name Marilyn, I think of you—of Marilyn Sheppard. Anyone else is just borrowing your name.”

Silence fell over the room, nailing every one of Eberling’s limbs in place. He was sure it gripped Marilyn too.

“That,” she said, “may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

They looked at each other and there was nothing else to do, he thought, except kiss this woman. But he waited too long, and she looked down at her plate.

“Thank you for the brownies,” he said, getting up.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

He turned to leave.

But she touched his arm to stop him. “You know, Dick, the next time you come here, you should bring your swim trunks.”

“Sorry?”

“You could swim at our beach after you’re finished and have a chance to play.”

Eberling looked out at the beach and back at Marilyn. “Really?”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“You would?”

“I like to know someone’s enjoying our place.”

“Well,” he said, “I come next Wednesday to clean.”

“I’ll plan on that then,” she said.

“I’ll see you,” he said.

In the van, watching the Sheppard house, Eberling imagined next Wednesday for about the hundredth time since he and Marilyn had talked. He saw himself change into his swim trunks in Dr. Sam’s study and then walk through the house to the patio, out the door, and down the steps to the water. Then he’d wade in, aware of Marilyn watching him from her bedroom window, and swim until his arms ached and all the work smells were washed off him. Then he’d dry himself off down at the beach and be sure to sit and wait for the wind and sun to dry him more so he wouldn’t seem too eager. Then he’d make his way back up to the house. Once inside, he’d find the downstairs empty. Then Marilyn would call to him from the bedroom upstairs. And if that happened, he wouldn’t fail himself like he had on the patio. He’d be ready. The house would be dark and cool, his hair and trunks damp from swimming but his body dry, and he’d walk up the stairs to where Marilyn was waiting. She’d be in her bed, the one nearest the door that he knew was hers because he sniffed the sheets whenever he stripped it. She’d be lying in them waiting for him. Then he’d take off his swimsuit and lie down next to her and take her in his arms and fit himself against her back, spooning her tightly. Her body would be warm and his cool. They’d listen to the breeze off the water, the leaves rattling the window screens. And that was when he’d tell her his secret.

“You know, Dr. Sam,” Mobius said, “there’s this funny thing that happens to some men before I kill their wives. Kind of a buyer’s remorse, I guess, because occasionally after the money’s changed hands and I’ve got my
mark’s brakes set to fail, her patio rigged to collapse, or the furnace ready to blow CO
₂
, every so often the husband will phone me in a panic the night before to call the whole thing off. He’ll be apologetic. A little embarrassed. He claims he doesn’t care about the lost deposit. Just abort, he says. And I’ll agree—it’s a substantial sum of money—but when I ask why he doesn’t want to go through with it, he says the same thing every time: ‘Things,’ he says, ‘are getting better. Things,’ he says, ‘have improved.’ There’s real
optimism
in his voice, practically newlywed glee. Sometimes he’ll even say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Mobius. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think my wife and I would’ve gotten to this point in our relationship. We’re happier now than ever. I owe you more than you know.’ We hang up, and I smile a little smile to myself, because a week or two later, the same guy calls back and says the exact same thing.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Kill the bitch.’”

“You’re demented.”

“And you didn’t answer the question.”

“You didn’t ask me one.”

“Can you tell the story of your marriage?”

Because Sheppard was a detective, he often reviewed the history of his relationship with Marilyn, jotting down his thoughts on a series of yellow legal pads, especially during the months he spent in prison before his trial and the ten years afterward until his verdict was overturned. Beginning sequentially, he then examined every last facet of it, uncovering every dark place, in an attempt to prove his own guilt or innocence and his degree of complicity, because at times he saw her death as being inextricably intertwined with their love, the terrible and logical conclusion of their togetherness, the culmination of a pattern of behavior on his part that he’d been conscious of but waited too long to put to a stop. And in this version of their life together, Sheppard considered himself as guilty of killing her as the man who’d bludgeoned her to death.

We orbit
, Sheppard wrote,
we repeat
.

This pattern was there from the beginning.

The boy’s real name was Sam, but soon after he was born his father called him Chip. It meant “off the old block,” of course—like Sam, he could sleep through a tornado—but Marilyn saw it differently. In the mornings, after
she woke him, he was so irritable she thought of him as Chip-on-my-shoulder. After spending a whole day together, after obeying as many of his little commands as seemed reasonable and arguing with every one that didn’t, each respective disagreement sending him spiraling into a tantrum, she called him Chip-away-at-my-sanity in her mind.

“Chip?” she called from the foot of the stairs. “Are you awake?”

“No,” Hoversten said, “he’s not.” He appeared at the landing, or rather his silhouette. He had a mallet of some kind in his hand, and his appearance startled her. “I just checked on him,” Hoversten said. He made his way and moved down the stairs in white shoes, white pants with a white belt, a red cardigan vest over his shirt. The mallet was a putter and he was carrying a bag of golf clubs. “What the hell’s that contraption on his face?” He stopped on the small landing above her.

Marilyn crossed her arms. “It’s a chin brace,” she said.

“What’s wrong with his chin?”

“Nothing,” Marilyn said. “It just juts out. Sam thinks that if we don’t fix it, he’ll have problems with his bite.”

Hoversten shrugged. “Well, tell Sam that in my professional opinion the kid’s going to have more problems with his self-image if he has to wear that thing every night. It makes him look like Frankenstein.”

“I’ll be sure to pass along the prognosis.”

Hoversten snorted. His eyes were ringed black with sleeplessness. The night before, Sam had confessed to Marilyn that there was talk of Hoversten’s medical license being revoked and some concern about “mental issues.” One of the nurses at Sam’s hospital had told her that during a breast exam he’d had the patient remove her gown, pinched both her nipples as if he were about to pull down a blind, and said, “Nothing wrong with these.”