Mr. Peanut (27 page)

He smiled at her emptily.

“Sorry I can’t stay and chat, but I’m playing golf with Dr. Stevenson.”

“I thought you were working with Sam at the hospital today.”

Hoversten’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling. “I think I need a little R & R right now. Tell Sam I’ll be staying with Stevenson for the rest of the weekend.” He leaned his clubs against the railing and labored back upstairs, using the putter as a cane.

“Would you mind stripping the bed before you go?” Marilyn called after him. She dreaded touching his sheets. Upstairs, she heard a couple drawers slam closed, then the bedroom door shut quietly. Hoversten took each step back down slowly, heavily, until they were at eye level. Holding an overnight bag, he shouldered his clubs and looked at her.

“I’ll let the help do it,” he said, then turned to leave.

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

“Careful with the cursing, Marilyn. When you’re dead you might end up in hell.”

“You’re a failure, you know that?”

Hoversten stopped at the door. “Oh, really?”

“A goddamn failure.”

He set his clubs down.

“Look at you,” she said. “Fired from the hospital. Deserted by your wife. Fat as a pig. And you show up at our door asking for help. Help and shelter. And we give it to you. We feed you and give you comfort, Sam even offers to get you a job, and that’s how you talk to me?”

“Keep it coming.”

“You arrange dates for my husband. Those nurses when we were in California. Then you have the gall to make a pass at me. You’re such a failure you try to share it.”

Hoversten stood there calmly, his weight resting on the putter. He shook his head slowly, his tongue pressed to his cheek. “Are you done?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said, and pointed the end of the club at her. “Because
you’re
the failure. A failure of a
wife
. You want to know why Sam’s been with all those women? Because of
you
, Marilyn. Because you
take
, but you never give. Because you need and then you need some more. God, you’re a greedy bitch. Sam puts a beautiful roof over
your
head, buys
you
clothes and nice things, and all
you
have to do is feed him and keep his house, take care of the kid, and just
once
a day be a loving wife. But that’s too much to ask, isn’t it? Oh, you think he didn’t tell me? You think he didn’t complain? And you blame
me
for the dates? Please. He
wanted
to go on those dates, Marilyn. He wanted a
break
. For all you know he’s on one right now.”

“Sam’s not doing that anymore.”

“Really? Well, I’m glad Sam’s changed. Have you?”

“Get out.”

From the kitchen door, she watched Hoversten back out of the driveway. Pulling into the road, he blew her a kiss and peeled off.

She sat down on the kitchen steps with her hands clasped behind her neck, her hair hanging over her face. She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw Sam—though she urged herself not to—having sex with someone, and then the woman came into focus. She couldn’t help it. Because Lester mentioned Dr. Stevenson, she saw Susan Hayes, first sitting and waiting in his car, the red MG Marilyn made him get rid of when they came back from
California this March; then she imagined the two of them fucking in it, Marilyn feeling not jealousy but a terror that had nothing to do with the act or the betrayal, only with him
not
being where he said he’d be
right now
. That’s what scared her most. It was irrational to think he was with Susan—she was long gone, back in Los Angeles—but if he wasn’t where he said he’d be, then he could be anywhere. And if he could be anywhere, Marilyn thought, then one day he could be nowhere. She could come home to find him gone. What she needed to know, more than anything else, was exactly where he was just this minute.

She went to the phone, called the hospital, and spoke with Patti, Bay View’s receptionist. She recognized Marilyn’s voice, checked Sam’s schedule, and transferred her to surgery. Donna Bailey, the receptionist there, told her she’d seen Sam in the OR about fifteen minutes ago. “Give me a second,” she said, “and I’ll locate him.” In the silence, Marilyn hoped he was about to pick up the phone but was sure he wouldn’t.

“Marilyn,” Donna said, “I can’t locate him, but I know he’s around. He’s scheduled straight through the afternoon. I’ll try to track him down and have him call you. Is everything all right?”

“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! Hel
lo
, 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.”