Mr. Peanut (31 page)

Sheppard shrugged.

“And, of course, the lovely Susan Hayes. How long were you two together?”

“We were on and off for three years.”

“Right up until March 1954. We do need to talk about her, don’t we?”

“Why’s that?”

“She was, after all, your motive for killing Marilyn.”

Sheppard and Susan Hayes were driving back to Los Angeles from San Diego. They’d attended an acquaintance’s wedding, though Sheppard couldn’t recall the groom’s name. It was nighttime and nearly freezing outside. The convertible Sheppard had borrowed from Dr. Miller—an MG—had a broken heater, and the wiper on the driver’s side was shot, so he’d taken the top down for visibility in fog that had rolled in as they drove up Highway 1.

“Can you see?” Susan said.

“Sometimes,” he answered over the motor’s snorkeling, which limited their conversation and was fine by Sheppard, who had nothing to say. As for whatever Susan said, he didn’t want to hear it, though she wouldn’t stop.

“You could
switch
it.” And when Sheppard indicated his ear, she added, “The
wiper blade.”

He turned to face her. She was sitting with her arms crossed and her back against the passenger door, mildly furious and half-amazed. Her thin features were paled by the dim dashboard light, sharpened and predatory, revealed in the dark as the old hawk-lady she’d become decades hence. That they were building toward a fight only married people had, like he and Marilyn, was off-putting. Yet it suddenly dawned on him that next to Marilyn, he’d never been involved with another woman for a longer time.

“Then you could put the
top
up,” she said.

Where was the woman Susan had been three years ago?

Regardless, it wasn’t a bad idea. He was cold himself, though not unpleasantly so, and several minutes later he stopped at an overlook, a gravel promontory bulging over the Pacific. He left the headlights on to see, then checked the blade. It was fastened by two Phillips head screws, so he searched the trunk for tools (only a tire iron) and then stood problem solving by the closed trunk, watching the fog’s underbelly slide across the headlights and arriving, after a moment, at other means. He came around and leaned inside, and Susan’s look of disgust nearly resembled fear. Reaching
behind the wheel, he turned off the ignition and pulled the keys. The car shook to silence with a tremor down the chassis, and all they could hear now was the punt and sigh of the ocean, a ceaseless concussing that, blow after blow, would erode millimeters of coastline until one day this road itself, he thought, would dissolve and slip into the sea.

“What are you doing?” she said. When he didn’t answer, she simply faced forward.

He held the key to the light. The flat edge was sharp enough to grip the screw’s slot, though the metal seemed too thick—but it did fit, just barely. He removed the first two screws with little difficulty and placed the warped blade on the hood, refusing even to glance at Susan lest she feel any more haughty about her solution. The second blade looked good though its screw was welded with grit, so he used the key and tried prying it loose, but it slipped and dug into his thumb, hacking the skin back, the pain zinging down his arm. Sheppard dropped the ring and, when he heard the passenger door open, roared, “Just stay in the goddamn car!”

She did, at least for a while. He staunched the blood with his fist and then dressed the wound with his handkerchief, clenching the cloth with his teeth and tearing off two thin strips with his good hand. He’d come around the car and leaned against the hood, cliffside, to collect himself, and she joined him from the opposite direction, taking his throbbing thumb in her hands. She tied the bandage together over the knuckle, patted it, and said, “That was a bad idea.” They turned to face the ocean, the night moonless, the sky star-splashed through strands of fog, the crash of waves rumbling up the rock into the soles of Sheppard’s feet, the sound tracing both the height of this cliff and the vastness beyond. This, in the darkness, set him even more adrift and conferred the vaguest sense of threat—that he was somehow at risk of not surviving this night.

“It’s not so cold when we’re not moving,” Susan said, rubbing her arms with her hands.

He wondered again, Where had she gone? Where had she hidden her? The other Susan, the old Susan, was simpler, braver, and this one had made off with her. She was here just days ago, when Sheppard had arrived in Los Angeles with Marilyn. He and Susan had been corresponding since February, when she left Cleveland to move out here, after she and Dr. Stevenson had officially broken off their engagement. Sheppard had arranged this trip for intensive training and board certification in vascular and neurosurgery—a milestone, to be sure—under Chappie. But in truth it was to see Susan. “While I’m in Los Angeles,” he told Marilyn, “you could head up to Big Sur with Jo. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” They were in his bed
together and Marilyn stared for a time at the ceiling. “Los Angeles,” she finally said. “Doesn’t that feel like a lifetime ago?” It had been only four years, but he said, “Yes.” The trick, of course, was to make it tempting and unappealing at the same time, to imply that he wanted her there in spite of the many restrictions: a vacation together she’d have to enjoy alone. “We could leave Chip with Richard,” he said. “I’ll be in surgery round the clock, but you’d be free to roam.” She put her arms around his waist while he sat up against his headboard. Usually she started the night in his bed, then went back to hers after he slipped off. Suddenly, she hugged him, hard, and he stared at the top of her head, imagined her scalp was a screen and he could see her brain and know what she was thinking. He kissed her, smelled her hair—a scent so familiar and unique he might as well have tried to describe the odor of blood.

She lifted her head from his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “We could bring our racquets and play at the club again.”

“We could,” he said. “Maybe I could get away one afternoon.”

“We never play tennis anymore,” she said. “Why is that?”

“We’re busy.”

“We were busy then.”

“We will,” he said, smiling, scheming, remembering playing together back when he was a resident at Los Angeles Osteopathic, those gray clay courts at the Hollywood Tennis Club, the pleasure before they’d hit of sweeping them, smoothing away the previous match and dusting the lines to brightness, of watching Marilyn, who had real talent, whose racquet on contact made a sound he simply couldn’t generate, a ringing impact that was more report, the angle and pace she used to attack his forehand and backhand acts of supreme control that made his own strokes easier to hit, the whole rally an act of generosity that made him feel like
he
was dictating …

But that was long ago. Now—even as he remembered those days—his thoughts turned toward Susan, interpenetrating everything, Susan written over these scenes in invisible ink. Marilyn could come along for all he cared. He’d still manage to see Susan.

Every day of that shortest month became a countdown to March. Once things were set up with Chappie, those two weeks he’d x-ed out on his calendar became a lodestar drawing him on, beckoning him even now as he sat with his wife in bed remembering their early years together, some of the very best times, before he and Susan Hayes had ever met.

It was an event he recalled vividly. It was in Bay View’s pathology lab, his brother Richard giving Susan the tour of the hospital, where they’d hired
her as a lab technician, their third addition to the staff in a month. He’d just come out of a routine appendectomy, and yet he felt anointed by the procedure’s efficiency, with the sense of order restored, the same tidiness and rectitude he felt when he changed his car’s oil and slammed the hood shut. He was naked under his scrubs—how he liked to work—and this contributed a kind of bedtime calm and comfort, a distinct libidinal alertness as he strolled the halls pendulant and free. He always felt most manly after scrubbing out.

Sheppard walked into pathology—Susan’s back was to him—and when she turned, Richard introduced her. Afterward, he reassembled her features in his mind: the strong, slender hand; the curly auburn hair; the golden brown complexion; the freckling across her cheeks and nose, so distinct it seemed tribal. He had to do all this after their introduction because the initial sight of her had somehow obliterated it.

“I hope you like being busy,” he’d told her.

“I do, Dr. Sheppard.”

“We start bright and early.”

“The bus from Rocky River’s always on time.”

“No car?” Richard said.

“I thought I got one when I was hired,” she joked.

They all laughed. Even Richard was smitten.

“Rocky River?” Sheppard said. “Where?”

“Fifty-nine oh three.”

“I’m only a block down.”

“We could take the bus together,” she said.

“I was thinking I’d drive.”

“Careful, Sam,” said Richard. “This is a nice girl. She still lives with her parents.”

“If Dr. Sheppard wants to drive the bus,” she said, “that’s fine by me.”

She talked like a movie starlet, Sheppard thought in his office later. And she was as pretty as one. She, of course, could be forgiven for the former. He put his feet up on his desk, his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Usually, he took a quick nap between his morning surgeries and lunch, but now he was wide awake. Before, with other women, he might simply be thankful that life had once again become interesting, but this was different.

You’ll see her tomorrow, he told himself.

She was waiting for him in his red MG the very next morning.

Sheppard came into the garage and there she was, sitting in the passenger seat as if she’d been there all night, so confident she didn’t even look up.
It stopped him, cold and amazed, for a second, her presence genie-granted even before he’d made the wish. He’d decided on his blue pinstripe suit this morning, and for some reason he stopped and touched his tie, looking down at his chest and smiling to himself; then, collected, he walked over and opened the driver’s door. She looked at him, again with a directness that silenced any questions and nullified small talk, a gaze that he found wonderful and unsettling to return. He started the car, backed out of the garage, and drove to the hospital uncharacteristically slowly, though not once during the whole ride did they speak. The car was dying to climb out of third, and when he downshifted before a stop he could feel each of the gear box’s grooves. Once the light changed he accelerated gingerly, as if he were driving on ice. In the parking lot, she said, “Thank you, Dr. Sheppard,” and then waited; instinctively, he hurried around to open the door for her—something he never did for Marilyn.

He held the hospital door open for her as well, and she walked to the lab without saying as much as good-bye.

If he saw Susan today, whether in the halls or the cafeteria, he knew they wouldn’t speak. He was as certain of this as he was that she’d be waiting in his car the next morning.

She was, her hands crossed over her lap. He didn’t hesitate this time and again they didn’t speak; speak and something might change. It was mid-May, spectacular spring weather, the dogwoods sneezing, cherry trees flowering like cotton candy, the redbuds like newly popped corn, various colors humming like Susan there next to him, Sheppard afraid to look straight at her lest the same magic that had placed her beside him make her disappear. At work it was more of the same. When they had to talk, it was strictly professional and in her realm of basic pathology. He gave specific directives. Coworkers, seeing them interact, might think they despised each other. Often, she didn’t even look at him. Gone was the starlet’s repartee. He knew they had the same agreement, which was highly unsettling and odd but strangely kept him focused. Knowing she’d be waiting in his car tomorrow let him blot out all distractions. To alter anything—to proceed otherwise—would’ve been apostasy.

“Who
is
that?” Marilyn said to him the next morning. She’d just come in from the garage, still in her nightgown. Chip, now four years old, was fast asleep.

He took a last sip of coffee. “Susan Hayes. She’s a new lab technician.”

“What’s she doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s sitting in your car.”

“I’m giving her a ride to work.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

“A ride or a car?”

“Either.”

Marilyn crossed her arms. “Is she getting one?”

“I have no idea.”

Marilyn shook her head in amazement. “Should we expect her tomorrow then?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Marilyn waited. There was only one thing to say in response, but for years now she’d been unwilling to.

“I have to go,” he said.

He got into his car. Again, Susan didn’t acknowledge him. No smile, no hello, not even a nod. Yet Sheppard found himself nodding at her impassively, as you do to someone taking the next seat on a bus or standing by an elevator. He turned his head, placing his hand behind Susan’s seat, and backed out of the garage.

“Was that your wife?” Susan said.

Startled, he had to stop at the end of the driveway to answer. “Yes.”

“She’s pretty.”

He said nothing. To answer would be to compare them, and in the strictest sense that wasn’t possible. When Susan didn’t continue, he drove on.

“She asked why I was in your car,” she said a few minutes later. “I told her you were giving me a lift to the hospital.”

Once again, Sheppard was driving so slowly that occasionally cars swerved around him.

“She told me you’d be late and that I should go on.”

When he turned left or right, his hands came together at the top of the wheel and then slid back, once he’d finished the manuever, to ten o’clock and two.

“I knew you weren’t going to be late.” She angled the side mirror toward her face and regarded herself. Satisfied, she readjusted it and sat forward. “So I said thanks and stayed right where I was.”

She was in control, Sheppard thought. Like Marilyn when they played tennis, Susan was dictating, and if he’d learned anything from that experience it was to realize that any effort on his part to wrest power from her would ruin everything. For two whole weeks she showed up in the garage. It was what he looked most forward to, opening the door and seeing her
there, as much a part of the car as the wheels, as surprising as seeing a cat uncurl itself from the front seat and scamper across the grass. He would open the door and look at her. She had a long, lovely neck; arched, haughty eyebrows; a small mouth to which she applied no lipstick, the upper lip on the verge, it always seemed, of a snarl. He walked toward her slowly so he could take in as much of her as possible before he entered that zone of silence, of blindness. Her hair, auburn and curly, was still damp at the neck from her shower; her upper lip freckled near the twin peaks by the philtrum. He took his seat, put the keys in the ignition, started the car, released the brake, pulled the stick to neutral, moved the gear shift from side to side once before dropping it into reverse, this last action allowing him to regard her hands. She had long fingers, thickly veined, the metacarpals as distinctly visible as the delicate fingers that stretched taut the wings of a bat.