Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [115]
May and June were infernally busy; it was amazing how quickly time passed once summer had arrived. Only the shape of Chip’s body seemed to capture it. When did his face become that of a little man? Sheppard couldn’t recall ever spending more than an hour with him. He’d find Chip coloring on the patio, lean down, press a palm to his cheek, and kiss him, but the boy would push him away and call for his mother. Or he’d simply say, “No,” and collect his book and crayons and leave—a rebuke that left his father stunned and blinking. There were evenings at work when he wanted to rush home and gather Chip in his arms, but he didn’t. And though Sheppard still came home for lunch, he often ate alone in the kitchen. He could hear Marilyn’s bath draining upstairs, hear her pad across the hallway, but for some reason he was afraid to see her. One late-August morning, when he came home early and Marilyn had just finished bathing, he led her to their bedroom, stirred by the idea of lovemaking. He took off his clothes and lay down next to her. “My diaphragm isn’t in,” she said. He went to the medicine cabinet and retrieved it. Their room was warm and filled with light; the wind made waves on the lake that they could hear lapping on the beach. Sitting on the bed, he slathered the rubber cup with the spermicidal meringue. She lay beneath him with her robe peeled open; and after Sheppard slid the diaphragm in and up against the knob of her cervix, he looked at her bared body, at the small dollop of paste stuck to her black hairs (which Marilyn, noticing too, pinched away), and realized something he could no longer hide from himself, that made him look out the window in hopes she wouldn’t see it on his face: he felt no desire for her. Sitting here beside her, it was like his cock was dead. And if this was only a season in their marriage that, like this summer, itself would pass, would his loneliness be so overwhelming? Yet if his father was right and we knew, then why couldn’t he be sure that this was in fact their end, that whatever had been between them was now permanently extinguished? “It’s all right,” she said, and stroked his arm. “We don’t have to today.” He lay there next to her and listened to the leaves ticking against the screens and, while she cried, took her head in his hand and pressed her temple to his, holding her like a brother might a sister.
“But Susan came back that summer, didn’t she?” Mobius said.
“Yes,” Sheppard answered.
“Alone?”
“With her fiancé. With Dr. Stevenson.”
“Did you resume your affair?”
“Yes.”
“Just picked up where you left off?”
“Not exactly.”
“How was it different?”
“We didn’t see each other as much.”
“Why not?”
“She didn’t have as much freedom. And she was more hesitant perhaps.”
“Why?”
“This time she had something to lose.”
“Didn’t you both have something to lose?”
“It’s difficult to say.”
“Because Marilyn was so tolerant.”
“Resigned, more like it.”
“Because of your ‘agreement.’”
“She knew she couldn’t meet certain needs of mine, yes.”
“But she never suggested you get a divorce?”
Sheppard shrugged. “Not seriously.”
“Did Susan?”
Sheppard didn’t answer.
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever tell her that you’d contemplated it?”
“Yes. But I also told her about my father. About the attention it would bring the family.”
“And what was her reaction to that?”
“She told me she didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“So she ended things between you?”
“She tried.”
“What do you mean?”
“We might go several