Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [118]
Of course, Sheppard thought, she had more to lose this time.
She stood by the mirror, replacing her earrings. When she was done, she rested her fingers on the bureau and looked at him in the reflection. “Sam,” she said. “I want you to do a favor for me.”
He couldn’t help but cross his arms and smile.
“A big, big favor.”
“Name it.”
“I want you to leave, right now.” She was near tears. “Stay far away from me and don’t come near me again.” She wiped her eyes with her middle fingers: one, two. “There isn’t going to be anything more between us. So please, good-bye … good luck. No conversation. Just leave.”
“Right away?”
“Yes.”
“No questions asked?”
“Yes.”
“No, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I think you know.”
“Then say it.”
“You tell me.”
“I’m in love with Bob.”
He jumped up behind her, staring at her in the glass. “How can you be in love with Bob and be here with me?”
“How can you be in love with your wife and be here with me?”
“I guess you love Bob like I love my wife.”
But he regretted having said this as he drove back to the hospital—a weak man’s line, strictly expedient. Worse, it was a lie. They were slipping more and more often into argument. And he didn’t want to talk about his marriage in Susan’s presence. His love for Marilyn should be sacrosanct. Yet who, then, was he to speak about love?
He loved Sunday afternoons in the fall when he could work on the boat, fix the stairs to the landing, or paint the fascia boards. He loved these chores because he could get them done—unlike the steady stream of things at the hospital, the endless revolving of the sick, the patched, and their return—and then he could drink beer in the afternoon and sit without the remotest chance of interruption, dozing on the daybed to the drone of the Indians or Browns on the radio, as pleasant as falling asleep to the sound of his parents talking during the long family car trips they used to take. In October, the tree leaves leading down to the water were curled up and bone-dry, as husked and brittle as the shells of dead beetles, black leaves falling in tatters against the bright water when gusts bent the branches. The yard was graveled with buckeyes, twigs, and acorns, and the grass had long stopped growing. He was sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, slipping off to sleep, when Marilyn appeared. Wearing her thick school sweater and jeans, she leaned against the screen facing him.
“I saw Susan Hayes today,” she said finally.
Sheppard, alert now, took a pull at his beer.
“We saw each other at the market. She said hello to me … which made me sick, really. Because why even speak?”
He put the bottle on the floor and crossed his hands over his stomach, rocking back and forth.
“You didn’t tell me she was back,” Marilyn said.
“Should I have?”
“Do you see her?” she said. “No, don’t tell me. I need a cigarette.”
She stamped through the living room and into the kitchen, checking the old hiding places behind the bread box, in the silver goblets or the clay pitcher. A glass broke. Then he heard her pulling down medical books in his study, all of which he’d have to pick up later.
Sheppard closed his eyes, then turned toward the door. “They’re behind the bowling trophies.”
She returned to the porch, a glass ashtray in hand, and took a long drag on her cigarette. It was as if her body was a jar and he could see the relief filling her up.
“Is it like this?” she said.
“Like what?”
She indicated her cigarette. “Is it like smoking? This need you have. Because I don’t want to smoke. No, that’s not right. I don’t want to feel so weak afterward. I don’t want to feel like such a failure.” She waited. “Is it like that?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why don’t you explain it to me?”
He thought for a moment. “Isn’t the fact that I have to explain it explanation enough?”
Marilyn shook her head. “No one knows you better than me,” she said. “No matter what you do.”
“I know that.”
“No one would ever give you this kind of … room.