Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [91]
“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