Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [94]
“Stop it,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Stop this right now.”
“Can’t I have even half of one?”
“No.”
He then tried to open the jar, and if Marilyn hadn’t been so furious, it would’ve been comical—Chip trying with both his hands and all his might to twist off the top, the act looking proportionally like a man trying to unscrew a wine barrel. Just to keep him busy, she was tempted to tell him he could have a pickle if he got the jar open, but then he nearly dropped it, and she yanked it away and placed it in the seat of the cart, which set him howling.
“Chip,” she whispered. “Stop this right now or so help me you’ll spend the rest of the day in your room.”
This only upped the volume. Women were passing by and shaking their heads, some sympathetically, some not.
“Enough.”
“I … want … a … pick … cull,” he gasped.
She had stopped at the freezer aisle, wider and brighter and cooler than the others. “Last chance.”
He was red-faced with screaming, now mouthing the word in slow motion: pick-cull.
“All right, then.” She gave the cart a hard push, just like she’d seen the boys do in the parking lot, aiming the carts into the backs of others as if bowling. The sudden speed got Chip’s attention. He immediately stopped crying and watched her, wide-eyed, as more and more distance separated them and she became smaller and smaller, Chip looking like a baby bird in a nest of groceries. A woman with her daughter in tow turned to watch the cart whiz by. “I’ll have to try that,” she said.
Chip sat in shock. “Momma?”
She saluted him and turned the corner.
She could hear him calling as she walked down the aisle, grabbing a tin of coffee and some oatmeal, trying to remember what else was on her list and feeling that odd sense of conflict, enjoying Chip’s suffering for all the times he’d made her suffer, relishing his fear like a big sister might, while simultaneously sensing her own blood collecting along her left side, as if he were magnetized and she drawn to comfort him, his terror pulling at her bones. But turning the corner she worried that rushing to his side would make him into his father’s double, confirming for him that she was at his disposal, so she hoped he might remember this abandonment, that her momentary disappearance might just once make an impact on his behavior. And then she addressed the child inside her: I could walk away from him. I could walk away from them both, from Chip and your father. But not you, love. Not you.
With a hand resting lightly on her belly, she saw a clerk standing by her cart, an old man with a dead eye, the pupil cream-clouded with glaucoma. He must be new because she didn’t recognize him. Chip was standing up in the basket but hadn’t found the courage to jump off and come find her. The stranger held him by the shirt, trying to comfort him, but his craggy, ghost-eyed appearance only made Chip more upset. Though his mouth was open, no sound at all came out.
“Is this your boy?” the clerk said.
Marilyn crossed her arms and squinted at her son. “I’m not sure,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“What’s your name?” the clerk asked him.
Chip took a deep breath and said his name, then closed his eyes again and continued throwing his silent scream, tears dribbling down his cheeks.
“Hmm,” she said. “That’s my son’s name, but this doesn’t look like my son. At least, I certainly can’t tell from his expression.” She squinted at Chip, who was reaching out to her with both arms. The clerk held his pants while Marilyn stayed just out of reach. “Maybe I could tell if he stopped crying.”
“She says you should stop crying,” the clerk said, tugging at Chip’s pants. “Let her get a look at you.”
He stopped crying so quickly it was like he’d turned off a spigot. He was breathing so hard his little shoulders pumped up and down.
“Can you tell now?” the clerk asked her.
Chip, aghast, stared at her as if his life depended on it.
“He looks like Chip,” she said, “but he doesn’t act like him. Are you a good boy?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you sit down in your seat?”
With the help of the clerk,