Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [95]
“My son listens to his mother. Do you?”
He nodded.
“Can you stay quiet while you’re in the supermarket?”
He nodded even more forcefully, given that he had no voice. His lashes were clumped and dewy with tears.
“Yes,” she said to the clerk. “I think that’s him.”
“All right,” he said. He patted Chip’s head. “Mind your momma, now.” Then he walked off.
At the checkout line, Marilyn thumbed idly through Screen Annual’s promotional stills of Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart’s new Hitchcock film, Rear Window. The director was ogling Kelly, pretending to sneak up from behind and choke her. God, Marilyn thought, looking at Stewart, there was a perfect man. Wasn’t he dating Anita Colby, and hadn’t she dated Clark Gable? Good for her. And Grace, Marilyn thought, was so beautiful. She remembered seeing her at the Hollywood Tennis Club years ago, and she was even prettier in person. But hadn’t she broken up the marriage of her costar, the one from Dial M for Murder, was it Ray Milland? And didn’t she always have some new lover? Well, she might live like a man, though she seemed none the worse for wear. Maybe it was simpler than she thought. Her own father had walked away from her. After her mother died giving birth to her stillborn brother, he’d sent her off to live with her Uncle Bud and Aunt Mary, claiming terrific grief. But perhaps he simply wanted to be alone. Or he saw in his wife’s death the opportunity to start all over. And was that simply a man thing? A capacity they retained once children were in the picture that women rarely could: to walk away. She looked up at Chip. Of course she couldn’t leave him. Yet most of the time it had seemed that Sam was simply daring her to walk away, pushing her into leaving. Why, so that the burden of breaking off wasn’t on him?
“Hello, Mrs. Sheppard.”
“Oh, hello, Timothy.”
“Having a party?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It’ll be pretty for the fireworks tonight. All weekend, in fact.”
“So I hear.”
“Hello, Chip,” the clerk said.
He looked at Marilyn for permission.
“Say hello,” she told him.
“Hello.”
“Timothy, what time do you have?”
“It’s a quarter past twelve.”
“Could you watch Chip while I make a phone call?”
She called the hospital and asked to be put through to Donna, who knew what she wanted the minute Marilyn said hello.
“He canceled his last surgery,” she said. “He left about thirty minutes ago.”
After saying good-bye, Marilyn stared at the black receiver. She saw Susan Hayes in her mind, sitting in the passenger seat of Sam’s car, waiting for him in their garage.
The truth, Marilyn thought, following the bag boy to her car, was that she’d been a fool to think that Sam could change—which was fine, if only because they’d tried. So now that they’d failed, she was going to show her husband that she could change. By inviting another man into her bed, or any number of them. She’d make it a sport. Hadn’t he once said as much, explaining that it was kind of a sport? She could take the Dick Eberlings and Don Aherns and Spen Houks, all of whom wanted to have their way with her, and play Sam’s game, then see how sporty he felt when it was happening to him, when the men who came to him for care had enjoyed his wife’s favors, when their wives knew, even his nurses and store clerks. After all, hadn’t the bedrock of her fidelity enabled him to do all this? Didn’t such behavior—as well as his appeal, his unattainability—require that things be one-sided?
Driving down Lake Road, she saw Dick Eberling’s van parked in front of the Houks’ house and thought, Why not start now? She pulled into their driveway, told Chip to sit quietly for a minute, and knocked on the door.
Esther answered, in a tizzy about getting the place cleaned up.
“I saw Dick Eberling’s van outside. I have to change an appointment with him.”
“He’s upstairs somewhere,” Esther said.
Spen, Bay View’s mayor, was by profession a butcher, and their house always smelled smoked or charred. It was dark on the second floor, close and warm, quiet and carpeted. Marilyn padded silently toward the bedroom, stopping just outside