Mr peanut, p.26
Mr. Peanut, page 26
“Very good,” he said.
She smiled.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“I noticed inclusion in the red cells.”
Sheppard smiled too. It was the longest conversation they’d ever had. He took a step closer and they stood together at the foot of the patient’s bed. He laid there, a young man in a suit, a John Doe, blood pressure falling to fatal levels. His breathing was labored, whistling slightly.
“What would your diagnosis be?” Sheppard asked.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“But if you were.”
Her faced flushed. He wanted to take it in his hands and kiss her.
“I’d say pneumococcal pneumonia. That would account for the low oxygen levels in his blood. And the disorientation.”
“Anything else?”
“Peritonitis. Also septicemia.”
“How would you treat it?”
“IV penicillin, immediately. And fluids, of course.”
Sheppard took the clipboard off the man’s bed and made a note. “Then that, Miss Hayes, is what we’ll do.”
She waited for a moment, looking at the man and then back at Sheppard.
“That’ll be all,” he said, and watched her leave.
His brother Stephen arrived early, around a quarter till six. By then Sheppard’s patient had stabilized. He brought Stephen up to speed and went back to his office; exhausted, he took off his doctor’s coat and put on his suit jacket, then decided to peek his head in pathology before leaving.
But Susan was gone. Tricia was already mulling over some slides in her place.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
He tapped the door once, looking around the lab, and left.
She was waiting for him in his car.
It was surprisingly humid outside, overcast, and it made the whole world bluer, all sound seemingly muffled by the promise of rain, with occasional birdcalls and the peculiar, particular brand of quiet you noticed only at odd hours or during dreams. Sheppard got in and started the car. “Are you hungry?” he asked, though he couldn’t look at her. “Yes,” she said, sounding as anxious as he felt. It was as if they were running from something. The need for food gave him license, and he pulled out; instead of heading toward Rocky River he went west through Bay Village toward Avon, though in truth he had no idea where he was going. It made him nearly desperate, this wandering. They had to get somewhere. It was as if he were in an unknown city, in a dreadful neighborhood, low on gas and lost. Before the township, he saw a brown sign with THORNTON PARK in gold letters above icons for a picnic table, a camper, a boat. He made such a hard right the MG fishtailed slightly, spraying the bushes with gravel. As he weaved down the narrow, winding two-lane road, Susan pressed her hand lightly on the dash. They came around one more curve and there it was: Erie in all its vastness, gray water against gray sky. A landing. A slack tide. Not a boat to be seen. The water looked forbidding, poisoned in its stillness. The wooded parking area with picnic tables was empty. Sheppard pulled in, cut the ignition. There was no sound except the quietest lapping, just beyond the bushes blocking a view of the beach, of the small waves. He faced forward for a long time and saw nothing.
She touched his leg.
He was upon her. If he could, he would feast on her mouth; he couldn’t press his to hers any harder. He tore his arm from his coat and took the back of her head in his available hand lest she try even for a moment to break away, then slipped his other arm out of the sleeve. She pressed his shoulders back. His lips were trembling and his teeth began to chatter. She was as still and calm as the lake. “The seats,” she said. He reached beneath her, between her legs, pulled at the latch and pushed her seat, hard, as far from the dash as it would go. He reached across her waist, his cheek pressed against her blouse, and lifted the latch by her door so that the bucket seat fell to near horizontal—then he was on her again. And just the feeling of her legs in each of his hands as he kissed her—the slightly moist crook of her knees and the soft, leather-warmed underside of her thighs—might be enough to satisfy him, or the pain of her heels hooked into his calves as she lay beneath him, or simply the sight of her as she crawled up the seat on her elbows so he could slide her panties off the leg he pressed bent to her chest and then down over the knee of the other to dangle at the ankle. Or how she slowed him down, unbuckling his trousers, lifting him up at the hips so she should could push his pants to the floorboard with the sharp toe of her shoe, stretching the boxers away from his cock, so it arched taut and free in the warm morning air. He raised himself up toward her chest, Susan taking hold of him—“Lie back,” she said—and never letting go while he slid beneath her, guiding him in while she eased herself down slowly, gently, the containment and spatial restrictions of the car itself, that it wouldn’t give either of them full freedom of movement, augmenting the bliss. “Goddamn it,” she said, pressing the heel of her hand to the headrest for balance and gripping the door handle with the other, both of them finally finding the right purchase, Sheppard shifting until he was nearly diagonal, his leg thrown over the stick and his foot smashed against the brake. “Are you ready?” she whispered. He closed his eyes. She moved so fast he was afraid to look, this physical incantation as she thrummed a brand of magic above him, something that might transform him into a pillar of salt if he dared open his eyes, a spell whose effect was to suck away something feathery that he hadn’t realized was lining his whole body. When she stopped, he lay there blind. His stomach, for a time, contracted uncontrollably and his extremities tingled so violently he had to tense up to keep from convulsing. And then he felt it: the warm wash spreading over his lap, an issuance that made him instantly erect and almost immediately ejaculate again. He lay still, groaning, and opened his eyes to see her watching him. Her hair was pasted against her forehead, her neck and chest shining. Her large nipples had burst from her white brassiere. She laughed now, wickedly, leaning forward and gathering his collar into her fists while he regrew inside her yet again.
“Did you feel that?” she said.
He blinked away his sweat.
“Who are you?” he wanted to ask.
• • •
Where was that Susan? he wondered now, staring at nothing over the cliff. And did she wonder herself? For it was a car just like this, Sheppard thought.
Once again and in spite of everything, he came around to the passenger side and opened the door for her, though this time she didn’t thank him. He took his seat and started the engine, his thumb throbbing, then pulled out onto the road. He shouldn’t be surprised that things between them had changed; like health, no state of being endured. Yet they’d reached what seemed to Sheppard a perfect arrangement: they were the exact answer to each other’s needs. Marilyn had cut him off, after all, or at least urged him to leave her alone. He was free, she said, just so long as she didn’t know. And so through all of that spring and into the summer of 1951, he and Susan had fucked in that car until they arrived at something they both believed approximated lovemaking, that felt necessary. But it was different, he realized: utterly new, something more. Even through the fall they maintained a pure pragmatism to their relationship, an unspoken agreement to make plans at some point in their shift to meet (between visits to patients, say, or in stops at the lab), after which it was a longing for the day to end. She’d be waiting in his car, he’d drive, and then they’d find deserted parking lots at stores closed for the night, alleyways whose blind walls rose from lanes pocked and puddled, the locked-down loading docks bumpered with black rubber, the fences topped with barbed wire, places where buildings hid air conditioners, dumpsters, and downspouts from sight, service entrances marked RING BELL or DELIVERIES ONLY. And during very late nights, either on call or after emergency surgeries, they parked in the backs of grocery stores buttressed by towering stacks of emptied wooden crates that put him in mind of lobster traps, or in the scores of parks along Erie’s shore, paved roads dissolved to gravel and sand, Sheppard cutting the lights after screeching to a halt.
“Can’t we ever make love in a real bed?” Susan asked finally.
Sheppard found the request disappointing. After months he’d still never seen her completely naked and secretly didn’t want to. Half-exposed, she was more beautiful; like the armless Venus de Milo or the headless Winged Victory of Samothrace, it was what was missing that conferred on her a kind of perfection. It was how she looked when she did what she did, and Sheppard would look up from the floor while talking with another doctor—hearing the sound of her heels in the hallway—to see her ankles, her thin calves, her skirt brushing her knees. He’d call her into his office, order her to come around his desk. He’d run a hand up her thigh, beneath her skirt and between her legs. She’d let him squeeze her hard, the heat rising off her, her eyes starting to close like a doll tipped to sleep. But then she resisted.
“Can’t we?” she said.
He was becoming reckless.
At the hospital’s Halloween party, Sheppard decided to go dressed as a woman. He even shaved his legs, Marilyn laughing at the sight of them, at his black, discarded clippings webbing the drain. “How do you women do this every day?” he said. She did his makeup, giving him lashes long as a movie goddess, lips as red as his MG, cheeks rouged up like a drunk’s. He donned a bouffant wig and wore the most alluring dress Marilyn could find in his size. Standing with him in front of the mirror—Marilyn, as Alice in Wonderland, carried a cup labeled DRINK ME—she said, “Thank God Chip’s a boy.” When he asked why, she declared, “Because you’d make an ugly girl.” Sheppard drank two martinis to nerve himself and ordered Marilyn to drive, though she was tight herself. They entered arm in arm—the party was in Bay View’s cafeteria—and he picked Susan out immediately. Dressed as a man—like Sheppard’s father, in fact—she’d pasted a mustache above her mouth, put on the same round, black-rimmed glasses, and slicked back her hair. She came up to him, reckless too, for Marilyn was standing right there. “Got a pipe, miss?” she asked. “I do,” Sheppard said, pulling one from the waistband of his skirt and handing it to her. She put the tooth-dented stem in her mouth and made her black Groucho Marx eyebrows dance, then tapped his chest with the slicked end. “Now,” she said, “I’m Dr. Sam!” Marilyn looked at him, baffled and appalled. He shrugged, then watched Susan shoulder her way into the crowd. “I’m Dr. Sam!” she announced, and pinched Donna Bailey’s ass. He drank more. He mingled. He knew where Susan was at all times. Marilyn spoke to him; he spoke with others and pretended to listen, not hearing a thing. He spotted Susan dancing with a resident, Stevenson, and approached them. Even in baggy pants and a suit coat whose sleeves she had to roll up, he could make out the shape of her thin, boyish body.
“May I cut in?” he asked.
Stevenson was a tall man, fit and broad-shouldered, and Susan acted vaguely disappointed at Sheppard’s appearance. But he didn’t care. He’d waited long enough.
“He’s all yours, Doctor.”
She had a stethoscope around her neck now and she looked up at him, glassy-eyed. “You’re a big missy,” she said.
Sheppard was so hard he thanked God for the pantyhose.
“What’re you here for?” she said. “Rectal? Hernia exam?”
She went to reach beneath his skirt but he restrained her, catching sight of Marilyn watching them, shocked.
“Ah,” she said, “I know. It’s your heart.” She pressed the scope to his chest, slipping the cold disk onto his skin. “Hmmm,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to be beating.” She leaned up to his ear. “I think all the blood’s in your dick.”
He pressed into her and they danced for three songs, and when he looked up Marilyn was gone.
Later, all the lights were off in the apartment. Sheppard had to hold the banister and press against the wall with his other palm to make it up the stairs. He took a piss and saw his harridan’s face weaving in the mirror. Knocking his earrings off the edge of the sink, he stumbled out and found Marilyn in the guest room. She’d wrapped herself in so many blankets they looked like a cocoon.
“You did it,” she said. “You actually did it.”
“Did what?”
“You’re fucking that woman.”
He laughed: just the thought of it. “I wouldn’t say I’m fucking her.”
“You decided to take me up on my offer.”
“The one to stop fucking you? Or the one to fuck?”
“And I really thought you wouldn’t,” she said.
“Well, what’s a girl to do?” he said, then swayed off to their room.
When he woke in the morning, she was staring at him from her bed. His hangover was like a pall.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I just don’t want to see it.”
Sheppard looked at himself. Still dressed as a woman, he had to get himself under control.
“Promise me,” she said.
But he wasn’t up to it.
Late that fall, he and Marilyn bought a home on Lake Road that had three bedrooms upstairs, a boat landing, and a screened-in porch with a spectacular view. Massive saucer-shaped clouds gathered low over the lake, layered in varying depths of gray, all pregnant with snow. Every body of water, Sheppard thought, was a mystery, as unique each day in appearance as a letter of the Mayan alphabet. Their move had made Marilyn happy. She’d been in a flurry of homemaking; his only responsibilities, she told him, were the boathouse and his study. Something had eased in her; she’d become more compliant. One night, as they talked in their separate beds, he could discern the black outline of her form as she told him she wanted to try. And so, in the afternoons, after warning her, “I’m coming home for lunch,” he’d eye the sandwich and glass of milk she’d laid out in the kitchen and hurry upstairs to their bedroom. Marilyn had ordered him to buy two twins, so he wouldn’t disturb her on nights when he was called into the hospital, and she lay waiting now in hers, her body still bath-warmed, clean and odorless, her white robe peeled open like the petals of a flower. She stared out the window while he undressed, draping his coat, pants, and shirt over the chair by her bed. When he climbed atop her, she tensed and said, “You’re freezing.” They kissed. Her mouth, her soft lips and their fit to his, was as familiar as the oddly metallic taste of her nipples, Sheppard so well-versed in the sequence of their lovemaking it was like walking through their living room in the dark. She kept her eyes closed, her expression, as he entered her, always of pain. Only at the very end did he feel anxious, did it seem, her face filling his sight, that she might say something disappointing. But they didn’t speak in those brief moments after. She kissed his cheek and gripped his neck in her arms. “That was nice,” she finally whispered. He went to the bathroom and rinsed himself off in the sink, proud of his postcoital size, then dressed, ate his sandwich, and drank his milk. Driving back to work, it was as if he’d left an alternative reality, Chip and Marilyn and their lives together something he’d dreamed.
He couldn’t help but compare those afternoons to his times with Susan. Honoring her request, he fucked her now in a real bed, in the interns’ apartment the hospital had rented, four modestly furnished rooms. Privacy wasn’t a problem, as rarely were more than two interns staying there at a time, sometimes none at all, and their schedules were easily checked. He’d been wrong to fear Susan’s nakedness, to think this new arrangement would change anything. But this leisure did allow them to slow down and, by eliminating the fear of discovery, made new explorations possible. They would arrive separately, Susan now in her own car, and he would enter the silent apartment and stand in the common room until he heard her breathing behind one of the doors, already undressed, lying in the single bed with the same look of idleness she’d worn during those weeks she’d made him wait, her expression part entitlement, part boredom, and she’d be oddly slow to look at him, even as he stood over her, took her hand, and pulled her up to face him. It sent a twinge of fear and dread through his mind that she might deny him. He touched her body while she indifferently, unresponsively removed his jacket and tie, his shirt and pants, as if to remind him that it was she who made these decisions. “What took you so long?” she asked one day. “I had to talk my way out of a speeding ticket,” he answered. Smiling now, appeased, she then kissed and climbed him, engaged, her legs wrapped round his hips, still climbing until she was onto his shoulders, this girl as thin as she was strong, his hair bunched in her fists while he fed on her little cunt. It amazed Sheppard that a thing so small could provide such delight, could supply what seemed as essential as water. He lifted her off his shoulders, placing her face down on the bed, and when she raised her ass toward him and turned around to look, the tiny spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose reddened, his cock drawn to her as if magnetized, so stiff it was as if it were a beak pressing itself out of his body’s shell. It was a feeling, as he clutched her hips, that they were in furious pursuit, chasing something down. He turned her over and watched her orgasm slowly bloom. She tilted her head back as if she were rinsing her hair, tears forming at the edges of her closed eyes, the folds of her vagina so radiant and wet, the warmth coiling through her torso and limbs, that when he pressed his cheek and chest to hers he was like a child lying waterlogged on the hot concrete of a pool.
“Whose room is this?” he asked after they’d used the same one several times. He was sitting in a chair by the bed with his pants on, watching Susan open a bottle of men’s cologne on the dresser.
She smelled it—wearing only Sheppard’s dress shirt—and then pressed a drop with her finger behind each ear. “It’s Robert’s.” She replaced the cap and carefully replaced the bottle. “Dr. Stevenson’s.”
“He’s not a doctor yet.”
“He will be.”
“Of course he will.”
“He loves me, you know.”
Sheppard raised an eyebrow.
“I think I love him too,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were seeing him.”
