Adam Ross - Mr. Peanut

For Beth

Where am I in the web of jealousy that trembles at every human movement?

What detectives we have to be.

Harold Brodkey

I went back upstairs and looked at my wife and felt and checked her pulse on her neck and determined or thought that she was gone. I became or thought that I was disoriented and the victim of a bizarre dream.

Statement from Dr. Sam Sheppard taken at the Cuyahoga County Sheriffs Office, Cleveland, OH, July 10, 1954, after consultation with his attorneys

W hen David Pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didnt kill her himself. He dreamed convenient acts of God. At a picnic on the beach, a storm front moved in. David and Alice collected their chairs, blankets, and booze, and when the lightning flashed, David imagined his wife lit up, her skeleton distinctly visible as in a childrens cartoon, Alice then collapsing into a smoking pile of ash. He watched her walk quickly across the sand, the tallest object in the wide-open space. She even stopped to observe the piling clouds. Some storm, she said. He tempted fate by hubris. In his mind he declared: I, David Pepin, am wiser and more knowing than God, and I, David Pepin, know that God shall not, at this very moment, on this very beach, Jones Beach, strike my wife down. God did not. David knew more. And in their van, when the rain came so densely it seemed they were in a car wash, he boasted of his godliness to Alice, asked rhetorically if a penis this large and this erect (thus exposed) could be anything but divine, and he made love to his wife angrily and passionately right in the front seat, hidden by the heavy weather.

He dreamed unconsciously and he dreamed sporadically. His fantasies simply welled up. If she called from work, he asked, Did something happen? If she was late coming home, he began to worry too soon. He began to dream according to her schedule. Taking the train today? David asked in the morning. Taking the train, Alice said. It was a block west to Lexington, where shed pick up the subway down to 42nd Street. At Grand Central, shed take Metro-North thirty minutes to Hawthorne, where she taught emotionally disturbed and occasionally dangerous children. Anything could happen between here and there. On the edge of the platform, two boys were roughhousing. The train came barreling into the station. An accidental push. Alice, spun round, did a crazy backstroke before she fell. And it was over. David winced. The things that went through his mind! From their window, he watched Alice walk up the street. A helicopter passed overhead. On Lexington, at the building under construction, a single girder was winched into the sky. And David imagined this was the last time he would ever see his wifethat this was the last image hed have of herand he felt the sadness well up and had the smallest taste of his loss, like the wish when youre young that your parents would die.

There could be no violence. It was a strange ethics attending his fantasy. He dreamed the crane tumbling, the helicopter spiraling out of control, but he edited out all the terror and pain. There was Alice, underneath the wreckage, killed instantly, or sometimes David was there, by her side, inserted just before the fatal moment. He held her hand, they exchanged last words, and he eased her into death.

David, Alice said, I love you.

Alice, David said, I love you too.

Her eyes glassed over. There could be no violence. But occasionally David became a Walter Mitty of murder. He dreamed his own agency. He did it. He shot Alice, he bludgeoned her, he suffocated her with a pillow. But these fantasies were truncated; they flashed in his mind, then he cut them off before the terminal moment because he never surprised her in time. He saw her recognize him as he came round the corner with knife, bat, or gun, felt her hand grip the arm that held the pillow over her faceand it was all too terrible to contemplate.

Whale! he screamed at her, because she was enormous. Goddamn blue whale! (Shed struggled mightily with depression but was now back on meds.)

When they argued, they were ferocious. Theyd been married to each other for thirteen years and still went for jugulars and balls.

Genius, she said. That drove him nuts. He was a lead designer and president of Spellbound, a small, extremely successful video game company. People in the industry called him a genius all the time, but during moments of doubt David confessed to her that the games they produced were inane at best, mind-killingto his and to the kids who played themat worst.

I wish you were dead! David screamed.

I wish you were dead too!

But this was a relief. The desire was mutual. He wasnt alone.

Later, after the quiet time, he apologized. Im sorry, he said. I shouldnt talk to you like that.

Im sorry, Alice said. I hate fighting with you.

They held each other in the living room. It was evening now and there were no lights on in the apartment. For hours theyd been sitting separately in the dark.

His love for his wife was renewed. How could he think the things hed thought? They took a shower together; it was one of their favorite things to do. He put his arms against the walls and she lathered his back, cleaned the cheeks of his ass and behind his ears. When she shaved his face, she unknowingly mimicked his expression. Afterward, she ran a bath.

You know who I was thinking about today? David said. Things between them still felt delicate, bruised, and he wanted to make conversation.

Who?

Dr. Otto.

She glanced at him and smiled sadly. Whether it was the associations his name conjured up or how long ago it was that theyd sat in his classit was where theyd first methe couldnt be sure. At the moment, David was sitting on the edge of the tub, Alices ankle in hand. He had soaped down her calf and was shaving it carefully. Hair grew in different directions in different spots.

Have you spoken to him?

Not for years. I read in the quarterly that his wife passed away.

Im sorry to hear that.

Im sure hes had a hard time.

And who hasnt? Alice said.

She completely filled up the bath. Her triceps swelled out separately, like a pair of dolphin fins; her breasts floated like twin islands. And she had the most beautiful face, the longest, finest chestnut-colored hair, and fabulous hazel-colored eyes. But shed grown huge, and David didnt pity her, though he knew it was difficult for her to carry the weight. At her maximum this year shed reached 288 pounds. Shed bought a digital scale (doctors orders) that flashed bright red numbers. Shed weigh herself in the morning as soon as she woke up, her hair hanging over her face as she stared between her feet.

I wish I were dead, Alice said.

And he wished her thin for her own happiness, but for himself he wished she remained fat. He loved the giganticness of her, loved to hold on to her mountain of ass. If he made love to her from behind, he imagined himself an X-rated Gulliver among the Brobdingnags. It was the difference in proportion that turned him on. Closing his eyes, he exaggerated her size, made himself extra small, David holding on, his arms outstretched, smashing into her rear for life, life, life. She was not his wife but a giant she-creature, an overlarge sex pet: his to screw, groom, and maintain. After they made love, she lay facedown on the bed, palms turned up toward the ceiling, eyes glazed open and body motionless (the weight had not deformed her, only intensified her curves, widened her like the Venus of Willendorf), Alice shot dead by Davids potent love.