Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

answer.
    “I thought I’d lost you. And now that you’re back, it’s like you’re gone.” He could see his wife breathing evenly, calmly, listening to him. “Say something,” he said.
    But she’d already fallen asleep.
    She slept late the next morning, and when she woke she still wouldn’t engage him. After breakfast, she took a nap. The moment she woke, a nurse came in to check her vitals, and everyone else in the hospital seemed to have an unspoken agreement with Alice that David was to be completely ignored. When the nurse left, another doctor trailed by a group of residents examined her; he explained how Alice had essentially starved herself for so many weeks that her system had gone haywire, her binge coupled with an allergic reaction to certain proteins, the combination having a toxic effect. “What we have here,” the doctor said, “is something akin to kwashiorkor—essentially protein malnutrition—followed by angioedema. A bad combo, to be sure.” The residents nodded, and Alice, happy to help, smiled at them and nodded back. “He’s right,” she said. “I barely ate.” Afterward, a food allergist paid an extended visit. Midday, David went back to the apartment to get her some clean clothes, took a few hours to clean the place spotless, and when he returned, Alice was surrounded by doctors and nurses again. So it wasn’t until late afternoon that she was discharged, she and David sitting in back of the cab, alone together finally, Alice pressed so close to her window and he to his that even a fat person could’ve shared the seat between them, and David picked up the conversation where she’d left off by asking, “How?”
    “How what?” she said.
    “How are you going to change your life?”
    “That’s my business.”
    “Oh,” David said. On the street, he watched a man turn the corner onto Lexington Avenue. When the wind hit him, it sent his cap sailing straight into the air. He watched it fly away as hopelessly as a child would a lost balloon. “Are you leaving me?” he asked after awhile.
    She closed her eyes, disgusted. “Not everything’s about you, David.”
    She continued in this fashion at home. Though the floor was mopped, the bed made with fresh sheets, the seat of the toilet as clean as new china, and you could see your reflection in the fixtures of the sinks, Alice bustled about restraightening everything, shaking her head in frustration as she ran her finger along the baseboards. “This place is filthy,” she said, flashing David her blackened finger. “I can’t live like this.” When he tried to stop her from bleaching the grout in the bathroom, she said, “Can I get myself situated without you following me around?” And so he retreated to sit in front of the television’s blank screen, which he turned on guiltily after a few minutes, sound off. Football wasn’t the same without commentary, the game a set of pointless collisions between enormous men. Commercials were like antic silent movies, the snippets from children’s video games like scenes from some hellish nightmare, even though one of them was David’s own. When Alice entered carrying a bucket and sponge, he couldn’t take it anymore and left for the office. Though in truth there was nothing there for him to do.
    So he came back to his book. He brought it up on-screen and read, standing, palms against his desk; then he sat down and fiddled with a sentence or two, reading back to where he’d gotten stuck. And staring at the screen he once again waited, which, as with many things, was often the only thing you could manage to do.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked Alice in bed that night.
    “I’m fine,” she said, staring at the ceiling with her hands crossed over her chest.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure.”
    “Nothing you want to talk about?”
    “No.”
    “Nothing you want to tell me?”
    “No.”
    There was no give in her whatsoever, and this in and of itself was a