Switcheroo

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “I’m the rubber, you’re the glue. That goes double for me,” Marla said. Her arsenal was not full of big guns. Sylvie, all at once, actually felt sorry for the girl. This wasn’t what she’d meant to do.

  They collapsed onto opposite sides of the bathtub ledge like depressed bookends. Sylvie, looking across at the mirror, wondered how either of them could win.

  10

  Sylvie had driven back from 1411 Green Bay Road and gone directly to the mall where her mother’s shop was located. Her hands had shaken so badly on the short ride that she’d had to pull over to the side of the road twice. Cars whizzed by her but she didn’t see them.

  Over and over, the thought that had kept running through her head was that Bob, or anyone, might never make love to her again. The romance, the loving, maybe her entire sex life had ended for her some time ago and she hadn’t even known it. What an idiot I was. What an idiot I am, she thought and remembered the Hawaiian brochure. What had Bob thought when she’d virtually begged him to go? She actually blushed with embarrassment, though she was alone in the car. She’d been pathetic. What exactly had Bob been thinking while she was busy pitching a romantic adventure? Going with Marla Molensky instead?

  Breathing became impossible. She was too shocked. She’d been replaced and the worst part was she hadn’t even known it. Twenty-one years of dedicated service, now over. At least in the corporate world they had the courtesy of giving you a pink slip and a watch. She felt as if she’d been kicked all over. Imagining Bob touching her younger twin, the more perfect Sylvie, hurt so much it was intolerable. And what had the neighbors, her students, her friends known? She remembered Honey’s comments, her sightings all over town. Sylvie couldn’t bear to think about it. She wouldn’t or she’d go crazy.

  More than anything else, though, she was upset and hurt by Bob’s charade. He was the person she trusted more than anyone else in the world—except for her mother—and he had tricked her, deceived her, and made her look like a fool. However scatterbrained that girl was, Sylvie had to admit that she herself was far more stupid.

  When she got to the mall, she parked like a madwoman, unfairly swooping into a spot ahead of a blue Toyota and selfishly straddling the line so that no one would be able to park beside her, at least not without taking off her goddamned car’s door handles. Well, let them. Let them take the tires and the hubcaps and the rest of the goddamn car, too. The woman in the Toyota gave her a dirty look, but Sylvie, usually so sensitive, didn’t even blink. She wasn’t having a shoe emergency here at the mall. She needed her mother. She strode across the parking lot and through the door of her mother’s store—Potz Bayou. The pottery shop—living up to its punny name—was decorated with New Orleans—style wrought iron. Fake Spanish moss hung from the ceiling. All the shelves were lined with every imaginable unpainted ceramic article, from the tiniest demitasse cup to huge punch bowls.

  Suburban matrons were clustered together at long tables busily painting glazes onto mugs and bowls. Two shop girls, Cindy and another one, a new one, were bent over, assisting a customer. “Hi, Sylvie,” Sandie Thomas called out.

  For a panicky moment Sylvie thought she’d have to stop and gossip, something unthinkable. What would she do if she couldn’t find Mildred? She’d burst into public tears in front of all these women. Oh, screw them, she thought. This isn’t about them. Then, thank the lord, her mother came out of the kiln room, wiping her hands on her apron. Sylvie stalked across the shop. “Did you have another daughter that you put up for adoption?” she demanded.

  Several of the women turned and stared, their conversations momentarily halted by what looked like a better drama. Mildred opened her eyes wide and gestured with her chin toward the back. As if Sylvie cared if people overheard her. As if Sylvie cared about anything right now. The hell with it all. If the kiln was on and her mother was firing, Sylvie would be more than willing to stick her head into it.

  But Mildred took her wild-eyed daughter by the elbow and led her to the tiny office in the back of the shop. “What do you mean?” she asked, sounding exasperated.

  “I saw her. Mom, she looks just like me, only she’s much younger.”

  Mildred shrugged. “You didn’t expect she’d be like you, but older, did you?” Then she put her arm around Sylvie. “I’m so sorry, baby.” She opened the back door, which led to the service area. She turned and called out to the shop floor, “Cindy, could I please have that big planter on the third shelf for my daughter?”

  Sylvie stepped away from her mother as if she’d lost her mind. “Mom, I know glazing is your life, but this is no time for ceramics. I can’t paint now.”

  Cindy appeared, holding a large pot, and handed it to Mildred. Cindy looked over at Sylvie, obviously curious. “Thank you, dear. I think Mrs. Burns needs you now,” Mildred said, dismissing her and looking back at her daughter. “A nice girl, but nosy.” She handed the pot to Sylvie.

  “Mom, I’m not going to do ceramics.”

  “Not do them, throw them.” Mildred gestured out the door into the parking area and the brick wall. Sylvie looked from the planter to her mother’s face. “It will make you feel better. Not much, but some. You can’t keep all the anger inside. It’ll make you sick.”

  Sylvie blinked and then, with a fury she didn’t know she had, she hurled the pot against the wall. It exploded into thousands of shards that fell onto the blacktop and bounced. For a moment—just a moment—she felt totally at peace. “I do feel a little better,” she admitted. But then the turmoil returned. “Cindy, three more planters, please,” Sylvie yelled.

  “And bring a broom,” Mildred added, then lowered her voice. “Do you think you’re the first one to have this type of therapy? When I found out about that thing with your father and the bookkeeper…well, that’s when I got into ceramics in a big way. It was incredibly soothing to break all that crockery and have your dad pay the bill. He always asked what I was doing with the stuff, since I never brought it home.” Mildred laughed. “I told him I was sending it to your aunt Irene. And look—now I’m in the business.” She patted affectionately the sign over the back entrance. “I love what I do. I have a staff, and I make a nice profit.” She raised her brows. “Plus I bank every penny. I could buy out a hundred bookkeepers now.”

  Mildred looked at her daughter. “I know this is a shock to you—and to me—but you have to hold yourself together. You’re not alone.” Mildred gestured to the bustling shop. “See Sandie over there? Just last year she smashed eight complete place settings of dinnerware before she started painting.” Mildred handed another bowl to Sylvie and then patted her on the back. “Don’t throw your shoulder out,” she said. “Put your whole body into it with the next one.” She paused. “So, how much did you offer her?”

  Sylvie shook her head. “Mom, she can’t be bought off. This is not about money.”

  Cindy arrived, carefully juggling the three huge pots. “I’m afraid there’s a chip on one, Mrs. Crandall,” she said.

  Mildred smiled at her. “That’s all right, dear. We’ll work around that.” She waited for Cindy to, rather reluctantly, remove herself to the front of the store. She shook her head. “That girl always senses domestic tragedy. What she manages to overhear in this shop isn’t just the Days of Our Lives, it’s the nights too,” Mildred said loudly. Then she lowered her voice. “You didn’t offer her enough.”

  “Mom, you don’t understand. She’s not a bookkeeper. She’s some New Age space cadet. But she’s my twin. She looks exactly like me. Except she’s got less mileage. She’s a replacement part. Well, more like an entire new model.” Thinking of the girl’s face, Sylvie took the top pot and threw it with all her might against the wall. It smashed into slivers with a satisfying pop, but it wasn’t enough. She picked up the next one and hurled that too. The destruction was satisfying, but still not enough for Sylvie to get sufficient air into her lungs. “I can’t breathe,” she told her mother.

  “Yes, you can,” Mildred assured her. “You can an
d you will. Think of it as Lamaze. You’ll breathe all the way through this.”

  Sylvie shook her head, looked away from the shards and back to Mildred. “I’m not going through this, I’m getting out of it. But first I want to make Bob feel as shattered as that.” She pointed to the pile of debris. “As shattered as I feel.”

  “So you’re going to break up your marriage, not just these pots? Over Bob’s dumb mistake?”

  “It’s not a mistake. And she’s not dumb. She’s addled. She’s weird and maybe amoral, but she’s not mercenary. She’s looking for a husband. And she wants mine. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  “Well, you have to admire her for that. Knowing what you want is the first step in getting it,” Mildred said. “I’m not sure you know what you want yet.”

  Sylvie almost began to cry again. “Oh, yes I do. I want Bob to ache for me. I want him to feel rejected, and used up. I want him to be deceived and feel like a fool. And I want to be able to breathe again.”

  Mildred handed her daughter another pot. “Will this make you feel better? It’s the last one I have.”

  Sylvie shook her head and put the pot down on the counter. “No,” she said, “it’s chipped. What’s the point? Once things get old or damaged or imperfect, who wants anything to do with them?”

  “Now I feel a victim of your sarcasm,” Mildred sniffed. “Sylvie, you’re only forty. You don’t even subscribe to New Choices, let alone Modern Maturity. You’re lovely, not an old soup bowl. I’d like you to try now to calm down.”

  “You know what I’d like? I’d like to be able to breathe again, and think,” Sylvie said. “I do have to calm down to do that. I have to really take this all in.” She paused. “I don’t think I actually want to kill Bob, but I don’t want to see him with this replacement. You know, if I could have one wish it would be to make my husband fall passionately in love with me. But I don’t want Bob the way he is today. I mean, I don’t care about his paunch or his hairline. I want the old Bob. The Bob who was passionate. Who adored me. I remember how good that felt. I want him back, and I want him to love me more than he ever did.”

  “What are you saying, Sylvie?” Mildred sputtered. “That you wish you were Bob’s mistress instead of his wife?”

  “Yes. Well…no, not exactly.” Sylvie lied. It was shaming to admit it, but right now that was part of what she wanted. Of course, she also wanted to see Bob hang from a meat hook. But after he was punished, then what? “She’s the one who’s getting all the affection. She’s the one who gets flowers and gifts. Meanwhile, I’m the one who’s hanging his shirts up, defrosting chicken, and writing to the kids.”

  “That’s a wife and mother’s job description.”

  “Well, I want a promotion.”

  “But you need some quiet time. Sylvie, every woman here has husband trouble. That’s if they have a husband. If they don’t, they have boyfriend trouble, or they’re lonely. Half of the ones with husbands are bored by them or can’t stand them. Or they ignore them. The other half are being driven crazy because they’re ignored—or they’re suspicious. Nobody has it easy.” Mildred looked out the office door at the crowded shop. “It makes for very good business. You may not be able to cope with your marriage, but you can glaze a hell of a tureen. I feel like I’m providing a community service.”

  Mildred began to sweep and sighed. “Time moves on, Sylvie. We grow and we change. Some things we lose. Others we gain. I can tell you I don’t miss menstrual cramps, but sometimes…” She paused and put down the broom. “God! What am I yammering about? Go home, sweetheart. Take a nap. You’ll feel better. Then call me. I’ll come over. We’ll talk some more.”

  In the car Sylvie’s thoughts whirled. Her mother hadn’t understood about Marla, about their twin-ship, but who could? You had to see the girl to believe it. In an odd—very odd—way Sylvie thought that perhaps she should feel complimented. Bob hadn’t picked a Spanish señorita with black hair trailing down to her hips. If I lightened my hair, Sylvie thought, and I lost a little weight…If I got rid of these bags under my eyes…Well, she wouldn’t do that to please Bob. She’d much rather poison him. If only he’d eat a meal at home.

  Despite her mother’s advice, the idea of being in the same house with Bob made her dizzy. How could she not manage to kill him, or keep her mouth shut after meeting his mistress? Because despite her hurt, despite her outrage, despite her confusion, deep down Sylvie felt that there was something she wasn’t quite grasping that was at the very center of this. Something more important than the simple issue of her injured pride and her husband’s egregious betrayal. There was something that could be learned, but it kept flickering at the edges of her thoughts. She couldn’t bring it into focus.

  What did she really want? her mother had asked. Sylvie had thought, only a few days ago, that she had everything she wanted. And she’d been deceiving herself. Life was too precious to waste in a dream state or pursuing a goal you didn’t really desire. What did she really want and, once she knew that, how could she get it?

  11

  Sylvie lay flat—well, as flat as she could with the mounds that her breasts and her stomach made—on the single bed in Reenie’s room. She couldn’t bear the thought of going into her own bedroom or touching her bed—the bed she had slept on all these years with Bob. But she had to lie down somewhere because she simply didn’t have the strength to stand up for another moment. She stared at the ceiling and felt time pass over her. That is what had happened: time had passed over her and, as it did, minutely, bit by bit, day by day, it had washed away her youth and her freshness and her options and her courage and left behind this thing she had become. She moved one hand to her hip—it took all her energy to do it—and felt the fleshiness there. The last time she’d been to the mall she’d had to buy a size twelve pair of slacks. The saleswoman had assured her they were “European cut” but Sylvie knew she had thickened.

  Yet, she told herself, it was natural. She was aging, just like everyone else on the planet. Including that…that…New Age bimbo. Someday (well, probably in about eleven years) that poor addled tramp will have thickened too. The nice definition between her rib cage and her waist would smooth out into a flat line. And her butt would sag.

  Yet, until then, it seemed that Bob preferred her to his own wife. Tears began to fill Sylvie’s eyes, but she blinked them away. She was too angry and too shocked to cry. Yet she was vindicated. She wasn’t crazy, or oversensitive, or paranoid. Even her mother had been wrong. Bob was ignoring her. No wonder he hadn’t noticed when she changed her perfume or wore that new nightgown. No wonder he hadn’t tried to make her feel guilty about the car in the pool. He was putting something inappropriate into something inappropriate himself. And no wonder he had given her the car in the first place. When you had a car lot, a car was the easiest gift in the world to give. He’d given one to his mistress. Sylvia wondered who else he had given cars to. Their dry cleaner?

  She also wondered when was the last time Bob had really noticed, really thought about her? She clenched her fists. This nightmare was the kind of thing that happened to other people, other less fortunate women. It happened to Rosalie, but she had always been…well, shrewish. It happened to women who chose obvious Lotharios for husbands. It happened to Sandie Thomas. But it didn’t happen to her. She’d been a really good wife. She hadn’t ignored Bob to focus on the children. She hadn’t nagged. She’d been interested in his hobbies. She hadn’t let herself go—much. For God’s sake, she’d gone fly-fishing with him three years in a row. And she hadn’t just kept his home, she’d also kept their musical life going. She’d taken him to concerts, they’d played duets. This kind of thing did not happen to her. She wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t blind, and she wasn’t a victim.

  But it had happened.

  It had also happened to her mother.

  Sylvie felt as if she were sinking into Reenie’s mattress, as if she weighed not just a dozen pounds more than she should but a thousand, or a million.
She felt as if she could sink right through the mattress and the box spring, through the floor, down into the basement, and then, her density increasing, right down to the center of the earth. She was sure she would never be able to stand up again, much less walk.

  But when she remembered that moment—that shock of seeing her own more youthful face staring at her from inside that woman’s apartment—Sylvie had to admit that this was not just the usual dalliance. Even now, she would swear that Bob had never cheated on her before. Even now, with her heart and her belly and her fists and her thighs all feeling heavier than an imploding star, she had to admit that in selecting Marla Molensky, her younger twin, Bob hadn’t been completely rejecting her. Well, he’d been rejecting her, Sylvie Schiffer, but he’d selected her, or something very like her. He’d selected her as she had been.

  The thought wasn’t just a rationalization. The resemblance was too startling. Despite the heaviness of her heart, Sylvie felt somewhere, in the very center of herself, that Bob had fallen into this affair, made his selection, looking for a Sylvie. Maybe not Sylvie as she was right now, but Sylvie as she had been. Yes. He wanted her. He just wanted the old her.

  That idea both horrified and galvanized her. She got up from Reenie’s narrow bed and, like a sleepwalker, like Frankenstein’s wife, she made her way over to the full-length mirror on the back of Reenie’s closet door. She stared at her reflection.

  Of course, her hair was wildly disheveled, her eyes red, and her face pale—except for the splotches on her cheeks that she got when she was very angry. Sylvie, in slow motion, began to unbutton her blouse. She dropped it to the floor and then struggled with the too tight button on her slacks. She let them fall to her ankles and stepped out of them, flipping off her shoes. Next she reached behind herself and took off her bra, dropping it to the floor as her breasts dropped as well. Last, she stripped off her panties and stood there, naked except for the little gold cross that she wore around her neck. Then she remembered that Bob had given it to her on their fifth anniversary and she pulled it off too, letting it fall to the floor with the other flotsam and jetsam. It took all her courage then, but she pulled herself together and looked into the mirror.