Switcheroo

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Yes. Was it Reenie? Has she switched her major again? Is everything okay?”

  “No. No. I mean, yes. It wasn’t Reenie.”

  “Was it Kenny? Is he still having trouble with the roommate?”

  “No. It was just one of those sales calls. You know. A veteran who wanted to sell me lightbulbs. Oops, could you hold for a minute?” he asked without giving her time to respond. He had to find out when Marla was returning. But he couldn’t put off Sylvie.

  “Hello,” he said into the phone tentatively.

  “Say, hey! I’m not going to have enough quarters to pay for this,” Marla’s voice told him. “You know I’m too smart to call your house collect.”

  “Look, I can’t talk now,” Bob told her. “When are you coming home?” His stomach was really beginning to bother him, and now his forehead and his upper chest were also covered with sweat.

  “I walk all the way down here in the dark, where they don’t even have streetlights, and you tell me you can’t talk? Bobby, have you got another girlfriend?”

  “Oh, babe, believe me, one’s enough.” Bob realized the tone his voice had taken and tried to lift it. “You’re all any man would ever need. Listen, I have to—”

  “If I’m all any man needs, how come you’re still with your wife?” Marla asked.

  “Hold on a minute,” Bob said and clicked back to Sylvie. “Hello?” he said and paused. He waited to hear whether Sylvie would respond. Sometimes the button on the phone didn’t work and you had the same person on you’d had on before you clicked. It would be bad to call Marla “Sylvie,” but it would be fatal to call his wife by another name. As fatal as this porterhouse which, at the moment, seemed to be sitting not only in his belly but on his aorta.

  “Bob? Who was that?” Sylvie asked.

  “Oh, it was the damn veteran again. He had to tell me how he was in a wheelchair. You know, it’s probably a scam but I bought a dozen bulbs. But, anyway Syl, honey, I don’t feel well. I think—well, let me just say that this meat hasn’t gone down well. In fact, it may come right back up.”

  “Oh, baby,” Sylvie cooed, “I’m so sorry. I wish I was there to hold your head.”

  Bob figured he could escape on that line and find out when Marla returned. “Hey, I’ve got to go. Love to Ellen,” Bob said, and just barely waited for his wife’s response before he clicked back to his waiting girlfriend. But when he got on the other line he heard only the buzzing of the dial tone.

  Marla had hung up.

  The next morning Bob, in recovery, was sucking on a couple of Tums as he carefully washed down Beautiful Baby. There was something calming, something almost sensual about sudsing her fenders. Washing your car was one of those few acts in life that deeply satisfied because, if you took pains, you could do it perfectly. As he rinsed the soapy sponge, Bob spotted his brother-in-law Phil coming across the lot. Bye-bye serenity. As he got closer Phil started to speak. “Is Pop here today?”

  “It’s Wednesday. He’s golfing.” Jesus, after five years of his father golfing on Wednesdays Phil still didn’t get the schedule. Didn’t he pay attention?

  His next question proved the answer to be no. “Hey, where’s Sylvie been? I stopped by the house earlier and she wasn’t there.”

  “Wake up and smell the anesthesia,” Bob said, looking up. “She went to your sister’s for a few days. Ellen’s having something ‘done.’”

  “Oh, she’s always redecorating. No kids. Gives her something to do.”

  “No. I mean elective surgery. You know, cosmetic.”

  “Yeah? What? A hooterectomy?” Phil probed, obviously deeply interested. “I tried to give a boob job to Rosalie on our last anniversary.”

  “Maybe that’s why it was your last,” Bob commented, shaking his head. His mood, his entire meditation, was ruined by this clown.

  “You’ve heard the one about the guy whose fiancée was perfect in every way? You know, gorgeous, young, rich, and sexy. Just one thing wrong: she didn’t have big knockers. You heard this one?” Phil asked.

  “No, Phil. I don’t believe I’ve heard this one,” Bob answered, turning back to his car. Rubbing it would bring him peace. He’d ignore this mosquito buzzing. “Can you give it to me in four words or less?”

  Phil put a hand on Bob’s shoulder, stopping him from buffing. “So anyway, of course he’s hesitant to marry her. I mean, no bazookas. But one of his friends says, ‘Are you crazy? You’d give up a beauty like that just because she’s a little titularly challenged?’ ‘But I like ’em big!’ the guy says. ‘So I got the solution,’ says the other one. ‘Just have her pat them with toilet paper three times every day. Before you know it, she’ll be Pamela Lee.’ ‘You’re kidding me,’ the guy says. ‘Toilet paper? This works?’ ‘Sure,’ says his buddy. ‘My wife’s been wiping her butt with it for years and now her ass is bigger than a house.’” Phil fell into hysterics. “Hey, you hear the one about the millionaire with three girlfriends?”

  Bob, unmoved, looked at Phil and answered simply, “Phil, you’re a throwback. So out of date: it’s not Pamela Lee anymore. She’s Anderson. They got a divorce.”

  “Oh yeah? Now she and I have something in common.” He shifted on his feet, but didn’t offer to help Bob with the car.

  “So have you heard from Sylvie?”

  “Every day, but those telephone conversations are never enough.”

  “Are you kidding? Women can kill you on the phone. I kept telling Rosalie 1 didn’t need details. I know more than anyone needs to know about her mother’s…”

  Bob looked over at his brother-in-law. He sounded so bitter. “So you don’t regret…?”

  Phil was silent for a minute and looked away, across the lot of empty models. “Sure I do. I haven’t had a solid bowel movement since Rosalie the Vindictive threw me out. Sicilian girls! They live for vendetta, but they sure can cook.”

  “And Sylvie made a hell of a pot roast,” Bob agreed nostalgically, as if she’d been gone for two years instead of only two weeks. With that, he got into Beautiful Baby, wet as she was, and drove off the lot.

  15

  Sylvie had already been to her yoga class when she met Marla for breakfast—such as it was. Marla had a loaded plate with toast and eggs and peanut butter and sliced bananas, along with a bowl of yogurt covered with the delicious, high-calorie granola. Sylvie sat opposite, sipping her soy and melon concoction. She’d need the protein to get through aerobics.

  Marla was spooning yogurt into her mouth and giggling. “So when he put you on hold, who did he say it was?” she asked again.

  After the two women had admitted that they were thinking of secretly calling Bob, they’d decided to call him simultaneously. “He said you were a disabled veteran,” Sylvie said.

  “Well, that isn’t true,” Marla explained. “I was never in a war.”

  “Only if you count the battle of the sexes,” Sylvie told her.

  “I can’t figure out why you walk like a boy,” Marla was saying later, as the two women were working together in a long, deserted spa hallway.

  “Maybe because I had an older brother,” Sylvie suggested. “Phil was an athlete. Very butch.”

  “Hey, I had an older brother named Butch too,” Marla said. “Well, he was a stepbrother. Or maybe a half stepbrother. What a pig! He made a pass at me when I was eleven.” Marla was on the floor, taping paper spa shoes to the carpet. It looked a lot like a foot diagram from Sylvie’s days at Miss Walker’s School of Social Dancing. “Okay. Now try,” Marla said, getting up off her hands and knees. Was it Sylvie’s imagination or was the girl’s face a little fatter? When Marla bent over, it became clear that her butt was. Thank god for mashed potatoes and butter, Sylvie thought, and smiled to herself.

  “Okay. So walk in my footsteps,” Marla commanded. Shrugging, Sylvie placed her feet, one by one, on the places Marla indicated. It made her almost cross one leg in front of the other, throwing her pelvis from side to side.

  “That’s it!” Mar
la cried, watching Sylvie from behind.

  “Marla, this is ridiculous,” Sylvie said, turning around. “It’s a hooker’s walk.”

  “I never got paid for it in my life!” Marla said hotly.

  “What I meant was, this isn’t the way you walk.”

  “It is when there’s a man behind me,” Marla told her. “Do it again.” Sylvie obeyed and managed to “walk the walk” without toppling like a fallen tree.

  Sylvie sat on the toilet, the seat down, and squirmed. For what seemed like an hour she’d been trapped here, being made-up by Marla.

  “Come on,” Sylvie said. “My behind has gone all pins and needles.”

  “Speaking of needles, you could use some electrolysis,” Marla commented as she picked up yet another brush and tickled Sylvie’s chin. The girl had more colors and brushes than Rembrandt. “Blend, blend, blend. It’s the secret to a perfect face,” she confided.

  “Would you just stop?” Sylvie asked. “I mean, what’s the point?”

  “Ta da!” Marla said. “Just gorgeous. That’s the point.”

  When Sylvie looked in the mirror, “Oh dear Lord!” was all she could manage at first. “This is what I waited so long for?” Marla had used a heavy base to cover Sylvie’s few remaining yellowish bruises, then painted a whole new face on the blank, poreless canvas.

  Sylvie pursed her glistening cherry lips, which now extended below her lip line on the bottom but were drawn in smaller on the top. Below her eyes there were pink streaks on her cheeks, then brown streaks below that, approximating cheekbones and hollows. Her eyes—well, they weren’t her eyes, they were the eyes of Nathan Lane in The Birdcage—were shaded with three colors and then outlined in black and fringed with lashes that resembled fat black centipedes.

  “I look like Norma Desmond,” Sylvie whispered.

  “Yeah. But remember, Norma became Marilyn Monroe.” Marla looked at Sylvie’s face in a dispassionate but critical way. “It is a little bland. I could touch it up,” she promised.

  That night, charley-horsed and exhausted after her two sessions of water aerobics, Sylvie fell into bed feeling as if her car had landed on her in the spa pool. Everything hurt, but she had to admit she was tighter and firmer than she had been in years. Marla, meanwhile, was sprawled on the armchair watching a movie. “What are you watching?”

  “It’s the latest Elise Eliot. I forget what it’s called.”

  “Isn’t she wonderful?” Sylvie asked.

  “I really don’t know. I’ve never met her.”

  Sylvie was too tired to even grin at Marla’s response. She hurt everywhere. “God, I’m fried,” she groaned as she pulled the blanket up with her aching arms.

  “I’m hungry,” Marla said. “I’d like something fried. Chicken, or maybe mozzarella sticks.”

  “How can you be hungry?” Sylvie asked. She hadn’t had more than a lettuce leaf and a sliver of fish for dinner, while Marla had devoured a steak, roasted potatoes, and two ears of corn, along with an enormous salad drowned in enough dressing to make each woman at the table raise their eyebrows.

  “That’s the trouble,” Marla said. “What did I tell you? Once you start to eat you can’t stop. Eating just makes you want to eat more. I wish I had a Three Musketeers,” Marla said.

  Sylvie just groaned again and turned on her side. She hadn’t had sugar for two weeks, and anyway, she was too tired to chew.

  She lay in bed in the dark until she heard Marla’s snores. Sylvie smiled. Bob may have done everything else in bed with that girl—but he had probably never spent the night with her, so he didn’t know the kind of noises that came out of that adorable nose. In fact, there were dozens, now maybe hundreds of things she knew about Marla that Bob did not.

  And it was odd, but the more she knew, the more Sylvie liked the girl. Oh, she was a ditz and not very bright and a bit of a liar, but none of that was her fault. Sylvie actually felt a lot of sympathy for her. What would she have done if she’d been born into a family as dysfunctional as Marla’s seemed to be? What if she hadn’t been bright, and if she hadn’t had musical talent? And their age difference made a crucial economic difference as well. Nowadays, with fewer and fewer opportunities, not to mention her lack of education, Marla wasn’t fit for much. If she hadn’t been pretty, she could have wound up with a permanent job at the fry station in Mickey Dee’s.

  How terrifying to be without resources.

  It was hard to find your niche in the world, Sylvie thought, and even harder for a woman than for a man. There were still fewer opportunities, and the jobs paid less, yet men no longer possessed the old chivalry that had protected wives and single women. Sylvie knew that having a comfortably well-off family, with a father who had paid not only for her education but for her prom dress and piano lessons and every kind of sports equipment she ever wanted was an enormous luxury. What would it be like to have no one to provide you with those things? What would it be like to have no one to fall back on in case of an emergency? She thought of Marla and how frightened she must sometimes feel.

  Sylvie had been so lucky, and she knew it. But what would happen to Marla? Sylvie could imagine the nurturing part of Marla as being good as a mother, but her impracticality, her lack of logic—well, to be honest, her idiosyncrasies and crazy belief system—would make for a really weird upbringing for her child, if she ever had one.

  Who would love and commit to a girl like Marla? She was so easy not to take seriously. When Sylvie thought about it, she felt sad and angry on Marla’s behalf. What Bob did was wrong—not just a wrong he’d committed against her but a wrong he’d committed against Marla. Sylvie knew he wasn’t going to take care of the girl, not in the way she needed. He was using her, just as he was using Sylvie. She thought of the old army doggerel: “This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for shooting, the other’s for fun.” Marla was the gun and—unless she was very wrong—Sylvie figured her husband would sleep with Marla, give her some money and some attention, but never really commit to anything. He needed Sylvie to be his rifle, a tool to keep his life orderly. Bob liked things orderly.

  And even if Bob did—god forbid—decide to leave Sylvie for this girl, Sylvie knew that he would never, ever consider having children with her. Where would that leave Marla, who craved them? The more she thought about it, the angrier Sylvie got. Until she realized that it was crazy to feel this kind of outrage on behalf of your husband’s mistress.

  They were back in the lounge, Sylvie again at the piano. She had briefed Marla on all her students, their personalities and their skill levels. But though Marla had memorized Lou’s and Honey’s and Samantha’s and Jennifer’s current exercises and name and favorite songs, she still couldn’t identify a sharp from a flat. Sylvie was playing the end of “If They Could See Me Now.” Marla was, as usual, nodding her head, off tempo. “Yes, yes,” she murmured. In desperation, Sylvie made a big, obvious mistake, and she made it loud. Marla looked up and, tentatively, shook her head no. At the no, Sylvie jumped up from the piano stool.

  “Good! Good!” she cried and hugged Marla.

  “I think you’ve got the wrist action on that. Now the back of the heel. How strong are your hands?” Distatstefully, Sylvie was doing as she was told, but the act struck her as obscene and more than a little ridiculous. Plus her hands were getting tired. How long would she have to keep this up? As if she read her mind, Maria said “Reflexology is ninety percent strength and thirty percent technique.” Sylvie refrained from mentioning that those percentages added up to much more than a hundred. “Hold my foot in your left hand as you work with your right,” Marla instructed.

  Sylvie sat, Marla’s feet in her lap, practicing her new “profession.” She had a look of disgust on her face and plenty of disdain in her heart. Sylvie hadn’t expected the whole process to be that difficult but she was finding out that there was more involved than she’d thought.

  “I guess I never knew this about myself before, but I can’t stand touching anyone’s feet,” Sylvie
said with a grimace.

  “Jesus didn’t mind,” Marla said in a superior tone. “Anyway, it’s just because you don’t understand them. They don’t call what you walk on ‘soles’ for nothing, you know. Why do you think people say, ‘Bless my soul’? Feet that hurt are a misery. Plus, they say ‘the foot is the window to the soul.’”

  Sylvie looked at the girl as if she were mad. “No they don’t,” she told her. “You already said that the sole is the window to the soul. And they don’t say that either. It’s the eyes that are the window to the soul.”

  “Whatever,” Marla said and Sylvie tossed her heel. “Ouch. Hey! Be careful. Doing that could permanently hurt a person’s instep for a long time.” She pulled her right foot off Sylvie’s lap and rubbed it. “Anyway, once you respect the foot, you’ll get over that sick feeling. Except, of course, if the feet are dirty or they have those big, hard calluses. Oh, by the way, Simon Brightman likes hot pink nail polish by Clinique,” Marla told Sylvie. “I don’t think it works with his skin tones, but let him have his poison.”

  “Simon? A guy who wants polish on his toenails?” Sylvie asked, disbelief on her face. Sylvie was sitting at the foot of Marla’s lounge chair with Marla’s right foot propped up on her knee. “Wait, I have to write all this down,” Sylvie said as she reached over for her notepad.

  “That’s not all they want,” Marla said. “One of my regulars insists I wear pumps that show toe cleavage.”

  “What’s that?” Sylvie asked, queasy.

  “Oh, you know…when a shoe is low cut and a little tight and it makes your foot crease between your big toe and your index toe. He just loves to look at it. And get this: some of them want to suck toes.”

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sylvie said, squealing. “What do you do?”