Switcheroo

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Bob turned around, walked down the steps, through the hall, and looked in the dining room. There, in the light of two guttering candles, sat his wife. “Honey, you didn’t have to wait up. And I’m not hungry.”

  Marla narrowed her eyes. “It took me all afternoon to make this. And I’ve been waiting all night to eat it. You have two choices: eat it or wear it.”

  “Oh. Okay, I’ll have it now.” Bob slipped into his seat. The table was set and a sad, wilted salad sat in front of him. He looked at Sylvie. Maybe it wasn’t hormones. Maybe she was mentally…upset. He picked up his fork. “The salad looks good,” he said.

  “I’ll get the entrée,” Marla said, but she pronounced it “entry,” like the doorway. She stomped out of the dining room. Bob wondered for a frightened moment whether she was on to him and his…situation. He didn’t think so, but it was best to be conciliatory.

  Marla stomped back in, two plates in her hands. She slammed Bob’s down on the table in front of him, then threw herself into her chair, picked up her fork, and stabbed at her food.

  Bob picked up his own fork, lifted up what looked like some sort of rice, and took a bite. “Umm, good,” he said, though it tasted fishy. He chewed and swallowed it anyway and took another mouthful. Sylvie glared at him. “You’re angry, aren’t you?” he asked. Sylvie didn’t answer but just put another forkful of food into her mouth. “I’m sorry, Cookie Face,” Bob said nervously.

  Marla narrowed her eyes. “Cookie Face? Who’s Cookie Face?” she asked.

  Bob was completely flustered. “Nobody,” he said. “I mean, you are.” He felt his throat close and picked up his water glass. He gulped a mouthful, but it was white wine. He managed to choke it down. He broke out in a sweat. “Nobody,” he managed to repeat.

  “It better be exactly nobody. Because if I’m spending my life taking care of you and…you know…those twins, and you’re running around on me…”

  Bob felt so dizzy he could hardly hear her. Something was very, very wrong. Bob clutched the arms of the chair. Even his hands were sweating. “I can’t breathe,” he whispered, because all the air was gone.

  “See what happens when you do something wrong? God punishes you,” his wife said and marched out of the room.

  Bob looked down at his plate, dizzy and breathless, shock running through him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. His chest was so tight. He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. He had all he could do to focus on the numbers. He needed help—medical help. He punched in John’s home number and prayed he wouldn’t get the service. After what seemed like a lifetime, the phone was answered and he heard John’s voice. “It’s Bob,” he gasped. “Shrimp,” he said, and then he blacked out.

  “You’ll live. Only the good die young,” John said as he threw away the disposable syringe and pulled up Bob’s shorts.

  Bob couldn’t exactly remember John’s arrival or the first adrenaline shot. He remembered a weeping Sylvie and John putting him facedown on the sofa. Now Sylvie was sedated, sleeping upstairs. Bob turned over and tried to sit up. “She’s trying to kill me,” he croaked to John.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” John said.

  “It isn’t ridiculous. Either she’s trying to kill me or she’s got Alzheimer’s. She forgot she put the car in the pool. She didn’t remember the crane. She made me bacon and eggs.”

  John nodded soberly. “Bacon and eggs will kill ya,” he agreed.

  “I’m serious,” Bob said.

  “No, you’re a narcissist,” John responded. “Sylvie was hysterical over her mistake. But mistakes happen. I work at a hospital. Trust me. I made her take an Ambien so she would sleep. She feels terrible.”

  “She does? I almost died.”

  “People forget things, Bob. They’re distracted or unhappy—and maybe they have every reason to be—so they get forgetful. Or they’re full of rage and simply not aware of it.” John closed his bag and rolled down his sleeves.

  “Wait. Before you go, can you take a look at this rash? It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Do I have to?” Bob pulled up his shirt. John leaned over him. “That’s just your nervous rash. You had it the day the kids left for school. Use the smelly cream.”

  John picked up his winter jacket and started to leave. “Wait,” Bob said. “That’s not all. When I shampooed this morning, there was hair in the drain. More than usual.”

  John stopped in the doorway. “Hair loss, huh? I don’t see it.” He shrugged. “In my medical opinion, it’s caused by the mess you’re making of your life.”

  And all Bob could think about was getting to Marla’s side as soon as he could.

  Marla and John were sitting, eating and drinking wine. “I’m glad you came over, Johnny, because otherwise this whole dinner would have gone to waste. Again.” Marla sighed, and pouted her lips as prettily as she could, but only partly for effect. “I’m still going to make Bob eat it when he gets home. If he ever does.” Had Bob really spent this much time at her apartment before the switcheroo?

  The table was completely set for Thanksgiving. Actually, it was overset. Dishes, silverware, Pilgrims’ hats, pumpkins, a huge cornucopia, and fold-out paper turkeys took up the entire surface, along with the two dozen or so place settings. The whole lot was swathed in dry cleaner’s polyethylene, reminiscent of Miss Havisham’s table. Or maybe it was more like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, since only a corner of the vast table had been cleared for the two of them.

  “Bob never comes home for dinner. He hardly comes home at all. I don’t think it was just because of the shrimp.” She looked up at John. “That was an accident.” He nodded. “Anyway,” she said, “I cooked it, he said he’d be home, and then he couldn’t make it. Meanwhile, children are starving in India. So I called you.”

  “And I was very happy that you did,” John said. “I hope it wasn’t just so the food wouldn’t be wasted.” He lifted his glass.

  “Uh-uh,” she told him, and took a sip of her wine. “It’s to confess. John, I’ve done something awful,” Marla began. “I think it’s really going to affect my karma.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so bad I have to whisper it,” Marla admitted and leaned forward. John averted his eyes from her cleavage but also leaned in toward her, until her mouth was almost touching his ear. “I’ve put Nair in Bob’s shampoo,” Marla whispered.

  John laughed for almost five minutes. “God!” he managed to gasp. “He told me about the hair loss. I said it was all in his head.” He started laughing again. Every time he almost stopped, he’d look at her and start over. “Well, I can tell you something I did that wasn’t good for my karma, as you put it,” John said when he could finally talk again. “Remember, back in our junior year of high school, the night you dragged me into Cleveland to that Swedish movie and made me see it twice?”

  Marla hadn’t a clue. “Wait. Let me think…oh, of course I remember. What happened?”

  “I told you I loved it as much as you did.” John paused. He looked at her blank face. “You don’t even remember, but it’s bothered me ever since. That I lied,” he admitted.

  “And all these years I never knew.” Marla leaned over and took his hand. “Know what? I didn’t really like it either.”

  They smiled at each other intensely enough for them both to avert their eyes.

  25

  What she needed, Sylvie decided—aside from a complete psychiatric appraisal and the appropriate pharmaceuticals—was a close girlfriend. Since Gloria had moved to Kansas City, she really hadn’t replaced her with a friend of equal depth. But she just had to talk to somebody about making love to Bob—otherwise she would burst. She couldn’t talk to John, close as he was. To him she liked to complain about Bob, not praise him. So the only person left, inappropriate as it was, was her mother.

  Sylvie got into the car and drove over to the strip mall. She had a key to the service entrance of Potz Bayou and parked her car back there. If anyone saw it they would just thin
k it was her car, not Marla’s. Maybe that was why Bob had given Marla the car. She shook her head. Sometimes it was hard to tell if Bob was a genius or a moron.

  She snuck into the back room, where the plaster casts, extra enamel jars, and brushes were kept, along with the detritus that collected in any storage room. Over by the coffeemaker were a bunch of mugs that had been abandoned by customers who had left them to be fired and never picked them up. Sylvie lifted an aqua one with little angels and the name Nan painted on it. Whoever Nan was, she couldn’t paint angels for shit, Sylvie thought. Sylvie filled the mug with coffee and picked up the receiver on the wall phone, using one line to dial the other. When she heard Mildred’s voice, she felt better. “Mom, could you come back here and meet me?” she asked. There was a moment’s pause.

  “Sylvie?” her mother asked in a hesitant voice.

  “Of course it’s Sylvie,” she almost snapped. “Do I sound like Phil?”

  “Well, actually, you and Miss You-Know-Who sound a lot alike.”

  “Could you please just come back here?” Sylvie asked.

  “Back where?”

  “Mom, I’m in the storeroom.”

  “What storeroom?” Mildred asked, exasperated.

  “Your storeroom,” Sylvie said, even more exasperated.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Mildred exclaimed and, moments later, walked through the doorway. She went past Sylvie, giving her a peck on the cheek en passant, and picked up a mug. She began to fill it.

  Sylvie stared down moodily into her own coffee. “Who’s Nan?” she asked.

  Mildred glanced at Sylvie’s mug. “Some jerk,” Mildred said. “She ran off with her contractor and never came back for the mug.” Mildred glanced at her daughter and raised her brows. “She wasn’t smart enough to leave her marriage alone either.”

  “Oh, Mom. Don’t scold me now,” Sylvie begged. “I admit there’s something seriously wrong with me. I was only trying to get back what I once had.” She looked over at her mother. “Look, I had the old Bob but now I have this new Bob, who is like Bob used to be. Not like the old Bob, like the young one, if you know what I mean.”

  Mildred squinted her eyes. “Are you really Marla?”

  “Mom, he made love to me and it was…” Sylvie couldn’t go on. She stared into her coffee cup again and a little shiver ran up her back. “Oh, you don’t remember what it was like.”

  Mildred patted her arm. “I remember,” she said, her voice softer. “Your father was a very passionate man.” They both stood there for a few moments in silence. “You love him, Sylvie?” Mildred asked.

  “With all my heart,” Sylvie said. “He’s so beautiful.”

  Mildred rolled her eyes. “Your late grandmother loved like that. Thank God it skipped a generation.”

  “Mom, this plan isn’t working,” Sylvie said. “I mean, I got what I wanted, but now I’m so afraid I’m going to lose it. I’m really scared.”

  “What’s new? You were born scared. All women are. Remember, this is a man who cheated on you and is cheating on you right now.”

  Sylvie panicked. She immediately felt her skin go clammy. “He’s sleeping with Marla? She told you that?” she asked.

  “No! He’s sleeping with you. You are Marla.”

  “No, I am Marla,” Marla said from the doorway.

  Mildred looked up. “Is this a scene from Spartacus?” she asked.

  “What’s a spartacus?” Marla asked.

  The two older women ignored the question. “You’re not supposed to be here. We can’t both be here at the same time,” Sylvie hissed.

  “Well, you’re the one who isn’t supposed to be here,” Marla pointed out. “I can visit my own mother if I want to. I don’t have anyone else to talk to. The kids are away and Bob’s never home.”

  “Tell me about it,” Sylvie said tartly, “after you’ve lived it for six months, not six days.”

  “I don’t get it,” Marla admitted. “It’s not like you’re a good sex partner or anything. You’re living on borrowed time.”

  “I am a good sex partner,” Sylvie snapped, then shivered with the tactile memory that flooded her. “The sex hasn’t been this good since before we were married.”

  “Before?” Mildred asked. “Before? When I think of what your father and I spent on that white wedding—”

  “Come on, Mom. It was the seventies,” Sylvie said.

  Marla put her hands on her hips and walked over to the coffee machine. “I was born in the seventies,” she reminded them.

  “That’s a he,” Sylvie shot back. “Admit it. You’re over thirty.”

  “Girls, girls. Stop it,” Mildred said, pouring a cup of coffee for Marla and handing it to her in a green mug that said “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.” “Solidarity, please. I thought this whole plan was supposed to be two women against a common enemy,” Mildred reminded them.

  “She started it,” Marla snapped.

  “And I’ll finish it too,” Sylvie said. “Right now. I just want to go back to being his wife and have great sex with him. Is that too much to ask?” Sylvie asked, turning to her mother.

  “Yes,” Mildred told her. “You want it all.”

  “If she has it all, I want it all too!” Marla whined. “Marriage, medical insurance, puppies that you have to buy.”

  “Look. Get this straight, the two of you: no woman has it all. Romance and marriage? No. Excitement and stability? Uh-uh. Not together. Pick one and shut up.”

  “But this terrific sex thing isn’t enough. I need to be with him more,” Sylvie whined.

  “More? He’s practically living with you. I mean, me.” Marla put down the coffee mug. “Listen to me: my kids are coming home the day after tomorrow and I expect to have a good family holiday. He never comes to see me—you—on holidays or weekends. So I want him home. If you want out, you have to wait until then. We don’t tell him until after Thanksgiving. And I could still sleep with him, you know. I could try to make him remember why he married you in the first place.”

  “You said you wouldn’t. You promised,” Sylvie said, frightened again.

  “So what? What about me? You promised that I would come out of this with a husband. You make noises about it but—excuuuuse me? I don’t see a groom.”

  Mildred went to the door and closed it. “All right. Stop it. Both of you,” she said. “Sylvie, Marla is right. It was a hell of a stupid promise, but you have to come through.”

  Marla smiled tremulously. Sylvie could see that she was thrilled by Mildred’s protection. “Thanks, Mom,” Marla said. She turned to Sylvie. “What about John? What about him as a husband?”

  “John? John’s in love with me! You can’t have John.”

  “Oh, forget John. He was born to be a widower. It’s his pain that makes him so attractive,” Mildred told the two of them.

  “John will never marry again, and he doesn’t want children,” Sylvie told Marla.

  “He never told me that,” Marla retorted.

  “Yes he did, about three years ago. You just don’t remember,” Sylvie snapped.

  Mildred interrupted again. “It would probably be a good idea to come up with a specific man,” she told Sylvie. “Why should Marla have to cope with an abstraction?”

  “Yeah,” Marla agreed, “whatever that means.”

  “Okay,” Sylvie said, putting down her empty mug and holding her hands up. “Okay. It’s not as if I haven’t been working on it. I’ve been thinking about giving her Phil.”

  Mildred dropped her own coffee mug then which was, luckily, almost empty. When it hit the floor it virtually exploded into a million bits. Despite the mess around her feet, Mildred didn’t move. “Oh, you broke the mug!” Marla, ever obvious, said, stooping and picking up the pieces. “I’ll make you a new one.”

  Mildred ignored her. “Our Phil?” she croaked.

  “Who is Phil again?” Marla asked.

  Mildred looked at Marla. “She’s talking about your brother, my son. Sylvie, are you out
of your mind? This isn’t ancient Egypt and he’s not a pharaoh.”

  “You mean I could be in the family?” Marla asked, childlike.

  Sylvie nodded, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “You’d be my sister.”

  “In-law,” Mildred added. “Sylvie, this is ridiculous.”

  Marla looked to Mildred for confirmation. “No, it would be great. You’d let me call you…Mom?”

  Mildred shook her head. “He’s my own son, but…well, he deserves love…on some level,” she added. She eyed Marla. “Sylvie, this is ridiculous. It’s out of the question. I—”

  “He’s nice-looking, he’s single, and he’s got a job,” Sylvie said to Marla. “And she’d be better than the last one,” she added to Mildred.

  “I would be? Great! I take back all the bad things I said about you. You know, now I remember Phil spoke to me on the phone. He was worried about you. He’s very protective. I like that in a man.”

  “Before you two buy the ring, you might want to check in with Phil about this,” Mildred said. “He might have a few reservations about incest. Meanwhile, I wash my hands of both of you.”

  “You can check him out at Thanksgiving,” Sylvie told Marla, who clapped her hands like an excited child. “Make a good meal. He loves to eat. Then we’ll both keep our promises. And don’t touch Bobby,” she sang out.

  “Don’t see him over the holiday,” Marla sang back. “And get me married. By the way, I invited one of the neighbors for Thanksgiving. She helped me roll in the olives. She’s very nice, Rose.”

  “Rose? Who’s Rose? You mean, Rosalie?” Sylvie asked.

  “Happy turkey day,” Mildred exclaimed and walked out.

  PART 3

  Which?

  26

  Bob and Marla were standing on the front porch as the entourage of college kids arrived in cars. The fall air was crisp but not cold. The leaves, now down from most of the trees, lay in drifts on the still-green lawn. It was like a scene from a made-for-television movie, Marla thought, feeling deeply sentimental. This was what she had shopped for, worked for, what she had expected. Bob’s arm was around her shoulders and the sun was shining, glinting off all the BMWs in the driveway. It was a perfect Kodak moment. Marla thought of her perfectly set table inside the perfectly arranged dining room inside the perfect house. Yes, this was what she wanted for herself. Stability. Organization. Routine. Ritual. People who loved her, who’d take care of her and who she could take care of. It would all be perfect as long as neither of the twins ratted her out.