The Switch
Olivia Goldsmith
From the bestselling author of The First Wives Club and Bestseller, a witty social satire of love, marriage, and the games men and women play with each other.Sylvie knows she has a lot to be thankful for. So what if her husband, Bob, is only interested in what she has to say ‘in four words or less’? The kids are off to college, and she is sure her marriage is about to bloom again. In fact it has already, but not with her. When Sylvie confronts Bob’s mistress, she is amazed: except for a gap of ten years and fifteen pounds, Marla could be Sylvie’s twin. But while Sylvie wants passion and romance, Marla just wants a husband of her own.And so their scheme is hatched: a nip and tuck and some blonde highlights for Sylvie, some brown hair and a few extra pounds for Marla, and the women are ready to switch places. The result as they juggle their new lives and identities is hilarious and enlightening. But just how long can they keep their charade going, and will it all end in tears?
OLIVIA GOLDSMITH
THE SWITCH
Copyright (#ulink_f068d26c-bb00-5d94-8ce5-8d1560848333)
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998
First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998
Copyright © Olivia Goldsmith 1998
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007361663
Ebook Edition © MAY 2015 ISBN: 9780007440238
Version: 2015-12-15
Dedication (#ulink_e2d74989-d6bb-5617-a471-807d70aaa741)
Amy Fine Collins for helping with the idea
Cindy Adams
Paul Mahon for not being there when I needed him the most
Linda Grady for her continued support and comments
Richard Saperstein for getting it and buying it for New Line Cinema
Lenny Gartner for the islands, the support and the earrings
Marjorie Braman for the great edit and ‘Marjorie Moments’
Beaver Hall for the gnawing, lodging and tail slapping
Leonida Karpik for knowing how to sell my books
Anthea Disney for laughing at my jokes
Contents
Cover (#uad9a0d84-56e2-5e61-80c2-d2b14ed40746)
Title Page (#u57844ceb-75c4-5ec8-a0e8-371c0223c6ce)
Copyright (#u9b7deab3-fafc-5c34-85d7-157bc0ae4eb4)
Dedication (#ucdf00ed2-99a3-5737-8343-e412ed885700)
Part 1: Bait (#u2ed16bab-6abb-539f-83eb-a2f209b2df9f)
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Part 2: Switch (#litres_trial_promo)
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Part 3: Which? (#litres_trial_promo)
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Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Part 1 (#ulink_d073e5f9-50c7-592e-a6b5-2aaa3a1d96b2)
1 (#ulink_dc5b5c1a-7d2b-53f3-95c2-897728a4f829)
Sylvie stood for a moment in the cool, dark hallway. It was the only dim place in the house and, though Sylvie loved the light—in fact, had fallen in love with the house for its light—she always found the comparative darkness of the hall a welcome contrast. She told herself that she really had too much to do to stand still here, one hand on the simple carved mahogany of the banister. She put her thumb on the comforting place where the curve of the wood had been worn flat by years of other thumbs. You don’t have time to linger here, she told herself sternly. But despite her admonishment, just for a moment, she would enjoy this quiet. She listened to the tiny creaks the old house made and the comforting tick of the wall clock, then forced herself to pick up the cup of tea she’d left on the sideboard. The jasmine smell filled her head.
Sylvie began to walk down the hall but, as always, glanced first into the dining room, then the living room opposite before moving down the hall toward the music room. Oh, she loved her house. It wasn’t large by Shaker Heights standards—just a center-hall colonial with only three bedrooms. But visitors, once in it, were always surprised by the grand dimensions and dignity of the house. Each of the downstairs four rooms was exactly the same size: all of them were large, light, airy rooms with ten-foot ceilings and long, high windows. Bob, at one time, had suggested they sell the house and buy a bigger one, but Sylvie had been aghast and had steadfastly refused. She didn’t need a guest room—guests stayed next door at her mother’s or camped out on the music room sofa. She didn’t need a family room: all the rooms downstairs were for the family.
Sylvie knew how lucky she was, and she didn’t take her good fortune for granted. Bob sometimes laughed at her for her little habit of checking each room. “Do you think they’re going away?” he’d ask. Or “Are you looking for something?” he’d inquire. “Not for, at,” she’d tell him. She was looking at her home, a place she had created slowly, over time, with Bob and the children. And she never wanted to be complacent about it.
Now Sylvie knew more surely than ever that she’d been right to not even consider selling the house. Perhaps in the old days they’d been the smallest bit cramped, but what would they do now with a larger place? Without the twins at home, the two bedrooms upstairs did stand empty, yet the rest of the house seemed to enfold and protect her. It was not a house too big for a couple, and perhaps someday when Sylvie was used to the idea that the children were gone she could turn one of their rooms upstairs into a proper guest room. Maybe she’d make a den for Bob out of the other. Then he wouldn’t have to leave his paperwork all over the desk in the corner of the dining room, though lately he hadn’t used it much, or at least kept it much neater than usual.
Sylvie moved down the hall to the music room, carrying her cup of tea before her as if the luminous white china could light her way like a lamp. She had only a few minutes before her first lesson and turned into the music room to see the usual organized clutter of sheet music, Schirmer’s Piano for New Students piled beside A Hundred Simple Piano Tunes and Chopin’s Sonatas. Her gray sweater lay across the bench of the Steinway, but nothing—ever—sat on its beautiful ebony lacquered top. Sylvie felt a little shiver of pleasure as she walked into the room. There was a touch of fall in the air and she closed one of the long windows. It was too early for a fire but, with the approach of autumn, she knew that soon the time she liked best in this room, the time when she gave lessons and played while apple wood burned in the grate behind her, was just ahead. Though she certainly missed the twins, this season was always a good time for her; September, when the children had begun school and she’d gone back to her full routine of piano lessons. It felt as if the year was beginning. Students returned from their summer holidays. Sylvie remembered that Jewish people actually celebrated their New Year about now. It made sense to her.
No reason to be sad, she told herself. No empty nest syndrome here, just because the children were no longer at Shaker Heights Elementary or Grover Cleveland High. Her daughter, Irene—Reenie to the family—would settle in at Bennington, and her twin brother, Kenny, already seemed perfectly happy at Northwestern. So, Sylvie told herself, she should settle in and be happy too. She was about to celebrate her fortieth birthday and was planning a treat. Bob had asked what she wanted and she’d finally decided. After all, she wanted romance. She had everything else.
Sylvie stopped for a moment, sipped her tea, and reflected on how many marriages in their neighborhood had failed. She and Bob were one of the lucky couples. They were happy. They loved each other. But she had to admit that sometimes she felt … well, Bob was always so busy. She’d expected he’d have more time once the kids were gone, but it was only she who had more time. He had filled up his agenda with campaigning, men’s club meetings, and business. But now Sylvie would help him take the time so they could discover themselves as a couple once again. She herself could focus a little more on Bob. Men liked that, even men as evolved as Bob. She’d already ordered some nice nightgowns from Victoria’s Secret. She’d make romantic dinners. She’d bought three bottles of champagne and had them hidden in the old refrigerator in the garage, waiting for a spontaneous moment to reveal one with a flourish and let Bob pop the cork.
Sylvie smiled to herself. She wanted to lie in bed with Bob in the morning and talk and giggle instead of letting him jump up, shower, and shave by half past seven. She wanted to sit out in the backyard in the coolness of the October evenings, wrapped in a blanket with him beside her, gazing up at the stars. She wanted to spend a Sunday morning poking around a flea market, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup held in one hand with Bob holding the other. She looked around at her lovely room and smiled with anticipation.
Sylvie had always felt sorry for women who had to work outside their homes. She had been so very lucky. Lucky to meet Bob as early as she had, lucky that he had come back to Shaker Heights and had seamlessly become part of her family. She was lucky that the twins were both so healthy, so smart, and had never been in any real trouble. There were no financial problems. Bob had given up his music to become a partner in her father’s car dealership, and that had provided well for them. Bob seemed to have done it willingly, though it always caused Sylvie some regret. There was no doubt in her mind that he had been the more talented musician. Perhaps his talent had actually made it easier for him to give up music as a profession; Sylvie didn’t mind teaching and wasn’t troubled by the knowledge that she was almost—but not quite—good enough to tour. Her talents had been exaggerated by a loving family. Juilliard, at first a startling comeuppance, had been a pleasure—once she realized that she didn’t really have the stuff it took to be a concert pianist.
But she had become a good teacher, and she enjoyed teaching. For her it was not a fallback, the boring trap that serious musicians were so reluctantly forced into. She loved bringing music into people’s lives and found that she also liked the glimpses into their lives that the lessons afforded her. Sylvie was a woman who enjoyed the process, and for that she was grateful. She actually enjoyed teaching scales, just as she enjoyed playing them. She liked the orderliness of building one week’s lessons upon the next, and the slow construction of a musician, week by week, as a student mastered fingering, timing, and sight-reading until the thrilling moment came when music burst out in apparent effortlessness. Sylvie treasured those moments when, almost invariably, students looked up from the Steinway keyboard dazzled by their own ability to bring forth a waterfall of sound, to recreate the ordered noise that Handel, Chopin, or Beethoven had first composed.
Oh, she was lucky all right. Lucky with her material possessions, with her family, and with her ability to be satisfied. She had, thank goodness, none of her brother’s constant dissatisfaction, or Bob’s restlessness, which Reenie seemed to have inherited. Sylvie and Kenny were more alike. But then, she had never had to give anything up, to sacrifice anything as Bob had. She had gotten to keep her music and her family. She’d gotten to have it all—a good marriage, good kids, a house she loved, a career she cared about. And if Bob sometimes seemed a bit absent, if he ignored her just a little or took her for granted, they could fix that now—now that they had the luxury of this time together.
She looked at her watch. Honey Blank, her next student, was late. Typical. Sylvie heard a noise in the hall and stepped out there again. The mail came sliding through the post slot in the front door. Maybe there was a letter from one of the children. Kenny would be bad about writing, but Reenie might take the time to send a note. Sylvie knelt to pick up the pile. The usual bills, some catalogues (soon the pre-Christmas deluge would begin), and a card from her sister. Ellen was always early with her birthday greetings. Sylvie opened it. “Forty but still fabulous” it said on the front, with a photo of a wizened old woman in frightening makeup. Thank you, Ellen, Sylvie thought. Older but still passive aggressive, I see. Sylvie shrugged. There was a postcard from Reenie. Sylvie read it quickly. Good. It seemed as if Reenie was settling in. She had signed it “your daughter, Irene,” the formality of which made Sylvie smile.
But it was the Sun Holidays brochure that lit up her face. This was what she’d been waiting for. She felt as if she and Bob needed to rekindle the lamp, the light that had always been at the center of their relationship. And now, with the children gone, there would be time. Here, in her hand, was a ticket to romance. It was up to her. She had always been the spontaneous one, the one who created their adventures.
The phone rang and Sylvie took the mail to the hall table.
“Are you in the middle of a lesson?” Mildred, Sylvie’s mother, began almost every phone conversation that way.
“No, but Harriet Blank is due over any minute.”
“Lucky you. The only woman in the greater Shaker Heights-Cleveland area with no social boundaries whatsoever. After her, do you and Bob want to come over for dinner?”
“No thanks. I’ve defrosted chicken.” Bob loved Mildred, but he got enough of Jim, Sylvie’s father, on the car lot most days. As she listened to her mother. Sylvie finished sorting through the mail.
“Your father is barbecuing,” Mildred told her.
“Well, that is an inducement. I haven’t eaten charcoal since July Fourth. You know, Kenny says Grandpa’s burgers are carcinogens. Something about free radicals.”
“The only free radical I know about is Patty Hearst,” Mildred snapped. Sylvie giggled while she opened the Sun Holidays envelope. It was the glossy brochure she’d written away for. She unfolded it, her heart beating a little faster. The photos were like gems, glowing deep sapphire and emerald in the dimness of the hallway.
“I thought I’d do your birthday dinner on Thursday,” Mildred continued, “in case Bob was taking you out someplace fancy on Friday.”
The only place she wanted him to take her was Hawaii, Sylvie thought. “He hasn’t mentioned it. I’ll ask him.”
“Maybe it’s a surprise.”
Oh no! “No surprise parties, Mom. I mean it,” Sylvie warned. “It’s bad enough being forty. I don’t need the whole cul-de-sac gloating. Not to mention Rosalie.” Just the thought of her ex-sister-in-law made Sylvie shiver. She held up the brochure. There was a picture of a guest room showing a canopy bed hung with white. She and Bob, tanned, lying under the canopy…. Well, she couldn’t tan but she could turn pink and put her arms around him and …
“Sylvie, are you moping? Not that I’d blame you, with the twins gone. It’s hard that both children had to leave at once. For me, I had six years to get used to Ellen, Phil, and then you leaving….”
“I’m not moping. I’m happy.” Sylvie clutched the brochure and dropped the other mail into the basket. “I’ve got to get ready for my lesson.”
“All right, dear. Call if you change your mind.”
There was a tapping on the glass of the French door. Mrs. Harriet Blank—Honey to her friends, if she had any—was standing at the back entrance. “You have a lot of leaves in the pool,” she said as she stepped into the room. “You should get one of those automatic pool sweepers.”
“Nice to see you too,” Sylvie said mildly. “It’s been a long summer.”
“I practiced every day,” Honey assured her, as defensive as Sylvie expected her to be. The lazy students always were. Honey took off her sweater and laid her bag on the armchair. She moved toward the bench, but paused and looked intently at Sylvie. “I saw you at L’Étoile, out by the lake, last week with Bob. You did something great to your face …” Honey took an even closer look at Sylvie, “… that night, anyway. I thought maybe you had a face-lift over the summer. You know, Carol Meyers did. She looks awful. Stretched. I hear she went all the way to Los Angeles for it. Waste of mileage. Anyway, you looked great—at L’Étoile—”
“Bob and I haven’t been out to dinner for months,” Sylvie said mildly. “Not since Bob started campaigning for the Masons’ grand vizier or whatever the boss is called.”
Honey made a face of disbelief. “Are you lying or did you forget?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t lie about being with my husband,” Sylvie said, laughing, “or about a face-lift.” She touched the part of her neck that had just begun to go a little crepey. Lately, when she glanced in a mirror, she sometimes saw a shadow of her mother’s face. God. She pushed the thought from her mind. She was letting this woman get to her. And Honey was such a ditz. She was too vain to wear her glasses most of the time, even when she drove. But … “When was it?” Sylvie couldn’t help but ask.
“Last Tuesday.”
“We were home,” Sylvie said. Then she remembered that Bob had been late on Tuesday. But not very late. “We were both home,” she emphasized.
“Come on. You were there,” Honey insisted. “The two of you were flirting like crazy. That’s why I didn’t even say hello.” Her voice drifted off. “You guys looked so romantic,” she murmured.
“That proves I wasn’t there,” Sylvie said, relieved. “In Shaker Heights, husbands don’t flirt with wives—at least not with their own.”
“It was you.” Honey paused. “Only your face was somehow … up. And you had only one chin.” Honey examined Sylvie’s face again. “You didn’t seem to have a wrinkle. And you were tan.”
“Honey, I never tan. Not since I was born. I turn red, crack, and peel. My mother can verify that.” Honey was a pain. “Shall we?” Sylvie asked, gesturing to the keyboard.
Honey leaned closer to Sylvie, still examining her face. “Well, you were tan two weeks ago. Did you buy that thing on QVC with the tape and the rubber bands? That temporary face-lift thing?”
“No, but I once did get the thigh master. It’s still under my bed. Want it?” Sylvie smacked her right leg and gestured for Honey to sit at the bench. “Obviously, I never used it.”
Honey seemed miffed by Sylvie’s response. They settled down to some finger exercises. It was clear that Honey hadn’t been practicing. Slowly they moved through the lesson. Somewhere near the end of the tiresome hour Sylvie thought she heard Bob’s car. She wanted to finish up quickly with Honey and present her new plan to her husband, but she was too professional to do it. She merely glanced over at the Hawaii brochure, propped at the edge of the music holder, and smiled.
At last the session was over. Sylvie gave Honey a new assignment and walked her to the French doors. What a day! The autumn air refreshed her, the crisp underscent of apples combining with that of drying leaves. Sylvie took a deep breath, then patted the sheet music she had handed Honey and raised her eyebrows, the strictest she ever got with an adult student. But subtlety was wasted on Honey. They said good-bye. Honey took the sheet music, looked up at her, and moved her hand to her own eyebrow, lifting the skin into a wrinkle-free arch. “If a person is going to look that good, even for one night, I think it’s really mean not to share how you did it with a friend,” Honey sniped.
“I share all my musical tips with you, Honey,” Sylvie said. “Here’s my best one: practice.” Gently she pushed the door closed and turned to join her husband.
2 (#ulink_3a05830c-354e-5c35-9a82-2a5e26740da2)
Bob wasn’t at his desk or in the living room. Sylvie checked the kitchen, flipped over the chicken that was sitting in its marinade, and sighed. Bob must have already slipped upstairs.
Sylvie was halfway up the stairs herself before she realized that she had left the travel brochure down in the music room. Honey, Sylvie admitted reluctantly, had flustered her. She turned around, bounded down the stairs, got the brochure, and doubled back. Now she could hear the sound of the shower in the master bath. That was what she’d been afraid of! It meant that Bob was probably going out again this evening. The chicken would be wasted. Damn it! Sylvie didn’t want to have to put off this conversation, but she didn’t want to be forced to sandwich it in between Bob’s ablutions and his departure.
Since Bob had begun to talk about becoming the grand panjandrum of the very secret Masons he’d been so busy. Why did he even want the position? It didn’t pay anything and it couldn’t really be any fun. Walking around in aprons, or whatever they wore, and singing secret songs seemed so unlike Bob. And why he needed to shave, change, and dress up for a smoke-filled room was also beyond her. He’d become more vain lately—she didn’t remember him ever bothering to shower and shave before Rotary, even when he was the president of that. Well, for all she knew, it was a Masonic rule or something. Sylvie got to the bedroom door, paused, and nervously smoothed her hair and then smoothed the brochure in her hand. It was time for a change. She’d just have to make Bob see that. Charm and quirkiness worked with her husband. She stopped for a moment at her bedside table and took out a roll of adhesive tape. She smiled to herself as she walked through the bedroom. She’d get his attention.
Sylvie marched aggressively into the bathroom. The steam pushed up against the door, then up against her body with a wet force. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at the place on the wall where, months ago, the paint had begun to peel. She wished, for the hundredth time, that Bob would remember not to turn the hot water up quite so high—but he never did. Acceptance was just a part of marriage. Sylvie shrugged and walked over to the glass shower wall.
Through the mottled texture of the glass she could see Bob’s body, but the glass seemed to turn him into what looked like animated blots of color—kind of like the way technicians electronically scrambled guilty people’s faces on television when they were being interviewed against their will. Sylvie stared. Pointillistic Bob. Then she picked up a hand towel and wiped down the glass. She’d be cute and quirky. Jauntily, Sylvie pushed the brochure up against the shower wall and, despite the moisture, used the adhesive tape to secure it there.
“Hi, honey. I have a surprise.”
“Your lesson over?”
Sylvie could see that the white dots topping the pink dots of Bob’s head had just about been washed off the animated figure that was her husband. Which meant that the shampooing was over and that he could safely open his eyes. She tapped the glass. “See what I brought you,” she said. She watched as he moved closer to the glass. He bent, suddenly, almost against the textured partition and his face clearly emerged. Very wet, but recognizably Bob’s nice-looking face. Close to the glass the wavering images didn’t blur. Sylvie knew he was close enough to see the brochure.
“Show and tell?” he asked casually.
“Show and go,” she responded, trying to be cute.
But then, to her disappointment, cuteness failed. His head disappeared again. He became a Seurat painting: Tuesday in the Shower with Bob.
Sylvie felt her jauntiness drop like a wilted leaf from a tree. No. He had to pay attention. She tapped the shower stall again. “Bob!
Look! There haven’t been colors like this since the seventies.”
He was fumbling for something on the corner shelf. “Beautiful. What is that? Something like Hawaii?”
“Good, Bob. It is Hawaii.” For a moment she felt hope surge, but then realized he wasn’t even looking. She’d have to try again. “You see those two people snorkeling? Isn’t it weird how they look just like us? They could be us, Bob.” Sylvie paused for his reaction. Then, to her dismay, she saw more white animated dots appearing at the top of her husband’s wavering form. He was shampooing twice. That was truly unusual. Bob never read the directions on any product or appliance, not since she’d met him. When did he ever read the instructions on the shampoo tube? Since when did he soap up twice?
The steam was taking over. Sylvie took the brochure down. Already its crisp new feel had begun to be transformed by the bathroom dampness. The pictures now sagged across the double-page spreads. For a moment the sag was echoed by the sag of Bob’s little belly, which emerged first from the stall, followed by the rest of him, only to be quickly wrapped in the special bath sheet he liked to use. Then, swaddled, he turned and inserted his arm into the shower, shutting off the water at last. The silence seemed startling to Sylvie, who felt more than a little bit forlorn. Perhaps Bob noticed, because he turned and gave her one of the big bear hugs that he was famous for. Just as she started to relax into it he dropped his arms, turned to the sink, and took down his razor and can of foam.
“You hear from the kids?” he asked casually.
“Nothing from Kenny, but Reenie sent a card. She says she wants to change her major again.”
“No more French poetry?” Bob asked, spreading the foam along his right cheek and stretching his neck up in that way men did before they patted the cream on their jowls. Sylvie wondered if shaving had some age-defying quality—Bob’s neck looked more taut than hers did, though he was already forty-four.
“She feels she has to major in post-Communist Russian studies.”
“Has to? That seems like something no one has to do,” he said as he pulled the razor down his cheek.
As always, Sylvie felt she had to spring to the defense of their mercurial daughter. Temperamentally Reenie and Bob were so similar that sometimes Sylvie had to run interference. “She’s been thinking about it a lot. I admit she’s a little at sea right now.”
“Well, she better move up to an A, or a B plus at the very least,” Bob punned. He flashed her a quick smile. His teeth seemed yellow against the unusually white-white of his foamy beard. It gave him an almost unpleasant wolfish look. Sylvie thought of the phrase “long in the tooth.” “She has to get a scholarship by next year is what she has to do,” Bob continued. The razor sliced another path through the foam. “First she had to pick the most expensive school in America. Now she has to study irrelevant recent history. You can’t even make a living with a degree in irrelevant ancient history.”
“The two of us felt we had to major in music,” Sylvie reminded him.
“Yeah. It sure helped me in my career,” Bob said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “When I’m giving a test drive, I know all the classical radio stations.”
Sylvie didn’t like the tone of this conversation. Bob seemed distracted and cranky. Normally, he was an indulgent father, a loving husband. Feeling a little desperate, Sylvie leaned forward and taped the buckling brochure to the mirror, beside the reflection of his now almost shaved face. It was hard to get the tape to stick to the wet glass.
Bob ignored the thing and rinsed the razor. “It’s not the seventies or eighties anymore,” he said. “Reenie has to begin thinking responsibly. Realistically. Do you realize the kids are older now than we were when we met?”
“They’re too short to be that old,” Sylvie told him.
He laughed and used one hand to pinch the nape of her neck, giving her the tug that connected deep inside her. Sylvie smiled into the mirror at him and started to gesture to the brochure, but he pulled his hand away and bent over, rooting around in the cabinet under the sink. “Bob, when we finished Juilliard, we were going to travel around the country in a painted bus. And play music wherever we felt like it. Why didn’t we do that?” Sylvie asked. Her voice, she realized, sounded plaintive. Where was quirky? Where was jaunty?
Bob was slapping his face with an aftershave. “Two reasons,” he said. “We were a decade too late and we had a life instead.”
“Bob. About Hawaii. For my birthday I’d really like to—”
“Oh no! A trip? Now?” He turned away from the mirror. “Come on, baby. That’s out of the question. We have the new models just jamming the lot. Your father’s talking about an advertising push, and I’m flirting with the idea of this political thing. Anyway, with two tuitions … we just can’t.”
“It’s not expensive,” Sylvie gabbled. “Not at this time of year. The season hasn’t begun yet. There’s a package deal. And I have money saved from lessons.”
“Hey! Pay for your own fortieth birthday present? I don’t think so.” He bent to her cheek and kissed her. His aftershave smelled of lime, unfamiliar. “Anyway, I already got your present for you. I brought it home tonight. Want to see it?” He dropped his towel, pulled on his briefs, stepped into his slacks, and looked around for his belt. Sylvie handed it to him. As he threaded it through his belt loops, Sylvie watched the brochure slide slowly down the wet mirror and settle in a pool of water on the vanity.
Bob, his shirt on, gave her another bear hug. “Hey! Come downstairs. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten your upcoming big day. Four decades! And you don’t look a day over forty.” She smiled weakly at him. He took her hand. “So, come on down and see your reward.”
Sylvie slowly followed Bob as he led her downstairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, past the rose bed and her row of double zinnias, over to the driveway. The light was beginning to fade, and his car—his obsession—was parked in front of the garage.
“You’re giving me Beautiful Baby for my birthday?” Sylvie joked mildly. If Bob had a choice between losing his car or his prostate, he’d probably keep the two-seater. It was a perfectly restored BMW, a 1971 XS200. But what in the world had he gotten for her? Her heart fluttered for a moment. Bob’s car was tiny, but there was enough room in the glove compartment for a jewelry box.
“You know my birthday isn’t until Friday. Shouldn’t we wait until then?” Sylvie asked. She felt guilty that she’d had ungracious thoughts about Bob. He really was thoughtful.
“Come on! You seem a little down. I want you to enjoy this as soon as possible. Use it on your birthday.” Bob pressed the remote to open the garage doors. As they swung up, he turned on the lights.
There, illuminated by the overhead fluorescent, was a new BMW convertible. A huge red bow was stretched across the hood. A car? Bob put his arm around her. “Happy birthday, honey,” he said. “Kids are gone. Time for a toy. Enjoy yourself.”
Sylvie looked at the sparkling silvery-paint-and-shiny-chrome object. “You took away my sedan?” she asked weakly.
“Don’t worry about a thing. Already detailed and in the previously owned lot.” He gestured to the convertible. “Isn’t she a beauty? Isn’t that better than a trip to Hawaii?”
Sylvie reluctantly nodded. She should feel grateful and excited, she told herself. Even if the family did own a BMW dealership and she got a new car every couple of years as a matter of course. This one was special. She knew Bob couldn’t keep the new convertibles on the lot. So why did she feel so … disappointed? She looked up at Bob. “Thank you,” she said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. She failed. “It’s really extravagant. It’s great,” she said, and she heard the flatness in her voice. God, she hoped Bob didn’t. She wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings.
But Bob didn’t seem hurt. He patted the leather of the seat. “You’ll love it as much as I love mine,” he told her. Sylvie doubted that, but she managed a smile. “Look, I’ve got to go,” he continued. “We’ll take the car out for your birthday, okay? Maybe we’ll drive up to the lake. Eat at L’Étoile. We haven’t been there in a long time.”
“Sure. Okay.” Sylvie paused. What was it? Oh. “That’s funny, because when Honey Blank came over today—”
Bob had pulled out his car keys. “Honey Blank? That piece of work? Can you tell me in four words or less?” he asked. “Or, better, save it for later. I really have to go.”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you when you get home,” Sylvie agreed. What difference did the coincidence make? Barely a conversation point.
“I might be late. I won’t wake you.” Bob got into Beautiful Baby and started her up. For a moment Sylvie saw him there as a stranger, a middle-aged man with a bit of a paunch sitting in a sports car built for the very young.
“I wouldn’t mind if you did wake me,” she told him, hoping he’d get the hint, but he had already begun backing out of the driveway. He waved as he pulled into the cul-de-sac and then accelerated. Sylvie watched him go. She stood for a moment in the twilight, the ugly fluorescent shining out of the garage behind her making the macadam under her feet look purple with oil.
“Well. That’s impressive.”
Sylvie looked up. God, it was Rosalie the Bitter, her ex-sister-in-law. Not right now, Sylvie thought. It wasn’t that Sylvie didn’t love Rosalie and feel sorry for her. She even took her side over her own brother’s, but Rosalie was difficult.
“A new car?” Rosalie asked. “I can’t even get Phil to fix my transmission. And he’s in charge of the service department.”
Sylvie had long known there was no way to have a conversation with Rosalie. Everything was a complaint or an attack. Though she’d wound up with the house, alimony, and healthy child support, Rosalie still felt cheated. Of course, Sylvie had to admit, Rosalie had been cheated on. Even if Phil was her brother, Sylvie thought he’d gotten what he deserved. But she couldn’t help wishing Rosalie didn’t live right next door.
“Have you been jogging?” Sylvie asked, partly to change the subject and partly to just say something. Rosalie was in shorts and the kind of industrial Nikes that cost in the three figures. Sylvie pressed the garage button to close the door. Rosalie, thin as a rake, ignored the question. It seemed to Sylvie that she’d displaced most of the energy she’d used nagging Phil and now used it to exercise with. Rosalie jogged, lifted weights, taught aerobics, and even attended a yoga class in downtown Cleveland. Maybe, Sylvie thought, she should give Rosalie her thigh master. Not that she needed it.
“You know how lucky you are?” Rosalie demanded. “Do you know?” Rosalie looked around at the flower beds, the lawn, the house. “A new car in your garage, two nice kids in college, and a husband in your bed.” Rosalie shook her dark head. Sylvie turned away and started for the back door. She felt sorry for Rosalie—her three kids argued or ignored her, had dropped out of school and out of work. But Rosalie never stopped complaining. Now she followed Sylvie across the slate patio. Rosalie the Relentless. “Forty isn’t easy for any woman. But if anyone has it easy, you do,” Rosalie was saying. “You’re lucky. You’ve always been lucky.”
Sylvie got to the screen door, opened it, and slipped in. Then, she very deliberately locked the button. “You’re right, Rosalie,” Sylvie said through the screen. “I’m lucky. My life is a paradise.”
And she shut the back door.
3 (#ulink_3257f6f7-4aed-5b46-b3cd-c8055d44ead1)
Sylvie had put the top down on her new car although there was a chill in the air. It was wasteful to drive with the heat pumping and the top off but she was doing it. What the hell. She’d be self-indulgent. She was almost forty. Live a little!
The groceries she’d just bought were arranged neatly in four bags across the backseat and, as she took a sharp turn, she glimpsed them in the mirror. They shifted but didn’t spill. Before the children had left she used to have to fill the backseat and the trunk of the sedan with groceries—Kenny and his friends ate like horses. Now four bags and a dollar tip to the box boy was all it took to fill the backseat and restock the larder at home.
She took a curve much faster than usual. The wind whipped at her hair. It was odd there was so much air, yet she couldn’t seem to breathe. Somehow all she could manage was shallow breaths. Maybe she should take a yoga class.
Last night, after choking down a solitary dinner of overdone chicken, she’d waited for Bob. He’d come in after midnight and he hadn’t wanted to talk. Sylvie didn’t push it. Instead, she’d lain awake most of the night, sleepless and confused. She had—
Out of nowhere a car pulled out of an almost hidden driveway on her right. Sylvie moved the wheel and the convertible swerved responsively. A van was in the oncoming lane. The slightest touch brought her car back, long before the van was a real danger to her, but she was shaken. So were the groceries. Sylvie had to admit that the convertible was beautiful to drive, but she didn’t want it. It was wrong somehow. It felt all wrong.
What’s wrong with me? Sylvie thought. Most women would give up their husbands for a car like this. Or, for that matter, give up their cars for a husband like mine. And I have both. Rosalie is right. I’m very lucky. I should be grateful. She began her litany. I’m healthy, I love Bob, he loves me, the kids are fine. It’s a beautiful sunny day, and the leaves are just starting to turn. This unease she felt, this nagging sense of dissatisfaction, wasn’t like her. Sylvie felt ashamed at her unhappiness, but it was still there, right under her breastbone. She braked for a red light, the car gliding smoothly and effortlessly to a stop.
The steering wheel under her hands was wet with sweat. The feeling that had been building in her, lodging in her chest, now moved into her throat and blocked it. She tried to swallow and couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter anyway—her mouth was so dry there was nothing to swallow. Either I’m going crazy or something is really wrong, she thought as the light turned green. A horn blared behind her. The driver hadn’t even given her a minute. She accelerated. All at once she was swept with a surge of anger—of rage—so complete that she had trouble seeing the road. She looked in the rear view mirror at the old man in the big Buick behind her, gunned the motor, and flipped him the bird.
God! She’d never done that before in her life. Road rage? What was going on?
She realized that it was more than not wanting this car. Bob hadn’t thought of her when he took it off the lot. It was a reflexive gift, not a reflective one. He hadn’t reflected, thought, for one moment about what she might want. He took her for granted. He hadn’t listened about Hawaii either. When was the last time he had listened? Sylvie didn’t want automatic gifts, no matter how luxurious. She didn’t want to be taken for granted. She didn’t want to be ignored by Bob. There was so many things she had that she didn’t want, she felt almost dizzy and nearly missed the left into the cul-de-sac. She jerked the wheel and the new tires squealed making the turn. She drove slowly on Harris Place, the street she lived on, where her mother had the big house with the white columns and where her brother had lived in the Tudor before he’d divorced Rosalie. The few other houses on Harris were all traditional, well-designed and maintained. She drove past the beds of vinca in front of the Williamsons’ and the row of gold chrysanthemums unimaginatively lined up along Rosalie’s fence. Everything appeared so right, but this foreboding, this sense that it was wrong, became insupportable. She still couldn’t breathe. It was as if the open top of the car let the entire weight of the universe in to crush her. Her house, the house she loved, loomed up.
Sylvie made a sharp right and felt the wheels of the BM W effortlessly move over the curb. She drove the car calmly across her own side lawn and, when she reached it, through the flower border, right over the zinnias. She felt an icy stillness as she proceeded onto the back lawn and engineered a carefully calculated right turn, avoiding the slate patio. The aqua rectangle of the pool was right before her and, without slowing down, she headed for it, the car, like a homing device, moving toward the concrete edge of the eight-foot diving drop. As the front wheels spun out into empty space, just before they took the plunge into the turquoise water, Sylvie was able to take the first deep breath she had taken all day.
“Sylvie! Sylvie, baby! Are you okay?”
Mildred had been rehanging the bedroom curtains and had looked down to see the L her daughter made in the lawn as she had done this crazy thing. Now Mildred stood at the edge of the pool. She couldn’t swim—never had—but she’d jump in to attempt to save her daughter if she must. Mildred was relieved then to see that Sylvie’s head had broken through the leaf-strewn surface of the water. Sylvie, a good swimmer, breaststroked gracefully over the trunk of the car and across the pool, still holding on to her purse. Her shoes had fallen to the bottom, but the shorts and blouse she had on felt surprisingly heavy, pulling her down. Still, Sylvie managed to move through the cold water to the ladder.
Mildred was panting, one hand against the ladder rail, the other hand on her heaving chest. “You frightened me,” Mildred said. There was a scream from the other side of the property and Mildred started and turned her head. Sylvie, still in the pool, couldn’t see but knew whose voice it was. “Oh god,” Mildred muttered. “I know she never washes her curtains, so what’s her excuse for seeing this?” She squatted down to get closer to Sylvie and extended her hand to help her. “Your ex-sister-in-law is waving to you,” she said.
Climbing the ladder, Sylvie turned and saw Rosalie’s dark head over the pickets of the north fence. “Trouble in Paradise?” Rosalie yelled.
Mildred, ignoring Rosalie, carefully helped her daughter out of the pool. “Why did you do that?” she asked.
“So I’ll remember where I parked?”
“Are you being flippant with your mother?”
Sylvie opened her purse, oblivious to the water that poured out, and dropped in her car keys. She snapped the purse shut. The noise it made, like a tiny sedan door closing, did not sound as solid as usual. “Flippant?” she echoed, distracted. She was a little dazed, but at least she could breathe.
“Sylvie, you do realize you’ve just done a very strange thing? If you don’t, it’s even stranger.”
Sylvie turned to look at the scene behind her. Three nectarines and a head of lettuce were now floating on the top of the pool. The car glinted up from the bottom like a silver fish lying under aspic. What had she done? And why had she done it? She put her hand up to her eyes to wipe away the water streaming down from her hair, only to realize there were also tears rising over her bottom lids. What had she done? Was she crazy? “I just want Bob to notice me,” she admitted in a whisper.
Mildred nodded, then opened the door to the outdoor cabinet that Bob had always laughingly called “The Cabana.” Oh, he was a card, Bob was. Sylvie shivered in the cool autumn air as she watched her mother take out two faded beach towels. “Sylvie, sweetheart,” Mildred said, “men don’t notice their wives. A new blonde in the neighborhood, yes. A sports car, absolutely. But after forty-six years of marriage, just ask your father what color eyes I have.” Mildred looked deep into her daughter’s own eyes. “Give it up, Sylvie.” Mildred wrapped one of the towels around Sylvie’s shoulders and handed her the other one. “For your hair,” Mildred directed. Rosalie had thrown her left leg over the fence. “What can I do?” she hollered.
Exasperated, Mildred raised her own voice. “You can move out of the neighborhood, Rosalie. You’ve been divorced from my son for three years.” Rosalie had almost managed to breach the fence. Sylvie knew Rosalie was lonely since the divorce and with her kids away, but though she tried to feel for her, Rose was shameless in her interfering with the family. She wouldn’t sell her house or leave the culde-sac; she wouldn’t stop snooping and gossiping and showing up uninvited. After her settlement from Phil had left him broke, she still insisted he had secret funds. And that everyone was better off and had more resources than Rosalie.
Now Rosalie the Resourceful got her right leg over the fence and jumped into the yard.
Rosalie made a beeline for the pool and stared into it. “Holy shit! I heard it but I didn’t see it.” She squatted down, looked at the car, and grinned. “Is this gonna be covered by the warranty?” she asked. She reached out and grabbed the lettuce, floating near the edge of the pool coping, and brought it over to Sylvie. “God, you’re a mess,” Rosalie said as she surveyed Sylvie, who was dripping like a defrosting freezer. Rosalie held up the lettuce. “Salad, anyone?” Mildred snatched it from her. “What’s happened to you, Sylvie?” Rosalie asked. “I mean, aside from the dunk? I couldn’t see you in the dark last night, but you look awful. You looked so much better the other day when I saw you with Bob leaving Vico’s. He was driving pretty fast but I could have sworn you’d lost weight. I thought you’d lost weight,” Rosalie said doubtfully, looking at the wet clothes clinging to her sister-in-law.
“I wasn’t with Bob in his car the other day,” Sylvie said. “He moves too fast.”
“He was putting the moves on you, all right.”
“Go home, you loon,” Mildred snapped and began propelling Sylvie away from the scene of the crime. Sylvie knew Mildred felt sorry for Rosalie, just like she did, but still, the woman was brash and insensitive. That’s why she’d been such a perfect match for Phil, and it had broken Mildred’s heart when they split up.
“I wasn’t in Beautiful Baby,” Sylvie called over her shoulder. Did all of Cleveland spend its free time sighting her in places she wasn’t? Next she’d be seen with Elvis.
“You’ll have to continue this little chat later.” Mildred turned her back on Rosalie and guided Sylvie gently but firmly into the house to the music room. She locked the French doors behind them and sat Sylvie down on the bench.
Rosalie, outside, tried the door handle.
“I haven’t ridden in Bob’s convertible in years. I’m not totally crazy,” Sylvie told her mother.
“Evidence to the contrary,” Mildred said, and took the towel from around Sylvie’s head. “You need a touch-up at the roots,” she added.
“I’m letting them gray and grow in,” Sylvie said.
“Then you are crazy,” Mildred told her daughter.
“Why? Bob didn’t even notice when I changed the color.”
“Well, he’ll notice this,” Mildred predicted, looking at the pool.
“My god. How will I tell him?” Sylvie felt her stomach lurch.
There was a banging on the window. Rosalie was pointing to the door lock. “As if,” Mildred sniffed. Sylvie looked at the poor locked-out woman. But she just couldn’t cope. She needed comforting now, and some calmness. Rosalie was too self-involved to offer that. For some reason, imagining Rosalie alone in her house next door made Sylvie lonely herself. Well, she realized, she was lonely. Even with her mother here beside her. She gestured for Rosalie to go away. Rosalie paid no attention.
“Maybe I am nuts,” Sylvie said, and nearly sobbed. “It’s pathetic to be so hurt because your husband is ignoring you. I just can’t figure out if he always did and I didn’t notice because the kids were around or if he’s ignoring me in a whole new way.”
“Oh, Sylvie,” Mildred sighed. “This is all so normal and predictable. I did the car thing too, back when your father was still running the lot. Maybe not as dramatically, but every time we had a big fight, I’d rear-end somebody.”
“You did? What did you tell him?”
“That the brakes failed, and that’s back when they were still calling it ‘the ultimate driving machine.’”
“So it’s hereditary?” Sylvie asked. “Being crazy?”
“From your father’s side.”
Rosalie began rattling the door. Mildred turned and surveyed her. “Isn’t it strange? She seems to think it’s accidental that she’s excluded,” Mildred observed to Sylvie. “Just remember,” she added, “I didn’t like her while she was married to Phil.” She turned her full attention back to Sylvie. “But I admit my son unhinged her. Poor thing. She’s crazy by marriage.” Mildred sighed. “Phil could make any woman nuts. Not like Bob.”
Sylvie felt the towel between her and the bench turning sodden and stood up.
“We better go upstairs,” Mildred told Sylvie. “If she can’t see or hear us, Rosalie will get tired and go home and the neighbors won’t hear her banging to get in. Otherwise this will be all over town by dinner.” Sylvie nodded, though it would be all over town by dinner anyway. Mother and daughter moved together from the brightness of the music room into the darkness of the hall. Mildred sighed deeply as she shepherded her daughter up the stairs. “Maybe the family business made all the rest of us crazy. But I thought you and Bob were immune.”
They got to the landing, where a picture from Reenie and Kenny’s tenth birthday party hung. Bob had been dressed up as a bagel, the twins’ favorite treat at the time. “Remember how much fun Bob used to be?” Sylvie asked.
“Fun? No. Intense, yes. Fun, no.”
“Yes you do,” Sylvie urged. “He was such a great dancer. And he was always playing the piano.” She lowered her voice. “The music in him has died.”
Mildred gave her a little push and propelled her up the rest of the stairs, still carrying the head of lettuce. “Oh, please, Sylvie! Those artistic dreams always die. There’s not a chiropractor in Shaker Heights who didn’t think, at one time, he had a novel in him.”
Sylvie shook her head, unutterably sad. They entered the bedroom. It was all so pleasant—the bed had an antique headboard she and Bob had bought and refinished together years ago. She’d found the chest of drawers at a Cleveland thrift shop and had painted and decoupaged it. The quilt had been her grandmother’s. It was a room with a lot of history. So why did she feel so desolate? Sylvie stood there and dripped on the floor. Mildred unbuttoned the back of Sylvie’s blouse and began helping Sylvie off with her wet clothes. Sylvie felt absolutely limp.
“I don’t know. I thought after the kids went off to college that …”
“… the two of you would … yeah, yeah, go on cruise vacations, dance until midnight.” Mildred pulled at the wet blouse, dragging it over her daughter’s head, then caressing her wet hair. “Just like your father and me,” she said. She shook her head. The gesture made Sylvie feel somehow bereft. “Where you got the idea that marriage was supposed to be romantic is beyond me,” Mildred said. “You certainly didn’t get it in my house.” Sylvie knew her mother was trying to cheer her up, but jokes were no comfort—if Mildred was joking.
Mildred turned Sylvie around to look at her. “Listen to me: you want excitement? You want affection and devotion and some nights out in the spotlight?”
Sylvie nodded her head.
Mildred brushed her hand tenderly across her daughter’s cheek. “Then take my advice: raise show dogs.”
4 (#ulink_6b7b5ca0-4d51-5437-8e6a-d64e81370cfb)
Sylvie sliced the rescued head of iceberg lettuce into four quarters and then took two of them and halved them again. She wondered if being submerged in the pool had poisoned the stuff. She’d removed the outer leaves and then washed the lettuce for almost ten minutes. Was it enough? Sylvie shrugged. What the hell. If chlorine in the pool didn’t kill you when you got a mouthful of pool water, she supposed it wouldn’t kill her husband when it was spread on a vegetable.
Bob had come home while she was showering. She’d come downstairs, neatly dressed and her hair freshly blown dry, but he had been on the phone in the dining room. For that she was grateful, because it gave her a few moments to prepare for her confession. When moment stretched into a tense half an hour, she went into the hallway looking for him, only to hear the shower running upstairs. She shrugged and began preparing dinner, mentally rehearsing what she could possibly say.
She looked at the lettuce. She didn’t care for it, not really, but no matter how hard she tried, Bob had never graduated from iceberg to mesclun greens or even Bibb. Sylvie reached for the balsamic vinegar in the cupboard on the right. She was almost out and took a moment to jot that down on her grocery list. Then she glanced out the window at the pool. Because the kitchen was slightly above ground level she could just look into it and see the BMW’s right fender and part of the trunk. God! She was nuts. Well, she’d done what she’d done. Bob would probably kill her, and she probably deserved it. She was a whining, spoiled, ungrateful woman. He, on the other hand, was an excessively clean man. At last she heard Bob coming down the stairs and, on an impulse, she flipped on the pool light. He entered the kitchen, sat down at his place at the table, and picked up the glass of white wine she had already poured him.
It was funny, Sylvie thought, how she could do some things automatically. How, despite this sense of everything being askew, she could manage to pull the salmon steaks out of the broiler and nestle them on the plates next to the broccoli. She looked at Bob, sitting there clean and damp, sipping his wine and going through the mail, seemingly calm and content. Her heart swelled. He was still so handsome. What was her problem? Maybe he didn’t notice her, maybe he did take her for granted, but he was a good husband, a great father, a good provider. He loved her. She glanced out the window again at the illuminated pool. She restrained a shudder and put the dinner plate in front of her husband, sitting down opposite him.
“Mom wants to know if you’d like to come to a birthday dinner at their house.”
Bob had picked up his fork and speared a piece of the salmon. He looked across the table at her. “Whatever you want,” he said, his mouth full of fish. He went back to the mail.
Sylvie stared at the top of her husband’s bent head. You could live with someone for two decades, sleep with them, do their laundry, bear their children, and then look up one moment and see them not as a perfect stranger but as a very, very imperfect one. For a moment Sylvie stopped regretting that she had driven the car underwater and wished instead she had driven it over her husband. Out of nowhere that same feeling of rage hit her again. Why?
Well, she thought, for one thing, for her birthdays had always been special. They were a day to rejoice. For Bob’s birthday she always made his favorite dinner: pot roast, potatoes, and red cabbage, even though the stink of the cabbage always made her queasy and hung in the air for days after. He liked angel food cake and she’d never failed to make one for him. She always had at least one funny gift, and one he really wanted. For the twins’ birthdays, every year, she’d made their favorite foods—and because Kenny loved fish sticks and Reenie liked glazed ham she had to serve two dinners. She’d never failed to bake her special angel food cake. She’d worried over gifts. She’d written (and saved) birthday poems every year, taken pictures of each event and put them in the special birthday album she had. Photos of all of them, on each birthday for nineteen years. Why was it only now she realized she wasn’t in the book on her birthdays?
But, she reminded herself, men knew nothing about celebrations and gifts, though she’d tried to teach Bob. On the first birthday she had spent with him, when they’d been married less than five months, he’d given her a toaster oven. Sylvie had opened the package, laughed, and then waited for her real gift. The oven, though, had been her real gift. She hadn’t spoken to him for almost two days and then, in an explosion of tears and anger, had had to explain that she wanted something personal, something romantic and meaningful, as a gift between them. He’d never made an error as egregious as the toaster oven again, but he’d still never quite gotten it about gifts and birthdays. Sylvie didn’t like to feel selfish or ungrateful, but she had to believe that twenty years of training could yield something more insightful, more meaningful, more imaginative than a car she didn’t want and a shrug of his shoulders for her fortieth birthday.
But maybe she was wrong. Maybe all he was trying to do was make her happy and doing it in the best way he knew how. The convertible—nothing she cared about and nothing she needed or wanted—might, to Bob, be the equivalent of an emerald ring with a loving engraving within. Might. Just possibly.
Sylvie looked across the table. “Bob, I did something terrible today.”
He didn’t put down the Ace Hardware flyer he was reading. “Terrible? You never do anything even remotely bad. What did you do, play ‘Für Elise’ in quarter time? Come on, kid, tell me about it.” He put down the flyer and glanced at her. “But I’m running late again so tell me in four words or less.”
Sylvie looked out the window again. She couldn’t help but stare at the car in the pool. It was an eye magnet, glowing like a grape submerged in aqua Jell-O. God, I must be insane, Sylvie thought. Maybe I’m more upset about my birthday than I think. She vamped for time.
“I hate it when you give that four-word order,” Sylvie told Bob and then took a deep breath. “Let me ask you this: how long does it take a submerged BMW to rust?”
“Huh?” Bob, his mouth now full of broccoli, stopped chewing for a moment and furrowed his brow.
She had his attention. “Okay,” she said. “In four words or less: drove car into pool.”
Bob managed—just barely—to swallow the broccoli. Sylvie wondered idly whether she still remembered CPR, just in case the vegetable got caught in his throat. “What? … why the hell? … are you kidding …?” he choked out.
Now he was listening to her. Not about Hawaii or her birthday, but about the car. Now, however, she didn’t want to talk. Did he still want it in four words? Sylvie counted on her lingers. “Felt bad. Turned right.”
Bob put down the fork and stood up slowly. Sylvie realized that this was the first time she’d seen him move slowly in months. Lately he was always in a rush, always on the go. “Your car? Our pool?” he asked. It seemed that he could talk in four words now too. Silently, Sylvie nodded. She watched him move slowly, like a sleepwalker, to the kitchen window and look out. It was getting dark earlier and twilight had fallen. The blue corner of the pool and the glinting car within it glowed. Bob stood absolutely still at the window, his back to Sylvie, his hands spread wide and as flat as two flounders against the countertop. It was very quiet in the kitchen. Sylvie could hear the ice maker growl on. Bob continued to stand there, his back to her. “Why in the world would you do a thing like that?” he asked, his voice full of wonder. “That’s nuts.”
Sylvie hung her head. All at once her anger deserted her and she felt like a preschooler, as wrong and needy as Kenny had ever been on his worst day. “Maybe I just wanted us to have something to talk about,” she managed to whisper.
Bob turned away from the window, but only for a minute. He swiveled his head back as if he were unable to tear his eyes away from the unnatural panorama. “We have plenty to talk about: Kenny, Reenie …,” he paused, obviously stuck, “… Hawaiian brochures,” he added lamely.
Sylvie lifted her head. Bob was obviously mesmerized; she could see the willpower it took him to force his eyes from the window. His voice was hoarse, either with broccoli or emotion. “A BMW underwater. It’s so … so wrong,” he said. In the light of the kitchen, she could see that his face was registering shock. “I can’t even imagine how I would feel if that was Beautiful Baby.”
“I’m not as close to my car as you are.”
He didn’t even notice her sarcasm. “But why, Sylvie? Why? I know you’re … spontaneous. You know … Lucy Ricardoesque. Maybe sometimes a little … well, flaky. But this is not the kind of thing that happens to us.”
Sylvie looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Bob, I don’t feel like there is an ‘us.’”
“Don’t be silly. We’re married. That’s as ‘us’ as you can get.” Bob crossed the floor, leaving the window and its shocking view. He gave Sylvie another quick bear hug. Then, taking her hand, he led her out the back door, into the soft darkness of the yard. How long had it been since they had held hands? she wondered. She couldn’t remember the last time. He led her across the patio and onto the lawn.
The sky hadn’t turned inky yet, but the hedges and shrubs had. The back garden was now fifty shades of indigo. When she and Bob had bought this property, the yard had been a huge forlorn lot with nothing but a scrawny Norfolk pine and an ugly border of chrysanthemums. Since then they had done so much together. In the last fifteen years the bushes and evergreens that she and Bob had planted had grown into an encircling shelter. And her flowers had thrived. Sylvie looked up.
There was only one star overhead. That dot of light and the lunar glow of the white impatiens in the border were the only touches of light in the darkness—except, of course, for the Technicolor glow in the center of the yard. The turquoise and silver of the pool and the car drew them to it.
Bob stood beside her at the edge of the pool, looking down at the sunken convertible. To Sylvie its sleek, metallic-gray chassis looked like the corpse of a shark. “You didn’t lose control of the steering?” he asked. “Nothing went haywire?”
“No,” she told him. Nothing but me, she thought.
“But how could you have an accident like this?”
“Bob, it wasn’t an accident …” She was about to launch into the stuff about her feelings, about gifts, about attention, when he spoke again.
“I understand,” he said.
“You do?” She could hardly believe it. Somehow her gesture, extreme as it was, had gotten through to him. “You really do?” she asked.
“Sure.”
Sylvie felt a flood of relief wash over her. Then Bob spoke again.
“You know, Sylvie, this has been a time with a lot of adjustments for you. Your birthday. Both of the kids gone. I mean, maybe it’s time to think about some medical help.”
“Medical help?” she echoed. “What do you mean? Psychiatrists?”
“No, no. I mean, not yet. Not unless you feel you need one. I just think maybe you’re a little moody, a little down. Maybe it’s time for that hormone replacement therapy. Maybe you should see John. Have a checkup.”
“Have you been watching the Lifetime channel secretly again?” Sylvie snapped. “Bob, this isn’t about my estrogen levels. It’s about our communication. Or lack of it.”
Bob was staring again at the pool bottom. “Jesus! Did Rosalie see this? Does your dad know? Well, all of Shaker Heights will be talking about this over granola and prune juice tomorrow morning.”
“Who cares?” Sylvie demanded. “I only care about what we talk about. Or don’t. We don’t talk.”
Bob turned to her and took her shoulders in his hands. They were warm against the cool autumn air and she shivered. “Look. I’ll talk to you about whatever you want to talk about,” Bob said, his voice as soft as the night. Sylvie took a deep breath, but before she could begin Bob continued, “I just can’t do it now. I have to get to this meeting. Tomorrow night though, over dinner, we’ll talk about whatever you want. I promise. It’s your birthday. It’s your night.” He took her elbow and moved her away from the pool edge. “I’ll take care of the car. Don’t worry about a thing. Then the weekend is coming up.
We’ll talk some more. But, Sylvie,” he paused. “You make an appointment with the doctor. It can’t hurt.” He had propelled her across the slate and was opening the screen door. He helped her up the steps as if she were an invalid but then closed the door from the outside. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll talk.”
Sylvie pressed her hand against the screen that was shutting her in as she’d shut Rosalie out. She began to tell him … well … to tell him something, but Bob had already swung around into the darkness and was gone. There was something, or a lot of things, out there more important to him than she was. She’d never talk to him again. She promised herself that. Then, in the harsh light of the kitchen, Sylvie dropped her hand, turned away from the door, and began clearing her untouched dinner from the table.
5 (#ulink_02d6f879-8230-5be1-804e-f890b0cbfe8f)
Bob Schiffer drove his car down Longworth Avenue and pulled into the Crandall BMW lot. The sun glinted off the cars. It was a perfect day, but Bob felt uneasy. Well, worse. How long could he get away with this? Sylvie was upset and his girlfriend, well, she was pressuring him. Roger, from maintenance, waved as Bob pulled past him into the special parking space he had reserved for his car. She purred to a stop and he switched off the ignition and patted the dash. “You’re beautiful, Baby,” he said to the car, which was how Sylvie had given it the name. He got out of the car and carefully closed the door. If he left her in the sun for any length of time he covered her, but he’d had a roof built over this spot so that her perfect paint wouldn’t fade.
The Crandall BMW car lot was on the edge of Shaker Heights. Jim Crandall, Sylvie’s father, had started the business almost thirty years ago when Beemers ran unbelievably behind Mercedeses in status and sales. He’d struggled for years, first against Detroit and then against Japanese imports. Finally, when he’d welcomed his son and son-in-law into the business, his days of glory had commenced. Now the lot spread over an entire block on Longworth Avenue and Jim was as proud of the neat landscaping, lush grass, and pristine building as he was of the healthy bottom line. Bob knew that Jim found his own son, Phil, a disappointment. He also knew that Jim thought of him as a son rather than a son-in-law. And Bob, whose own father had died when he was twelve, looked on Jim as a father. And, why not? After all, he spent more time with Jim than Sylvie did. The old man could certainly be a pain in the ass at times, though.
Now Jim was crossing the lot, his white hair glaring in the autumn sunlight. So was he, and talking before he was close enough for Bob to hear. “Let me get this straight,” he was saying. “She drove the car right into the pool?” Jim asked. He’d asked the question several times already last night and this morning over the phone.
Bob nodded. “Into the pool, Jim.”
“Wasn’t she looking where she was going? And why was she driving in the backyard?”
“That, indeed, is a legitimate question. But what is the answer?”
“Insanity,” Jim barked. “Not that your mother-in-law can drive. She’s had more fender benders than a demolition derby. Well, Sylvie didn’t get it from my side of the family. Crandalls can all drive.” Bob forbore to mention the several accidents Jim had been in. “You making the arrangements?”
“Yeah. I’m on it. So I guess we’re canceling the commercial shoot?”
“No. In fact, I got an idea. Let’s use the car in the pool as part of the commercial.”
Bob looked at his father-in-law. “Is a wet Beemer an inducement to purchase?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not like the old Volkswagen beetle. Believe me, Jim, this car is not floating.”
“Hey. We don’t shoot it in the water. We shoot it in the air. When they’re lifting it out. Hell, even Phil can think of the patter. Christ knows he’s good with bullshit.” Jim turned around and started back toward the office. “Me, I’m playing golf this afternoon. You can get me at the club if you need to.”
Jim was in what he called “semiretirement,” but one of the problems was you never knew at which moment he was in “semi” and which moment he was in “retirement.” Bob shrugged. This morning appeared to be the former and would therefore be a killer. They were in the process of doing inventory, preparing for the special promotion, shooting a commercial, and now, as if that weren’t enough, he had to keep an eye out for Jim and take care of Sylvie’s little … mishap. He shrugged and pulled his phone out of his sports coat pocket. He punched in a number. It was busy. He hated that. It was almost the millennium. Hasn’t everyone heard of call waiting? Bob sighed and began to dial another number. He was a man with a lot on his mind.
“A crane. That’s right, a crane … because it’s in the pool, that’s why…. Please don’t make me say it again.” Bob had finally gotten through to the wrecking company. He was at the farthest end of the lot, overseeing Sam Granger and Phil, who were going through the inventory. It had been a busy morning, except in terms of sales. Now a woman, middle-aged but attractive, was idly wandering among the gleaming cars, a row behind Bob. Normally he would approach her, but she had the look of a brow ser, not a buyer. Despite the risk, Bob motioned to Phil. “Why don’t you handle her?” he asked. Phil nodded and moved toward the woman. Since Phil had been put in charge of service he relished selling opportunities. Bob just hoped Phil didn’t take his suggestion literally.
Since his divorce, Phil blamed everything that was wrong in the world on women. The fact that he’d caused the end of his marriage by continuously cheating on his wife never entered his mind. Lately he was also slightly delusional, assuming every female was interested in him in a carnal way. Bob looked at his brother-in-law. He was still sort of good-looking, despite his receding hairline, his paunch, and his questionable taste in clothes. Yet he saw himself as Ohio’s answer to Brad Pitt. This was a guy who would order a hamburger at lunch and, when the waitress asked how he wanted it, would leer and insist her question was a double entendre. “How do I want it?” he’d repeat, nudging Bob, who’d squirm with embarrassment while the bored waitress stared out over the parking lot. Invariably, after the girl left, Phil would begin his excited whisper. “You heard her. It’s not like I started it. How do I want it? Why doesn’t she just give me the key to her place? I tell you, they can’t leave me alone.”
The woman was looking at the sticker price of a sedan. She was squinting in the sun. Phil looked over at her. “Did you see that?” he asked Bob.
“What?”
“The way she stared at me, checking out my package,” Phil cried hoarsely. Sam Granger snorted. Bob rolled his eyes. Phil was a danger. to himself and others, Rosalie the Horrific might have been a witch, but she’d certainly had her hands full with Phil.
“Phil, behave,” Bob warned. “Take it easy or I’ll tell your father on you.”
“Hey! She better take it easy. The laws against sexual harassment cut both ways, ya know.”
“Control yourself, Phil. Try to sell a car.” Bob’s cellular rang and he pulled it out. He moved away from Sam Granger and put the phone to his ear. “Hello. Bob Schiffer. Oh,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Hi, Cookie Face. I can’t talk now. No. Really. I can’t.” Bob looked around. Phil was leaning up against the sedan, talking to the poor female prospect while Sam had disappeared into the front seat of a model a row away. “Come on, honey. You know this isn’t a good place for me to talk,” Bob murmured into the phone. He laughed out loud. “Sing? If I can’t talk, how can I sing?” She always made him laugh, but after four months he still wasn’t sure if it was intentional or accidental. That was part of her charm. Now he listened to her request. “But you called me. The song makes no sense if I sing. No. Of course I do. All right, but then I have to go.” Bob began to hum into the phone, then tried for a Stevie Wonder voice. “I just called to say I love you … I just called to—”
When he was tapped on the shoulder, Bob must have jumped eight inches straight off the ground40. John Spencer, Bob and Sylvie’s best friend, was standing behind him. “Gotta go …,” Bob hissed into the phone. “No. Not now. And be sure to get the crane there by one o’clock,” he added in his normal authoritative tone, then flipped the phone closed and slipped it into his pocket. He turned to John as casually as he could and gave him a big bear hug. “Hey. How ya doing?”
John wasn’t buying it. “Why, you sneaky, slimy bastard. Bob the Saint …”
Bob opened his eyes wide and tried to make a blank face. He wasn’t sure it was working and when John raised his brows upward Bob felt his stomach tug downward. “What? It was Sylvie,” he protested.
John shook his head. “Maybe I’m just a general practitioner, but
I’m not stupid. You, Bob? Come on. You’re no player. What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing,” Bob said and sounded to himself like one of the twins when they were eight years old. He looked at John’s doubting face. “Okay,” he admitted. “Something. But nothing important.” He bit his lip. “I don’t want to hurt Sylvie. You don’t either, do you?”
John looked him in the eyes. “I won’t tell, if that’s what you’re asking, but I won’t lie. She’s my friend too. She was my girlfriend before she even met You.”
“I know. I know. You remind me of that all the time. But this is … just a temporary thing.”
“So? Temporary but indefensible.”
Bob, trapped, knew he had no defense. “Well, Phil did it,” he said, sounding like one of the twins when they were ten.
“Great response,” John snorted. “Let’s not forget that Phil is a delusional penis with a man attached. And he wasn’t married to a Sylvie.”
Bob looked away, ashamed. John’s wife, Nora, had died almost three years ago, and if their marriage hadn’t been perfect then, it was now, enshrined in John’s memory. Since then John had thrown himself into his practice and into his avocation—Little League coach and professional widower—but in Bob’s opinion, he took a certain amount of pleasure in wallowing in his bereavement. Plus, there were always so many Shaker Heights women dropping off casseroles and inviting him to be the extra man at their dinner parties that his life wasn’t anything close to the living hell he depicted it as.
But mine could be, Bob thought. It could if I lost Sylvie. And he had been meaning to end it with the girl. He just didn’t know how. He had never had an affair before. Best to come clean. “You’re right. You caught me,” he admitted. “I don’t know what I’m doing. One day I’m a nice guy, the next I’m a Kennedy husband.” He paused. John looked skeptical, as if he doubted Bob’s sincerity. “Wait. I’m worse. I’m dead dog meat.” John raised his brows. “No,” he corrected himself. “I’m dead dog meat with maggots.” John nodded. “Can we talk about this while you drive me to my house?” Bob asked. “I don’t deserve to sit behind the wheel of Beautiful Baby.”
“Vehicular morality wasn’t the first concern I had.”
“Please. Will you drive me?”
“No problem. I can’t get enough of that dead dog meat smell in my car.”
They got into John’s three-year-old sedan, which Bob had sold him after using it as a showroom model. He’d given John a real deal on it. They drove off the lot. It was time for Bob to recoup a little. After all, John was only a doctor, not a judge.
“Don’t tell me you never did it. With all those women patients! With all those females who worship you. Swear on Nora’s memory that you didn’t.”
“Not with a patient. Never.” John maneuvered the car into the passing lane.
“Ah, With someone impatient! Come on. Come clean. You were human too!”
John hesitated. “Only once,” he admitted.
“I knew it! See. No one is perfect.”
“Okay. Okay. But I was loaded. No excuse. I was on a business trip and it was with a pharmacologist, not with a patient. I regretted it immediately.”
“Afterward, that’s easy. I always regret it afterward too.”
“Yeah, but it was a decade ago. To this day I regret it. Nora’s dead almost four years and I still feel really bad about it.” Bob patted John on the shoulder. John came out of his reverie. “Just look at your brother-in-law.”
“God. Do I have to?”
“I mean, look how he ruined his life. His ex-wife hates him, his children are turned against him. And he can’t afford a meat loaf sandwich.”
“But he had an excuse: he was married to Rosalie.”
“What does that mean?”
Bob gave John a look. “Rosalie pushed him into infidelity. Me, I just slipped. I never meant for this to happen,” Bob admitted. “This girl was just there, all pink and naked.”
“She was pink and naked right when you met her?”
“Well, no. But, I could tell she wanted to be…. Hey. Come on. You think I want to lie to my wife?”
John’s voice finally became sympathetic. “No, buddy, I don’t.”
“In its way, my position is its own kind of hell,” Bob said mournfully.
John nodded. “I’ve been there.” Then, for a moment, John became distracted by a racing green 530i that passed them on the right. “Nice model,” he commented.
“Forget it,” Bob told him dismissively. “It’s not for you. A vinyl interior. If you’re going to trade up, trade up for the best.” John nodded his agreement. He pulled back into the right lane. There was a truck ahead of them. John should have passed it too. Bob hated sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“You know, Sylvie is too good to risk losing.”
“I know.” Bob sighed gustily. “Let’s face it. Men are pigs.”
“The worst form of human life,” John agreed.
“Slime….” Bob figured he’d change the subject while he could. “So, you seeing anyone?”
John shook his head. “You know I haven’t been able to see anyone since Nora passed away…. Maybe it’s the guilt over that … episode.” He reflected for a minute, his eyes on the road. “This month we would be celebrating our twentieth anniversary. I ignored her more than I should have when we were married. During med school, and my internship, and then building my practice. Jesus, Men are stupid.”
“Yeah,” Bob agreed. “But women are crazy.” John stopped for an amber light that Bob would have slid through. God, he was a cautious driver. Cautious about everything, in fact. Bob looked over at his pal, who now seemed very depressed. “You know, I didn’t realize your anniversary … well … that has to be hard for you.”
John nodded. “It’s not easy. A guilty conscience is never easy to live with.” He gave Bob a look. “Know what I mean?”
The light changed. John just sat there staring ahead at nothing, or something only he saw, some flashback from an earlier time. Bob pointed to the green light and John blinked, then accelerated. “Look,
I know I should stop,” Bob admitted. “And I’m going to. As soon as I find an opening.”
“Those openings are tricky,” John said dryly.
Bob gave his friend a boyish punch on the shoulder. “Hey, enough. I take your point. Today my job is to make you feel better. It’s time for a change. You’re going to trade your car in for a newer, shinier model. It’s exactly what a man needs when he’s contemplating his own mortality. And I’m going to give you an unbelievable deal. As a tribute to Nora.” He paused. “But I do need a little favor.”
John shrugged. “It’s yours.”
“Can you make an appointment to see Sylvie? Casually, but as a professional. Talk to her?”
“To what end?”
“Put her on hormones or something? She’s just not herself. Frankly, I’m worried.”
“What? Hormones? Why? Anyway, I’m not a gynecologist. And they’d want to run blood work first. You know, I don’t hand out powerful drugs as if they were candy corn.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to insult you …”
“Anyway, what’s wrong with Sylvie? You’re the one who’s sick. Sylvie is fine. We both know that.”
“Fine? Would you say that if you knew she drove her new car into our pool yesterday?” Bob’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out and flipped it open while John, openmouthed, stared at him. Bob wished he’d keep his eyes on the road.
“Yes?” Bob snapped into the phone. “Uh-huh. Right. The crane goes to my house. Yes. Through the yard, into the back. How else could it get over to my pool?” He sighed deeply. “Please don’t make me explain it again.” When Bob hung up, he looked over at John to see him shaking his head.
“She drove the car into the pool?” John asked. They were both silent for a moment as John drove—too slowly—through Highland Heights. “And you think this affair isn’t affecting Sylvie?”
“Sylvie doesn’t know anything about it,” Bob said vehemently.
“Come on, Bob. Even if she hasn’t heard about it—yet—Shaker Heights is a small town. Anyway, haven’t you ever heard of the sub-conscious? Sylvie must know something is wrong. Not to mention the girl. She may have called Sylvie, for all you know.”
Bob’s stomach clenched and a nasty taste of bile rose to his throat. “I told her not to even talk about Sylvie, much less talk to her.”
“Well, I hope she’s good at obedience,” John said. “Aside from all this, if the Masons find out, you’d get drummed out, or whatever they do to a shamed Mason.”
“Who cares? The Mason story is just a cover-up to give me an excuse to go out at night. God, I’m an asshole. No, I’m the world’s biggest asshole.” Bob stared out the window. “Think of the biggest asshole in the world. Now raise it to the power of ten. That’s me. I am a thousand assholes.”
“Don’t be so grandiose,” John told him. “You’re just a common garden-variety adulterer. I see them every day. Your dick is running the company right now. I might as well be talking to it.”
Bob nodded morosely. “You’re right.” He looked down at his crotch. “He’s the C.O.O.” He sighed. “You know what I wish? I wish I could get him off the board of directors. Or just cut it off. Or better, I wish it would just fall off. It’s ruining my life.”
John snorted. “Bob, eunuchs are not happy guys.” He swerved around the corner and Bob instinctively pressed his foot down where the brake pedal should be on the passenger’s floor.
“I’d like to see the research on that,” Bob said as John turned the car into the driveway.
As John and Bob pulled up to the house, the whole cul-de-sac looked more like a derailed circus train than a suburban street. “Looks like my brother-in-law is in charge.” Bob said. Phil, gesturing madly, looked as if he were either teaching parallel parking or directing the crane.
“Well, good luck with him. And, Bob … think about what I said. Your life is becoming unmanageable.”
“No it isn’t. But as God is my witness, I’m ending the … you know,” Bob promised John. “Sylvie deserves better. The poor girl deserves better.” He looked at his pal. “Do you think I’ll ever forgive myself?”
“Somehow, Bob, I think you’ll manage,” John said and laughed. “Kiss Sylvie for me. If you don’t, maybe I will.”
Bob got out of the car. Vans, a couple of trucks, and the crane were scattered over the sidewalk and lawn. People milled around. Confusion reigned. Bob headed for the backyard, stopping to bear-hug everyone in his path. Phil was by the pool already, yelling, looking up at the convertible, which was being lifted by the crane. Bob stared up at the suspended car doubtfully. Perhaps his life was unmanageable.
6 (#ulink_e66e92fd-2e16-5376-8d72-b2aac792af58)
Today would be a full day for Sylvie. Not only did she have back-to-back students, but then she also had to try and get Bob to talk with her about why she decided to transmute her car into an amphibian. Blessedly, that wouldn’t come until tonight. Now she just had to try to concentrate on Lou, her oldest student. He was sitting at the piano blundering through “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore” as if this were his fifth lesson. Actually, it was closer to his fifty-fifth. Lou had been taking lessons twice a week for months now—not that he got any better or more enthusiastic. Lessons were by doctor’s orders. John Spencer had sent Lou over to Sylvie, so she couldn’t say no. Since Lou had retired, he was having a hard time. For Sylvie, listening to him play wasn’t easy either, but she always tried to encourage him. Now Lou missed two notes, stumbled on the sharp, and paused to look up at her. “I can’t do it,” Lou stated and dropped his hands into his lap, utterly defeated.
“Yes, you can,” Sylvie reassured him, and approached the piano.
“No. I can’t do it. And this is my last shot at life.”
“You remembered to take your medication today, right, Lou?” Sylvie asked.
“Yes. And if I’m this depressed on antidepressants, what’s the use?” Lou said, shrugging.
Sylvie caught a glimpse of something or someone flash by the French doors. Oh, please, not Rosalie, she thought. Sylvie put a hand on Lou’s shoulder to try to comfort him. Then she saw something else flash by. This time, Sylvie looked up in time. There, strategically positioned in her backyard, was a crew of construction workers trying to direct a large piece of equipment around the hedges. What? Turning her attention back to Lou, she forced herself to encourage him. “C’mon, Lou. Look, all men have trouble with transitions: from single to married, from couplehood to family. It’s tough to have your kids leave home. It’s tough to go into retirement. But change is a joyous part of life.”
“Yeah? So how come there are no joyous songs about menopause? You wait. You’ll play a different tune then.” Lou sighed, then started to move his fingers over the keys as if to play. Sylvie was sure that he was going to do a bit better when, instead, he fisted his hands and began to pound the piano keys.
Gently but firmly, Sylvie lifted his hands off her precious Steinway and closed the lid. “Lou, have you thought of taking a trip?” Sylvie asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“I’m too old,” Lou said. “And besides, who wants to die on a strange mattress?” He sat, immobile. Sylvie moved back to the window. Without even trying to talk him out of his stupor, she watched the activity brewing in her backyard. After a time Lou opened the piano, began to play, and caught the melody of the song for a moment. Sylvie thought of Bob. He didn’t send her flowers anymore either, she thought, and leaned up against the door frame.
The classical piece, a Schubert sonata, was being played far too quickly. Sylvie winced, but continued looking through the French doors. Now there was a crane poolside, along with a milling crowd of cameramen setting up for some kind of shoot. Would her drowned car make the local news? Sylvie turned away and looked back at her twelve-year-old music pupil, who was playing frantically. Too much Ritalin.
“Slow down. It isn’t a race, Jennifer.” Jennifer looked up. You could see that though she tried to hide it, she was totally crushed by even this slight criticism . Jennifer already excelled at gymnastics and tennis, and was the leader of the girls’ swim team. No wonder she rushed. She had a lot to do, and she tried to do it all perfectly.
Sylvie focused on the girl, leaving the growing pageant at the window and putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder, trying to gently explain. “Play it as if you were falling in love for the first time,” Sylvie suggested and sat down at the piano. She played the Schubert dreamily, and the yearning and romance of the piece came through. Sylvie herself fell under the sonata’s spell. “Feel it, Jennifer.”
“I don’t know what that love stuff feels like.” Jennifer sat, as solid as a packed laundry sack.
“You will,” Sylvie told her reassuringly. Looking at Jennifer’s doubting face, she continued: “Love heightens the senses and makes you do things that are so surprising,” she lowered her voice, “and feel so-o-o good. You’ll be amazed. But you have to go slow then too.” Then, as if she were waking up from a dream, Sylvie realized how inappropriate she was being. To cover her slip she smiled brightly, a teacher-to-pupil face. “Don’t worry, Jennifer, you’ll feel it after your first kiss.” Sylvie got up from the piano and went to look out the window again at the activity around the pool. “Try it again,” she encouraged.
“I’ve already been kissed, like, three times,” Jennifer told her, still defensive. Then she began playing the piece again, almost as maniacally as before.
Sylvie turned back to her. “Maybe you just need a better kisser,” she suggested. Jennifer giggled, perked up, and actually slowed down. Good. Poor kid. Sylvie wanted her students to enjoy their lessons, and Jennifer had talent. She just needed the capacity to enjoy it. The girl finished the piece and Sylvie made it a point to praise her. Meanwhile, when she glanced back, her backyard had become even more of a circus.
“Come over here and take a look,” Sylvie told the girl. Jennifer and Sylvie both peered out the window. The crane, tearing the hell out of the lawn, was poolside. Men with hard hats were gesturing, one of them obscenely. “How did your car get in there?” Jennifer asked, sounding awed.
“I don’t know. Maybe it wanted one more swim before winter.”
Jennifer giggled, until her mother, Mrs. Miller, appeared on the walk outside the French doors and stepped in to join them. She was the kind of suburban matron who not only had to have her children do everything, but always had to know everything herself. “Sorry I’m a little late,” she apologized, but it didn’t sound like she was sorry. “There’s a lot of confusion in your driveway. How did the lesson go?” she asked brightly.
Jennifer tore her eyes off the crane and looked up at her mother. “She told me I had to get kissed better. Like, maybe with tongues.”
Mrs. Miller opened her eyes wide and turned to Sylvie. Great, Sylvie thought. She shook her head. “No, Jennifer, I did not say that. I didn’t give specifics,” Sylvie reassured Mrs. Miller. “We were talking about tempo, actually.” She raised her brows and lowered her voice. “I’d also suggest you monitor her television.” Jennifer’s mother, pacified, took her daughter by the arm and left.
Sylvie walked out into her yard. People were all over. Phil was yelling at a guy with a video camera. She felt as if it were some kind of foreign film and she was in it. “What is all this?” she asked her brother.
“We’re shooting today’s commercial here.”
“Here? In my yard?”
“Yeah. I rerouted the crew. We’d been scheduled to shoot one on the lot, but this is better. Now we’re just waiting for Bob to get ready.” Phil laughed and looked over toward the garage, where Sylvie was surprised to see her husband having his hair combed by a woman. “He’s becoming the Harrison Ford of car ads,” Phil smirked. He looked back at her. “It’s a hell of a thing to do to a Z2,” he told her. “But Pop thinks it’s a stroke of luck that you couldn’t control yourself. Women drivers.” Phil shook his head again.
Then Bob approached. Sylvie just looked up at him and his professionally combed hair. He smiled back sheepishly. “Hey, Bob, you—” Phil began but, klutzy as always, he tripped over a cable, then looked around to see who he could blame it on. Of course, Sylvie saw, he noticed the only woman on the crew, a pretty woman with freckles and auburn hair. “Hey! Red! Is this the way you hope to get a good-looking guy?” he shouted. “Try taking out a personal ad.” Sylvie cringed. Phil peered at Bob. “Makeup! We need makeup.” The woman Phil had just dissed picked up her makeup box and moved toward them.
“Well, I’m sure she’ll do a great job now,” Bob said to Phil, smiling again at Sylvie. She said nothing, just moved away as Bob was prepped and fussed over.
“Okay, okay, listen up. A star is born,” Phil yelled to the crew.
My brother is an ass, Sylvie thought. She watched as Phil hunkered down to talk to Bob. “You know what we need here. The usual bullshit. Sincerity until it hurts.” Phil paused in his directorial overdrive. He’d obviously seen what Sylvie just had—Rosalie’s face popping up over the fence. “Get that head down out of the shot or we’re going back to court!” he shouted.
Rosalie disappeared. Poor Rosalie. She’d always been loud and insensitive, but no woman deserved Phil. Sylvie looked back at Bob, who’d been powdered down and was now being led to his mark. Phil handed him the script. Bob was used to doing all this, but he looked nervous. Sylvie watched him. Somehow, he looked different. It wasn’t just the makeup. She approached him.
“Sylvie, I know that you—” Bob began.
From behind, Phil interrupted. “Got your lines down?” he asked.
Bob gestured toward the script. “I don’t think it’s—”
Phil, the half-pint Quentin Tarantino, was in his glory. When they were shooting a commercial, he got himself confused with an auteur. “Come on. No temperament,” he said to Bob. “And people: let’s get this the first time or die,” he called out. Sylvie saw one of the crew members roll his eyes. She blushed for her brother. Meanwhile, Bob turned to the camera.
Was this, then, all the attention she got after doing something as crazed, as outrageous, as dunking her car like a doughnut? Had Bob, before he’d even spoken to her, before he’d had a chance to … before she’d had a chance to—well, to talk—digested this bold act of hers? Had he processed it in his own way, turned it to his advantage and already moved on, leaving her frozen here, unable to move?
Somehow Bob had managed, literally overnight, to turn her discomfort, her confusion and pain, into an advantage, or at least an ad. No wonder he’d been president of the Rotary and head of the Chamber of Commerce!
Sylvie stood, frozen, while Phil the director signaled for Bob to start. But then Sylvie broke out of her trance and began walking toward her husband. Rosalie, along with another neighbor and a few kids, had come from her side of the fence and joined the crowd around the shot.
“Rolling,” the cameraman called out. “Speed.”
Bob began to speak his lines. “Why would I put a BMW in a pool? To prove to you—”
“Bob?”
“Great, Sylvie! You blew a take!” Phil cried. “You know we’re working here.”
“Bob?” Sylvie repeated, ignoring her brother. “You didn’t put the car in the pool.”
“No. I know that, Sylvie. I’m just reading the script.”
Phil got between the two of them and shook his head. “Even my own sister acts like a woman.” Phil signaled to the crew to begin again. “Sylvie, move out of the frame. Okay, people, let’s take it from the top. Rosalie, move back. No one wants that face in their living rooms.”
Rosalie flipped Phil the bird and stalked away.
Sylvie, who felt like doing the same thing to her brother, ignored him instead and looked only at her husband. “Bob, do you think I did this to improve car sales?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on!” Phil smacked his own thigh. If he’d been von Sternberg he’d have used a riding crop. “Are we playing twenty questions, Sylvie?” Sylvie just stood there.
Despite his brother-in-law’s impatience, Bob did, to his credit, keep his eyes locked with hers. “I thought you must have been upset about something,” he admitted.
“Have you thought about what, Bob?”
Phil smacked his own forehead, but not as hard as Sylvie wanted to. He pointed to his watch. “This is not the time for a tender marital moment.”
Sylvie kept the laser look on her husband. “What, Bob?” Sylvie repeated, ignoring not only Phil but all the now silent staff and neighbors crowding her yard.
Phil, a desperate look on his face, glanced at the watching crew.
Then he grabbed his sister’s hand. “Hey, how about you be in the commercial with Bob?” he asked in the false, cheery voice of a desperate clown at a children’s birthday party gone wrong. He regrouped and then continued in a tone that sounded apologetic. “Women buy cars.”
“No … really. I don’t want to—” Sylvie tried to pull free.
But Bob grabbed her other hand. “Come on! Wasn’t it you who wanted us to be spontaneous? Just kick off your shoes so they don’t get wet,” he told her. “We’re only shooting from the knees up.” He pulled her into the shot, hugged her, and then grabbed the nape of her neck. Bob tried to point her at the camera.
Sylvie was about to pull away when she looked down and saw that Bob’s own pant legs were rolled up, his socks and shoes off. She stared down at his bare feet. She couldn’t believe it. She stiffened and once again she found it hard to catch her breath. Bob’s hand on her shoulder became suddenly unbearable. “Sorry. No. I can’t,” she said, horrified, and pulled away.
“You can’t? Come on, Sylvie. Since when do you have stage fright?” Phil asked. He grabbed her hand.
“No. It’s not that. I forgot. I have to go.” Sylvie pulled away again.
“Where?” Bob wanted to know. As if he had any right.
“I just have to go. I need to …” Sylvie felt tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t think, couldn’t lie, couldn’t stay. She couldn’t bear for Bob to touch her, for them all to be looking at her. She felt exposed, humiliated. “I have to … go get a pedicure or something,” she said and bolted.
7 (#ulink_939bd1ac-1dce-5e6a-abdd-c540102526c2)
Jim, Sylvie’s father, was sitting in his wing chair, his feet on an ottoman, watching television. Mildred was deadheading her African violets. She noted that the pot on this one was cracked. She made a mental note to glaze another one at the pottery shop she owned. She looked over at her husband, seeing what the world saw. Jim was still good-looking, but he’d mellowed into a slightly overweight, grandfatherly type, the kind of man who could sell oatmeal on television. In fact, at the moment he had the television on, the remote in his hand. He was watching a PBS documentary on Dunkirk, or maybe it was Anzio—one that he’d probably seen a hundred times.
“Mildred. Look at this.”
“Please. Change the channel. You’re making me nervous,” she told him. “I hate it when you say, ‘Honey … the Nazis are on.’ As if I care.”
“I thought you wanted to see them lose again.”
“Jim, I’m not interested. Women don’t want to watch World War II unless Gary Cooper is an officer in it. Why don’t you give me the remote? There’s an Angela Lansbury rerun on.”
He waved her away, then realized she was teasing. “You know, we’ve been fighting about television since it was invented,” Jim commented.
Mildred laughed. Jim put his arm out but before he could hug her, gunfire broke out. He looked back at the screen and only patted Mildred’s back. Mildred had hoped for more and, anyway, she didn’t like to be patted. Never had. It felt … condescending. There, there, old girl. She turned to go back to her deadheading. Just then the doorbell chimed. Jim, of course, didn’t move, so Mildred went to the door and opened it. Sylvie was standing there, disheveled, out of breath and clearly upset.
“My God! Sylvie! What’s happened? Another car incident?”
Sylvie shook her head and tried to talk, but no words came out of her mouth. Looking in both directions, Mildred drew her into the foyer. No use sharing the latest bizarre family behavior with the entire neighborhood, not to mention Rosalie the Mouth. “Take a deep breath. There. Now another,” Mildred directed. “Okay. Talk.”
“Bob’s having an affair,” Sylvie finally managed to gasp.
The two women stared at one another for a silent moment. Mildred then shook her head. “Not Bob. I admit my son is crazy, but not my son-in-law. We took him into the business and the cul-de-sac …” She paused. “How do you know?”
“He’s never home. He forgave me about my car too easily. Did you see the crane he’s got in the backyard? He and Phil are using it to shoot a commercial. Daddy told them to.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mildred murmured.
“Mom, don’t you see? Next he’ll even let me drive Beautiful Baby. Something is definitely wrong. And … people are saying they saw us out together. But it’s always some place I haven’t been to.”
Mildred, her heart beginning to flutter in her chest, forced herself to take on the practical aspect that Angela Lansbury used in Murder, She Wrote. “That’s nothing. Circumstantial,” she said dismissively. “You still haven’t given me anything definitive.”
Sylvie burst into tears. “He’s gotten a pedicure.”
“A pedicure! My god!” Mildred took her daughter into her arms. Sylvie wasn’t just paranoid. “Was it a professional pedicure?” Mildred asked, giving her son-in-law the benefit of the doubt.
Sylvie nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “He’s been stabbing me with those pointy, deadly, fungoid toenails for twenty-one years. And now, just when he’s ignoring me, they’re short and shell pink.”
“He had a professional pedicure?” Mildred repeated, outraged. “He was dying to get caught,” she muttered.
Sylvie began crying on Mildred’s shoulder. “I know he’s sleeping with a younger woman.”
Mildred rocked Sylvie in her arms, but managed to shrug. “Of course it’s a younger woman! Do you think men cheat on their wives because they miss their grandmothers?” Mildred glanced toward her husband. Jim was still in the living room and the GIs were still eating lead on the beach. He was entranced. If a sociopath with a can of acid and a butcher knife had been at the door, Mildred would be blinded and gutted at this very moment while Jim waited for a commercial break to channel surf. Men! What were they good for? “It’s your daughter,” Mildred called out to him.
“Hi, honey. Want to watch the Nazis?” Jim called back, his eyes still glued to the screen.
“No, dear. We’re going to have a little chat instead,” Mildred told him. She wasn’t sure if he heard or not, but since he didn’t move she figured he didn’t need any further communiqués from the front. Mildred took her daughter’s arm and led her upstairs.
“Where are we going?” Sylvie asked, still wiping at her eyes with her hands, just the way she’d done when she was small.
“To cry our eyes out for two hours. You’re getting into bed and I’m bringing you a heating pad. Then we’ll talk.” Mildred led her into the bedroom, made her sit on the bed, then knelt and took off Sylvie’s shoes. “Lie down,” she said, and Sylvie did. Mildred drew the chenille spread up over her and tucked it under her shoulders, just the way she liked it.
Sylvie awoke in her old canopy bed. Everything in the room was dated: teenager circa 1967. The house was a big one, and Mildred had left the children’s rooms just as they had been. There was a shelf of Barbie dolls still on display and a blue Princess phone. The light was fading outside. Mildred was sitting in the dimness on the bed beside Sylvie, who sat up slowly and stretched. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Time to stop dealing with suspicion and start looking for facts,” Mildred told her.
“Is the crane gone?”
“The crane, your car, your brother, and Bob. They’re all wet and they’re all gone,” Mildred said. “The coast, as they say, is clear.”
Sylvie threw-the blankets off and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Mildred asked.
“Next door. Back home. I have some research to do.”
Sylvie was sitting in the dimness of her dining room ensconced behind Bob’s desk. In all their years of marriage, she’d never even glanced at open mail on it. Now every pigeonhole and drawer was emptied. She’d even lifted up the blotter, to look under it. She had bits of papers, cards, and receipts spread out around her on the desk top and the dining room table. It had grown dark outside but Sylvie hadn’t bothered to turn on the lamp. She didn’t need to survey any more of this. What she had in front of her was not just a paper trail of betrayal but a sort of First-Time-Do-It-Yourself-Adultery-Kit. Her hands were shaking, but she hoped she had the strength to shoot Bob when he came in the door—if only she had a bullet. Or a gun to shoot it with.
She wouldn’t aim for the heart or the head—she was enraged but not deranged. She didn’t want to go to prison. She would only shoot him in the legs, both of them. Then he’d hurt a little bit, but not the way she did. After he bled and cried for a while, he could drag himself behind her to his damn car and she’d drive it while he bled all over the upholstery. They could go to John, who would discreetly take out the bullets. After that, she’d leave Bob. Maybe she’d start her life over in Vermont with Reenie or alone in New Mexico. She had always wanted to see the desert. A nice adobe house, tumbleweed, and a dog. No, two dogs. Golden retrievers, and both of them female. She’d do a Georgia O’Keeffe thing and maybe, when she was ninety, some young man would come to her, too, and she’d be ready to try again. But not before.
Sylvie got up and went through the darkened hall to her music room—the only place where she could find comfort. In the darkness she sat down at her piano and began to play. The liquid glissando of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 filled the room. She’d played this piece at Juilliard, for a recital. Bob had been there. She remembered his face as he’d congratulated her afterward. They’d made love for the first time that night. He’d adored her then. She’d played well, but now—alone in the darkness—she knew she played better. Her fingers fumbled a few times, but her feeling, her timing, and the heart of the music was better, truer.
When she heard the door open she started, dropping her hands. The shock of hearing the music ending abruptly gave her the energy to turn around to face her husband. She felt her heart thump painfully against her breastbone. But it was only Mildred, standing there in the music room doorway, carrying a sandwich on a plate.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Mildred said. “You have to keep up your strength.” Sylvie turned on the lamp, wordlessly stood up, took her mother by the hand, and led her down the hallway. At the dining room door Mildred surveyed the room, took in an audible breath, and put the sandwich down on the other end of the cluttered dining room table.
“You want proof?” Sylvie asked. “I have it. In spades.”
“So you don’t want the sandwich. You want a pistol,” Mildred said. “Where’s Bob now?” she asked, picking up one of the pieces from exhibit A.
“He left a message. Supposedly he’s working late and then going to a special Masons meeting tonight. But there is no special meeting. I checked with Burt Silver’s wife. And there was no Masons’ meeting yesterday.” Sylvie sat back down at the desk. “I knew something was different,” she said. “It wasn’t just the usual, routine, taking-me-for-granted Bob. It was the new, improved, making-a-fool-of-me-cheating Bob.” Sylvie lifted up a crumpled slip of paper. “Look at this,” she said.
Mildred crossed the room and took the receipt. She scrunched up her eyes and held the bit of paper out but still couldn’t read it without her glasses. “What is it?” she asked.
“An American Express receipt from Weiner’s Jewelry.”
“That thief. You shop there?”
“I don’t. I don’t buy jewelry. But somebody bought a necklace there.” Sylvie’s voice became high with sarcasm. “Who could it be? Wait! Look! The receipt was signed by Bob.” She turned away from her mother.
“Maybe it was a pair of cuff links. You know how he likes cuff links.”
Wordlessly, Sylvie handed her the store sales record. “No cuff links,” she said. “A necklace. And trust me, Bob hasn’t worn beads since college.”
Mildred looked at the transaction record and then looked at her daughter. She sat down heavily at the head of the table. In Bob’s chair. “Maybe the necklace is for you. For your birthday.”
“I got my present. Remember?”
“Well, it could be for Reenie. When she comes home for Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t try and justify my husband’s actions,” Sylvie said. “It was sent to an M. Molensky.”
“M. Molensky? Is that the name of a girlfriend?” Mildred asked. “Sounds like an accountant.”
Silently, Sylvie handed Mildred another receipt. “Save your breath. Read it and weep.”
“Switzer’s?” Sylvie nodded, put her hand to her mouth, and stifled a sob.
Mildred made her way over to her daughter, the final proof of her son-in-law’s infidelity still clutched in her hand. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry …” Mildred looked down and whistled at the amount at the bottom of the bill of sale. “We’re talking some serious lingerie,” she said.
Sylvie was crying full force by now. “And I wear cotton panties I buy myself,” she sobbed.
Mildred sighed. “Don’t men know anything about discount malls?” she asked. She stroked her daughter’s hair. “One of the main differences between men and women is that we brag about how little we paid for something. They brag about how much.”
“That’s not one of the main differences,” Sylvie said grimly. She gestured to the papers and cards. “Women wouldn’t be so dumb as to make calls to their lovers in Cleveland from their home in Shaker Heights. And that’s not all, Mom. When I went through the American Express bills there were dinners, lots of them. No wonder people said they saw me around town. They were expensive too. And he tipped twenty-five percent.”
Mildred nodded her head. “A dead giveaway. Men tip big to make up for other things that might not be.” Mildred lifted two other receipts. “So you didn’t go to Vico’s?”
“No. But Rosalie thinks I did.”
“What was she doing there, anyway?” Mildred wondered.
“She’s dating some guy with nine toes. He probably took her. Anyway, are you convinced?” Sylvie asked.
“Oh yes,” Mildred said. “I’m optimistic, not stupid.” She shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in Bob. So what now?”
Sylvie had wondered the same thing herself. As she had gone through the pile of proof, she’d moved from disbelief to fear to denial and all those other phases that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross had described as the stages of accepting a death, because what Sylvie had been through was not just Bob’s desk but the death of her marriage and the end of all her future dreams. In her heart, buried somewhere deep under her optimism and blindness, there had been a core feeling that had told her something was wrong although she had refused to listen. There, at Bob’s desk, she had had to not only face this reality but decide what she was going to do about it. She had known immediately that she couldn’t pretend, that she couldn’t excuse it, nor could she doubt that it had happened.
“Sylvie?” Mildred’s voice was gentle. “So what now?”
“Well, before I decide, I want to show you just one more thing,” Sylvie said, and the tears in her voice were laced with bitterness. She pulled out a small package from the bottom of Bob’s desk and handed it to her mother. Mildred looked down at the condom in her hand.
“Well, at least he was having safe sex.”
“The only safe sex Bob can have is with me,” Sylvie said. “And that hasn’t happened for fifty-six days.”
“You’re counting?” Mildred asked. “It’s a bad sign if you’re counting.” She sighed. “My god, if I counted the last time your father and I—”
“Mother, please!” Sylvie stood up and gathered all the evidence, throwing it into a large envelope. Then she crossed the room.
“What are you doing?” Mildred asked. “Where are you going?”
“Upstairs to pack.”
“Pack?” Mildred echoed as her daughter disappeared into the hall. “Oh no, Sylvie. You mustn’t do that.” She ran up the stairs after her daughter. I already have one ex-in-law on the cul-de-sac. You can’t leave the house.” Sylvie was already in her bedroom, and by the time Mildred got there she had thrown an opened suitcase onto the bed. In fact, she had already thrown some of her cotton underpants into it. “Sylvie, don’t do it. This is where your life is.”
Sylvie opened the closet door, took out a blouse and a suit—a Karen Kahn she hadn’t worn since the twins’ eighth-grade graduation—and threw them into the bag. “What life? This is not a life. It’s a sham. I have to go. I’m married to a man who not only cheats and lies but also has his toenails buffed.” She knew she was as angry at herself as she was at Bob, because some part of her had suspected something and another part—the stupid part—had refused to acknowledge it. Sylvie picked up the little lamp on her dressing table, unplugged it, and threw it into the suitcase.
Mildred put the lamp back. “You won’t be doing much reading for a while, I think. But if you were to pick up a book, may I suggest A Week in Firenze? Camilla Clapfish is such a good writer. She knows everything about middle age.”
“No. I’ll be too busy calling lawyers,” Sylvie said bitterly. “You know, I’m actually glad I found out. I’m strong. I’ll survive. I’ll become a lawyer or a forensic psychiatrist, or marry a senator. No. I’ll become a senator—a thin one. I’ll pass a bill tripling import duties on foreign cars. Then Bob will be sorry.”
“So will your father.”
Sylvie ignored her mother. “This was a man I used to trust. My only regret is that I did the laundry before I left.”
Mildred moved across the room, opened Bob’s leather jewelry box, and rattled it like a cocktail shaker. “This is a man who used to have very organized cuff links,” she said. Then she opened the box, took out one of each of the good cuff links, and put them in her own pocket. “That will drive him bananas. Listen, Sylvie. You’re angry. You’re hurt. Take my advice: act out. Spend money. Scream. Cry. Have an affair if you have to. Make him pay emotionally. But hold on to your marriage.” She looked intently at her daughter. “I know Bob. Your husband is a man who likes order and routine. Most men do. And you give him that. Not some bimbo named M. Molensky. Perhaps he’s taken what you give him for granted, but he needs it. Just let this blow over.”
Sylvie turned her back to her mother, added a couple of bras to her suitcase, and then threw in a framed photo of the twins. Mildred watched, shook her head, and opened Bob’s shirt drawer. All of his sports shirts, back from the laundry, were starched, folded, and arranged meticulously by color. He was a nut about his shirts. The dress shirts had to be hung in the closet facing the same direction. Mildred took out the cardboards, pulled off the collar forms, and stirred them as if they were a stew. “Sylvie, put your clothes away,” she commanded.
“Mother, you have no idea how I feel. I couldn’t possibly get back into this bed and sleep with Bob.”
“Oh, be realistic!” Mildred snapped. “You’re not going to be doing any sleeping for weeks anyway. Look. I admit this is a shock. I admit it’s awful. But I don’t believe it’s ever happened before. I know Bob. So do you. Why believe it will ever happen again? You’re not the only one who’s facing your mortality, you know.” Mildred pulled open Bob’s bedside table drawer, took out his carefully rolled socks, and began mismatching them. Then she rerolled them and threw them back into their accustomed place. Meanwhile, Sylvie added a photo album to her cache and was about to put in the Christmas cactus when Mildred sat down on the edge of the bed. “Sylvie, where are you going to go?”
“Mom, times have changed. Women don’t just put up with this behavior. They don’t stay anymore. I want to confront him, I want to punish him, and then I want out.”
“Listen to me, this feeling will pass. Don’t run. And Sylvie, don’t point the finger at Bob.”
“I want to point the finger! And I want him to hurt like I do.” Sylvie picked up the phone.
“What are you doing?” Mildred demanded.
“I’m making an appointment.” Mildred tried to pull the phone away but Sylvie wouldn’t let her. “I’m in hell. Why shouldn’t he be?” Sylvie asked. Then the phone was answered by the lot receptionist. Sylvie, with an effort, managed to speak in a sweet voice. “Betsy? Mr. Schiffer, please…. Oh, fine. They’re both fine…. He’s not? Oh…. Off the lot? … No. No message.” Sylvie slammed down the phone, and in a second she had gathered her things, ready to leave.
“What, the finger in person?!” Mildred asked.
“Yes! I’m not wasting this rage. Can I borrow your car?”
“Listen. The two of you have history. That’s worth something. You have a past and maybe a future. You point the finger at him he gets mad, then deaf.”
Sylvie picked up the suitcase. “Your thinking is so out-of-date.”
“Out of date my buttocks,” Mildred croaked. “You think, Sylvie. Think hard. Do you know what you want? A future like Rosalie the Bitter?” Sylvie just shook her head, grabbed her purse, and left the room. “Where are you going?” Mildred cried, then followed her daughter.
“I’ve called a taxi. I’m going over to the lot, confronting Bob, and then I’m leaving him.” Sylvie was down at the bottom of the staircase. “And I’m taking back my old car to do it.”
“Oh, no,” Mildred moaned. There was a honk from outside and Sylvie opened the door, waving to the driver. She picked up her suitcase. “Please …” Mildred began, but her daughter had already walked out the door and down the walk to the waiting cab.
8 (#ulink_fae67b37-67df-59eb-a267-1dd32e7341d5)
Sylvie hadn’t taken cabs often. Shaker Heights was the kind of town you drove in, and even when they went to the airport, she and Bob preferred to drive and leave their own car in long-term parking. The taxi that was now waiting outside was all blue—the beaten-up exterior, the vinyl interior seats, the dirty floor mats, and even the ineffective pine-shaped deodorizer hanging from the windshield. Well, blue matched her mood, Sylvie thought as she got in. Since the driver didn’t even offer to help with her bag, she threw it in the backseat herself. Might as well get used to doing everything for myself, she thought.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Longworth Avenue. Crandall’s car lot.”
“No problem,” the driver said. She could only see the back of his neck and a strange hat he had pulled down. It was blue too, and shaped like a mushroom with seams. The cab took off and Sylvie leaned forward.
“Let me ask you a question,” she said. She tried to catch his eye in the rear view mirror. “Did you ever cheat on your wife?”
“Not that I can recall,” the driver said. Sylvie raised her brows.
“I think if you cheated you’d be able to recall it,” she spat.
“Maybe not if I was very, very drunk,” the driver said. “Not that I drink. Anymore. ‘Course, I’m not married anymore either.”
Sylvie directed the driver past the main entrance of the BMW lot and onto the side street off Longworth. Sylvie asked the driver, after lambasting him for most of the ride, to try and not be obvious. She got out of the car and, perhaps out of shame, he handed Sylvie her bag, obviously relieved to be rid of her. She fumbled with her purse. She wasn’t exactly sure how to tip. The ride had been awful, but so had her behavior and, after all, he had gotten her there and taken her abuse as well. She handed him the fare and fished out another two dollars. “This is for calling you a scumbag,” she told him. “I’m sorry.” She reached into her bag and took out another two dollars. “And this is for referring to you as a ‘hopeless asshole.’ I’m sure you’re not hopeless.” She paused for a moment, remembered something, then handed him a five. “And this is because you said I’m still pretty.”
The driver smiled. He was missing a bicuspid and the teeth he had didn’t seem worth keeping. “Hey, thanks, lady.” As he started to pull away, leaving Sylvie in the middle of the empty street, her mother’s car pulled up, Mildred at the wheel.
“Don’t argue. Put your suitcase in the backseat and get in,” Mildred commanded. Sylvie had last heard that tone of voice when she was in the seventh grade and, to her own surprise, she responded automatically and did exactly as her mother told her. Once in, Mildred rolled up the window and turned to her daughter. “Okay. You want to confront Bob?” Sylvie nodded her head and held up the envelope full of proof. “Foolish girl. If you have to confront someone, I say you confront the girlfriend. Throw her out of town .”
“Mom, this is not about two women fighting over a man. This is about Bob lying and making a fool of me.”
Mildred sighed, shook her head, and then laboriously managed a three-point turn. As she braked for the stop sign at Longworth, they simultaneously spotted Beautiful Baby zipping by.
“Oh my god!” Sylvie cried. “I’ll bet he’s going there. To her.”
Mildred pulled out and began to follow him. “We can’t get right behind him,” she said. “Do you know where she lives?”
“Across the bridge. Cleveland. 1411 Green Bay Road. That’s where the negligee went.”
Mildred snorted. “I bet there’s no green and I bet there’s no bay,” she said. “I think that’s the section beyond the airport. Condos,” she sniffed, as if it were a dirty word. They drove in silence for a while. Grimly, she clutched the wheel and stared ahead at Bob’s distant taillights. Mildred kept a car between her own and Beautiful Baby. As they left their Shaker Heights neighborhood, the houses got smaller and the traffic more congested. But Mildred never lost sight of Beautiful Baby.
“Hey, you’re good at this,” Sylvie marveled.
“There’s a lot of things I have experience with.” Way ahead Sylvie saw Beautiful Baby pull off the road.
“Look!” Sylvie cried. “Bob’s stopped. Does he have car trouble? Or is he having second thoughts?” They slowed down. “It’s a roadside stand. What does he want?”
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