Switcheroo (25 page)

“There you are!” he said. “Why didn’t you come in the side door?” He indicated a door at the back of this room, almost hidden by the velvet drape. “You know I don’t like you to be in the main reception area.”

“Oops, sorry. But here I am,” Sylvie said, trying to sound as cheerful and dotty as Marla normally did. “Wow!” she said. “You have a really, really great aura today.” Sylvie opened her bag, took out a bottle of oil, some incense, and Marla’s aromatherapy kit. Getting closer, Sylvie recognized that Simon Brightman’s feet could use some therapy in the aroma department.
Where was Marla, damnit
! Sylvie fiddled with a match, lit the incense, and wondered whether her evil twin was still at the club with John.

“Go on, baby. Do me,” Brightman said and winked.

Sylvie almost fainted. Desperate, she vamped for time. “You’ll have to excuse me for a minute,” Sylvie said. “I have to tinkle.”

Brightman sighed heavily. “I don’t have much time,” he said. “Make it quick.”

Sylvie left the room and closed the door behind her. She leaned up against the wall long enough to regroup her thoughts. She had to find Marla, and fast. Otherwise she was just walking out. Sucking those feet was too disgusting for words. Sylvie headed toward the reception desk. She was about to ask the receptionist for permission to use the phone but then she spotted a pay phone in a small alcove. Of course she didn’t have any quarters. Sylvie began punching an endless stream of numbers into the phone. Calling cards were convenient, she supposed, yet what a nuisance. Who can remember all these digits when they’re under stress? She misdialed her own car phone number and had to reenter everything one more time. All she could think of were Brightman’s feet, waiting for her. Thank god Marla picked up on the first ring. “Where are you?” Sylvie demanded.

“I’ve been caught!” Marla said, sounding frantic.

“What!?” Sylvie’s stomach did a flip. Had Bob figured it out? Were they busted? Her stomach lurched and she thought she should have made love to him last night while she’d had the chance.

But, “I’m caught in a loop,” Marla was saying. “How do I get out?”

“What are you talking about?” Sylvie snapped, relieved but confused. Maybe they hadn’t been busted.

“I left John at the club but I can’t seem to find my way to you. I’ve wanted to live in a place like the Heights all my life, but now I can’t get out! How many cul-de-sacs are there in this place? I’ve passed our street four times already. Oops. There it is again.”

Sylvie tried not to implode. She had to be patient to get Marla here. Then she could kill her.

“You know, our husband has to mow the lawn,” Marla was saying. “Say, hey, people around here are so rude! This lady that lives two houses down just flipped me the bird. Boy, does
she
give off bad karma. I can feel it from here and I’m protected by steel and glass.”

It must have been Rosalie, Sylvie realized. Marla would need lead to protect her from poor Rosalie’s “karma.” “Just get on Lee Road to the bridge and get over here,” she said, sounding as desperate as she felt.

“Lee Road? I’m
on
Lee Road. Or I was. I know I saw it,” Marla said. “Say, hey, your brother called. He called me here on the car phone. He said his nosy ex-wife saw me driving in circles and thought I might be looking for another pool to drive into.” Marla giggled. “He’s really sweet, isn’t he? He was worried about me.”

“I’m more worried about me,” Sylvie snapped. “Simon Brightman’s feet won’t last forever.”

“I’m just lost. I can’t get past Eaton and Carlton roads, and I’ve got to get out of here. People are looking. Please, be my control tower.”

“All right. Calm down,” Sylvie reassured her. “Take a right at Carlton and a right on Eaton. Two doors down you’ll see a duck mailbox. Take a left. Go through two lights and you’ll see the shopping center on the right.”

“You don’t really, really mean to go
through
the lights?” Marla asked. “What if they’re red? You’ll have a pimple on
your
license, remember?” Marla paused. Sylvie was silent. “I’m trying to be funny,” she explained.

“And I’m trying not to laugh,” Sylvie said bitterly, drumming her fake nails against the phone. She waited.

“I’ve been through four lights and I still don’t see any ducks,” Marla told Sylvie.

“I said
two
lights,” Sylvie snapped, desperate. “Two.”

“Okay. Okay!” Marla said. “I’ll hang a U-ee.”

At that moment, Mr. Brightman stuck his head out of the door and looked around. He spotted Sylvie and motioned for her to rejoin him. He pointed down at his watch. Sylvie smiled and nodded.

“Hurry up, Marla. Mr. Brightman’s getting really impatient,” Sylvie begged. “And what’s ‘the full treatment,’ anyway?”

“I’m out! I’m out!” Marla cried triumphantly. “I see the bridge. I’ll be there in four minutes. Boy, I’d hate to have to try to get out of the Heights in an emergency.”

“This
is
an emergency!” Sylvie said with clenched teeth, and hung up the phone. She started back to the room and Mr. Brightman. As she approached him Sylvie shrugged and smiled, Marlaesque. “I’m sorry about that. I was getting bad vibes about my sister and I just
had
to call her.” She sat on the stool at his feet. “Uh…your toes look particularly adorable today.”

Mr. Brightman leaned back and closed his eyes. “That’s what I like to hear. Change the polish. I want something…youthful.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. I mean, I have. Come, I mean. I mean, come here.”

“My insteps are killing me. Why don’t you give them a try? But first put on new polish. You know I like a
lot
of color.”

It took everything Sylvie had to get even her hands and his toes in close proximity. She had Marla’s kit, but it wasn’t a pedicure kit…it had essential oils and cream but no Revlon Fire and Ice. Sylvie took out some massage oil and dripped a little onto Simon Brightman’s foot.

“Haven’t you forgotten to take something off?” Mr. Brightman asked, his voice low.

“Take something off?” Sylvie inquired, staring at his horny toenails. It seemed to her that it wasn’t just his nails that were horny.

“My old polish.
And
say the poem. I want the full treatment. Are we playing coy? Please, Miss Molensky, I’m losing patience. I’ve got only twenty minutes left.” Sylvie, not knowing what to do, started to rise. Enough was enough. She simply couldn’t do this. She’d leave.

“Go behind the drapes, like you always do,” Mr. Brightman said, his voice commanding. Without thinking about it, she did. She’d stood there for a moment, almost in tears, when she heard Marla dance into the room from the outside door. Sylvie peeked out from behind the velvet curtains.

“One little piggy goes to market,” Marla cooed to Mr. Brightman, “one little piggy stays home.” Marla ducked behind the other drape, pulling it in front of her while she searched her bag for something. She pulled out a Day-Glo-pink Hard Candies nail polish, which she held out from behind the curtain with a practiced stripper’s gesture and shook before she tossed it across the room. Mr. Brightman groaned. “Oh, yeah!” he said. “It’s perfect. You little tease!” Marla danced out from behind the curtain. “Go out the side door. Now,” Marla whispered as she passed the drape that Sylvie still clutched in front of herself. Marla retrieved the polish and squatted at Mr. Brightman’s feet. He closed his eyes and Sylvie slipped gratefully out of the room.

Sylvie pulled up to her house, parked the car, and looked around the cul-de-sac, checking it out through her rearview mirror. She certainly didn’t want her neighbors, including her mother and Rosalie—above all, Rosalie—to see her. Bob had always complained about the garage being separate from the house, but this was the first time that Sylvie herself minded making the walk from the driveway to the back door.

She stepped in through the French doors to the music room. She froze, then gasped. The disorder was amazing. Her beloved sheet music was spread in messy piles on the settee, on the window seat, with the biggest pile on the floor, far too close to the fireplace. Some of those arrangements were irreplaceable, done by her professors at Juilliard, long dead now. Didn’t that girl know anything? Aside from the music morass there were two or three half-filled mugs and an empty soda-water bottle sitting on the end tables but, worst of all, there was a vase full of dying chrysanthemums and lilies—a vile combination—on the piano. Sylvie couldn’t tell how long it had been there, but the flowers were drooping and, when she rushed over to it, Sylvie could see the fetid water within the vase. Yellow-brown pollen from the stamens of the lilies blotched the surface of the baby grand. Holding her breath, Sylvie lifted the vase. Thank god, there was no water ring under it, but somehow she was sure that wasn’t because of Marla’s care. Sylvie caressed the unblemished smoothness of the top of the piano. She’d missed playing almost as much as she’d missed Bob. She wished she had the time right then to sit down and play—even for just a few minutes—but it was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

Sylvie tried to remember the last time she’d gone this long without playing. Maybe right after the twins were born, but not since then. Reluctantly, she forced herself to leave the desecrated music room as it was but she
did
carry out the vase. She’d have to tell Marla—if she hadn’t told her already—
never
to put anything on the Steinway’s ebony lacquer.

Sylvie walked through the dark hallway. She felt like a ghost, haunting her own home, carrying the dying white mums and lilies before her. She walked by the bookshelf and noticed a photo at eye level. She stopped. Bob stood with the twins on a beach in South Carolina. The photo was in an old silver frame that Sylvie had been given by Bob’s mother just before she died. No one looking at the picture, except for her and Bob, would know that she had snapped the photo, or that just minutes before Kenny had been caught in an undertow that had nearly pulled him out to sea. Sylvie had seen it happen, quick as a flash, and screamed: Bob had raced into the waves, crossed the current, and managed to pull Kenny along with him. Now Sylvie looked at the children’s smiling faces. They were completely unruffled but, despite Bob’s tan, Sylvie knew he had been, at that moment, pale beneath the sun’s ruddiness. Her finger had trembled on the shutter, and when they had gotten the photos back both of them had looked at this one together silently for a long time. Then Bob had mouthed her thought: the picture on the roll before this one might have been the very last one of the twins together.

Sylvie clutched the dying flowers to her. She didn’t want to lose Bob. It was more than just love and it was more than lust and it was more than pride. He shared memories and experiences of her whole adult life, things she would never be able to share with anyone again. She wanted to get to keep her life and his reflection of it, just as she was willing still to reflect his. If her marriage ended, Sylvie knew she would never marry again. Not because she would continue to love Bob and moon over him, and not because this possible dissolution would turn her into a man hater, but because it this union failed, she would know that all unions could fail. She would never want to go through another, a false union doomed to disappoint and unravel. Rather than that she would turn to God, a love that would always be returned. That or she would get those golden retrievers.

She pushed open the swinging kitchen door with her hip and stopped dead in her tracks. Every surface of the kitchen—the counters, the table, the island—was covered with food. It looked as if Marla was about to open a farm stand at the back of Sylvie’s home. Pumpkins were set on the table, tomatoes lined the windowsill, an entire net of garlic—at least a two-year supply—hung from the pot rack, and three sacks of potatoes were leaning against the basement door. There were also cans of baked beans, bowls of yams, boxes of Pepperidge Farm cookies, a huge pile of Indian corn, two or three tins of anchovies, a tray of baked cookies…just doing an inventory would have taken Sylvie all day. What in the world was Marla doing?

Sylvie was a fanatic for putting things away and keeping her kitchen cleared and organized. She didn’t go as far as alphabetizing the canned goods, but she did keep them stacked, with the soonest expiration dates in the front, the later purchases in the back. She put down the vase, having to push over a stack of mail to find the counter space. Then she took a deep breath and scratched at her inner elbow. This chaos was enough to give her hives. And Bob hadn’t even noticed? Didn’t the man have eyes? Sylvie wondered for a moment why she had bothered fighting the daily tide of entropy for the last two decades. Certainly the kids had never minded disorder. Apparently Bob didn’t either. Had she been doing it all for herself? Sylvie thought of those hours—hundreds of hours—of unpacking and folding grocery bags, organizing and putting things away. She could have spent the time playing the piano. She could have spent the time with the children. Or exercising and having her hair streaked blonde. Maybe, if she’d spent the time on her appearance and with Bob instead of working in the house, she’d still be in this house, happy and loved.

Sylvie looked up at the kitchen clock, a clock that had measured out her life for almost twenty years. She didn’t have much time, and thought it best to not even look at whatever other changes Marla had wrought. Instead, Sylvie just turned and opened the door to the laundry room, shutting it behind her and simultaneously turning on the light.

She almost screamed. Here, confronting her, was the most enormous pile of laundry she’d ever seen, except maybe for that time when the kids came home from camp on same day Bob came back from a business convention. But this wasn’t just kids’ T-shirts and shorts. There were sheets and towels from all of the bathrooms. There were Bob’s sweaters, his polo shirts, his chinos and socks. There were dishcloths and washcloths, dress shirts and her cloth napkins. The biggest pile had obviously towered too high on the counter and had fallen onto the floor, creating a cloth swamp. Worst of all, there was no separation between the delicates and the permanent press, hand washables, or even the whites and colors. It was a stew.