The Switch

“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

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

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?”