Switcheroo (29 page)

“Hi, Daddy,” Reenie called out. “This is Brian. Hi, Mom. This is laundry.” Reenie bounded up the steps of the porch, quickly kissed Marla, then put the duffel bag in her “mother’s” arms.

“It’s very open of you to accept me for the holidays,” this Brian person said to Bob and Marla as he shook their hands.

“Another guest?” Marla asked under her breath. She thought of her table. Well, if she added one more place on the far side she might squeeze him in.

“You should have let us know, Reenie,” Bob said, but his voice was indulgent.

“So? Guess who Kenny brought home?” Reenie demanded in a childish voice. “His whole soccer team.”

Marla held in the yelp rising in her throat. Kenny got out of the car then with four big guys. Marla stretched out her arms again. “Not the whole team, I just brought you the defense,” he shouted, correcting his sister. He ran up to the porch, threw a fake punch at his dad, and dropped a huge duffel bag. “I brought you my laundry too. Thanks in advance, Mom.” He gave her a hug—but not the long, warm one Marla had imagined and wanted—then ran back to the guys.

Marla faintly murmured, “More people?”

“Yeah. Devon, Alex, Simon, and Hugh.” The boys waved. Then one of them—the handsomest—said something, the others laughed, and Kenny responded. There was another outbreak of laughter. It made Marla, suddenly, feel very left out and…old. Clearly the kids were more interested in their friends than in their parents. And even though those young guys weren’t that much younger than she was, when they grabbed their gear and walked up to the door they said brief hi’s as if she were invisible and then rushed into the house.

Bob turned to Marla and looked at her fondly. He pecked her cheek. “It’s good to have the family together, isn’t it? The family and John. He would have been all alone this Thanksgiving.”

“John. Right. And Rosalie says
she’s
bringing a date. That’s roughly…what?” said Marla, weakly counting on her fingers. “Twenty-nine?”

The table had been perfectly set—flowers, pumpkins, Pilgrim figures, candles, and all. Marla went into the dining room, sighed deeply, removed the dry cleaner’s plastic covering the perfectly set table and started squeezing place settings together.

Bob had taken the kids to the mall. Kenny needed new Reeboks, and Reenie, as always, thought there was just one more pair of shoes somewhere that would make life perfect. Alex, Devon, and Hugh hadn’t joined them—they were playing one-on-one at the high school basketball court. But Reenie’s boyfriend, Brian, and Kenny’s friend Simon had come along, and so had Jim—as if Bob needed to spend any more time with his father-in-law.

“Hey, Dad. How’s business?” Kenny asked. Before Bob could open his mouth Kenny added, “In four words or less, of course.” There was a laugh from the peanut gallery in the backseat.

“Not good enough to let you keep the car, I’m afraid,” Bob said, but Kenny didn’t even blink at the bluff.

“Hey, give him a new model if he wants it,” Jim said, as usual, playing king of the lot. Bob tried to keep himself from being annoyed. “You okay way back there?” he asked. Reenie was lying down in the back of the station wagon with that…that annoying guy. Bob craned his neck to get a look at them in the rearview mirror. Was he groping her?

A horn blew and Bob stopped short. Traffic was awful. They crawled to the mall and, once he parked, Bob told the kids to follow the family’s usual mall procedure—Kenny and Simon were going for the two-hundred-dollar sneakers and checking out the action at Sports Authority, while Brian and Reenie and Bob would also split up, all rejoining at the food court. “In an hour. In front of the potato skins counter,” Bob reminded them all. God knew what Jim, the indulgent grandfather, would do. Bob figured he was on his own.

After potato skins, the kids had more plans: Brian wanted to check out the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Bob had begged out but had to pick up some cumin—whatever that was—for one of Sylvie’s recipes and so the group separated in front of the Ritz Carlton, planning to hook up again in two hours. Bob couldn’t help but watch Brian as he and Reenie walked toward The Gap. He had stuffed his hand in the back pocket of her jeans and Bob felt an almost irresistible urge to run over and smack his hand away. He turned and leaned on the railing that overlooked the central fountain of the mall.

Tower City was crowded. When the place had first been converted from the old RTA railroad station and been renovated, the kids had liked nothing better than to come here, eat junk food, and watch the dancing waters in the choreographed fountain. Every half hour music was piped in and the show began: water spurted in coordinated runs to the sounds of Tchaikovsky and John Philip Sousa. Sylvie despised it, Bob enjoyed it as just kitsch, but the kids had once thought it was magical. Now they ignored it completely, walking by the large reflecting pool as if it didn’t exist. As the program began Bob watched the fleeting silver arcs of water that made the milling crowd below point and ooh. For some reason he thought of Marla, and the beauty and depth of their lovemaking last night. It had shaken him. He had meant to end this thing but, god, she was under his skin. He wanted to hold her, to feel her skin against his. Then he wondered if Reenie was sleeping with that Brian kid yet. If not, she would be soon. The idea made him a little queasy. What would it be like for her? It was hard to believe his baby was that old. Where had the time gone?

The music changed tempo and the water arcs below started breaking into moving dotted lines that completed their flight and disappeared back into the pool, more graceful than flying fish. Some of the people in the crowd clapped. Who were they clapping for? Bob wondered. The music recorded years ago? The programmer who had designed the computer-controlled fountain performance? The engineer or architect who’d conceived of the plan? Or maybe the applause was for the water itself?

Somehow their dissassociated clapping made him feel…strange. Lonely. He wanted Marla beside him. Bob shook that idea out of his head. He knew he ought to get moving and get over to the specialty gourmet shop, but he stood for a moment more, away from the crowd, above it. His ankle was hurting from all the walking and it seemed to throb to the rhythm of the cascading water. But his real problem was that he realized he was lonely. For almost twenty years he’d been the center of Kenny and Reenie’s life, the center of Sylvie’s. Now, with Sylvie at home in a frenzy of table setting, and Reenie and Kenny back, but not really with him, Bob, all at once, felt such a sense of uselessness and isolation that he had to clutch the railing for a moment. He’d been a good husband, an involved father, and a capable businessman, but what had it added up to? He’d done a lot less than the pianist—perhaps dead now—who was playing the music, less than the computer programmer. No one was clapping for him. No one knew he was there. He thought of calling Marla, because the way they had been…with her…well, he hadn’t felt lonely. It was crazy to call her—she was nothing but pressure for him, especially on a holiday, but somehow, something that had only been a physical thing had, just the other night, turned into…

But this was a family holiday. A day to take stock and be grateful. Bob was not a religious man, but he was aware of his blessings. His kids were healthy. He had never meant to cheat on Sylvie. He really had never meant to. Marla had just shown up and…He’d felt flattered by her interest. He hadn’t taken her seriously. He knew he loved Sylvie. What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t remember, was exactly how the affair with Marla had started. Had she made the first move? Had he? What he did know was that he had never meant for this to happen. What would Kenny think if he knew? What would Reenie…His mind jumped away from that. It was unthinkable. Bob knew, now that the children were home, that he had to end this double life. Only a fear of hurting Marla—that and a little lust—had kept it going. But the damned thing was that just in the last week or so, just since the other night, he’d realized he had…well, a lot of feelings for Marla. Being with her, making love with her, had felt too much like love. He’d even
called
it love.

To make it worse, since Sylvie had come back from her sister’s—especially in the last few days—being with her had also been different: it had been too much like work. She was more dependent, while simultaneously self-absorbed. She seemed addled, and the house, except for the dining room table, was a mess. Bob sighed.

He looked down and noticed Brian coming out of the bookstore below. He was carrying a bag and talking to a young girl. Bob thought he recognized the girl from Reenie’s carpooling days. Jenny—a real little flirt even then. He watched as Brian took her hand and she pulled away, laughing. Then Brian spoke earnestly to her for a few moments, and at last she reached into her purse, took out a pen, and wrote something down on his bag. Jenny flung the boy a pouty look that was as good as a promise before she flounced off.

Bob could hardly believe what he had just seen. Maybe it was innocent, he told himself. Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t project. But it seemed to him that the sensitive little son of a bitch his daughter was obviously besotted with had just taken Jennifer Hill’s phone number. Outraged, he spun around, ready to confront the bastard. Then he stopped himself. The two kids would work out their own future. The question was, what the hell was he doing? Brian, the little scumbag, owed his daughter a lot less than Bob owed Sylvie.

And it was all so odd. He could have sworn that just a few weeks ago he would have been able to break up with Marla effortlessly. It was only now that something had gone terribly wrong. After last night his world had been shaken. He realized that he loved her. It wasn’t just sex, or his protective instincts. It felt like love. He wasn’t sure if he could bear to give up that love. His life would feel too empty without it. He had never expected this to happen. And he didn’t have a clue as to what he should do.

Jim came up behind him and put his hand on Bob’s sore elbow. Bob jumped, both from the pain and the guilt. “Oh, sorry,” Jim said, leaning on the railing and putting his hand to his back. “You’re getting almost as decrepit as I am,” he said. “You’ve got that bum ankle, and now your elbow. You’ve got a rash all over your neck too,” Jim observed. Then he moved in a little, straining his eyes. “And is your hair starting to thin?”

Bob reached up to his hairline self-consciously. He thought so too, but he wasn’t going to admit it to Jim. “I might have a couple of good years left in me,” Bob told his father-in-law.

“Well, spend them wisely,” Jim said. Bob looked at him. Was there a warning in the old man’s voice?

Bob wondered who he’d spend his last years with and, turning away from the railing, began limping over to fetch the cumin for Thanksgiving dinner.

Marla woke up and turned the alarm off so that it wouldn’t wake Bob, snoring beside her. She pushed herself out of bed. She checked the clock—4:45
A
.
M
. She threw on one of Sylvie’s terry robes and thick socks, then—after splashing some water on her face—she stopped in the laundry room.

She looked around. It was beyond her. Though Sylvie had done it earlier in the week, now again there were piles and piles of nasty, dirty, bits of clothes. Socks, sweat bands, jockstraps. There were T-shirts in tatters, and at least a hundred pairs of jeans.

Marla looked at the dials on the machine that hated her. Cold/Cold, Warm/Cold, Hot/Cold, Warm/Warm…Why so many choices? And load size. How should she know what was normal? None of this was normal for her. Not to mention all the other dials. What did
they
do?

After getting nowhere for ten minutes, Marla simply picked up an armful of stuff and threw it into the gaping washer’s mouth. She closed her eyes, turned the dials, and hoped for the best. Marla staggered to the kitchen. It was 5:10 already. She was behind schedule! She reached up and turned the oven to 350, then went out the back door and dragged the enormous turkey in. It didn’t seem as if it had defrosted at all, because the weather must have gotten colder overnight. There was frost on the lawn. Marla put the turkey on some aluminum foil, because no pan was big enough to hold the sucker. She opened the oven door, but then couldn’t carry the turkey to it. She looked around. At last she leaned the ironing board against the oven, and pushed the turkey up the board and almost into it. At the mouth of the oven, though, it soon became very clear that the turkey was too big to fit inside. Way too big. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get it in.

Marla was about to cry. She pushed the damn bird back down the ironing board and managed to get it onto the kitchen island. Next she tried to cut it in half, first with a knife, then a saw, then an ax she found in the garage. She hurt her arm but didn’t put a dent in the carcass. It was frozen, rock hard. Forty-four pounds of turkey and no way to cook it.

Nothing worked.

Marla pulled up to the parking lot just as the sun rose. Despite the time of the morning, the twenty-four-hour supermarket was filled with dozens of zombie women who all had one mission in mind: to pick up the single crucial thing they had forgotten to buy. The problem was that all the crucial things—cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, boxed stuffing—were long gone.

Marla approached the butcher counter. It was decimated. Not a bird was left, only piles of dirty ice and blood from the carcasses. It looked like a deserted battlefield. A butcher, obviously a casualty of shell shock, was sitting there, legs sprawled.

Marla knew she didn’t look her best. Her hair was still uncombed, her face bare of makeup, and she was dressed in baggy sweats. But she had to get this man to like her, to come to her aid. She began to blather out her tale of holiday hell. “…so it doesn’t fit. And it’s still completely frozen,” she finally ended with. “Help me,” she said to the butcher. “I need a new bird.”

“It’s kind of late, lady. We don’t have anything left,” he replied, his eyes glazed with exhaustion.

“But you have to do
something
,” Marla cried, on the verge of hysteria. She couldn’t do Thanksgiving without a turkey! They’d all be so disappointed she’d be found out as a screwup. She never got things right! “Can’t you make me one?” she begged, desperate. She fluttered her eyelashes. “You can probably do anything.”