The light from the window wasn’t harsh—Reenie’s room faced north—but a clear white illumination. Sylvie looked at herself in her daughter’s mirror. When had those bags under her eyes filled in with fat? And when had the two sides of her jaw, each bit beside the corner of her mouth, begun to hang like that? She put her hand up to her throat. When had it gone so soft? She lowered her eyes to her chest. She was covered with little freckles and discolorations all across her breastbone. And her breasts!
Her breasts had never been overly large. She used to really like her breasts. Now she stared and wondered when the nipples had started pointing down instead of up. She remembered the stupid pencil test—the girls in school had always said you had to wear a bra if your breasts hung low enough against your chest cavity so that you could hold a pencil the thickness of a cigarette there. My God! She could secrete a Royal Macanudo cigar and no one would be the wiser. Sylvie continued her examination. Her belly had filled out. She was used to a little round mound, but this was more. When she was younger, even the roundness was cute. Somehow now, the lumpiness and the look of the flesh, her own flesh, was unattractive. And then came her thighs! She looked at the dimpled cellulite. When had she become The Pillsbury Doughboy? Once past the thighs her legs weren’t so bad—but as she stared she noticed two or three places where the veins were beginning to come close to the skin. Were they varicose?
She looked down, away from the mirror, directly at her own body. Despite the slight bulge of her stomach, she could see her pubic hair. Was it sparser than it had been? And—oh my god—was that a gray hair among the others?
How had this happened without her noticing it? Had she been too busy with the kids, her music, her students, the house and the garden to notice? She had become a middle-aged woman!
It was, of course, inevitable. She simply had not thought it was going to happen so soon. Forty wasn’t old. Somehow she wouldn’t have minded so much if she thought she was loved. But now, realizing that Bob had so little interest in her, Sylvie despised what she saw. Ten years ago—even five—she’d been able to hold it together. At thirty she could pass for twenty-two. She’d been carded once when she was thirty-one (and the bar was dark). At thirty-seven she still didn’t look her age. But somehow it had all caught up with her. The ten years, or eleven, or whatever the difference was from that other woman were the years where some irreparable change took place, where the rubber hit the road. Sylvie’s only comfort was that all of these changes would happen to that hussy too. She would stand before a mirror just like this someday. But, in the meantime, Marla was flawless.
Sylvie looked at herself in the mirror again and blushed. She felt the flush move down her neck and heat her chest. Every time Bob looked at her in the last few months he must have compared her to that other woman, the one with the skin that was still elastic, with the hands that were smooth. How humiliating! Sylvie had to turn away from the mirror. She took Reenie’s old dressing gown down from its hook and wrapped herself in the big flannel robe.
When was the last time she and Bob had made love? She’d joked when she told her mother fifty-six days. But how long was it? She tried to remember. Not since before the children left for school. And she wasn’t sure whether they had tried during the summer. Could it be that long? Almost four months? They’d been married forever, and there had been dry spells, but they’d never gone as long as this. Sylvie held her hand out to steady herself against the wall. When would she make love again? Maybe never. How could she possibly ever make love to Bob after this? And she couldn’t even think of another man in her future.
In truth, Sylvie had never expected much drama in life. She felt as if she made her own world and was responsible for her own happiness. But she wasn’t ready to be counted out. She wasn’t ready to give up carnal pleasure or be relegated to the discard pile.
Bob had found somebody new, yet still had all the safety of familiarity. Bob was making love to another woman, a woman who looked just like Sylvie had looked a decade earlier. Bob was turning back the clock.
But for Sylvie, what answer was there?
Sylvie was sitting in Dr. John Spencer’s office, but she couldn’t sit for long. Instead, she began to pace. The usual framed official stuff was on the walls: medical school degrees, awards for community service and the like. There was also a big picture of John’s deceased wife Nora and dozens of pictures of the two of them together. Too bad they’d never had children, Sylvie thought. Nora hadn’t been able to conceive. John would have been a good father, and if they’d had kids, he wouldn’t be alone now. The way I soon will be. Sylvie, still too anxious to sit down, kept pacing back and forth. When John put his head out of the office, she was upon him.
“Sylvie, are you okay? My nurse said—”
Sylvie put up a hand to stop him from talking and shook her head. She was using all of her control not to cry. It seemed to be the only thing she’d been doing successfully lately. He gestured for her to follow him down the hall.
“I need an EKG,” she told John as they entered his office.
He turned to look at her with concern. “Are you having chest pains? Is this an emergency?”
“Yes. I need an emergency face-lift. And liposuction.”
“A face-lift? Why?” He took her hand. “Sylvie, what’s wrong?”
“Everything. Bob’s cheating on me. And I saw her. She looks just like me, but younger. Just like me, but no crow’s-feet. Just like me, but without the second chin.”
John sat down heavily in his desk chair and steepled his fingers. “I’m very sorry, Sylvie.”
Sylvie nodded. “I’m not even going to ask if you knew about how Bob was spending his free time. You’re too good a friend to both of us to have to take sides.” She crumpled into the chair facing John and allowed one tear to slide out of her eye. John got up from his desk, moved to Sylvie, and was about to take her into his arms when she felt him hesitate, just for a second. Sylvie knew about John’s deep feelings for her, and it was a comfort. John may have wanted to put his arms around her, but he only touched her in a doctorly way. Now his arms could have been a bulwark against her sexlessness.
“Age just crept up on me, John. I wasn’t watching. I didn’t know I looked so bad—”
“Are you insane? You need a psychiatrist, not a plastic surgeon. Are you blaming yourself for Bob’s behavior? You are an attractive, vital woman—”
“Last time I was here you told me I had to lose ten pounds,” Sylvie interrupted.
“Well, I didn’t see it, I was just going by the charts,” John protested. “To me, you’ll always be my prom date. Hey, I’m still upset you didn’t accept my proposal.”
Sylvie walked to the window and looked out on the quiet street. “I couldn’t. You were science. Bob was music, and I wanted to play. I thought Bob and I would play together.” She paused. “We didn’t. What happened?” She moved back to John, put her head on his shoulder, and began to cry again. He held her.
“Sylvie, let me speak to you as a medical professional. Occasionally men behave like assholes.”
“You don’t.”
“Oh, yes. Even me. Since Nora died, I’ve thought of every compliment I didn’t give her. Sometimes men forget the important things.”
“Oh, John. I’m so sorry for you…and Nora.”
“We’re talking about you, now. Sylvie, it’s not about you. It’s about Bob. I see this all the time. Forget surgery. A woman suffers a blow to her ego, gets insecure. You’re thinking if you looked younger, if you changed your looks…but it’s not about looks.”
Sylvie had stopped listening. She gestured wildly with her hand. “You don’t understand. This is not the normal situation. She looks exactly like me, John. It is about looks. About youth. About mortality.”
“No. No…”
“You don’t understand…I could be her. She could be me. We could switch—”
“Sylvie, most men think they want the comfort of a wife and the excitement of an affair. I
t’s the human condition, the pull between safety and the unknown, but in the end…”
But Sylvie still wasn’t listening. Her brain was, at last, moving with lightening speed. Realization dawned on Sylvie. “…and neither one of us is happy. She wants a marriage. I want…romance.”
“…no one can have it both ways.”
The blurred image of Marla and herself flashed in Sylvie’s mind. How they had stared into the quince-filmed mirror, identical. “You don’t understand,” she repeated. “I could be her. I could be her. I could be her,” Sylvie kept repeating like an actress rehearsing her lines.
12
Sylvie slept—well, she’d pretended to sleep—on the narrowest sliver of the edge of the bed, her back turned to the vast empty space behind her. Eventually—it must have been past midnight—Bob had returned and slipped quietly in beside her. It had been dreadful for her to feel his body lying there, even though he wasn’t touching her. Her back felt as if it were a kind of tingling radar; she could feel his slightest movements and kept herself as far away as possible. She’d pushed herself ever closer to the bed edge. She couldn’t help having these feelings even though he was late because tonight he actually did have his damn Masons’ meeting. But the tension in her body was unbearable. If Bob had actually reached out and touched her, she would probably have screamed and begun slapping him. But instead he had fallen into a loud, breathy coma while she lay there awake most of the night.
Each time she did close her eyes her dreams were vivid—and violent. A piece of paper wrinkling, then catching fire and burning down her beloved house. She woke in a sweat, only to sleep and dream again. This time something about that girl moving into her house and Sylvie outside, in the street, peering in the window. They had traded places, or at least that woman had taken hers. Awake, her thoughts would circle and circle among the facts and her options.
And then, like a tremor that started in her head and moved through her whole body, it came to her. The idea that had been lurking just beyond her consciousness sprang clearly into her mind. Sylvie actually thought the bed shook, but it was only her brain moving. Why not change places? Sylvie didn’t want Marla to replace her—she wanted to take Marla’s! Was it possible? People had already mistaken them for one another from a distance. And their smeared images in the mirror were identical. Could it be possible? Last year Bob had finally given in and gotten reading glasses. How misty was his vision up close? And then it had come to her—the culmination of not only Bob’s reality, but the advice from her mother and John’s view. It had all meshed in a daring, creative way. But, hey, Sylvie told herself, I am capable of being daring and creative.
Excited by the plan she’d begun incubating, Sylvie got out of bed and paced the downstairs hall, sipping cup after cup of tea, until she’d thought it all out very carefully. It was wild and complicated and maybe impossible and crazy. But, if she could pull it off, she’d have everything she wanted.
With a little bit of surgery—not much—and the loss of a few pounds (which she’d been meaning to lose anyway), and the lightening of her hair, plus the addition of a lot of what was probably herb-based makeup, Sylvie figured she could take Marla’s place. Then she’d not just catch Bob in the act of cheating on her, but she could also make a fool of him, just as he had of her. And, if she chose to, she could let Bob make love to her the way he once had. Be wooed. Romanced. Or she could let him lust and then turn him down flat. Let him feel the rejection she now felt.
Of course, to make it happen she’d need some luck, some surgery, and the complete cooperation of the woman she’d begun thinking of as Marla Molensky, N.A.D. (New Age Ditz). But the more Sylvie thought about it, the more she felt the plan was doable. After all, the N.A.D. wanted to be a wife. Let her try it. It made Sylvie think of one of those World War II films her dad always watched where someone like Gregory Peck would have to go behind enemy lines and impersonate the Nazi general because of a coincidental resemblance; then you’d see army intelligence tutoring Peck in German, giving him a dueling scar, and briefing him on all the general’s personal habits. Last, they’d tailor a perfect uniform and send Peck off on a mission that was almost impossible.
But he always pulled it off. So why couldn’t she? She could learn to speak New Age. Certainly Marla could learn to cook some chicken and be ignored. It would be Twainish—the prince and the pauper—but at this particular moment Sylvie couldn’t figure out which of them was which.
The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. The obstacle would be to convince Marla. But Marla was dying to play a wife. She could be pursuaded to start with a dress rehearsal. Might as well try, Sylvie thought. I have nothing to lose: if Bob found them out he might be furious at Sylvie’s deception but he’d be shamed by his own. At the same time, there was a chance he might look at Marla’s complicity as a complete betrayal. Sylvie smiled. That in itself wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Sylvie didn’t know if she could save her marriage, or if she wanted to, but she was certain that she wanted to break up this little affair. If she forgave Bob now, she’d still be just the wife—the reliable, comfortable, taken-for-granted wife. And she knew her mother was right in one respect—she didn’t want Marla Molensky to ever really become the new Mrs. Bob Schiffer. Sylvie knew how the water closed over a divorcée’s head in Shaker Heights. But worse, her pride couldn’t take knowing that she was replaceable, a human lightbulb that was once screwed in but was now screwed out.
Sylvie put down her last cup of tea and got dressed at daybreak, left a note for Bob, and drove through the quiet streets of Shaker Heights. The leaves were at their peak. It was beautiful here in the pink light of dawn. She loved her hometown. She wanted to stay here, but not as Rosalie had. Sylvie wanted to stay on her own terms.
So all she had to do was convince Marla to fall in line. Sylvie knew she’d have to be a little bit duplicitous, but she was capable of it, especially in the face of the duplicity she had just experienced. What she needed to convince Marla was an incentive. Despite her mother’s suggestion, she knew money wouldn’t work—but she thought she did have a way to motivate the girl.
Sylvie drove across the North Woodland Bridge, found a strip mall with a deli that was just opening and had a cup of coffee. She almost bought a glazed doughnut, until she realized there would be none of those until this plan was completed. While she drank her coffee, she stared out the deli window at the water. To her it wasn’t Shaker Lakes. She felt as if she had crossed the Rubicon. She got back in her car, fortified by the caffeine, and drove—for the second time—up to 1411 Green Bay Road.
“I have a proposition for you. May I come in?”
“I don’t think so. For some reason, we upset each other,” the bimbette said.
“I upset you?” Sylvie asked, as coolly as she could. “I can’t imagine why.”
The sarcasm was lost on blondie. “Do you have Scorpio rising, by any chance?” Marla inquired nervously.
“I haven’t a clue, but I promise I’ll find out,” Sylvie said sweetly. “And if you let me in, I promise you’ll like what I have to tell you.” Slowly, Marla opened the door and let her in. The girl was gullible.
Sylvie had to explain her idea twice. Maybe it was the early hour, but this girl wouldn’t ever win a MacArthur grant.
“That would be in-sane,” Marla said once she got it, still wincing in the morning light. She had come to the door in a nylon baby doll nightgown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and though Sylvie had brought out two paper cups of coffee and offered one to Marla, she’d refused it. She simply lay down on her sofa, listening and yawning and stretching like a cat. Sylvie had explained everything breathlessly—twice—and was now reduced to standing over Marla, waiting for her to think things out. “In-sane,” Marla repeated.
“Think of it as a temporary career change,” Sylvie suggested. “You wouldn’t have to fly the overly friendly skies.”
“Fly?” Marla asked, awake for the first time. “Oh. Fly. Well, actual
ly, I don’t.”
Sylvie paused. “Didn’t you say you were a flight attendant?”
“No. Well, yes. I said it. I mean, I was a stewardess. Almost. I got hired and I started stewardess school but…anyway, it didn’t work out. And my work now is much more important.” She tossed her head.
Sylvie marveled at the freshness of her skin, the gloss of her hair, the lies on her lips. Who was this girl? She was fascinating to observe. Sylvie felt as if she were watching an old video of herself. Had only a dozen years robbed her of so much? “So, what is it that you do? I mean, professionally,” she asked.
Marla sat up, smoothed down the cheap lace of her nightie, and said, “I’m a state-licensed professional reflexologist. It’s very therapeutic. I’m not defensive about it.” She said it defensively.
“That toe massage stuff?” Sylvie asked. Well, that explained the new condition of Bob’s feet. Sylvie tried to imagine what it would be like rubbing strangers’ insteps all day long. God! Worse than oral hygiene. She felt a little nauseated, but it could have been due to her empty stomach, the coffee, and the lack of sleep.
“You know, the sole is the window to the soul. And I think I have the gift of healing.”
“No puns intended?” Sylvie asked.
“What puns?” Marla responded blankly.
Sylvie, tired of standing or pacing, realized this was going to take some time. Marla seemed to be short on furniture—just the sofa in the living room—so Sylvie fetched a folding chair from the card table in the kitchenette and brought it back, pulling it close to the couch. “Listen, Marla, think of it as a job change. A promotion. If we change places for a little while, we’d both be happier in our new jobs with Bob. You could see what it’s like to be drowning in security…and you could learn how to be a good wife. It will help you get a good husband. I’d teach you. Meanwhile I could feel what it’s like to have good sex with the man I usually only sleep with.” Sylvie held her breath. The girl hadn’t said no. Would she say yes?
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