Switcheroo Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.