The Switch Page 7

  “All you meant—” He turned away with the trophy and the drink and placed them side by side on his dresser. “All you meant, bullshit. That little innocent voice, Christ. All you do, you’ve got a way of putting everything down. You don’t like the coat, you don’t like the club crest on it. What else? The trophy—”

  If she hadn’t washed and brushed her teeth—if she’d turned the bed lamp off right away—She had thought Frank might stay downstairs awhile, watch a late movie with a drink and one eye closed.

  “I asked you what the crest meant,” Mickey said. “How long ago was that? I haven’t said a word about it since.”

  “No, you haven’t said anything—”

  He was unbuttoning his shirt, showing her his chest. He did have a good chest. But a little too much stomach after all the drinks and dinner and after-dinner drinks; the stomach straining against the white patent-leather belt that matched his loafers. Frank liked matching outfits. For the club he liked paisley pants with a yellow or lime-green sport jacket. He owned twenty-five suits. Men who sold them would show Frank the latest “in” styles and he’d buy them. He parted his dark straight hair on the right side and wore sideburns that came to points. He was neat, an attractive, masculine-looking man; not tall, but well built, good chest and shoulders. He smiled easily; he knew almost every member of the club by name. He grinned and punched shoulders and called his golf buddies “partner.” His voice was easily identified in the locker room and he was known to tell jokes well. Sometimes Mickey thought he was funny.

  But she never felt with him.

  Even now she was perched somewhere looking down, a spectator, watching the two of them in a pointless scene. Thinking of lines she could give herself, zingers; but knowing he would either get mad or not get it at all. So usually she backed off, played it safe and continued to watch.

  He was still delivering broad sarcasm.

  “You never say anything that people know what you’re talking about. You realize that? You pull all this cute shit. Cute little Mickey Dawson; oh my, isn’t she a cutie? She’s fucking precious is what she is. Skinny little thing, nice boobs. How does she keep her figure? Those fat broads’re always asking you that, right? Making comments? Well see, what she does—anybody wants to know—she concentrates on her husband, watches him like a fucking hawk so she can count his drinks. See, she gets so wrapped up in it, her cute little brain working away, counting, it burns up energy.

  “She’s just a cute little bundle of energy, counting drinks, running out to the club every day, taking Bo to matches, very devoted.” He paused to take his drink from the dresser and finish it, defiantly. “Okay. How many did I have tonight?”

  She had never thought of herself as cute little Mickey Dawson. She had come to accept people telling her she was cute—tired of acting surprised and discounting her looks. She preferred to think of herself as natural looking—with her Revlon Light ‘n’ Lively hair worn fairly short, barely teased and parted on the side—and with an inner something—she hoped—an awareness, that showed in her eyes, if anyone bothered to look. (The club lovers looked and saw their own reflections.) One thing for sure, she never felt cute or worked at it with cute moves.

  “How many did I have. Come on.”

  “How many drinks?”

  “Jesus Christ, I believe that’s what we’re talking about.” Frank held his shirt open, waiting for the answer.

  What was that supposed to do to her?

  “I don’t know,” Mickey said. “I was there a half hour before you came out of the men’s grill.”

  Frank unzipped his fly and she thought he was going to expose himself. “Okay, I had two in there, maybe three. How many more, after I came out?” He took his pants off, his back supported against the dresser. Still, he lurched as he threw the pants across a chair. “You counted them, didn’t you?”

  She was thinking: Take pictures of him sometime with the movie camera. Or have his tape recorder turned on and play it back in the morning. First, a tape of his nice-guy speech accepting the trophy, straight-faced, but with the hint of a boyish grin. (“I owe it all to clean living, a devoted wife and my opponent’s double bogey on the fifteenth.”) Then play the bedroom tape, the other Frank Dawson. He did not seem complicated; he played obvious roles. He was considered bright, but was actually very unaware. It would never occur to him that his wife was more intelligent than he was. Frank was the man, he was successful in business, he owned a $260,000 home, he played golf with a three handicap. (And she was the wife.) Maybe that’s all there was to him.

  She said, “I guess you’ll drink as much as you want.”

  “Come on, how many did I have?”

  “But I’m not going to drive home with you any more when you’re drunk.” There, she said it.

  “Wait a minute. Now you’re saying I’m drunk?”

  Frank watched her close her eyes, face shining clean, hands folded over the neatly turned-back sheet. He walked over with the trophy, raised it and slammed it down hard on the empty flat side of the king-size bed. Mickey’s eyes opened abruptly and she came up on her elbows as the trophy struck her legs, bounced awkwardly, and went end-over-end off the side of the bed.

  Frank waited. After a moment he said, “I didn’t mean to do that, but goddamn-it I’m asking you a question. You accuse me of being drunk, how many did I have?” Subdued, but hanging on.

  Mickey was sitting up, touching her shins. They hurt with a throb, but she didn’t want to push the sheet down to look.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t I what?”

  “Frank, why don’t you go to bed?”

  She lay back again, this time turning to her side, away from him. Reaching up to turn off the lamp, she saw the golfer on the floor, no longer on top of the Empire State Building.

  Frank said, well, he counted them. She was always saying he should count his drinks, right? Well, tonight he’d counted them. He’d had eighteen since finishing golf at 6:30. Okay, now what was he supposed to do? You count drinks and then what? What was supposed to happen? Mickey didn’t answer. You keep a record, is that it? What was it supposed to tell you?

  At twenty past four Mickey heard her husband get up to go to the bathroom. She heard a bumping, scraping noise and raised her head to see Frank—a pale figure in the dark—pushing his dresser away from the wall, struggling with it, grunting, then wedging himself in behind it. There was silence before another sound came to her, soft and steady, as the Deep Run Country Club First Flight champ urinated down the wall and onto the oak floor.

  After that, for awhile, she lay awake and asked herself questions.

  What had they really been talking about? Not drinks. Why did she let him—Why did she play games with him? . . . Why was she afraid to tell him what she felt? Why didn’t she cut through all the words and get to the point? . . . Why did she do things—sit around the club, smile, laugh at things that weren’t funny—she didn’t want to do? Playing kissy-ass, that’s what it amounted to. Why was she so goddamn nice all the time? Nicey-nice. God.

  2

  * * *

  TEN TO NINE, Sunday morning. Mickey, in a plain white scooped-neck tennis dress, stood at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and the Sunday Detroit Free Press—the linoleum floor cool and a little sticky beneath her bare feet. She had showered and was hungry, but would hold off the bacon and eggs until Bo came down.

  She flipped through the sections of the thick Sunday edition—from the front-page headline, Witnesses Finger Teen Gang Leaders . . . past Sports, BoSox Rout Tigers 10­2 . . . to the Women’s Section, and stopped. God, there it was. With pictures.

  TENNIS MOMS

  Children’s Games Become Their Career

  The story, covering the entire first page of the section, was illustrated with five action shots of moms and their kids: the kids swinging tennis rackets; the moms staring, chewing lips, one smiling. Mickey saw herself, slightly out of focus, beyond Bo’s clenched jaw, racket chopping down
hard. The caption read: “Bo Dawson smashes a volley while his proud mother, Margaret ‘Mickey’ Dawson, watches from the sidelines. Bo’s home court is Deep Run Country Club.”

  Her gaze scanned the columns of type, stopping to read about a mom who had canceled a trip to Europe in order to take her son to the Ann Arbor Open.

  A Grosse Pointe mother had persuaded her husband to buy controlling interest in an indoor tennis club, then moved in as manager to promote her daughter’s career full time.

  Nothing about Bo’s mom yet.

  A Franklin Village mother, whose husband was in cardiac care at Sinai, told a friend, “I’ve lived my whole life for this (Southeastern Michigan Junior Championship). My husband isn’t conscious; there’s nothing I can do for him. But I can be with my daughter and help her.”

  In the third column, mothers were sweating out their children’s matches, nail-biting, chain-smoking. There it was . . .

  “Watching her son Bo in a match at Orchard Lake, Mickey Dawson claimed she wasn’t the least bit nervous. Except there were 10 menthol cigarette butts at Mickey’s feet by the end of the first set.”

  . . . Thrown in with the rest of the clutched-up tennis moms. She had told the relaxed young woman writer she wasn’t nervous, not at all, and was sure she’d smoked no more than four or five cigarettes. The other butts could have been there before. If she had smoked ten—it was possible—it had nothing to do with Bo. Frank had been there too, growling, calling shots, officiating for the people in the stands.

  There were quotes from moms agonizing: “Oh Kevin, oh Kevin, oh Kevin, please—that’s it, baby. That’s my baby.”

  Another one: “If only I had been there. Missy needed me and I let her down.”

  A mom complaining, her voice breaking: “They’ve got the seeding all backward. I can’t believe it.”

  Rationalizing: “You start to figure if you combine your intelligence with your son’s ability you can go all the way.”

  A minimizing mom said: “Not me, I have a husband I adore. I love to party, travel . . .” Her husband: “Any time you ask her to do anything, she has to check her calendar to make sure Scott doesn’t have a tournament.”

  “Bo’s father, Frank Dawson, shaking his head, but with a merry grin on his handsome face:

  “ ‘If I told you what it cost a year, would you believe six, seven thousand?’ “

  “. . . a merry grin on his handsome face.” Frank loved to say “would you believe.” He loved to talk about money, what things cost.

  At five to nine, though, he didn’t seem ready to talk about anything. Frank came into the kitchen wearing his yellow golf outfit and carrying an old pair of loafers, his eyes watery, glazed.

  “You didn’t call me.”

  “I didn’t know you were playing.”

  “I never play on Sunday, uh?”

  “I mean this early. You didn’t say anything.”

  “We’ve got a 9:30 starting time. Overhill and some guy that works for him.”

  “Who’s Overhill? Aren’t you gonna have coffee?”

  “No, just some juice, tomato juice. You know him; we had them out last year. Larry Overhill, the big guy with the laugh. He’s got a slice and about a thirty-five handicap.”

  “Why’re you playing with him then?”

  “You kidding? He’s loan officer at Birmingham Federal. Listen, I was thinking—” He paused to drink down half the tomato juice. “Since I’m going to Freeport the end of the week—I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t think so, you might have.”

  “We’ve got some investors, a group, coming all the way from Japan, if you can believe it. All the islands over there, they’re looking in the Bahamas. So—I thought why not fly down with Bo this evening, see your folks. They probably have some questions, how late he can stay out, all that.”

  “I’ve been on the phone with my mother practically every day this week,” Mickey said.

  “Also it’ll give Bo and I a chance to talk,” Frank said. “See if I can get a few things straightened out about his attitude.”

  Mickey watched him pour another ten-ounce glass of juice. Was he kidding or what? He looked terrible, as though he could use another five hours of sleep; but he kept busy, putting on his shoes now, trying to act as though he felt normal. In their fifteen years together, Frank had never admitted having a hangover.

  “The flight’s at 6:30,” Mickey said.

  “I know, I called and made a reservation.” He glanced up at her. “Couple of days ago. I thought I told you.”

  He was rushing it at her. “Let me get it straight,” Mickey said. “You’ll drop Bo off, see my folks and what, hang around Lauderdale a few days before going to Freeport?”

  “Either way. I can see your folks. Then, I can stop at the tennis camp on the way back, like Friday, and come home Saturday.”

  “So you’ll be gone all week.”

  “Now you’ve got it,” Frank said.

  “Well, okay. Then I’ll drive you to the airport?”

  “No, I’ll drive, leave the car there. It’s a lot easier, in case I get in late.” Frank finished his tomato juice, getting every drop. “I drive, Bo and I can talk in the car.”

  There were questions she wanted to ask; but he would tell her he didn’t have time now; later. So she said, “Bo has a match at one, the Inter-club. Are you gonna watch it?”

  “I’ll see. It depends on what time I get finished. So—”

  She raised her face for the kiss on the cheek and felt his hand slide down the tennis dress to pat her can.

  “—I’m off.”

  “Your name’s in the paper, Frank.”

  “Hey, really? The club championship?” Turning back to her, his eyes seemed almost bright.

  “No, it’s about kids playing tennis. Remember we talked to the girl, the reporter? At Orchard Lake.”

  “Oh.” He picked up the paper, glanced at the page a moment and dropped it on the counter. “Good shot of Bo. What’s it say, anything?”

  “You can read it later.”

  “Yeah, save it. Well—I’m off.” He always said, “I’m off.”

  Frank went out the door that led to the attached garage. The door closed behind him. Mickey waited. The door opened again and Frank was looking in at her, frowning, scowling.

  “What in the hell you do to your car, for Christ sake?”

  3

  * * *

  SUNDAY, A NICE SUNNY DAY, Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara were out for a ride in Ordell’s tan Ford van. It was mostly tan. What made it stylish was the black-yellow-red stripe of paint worn low around the van’s boxy hips. The tan van for the tan man, Ordell said.

  He had not seen his friend Louis Gara in almost three years. Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five p.m. and turning the light out at ten. Louis was back home and Ordell was showing him the latest sights of the Motor Capital. Things like the Renaissance Center on the riverfront, all that glass and steel rising up 700 feet in a five-tower complex.

  Louis said, “Wow.” He said, “It’s big.”

  Ordell squinted at him. “That’s all you can say? It’s big?”

  “It’s really big,” Louis said. “If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.”

  “Take you farther than that,” Ordell said. What he saw, looking up at the Plaza Hotel tower and the outside elevator tubes, the sun hitting on it hot and shiny, it looked like a gigantic spaceship could take you to the moon for about a buck seventy-five. Louis and Ordell had been smoking grass, too, lounged in the van’s swivel captain’s chairs, some Oliver Nelson electronic funk washing over them from four speakers as they drove around looking at the sights, working north from the river.

  Six years ago Louis had been tapping a swizzle stick at Watts’ Club Mozambique, messing up Groove Holmes’ beat for Ordell who happened to be sitting next to Louis at the horseshoe bar. Ordell had put his hand with the jade ring on Louis
’ wrist and said, “My man, we don’t go to your clubs and fuck with the beat, do we?”

  Louis was high that time and feeling love for mankind, so he didn’t take Ordell and beat him up the side of his head. He put the swizzle stick down and let Ordell introduce him to Campari and soda and they discovered what a small world it was. Unbelievable. Both of them had been in Southern Ohio Correctional at the same time. No shit—for true? But wait—and both of them had been in there for grand theft auto, supplying new Sevilles and Continentals to body shops and cutting plants down near Columbus.

  They even looked somewhat alike, considering Ordell Robbie was a male Negro, 31, and Louis Gara was a male Caucasian, 34. Ordell was light-skinned and Louis was dark-skinned and that put them about even in shade. Ordell had a semi-full round afro, trimmed beard and bandit mustache. Louis had the mustache, and his head was working on a black curly natural, growing it out again after his time at Huntsville. Both were about six feet and stringy looking, weighing in around 160. Ordell wore gold-frame Spectra-Shades; he liked sunglasses and beads and rings. Louis wore a cap—this summer a faded tan cap—straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn’t go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he’d picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas.

  Ask ten girls which one they thought was better looking. It was close, but Louis would probably win six-to-four.

  Woodward Avenue didn’t look any different to Louis, the same bars, the same storefronts with grillwork over the show windows, a few more boarded up. It was a strange deserted big-city downtown with everybody staying out in their neighborhoods.

  “Crime,” Ordell said. “People afraid to come downtown; but there’s no crime here. You see any crime in the streets?”

  “Only the way you’re driving,” Louis said. “You’re gonna get stopped for loitering.”

  “Coleman’s got to fix this city up,” Ordell said and sounded concerned, sitting low in his swivel seat, creeping the van along Woodward. Louis had to look over at him. Ordell said, “They build all the glass shit and convention centers and domes along the river? That’s for the postcard pictures—hey, shit, look at Detroit, man—if you never seen it before. Then you drive out this big wide street, what do you see? What does anybody want to come here for? Pick up some ribs and leave the motor running.”