Tim Meyer - The Switch House

It was a question she’d asked herself countless times before, so many she thought her brain would be quick to supply an answer. But the truth didn’t come out that easily. She froze, her words lost in the swirl of memories and times past, happy and sad, significant and mundane.

“Don’t think about it too long,” Abbie said sternly, directing her eyes to her subject. “Wait too long and your mind will make up lies for you. Gut instinct—are you still head-over-heels-crazy-in-love with your husband, Angela Shepard?”

Angela replied, “Yes, I love him.” The words came out sounding automated, and she wondered if Abbie sniffed out her lies.

“That’s the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Every day?”

Her eyes darted in different directions. They lingered on the wall behind Abbie, specifically on the framed painting of a bouquet of roses, one that looked oddly familiar. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were the same roses Terry occasionally bought on his way home from work. The flowers he staged on the rustic wrought-iron table near the stairs. It seemed impossible but her brain went fuzzy with a sudden flash of deja vu. Even the table upon which the vase rested looked like hers, copper-glazed legs and all.

“Yes, every day,” she said, as if she were a robot reciting a programmed response. “We have our struggles like any couple. Especially after…” Her eyelids fluttered. “…but we do the best we can and move on. And there’s love. Even if there’s no sex, at least there’s love.”

The psychiatrist seemed satisfied with her summation and flashed a brief, mandatory smile. “Look at the time,” she said, checking her watch. “Hour’s up.”

Thank God, Angela thought, rising from the couch that seemingly wanted to cradle her. She swore she felt arms wrapping themselves around her abdomen and pulling her back down. As she followed Abbie toward the front door, she glanced back. No arms, only the soft indentation where she had spent the last sixty minutes. As she left the office, the couch pulled on her memory strings, making her think she’d seen the furniture before, not in her living room, but somewhere else.

Maybe in a dream.

Maybe in the Everywhere.

She walked in through the front door and smelled dinner baking in the oven. When she turned the corner and stepped into the dining room, she immediately spotted the table and its enriched appearance; the lacy tablecloth, the pricey, ornate silverware they had received from Terry’s parents on their wedding day, and the two vases overflowing with an array of flowers sporting chromatic petals. Terry bent over the table and set down a salad bowl and a plate full of mixed vegetables. He glanced up at her as she stopped and clutched the center of her chest in surprise.

“Hey, babe,” he said with a faint smile.

“Hi,” she said, not even realizing she was grinning. During the drive home, she had found it hard to concentrate, feeling empty and lost in her own mind. All those terrible feelings, those purged emotions, suddenly meant nothing as she glimpsed her husband setting the table. His hair was slicked back, just the way she liked it, and he’d thrown on an apron with the words F*CK THE COOK printed across the chest.

With a hand over her mouth, she chortled. “You’re actually wearing that thing?”

He looked down, reading the words with a teeth-baring smile. “Oh, so you like my apron?”

“Yeah, I do. Where’d you find it?”

“It was buried in the linen closet. Remember when you bought it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Your birthday. Six years ago. It was supposed to be a gag gift.”

“Figured I’d put it to good use.” The corners of his mouth stretched.

She considered this behavior odd, and couldn’t stop the question from forming in her head, from exiting her mouth. “Terry, what is all this?”

“What?”

She shrugged and glanced around the table, examining every plate, every special detail. “This.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know.” She knew how the stress of everything had affected him lately. During filming, the slightest criticism had turned into a full-blown argument. For the first few weeks anyway. Terry had shut down for the latter half of the season. He had barely spoken to her, which had prompted Barry to nudge the couple in a dark new direction; one Angela wasn’t exactly prepared to travel down. “This isn’t… you.”

“What do you mean this isn’t me?”

She disliked Terry when he played stupid, but, whatever trick he had stored up his sleeve, it came from a good place. She decided not to push him away, promised she wouldn’t let the conversation veer into those familiar angry places.

“I just… everything’s been so weird lately. I don’t remember the last time you cooked dinner.”

For a second, he looked like he wanted to do more than just argue—he looked like he wanted to explode. His face went slack and pale, his shoulders slumping. He breathed heavily through his mouth. Just when she expected him to lash out with some venomous remark about how she didn’t love him anymore or about how far their marriage had fallen, his face broke into a huge grin. “I know. I haven’t been a great husband lately.”

Angela sighed. “No, Terry. That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s okay,” he said, almost jovially. “I admit it. I acted like an ass on the Switch. I embarrassed you. You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to. But I was a bona fide dickhead to you, and I’m sorry.”

She didn’t argue.

“I can’t explain it. It was like I was someone else. Every day we were filming I thought, ‘This isn’t me. This isn’t who I am.’” He frowned. “I’m better than that. We’re better than that.”

Angela nodded. “The show ended weird for both of us.”

“Do you think we made a mistake?”

She placed the strap of her purse on the back of the chair in front her and sat down. She propped her head on her hands, as if her swollen cranium were too heavy for only her shoulders to support. “I don’t feel any better. About this house. About what happened.”

“That’s how I feel, too.” Terry scratched the little hair he had left on his head. Angela always found bald men, or balding men, somewhat repulsive. Then again, when she had met Terry almost ten years ago, he had an entire head full of long dark strands. But times change. So do tastes and she no longer minded the inevitable baldness. The thin wisps of hair and the visible dimpled texture of his scalp didn’t exactly turn her on, but it wasn’t as off-putting as she had expected. “I don’t like what the show did to us.”

“It was supposed to be a vacation.”

They had spent two months in Vermont living in someone else’s home, using someone else’s amenities, sleeping in someone else’s bed. Living someone else’s life. The show was supposed to be an escape from reality but it hardly felt like one. They left with the intent of cleansing their souls but came back with another devil in their trunk. The cameras being shoved in their faces all-day-everyday issued a lot of stress, wedged a wrench between them, though they didn’t help matters with their bickering and subsequent silent treatments. Barry, with his itinerary and list of demands, definitely complicated things. Their producer had been a hard-ass from day one. He acted like he was the director of a two-hundred-million-dollar Hollywood production. The guy had seemed chill and levelheaded during preproduction but the script flipped the second they stepped foot inside the Vermont house and started shooting.

Terry nodded. “Yeah. Now that I’m back here, though,” he said, shivering, “feels like I never left.”