Two-Part Inventions by Lynne Sharon Schwartz Page A

to play the guitar. If his aunt and uncle ever asked what he wanted for his birthday, he’d
say a guitar. He could learn on his own, or take classes after hours at school. With his band he could tour all over in a bus painted with crazy colors and pictures. He’d seen one parked on Flatbush Avenue, with wild hues and shapes—bizarre animals climbing over each other, impossible flowers and ripples and stars. He could drive a bus just like that. Uncle Mel had promised to teach him to drive as soon as he was old enough to get a permit.
    Sometimes at night, while his aunt watched TV, he played games with his uncle. Mel taught him to play chess, and by the time he was thirteen Phil became so adept that once in a while he even won. Uncle Mel loved to discuss what he called strategies, and he carefully explained what the word meant. When the game was over he would go back over each move and explain his strategy. “You see, when you moved your queen there—and that was a pretty smart move, by the way—I couldn’t get my bishop where I had planned, and my knight was unprotected. So I had to find another way to cut you off. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, know what I mean? If the obvious way doesn’t work, look for something else. Be ready to change your plans. That’ll do you in business, too.” Then he launched into stories about his successful clients, how they had revised their plans to make products people would want. They couldn’t always reveal their plans or their procedures openly or totally—of course not. No one would survive in business if they never cut a few corners here or there. The crucial advice, Phil remembered always: The main thing was to achieve your goal by whatever means, and for that you needed a strategy. More than one. A main strategy and then a backup. Or two.

 
    W HEN SHE WAS thirteen, Suzanne found herself bringing Richard the very same complaint about her father’s demands that she had two years ago. Only this time she thought she’d handled things far more cleverly.
    Once again she’d been reading on her bed on a Sunday afternoon—past Nancy Drew now and on to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility —when she heard his pebbly voice calling her from downstairs. They had visitors; she’d heard the door open a while ago and the usual trilled greetings. So it was going to be the same thing all over again. She’d thought it was finished, this summoning her to entertain when guests turned up. He’d stopped after the fiasco with Aunt Faye and Uncle Simon, with only a couple of relapses. But now she was definitely too old. She was tall, almost as tall as her father; she wore grown-up clothes and her long sleek hair fell down her back. Men on the street looked at her as if she were a real woman. And her father still treated her like a circus act. It made her feel sick, a tightness in her throat, the threat of an avalanche in her gut. She wouldn’t answer.
    He kept shouting and finally came clomping up the stairs and knocked on the door—this brief warning a small deference
to her age—then too quickly entered, undoing the value of the gesture. “What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf?”
    â€œI was asleep.”
    â€œWell, wake up. The Woodsteins are here. You know they love to hear you play. And they brought Mr. Woodstein’s sister and her husband from Philadelphia. They’re staying in New York for a week.”
    His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing his thick hairy arms. He was glancing around the room with a proprietary air, like an animal surveying his territory, Suzanne thought. It was her room. She didn’t want his gaze taking in her things, the books on the bed, the lipsticks on the dresser, the photos of famous musicians she’d cut out of magazines and stuck on the mirror the way other girls hung up photos of movie stars.
    â€œI really don’t feel like