Songs Without Words (3 page)

Who, speaking of: class was almost over. Her heart pounded as she watched the classroom clock click from six of to five of. Just five minutes until the after-chemistry pass. She ran her fingers through her hair, then lowered her head and examined her teeth with her tongue. She cupped her hand under her mouth and exhaled, but her breath just smelled like the classroom, not that she ever got close enough for her breath to matter. Some idiotic magazine article had said you should pinch your cheeks to bring color to them, but color wasn’t a problem—her face was always on fire when she looked at him. At the moment she was also sweating between her boobs, which she absolutely hated.

“Lab tomorrow,” Mr. Greenway was saying. “Don’t forget your flameproof suits.” He smiled his pathetic aren’t-I-funny smile just as the bell rang, and Amanda turned and rolled her eyes at Lauren.

“Don’t forget your dick brain,” she said, meaning Mr. Greenway’s, but Lauren was in no mood. She’d missed the before-school locker pass, so she didn’t even know what he was wearing today. She preferred this pass to take place out beyond the science complex, under the open sky rather than on the busy covered walkways, where she always felt invisible. Plus she could see him for longer out there, see him leaving his English class if she got out there early enough. Walking that swinging walk. His arms, his legs. She imagined him naked walking like that, and her face got even hotter, if that was possible. Herself naked near him—she wanted to barf.

“Laur-en,” Amanda said, and, nearly at the door, Lauren looked back. Amanda for some reason was still at her desk, still putting her stuff in her backpack. Fuck—now the pass would take place on the science walkways, no question. She might even be too late altogether.

“Do you mind waiting?” Amanda whined, and Lauren waited, and by the time she got outside it
was
too late: he was past her, heading for his physics class, wearing his blue T-shirt with the faded red ladder on the back, from his painting job two summers ago. On the front, she knew, just over his heart, it said:
JEFF
.

2

S
arabeth had a staging job to start in El Cerrito, and she was parked in front of the house, early as usual, waiting for the appointed time. She sometimes thought that the need to be punctual was like a chronic but mostly manageable disease—an asthma, a diabetes, the kind of thing you accepted about yourself, accommodated, all the while knowing it could turn you inside out at any moment. For example: a week or so ago, on her way to a paint consultation, she realized halfway there that she’d forgotten her Benjamin Moore color wheel, and the next fifteen minutes—turning around, speeding home, racing into her house, racing back out, starting her car again—were an ever-escalating torment. The mental equivalent of a quiet summer afternoon into which a platoon of helicopters suddenly flew.

At ten-thirty on the nose she knocked at the door, and husband and wife answered together. Henry and Melissa, according to her notes. They said hello, and she said hello, and then they all stood there awkwardly.

“Please come in,” Melissa said, and Sarabeth stepped over the threshold. The first moments were always so hard: as if she’d arrived early for a dinner party—early or uninvited.

Melissa tapped her lips nervously, and Sarabeth said, “I love this room.” She glanced around and nodded. “You guys have done such a nice job here.”

It was in fact a very nicely proportioned room, but it was jammed with stuff, and in her mind she erased an overly red armchair and matching ottoman, an étagère displaying a lot of Japanese lacquerware, a framed Rousseau poster, a trendy shag rug.

“Thanks,” Henry said. “We like it. Although not that much, obviously!”

“Well,” Sarabeth said, “there comes a point when you’re ready for more…”

“Space,” Melissa said. “Definitely.”

They all smiled, and Sarabeth fished for her cell phone, bringing it all the way out of her purse so they could see that she was hitting the power button. She said, “Maybe we could just walk through first?” and with that they were off.

First was the kitchen, a sunny, remodeled space with a separate eating area on the far side of a peninsula. She imagined clearing the counters, taking the leaf out of the table, bringing in her bentwood chairs. A glass bowl of apples, and she’d be all set.

Next was the minuscule bathroom, which Jim, her friend and employer, had said was slated for a paint job. After that, all it would need would be neutral towels. And a fresh shower curtain, of course.

“And here,” Henry said as she stepped back into the hallway, “is the second bedroom, which we use as an office. It’s kind of cluttered, we know.”

“Cluttered!” Melissa said. “It’s a disaster.”

Sarabeth averted her eyes as she made for the open doorway. Moving was loss and reinvention and renewal, all at once. And fear. And desire. She felt sometimes that she witnessed moments no outsider should see.

She also saw rooms—like this one—that implied so much history, contained so many snapshot-studded bulletin boards and Magic Markered boxes, that you couldn’t imagine the inhabitants ever leaving. Under one of three paper-strewn desks, a single Rollerblade was balanced precariously on top of a sewing machine, and she thought that the story of the missing Rollerblade probably had the potential to introduce her to some of the major themes of Melissa’s life.

They showed her their bedroom last. It was a standard first-house bedroom: very small, mostly bed, with dressers crammed against the available wall space and a chair tucked into one corner. Sarabeth stood just inside the doorway and made a mental list.

The dressers would go. The chair would go. The framed family photos on the wall between the two windows would go—as would the wedding picture. She skirted the bed (the busy, flowered duvet cover would go) and took a closer look. An outdoor setting, a bower of white roses, Henry and Melissa with their faces together, looking at the camera. He was nice looking, with good skin and hair, and handsome shoulders, though since the taking of this picture he had begun to go heavy through the jaw.

Stop, she told herself. She could think all she liked about men she met, conflating the best parts of them into some Perfect One, but not even He was who she wanted. Billy was. Still.

Behind her, Henry cleared his throat. “So I guess we’ll need to get rid of some things?”

She turned to face them. “Where’d you guys get married?”

They were both silent for a moment, Melissa’s finger tapping her lips again as she glanced at her husband. “Back east,” she said. “In my grandparents’ backyard.”

“Where back east?” This was nosy, but Sarabeth was curious.

“Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. It’s just outside Philadelphia.”

Sarabeth nodded vaguely, but in fact this was very satisfying: she knew where Swarthmore was and, more to the point, what it was, aside from a college: it was the town where Liz had spent her early childhood.

But she needed to focus. Jim had told her Henry and Melissa were already in escrow on a huge place in Montclair; they needed to get this house on the market
now.

“You’ve probably heard Jim talk about a house’s bones,” she said, “and this house has great bones.” She paused for a moment. “Katharine Hepburn bones,” she added, and they smiled on cue, as nearly everyone did; how embarrassing that she recycled her jokes, but there it was.

“I’d like to make some suggestions,” she went on, “that will enable potential buyers to really see that, but before I start I’d like to hear your thoughts about how you want to present the house, what you’re thinking we might do to make it show well.”

Melissa nodded happily. It was so easy and important to ask this question, though when Sarabeth first started this work she didn’t get the emotional part at all. Early on, she nearly cost Jim a client: a middle-aged woman with a collection of frogs to rival—well, the amphibian population of a hell of a big pond. This woman had plush frogs and ceramic frogs and frogs made of wood and metal and fabric. They were everywhere. Sarabeth’s very first comment was that they should be removed, and the woman went into a great huff, saying she didn’t see the value of taking away the house’s charm, and did Sarabeth even understand what made a place appealing, did she even know? Jim happened to be there, and when he and Sarabeth exchanged a look—just a quick, careful look, a tiny posy of a look given their vast garden—the woman said she needed to rethink everything, selling at all, moving, really her whole life. In the end the house was listed; the frogs were boxed and put in storage, the bad furniture was removed, and Sarabeth did her thing with window treatments and sisal; but, oh, it had been a warning. Jim was the most loyal guy she knew, but he’d been on edge, and she’d wondered if their old friendship would depend on their new business arrangement and not vice versa.

Melissa said she thought the living room was pretty much OK, the kitchen OK, the office—she and Henry exchanged a glance—a bit crowded, and the bedroom OK. Sarabeth spoke generally about neutralizing the furnishings and opening up the rooms so they could be more clearly seen, and then she told them a very few of the specifics she was considering. Most of it she would save for the next visit, when they’d have begun to think editorially themselves, which would allow them to feel that even her ideas were theirs.

She said goodbye and went out to her car, but as she drove down the street she found that she was worrying a little. One of the few things she had suggested removing was the étagère in the living room, and as Melissa passed it on the way to the front door, she stopped and micro-adjusted the position of a glossy black platter. Sarabeth hoped she wasn’t hurt.

Next on her schedule was Emeryville, Mark Murphy’s shop. She turned on the radio, and there was a woman’s voice, singing:
Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
She turned the radio back off, but the silenced song had taken hold, and in her mind she heard
Na na na na, na na nah na, na na na na na na, I grow misty just holding your hand.
She imagined a little girl walking hand in hand with a woman, and it was the day that was misty. They were both wearing dark knee-length coats, as in the sixties. It was like a scene from a movie, piano music on the sound track: you saw them from the back, and you knew they were walking toward something scary or dangerous or sad. Switch to the girl’s point of view as she looks up: the woman’s face is pale. The girl looks for another moment, then focuses on her feet, the step, step, step of her black maryjanes.

Sarabeth gunned the engine as she merged onto the freeway. It was late morning on a Tuesday, not much traffic. How she lived made sense in a certain way, the bits and pieces of work she did that added up to a living—a life. Sometimes, though, like now, the energy it took to haul herself from place to place seemed out of reach.

Mark Murphy’s shop was in a refurbished warehouse in the industrial part of Emeryville. He shared the lease with an artisanal bakery, and as Sarabeth entered the high-ceilinged space she breathed in the aroma of baking bread. He was at his desk, on the phone, but he waved her forward, then held up his forefinger to show he wouldn’t be long.

He might be, though—he often was—so she set the box she was carrying on the floor and wandered back to his display area, where a couple dozen lamps were grouped in vaguely roomlike configurations: a few on tables, several standing lamps set near armchairs, wall sconces at almost believable intervals. Mark had done a good job here, and Sarabeth thought it was sort of too bad he was doing so well now; these days, most of his business happened through his handsomely produced catalog, or online, and the showroom was—well, just for show.

“What do you have for me?” he said, approaching her from the front of the shop. He had a way of giving almost everything he said a slight sexual gloss, and Sarabeth blushed lightly. He was attractively tall and narrow hipped, and he wore his Levi’s tight.

“It’s a new one,” she said. “I was thinking about the mocha, and I thought, Let’s try something for people who aren’t afraid of color.”

He tilted his head to the side and smiled his dry, slightly mocking smile. At first this smile had put Sarabeth off—it had taken months for her to realize it didn’t necessarily reflect what he was thinking or what he was going to say. Although it could.

“Color,” he said. “I’m intrigued.”

She headed past him to where she’d left the box. Opening the flaps, sliding away the tissue paper: he was standing behind her now. She took hold of the piece by the wire spokes and pulled it clear of the box.

“Oooh,” he said. “That’s nice.” He pushed papers out of the way so she could set it on his desk. “That is
nice.
”

“Thank you,” she said primly, but in fact she was quite pleased. She’d found some handmade dusty-rose paper and fashioned a lampshade unlike any she’d made before. She’d glued braid around the narrow top and the prettily flared bottom, and the shape was almost saucy.

“It’s very
McCabe and Mrs. Miller,
” he said. “Kind of ‘welcome to our bordello.’”

She cracked a smile.

“But in a good way,” he said with a wink. He lifted the shade and looked underneath, his eyes squinting as he faced the high ceiling. The underside, yes: she was particularly proud of the lining. Racing into the future, she wanted to try sea green, apricot. Maybe midnight blue on a perfect cube.

“How much paper did you buy?” he asked.

“Only enough for the prototype.” This wasn’t quite true—she’d bought all that was left on the roll, three yards and change. But Mark was your classic hard-to-get guy, and she played fire against fire. (And wondered about his twenty-year marriage. Did he have affairs? Or was it perhaps enough to flirt, to be forever sought? His wife, Mary, was a friend of Sarabeth’s friend Nina—that was the route Sarabeth had taken to him in the first place—and at the beginning, on meeting him, she had thought: Why didn’t Nina tell me they were splitting up? Now she thought: Why didn’t Nina tell me they were so solid?)

“What if I wanted to place an order?” he said. “A dozen of ‘Welcome to Our Bordello’?”

She suppressed a smile. “I could check back with my supplier.”

“Why don’t you do that, Sarabeth?” He leaned against his desk and crossed one long leg in front of the other. He had big hands, big knuckles, and his wedding ring nestled in the fine hairs on his ring finger. It had swirls carved into the gold. It said:
We got married back when Zen gardens first got popular.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll leave you a voice mail.”

She started to put the lampshade back in the box, but he reached out a hand to her forearm, and she stopped. “Do you have a sec?” he said.

“Sure.”

He pushed away from the desk and headed toward the back of the shop. Past the display area, he opened a door and led her into a dark workroom. “Come on,” he said, crooking his finger. In the back, against the wall, was…a canoe? He stepped to the loading dock and hit a button, and a grayish fluorescent light flickered on. He looked up at the blinking panels. “Irony of ironies.”

Now she could see: a canoe, yes, but not just any canoe. It was beautiful, long and sleek and glossy, made of a light wood but with a darker wood inlaid into a geometric design on the front. “Wow,” she said.

“Pretty, huh?”

“So business is good?”

“I try to do something nice for myself every once in a while.”

She walked the length of the canoe, then walked back. “When’d you get it?”

“It was just delivered this morning. You’re the first to see it.”

At this she looked away from him. She squatted, and when she ran her fingertips over the seams around the inlaid area, there wasn’t the slightest alteration in how the wood felt.

“Where do you go canoeing?” she said.

“I tend to like rivers.”

She couldn’t tell if this was snide or not. “You know, I should actually get going, but thanks for the look. It’s beautiful.”

He said, “Sacramento River, Feather River. Or if I have more time I go up to Oregon.” He watched her in an intent, focused way, and she wanted to say:
OK, you win, I’m not woman enough for you, buddy.
Instead she said, “Does Mary like canoeing?”