Songs Without Words (34 page)

He looked at the sky again. In less than two months he’d be at camp, in the mountains, and the sky would swarm with stars—all that pinprick, enormous light. He thought of the impossible truth that they were finished despite their brightness. They looked motionless, but they were on their way away—they were going, they were already gone.

42

O
n a sunny Saturday at the beginning of May, Sarabeth stopped at Andronico’s on her way home from a paint consultation. She was starving, and though she needed to do a big shopping, all she wanted right now was to address how hungry she was right now. At the deli she asked for a quart of asparagus and pasta salad, then she went to the baked goods and selected a full-size loaf of
pain levain.
“Pane levane,” as Nina had pronounced it once, and it had become this joke of theirs: Pain le Vain, and le Conceited, and le Grandiose. Pain was all of those things.

The Heidts’ driveway was empty, and she went inside for a fork and a bottle of water, then sat on her porch, took off her sweater, and pried the top off the salad. She ate a piece of asparagus, tangy in its lemon vinaigrette.

A minivan pulled into the driveway, and for a moment she wondered if the Heidts had finally gotten rid of the Volvo. But no: it was Liz, Brody and Liz, Brody driving all the way to the end of the driveway and Liz wearing such a stern expression that Sarabeth was certain they had come to tell her something terrible.

There was a swarming feeling inside her, and she set her food down and got to her feet. Brody cut the engine and held up his hand in greeting, and then no one moved.

She went down the steps, and as she approached, Brody opened his door and got out. He left the door open, and Liz leaned over from the passenger seat and called, “Hi.”

It was dark in the van, and Sarabeth couldn’t quite see Liz, couldn’t see her expression anymore. “Hi,” she said back. Brody just stood there, then he moved forward and gave her a light hug.

She stepped closer to the van. She could see Liz now, looking not so much stern as frightened. “Hi,” Sarabeth said again.

Liz gave her a quick smile. She hesitated, then opened her door and got out. Sarabeth waited, and Liz walked around the front of the van and stopped a few yards away from her. She was wearing black-and-white-checked pants and a black polo shirt and gleaming red loafers. She said, “I don’t know if it’s OK that we came.”

“It is,” Sarabeth said. “It definitely is.” She glanced over her shoulder at Brody. They had not come with news, she didn’t think, but she couldn’t understand why they had both come, why they had come together.

“We brought you something,” Liz said. “I couldn’t bring it by myself.”

Brody ran his toe over a crack in the concrete. “Are you sure you want to do that now?”

Liz lifted her hands, then let them drop again. “I don’t know.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and looked at Sarabeth. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

Liz dug in her purse for a Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes.

“Do you want to come in?” Sarabeth said. She looked over at Brody. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Um,” Liz said. “Brody’s going to do an errand, but I want him to help me with something first.” She set her purse on the driver’s seat and moved to the back of the van. Brody followed. He opened the gate, and Sarabeth watched as he maneuvered something that was evidently quite heavy to the mouth of the van. It was a bench, a painted bench. He carried it over and set it at Sarabeth’s feet.

“I don’t know if you might have any use for this,” Liz said, “but if you do, I’d like you to have it.”

It was the bench from Liz’s garage, from last fall. It had been painted a bright, insistent plaid, topped with a confetti of pastel flowers. The plaid was strident, its colors the colors of nursery school, and against them the pale flowers didn’t stand a chance: grayish against the background more than pink, lavender, peach. Sarabeth could tell Liz had labored over it for a long time.

She said, “This is that bench, isn’t it? That you showed me last fall?”

Liz nodded.

“God, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful. But—you shouldn’t give it away, should you?”

“If you don’t want it,” Liz said.

“No, of course I do. I love it.”

Brody said, “It might look good on the porch.”

Sarabeth looked at the porch. It would be the first thing anyone saw, coming to visit. A plaid bench.

“Do you sit out here, though?” Liz said. “I mean, you just were, but—”

“I do,” Sarabeth said. “I definitely do.”

Brody carried the bench up the steps and positioned it next to the door. He stepped back, looked at it, moved it a little to the left. “Good?” he said.

Sarabeth smiled at Liz. “Perfect.”

Liz went to the van for her purse, and Brody came down the steps and stood by her.

“So I’ll call you,” she said to him.

“OK.”

Sarabeth watched as he looked at Liz, as he stepped toward the van, as Liz reached for his arm and stopped him for a kiss that seemed almost…apologetic? Sarabeth wondered how things were between them these days.

“Thanks, honey,” Liz said, and he cast a glance at Sarabeth and then stepped up into the van, raised his hand to them, and started the engine.

Sarabeth and Liz stood side by side and watched as he backed out of the driveway.

“So,” Sarabeth said.

“So,” Liz said.

They stood there awkwardly, and then Liz moved closer and put her arms around Sarabeth, and her shoulders began to shake. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“
I’m
sorry,” Sarabeth said. “I’m sorry it was so true.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No, it was. Is. Was.”

Liz let go of her. She stepped back and looked at Sarabeth with her wet eyes wide.

“Love the red shoes,” Sarabeth said, and Liz let out a single, loud laugh.

Up the steps Sarabeth went, and across the porch to the bench. It was, or you could choose to see it as, a rather delightful piece of furniture: a burst of fruity candy in the middle of a bland meal. She was beginning to love it already, how Liz it was. She sat down and rested her elbow on the little armrest. “Come,” she said.

Liz stepped up onto the porch and then stopped and leaned against the corner post. Her eyes were still wet.

“Sit,” Sarabeth said, and after a moment Liz came over and sat next to her, but tentatively, her butt only half on the seat, her body angled toward the yard. Sarabeth said, “This is so strange. Are you really here?”

“I’m not sure,” Liz said. “I’m not sure how much I am.” Her head was turned away, but she reached back and gave Sarabeth’s fingertips an awkward squeeze. “Sorry.”

“No, that actually makes it more real,” Sarabeth said. “Don’t be sorry.”

Now Liz looked at her. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

With a sigh, Liz moved herself back, settled onto the seat with her elbow just inches from Sarabeth’s. She had the heavy, brooding presence of some kind of huge creature; but it also seemed she might skitter away at any moment. Sarabeth wanted to leash the skitterer, make room for the weighty other.

She touched the back of Liz’s hand. “How’s Lauren?”

“She’s doing better,” Liz said. “I don’t know how. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem real.”

“Real like permanent? Or real like you’re not sure you’re right?”

“Both, I guess. Or no—just the first. Real like permanent.”

“Is she still in therapy?”

“Oh, yeah. I think that’s going to go on for a while.”

Sarabeth’s stomach growled, and she went and got her food, then returned to the bench and sat again. She tore off some bread and offered the loaf to Liz, but Liz waved it away. The sun shone brightly, hit the wall behind them and made this corner of the porch feel close to hot.

“That year I lived with you guys?” Sarabeth said. “I think that’s when it started.”

“What do you mean?” Liz said.

Sarabeth knew she knew. She took a sip of water and went on. “You know that doll you had? That you’d brought from Swarthmore? And she could pee?”

“Baby Betty?” Liz said.

“Baby Betty. Did you ever wonder what happened to her?”

“‘It.’ What happened to ‘it.’”

“Did you?”

“I can’t say I did. Why? Do you know?”

“I stole her,” Sarabeth said. “I put her out with the garbage one morning; I set my alarm. I wrapped her in a grocery bag.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Why?”

“It bugged me that you still had her—I thought you were too old. I mean, that’s what I thought then. Now I think I was jealous.”

“Oh, that’s silly,” Liz said. “You weren’t jealous.”

“No, I think I was.” Sarabeth brought one foot up onto the bench and swiveled to face Liz. “I went back there, about a month ago—I parked right outside your house. I got out of the car, and it even
smelled
the same. Remember that spring, when my father sent me money for a car and I got that little white Pinto? I can remember the sound it made while it was cooling, this kind of ticking sound, but I can only remember it at night, and I wonder, Am I remembering it from one night or am I remembering it from a whole bunch of nights?”

Liz pulled her own feet onto the bench. She wrapped her arms around her shins and rested her cheek on her knees.

“What?” Sarabeth said.

Liz’s eyes filled, and Sarabeth reached out and stroked her hair, hot in the sun and lit with red and blond.

A bee dove at them and flew away. Liz lifted her head; the side of her face was red. She said, “I don’t know how I survived.” Her hands were curled loosely on her bent knees, and Sarabeth ran a forefinger over her knuckles.

She said, “You must be very strong.”

“No, it’s a brute thing. It’s almost animal.”

“Well, in whatever way, you did.” Without me, she thought, and she minded less than she once would have.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “I guess I did. I did and I am.”

Sarabeth fanned her face and looked out at the yard. Climbing the wall of the Heidts’ bike shed was a tangle of nasturtiums, yellow and orange flowers amid a profusion of round green lily-pad leaves. She ate a piece of asparagus, waved away a fly. “Want to go in?” she said. “Let me get you a nice cool drink.”

The corners of Liz’s mouth lifted.

“What?”

“Thanks, Mom,” Liz said, and they both smiled.

Inside, they leaned against the kitchen counter and drank tall glasses of tangerine-grapefruit juice. When Sarabeth was finished drinking, she ran cold water into the sink and wet a paper towel, then held it to her forehead.

“How’ve you been?” Liz said.

Sarabeth kept her eyes averted, moved the towel to the back of her neck as if she were absorbed in the work of cooling herself off. What she thought of, for some reason, were the weeks during the worst of it when on several occasions she’d come to herself, from a kind of daze, to find that she was smelling cloves or sucking a lemon—seeking an extreme for her dulled senses. All that spicy food she’d craved.

She looked over at Liz and smiled, and Liz’s face changed, a look of understanding appearing as she realized what she’d asked, how impossible it would be for Sarabeth to answer.

“It wasn’t the whole story,” Liz said. “Ever.”

“It’s OK,” Sarabeth said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“Actually, it’s Lauren you should thank.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

In the living room they settled onto opposite ends of the couch. Sarabeth sat sideways with her legs folded underneath her, while Liz faced the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other. “What’s with all that?” she said, waving her hand at the stuff on the floor.

“Oh,” Sarabeth said. “My life in a nutshell.”

“An abalone shell.”

Sarabeth looked at Billy’s shell. It was off to the side, and she couldn’t remember whether that was where she’d first put it or whether at some point she had moved it away from everything else. She said, “Did you want to kill me through all of that?”

Liz opened her mouth, then shut it again.

“You can tell me,” Sarabeth said.

“I was going to say no, but”—Liz shrugged—“I guess at times I did.” She thought for a moment. “But you know what? Not really. It was more that I wanted to shake you.”

“To my senses.”

They sat and talked, and then after a while they got up, and Sarabeth showed Liz the new batch of “reading lights” she’d begun, with some additional paper she’d managed to special order. When they returned to the living room, she stooped to pick up the abalone shell, and because she was standing there holding it, just steps from the bathroom door, she took it back and put it where it had been, long ago. Liz was holding the pink dish when she got back, and she took it from Liz and returned it to its old place. In five minutes the floor was clear, and they had not even discussed what they were doing.

Not much later, Liz looked at her watch and said she should call Brody, and together they went outside to wait. The Volvo was back in the driveway, and it struck Sarabeth that now he would have to return on foot. She pictured him walking up the driveway, maybe tossing his keys, maybe whistling, and for some reason she felt a little sad for him.

She sat down and stretched out her legs. “I love my new bench,” she said. “I can’t believe you gave it to me.”

Liz was leaning against the post. “What are friends for?”

“You know, that’s actually a really interesting question.”

“Whoa,” Liz said. “Philosophical.”

“That’s me—a philosopher.”

Liz stood still for a moment, a pair of lines appearing between her eyebrows as a thought occurred to her, as her lips parted so she could say, Sarabeth felt certain:
And what am I?
But she closed her mouth again, and with a look of wild uncertainty on her face, she stared into the Heidts’ backyard.

Once more, Sarabeth had the idea that Liz might flee. Sarabeth was going to have to be very careful with Liz; that was clear.

The Heidts’ patio door opened, and Chloe came out, glancing at Sarabeth and Liz as she moved to the grass. She stood at one edge, raised her arms, hesitated, and then took a couple steps and turned a perfect cartwheel. As Sarabeth watched, the worried look left Liz’s features, and she smiled a small, private smile. She came and sat next to Sarabeth and said, “Remember our gymnastics show?”

Now Sarabeth smiled, too. In the Castleberrys’ backyard she and Liz had spent several afternoons one summer doing somersaults and clumsy cartwheels, until the only possible next step was a performance. Her parents must have come to watch, but she couldn’t remember them. She couldn’t remember Liz’s parents either, for that matter. What she remembered was how perfectly bright the sky was, though dinner was long over, and how she and Liz hid around the side of the house while everyone settled in, holding hands for moral support, for courage.