Songs Without Words (5 page)

It had been weeks that he’d been promising, and a smile lit her face. “Really?”

“Yeah. It’s Saturday, and I’m a man with a power tool. What could be better?”

Upstairs, Lauren heard Joe’s shower go on, and she looked at her clock: 10:17. She’d been awake since eight something, but she was still in bed, or actually in bed again, having gotten up to discover that the only clean jeans she had were a pair she hated. They made her ass look fat, which meant an ugly day. Back under the covers, she’d pulled her nightgown over her nose and sniffed, and though she couldn’t smell anything she was sure she stank, because her pits were slick with sweat. It was such a joke that Jeff Shannon would ever look twice at her. He might look twice to bark. She hated how easily she cried—she was doing it again. Tears all over her face. Snot streaming from her nose. She cried without even crying. These days she did. Just quietly, all this stuff sliding out of her.

She sat up and then had to wait for the dizziness to stop before she could stand. Her room had the awful darkness of closed curtains in daytime. She went over and pulled one curtain to the side. It was sunny out, the sky so clear and blue it hurt her eyes. She’d prefer rain or at least clouds. She thought of how her dad used to take her and Joe bike riding: on Saturdays like this, if he didn’t have to work, they’d go on these megarides by the reservoir. When Joe was moving along OK, Lauren and her dad would race to the moon. That was what he said: “Let’s race to the moon.” He always let her win. She knew but didn’t know. He’d be panting, he’d be all, “I almost had you.” Pretending to wipe sweat from his forehead. And she believed him. It wasn’t even like she had to choose to believe him; it just happened. So how did she know now that he’d been faking?

She hardly saw her dad these days. Well, that wasn’t really true, she saw him all the time, and for some reason this made her feel worse. Now her shoulders shook a little. Now she was really crying. She got up onto her desk and stared out the window. From the second floor it would be so easy to fall. She meant jump but pretend she’d fallen. She hated these thoughts. She hadn’t been thinking about anything before, but now she was thinking horrible stuff. She was crying and crying. She realized that she was pounding her fists against her thighs. If only there were somewhere to go, she needed somewhere to go. She slid off the desk and crumpled to her knees, then lowered her head to the rug. She was crying and crying, as quietly as she could but so hard she felt sick. Her parents were downstairs, Joe was in the bathroom. She couldn’t go anywhere.

The picture came to her then, the picture of herself under a heavy blanket, this stiff, hairy blanket like something from the army. It stretched over her, taut like Saran Wrap on a dish in the fridge. Her body was a lump underneath it. She sat up quickly, and bright lights swarmed around her. She crawled toward her closet. She crawled inside, slid the door closed, and sat against the wall, in the space she’d cleared among her shoes. Her stupid blue dress from last year brushed her shoulder. Life was endless, endless.

4

W
e’ll have an early dinner, Liz had told Sarabeth, very casual, don’t bring anything, but Sarabeth couldn’t not bring anything, so on her way out of town she’d stopped at the Cheese Board for half a dozen cheese rolls. Slowing as she approached the toll plaza on the San Mateo Bridge, she reached onto the passenger seat for the bag and tore off a little bit of one of the rolls—the same one she’d already molested, she fervently hoped. She put it in her mouth and savored the delicious tang, the way it was both soft and crunchy at the same time. These cheese rolls were such a reliable pleasure. She handed her money to the toll taker and floored it out of the gate: water on both sides, the city far to the right in deep shadow, the sun going down behind the mountains.

Joe answered the door, looking about two years older than when she’d last seen him, in August. He was beautiful: Brody’s blue eyes, Liz’s cheekbones and gorgeous brown hair, her dad’s handsome, squared-off chin.

“Hi, there,” she said, and he gave her a cute little wave as he stepped back to let her in. “How’s life? Are the girls leaving you any time for yourself?”

“It’s OK,” he said. “You know, school and stuff.”

“You playing soccer this year?”

He hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Oh, duh,” she said. “Of course you are.”

Liz came in from the kitchen, smiling widely and wiping her hands on her jeans and then pulling Sarabeth close. She smelled of the moisturizer she’d been using since high school; she smelled of Liz.

She took a step back and looked Sarabeth over. “As usual,” she said, plucking at Sarabeth’s scarf. “Where do you find these things? I feel so matronly around you.”

The scarf was a larky thing Sarabeth had bought at a boutique on College—sheer and stretchy, and imprinted with images and text that looked as if they came from a tabloid newspaper. “California Teen Dating Einstein’s Brain” screamed one headline. She’d worn it for Lauren, really. She’d thought Lauren would get a kick out of it.

“Please,” she said to Liz. “You’re about as matronly as Michelle Pfeiffer.” In fact, Liz
was
a little matronly—or if not matronly at least square. Tonight, she was wearing a powder-blue sweater set that could have come from Ann Taylor, even Talbots. “You look great.”

Joe was heading away from them, and Liz called, “Did you say hi to Sarabeth?”

“No, Mom,” he said, turning back. “I opened the door and just stood there like an idiot.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Sarabeth said.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Liz called, and they both watched as he made the stairs and took them in a few leaps.

“He is too cute,” Sarabeth said.

“Isn’t he? It actually kills me; I’m afraid he knows it.”

“Joe? I don’t think of him as conceited.”

“No, I’m afraid he knows it and feels he
has
to be. Like it’s his job. Come on,” Liz said, and as they headed for the kitchen Sarabeth marveled—not for the first time—at the subtlety of the things Liz worried about.

Brody was standing at the counter opening wine, dressed in khakis and a navy-blue crew-neck sweater. Even now, after all these years, Sarabeth was still sometimes taken aback by his—“dullness” wasn’t the word, he wasn’t dull—his
plainness,
though not in the physical sense but rather in his being
just a guy,
a clean-shaven guy who wore khakis and played a lot of tennis. What did it mean that he was the husband Liz had chosen?

He and Sarabeth greeted each other, and the three of them chatted while Liz set out cheese and crackers. The kitchen smelled of beef cooking in wine, and there were expensive ceramics displayed on shelves, and pots of herbs growing on a ledge in a south-facing window. Sarabeth had to settle in each time, take in the
Sunset
magazine perfection of it all, recognize her own scorn, her own
envy
—and then take all of that and throw it off so she could see Liz; see Liz and herself.

“So how’s business these days?” Brody asked her.

“Oh, thriving.”

“You got that Web site up and running yet?”

Sarabeth looked at Liz, and Liz tilted her head sideways and mock-glared at Brody. “He’s kidding,” she said to Sarabeth. “Aren’t you, honey?”

Sarabeth didn’t care. One of these days she’d enter the twenty-first century, and when she did she’d ask him for help, or ask Liz’s older brother….

“Oh, my God,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Did I tell you? I somehow got on John’s mass e-mail list, and he’s forwarding me dirty jokes practically every day!”

“No!” Liz said. “He’ll be so embarrassed.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“Of course I’ll tell him.”

“I want to be on that list,” Brody said. “No fair.”

Liz flapped her hand at him, then turned back and told Sarabeth that John had called that very morning to report that his oldest had gotten engaged—the first Castleberry grandchild to tie the knot.

“God,” Sarabeth said.

“What?”

“I just think it’s wrong that someone in my generation could have a child ready for marriage.”

“Who says he’s ready?” Brody said.

“Touché.”

“You know,” he went on, speaking mostly to Liz now, “I think maybe I’ll head upstairs and check on the game.”

“It could use your help.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

He took his wine with him, and Sarabeth listened to his footsteps until he’d reached the top of the stairs. The game was a pro forma excuse even if it was a real one: he always gave the two of them time alone. Whether this was for his benefit or for hers and Liz’s, she didn’t know and didn’t much care. What mattered was that she had Liz to herself for a while.

“So tell me,” Liz said.

“Tell you what?”

“Everything!”

Their friendship was a story of stories told, going all the way back to childhood. Sarabeth could still remember the summer day when Liz’s family arrived on Cowper Street, when she and Liz were eight. Liz’s first story, told that afternoon as the two of them sat on the curb eating Creamsicles: during the long drive across country from Pennsylvania, her little brother had thrown up
seven times.

“If only there were an everything,” Sarabeth said now. “Or even an anything.”

“There must be an anything.”

“I made a new lampshade.”

“What did I tell you?” Liz teased. She twirled the stem of her wineglass and said casually, “For MM?” She worried about Mark—but really, she didn’t need to.

“The very same.”

“Did he like it?”

“He did. But not as much as he likes his new canoe.”

“What?”

“Mark got himself a new canoe. It was kind of strange, really, I was getting ready to leave, and he goes, ‘I want to show you something.’ And in his workroom he had this actually very beautiful new canoe.”

“Only you,” Liz said, “would know someone who’d have a canoe at his workplace.”

“Unless the workplace was a boat shop.”

“Only you would know someone whose workplace was a boat shop!”

Sarabeth shrugged; Liz had a thing about how unusual and interesting her life was. If only it were true.

“So how was it strange?” Liz said.

“I don’t know. Because a canoe is so phallic?” Sarabeth waited for Liz’s smile. “It was different is all. Mostly I’m in, I’m out, it’s all lamps. He made a point of asking if I
had
a second.”

“Maybe it was that he showed you something he cared about. He put himself on the line. It would’ve been hard for him if you hadn’t admired it.”

“Speaking of phallic,” Sarabeth said, and they both laughed.

“Actually, I have something to show you,” Liz said, and she motioned Sarabeth to follow her to the garage.

There, in the middle of the floor, in a space cleared of bicycles and skateboards and exercise equipment, stood an old wooden bench: two boards for the back, three for the seat, and a pair of sweet little armrests supported by standards of curved wrought iron. Liz had started doing decorative furniture painting recently, and Sarabeth figured this was her next project.

“I love it,” she said. “What’s your plan, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.” Liz brought her arms close, folding them across her stomach. “That’s the hard part.”

“It’s the fun part,” Sarabeth said. “You’ll think of something great.”

“We’ll see. You’re the creative one.”

“We aren’t
ones,
” Sarabeth said. “If I’m the anything one, or you are, then that means the other person automatically isn’t that thing.”

Liz smiled.

“What?”

“I always knew you were the smart one.”

They went back into the kitchen, and Liz stationed herself at the drainboard, where a pile of washed potatoes waited. She opened a drawer for a peeler, and in no time there were ribbons of potato skin flying into the sink. Sarabeth stood where she could watch.

“So how is everyone?” Liz said. “How’s Jim? And Esther—you haven’t mentioned her in weeks.”

Esther was an elderly woman Sarabeth had sort of adopted—or was it Esther who’d adopted Sarabeth? For five years now, Sarabeth had been reading aloud at the Berkeley Center for Integrated Living, a result of one of the fortuitous, strange stories that had supplied her with work, a short-term volunteer position reading to the blind becoming a paid—well, gig, actually. Once a week she carried a book of her own choosing to the Center, and people paid to listen to her read from it. Blind and sighted people. Esther was her favorite: at least eighty, thin as a pack of sticks, and possessed of a lovely, uncanny cheerfulness. Nearly every week she presented Sarabeth with a small gift, usually a few cookies in cellophane, sometimes a worn postcard of a painting she’d seen decades earlier at a museum in Europe. She baked the cookies herself: branny, raisiny cookies that Sarabeth never ate, though she took them home and kept them until she received the next bag.

“She’s a delight,” Sarabeth said. “She’s so cute—last week she was wearing this red beret.”

Liz grinned. “My mother got red pants.”

“Red pants like preppy?”

“More like hottie. Tight, low-cut velvet. She lost weight in Egypt so she’s buying all these clothes that’ll fit her for like a month.”

“Now, now.”

Liz had finished peeling the potatoes, and she set them on a board and cut them into chunks, then put them in a saucepan. She filled the pan with water, swirled it around, dumped it out, and filled it again. There was a reason for this, Sarabeth was sure, but she had no idea what it was.

On the counter near her elbow there was a piece of binder paper with a drawing of a leaf on it—a marijuanaish-looking leaf, though surely it wasn’t. She held it up for Liz to see. “What’s this?”

“Looks like something of Lauren’s.”

That made sense: Lauren was the artist. She was a wonderful artist, in fact—had been since she was little. The leaf was beautifully drawn, the veins faint but exact.

“Oh, my God!” Sarabeth said. “You know who I just thought of? Do you remember that guy Carl Drake?”

“Oh, my God!” Liz cried. “I haven’t thought of him in decades!”

They beamed at each other, Liz’s eyes wide with pleasure, Sarabeth feeling something close to an adrenaline rush. Moments like this with Liz, the retrieval of events buried so long they’d become comedy—who needed sex?

“What on earth made you think of him?” Liz said.

“Let me think.”

What had? He’d been her just-after-college boyfriend—one of her just-after-college boyfriends—and she remembered being in bed with him, how full he was of dirty talk.
Do you like my dick? Does that feel good on your pussy?
What on earth had she been doing with him? Liking his dick, actually. Then one day she realized there was a difference, and she didn’t really like him.

But why had she thought of him? She thought of his apartment, a tiny chunk of an old house near the Oakland border. His room, which smelled of cigarettes and greasy food. His bed. Then she realized.

“Marijuana! He had a huge poster of a marijuana leaf over his bed.”

“Ohhh-K,” Liz said. “And you thought of marijuana because…”

Sarabeth held up Lauren’s drawing again. “It’s ten o’clock,” she intoned. “Do you know where your child is?”

Liz laughed. “That’s a
maple
leaf! I wish it were pot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Liz said, and she returned to the sink, clearly not wanting to say more. Should Sarabeth ask? When Liz was this emphatic she never quite knew.

“All right,” Liz said, setting the pot of potatoes on the stove with a clank. “We are getting there.” She stood still for a moment, tapping her finger against her chin, then she went to the refrigerator and got out lettuce and a cucumber.

Sarabeth put the drawing down. She said, “I believe the time has come.”

“The Wandering?”

“Exactly that.”

She had her habits, and one was to spend a little time on each visit drifting through the Mackays’ house and garden—as if she were a nineteenth-century landowner who’d traveled to one of the more distant acreages of his holdings, partly to reacquaint himself with it and partly to determine if there had been any changes since his last visit. As if she were a Levin, come to think of it. She was reading
Anna Karenina
at the Center.

Through the family room she drifted, past the huge flowered couch, the elaborate entertainment center, the family photos crowding the horizontal surfaces. At the French doors that let onto the patio, she stopped. She could see Liz reflected in the glass, her arm moving quickly as she sliced the cucumber.

She opened the door and stepped outside. She breathed in the smell of the suburbs. Overhead, the sky was teal blue, starless. She stood still for a moment, then made her way to the wooden glider the kids had given Liz for her birthday one year. She sat down and pushed off with one foot, and the glider creaked as it began to move.

Who cared about Carl Drake? It was Billy who was on her mind. Endlessly. Or if not on her mind, then in it, readily available: the one channel always broadcasting on her mental TV. She saw him in close-up: his thick hair, always so clean smelling; the scar dividing his left eyebrow, where her fingernail fit perfectly; the shallow rise and fall of his upper lip. No other ex-boyfriend had had such a hold on her, not even Roger Orr, the one guy she’d actually lived with during her spotty romantic career. Was it because Billy had been married?
Was
married?