Songs Without Words

by Ann Packer

  “What can I do?” he said.

  She struggled to swallow. She could perpetuate their difficulties with a single, cold word; she was capable of such cruelty. She shifted her weight so she could look at him. “What can I do?” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. They were glazed when he opened them again. Speaking very slowly, as if each word were a separate effort, he said, “You…can…be with me.”

  34

  It was from Mrs. Bridge: “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it.” She found out from Miranda, during an out-of-the-blue phone call that she suspected Nina had engineered. “I was just thinking about you,” Miranda said by way of explaining the call, but how likely was that? They talked about Mrs. Bridge and about the movie version of The Raj Quartet, with its images of the spoiled British being waited on hand and foot by Indians, being called sahib and memsahib while the clock ticked toward their departure. “Speaking of literary adaptations,” Sarabeth said, and she apologized again for having walked out of Miranda’s play. Miranda said her only regret was that she’d wanted to introduce Sarabeth to her cousin, a single man.

  And so they were having lunch. Not Sarabeth and Miranda’s cousin: Sarabeth and Miranda.

  Sarabeth arrived first. At her request they were meeting at a cheap place, a café that didn’t even have table service, and as she stood out in front waiting she hoped she hadn’t made a mistake; it was not the kind of place where one comfortably lingered. She wondered if they would talk easily, or if it would feel forced, with lots of silences. She’d never been alone with Miranda before.

  Miranda came into view at the far end of the block, her tall frame and long light hair, and as she approached she looked in store windows, at the sidewalk, into the street: everywhere but at Sarabeth. “It’s a first date,” she said when she’d arrived and they’d said hello, and Sarabeth realized that she felt awkward, too.

  Standing in line at the counter, they talked about the book group, about the weather—about nothing. Once they’d found a table, though, they moved easily to more personal things, including the fact that Miranda was divorced.

  Sarabeth was astonished. “You are? You don’t seem divorced.”

  “What does divorced seem like?”

  “I’m not sure—I guess it’s one of those things where you know it when you see it.”

  “Like pornography,” they said in unison, and they both smiled.

  “So what happened?” Sarabeth went on. “If you want to tell me.”

  “Oh, sure—it’s nothing to not tell. We were incredibly young, for one thing. And we had very different ideas about what marriage was. Or what we wanted ours to be.”

  “So it was amicable? You realized you wanted different things and went your separate ways?”

  “Oh God, no. We fought like crazy, and lied and cheated—well, I did. I had this ridiculous affair with our super.”

  “Your super? Was he some magnetic Stanley Kowalski type or something?”

  Miranda laughed. “He was a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Tufts. He was the super so he could live rent free—he couldn’t fix anything.”

  Sarabeth tried to imagine Miranda minus twenty years: a married Miranda, an adulterous Miranda. Today she wore a gray wool turtleneck and not a trace of makeup. Though what did that mean? Sarabeth wanted to make adultery something other women did—women in sexy clothes, women unlike herself. A week or so ago, she’d seen Billy’s wife standing with another woman in a housewares store she’d been about to enter, and she was filled with shame. Guilt wasn’t a useless emotion; it made the guilty suffer, as they should.

  “Speaking of fixing things,” Miranda said, leaning forward. “I can definitely fix you up with my cousin if you’re interested, but I had dinner with him last night, and I think he’s too staid for you.”

  “Staid might be good,” Sarabeth said. “But somehow…”

  “It’s not the right time?”

  She hesitated. “I guess not.” She was tempted to explain, to tell Miranda about Liz, but she didn’t want to; she didn’t want it to be the thing she talked about—or didn’t talk about—with everyone. She ate some tabbouleh, wishing for a moment that she’d gotten the pepper noodles, wishing it almost enough to get up and go order some. She was so weird; she’d wanted nothing but spicy food for weeks. “Back to your art historian,” she said. “I’m curious. Did your husband find out?”

  Miranda shook her head. “Not officially, but he was aware of it on some level. His mother had this very flamboyant affair when he was a child, so he had almost…antennae for it.”

  “My mother committed suicide when I was sixteen,” Sarabeth said. And then, “Oh, my God. Why did I say that?”

  “Maybe so I’d know.” Miranda watched her for a moment and then reached for her water and took a sip. “I’m really sorry,” she added. “That would be hard anytime, let alone at that age.”

  “Thanks,” Sarabeth said, but she felt embarrassed, and also a little empty. What a blurter she was. And hard or not hard—that wasn’t the right set of possibilities. The right axis. Her mother’s suicide had been…a devastatingly welcome relief. Which itself had occasioned…an endlessly burning shame.

  Endlessly.

  “Do you miss her?” Miranda said.

  “Not really. She was sort of out of it for most of my life.”

  “She was sick?”

  “Depressed.”

  “But she lived with you?”

  “You mean as opposed to at a hospital? She was never that bad off.”

  “She must have been,” Miranda said, and after a moment Sarabeth saw her point. She was right, of course: when you looked at it from this end.

  After lunch they walked down the street. It was the beginning of February, cold and raw. They came to Carta, and through the window Sarabeth saw that a different woman was behind the counter today. “This is the store I was telling you about,” she said to Miranda. “With the paper. Want to go in?”

  The Pride and Prejudice sheet had been bought, as had several of the others; she could tell from how depleted the display looked. There were perhaps a dozen left, including “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it.”

  Miranda said, “After our conversation I went to Cody’s and bought myself a copy of Mrs. Bridge. Do you ever do that? I don’t even necessarily want to read it again—I just want to have it.”

  “All the time,” Sarabeth said, but she was looking at the sheet of paper, not quite attending. “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it.” It didn’t actually make sense, now that she thought about it, because if you grew up with the name India you wouldn’t have to get used to it: you wouldn’t know anything else. India would be you before it would ever be a country. It came to her that Lorelei had been like that for her—that Lorelei’s depression had. She had been how she had been before Sarabeth could understand that there was a difference between her and what other people meant by “mother.”

  Miranda had wandered to the other side of the rack, and she began reading aloud: “‘Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ God, I loved that movie. I could go for a Maxim de Winter, couldn’t you? Then again, maybe it’s Laurence Olivier I really mean.” She came back around. “So are you making lampshades out of these? They’d make great ‘reading lights.’” She did air quotes on “reading lights,” but it took Sarabeth a minute to get it. Then: lights you could read, not just read by. It was a cute idea.

  But what if she got the paper home and then for whatever reason couldn’t work? Her resolve to start cranking out some lampshades had not exactly borne fruit.

  “You should do it,” Miranda said. “Go, Sarabeth! Don’t you hate cheerleaders? But I think they would be great.”

  Mark would probably really like the idea—it was just the kind of larky thing he’d go for. Straight sided, they’d have to be, and probably square, though circular could work, too. She
lifted a sheet from the display and carried it to the window. Light filtered through, separating the text from the background: pale pink words on a yellow field. She put it back, told Miranda she had to make a quick call, and stepped outside. She found Mark’s work number and then stopped, heart pounding. Hi, Mark? she imagined herself saying. This is Sarabeth. She hadn’t seen him since the night when he’d been waiting for her on her porch. She took a deep breath and sent the call.

  He sounded surprised to hear from her but covered it quickly, chatting casually for a minute or two and then listening closely once she started explaining what she had in mind.

  “It’s a cool idea,” he said when she was finished, “but of course I’d need to see a prototype.”

  She felt herself begin to wilt. She imagined having one sheet of the paper in her workroom, having one lampshade to make. She said, “The thing is, they’re selling. I was here last week, and they’ve sold maybe half the stock in that time. There are maybe a dozen left, that’s all.”

  “I like the sound of it,” he said. “But wait—people wouldn’t be able to choose the passage they wanted? No two are alike?”

  “No two here. I suppose I could find out who the manufacturer is, and—”

  “Why don’t you?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Find out who the manufacturer is. Look into what the options are.”

  “No.”

  There was a silence, and as she stood there with her back to the shop, people passing by on the sidewalk, cars whizzing by on the street, she felt an urge to giggle.

  “What’s happened to you?” he said, and now she did giggle.

  “Yes or no, Mark,” she said.

  “Am I doing this?”

  “I think you might be.”

  He laughed, and after a moment she laughed along with him. “Someday,” he said, “I’m going to have to figure out what just happened.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “You think far too much as it is.”

  They finished the call, and she went back inside, where she bought all of the remaining sheets of paper. Would she have called his bluff like that if it hadn’t been for his nighttime visits? The force of the word “no”—it was almost titillating.

  “It would have been cool,” Miranda said as they headed toward their cars a little later, “if you could have chosen the passages yourself.”

  “I thought of that,” Sarabeth said. “‘One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.’”

  “What’s that?”

  It was the beginning of Howards End; it had just popped into her head, whole like that—she hadn’t even known she knew it. She thought of Liz, telling her Lauren hadn’t liked the book. What an idiot she’d been, going on and on about how she should have suggested something different.

  She wondered how Liz looked at what Lauren had done, at Lauren’s suicide attempt, or gesture. Was it the same as with Lorelei? Did it change the way you saw what came before it?

  “It’s Forster,” she told Miranda. “Howards End.”

  “Of course!” Miranda said. “‘Telegrams and anger.’ ‘Only connect.’ I have to ask you, did it drive you crazy that they cast Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter in that movie? As sisters?”

  Brainy, sensible Margaret and softhearted, impetuous Helen: two more sisters for Sarabeth’s list. “It did,” Sarabeth said. “It definitely did.”

  The time had come to part. Miranda leaned down and kissed Sarabeth on the cheek. “Let’s do this again,” she said. “OK?”

  “Definitely,” Sarabeth said, but as she watched Miranda walk away she imagined the “again”—another restaurant, another table—and she wondered if there were any other setting possible for friendship.

  Liz at the Thai restaurant.

  Liz’s face last time, the way it went from soft to hard to soft again.

  What did you mean now you’re eating? What happened? What? Sweetie.

  How had Liz found the means to sound so concerned? To be so concerned? This question had never occurred to Sarabeth before, and she stepped back from the sidewalk and leaned against a wall. What happened? What? Sweetie. She’d sounded genuinely concerned, when clearly, and with good cause, she’d been furious. Sarabeth thought of the moment earlier that same evening when she asked how Liz was, and Liz said: How are you? And then, right away: How are you? Trying to fix it, trying to correct her tone so Sarabeth wouldn’t know how pissed off she really was.

  What an effort that must have required.

  Sarabeth remembered what Liz had said about Joe, last time she was over there: they were talking about how cute Joe was, and Liz said she was afraid Joe felt he had to be cute—that he saw it as his job.

  What was Liz’s job? To be good, to be kind in every instance no matter how she felt?

  Poor Liz, Sarabeth thought. To have to work so hard, always.

  35

  Weekends dragged. She either saw Amanda or she didn’t, and neither felt right. Amanda treated her weirdly: sort of fakely polite, too careful about what she said. “I don’t know what her problem is,” Lauren had said to Dr. Lewis one day, and he’d said, “Maybe she’s worried about you,” and now she was sure he thought she was a brat.

  One Saturday afternoon she lay on her bed doing nothing, a practice her parents had always frowned on, but these days they didn’t seem to care. She’d told them it was normal for people on Prozac to need a little extra sleep, and she guessed they believed her.

  In fact, being on Prozac was having no effect on her at all. “Are you sure?” Dr. Lewis had said. “Have you had the kinds of thoughts you used to have?” He meant the pill thoughts, the falling-out-the-window thoughts, and she hadn’t really, but how could that be the Prozac? A pill couldn’t make you think or not think something.

  There was a knock, and her dad leaned in, said he was heading out to do errands, and did she want to go.

  “Come on,” he said. “Keep me company.”

  And so they drove around town, dropping off DVDs at Blockbuster, stopping at Longs, getting cash at the ATM. “One more?” he said, and next thing she knew they were heading down 101.

  “Wait, where are we going?”

  “Expo.”

  “You never said we were going down there.”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “I never said we weren’t.”

  Expo was miles away, on the edge of East Palo Alto in a huge lot of horrible megastores. It was supposed to be a fancier Home Depot, but when they arrived, Lauren found it was just another airport inside, way too much undivided space. The ceiling was about sixty feet high, traced with pipes, and the whole place smelled of something not natural—chemical finishes, plastic, she didn’t know what. She wished she’d stayed home.

  Her dad wanted to redo the storage system in the garage, and he led her past tiles and flooring and a bizarre display of shower stalls. There were a lot of people, and it was noisy in the way she didn’t like, sort of a loud hum behind all the other noises, behind the voices and laughter.

  “Huh,” he said when they got to the storage section. “I thought they’d have more.”

  How far out of the way had they driven for this? “Dad,” she said.

  “I wonder if Ikea—”

  “Dad!”

  He frowned and turned to leave, and she felt bad; he didn’t have many chances to do stuff like this, especially lately—he seemed to be working all the time. It was sort of his own fault, though; he never should have asked her to come along. Why hadn’t he asked Joe? Because Joe had a life.

  “Oh,” he said as they stepped outside. “I almost forgot. I told your mom we’d run by Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

  Lauren stopped.

  “What?”

  “I thought we were done.”

  “It won’t take more than twenty minutes. I’ve got a recipe of Mom’s that Grandma wants.”

  “I don’t want to.” Embarrassed, she turned away.

  “What’s the b
ig deal?”

  “It’s not a big deal, it’s just—” To her dismay, tears filled her eyes. “Can’t Mom e-mail the recipe?”

  “Laurie, what is it?”

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a guy pushing a bare toilet on a cart. She wanted to laugh, but instead she started to cry. What was she doing here, in this parking lot with her dad, grease and beef smells wafting across the asphalt from McDonald’s?

  “Laur?”

  She shook her head and started walking again. He caught up with her and stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “We can go home. Mom can e-mail the recipe, or I will.”

  “It’s OK, we can go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at the ground and saw the scuffed toes of his shoes. There was something about them: she began to cry again. He stepped close and put his arms around her, and she let herself lean against him. The feel and smell of his shirt were like something she’d known once and forgotten. She cried harder. “It’s OK,” he said, “it’s OK.” His arms came up around her, and he stroked the back of her head. “Let’s get in the car,” he murmured, and she let him walk her, his arm around her as a guide. In the hospital, a girl had told her about being escorted by some weird escorting professional to a school for troubled teens in rural Idaho. The escort had insisted that they hold hands whenever they were in a public place. It’s your choice, the escort had said. I can cuff you instead.

  Lauren’s dad produced his keys as they approached the car. “Do you want to drive?”

  She was shocked. “Now?”

  “Why not? Your permit’s still in the glove compartment.”

  She hadn’t driven since it happened. She didn’t know if she still could—couldn’t believe he thought she could.

  With his remote he unlocked the car. He opened the driver’s door and held it for her like a chauffeur. “Madam.”

  She hesitated. The world was impossible, pressing on you from the outside and then suddenly reversing, so that you tumbled toward it. She got in the car, and her dad closed the door and went around to his side. He buckled up and handed her the keys.