Songs Without Words (15 page)

The nurse came back into the lounge. She made her way to Liz and Brody’s corner and sat in the chair Lauren had occupied. She was a beautiful black-haired woman with light brown skin and a diamond stud in her nose. “Lauren is very sad,” she said, her voice lilting a little with an Indian accent. “She feels really terrible, and we need to help her.”

Tears pushed to the rims of Liz’s eyes, and she fought to keep them from falling.

“Most kids here go through a lot of different feelings,” the nurse continued. “Sad and confused and angry. Sometimes Mom and Dad are angels, and sometimes they are devils.”

“And right now we’re devils,” Brody said.

“Lauren needs some time,” the nurse said. “Here she has very good doctors and staff.” She smiled and brought her palms together, and Liz had nearly moved her own hands before she understood what she’d been expecting the nurse to do: bow her head and say,
Namaste.

Namaste.

I bow to you.

It’s the acknowledgment,
Diane had said once,
by one soul of another soul.

Liz imagined herself bowing to Lauren, acknowledging Lauren. Had she somehow failed to do that? She couldn’t think of anything more important for a mother to do.

On Wednesday, Brody finally went into the office. Technically, the company was already closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, but there were a lot of people around, in jeans instead of khakis, or sweatpants instead of jeans—letting it be known that they weren’t really here, not officially. Kathy sat at her desk until twelve-thirty, then came to his doorway with an apologetic look on her face.

“Go,” he said. “Kathy, really.”

“I don’t have to. Do you want me to wait and see if anything comes up?”

He went to the door and hugged her, his gray-haired fairy godmother of an assistant, his genius of organization. A good assistant, Russ had said once, was someone who brought you a hose at the first sign of smoke. Kathy brought him a hose, a fire extinguisher, a bag of sand, a tarp….

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “See you Monday. Have a great weekend.”

“You, too,” she said. “I mean—”

“I know, Kathy,” he said. “It’s OK. Thank you.”

When she was gone he returned to his desk. He had dozens of e-mails to deal with, but he could do that at home. He began going through the stack of papers that had accumulated on his desk.

A knock sounded, and there was Russ, standing in the doorway. His version of dressing down was a dark blue shirt with the top button unbuttoned, no Zegna tie. His shoulders pushed at the shirt fabric, thick like a wrestler’s. Ugly-sexy, Liz had called him once. Or had it been Sarabeth, drawing a conclusion based on Liz’s description? Brody was a little surprised Sarabeth hadn’t been over, though maybe Liz had asked her to wait.

“Come on in,” he said to Russ. “I thought you were out of town.”

“Not till tomorrow morning—I’m on the first flight to Cabo with my youngest.” Russ came in and sat in Brody’s visitor’s chair. “I’m so fucking sorry, man. How is she?”

Brody thought of Lauren’s rage last night, of the way she’d come back to the lounge at the last minute and clung to Liz, begging her not to leave. He said, “It’s hard to know. They only started Prozac Monday.”

“Prozac can really help.” Russ looked very certain, and Brody wondered if he was speaking from some kind of personal experience. His kids were older than Lauren and Joe, pretty much grown, but there was a son who’d had difficulties and apparently did again, or still. Rumor had it he was back at home, living with Russ’s ex-wife in the eight-thousand-square-foot house in Woodside that she’d gotten in the settlement. Patty. Liz had always liked her, had enjoyed talking to her at company social events. On such occasions now Russ was generally accompanied by a woman half his age: gorgeous, and never seen again.

“I don’t know why you’re here today of all days,” Russ said. “Seriously. Go home.”

“I needed to come in.”

A look came over Russ’s face, and he said, “Oh, of course. Are you OK? I mean how could you be, but—”

“I needed to get some stuff for the weekend.”

Russ nodded quickly. “Right, right.” Then he said, “Listen, take whatever time you need, OK? Really, I mean it.”

He stood, and Brody stood, too. Was he supposed to say thank you? He didn’t need Russ telling him he could take time. But yes, he was supposed to say thank you, and he did so as he walked Russ to the door.

He left a little later, calling Liz to say he’d pick up Joe. The bell rang as he walked through the middle-school gate, and within seconds a first wave of kids spilled past him, forcing him to the edge of the walkway. He waited, and a second, larger wave approached, the kids so developmentally disparate that some looked like college students while some still looked like—still were—children.

It was Joe’s last year here; he’d join Lauren at the high school next fall.
Lauren Mackay’s brother, Lauren’s little brother, Lauren’s brother:
Brody imagined whispers and felt a spark of anger at her.

Joe appeared with Trent. They walked without speaking, simultaneously speeding up to pass a slow mover, stepping to the left to get around a couple of stalled girls.

“Joe,” Brody called.

Joe kept going; it was Trent who slowed down, glanced over his shoulder, stopped. He said something to Joe, and Joe turned. For a moment, he had the what’d-I-do? look of his much younger self. Then he made his way over.

“Thought I’d come get you,” Brody said.

“OK.”

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

The contours of worry on Joe’s face: Brody felt so powerless he might as well have been made of air, water. He imagined a man-size dump of water splashing onto the pavement where he stood.

“We can give Trent a ride if you want,” he said, but Joe shook his head.

“That’s OK.”

They walked in silence, Joe with his hands in his pockets, head down. The walkway split, the crowd thinned, and there was Trent again, just ahead of them, his backpack hanging from one shoulder.

“Come on,” Brody said. “Let’s see if he wants a ride.”

Joe glanced at Brody and then lengthened his stride toward his friend.

“Trent,” Brody called. “Want a ride?”

Trent turned, eyes wide. After a moment he shrugged his assent.

They continued, and immediately Brody knew he’d made a mistake. They were silent, all of them: walking the rest of the way to the car, getting in and buckling their belts, driving the roads to Trent’s house. Lauren everywhere and nowhere, both at once.

That evening, in the crowded hospital lounge, she was nearly silent. Brody and Liz weren’t meeting with her psychiatrist until Friday, and he half wished they wouldn’t have the chance to see her again until after they’d talked to him.

Much later, when they were home again and Liz and Joe were asleep, he left the upstairs TV room, where he’d been trying to work, and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.

From the doorway he could see the digital clocks on the stove and microwave: 2:04 and 2:05. He could never perfectly synchronize all the clocks in the house, though he thought about it at every daylight savings time change, every power outage. Now they were 2:05 and 2:05. Red numbers glowing, the faint buzz of the emergency flashlight plugged in next to the door to the garage. It was quiet, dark. He felt himself a darker shape in the transparent darkness of the night. Himself, impermeable. He imagined the kitchen from outside, the dark windows seen from a neighboring house, the thin light that would suddenly appear if he opened the refrigerator or turned on the fluorescents under the cabinets. This light would imply someone standing there. Himself, standing here. He thought of Liz asleep, of the stairway to the upstairs: the room he’d just left, the guest room, the kids’ bathroom, Joe’s room, Lauren’s. In his mind he climbed the stairs and looked in on Joe, Joe’s chest rising and falling, the sound of his breathing a tonic to Brody, a treasure. In his mind he opened Lauren’s door, then backed away.

He moved to the couch and stared at the blank TV. The remote was on the coffee table in front of him, and he picked it up and studied the buttons, wondered how loud the sound would be if he turned it on. He didn’t want to wake Liz. He didn’t want to watch TV. He put the remote back and stretched out. He had not called his mother yet about what had happened. She was actually no older than Robert and Marguerite, not in years, but she was older in spirit, in mental flexibility—and she was too old for this. She hadn’t visited since Brody’s father died, and Brody thought it was because the Bay Area frightened her, the congestion, the energy. She still visited his sister in Cincinnati. In fact she would be there for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Today.

At the fridge he poured himself some milk and gulped it. Then, in the garage, he found clean shorts on the dryer, shoved his sockless feet into his tennis shoes, and headed to the car. The streets were empty. Each house was snug, dark, safe. At the high school he parked behind the courts. He made his way to the nearest baseline. He lined up his cans of balls behind him, tossed his racquet cover to the fence, grabbed a couple of balls, and settled into serving position.

He started with his toss. Ball in one hand, racquet in the other, both in front of his chest, he brought his arms down and up again, and the ball continued into the sky and came back down into his hand. Ten times he did this, fifteen. He liked the rhythm, the swing of his arms moving down together and then separating and sweeping upward. The pain in his shoulder asserted itself, but he moved through it. He bounced the ball a couple of times and did four or five more tosses. Now he was ready. He held the ball, the racquet, he swept his arms down and up, and he slammed the ball into the service box. And the next one. He hit all the balls he had, his target the outside corner of the box, and he nailed it and nailed it again. He was sweating lightly now, despite the cool air. He circled the net and collected the balls. From this side of the net he worked on his ad court serve, reaching down to the cluster of balls, grabbing two at a time, shoving one into his pocket, and hitting the other. Back on the first side he tried it with his eyes closed. Later he changed the target spot. He hit his mark or not—it no longer mattered. What mattered was the darkness, the solitude, the late hour, the cool air, and the motion, over and over again, of his arms.

15

H
er tea was very hot, and then it was not so hot, and still they didn’t come out. Sarabeth was at the window, and the Heidts’ Volvo was in the driveway, and neither moved. What was going on? Was someone sick? But that wouldn’t keep them all home, would it?

In the kitchen, her coffeemaker hissed. In a while it hissed again, and though she found it difficult to move away from the window, away she went: to fill a mug, stir in a knobby brown lump of sugar. She was a creature of habit: she had tea first and then coffee, every morning. She carried her mug back to her lookout, but still there was no sign of the Heidts.

Surrounding her, filling her, was what Lauren had done. And what she herself had done, had failed to do. “It must have been really hard for you,” Liz had said on the phone Tuesday morning. “It’s so understandable that you’d have trouble with this.” Warm, she’d been. Forgiving. But when Sarabeth called again—and she called again several times—Liz didn’t answer.

It felt almost like a weekend, and she was tempted to have her weekend breakfast of lemon pound cake. Instead, she returned to the kitchen and started toast. On the shelf behind the toaster an old gift of Esther’s had gathered dust, and she reached for it across the heating slots. She unwrapped the cellophane and pressed the surface of one of the cookies. Hard as a rock. She had no idea where she’d left off in
Anna Karenina,
but she’d figure it out before tonight. She had quite a group these days—more even than she’d had for
Madame Bovary.
Adultery. You might not commit it yourself, but you were sure going to be interested in it.

Guilt is a useless emotion.
Billy was always saying that—being philosophical, telling her to let it go. As if it were so easy! As if it were morally acceptable. He’d hardly been speaking from a neutral position.

She popped the toast, and though it wasn’t as dark as she liked, she plucked it from the toaster and spread it with almond butter. At her table she ate quickly, three or four bites. There was a feeling in her chest that she didn’t like—from eating too fast? “Esophagus” had been a favorite word of Lauren’s in early childhood. To hear it spoken or to speak it herself had sent her into fits of giggles.

How was Liz surviving? She had sounded calm on the phone, but she couldn’t be calm; she couldn’t be anything but devastated. “No, thanks” had been her response to Sarabeth’s offer to drive over. “Nothing, thanks” to what Sarabeth could do to help. Someone else might just go, but not Sarabeth. Was she respecting Liz’s boundaries? Or being a bad friend? A worse question: Would Liz be talking to her if Sarabeth
hadn’t
failed her so horribly? Confiding in her, telling her how she felt? Had Liz ever truly depended on her? Sarabeth thought of when Ted, Liz’s boyfriend before Brody, broke up with her, one of the coldest, out-of-the-bluest breakups she’d ever seen. Liz had gone underground then, and Sarabeth had worried and wondered why. But she hadn’t forced herself on Liz. Hadn’t said:
I will not leave until you are well again.

She went to take a shower, and it was there, waiting for the water to heat, thinking maybe she’d call Jim about touring, that she realized: today was Thanksgiving. There was no tour today. The Heidts were home because there was no work today, no school. It didn’t matter where in
Anna Karenina
she was, because the Center was closed today, a fact she had known, had owned, once upon a time. “See you in December,” she’d said at the end last time. “That’s marvelous,” Esther had said as she hobbled out of the room. “Marvelous.”

Sarabeth shut off the water and sat on the closed toilet. How could she have forgotten Thanksgiving? When had it happened, when was the last moment she’d known? She wondered what she should do. What were the Mackays doing? How odd that she had not thought of it on Tuesday, talking to Liz. Heat filled her face, and she felt sick with shame at the possibility that if she’d remembered she might have asked Liz if dinner was still on.

She took her shower, dried off, returned to the bedroom. For an hour or so she lay on her bed and read, until at last she got up and made her way to the living room window. She had begun to hear voices a while back, and in fact the Heidts’ yard was full of children—at a quick count nine of them, all wearing paper headgear appropriate to the holiday. Chloe had on a black-and-white pilgrim hat, while Pilar and Isaac both sported elaborate feather headdresses. Had Bonnie made these hats in advance of the party, or would each child have been welcomed with the opportunity to make one for him-or herself?

It was after one o’clock somehow, and Sarabeth went into the kitchen and made tuna salad, thinking, as she always did, that no-drain vacuum bags of tuna were among the world’s greatest inventions. She ate six huge forkfuls standing at the sink, then covered the bowl and stashed it in the refrigerator.

She wandered into her workroom and gazed at the carton that had arrived yesterday. She thought of opening it, but she knew what was inside—two dozen ring sets—and she had no desire to see two dozen ring sets. She crouched at her scrap box and dug through it until a piece of shiny silver paper caught her eye. She began folding it, randomly she would have thought, but then she recalled the cootie catchers she and Liz used to make, origami-like structures of folded paper that you could ask questions, and she realized she was folding with them in mind. Deep inside you wrote answers: “yes” and “no” and “maybe,” say, or “dentist” and “hula girl” and “teacher.” She remembered one of Liz’s, where the question was “Who will you marry?” Sarabeth chose a flap, and Liz opened it for her, and they both shrieked with laughter because what was written there was “Steve.” “At least we’ll be sisters,” Sarabeth said, and Liz said, “We already are.”

She abandoned the paper and returned to her bedroom. She took up a volume of Hemingway stories and began reading “Hills Like White Elephants,” but the cloistered conversation made her restless, and she closed the book and instead thought of the pale hills, the heat, the dust, the drone of insects. She had never been to Spain. Her father had offered to take her to Spain
and
France one summer, but she’d declined. It was the summer after her freshman year at Berkeley: he was in Baltimore, and she told him, truthfully, that she’d just rented a room in a house and wanted to get used to living there before school started up again in the fall. She was working at a café, reading a lot. It wasn’t bad. But after that, after she passed up his offer, their communication fell away with surprising speed, and when he died a few years later, just two months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her life in some way got simpler. It had been hard, being cowitnesses to a disaster.

The children had fallen silent, and she went to investigate. The Heidts’ yard was empty; she figured they were inside eating. Would there be a separate children’s table? She thought of the holiday dinners of her childhood, how much she’d disliked sitting at the children’s table, how she’d felt suspended in time, waiting for her parents to claim her again. Once, a man looked over from the adult table and told her not to eat with her fingers. She was eating a roll, but she was mortified anyway.

She would have been wearing a fancy dress; her mother bought her two each year, one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas. Velvet or silk. She wasn’t allowed to put them on until the holiday in question arrived, and then only at the last minute. Beforehand, she would watch her mother’s preparations, the brushing of her hair, the fastening of a necklace, and when her mother was all ready—perfect from top to toe, and very beautiful—they would go together into Sarabeth’s bathroom, and under her mother’s terrifying gaze Sarabeth would carefully scrub her hands in preparation for putting on the special dress.

Liz didn’t do that kind of thing. She was such a good mother. One Thanksgiving Joe wore his soccer uniform. Another year Lauren decorated the table with rocks and pinecones from the backyard, and then placed among them her collection of rubber trolls. Sarabeth’s mother would have died before allowing a table of hers to look like that. Actually, she had.

It was remarkably warm, and Sarabeth thought that if she had a private porch she’d sit outside and read. If she had a private porch, she might have a
place
to sit outside and read; as it was, she’d barely swept. She sat on her top step and looked at the Heidts’ yard: a single abandoned feathered headdress lay on the lawn. She wondered if it was Pilar’s.

With a creak, the Heidts’ back door opened, and out came some of the children, Isaac and some of the other little ones, holding cupcakes. Isaac glanced at Sarabeth; it was not typical for her to be on her porch. He set his cupcake on the sandbox ledge, stood next to it with his feet side by side, and with a great whoop jumped into the sand. Another boy stood outside the box eating his cupcake, eyeing Isaac’s from time to time.

With another creak the door opened again, and now Pilar emerged with another girl. They both carried cupcakes, the girl in a pilgrim hat, Pilar’s head bare. “My feathers!” she cried, and she set her cupcake on the patio table and hurried to rescue her headdress. She gave Sarabeth a funny little wave as she settled the feathers on her head. She turned and went back to the table for her cupcake. Sarabeth wondered if she should get up and go inside, but it was so nice and sunny, and there was nothing inside but tuna and Hemingway, and so she stayed. Pilar and the other girl were talking quietly, while the sandbox now contained Isaac and three other kids, each of whom had frosting around the mouth and a big plastic truck in hand. “Beep, beep,” they said. “Rrrrrm, rrrrrm.”

Pilar approached the sandbox. She wore a purple jumper over a patterned turtleneck, yellow tights, and very elfin purple-and-green maryjanes. She stopped and surveyed the younger children’s work, then continued past the sandbox toward Sarabeth.

“Hi,” Sarabeth called, and Pilar waved again.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she shouted. She approached the jasmine that separated the Heidts’ property from Sarabeth’s, picked her way through it, and in a moment was at the base of Sarabeth’s steps.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you,” Sarabeth said.

“I’m a squaw,” Pilar announced, touching her feathers. “My mom said I could be a squaw with extra feathers if I wanted.”

Sarabeth pondered this for a moment, then remembered that only the chief wore lots of feathers—and did the women wear any? “Why not?” she said.

“Thanksgiving is for being creative.”

“I should say so.”

Pilar was eating her cupcake between statements—or eating the frosting, anyway, a business requiring tongue and lips but no teeth.

“How’s your cupcake?” Sarabeth said.

“Good. The frosting is chocolate and the cupcake part is pumpkin, which isn’t very good but is better than pumpkin pie.”

“You don’t like pumpkin pie?”

“Blech,” Pilar said with a shudder. “My brother and I hate it. My sister likes it so-so. My brother threw up last time we had it, but he might have been getting sick anyway, we’re not sure.”

“It’s hard to know what’s caused by what.”

Pilar held the cupcake out, empty of frosting, its surface shiny wet. “Want the rest?”

“No, thanks,” Sarabeth said, “but it’s nice of you to offer.”

“On Thanksgiving you’re supposed to be nice to people,” Pilar said. “It’s a day of caring and sharing. My sister and I aren’t allowed to fight unless we have to.”

“I see,” said Sarabeth.

“Did you make any friends yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“My mom says that’s why you look at us. Because you’re lonely.”

Heat flooded Sarabeth’s face, and her stomach churned. She turned away from Pilar and breathed hard. Pilar stood there, just over her shoulder, but Sarabeth couldn’t move. She was sick, sick. Yet she feared she was upsetting Pilar, and with great effort she turned back. Pilar watched her solemnly, the only evidence of disturbance the fact that she was plucking crumbs from the cupcake and dropping them to the ground. Sarabeth tried to think of something to say.

“It’s Thanksgiving for the birds, too,” Pilar said.

“It is. You’re sharing with them.”

“Bye,” Pilar said, and she made the jasmine in two long steps, leaped over it, and strode through the yard and into the house without a moment’s pause.

Sarabeth went inside and locked the door. Her living room was so dark she could hardly see. She closed her eyes and by feel—touching first the plant table by the door and then an armchair—she found the couch and slowly eased herself onto it. She lay down, resting her head on a throw pillow she’d made by embroidering flowers onto a pink silk handkerchief and wrapping it around a pillow form. Against her face the flowers felt scratchy, and she pulled the pillow out from under her head and tossed it to the floor. She hesitated a moment and then with her feet grabbed the white lace pillow at the other end of the couch, took hold of it, and tossed it to the floor, too. She sat up quickly, and when the room stopped spinning she crossed to the mantel and moved each of the seven silver candlesticks to the floor. From her bedroom she got the wire-and-mesh Eiffel Tower that held her earring collection, then went back for the majolica plate on her bedside table, where she kept ChapStick, lotion, and a notepad and pen. On the living room floor there was now quite a collection of stuff, and she added the Eiffel Tower and the plate, which she’d bought at some antique store in the city because she’d felt she
had
to have it—whereas she felt like kicking it now. She brought in a few more things from her bedroom, then turned her attention to the bathroom. From the wall she took a paper silhouette of a woman carrying an umbrella. With her free hand she put a wire basket of soap balls into Billy’s abalone shell, and she carried all of this into the living room and set it on the floor. She went back to the bathroom for the little pink dish Liz had brought her from France, one of her most beloved possessions: an opalescent pink oval in the middle of which had been painted the words
Jerêve.
I dream. Liz had bought it for her at a flea market in Montpellier. She set it on the floor and went into the kitchen, where she gathered a blue glass bowl, her two favorite mugs—one still holding an inch of this morning’s coffee—and a creamer in the shape of a cow.