Songs Without Words by Ann Packer Read Free Book Online Page A

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