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

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