Songs Without Words (4 page)

He smiled a different smile now, a pained smile she couldn’t quite read. “Mary does,” he said. “Mary likes canoeing.”

Back in the car, she sat still for a moment, watching as a homeless man passed by pushing a shopping cart piled high with bloated bags. Half a mile away was the new Emeryville with its terrifying Ikea, its nightmare version of a suburban shopping mall. Here, in front of Mark’s shop, the last thirty years might never have happened.

Seeing Mark always sparked something in Sarabeth: lust, but also loneliness, too. Starting her car, she thought of Henry and Melissa, the brief time with them and the brief times to come and the void that would follow.
My grandparents’ backyard.
What did that mean to Melissa? What did Swarthmore mean? To Liz it was the backdrop of early memories, first memories: one having to do with using a big piece of cardboard to slide down a leaf-strewn hill in autumn; another concerning corn on the cob—driving to a farm and buying corn that had just been picked, and Liz’s mother cooking it right away and then serving it to the kids at the picnic table in the backyard, steaming ears of corn dripping with butter in the middle of the afternoon. Some of Liz’s memories were so vivid to Sarabeth, it was as if they were hers.

She turned her phone back on and called Liz, getting the voice mail at home and then trying her cell.

“I was going to call you in maybe twenty minutes!” Liz said by way of answering.

“Beat you to it.”

“I’m in line at the grocery store. Can I call you when I get home?”

“Sure,” Sarabeth chirped, but when she’d stowed her phone, she lowered her forehead and rested it for a moment on the steering wheel.

She started the car and headed home, taking Adeline for no other reason than to pass the Berkeley Bowl. The infamous Berkeley Bowl, where she’d met Billy. She’d spotted him at the heirloom tomatoes—this tall man with small gold glasses and thick, gray-blond hair—and she noticed even before they spoke, before that opening remark of his about the tomato that looked like George Bush, that he wore a wedding ring. She laughed at the tomato—it did have these flaplike things on the sides, like ears—and he mentioned a book his kids had that contained photographs of fruits and vegetables that seemed to have faces.

And then there he was at the baked goods. And then in line at the cashier. It was a hot September day, and there was a fresh juice stand, and they bought smoothies and sat on the curb in front of her car and talked for forty-five minutes while her peach sorbet melted and her free-range chicken got busy welcoming colonies of bacteria.

And he was so interested in her! And he thought her lampshades sounded so cool! They met for coffee a few days later, and for lunch a week after that, and then for sex every Monday noon and Wednesday evening for the next thirteen and a half months.

And then they didn’t. Now they didn’t. It was coming, the anniversary of their breakup. She longed to be someone who could face such a thing with equanimity, who would not joke to her friends, as she had been doing, relentlessly, that when the day came she would mark it somehow: by lighting a candle, calling him, slitting her wrists.

Enough, she thought. Enough.

She was driving. The sky was the intense blue of early autumn, and there were pumpkins on porches—pumpkins already. Halloween was around the corner, and all at once the entire holiday season loomed up on the bare calendar in her mind like a group of massive fortresses coming into view on an otherwise empty horizon.

It came back then, the girl and the woman. Walking in the mist. They were walking
toward
an empty horizon: a horizon that was all mist. She saw them clearly: the girl and the woman walking, and the girl looking up but not speaking, not speaking, never speaking.

3

B
rody worked at a company called Oiron, where he was VP of business development; he’d been on board almost since the beginning, moving from one position to another as the company went public and grew to its current size of five hundred employees spread over three continents. The best-selling product was Parapet, a comprehensive Wi-Fi security system; Oiron was the name of a fortress in France.

It was Friday now, the end of a long week. Brody was in front of his terminal, triaging the afternoon’s e-mails and thinking about tonight, when he and Liz were taking the kids to his favorite restaurant in North Beach, a tiny, crowded place where you could almost taste the garlic from the sidewalk, and the waiters jostled your chair as they passed behind you, and the only difficult moment you could possibly have was choosing from among the twenty-seven different pastas on the menu. He’d discovered it his first year in California; he and a bunch of guys from work had landed there by accident one Saturday night, and his whole concept of Italian food had changed in an instant. He was looking forward to a plate of fettuccine Genovese, the kind with thin slices of potato mixed in with the noodles.

“Dude.”

He looked up and saw Mike Patterson standing in his doorway. Mike was big, maybe six feet five, with thick shoulders and arms—high school football, Brody was pretty sure. Mike was in marketing, where Brody himself had been for years; Brody’d been in on the hire, in fact. Mike was a good guy. Brody and Liz had done dinner out with him and his wife several times.

“Who are you duding, dude?” Brody said.

Mike grinned as he came into Brody’s office. “My brother put his foot down when his kids started calling their mother dude.”

“Joe does that,” Brody said. “‘Mom, dude, will you make some brownies?’”

“And Liz?”

“Liz just laughs. You know how she is.”

Mike had stopped at Brody’s bookcase and was looking at the tennis ball Brody kept on a stand there, a wild shot off Andre Agassi’s racquet during a practice session Brody’d happened by at the U.S. Open one year. Mike said, “I’m still shocked you stole this.”

“‘Kept it,’” Brody said. “I ‘kept’ it.”

“Sure you did, pal. So are you coming?”

“Where would that be?”

Mike mimed drinking something, and Brody looked at his watch: late on Friday afternoons the helium balloon that was Oiron’s usual corporate urgency started making its way to the floor, and to cushion the landing there was generally a beer bash in the cafeteria. “Whoa,” he said, “it’s later than I thought.”

“Brody, it’s not about time,” Mike said, “it’s about the change in synergy. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

“Up yours.”

“HR’s going to have to schedule another sensitivity-training retreat for us if you don’t shape up.”

Brody rolled his eyes. “Promise you’ll shoot me if that happens.”

“I would, but I’ve already got someone lined up to shoot me.”

Downstairs, there were already several dozen people gathered, talking mostly in their work groups, though some ventured laterally across department lines. At the keg Mike drew Brody a cup of beer, then gestured with his head that he was going to try to get to the food. Brody moved to the wall. The beer was thin and foamy and almost tasteless: terrible but in its own way also delicious. He drank half of it in a few gulps, liking the way it felt both warm and cool as it spread through him.

“Brody Mackay, how goes it?”

He turned and there was Russ Conklin, holding not beer but, as was his custom, a bottle of Odwalla carrot juice. Russ was short and muscle-bound and perfectly bald, his head shaved where hair still grew. He was Oiron’s founder and CEO, not to mention Brody’s boss, but Brody went way back with him, to when they’d been in side-by-side cubes at Wells Fargo twenty-odd years ago. Long after they’d both moved on, Russ had tracked Brody down at another start-up and sold him on Oiron in a five-minute phone call. Actually, Russ had sold Brody on Russ, and it had turned out to be a very good buy.

“Just fine,” Brody said. “And yourself?”

“Very well. Give me the ten thousand foot on your conversation with Harker.”

Harker was the head of I.S. Solutions, a small software company with some very clever algorithms for the detection and blocking of the latest sniffer devices. Brody’d spent an hour on the phone with him that morning, working out the details of a licensing agreement.

“He’s sending it to his legal guy on Monday,” Brody said.

Russ raised his juice bottle in a toast. “What I like to hear.” He took a swallow and said, “So what are you up to this weekend?”

“Not much. How ’bout you? Cycling to Santa Cruz? Parasailing at Stinson Beach?”

Russ smiled. He’d gotten divorced two years ago, and since then he’d been incredibly active, departing from his workaholic ways for weekend scuba trips, helicopter skiing in the Canadian Rockies. He was also dating like crazy, though Brody suspected he was lonely; it was only after his divorce that he’d begun sending e-mails time-stamped at 3:00 a.m. The witching hour, the hour of Ambien and cable TV.

Brody’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket, saw it was home.

Russ clapped his shoulder. “I’ll let you get that.”

Brody stepped away from the crowd and watched as Russ moved to a group from sales. He answered.

“Is it crazy there?” Liz said.

“Not particularly. We’re having our Friday kegger. How’re things there?”

“Fine, but we have a wrinkle for North Beach tonight. Joe’s game got moved to eight a.m. tomorrow. I’m thinking we should put it off.”

“Eight a.m.?”

“I know.”

Actually, Brody enjoyed early morning soccer games; that wasn’t the issue. He said, “Joe doesn’t want to go?”

“Well, he didn’t say so. But you know we wouldn’t get home till eleven or so. He’s got to be at warm-ups at seven.”

“True.”

“So don’t you think?”

Brody considered. Of course it would be best for Joe to get a good night’s sleep, but he and Liz had a history of differing on whether or not best mattered all that much. In the grand scheme of things, how important was it for a thirteen-year-old boy to play a soccer game under optimal conditions? When Brody was a kid playing Little League, his parents had barely known when he had a game, let alone made sure he got enough sleep the night before. This was tricky ground, though, because he didn’t want to seem like—he wasn’t—an uncaring father.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “We’ll do it another time.”

“You sure?”

“Definitely.”

He put his phone away and looked at the crowd. Just opposite him, a trio of engineers peered down at someone’s Palm. They looked as if they’d slept in their clothes, which in fact they might have: there was a big deadline next week, and the feeling of barely controlled frenzy on the third floor was getting stronger with each passing day. It was all Red Bull up there now, and the sharp smells of garlic and sweat. These three guys would each drink a Diet Coke and then go back upstairs, probably be here all weekend. Brody knew that drill inside out: working seventy or eighty hours a week without giving it a second thought because that was what you did if you wanted to go places. Then one day you woke up and went:
Oh. This is my
life
I’m living at this desk.

The morning air was bright, the grass sopping. Brody helped Joe’s coaches drag the goals into place and then watched the boys warm up: stretches, drills, a couple good laps around the field. They were at a park high in the hills, with a clear view west of the coastal range: the rise and rise of its thickly forested flanks. Somehow, you could tell the ocean was right on the other side—maybe because the sky at the top of the mountain was so brilliant. If Liz were along they’d have walked the park’s trails until the game began, but these days she tended to skip the early games—so she’d be home when Lauren got up.

There was this thing Brody did sometimes, thinking about Joe: he ran the movie of Joe’s life, but sped up. It went slippery infant, chubby baby, toddler, truck lover, math guy, smart aleck, athlete. It was Joe-through-the-ages. Like those old Wonder Bread ads from his own childhood: helps build strong bodies twelve ways. And you’d see a flash series of one kid through the years, wearing the same clothes but getting bigger and bigger.

Right now, Joe was all athlete. The game about to begin, Brody watched him jog in place, touch his toes, jog again.
Ready,
he seemed to be saying.
Ready now.

The whistle blew, and Joe leaped into play, running wide and receiving a pass from Trent, then dribbling up the side with the opposition giving chase. Joe had moves—he could dodge and feint—and he was fast on his feet, but near the goal something sometimes took over, a hesitation, a lack of focus, and Brody realized he was holding his breath and let it go in a rush.

He headed toward a couple of the other fathers. “Beautiful morning,” he said.

“Beautiful,” one guy agreed. His son was in the goal, and he seemed to bear some of the tension in his own body: he appeared coiled, ready to spring.

“Got to love these eight a.m. games,” said another. He jiggled the keys in his pocket. “This is my twentieth year doing this,” he added, almost to himself.

Brody had clocked far less than that, but he was pretty sure he was going on a decade. When had Joe started, kindergarten? Back then Brody had never imagined Joe would continue to play year after year, that soccer itself, the blunt, running, back and forth of the game, would so engage him. In the early years it had been as much about the snack as the game—more, probably. He vividly remembered walking across a muddy field—maybe half the size of this one—carrying a huge pink bakery box while Joe charged ahead and called to the other boys, “We brought doughnuts! You can have glazed, cinnamon, or chocolate with sprinkles, but if you have chocolate with sprinkles you have to finish before you get in your car!” Then, when the game was over, the boys crowded around the box and grabbed. Jostling, sweaty, muddy—like pigs in a litter. Brody felt a great kinship with them, intermingled with a kind of finicky adult remonstrance.

After a while it was halftime. Joe stood with his teammates chugging water, his face red as a steak. Brody gave him a thumbs-up, and he smiled and gave Brody a little wave. He was a good boy, a good son. All the previous Joes lived directly under his skin. It was different with Lauren—or maybe Brody was different. He didn’t do the movie thing with her. What he returned to again and again was a certain time in her very young life, when Joe was a newborn, always on Liz’s breast, and he and Lauren were their own pair. It was the era when she liked to clomp around the house in his shoes. He read Dr. Seuss to her and cut up cheese and apples for her to eat. She had a special rubber whale, and she squealed with laughter when he made it swim around at bathtime. He loved to make her laugh, he loved to think that she was thinking. But at night, sitting by her crib for a few minutes once the light was off, he’d watch her little body move around, her rump go into the air, thumb into her mouth, and he’d be nearly breathless with the thought that she was still just a baby. He was afraid he asked too much of her. The urge to protect her was enormous.

In the last seconds of play, Joe scored the game’s winning goal off a pass from his friend Conor, and all the boys pounded one another with excitement. Crowded together afterward, mud spattered and happy, they did their two-four-six-eight for the other team in a near frenzy of exuberance.

Brody waited for Joe to pack up, and they walked to the parking lot. “Did you see Conor?” Joe exclaimed. “He set that up so perfectly.”

“Wouldn’t’ve gone anywhere if you hadn’t been ready.”

Joe grinned, and Brody squeezed the back of his neck, let his hand rest on Joe’s shoulder as they continued to the car.

At home, Liz was at the kitchen table with coffee and the newspaper, her dark hair glinting red and blond in the sunlight coming through the window. She looked over her shoulder, then stood and smiled at Joe. “So?”

“We won, four to three.”

“And guess who scored the winning goal,” Brody said.

“Way to go!” Liz held out her palm for Joe to slap. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

Joe sank onto a chair and peeled off his socks, then unstrapped his shin guards with a groan. His feet were pocked with terry marks, the fine new hairs on his toes sticking to the skin.

Brody looked at the clock: almost ten. “She’s not up yet?”

“Not yet.” Liz bent over Joe and kissed the top of his head. “Teenagers need their sleep,” she murmured into his hair. “In fact, I have a feeling a certain person might crash this afternoon.”

“Mom,” Joe said, but he was smiling.

Once he’d headed upstairs to shower, Brody sat at the table, and all at once the morning caught up with him. There was a dull ache in his right shoulder—his tennis shoulder—and even his legs felt heavy. “Actually I’m beat, too,” he said, and Liz gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Nothing like getting up at six-thirty on a Saturday.”

He smiled back at her, but for a strange moment he felt close to tears: something to do with how tired he was, or perhaps with her kindness. She even looked kind: it was in her mouth, in the unassuming gray of her eyes. The first time he ever saw her, this knockout girl with long legs and great hair and a fantastic smile, standing across a crowded bar in the Marina, what he really thought was: She looks
nice.

He rotated one ankle, then the other. He could do with a shower himself, or a long nap. A long nap with her: the house empty, the two of them lying together. He saw her on top of him, her breasts filling his hands, her face as light as the moon.

“What?” she said. “You OK?”

“Sure. Nothing a cup of coffee won’t fix.”

They both looked at the coffeemaker: empty. “I’ll make a new pot,” she said, but he shook his head.

“Actually, don’t bother. I’m better off without it. Any plans for today?”

“Just Sarabeth coming for dinner.”

“Oh, right.” He’d forgotten about Sarabeth—kind of like forgetting about a dentist appointment. Liz was watching him, and he stretched his arms out in front of him, pulled the paper closer for a glimpse of the headlines. He said, “Hey, maybe I’ll sand that bench today.”