Songs Without Words (Random House Large Print) - Softcover

Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories. She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in northern California with her family.

www.annpacker.com

Chapter 1

Six o’clock in the morning. It was one of Liz’s favorite times of day: everyone else asleep, Brody still motionless in the bed she’d just left, the kids upstairs, in sleep not teenagers anymore but simply larger versions of their younger, childish selves, who, she could almost believe, would wake and seek her for body comfort, as they used to. They were thirteen and fifteen, but she could still open their doors and look at them sleeping: how Joe lay on his back with half his blankets kicked to the side, his mouth slightly open; how Lauren folded her limbs in close, her head sandwiched between two pillows, a fist curled under her chin.

In the kitchen, Liz spooned coffee into the Krups and leaned in for a whiff of the dark, rich smell. She got out four plates and four juice glasses. Moving to the calendar, she did a quick pro forma check of the day, but she knew: soccer practice for Joe, and Brody home a little on the late side because of his tennis game. Lauren did nothing after school this year, and Liz had taken to planning labor-intensive dinners so she’d be in the kitchen if Lauren wanted her. Jambalaya tonight? She’d go grocery shopping after her yoga class.

Outside, the newspaper lay on the lawn, its plastic wrapper wet with dew. She bent over for it, then looked up and down the street. The houses in this neighborhood were at once ample and modest, with lovingly tended small front yards. Sixteen years ago, buying here had seemed a compromise: it wasn’t Palo Alto, but it was nice, and the schools were good, and she and Brody reassured themselves that Palo Alto would still be there when they had more money. Now they had more money, but they stayed. They were comfortable here. It was home.

She left the paper in the kitchen and tiptoed through the bedroom to the bathroom. She loved the first blast of the shower on her face; she opened her mouth and used her hands to cup water at her cheeks, her eyes. She massaged shampoo into her scalp, then turned and let the water course through her hair. When she turned back it beat at her nipples, and she twisted them, felt a tingling between her legs. It had been a while since she and Brody had made love, and she was ready. Was he? They were a little out of sync, she sometimes felt.

In the bedroom she began to dress, opening drawers as quietly as she could, though he was beginning to stir.

“Time is it?” he muttered after a short while.

She turned around, saw he hadn’t moved. “About six-thirty.”

He raised himself up and looked at her, then sank down and lay on his back. She skirted the bed and sat near him on the edge of the mattress. His chest was bare, and she laid her hand over his breastbone, its bloom of graying hairs.

“OK,” he said, covering her hand with his own.

“OK,” she said with a smile.

She left him and went upstairs to the kids. Lauren was likely to be awake already, and Liz hesitated, then turned the doorknob slowly. She pushed the door open but waited a moment before moving over the threshold.

Lauren was on her back, looking at the door. It seemed to Liz that she had been waiting for this moment, had even girded herself for it: pulling the covers all the way to her chin, making sure her head was in the very center of her pillow. She stared hard at Liz but didn’t speak.

“Morning, sweetie,” Liz said, but still Lauren didn’t speak, didn’t react at all. Something was going on with her these days, Liz didn’t know what. It was almost as if the last three years had never happened, and she was still twelve: sullen and aggrieved. Though Friday night she’d abruptly changed her mind about spending Saturday in Berkeley with some friends, and Liz knew that at twelve Lauren never would have canceled anything involving even one other girl.

“Almost time to get up,” Liz said now.

“I know,” Lauren said with a sneer. “I’m not stupid.”

Liz pulled the door to and headed for Joe’s room. Lauren’s tone seemed to have lodged inside her: she felt it harden like a fast-drying coat of shellac on her lungs. Outside Joe’s room she took a deep, slow breath to break it up.

Long ago she’d replaced Joe’s curtains with blackout shades, and it was very dark in his room, the only light coming from the hallway behind her. She crossed to his bed and sat down. Already he’d turned off the alarm clock that he set, every night, for six-thirty. He was crafty, never just hitting the snooze button but actually sliding the setting to off.

“Joe,” she said. His head was turned to the wall, and she put a hand on his shoulder and shook it a little. “Joe.”

He burrowed deeper, and as always she felt torn: she wanted to adjust the covers over him, to encourage his sleep, make his bed the nicest place possible; and she wanted, needed, to get him up.

She shook his shoulder again. “Joe.”

“I’m awake.”

“Right.”

“I am. I swear.”

She patted his shoulder and left the room, knowing she’d come again in five minutes. She tried hard to make them independent, but there was a cost to her, and some things she couldn’t give up. Yet.

In the kitchen she began breakfast. She sliced a pear into a bowl of blackberries, unwrapped a loaf of challah, and cut it into thick slices. She put jam and honey on the table, then went back to Joe.

“It’s time,” she said to his sleeping body.

He hunkered farther, bringing the covers over his face.

“It’s time,” she said again, shaking his shoulder. “It’s almost seven.”

“Urf,” he moaned, but the position of his body changed, and after a while she could tell he was awake. “No,” he said.

“I’m afraid so.” She tweaked his foot and then left the room and headed toward Lauren’s nearly closed door, but before she could speak Lauren’s voice came at her, brusque and preemptive: “Mom, I’m up!”

Liz retreated. Down in the kitchen again, she put challah slices in the toaster and poured herself a second cup of coffee. She sometimes regretted the second cup at yoga, but she missed it too much when she skipped it.

In a few minutes Lauren came into the kitchen. She moved slowly, and her unbrushed hair fell in clumps past her shoulders, collected in the hood of her oversize gray sweatshirt. “Sweetie,” Liz said without meaning to, and Lauren gave her a sour look.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hi.” Liz put a second round of bread in the toaster and watched in her peripheral vision as Lauren moved around the table and pulled out her chair. When the toaster popped, Liz buttered the new slices, put them all on a plate, and took them to the table. “Here we go.”

Lauren reached for a piece of toast and took a bite, and Liz thought, You’re welcome. Then she wished she could unthink it. She hated how pissy she felt—it wasn’t the kind of mother she wanted to be.

Brody came in, dressed in a white shirt and tie, and she remembered that he’d mentioned a meeting out of the office today. He passed close by her on his way to the coffeemaker, and she caught a whiff of his soap smell, watched as he found a mug and pulled the coffeepot out of its base. His nice broad back seemed broader in the white shirt. He turned and faced her for his first sip, and she thought about how much it had always pleased her to see him in a dress shirt and tie. That’s because he reminds you of your father, Sarabeth had remarked about this, in her usual perspicacious way.

Now Joe arrived, reaching for a slice of challah before he’d even sat down, then consuming it in two bites and chasing it with a large gulp of juice. He’d shot up over the summer, and he was gangly now, with enormous wrists. She took her seat and watched as he helped himself to fruit, took more toast, pulled his juice glass a little closer: gathered what he needed to stock himself for the day.

He looked up at her as he stabbed a pear slice. “Are you driving us to practice?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I’ll drop your gear at Trent’s if I’m not. Are you packed?”

“How is our friend Trent?” Brody said as he came over and sat down. “That was quite a play he made on Saturday. That kid can kick.” He unfolded his napkin and then unfolded it again and tucked a corner into his collar. He turned to Lauren and said, “Did you know that the entire purpose of the necktie used to be to protect the shirt? Now we have to protect the protector!”

“That’s the fullback’s job in soccer,” Joe said, and Brody winked at Liz as he turned back to Joe.

“You’re quick this morning.”

“No, I’m not,” Joe said, but he smiled with pleasure, a wash of color high on each cheek.

Liz looked at Lauren. She was spaced out, her expression vacant as she played with one of the many thick silver rings she wore. Let’s try again, Liz thought, but she wasn’t sure how.

“You could get one of those plastic ties,” Joe said. “Like for a Halloween costume.”

“Maybe I will,” Brody said. “That could solve all kinds of problems.” He smiled at Liz again and reached for the challah, and she saw there was only one piece left.

She said, “Oops, sorry, I’ll get some more of that.”

He shrugged. “I can.”

“No, no, I will.” She slid the last slice onto his plate and went back to the toaster, thinking for a moment that this wasn’t the best model for Lauren—or Joe, for t...