Songs Without Words Read Online Free PDF

the shop. Past the display area, he opened a door and led her into a dark workroom. “Come on,” he said, crooking his finger. In the back, against the wall, was…a canoe? He stepped to the loading dock and hit a button, and a grayish fluorescent light flickered on. He looked up at the blinking panels. “Irony of ironies.”
    Now she could see: a canoe, yes, but not just any canoe. It was beautiful, long and sleek and glossy, made of a light wood but with a darker wood inlaid into a geometric design on the front. “Wow,” she said.
    “Pretty, huh?”
    “So business is good?”
    “I try to do something nice for myself every once in a while.”
    She walked the length of the canoe, then walked back. “When’d you get it?”
    “It was just delivered this morning. You’re the first to see it.”
    At this she looked away from him. She squatted, and when she ran her fingertips over the seams around the inlaid area, there wasn’t the slightest alteration in how the wood felt.
    “Where do you go canoeing?” she said.
    “I tend to like rivers.”
    She couldn’t tell if this was snide or not. “You know, I should actually get going, but thanks for the look. It’s beautiful.”
    He said, “Sacramento River, Feather River. Or if I have more time I go up to Oregon.” He watched her in an intent, focused way, and she wanted to say:
OK, you win, I’m not woman enough for you, buddy.
Instead she said, “Does Mary like canoeing?”
    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