Songs Without Words Read Online Free Page A

and Sarabeth said, “I love this room.” She glanced around and nodded. “You guys have done such a nice job here.”
    It was in fact a very nicely proportioned room, but it was jammed with stuff, and in her mind she erased an overly red armchair and matching ottoman, an étagère displaying a lot of Japanese lacquerware, a framed Rousseau poster, a trendy shag rug.
    “Thanks,” Henry said. “We like it. Although not that much, obviously!”
    “Well,” Sarabeth said, “there comes a point when you’re ready for more…”
    “Space,” Melissa said. “Definitely.”
    They all smiled, and Sarabeth fished for her cell phone, bringing it all the way out of her purse so they could see that she was hitting the power button. She said, “Maybe we could just walk through first?” and with that they were off.
    First was the kitchen, a sunny, remodeled space with a separate eating area on the far side of a peninsula. She imagined clearing the counters, taking the leaf out of the table, bringing in her bentwood chairs. A glass bowl of apples, and she’d be all set.
    Next was the minuscule bathroom, which Jim, her friend and employer, had said was slated for a paint job. After that, all it would need would be neutral towels. And a fresh shower curtain, of course.
    “And here,” Henry said as she stepped back into the hallway, “is the second bedroom, which we use as an office. It’s kind of cluttered, we know.”
    “Cluttered!” Melissa said. “It’s a disaster.”
    Sarabeth averted her eyes as she made for the open doorway. Moving was loss and reinvention and renewal, all at once. And fear. And desire. She felt sometimes that she witnessed moments no outsider should see.
    She also saw rooms—like this one—that implied so much history, contained so many snapshot-studded bulletin boards and Magic Markered boxes, that you couldn’t imagine the inhabitants ever leaving. Under one of three paper-strewn desks, a single Rollerblade was balanced precariously on top of a sewing machine, and she thought that the story of the missing Rollerblade probably had the potential to introduce her to some of the major themes of Melissa’s life.
    They showed her their bedroom last. It was a standard first-house bedroom: very small, mostly bed, with dressers crammed against the available wall space and a chair tucked into one corner. Sarabeth stood just inside the doorway and made a mental list.
    The dressers would go. The chair would go. The framed family photos on the wall between the two windows would go—as would the wedding picture. She skirted the bed (the busy, flowered duvet cover would go) and took a closer look. An outdoor setting, a bower of white roses, Henry and Melissa with their faces together, looking at the camera. He was nice looking, with good skin and hair, and handsome shoulders, though since the taking of this picture he had begun to go heavy through the jaw.
    Stop, she told herself. She could think all she liked about men she met, conflating the best parts of them into some Perfect One, but not even He was who she wanted. Billy was. Still.
    Behind her, Henry cleared his throat. “So I guess we’ll need to get rid of some things?”
    She turned to face them. “Where’d you guys get married?”
    They were both silent for a moment, Melissa’s finger tapping her lips again as she glanced at her husband. “Back east,” she said. “In my grandparents’ backyard.”
    “Where back east?” This was nosy, but Sarabeth was curious.
    “Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. It’s just outside Philadelphia.”
    Sarabeth nodded vaguely, but in fact this was very satisfying: she knew where Swarthmore was and, more to the point, what it was, aside from a college: it was the town where Liz had spent her early childhood.
    But she needed to focus. Jim had told her Henry and Melissa were already in escrow on a huge place in Montclair; they needed to get this house on the market
now.
    “You’ve probably heard Jim talk about a