Songs Without Words Read Online Free Page B

house’s bones,” she said, “and this house has great bones.” She paused for a moment. “Katharine Hepburn bones,” she added, and they smiled on cue, as nearly everyone did; how embarrassing that she recycled her jokes, but there it was.
    “I’d like to make some suggestions,” she went on, “that will enable potential buyers to really see that, but before I start I’d like to hear your thoughts about how you want to present the house, what you’re thinking we might do to make it show well.”
    Melissa nodded happily. It was so easy and important to ask this question, though when Sarabeth first started this work she didn’t get the emotional part at all. Early on, she nearly cost Jim a client: a middle-aged woman with a collection of frogs to rival—well, the amphibian population of a hell of a big pond. This woman had plush frogs and ceramic frogs and frogs made of wood and metal and fabric. They were everywhere. Sarabeth’s very first comment was that they should be removed, and the woman went into a great huff, saying she didn’t see the value of taking away the house’s charm, and did Sarabeth even understand what made a place appealing, did she even know? Jim happened to be there, and when he and Sarabeth exchanged a look—just a quick, careful look, a tiny posy of a look given their vast garden—the woman said she needed to rethink everything, selling at all, moving, really her whole life. In the end the house was listed; the frogs were boxed and put in storage, the bad furniture was removed, and Sarabeth did her thing with window treatments and sisal; but, oh, it had been a warning. Jim was the most loyal guy she knew, but he’d been on edge, and she’d wondered if their old friendship would depend on their new business arrangement and not vice versa.
    Melissa said she thought the living room was pretty much OK, the kitchen OK, the office—she and Henry exchanged a glance—a bit crowded, and the bedroom OK. Sarabeth spoke generally about neutralizing the furnishings and opening up the rooms so they could be more clearly seen, and then she told them a very few of the specifics she was considering. Most of it she would save for the next visit, when they’d have begun to think editorially themselves, which would allow them to feel that even her ideas were theirs.
    She said goodbye and went out to her car, but as she drove down the street she found that she was worrying a little. One of the few things she had suggested removing was the étagère in the living room, and as Melissa passed it on the way to the front door, she stopped and micro-adjusted the position of a glossy black platter. Sarabeth hoped she wasn’t hurt.
    Next on her schedule was Emeryville, Mark Murphy’s shop. She turned on the radio, and there was a woman’s voice, singing:
Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
She turned the radio back off, but the silenced song had taken hold, and in her mind she heard
Na na na na, na na nah na, na na na na na na, I grow misty just holding your hand.
She imagined a little girl walking hand in hand with a woman, and it was the day that was misty. They were both wearing dark knee-length coats, as in the sixties. It was like a scene from a movie, piano music on the sound track: you saw them from the back, and you knew they were walking toward something scary or dangerous or sad. Switch to the girl’s point of view as she looks up: the woman’s face is pale. The girl looks for another moment, then focuses on her feet, the step, step, step of her black maryjanes.
    Sarabeth gunned the engine as she merged onto the freeway. It was late morning on a Tuesday, not much traffic. How she lived made sense in a certain way, the bits and pieces of work she did that added up to a living—a life. Sometimes, though, like now, the energy it took to haul herself from place to place seemed out of reach.
    Mark Murphy’s shop was in a refurbished warehouse in the industrial part of Emeryville.