Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

Author:Ann Packer [Packer, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 0375727175
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2007-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The evening was slow for Brody, creeping. At dinner Liz worked way too hard to keep a conversation going, and as a result every word she uttered struck him as false. Christmas was coming! Robert and Marguerite were going to be in a big concert! Joe’s soccer team had won an invitation to a tournament over winter break! And of course they were going to Tahoe!

After dinner, Joe asked for a ride to Trent’s, and Brody took him; he and Liz had agreed in advance that forced family time would be a mistake. Liz had rented some movies, and when Brody got back, Lauren chose one for the three of them to watch.

Much later, after Joe was home again and everyone else was asleep, Brody left his laptop, where he’d been trying to catch up on work, and made his way to the garage. He’d taken to leaving his tennis shorts and shoes in there, a change he felt sure Liz had noticed, though she hadn’t remarked on it. They were on a shelf above the dryer, and he reached for them, shucked off his khakis, and pulled them on. He slid his feet into his tennis shoes without bothering to change his socks. Dark socks for tennis—what an iconoclast he was.

“Where are you going?”

He turned, and there was Lauren, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Honey,” he said. “Gosh, I didn’t hear you.”

She was flushed and tousle haired, her nightgown sweeping the floor.

He said, “Can’t you sleep?”

“I was thirsty.”

“Want some water?”

“What are you doing?”

There was nothing for it: he had his shorts on, his shoes. “I’m just going to hit some tennis balls.”

“In the middle of the night?”

He turned away. The garage was a mess, or seemed so because of the bench Liz had abandoned, which sat on newspaper in the middle of the floor, partially painted, perhaps never to be completed. One evening he’d brought it up, meaning to offer help of some kind—a hand in moving it out of the way if nothing else—but she’d seemed furious at the mention of it, and he hadn’t gone on.

“Yeah,” he said to Lauren. “In the middle of the night.”

“Where can you hit tennis balls in the middle of the night?”

The realization of what he was going to have to say hit him hard. He did not want to do this, did not want to utter the word “school.”

Instead he said, “What would you like to drink?”

She lifted her shoulders. Her nightgown, he realized, was a castoff of Liz’s—it was possible he himself had given it to Liz one Christmas. “Lanz” came the brand name out of nowhere. He remembered now that Liz had worn these nightgowns—Lanz nightgowns—for years, so unsexy they were almost sexy. A longing for her swept over him, but in her presence these days he felt something like its opposite. Maybe not revulsion, but something close.

“Juice?” he said to Lauren.

“I’ll get it.”

She moved away from the doorway, and he hesitated a moment, the darkness outside the garage calling to him with its promises.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.