Songs Without Words Read Free

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    “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