Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

are, then that means the other person automatically isn’t that thing.”
    Liz smiled.
    “What?”
    “I always knew you were the smart one.”
    They went back into the kitchen, and Liz stationed herself at the drainboard, where a pile of washed potatoes waited. She opened a drawer for a peeler, and in no time there were ribbons of potato skin flying into the sink. Sarabeth stood where she could watch.
    “So how is everyone?” Liz said. “How’s Jim? And Esther—you haven’t mentioned her in weeks.”
    Esther was an elderly woman Sarabeth had sort of adopted—or was it Esther who’d adopted Sarabeth? For five years now, Sarabeth had been reading aloud at the Berkeley Center for Integrated Living, a result of one of the fortuitous, strange stories that had supplied her with work, a short-term volunteer position reading to the blind becoming a paid—well, gig, actually. Once a week she carried a book of her own choosing to the Center, and people paid to listen to her read from it. Blind and sighted people. Esther was her favorite: at least eighty, thin as a pack of sticks, and possessed of a lovely, uncanny cheerfulness. Nearly every week she presented Sarabeth with a small gift, usually a few cookies in cellophane, sometimes a worn postcard of a painting she’d seen decades earlier at a museum in Europe. She baked the cookies herself: branny, raisiny cookies that Sarabeth never ate, though she took them home and kept them until she received the next bag.
    “She’s a delight,” Sarabeth said. “She’s so cute—last week she was wearing this red beret.”
    Liz grinned. “My mother got red pants.”
    “Red pants like preppy?”
    “More like hottie. Tight, low-cut velvet. She lost weight in Egypt so she’s buying all these clothes that’ll fit her for like a month.”
    “Now, now.”
    Liz had finished peeling the potatoes, and she set them on a board and cut them into chunks, then put them in a saucepan. She filled the pan with water, swirled it around, dumped it out, and filled it again. There was a reason for this, Sarabeth was sure, but she had no idea what it was.
    On the counter near her elbow there was a piece of binder paper with a drawing of a leaf on it—a marijuanaish-looking leaf, though surely it wasn’t. She held it up for Liz to see. “What’s this?”
    “Looks like something of Lauren’s.”
    That made sense: Lauren was the artist. She was a wonderful artist, in fact—had been since she was little. The leaf was beautifully drawn, the veins faint but exact.
    “Oh, my God!” Sarabeth said. “You know who I just thought of? Do you remember that guy Carl Drake?”
    “Oh, my God!” Liz cried. “I haven’t thought of him in decades!”
    They beamed at each other, Liz’s eyes wide with pleasure, Sarabeth feeling something close to an adrenaline rush. Moments like this with Liz, the retrieval of events buried so long they’d become comedy—who needed sex?
    “What on earth made you think of him?” Liz said.
    “Let me think.”
    What had? He’d been her just-after-college boyfriend—one of her just-after-college boyfriends—and she remembered being in bed with him, how full he was of dirty talk.
Do you like my dick? Does that feel good on your pussy?
What on earth had she been doing with him? Liking his dick, actually. Then one day she realized there was a difference, and she didn’t really like him.
    But why had she thought of him? She thought of his apartment, a tiny chunk of an old house near the Oakland border. His room, which smelled of cigarettes and greasy food. His bed. Then she realized.
    “Marijuana! He had a huge poster of a marijuana leaf over his bed.”
    “Ohhh-K,” Liz said. “And you thought of marijuana because…”
    Sarabeth held up Lauren’s drawing again. “It’s ten o’clock,” she intoned. “Do you know where your child is?”
    Liz laughed. “That’s a
maple
leaf! I wish it were pot.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing,” Liz said, and she