Chapter 1

Six o'clock in the morning. It was one of Liz's favorite times of day: everyone else asleep, Brody still motionless in the bed she'd just left, the kids upstairs, in sleep not teenagers anymore but simply larger versions of their younger, childish selves, who, she could almost believe, would wake and seek her for body comfort, as they used to. They were thirteen and fifteen, but she could still open their doors and look at them sleeping: how Joe lay on his back with half his blankets kicked to the side, his mouth slightly open; how Lauren folded her limbs in close, her head sandwiched between two pillows, a fist curled under her chin.

In the kitchen, Liz spooned coffee into the Krups and leaned in for a whiff of the dark, rich smell. She got out four plates and four juice glasses. Moving to the calendar, she did a quick pro forma check of the day, but she knew: soccer practice for Joe, and Brody home a little on the late side because of his tennis game. Lauren did nothing after school this year, and Liz had taken to planning labor-intensive dinners so she'd be in the kitchen if Lauren wanted her. Jambalaya tonight? She'd go grocery shopping after her yoga class.

Outside, the newspaper lay on the lawn, its plastic wrapper wet with dew. She bent over for it, then looked up and down the street. The houses in this neighborhood were at once ample and modest, with lovingly tended small front yards. Sixteen years ago, buying here had seemed a compromise: it wasn't Palo Alto, but it was nice, and the schools were good, and she and Brody reassured themselves that Palo Alto would still be there when they had more money. Now they had more money, but they stayed. They were comfortable here. It was home.

She left the paper in the kitchen and tiptoed through the bedroom to the bathroom. She loved the first blast of the shower on her face; she opened her mouth and used her hands to cup water at her cheeks, her eyes. She massaged shampoo into her scalp, then turned and let the water course through her hair. When she turned back it beat at her nipples, and she twisted them, felt a tingling between her legs. It had been a while since she and Brody had made love, and she was ready. Was he? They were a little out of sync, she sometimes felt.

In the bedroom she began to dress, opening drawers as quietly as she could, though he was beginning to stir.

"Time is it?" he muttered after a short while.

She turned around, saw he hadn't moved. "About six-thirty."

He raised himself up and looked at her, then sank down and lay on his back. She skirted the bed and sat near him on the edge of the mattress. His chest was bare, and she laid her hand over his breastbone, its bloom of graying hairs.

"OK," he said, covering her hand with his own.

"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...

 

"Songs Without Words is an eloquent, on occasion harrowing account of friendship and its limits, the mind and its fatal fragilities, and the saving graces of human nature. Packer captures mental pathologies exceptionally well and writes beautifully about despair and love and how they travel together throughout a lifetime."

 

"A hauntingly believable portrait of grief. . . . [Packer] shows us that grief is not, for better or for worse, a solitary affair. . . . Slowly and carefully, Packer shows her characters putting their lives back together after a traumatizing blow. . . . The two old friends' moving reconciliation closes a quiet narrative whose emotions, we come to realize, run deep and true. . . . Commendably ambitious and ultimately rewarding."

 

"Welcome back to Packer country, a richly psychological terrain where finding the balance between responsibility to others and obligation to oneself is never obvious or easy. . . . Engrossing, forgiving and quietly wise, Songs never makes a false step as Packer keeps both the pages and her readers' minds turning until the very end."

 

"As in The Dive From Clausen's Pier, Packer makes the ripples from one act so involving, you can't pull away."

 

"A richly nuanced meditation on the place of friendship in women's lives. . . . Packer gets deep into the perspectives of Liz, Sarabeth and Lauren, and follows out their conflicts with an unsentimental sympathy."

 

"Packer writes about adult female friendship with a nuanced understanding of its emotional intensity. . . . One of Packer's strengths as a writer is her ability to subtly shift tone and voice to bring us into the interior of very different characters. The narrative moves with ease."

 

"A close and careful look at the bonds of friendship. . . . It's all about the relationships among the characters, and Packer can be quite astute in showing us how they behave, and how they see the world. She's especially good describing unspoken thoughts."

 

"Subtle and complex. It's a compelling family drama about friendship, the past, guilt and unconscious patterns set in childhood. What's most impressive about Songs is Packer's ability to set a story in the wealthy and beautiful suburbs of San Francisco and make her characters' suffering authentic. . . . Packer effectively conveys the downward spiral of her thoughts and her growing reservoir of self-hate and disordered thinking. This is an excellent rendering of adolescent depression, female-style. . . . Packer makes us understand why life is simply harder for some people."

 

"Ambitious . . . [This] sensitive novel should appeal to fans of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold."

 

"Friendship between women can be a complex thing, with break-ups, make-ups and heartache to rival that of any romantic union. Ann Packer's Songs Without Words expertly captures the intricacies of this relationship. . . . Packer writes with unsentimental realism. . . . It is a credit to Packer that the reader might not always root for the women's friendship (the connecting link in the book, the one that affects all four characters) to survive. . . . Packer resists the urge to provide simple answers, which makes for a compelling novel."

 

"Readers will be pleased to find Packer's remarkable talent for characterization in the pages of her second novel, Songs Without Words. . . . In this novel, commonplace events and everyday gestures reveal not only sorrow, but the complex, interior lives of characters. There is no heavy-handed foreshadowing by the author. Instead, every exchange between characters, each fleeting doubt or frail hope, is given equal weight. Relationships fray and falter, love is rekindled or lost, often surprising the characters themselves, and the reader. . . . Lauren's sections are pitch-perfect. . . . It is Lauren who gives this novel its enormous heart."

 

"Packer knows just how to make a story build: the novel reveals a sure sense of pace and pitch, a brilliant ear for character . . . a searching emotional generosity."

 

"Intricately detailed, deeply felt, compelling and utterly surprising. . . . Wonderfully satisfying."

 

"Gracefully written and provocative. . . . An elegant book."

 

"In quiet but beautiful prose, Packer tells a complex and subtly constructed story of friendship, love, and the hold the past has on the present. This is the sort of book one reads dying to know what happens to the characters, but loves for its wisdom: it sees the world with more clarity than you do."

 

"[Packer's] characters seem observed rather than invented, and capable of mistakes that the author may never have intended. The result is genuine suspense."

 

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer
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