The Happy Hour Choir (19 page)

Chapter 22

T
he next Sunday I considered faking my own death to get out of playing piano at the church. How in heaven's name was I supposed to pretend that things were okay between me and Luke?

I'd chickened out of telling the Happy Hour Choir what happened with Derek the intern. I'd told Tiffany, though, certain that she would tell anyone else who would listen because she was so indignant on my behalf.

“Beulah Lou, time to go!”

I plodded down the stairs in the lowest-cut sundress I had, halfheartedly hoping Ginger would send me back upstairs and not let me come back down.

She didn't say a word.

At the church, we had to park on the outer edges of the parking lot. “Hey, Tiff, what's this all about?”

She offered me a hand, and I helped her slide out of the backseat. She tried to hide her blush by walking around the car to help Ginger. “I don't know.”

“Well, I know you're a horrible liar.”

Once we had Ginger in the choir loft, Tiffany turned me toward the congregation and faced the wall while she spoke softly in my ear. “The flower shop is next door to the beauty parlor, and I heard that Goat Cheese has been talking about the choir, telling everyone they need to come see us. Then Miss Lottie has been telling anyone who will listen that you and Luke are an item.”

My stomach bottomed out around my toes.

“I don't think her rumors have done what she intended,” Tiffany continued before I could stop her. “Kari, for one, said she thought the two of you would make a handsome couple.”

My heart knocked around in my chest.
Maybe we would've made a handsome couple if I weren't so screwed up.
As I stood there willing my body to continue with the basic function of breathing, I realized there were more people than I could count.

“Tiffany,” I whispered. “All those people are here to see the choir?”

She bit her lip as she nodded yes.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to smile. “Then let's give them something to remember.”

She took her seat, and I laid the jazz thickly to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Half the congregation sang softly along with the glory, glory, hallelujahs. If Luke minded I had just called an audible with the prelude, he didn't say anything.

Sam provided the perfect touch to “The Church in the Wild-wood” and, blessedly, kept the kazoo out of it. Tiffany and I sang an even better version of “Ivory Palaces” for the offertory than we had in practice. Then Luke started to read from the same passage about David and Bathsheba that the Bible study had covered that week.

It was all I could do to school my face into indifference. I couldn't hear his words for analyzing that night six ways from Sunday. Had he been repulsed? Had I given the wrong answer? What was the right answer? If my heart hadn't been in the right place, then where could I put it? My mind went around and around in circles, and I tried not to blush too fiercely when Jason Utley caught me daydreaming instead of starting the invitation.

As the church sang about being weary and heavyhearted, I led them through their paces. I refused to turn around to watch Luke shaking hands at the door, but I could hear a crowd—it had to be more than fifty people. And was that the giggle of a child? There were children at County Line?

Well, Luke had what he wanted, what he needed.

I slipped out the back door trying not to be so sad that what he needed hadn't included me. I didn't need him, either. I'd made it just fine before he came along, and I would have my hands full with Tiffany and Ginger.

 

The next month passed in a flurry of taking care of Ginger and playing at The Fountain. Luke and I managed to be cordial with each other, but he didn't request that I stay for Bible study anymore. Even though staying after choir was the last thing I wanted, I irrationally wanted him to ask me to stay. He'd finally realized he was better off without me, the very thing I'd tried to tell him at the beginning.

Most days Ginger felt okay, but there were bad days, too. I had the feeling the only thing really keeping her with us was her desire to see Tiffany through her pregnancy. Well, that and her innate stubbornness. If the doctor said she only had six months to live, then she was going to live seven just to spite him.

Then somewhere at the beginning of August she had to go back to the hospital because the blood thinner that had cleared the clot from her spleen then caused her spleen to rupture. She joked with the doctor, saying, “Can't you folks fix one problem without causing another?” She was less forgiving of the hospital food, though, and threatened to launch a campaign for caffeinated coffee on all morning trays.

She came home mid-August and had a few days where she went on a ridiculous cleaning spree. Tiffany and I had to practically tie her down to keep her from hurting herself. We couldn't stop her as she worked in the little planter boxes on the front porch or started freezing meals for when she was gone. One day, I even caught her putting labels on the backs of pictures, plates, and other household items. I didn't let her see me, but when I came back later to find she was dividing up her possessions and marking to whom they should go, I ran upstairs and cried yet again. I sobbed into my pillow so no one could hear me because I didn't want to be the one that sent that first domino of sorrow toppling over.

At the end of August, she started to walk with a limp. The doctors determined she had developed a tumor on her spine, a tumor that was pinching the nerves of her right leg. I begged her to take treatment to ease the pain. She refused. Her only request? She wanted to go to choir practice then stick around for the Sinners to Saints Bible study.

I couldn't tell her no for a couple of reasons. First, she was getting so thin I was beginning to fear I might lose her at any moment. I wanted to keep her in my sight at all times even if it meant facing Luke at Bible study. Also, I couldn't tell her no without admitting that Luke and I weren't on the best of terms. Despite my best efforts, I only held her off until early September just after Labor Day.

She used her cane to enter The Fountain. “Never thought I'd see the day I came in here,” she said.

“That makes two of us,” I muttered under my breath.

“Quit holding my arm. That's what I've got this cane for.”

I let go, and she trudged across the room, her leg obviously hurting her. She sat down behind Tiffany. Sam sat down on her left. “Hey, there, tall boy!”

“Hey, Miss Ginger,” he said. “Can I get you a beer?”

“Yes, you can. I don't believe I've ever had a beer, and I think I'll try one before, well, you know. Not getting any younger here. What do you suggest?”

“Uh, Heineken?”

“Would you mind getting me one of those?” Ginger batted her eyelashes, and Sam jumped to his feet as if Scarlett O'Hara herself had sent him on a sacred mission. He procured a Heineken longneck and popped off the cap before handing it to her.

Ginger looked at the bottle, smelled its contents, then held it out with her face scrunched up in disgust. She yelled up to me at the piano. “Do you really drink this stuff?”

“Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Go ahead and taste it. If you don't like it, I'll drink it.”

“I wish I could have a beer.” Tiffany sighed mournfully.

“Oh, you're underage anyway, so quit your bitching,” Ginger said to a collective gasp.

Sam spewed his beer.

“It's only a few more months.” She studied the label of her beer.

“But then there'll be breast-feeding and—” Tiffany began.

Sam almost spewed again, but Ginger didn't miss a beat as she switched from battle-ax to grandmother and gave Tiffany a gentle pat on the knee. “But it will all be worth it. That much I promise you.”

Tiffany struggled to turn sideways and placed a hand on Ginger's arm. She teared up for no reason, as she'd been doing often the past few weeks. “Miss Ginger, then you drink and enjoy that beer for me.”

“Cheers!” Ginger turned the bottle up and chugged more than she should have. As a result she belched loudly and, instead of apologizing, said, “That tastes like shit.”

The entire Happy Hour Choir hooted and hollered, really rolling in the aisles. Old Mac laughed so hard he had to wipe away tears, and the Gates brothers were both about to bust a gut. Ginger's eyes twinkled, and she took another swig. “Hey, Beulah, I think I should have been coming to these practices. These folks are fun.”

I grinned. “I told you they weren't so bad.”

“No, but the beer is.” Ginger took another drink, then looked at the label and up at Bill. “Maybe I'm not a beer drinker. Bill?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Bill waddled over so quickly he lost his breath.

“Think you might be able to get liquor in here? I've heard it's quicker.”

Bill's eyes opened the widest I'd ever seen them. When he recovered, he shook his head ruefully. “My permit only allows beer and wine.”

“Then for heaven's sake, you need to get some wine. That would make more sense for the Happy Hour Choir anyway. Wasn't Jesus's first miracle turning water into wine?”

Bill took off his Co-op cap and started opening and closing the plastic adjustable band at the back. “What kind of wine would you like, Miss Ginger?”

“I don't know, Bill. I used to drink the hard stuff, personally. But that was only until Beulah came along. All I know is there has to be a wine out there somewhere that would taste better than this beer.”

“Maybe you need to try another brand,” Bill said. He brought her a Bud Light, a Coors, a Miller Light, and finally a Corona.

“I guess this'll have to do,” Ginger said after the swig of Corona, not realizing she was too buzzed to tell the difference among the beers by that point. “But next week you need to have some wine for me to try.” She wagged her finger at him, and he took a step back.

“Yes, ma'am.”

I desperately needed to regain order. “All right, y'all, now we're running behind schedule. Open your hymnals to ‘Yield Not to Temptation.' ”

“Do we have to sing this again?” Tiffany's objection surprised me.

“What?”

“We've already sung this song three times this month, Beulah. What's the deal?”

Apparently, I was trying to remind myself not to ever yield to temptation again. That and I obviously had some “dark passions” to subdue. “Okay, okay. Let me think for a minute.”

I closed my eyes, but all I could think of was Luke. At the thought of him, all I could think of was temptation. And the need to not yield.

“How about ‘What a Friend'?” Ginger belched but remembered to excuse herself that time.

“Thank Go—thank goodness.” Pete Gates looked relieved, too. Apparently, no one liked “Yield Not to Temptation”— probably because we were all bona fide experts at yielding and not so good at the not.

We played through Ginger's suggestion then we practiced a couple of other numbers. We still needed an invitation, though, and Sinners to Saints was set to start in five minutes.

“Okay, now all we need is an invitation. Let me think. Let me think . . .”

“ ‘Pass Me Not'?” I looked up to see Luke in the doorway with his Bible tucked under his arm. I sucked in a breath. I could have asked him the same.

Everyone turned to look at Luke. He hadn't made a song suggestion in months. My heart did a little dip. Not only did Luke not want to have anything to do with me, but he had also proven he didn't need me. He'd just picked the perfect invitation.

“You heard the man.” I cleared my throat and choked back tears I was determined not to let fall. “A quick run-through and y'all can get to Bible study.”

And a quick run-through was all they needed. The Happy Hour Choir kept getting better and better. I had taught all of them the basics of reading music by then, and I caught myself thinking about what equipment it would take to make a CD. I shook those thoughts off. I didn't know where to begin with such things.

Sometimes I would catch Tiffany sitting at the piano with the Gates brothers as they picked through their parts. Sam usually watched from the sidelines. I liked to think he was gathering his courage to take a turn at the piano beside her, but sometimes he would still gaze at me. Increasingly, that gaze grew puzzled instead of interested. After all, Miss Georgette and Miss Lottie had made sure everyone knew about my and Luke's “torrid love affair.” Fortunately for Luke, such gossip had led to a new record attendance at County Line, not the opposite.

When I quit playing piano, my choir members shifted from singing to talking. They laughed at jokes and teased each other raucously. From the risers I had that awful outside-looking-in feeling again, especially as others wandered in. Goat Cheese had become a regular, and Bill's wife, Marsha, sometimes came to knit while she listened.

“Going to stay tonight?” Luke asked without looking up from where he had laid his Bible. I glanced up in surprise. He looked thinner, gaunter. Or was it just my imagination hoping he was pining for me?

“Yeah, Ginger and Tiffany need a ride.” I immediately regretted the words because my tone suggested I was mad at him when I was really still mad at myself.

“I've been hoping you'd come back.”

His eyes met mine. I felt a little flutter of hope but didn't dare let it free.

“Beulah, come sit down here with me and help me drink some of these extra beers. No sense in letting them go to waste.”

At that moment, for one split second, Ginger Belmont was not my favorite person, but the sensation passed. I picked up the Bud Light and made a note to pay for our beer as well as put a generous tip in the jar on Bill's counter.