The Happy Hour Choir (5 page)

I blinked twice. Handbells seemed like a ridiculous waste of money to me. We already had a piano and an organ, but I didn't need to waste my time or what little breath I could catch arguing the point with him. Let him roast all summer if they meant that much to him. “Suit yourself.”

“I'm going to need some songs on grace. Want to read the sermon to see what I'm talking about?”

No, I want to know what your exercise regimen is and if I can come watch.
“No, thanks. Let's see, grace . . .”

A bead of sweat fell from his forehead onto an envelope he was about to open, and he hastily brushed it away. When my fingers twitched to help him out with that, I decided I didn't need to be in a room alone with him.

“I think it's actually cooler outside. Want to move this conversation to the oak tree out front?”

“You go ahead, and I'll be there in a minute.” He frowned at the letter he held in his hands.

Once outside I could breathe easier, which said a lot for the sad state of the church. Didn't Luke realize he was never going to get the building cool enough in time for Sunday? Whatever. That was his problem. And it gave me a good excuse to wear my favorite spaghetti-strap sundress to church, too.

Underneath the oak, I sat at one of three old picnic tables to think about grace.

Grace was the girl's name I'd picked out.

For a brief moment I remembered New Orleans and pressing a hand to my rounded belly while standing shoulder to shoulder at Preservation Hall. That was about a month after Ginger had taken me in, and she was sick and tired of the bad attitude and the stomping around. She'd put me in the car, and we didn't say a word other than “I have to pee” until we reached the outskirts of New Orleans.

“What's all this about?” I'd asked in a surly teenage tone that Ginger didn't in the least deserve.

“Something I think you need to see,” she finally said as we pulled up to the curb of an aging but elegant hotel that overlooked the streetcar line. Ginger passed the valet her keys, and I gawked. I'd never seen a real life valet before. She even let another uniformed man get the bags out of the trunk, as though letting someone else handle her luggage was the most natural thing in the world.

“What could there possibly be here that I couldn't see at home?” My question trailed off as I looked all around me at the faded opulence. Once upon a time, this hotel had really been something.

“We both need an attitude adjustment,” Ginger had said primly as she took the key and led me to the elevator.

After a nap, she took me outside to catch the streetcar, and we rocked and clanked our way to Bourbon Street. Warm jazz and raucous laughter oozed out of dingy buildings into the street as day faded into night. Ginger took my hand and pulled me to the middle of the street as I gaped at a swing with fake legs above a doorway. Everywhere people laughed, danced, and drank.

Up until that point, I'd only known Ginger as the prim and proper lady who sat beside me for years of piano lessons. The faraway expression she'd once worn was gone, and her eyes twinkled as she led me through unbridled revelry.

We waited in a long line, and my lower back began to hurt. I didn't want to say anything, though, because I wanted to know more about this Ginger who nonchalantly tipped valets and waltzed down Bourbon Street like she knew exactly where she was going.

Finally, we shuffled inside. At first I was disappointed. The room had no air-conditioning, no decoration, and precious few seats. The grizzled musicians appeared with the air that
they
were doing
us
the favor despite the fact we'd paid them.

When they began to play, I realized they were.

They played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” in a way I'd never heard it before. Clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and banjo played over, under, and around each other in a beautiful chaos, then gave way to a solo from each player. The pianist plunked keys with steady confidence, helping the drummer keep time. We listened to a handful of New Orleans classics, then filed out and came back in for more.

Ginger made a request, again flashing cash.
Who is this woman?
I wondered. At the end of that set, they played “Amazing Grace,” and it all clicked for the Baptist preacher's girl that there was a whole world beyond what I'd always known. For that one moment in time, I could believe in a world where good and bad lived side by side. For that moment, I believed we could all tamp down the bad a little more and let the good rise to the top. For that moment, I was ready to try again, to try things Ginger's way.

We never talked about what happened that weekend in New Orleans, but Ginger fed me well and I came home a new person. On the long car ride home, I decided I'd name my baby Grace if she was a girl.

“Any luck?”

I jumped out of my skin as Luke's question brought me back to the present. “Didn't your mama tell you not to sneak up on people?”

He took a seat beside me and held out a glass of sweet tea. “Nope. She didn't have time to teach me much of anything before she passed away.”

Sweat dripped from the glass and plinked on my leg. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It happened a long time ago.” He took a gulp of his tea and eased onto the seat across from me.

“But still—”

“Wound's healed, Beulah. She's in a better place.”

I gritted my teeth against the memory of a ridiculously small white casket—no way would I ever talk so easily about his death. How were we supposed to know for sure our loved ones were in a better place? “So, I was thinking about a few hymns you could put here.”

Luke's eyes bored through me as if he knew why I was changing the subject. “Who did you lose?”

I could tell him. I could tell him about how I called my baby Grace right up until the moment I popped out a baby boy and named him Hunter. I could tell him about how scary and awful it had been and how I wasn't old enough to take care of myself much less a baby. I could tell him how much it hurt to lose that child just when I felt I might make it after all, but I hadn't said anything to anyone about my baby for so long that the words were rusty, unable to move out of my throat and into my mouth. It hit me. I'd allowed myself to think about my sweet, sweet baby boy by name for the first time in years, and I couldn't think his name twice in one day.

I choked out different words. “You could use ‘Love, Mercy and Grace' here or stick with an oldie but goodie, ‘Amazing Grace'—”

Trying to change the subject again gave me a reason to ignore how he gazed patiently, relentlessly. I didn't know it then, but Luke was an expert at excavating secrets. “Beulah, we don't always understand why someone has to die, but—”

A sob escaped in spite of my best efforts, but I wasn't about to let him see me cry. “Do you really think I haven't heard all of this hogwash before? You don't know. You. Do. Not. Know.”

I stood, ready to run, but he was there with his hands on my shoulders holding me in place.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry,” he said.

I swiped at both cheeks and cleared my throat. “Well, you did. The heathen has a heart. There? You happy?”

“Not really.” From the way he studied me, I thought he might kiss me. Just when I'd decided I'd let him, something, some deeply buried secret of his own, made him release my arms and step back. “ ‘Love, Mercy and Grace,' huh?”

I nodded, reaching for the tea. If I could swallow the tea, then I could swallow a lump of sadness. For a minute I thought I was going to make it. Now he sat on the other side of the picnic table holding his own tea and waiting patiently for me to talk hymns or lost babies.

When the moment came to speak, I walked to the car instead.

Chapter 6

T
he next night I should have known immediately something was wrong with Tiffany. She looked a little green around the gills, as my aunt Edith would have said. And she kept bolting for the bathroom. But I didn't notice those things at first.

Instead, I was still in my funk about Luke and his questions, wanting to think about Hunter and not wanting to think about him all at the same time. I was on my third slow song with “baby” in the title when Bill leaned over to whisper, “Think you can play something a little peppier? The boys are getting kinda down.”

I nodded and vowed to play something up-tempo next. “The boys are getting kinda down” was Bill-speak for “You're making folks so sad they'd rather go home to their miserable lives than hang out here, which means we won't make any money.” I humored everyone with classics like “There's a Tear in My Beer” and with some audience participation in “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” By the time nine rolled around, I was ready to sing my song with my usual gusto. After a particularly rowdy version, I snagged a beer and stepped outside for my break.

There was Tiffany at the side of the building retching her fool head off. Then I knew, but I was the one who felt dizzy. “Tiffany, you okay?”

“Hell, no. I want to go home and lie down.”

“What's wrong?” My heart was beating so loudly in my ears I wondered if I would be able to hear her answer.
Please, please let me be wrong.

She turned to face me, wiping her mouth on her forearm. “I don't know. I swear I thought it was some bad shrimp I got from Seafood Sam's, but I should have been over that by now. And I'm so damned tired. All I want to do is go home and take a nap.”

She didn't know. Bless her heart. She didn't know.

“Think you might be pregnant?”

Her brown eyes widened in horror.

“Maybe you ought to ask Bill for the night off.” I patted her on the shoulder and turned to go back in. It wasn't any of my business, and I shouldn't have said anything. From behind me, Tiffany made a horrible choking, mewing sound. I told myself I didn't want any part of it. I didn't want to get involved with her growing belly. I didn't want to see her healthy baby boy, a baby she would think she didn't want. And I hoped to goodness she wouldn't have to find out how much she did, indeed, want that baby.

Not like I did.

“Beulah, please.”

At that, I turned around, and she fell into my arms before I could stop her. I wanted to shove her away and to yell at her for being so stupid. How could she throw away that scholarship for some asshole guy? What had she been thinking?

And I remembered how plenty of people, particularly my parents, had yelled those questions and accusations at me. I wouldn't do that to Tiffany. No one deserved to be skewered for mistakes that couldn't be erased. No one.

I drew her closer and rubbed her shoulder with my free hand. “It's going to be okay. Promise.”

Total bullshit, but she didn't have to know that yet.

Bill poked his head out the door. “Beulah, you gonna play tonight? Tiff, you gonna pass out beers? You two having some kind of Summer's Eve moment out here?”

“Just a minute, Bill. Keep your pants on,” I said.

He let the screen door slam behind him.

“I gotta go play,” I said. “Why don't you go on home and rest? You can get a test in the morning to be sure. Maybe it's bad shrimp after all.”

She nodded but then followed me in and finished out her shift with a grim determination I couldn't help but admire. But I made sure I didn't sing any more songs with the word
baby
.

 

Just after the eleven o'clock rendition of my song, Luke walked in and sat down beside me at the bar.

“I didn't expect to see you here,” I said as I motioned to Bill. “Hey, get a beer for the preacher man, would you?”

“I'm not staying long,” he said. “I only wanted to see if you were okay after this afternoon.”

“Just peachy,” I said as I took a swig from my foreign beer of the week, a Hoegaarden. My pulse beat double time. Luke had come back into The Fountain to check on me. “But thanks for asking.”

He gave me that half smile I was growing to like in spite of myself. For a second or two, I caught a glimpse of Luke the man as he sat on a stool and drank a beer.

“I gotta get back to work,” I whispered.

“Take any requests? Maybe a Beatles song?” he asked.

“Only for a tip,” I said with a grin.

He fished around in his wallet for a single and held it out to me.

“That's only good for ‘Yellow Submarine.' Just so you know,” I said.

This time he came back with a five. “How about this?”

I whistled. “For that kind of money, you get to pick.”

He closed my fingers around Abe Lincoln. “Surprise me.”

I sat down to sing about how I could get by with a little help from my friends, but then I hit the line about believing in love at first sight, and I couldn't stop the furious blush at the edge of my cheeks. Damn him! No one made me blush. No one but the Beatles-loving preacher man!

Nope. Not going there.

Blessedly, the song ended. Luke saluted me with his beer bottle and quietly left. While watching him go, I broke a cardinal rule by sitting silently. Leaving any amount of dead air meant that someone from the pool table would have the opportunity to shout, “Play some Skynyrd!”

I sighed deeply. “That one's going to cost you!”

They came up with the necessary twenty bucks, and I had to play “Sweet Home Alabama.” In my heart, though, I was still humming the Beatles.

 

That Sunday, with the help of one of Ginger's hideous shawls I had no intention of wearing past the car, I managed to slip out of the house in my favorite sundress and cowboy boots. Since we were already running late, Ginger looked at me and shook her head.

Running late was part of the plan, too, because it meant I could sneak past Luke and into the choir loft without having to speak to him. Between breaking down into tears and accidentally playing a song about needing someone to love, I didn't really want to chance saying something else stupid.

We went through the motions just fine. Luke had smiled at my song choices, even if he wasn't happy about a return to the little brown book. I smiled, too, until I looked over at the empty choir loft. Were the members all absent or still boycotting me? If so, then so much for last week's whole judge-not spiel.

From my perch in the choir loft, I looked for the usual suspects. All I could remember from nine years ago were the twins. There Miss Lottie and Miss Lola sat side by side. Counting the other heads was no problem since the pews were more empty than not. Even so, I saw Lester “Goat Cheese” Ledbetter on the back row, twisting his fingers one over the other as if he'd prefer to be smoking a cigarette. No doubt he'd come out of curiosity, since the only person more in the know about community doings had to be Miss Georgette. I looked behind me at the dusty wooden sign with cardboard numbers, the one that proclaimed attendance and weekly offering. Twenty-two present that day. The sign declared record attendance to be six, but that was only because County Line had long ago lost the other six that used to hang in front of it.

I remembered the day we set that record, too. It was my second day in church with Ginger, and I sat beside her in the most hideous blue paisley maternity dress. Tom Dickens had come by and chucked me under the chin, thanking me for being number sixty-six.

I missed Tom Dickens.

I realized the sanctuary of today was eerily quiet, and the whole bunch of them looked at me expectantly. Song leader Jason Utley needed a song. I whispered a number then took my place at the piano while everyone thumbed through their books.

After church, I skipped down the choir loft steps and leaped into the mix of cliques that gathered to exchange well wishes for the week. I rushed for the only choir member I remembered. “Miss Lottie?”

She had her back to me, and she stiffened, steeling herself to turn and answer me. “Beulah.”

“I can't help but notice you haven't been in the choir the past two Sundays. Everything okay?”

She gathered herself tall, pulling in as much of her ample bosom as she could muster. In her rust-colored suit with her double chin and regal bearing, she reminded me of a Rhode Island Red preparing to scratch around the chicken coop. “We feel you should not be playing the piano here if you're going to continue to play at The Fountain.”

My smile stayed in place. “I don't really see what one has to do with the other.”

“Good Christian people don't go
there.
And they certainly don't make fun of hymns and drink and carouse while they do it.”

“And how would you know all that if good Christian people don't go there?” I batted my eyelashes. I couldn't help myself.

“I hear things,” she sputtered.

“Maybe you shouldn't believe everything you hear.” I leaned forward.

“Tell me I'm wrong,” she said, leaning forward to meet me.

“You're wrong.” After all, I didn't drink and carouse
while
I played. “I would think you could help me out since I'm only doing this as a favor to Ginger.”

“Yes, yes. That Ginger is a remarkable woman.” The unspoken “but” hung heavy in the air. I was the blemish on Ginger's record, the one stain she couldn't explain to others. I'm sure Charlotte Miller wouldn't have dreamed of taking me in, and she would have kicked me out the minute I started playing piano at what was then known as Bill's Tavern.

Miss Lottie stood up taller, suddenly sporting a smile. “I'll tell you what. You get out of that honky-tonk, and we'll go right back to singing in the choir,” she said in an unnaturally loud voice. She pinched my cheek then gave it a rougher-than-usual pat. “We all know a good girl still lives in there somewhere.”

At that moment I wouldn't have quit playing at The Fountain for a million dollars. “Funny how people there are a whole helluva lot nicer to me than people here.”

I wheeled around to make my escape and came nose to chest with Luke. The last part of Miss Lottie's speech had been for him. When I looked up, I saw his flashing eyes and clenched jaw. He was going to bless me out for cussing in front of an old biddy in church.

Instead, his stare was for her. When he looked down at me, he asked, “You okay, Beulah?”

“You're asking if she's okay?” huffed Miss Lottie. “I think it's time Mr. Dartmouth and I had another chat about how things are being run around here!”

Luke winced at her comment, but his eyes didn't leave mine. “Fine,” I murmured. I needed to move, but I was drawn to him even though a good four inches separated us.

“Beulah? Ready to go?”

Luke took one step back and then two.

“Yeah, I'm ready.” It was so stupid to be leaning toward Luke Daniels. Especially in the middle of a church with an audience.

Ginger tugged on my arm and pulled me back in the direction of the choir loft and out of the earshot of exiting church members. “Now why'd you have to do that?”

“I wanted to know why no one was in the choir.”

“No, you didn't.” Ginger shook her head. “I should have thought about how petty people could be. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I should have left well enough alone and found someone else to play the piano.”

“Oh,
now
you decide that,” I muttered. It was irrational to feel she was disappointed in me when she was so clearly disappointed in her fellow church members, but I felt tiny. “No, Ginger. I promised you I would play for you, and I'm going to do it. If Miss Lottie and her friends want to pretend we're in junior high, that's their problem.”

Ginger squeezed my hand. “That's my Beulah. Let's go get some lunch.”

The sanctuary was empty except for the two of us and Luke. He looked out at the parking lot, his face sad and pinched. Ginger dropped her purse, and his head snapped toward the two of us and he summoned a smile. “Just had to get me alone, didn't you?”

“Oh, you know us, we're a couple of wanton hussies,” Ginger said as I stooped to get her purse. “I was hoping you might squire us to lunch again—with me paying this time. It's the least I can do now that Lottie's going to sic Dartmouth on you.”

My eyes cut to Ginger. “Who's Dartmouth?”

I had to wait until after we'd ordered at Las Palmas before I could get the answer to my question.