The Hymn My Mother Still Knew
“No, ma’am,” he said.
Mrs. Halvorsen laughed so hard she had to hold on to the table. Barb was laughing and crying at once, hanging on to her walker. Even Pete, over by the coffee, had to turn and face the wall.
They stood up. And without anybody telling them to, the six of them shuffled around until they were lined up by height.
My mother nodded once and played.
They sang all four verses, with no books. There was not a book in the room.
Mrs. Halvorsen had the alto, low and sure. Tom had a tenor that was still clear as a bell. Jim’s bass was a little flat, and he sang with his eyes shut, and I had to look away from him.
Mom’s left hand missed some in the second verse. I heard it go wrong. She did not stop to fix it. She kept the right hand going and let the left hand find its way back, and by the third verse it had. That was what she always taught. You do not stop. You keep the count, and you find your way back in.
On the third verse some of the residents came in. Walt did, cap in his hand again. A tiny woman named Marge, who has not spoken a sentence since I have been coming there, sang it word for word in a high, clear voice. Kim stood in the kitchen doorway holding a dish towel against her mouth.
Marcy sang what she had of the first verse and hummed the rest. She stood beside her grandmother, and their two heads were tipped at the very same angle.
At the end my mother held the last chord for the full count. Then she lifted her hands off the keys together, cleanly, and put them in her lap.
Nobody clapped. I think nobody wanted to be the one to break it. Then Walt put his cap back on and said, loudly, “Now that’s more like it,” and everybody laughed, and the room let go.
They came up to her one at a time. She shook each hand. She told Tom he had a nice voice and ought to do something with it. She did not know one of them. Every one of them thanked her anyway, by name, and Barb bent over her walker and kissed my mother’s cheek and said, “I kept my wrists up, Miss Dorothy. Sixty years.”
Mom had no idea what she meant.
“Good,” she said. “See that you do.”
Kim poured coffee and Mrs. Halvorsen cut the lemon bars. People pulled chairs up to the round tables and started in on the old stories: the nickel, the metronome, the Christmas program when the angel fainted. I heard things about my own mother that afternoon that I had never been told.
I did not sit down with them. Mom was still on the piano bench, with her hands in her lap, looking at the keys. I did not want her there by herself.
I went and stood beside her.
She looked up at me. She looked at me for a long moment. I will be honest about it, because I promised myself I would be. Some foolish part of me thought, now. After all that, now she will say it.
“Do you play?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “I had lessons once. I wasn’t any good.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. I just wasn’t.”
She made a small impatient sound, one I had not heard in years. Then she slid over on the bench and patted the place beside her.