The Choir That Sang Under My Window

She sang my part.

She sang it down in the low register, where she has no business singing, in a voice she did not own. It cracked on the third note. It was the sound of a woman covering a hole in a floor with her own two feet.

The rest of the choir came in on the next line and finished the hymn. It was thinner than any hymn I have ever heard sung by that many people, and I stood with my hand on the glass and thought it was the most beautiful thing I had listened to in my life.

They sang two more. “Abide with Me,” and “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Each time they came to the place, they stopped, and listened, and went on without me.

Then Marlene lowered her hands. She turned toward my window and lifted two fingers off the top of her fender, the wave people give each other on country roads, the lazy one that means I see you and I am not going to make anything of it.

I did not wave back. I am sorry to say so.

They climbed into the cars one at a time. The pickup went first. I stood where I was and listened to the engines go down the road until I could not hear them, and the wind took up the quiet where they had been.

Then I sat down in my chair and said the only prayer that came to me, which was, “Lord, what in the world have you let them do.”

Dale on Sunday dinner

My son comes for Sunday dinner. He brings it, in fact, in a roaster Connie wraps in two towels, and he eats it with me at the kitchen table because I will not eat alone and he knows that.

He came in at half past twelve, stamped the cold off his boots, and said, “There’s a lot of tracks in your drive.”

“Eight people,” I said. “Plus Marlene’s Buick.”

“What for?”

I told him. I told it badly, because I was still turning it over, and when I got to the part about the place where I should have come in, my voice did something I did not expect, and I stopped and looked at the gravy.

Dale is a man of few words. He gets it from his father. He cut the ham and set a slice on my plate and said, “Are you going to sing with them?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Dale Harold Trout.”

“I’m only asking, Mama.”

“My voice is gone. You’ve heard it. It’s a screen door.”

He chewed for a minute and looked out at the yard, where the grass had flattened in two curved rows.

I did not sleep well that week. By Friday I had made up my mind to one small, practical thing. I told Dale on the phone.

“Bring a tool Sunday,” I said. “Something to hold the window up.”

“How far up?”

“I don’t know, Dale. Just enough that I can be heard if I decide to be.”