The Eleven in the Pews at Bethel

The names

Lisa walked up the aisle like she was walking through water. She sat down in the front pew, on the left, right by the piano. Hank got up from the bench and stepped back to give her room.

I read the names.

“Hank,” I said. Hank, standing beside the piano, nodded once and said, “I was parked on the shoulder in the snow. She knocked on my window.”

“Merle.” Merle stood up halfway. “My wife’s circle night. I couldn’t stand the house.”

“Art.” Art was still standing. “Same as Merle. Fifty years across the road from him and we never said ten words. Now we say a few.”

“Nora.” Nora had come in her scrubs, the way she always did. “I used to sit in the hospital parking lot crying before every shift. Your mom found me at the gas station.”

“Donna.” Donna’s voice was very small. “My husband doesn’t know me anymore. My daughter gives me two hours on Wednesdays. I used to just drive.”

“Ray.” Ray only said, “My wife left in 2022. This is the only place I go besides the elevator and the parts store.”

“Tom,” I said, and then, “Sue.” They stood up together, and Sue held Tom’s arm. “Our son,” Sue said. “The grain bin. We couldn’t go back to our church. Nobody here watches us.”

“Bill.” Bill said, “I can’t hear the radio anymore. I can still hear her piano.” Then he corrected himself. “Hank’s piano. It’s all right too.”

“Kayla.” Kayla stood with the baby asleep on her shoulder, safe and warm. “My husband’s in North Dakota. Ellie wouldn’t stop crying. This is the only place she sleeps.”

And then I read the last line, the little one. “Baby Ellie.”

Nobody said anything for a while after that.

The thing Mom wrote last

There was one more thing in the hymnal. I had not seen it the first time because it was on the inside of the back cover, and I had never turned that far.

It was dated in May, four months before she died, and it was in her shaky hand, the hand she had at the end, when her fingers would not always do what she told them.

“Lisa,” it said. “You were right that I was lonely. You were wrong that it was for nobody. Come play for them. Your hands were always better than mine. Love, Mom.”

I did not read that part out loud. I closed the hymnal and handed it to my sister, open to the back, and went and sat down beside Josh and Abby in the last pew.

Lisa read it. She read it twice.

Then she put her face in her hands in the front pew of Bethel, in front of eleven strangers and her own sister and her niece, and cried the way she had not cried at either of our parents’ funerals.

Nobody watched her. That is what Sue had meant. Everybody looked at their hands, or the windows, or the baby.

Merle put his cap back on and took it off again. Josh put his arm around me. Abby put her head on my side.

After a long time, Lisa wiped her face with her sleeve, the way she used to when we were kids, and stood up, and sat down at the piano bench.

She did not play anything that night. She just sat there with her hands on the closed lid, and Hank stood beside her, and after a minute she said, “I don’t remember anything.”

“You will,” Hank said. “It comes back. Took me thirty years.”