The Front Pew and the Choir

Who Sat Down

The footsteps came all the way up the aisle while Marla played the opening chord and came back around to the front. They stopped at the end of our pew, on Dad’s other side.

I looked up.

It was Denise. She had on her gray church coat. Her eyes were red, and I could tell she had been crying in the back since the first verse.

She did not look at me. She looked at Dad. And Dad looked at her, and then he moved his hymnal off the pew and patted the place where it had been.

Denise sat down beside him.

The choir began again. This time Dad sang. His voice was rusty and too loud and a little behind, but it was his bass and the two men on the end leaned into it.

On the third verse he reached over and took Denise’s hand in his. He sat there between his two daughters and sang my mother’s hymn, the way he had sung it beside her for thirty-one years.

Denise cried harder than he did. Quietly, the way she does everything, with her mouth pressed shut and her shoulders shaking.

I did not look at her much. It did not feel like my moment to look. It felt like something between her and Dad, and maybe between her and God, and I had no business staring.

When they finished, a few people in the pews clapped. We do not clap in church at Zion. But a few people did, and then more did, and Pastor Ben did not stop them.

Dad sat back down, slowly, and wiped his face with Mom’s old handkerchief that he still carries in his breast pocket. “Thank you,” he said, to nobody and everybody. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted.”