The Song Two Hundred Guests Finished

What she said next

“When it started tonight,” she said, “I didn’t think. I heard the first notes, that bass line, and I was standing in the funeral home again, looking at him. I couldn’t breathe. My hands just went.”

She held them up and looked at them in the string light like they belonged to somebody else.

“I didn’t know it was your dad’s,” she said. “Whit told me in the car. Your dad picked it for you. In his shop. When he was dying.” Her voice went thin.

“And I pulled the plug on it in front of everybody. On your wedding day.”

“You didn’t know,” I said.

“I should’ve asked,” she said. “I could’ve just asked you. Instead I tried to run the whole thing so I’d never have to say it. That’s the truth, Eloise. I’m a coward about it. I’ve been a coward about Willard for six years.”

I thought about my mother, who still sleeps on her side of the bed. I thought about Uncle Woody practicing with Aunt Esther in his garage.

I thought about how much of grief is just trying to get through a grocery store.

“You’re not a coward,” I said. “You came back up the drive.”

She looked at me then, really looked, and her eyes filled up.

“Those people sang it,” she said. “All of them. I was standing there holding that cord, and that little girl started, and then two hundred people sang it. I heard every word. For the first time in six years I heard the whole thing, start to finish.”

“How was it?” I asked.

She was quiet for a long time.

“It was awful,” she said. “And then it wasn’t. About halfway through, I could hear Willard singing it off key in the truck. I could hear him laughing at me. I hadn’t been able to hear his voice in my head in a long time.”

I reached over and took her hand. It was warm this time.

“Dad used to say a song is just a place to keep somebody,” I told her. “So you can go visit.”

Paula made a sound I will never forget, something between a laugh and a sob.

Then she leaned over in the grass and put her arms around me, and I put mine around her, and we held onto each other in the middle of that lawn under the string lights.

I do not know how long we stayed like that. Long enough that my gown was soaked through at the knees.

Long enough for Whit and Abner to finish with the chairs and come back up the drive and stop.

I saw Whit over Paula’s shoulder. He did not come any closer.

He just stood at the edge of the light with his hands in his pockets, and I watched him put his hand over his mouth and turn his face away for a second.

Then he walked over, sat down on the grass on his mother’s other side, and put his arm around both of us. He did not say anything. Some men do not need to.