The Solo Her Grandmother Tried to Stop

The gym door at 1:38

The elementary school sat on a corner lot across from a city park, a long brick building with the gym at one end.

The lot was already full. People were parking on the grass along the street.

I pulled up right to the side door of the gym, which I would never do on a normal day, and Mr.

Ahlberg was standing there holding it open with his foot. It was 1:38.

Fenwick Ahlberg was forty-four, a tall, skinny man with a gray beard and a cardigan of his own.

He had taught music in that building for nineteen years, and half the town had sung for him at one time or another.

He did not make a speech when he saw Nora. He just let out a long breath, and his shoulders came down about two inches. Then he looked at me over her head.

“I was about to cut the solo,” he said quietly. “I had the narrator ready to read it instead. I didn’t know what had happened. Her grandma called the office this morning and said she was sick.”

That was the first I had heard of it. Gloria-Jean had called the school before noon and told them Nora had a stomach bug. She had planned the whole thing out ahead of time.

“She’s not sick,” I said. “She’s here. Don’t cut it.”

“I wasn’t going to if she walked in,” he said, and he put his hand on Nora’s shoulder and steered her inside.

“Come on, kiddo. One of the moms has bobby pins and a can of hairspray older than you are.”

I never did learn which mom it was. But Nora laughed, a real laugh, and then the door swung shut behind the two of them, and I was standing alone on the sidewalk.

The bleachers

I went in through the front doors with the rest of the parents. I still had my tan co-op jacket on.

I had not even thought about it. There was corn dust on both sleeves and a grease mark on the cuff from the sample probe.

The gym smelled the way every school gym in Nebraska smells, like floor wax and popcorn and old wood.

The folding chairs were set up in long rows on the floor, but most of the families had picked the pull-out bleachers instead, and the front rows stayed half empty.

The pull-out bleachers along the side wall were filling up with grandparents and teenagers and dads who had come straight from the farm or the shop.

Nobody looked twice at my jacket. Half the men in there were wearing worse.

Afternoon sun came slanting in through the high windows up near the ceiling.

It fell across the stage in long bright stripes and lit up the painted backdrop of a pine forest.

Somebody touched my elbow. It was Eula, who had lived across the alley from me for six years and who had been the church secretary since before I was born. She was eighty-one and still drove herself everywhere.

“Harmony,” she said. “I thought you were working. Your girl’s still in it? Somebody told me she was home sick.”

“She’s not sick,” I said, and something in my voice must have told her the rest, because she patted my arm and did not ask another question. She just scooted over on the bottom bleacher to make room.

I thanked her, but I did not sit. I stood at the edge of the gym floor, just past the end of the front row, where nobody would be in my way, with my phone in my hand. I wanted Nora to be able to find me.

Eula hummed under her breath while we waited. It was the old hymn about the river, the one they sing at every funeral in Gage County. I don’t think she even knew she was doing it.