The Happy Hour Choir

by Sally Kilpatrick

  Under the pickles. There was a place Ginger knew I’d never look because I hated pickles almost as much as she did. I fished to the back of the pantry and picked up the lone dusty jar of most likely expired pickles. Sure enough, a ragged index card sat underneath. I took the card and scanned it.

  “How am I supposed to make heads or tails out of this?”

  She lay back in the recliner, her eyes already closed. “Sometimes you have to feel for what’s right.”

  I took a deep breath. If I had known I was going to have to wing the Thanksgiving Day dressing, I would have practiced a week ago. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t come up with the perfect combination on the very first try.

  I muttered the ingredients to myself, a Southern woman’s incantation: “cornbread, biscuits, eggs, chicken broth, diced onion, sage, Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, cream of chicken, celery. Celery? I am not putting that in there.”

  The index card was full of notes on the side like, Use cream of chicken to add more flavor or Some yuppies add thin slices of apple to add moisture. The amount of eggs was five, which was marked out and a four added. Then the four was crossed out, and a three stood to the side next to a glob of something that looked suspiciously like cream of chicken.

  I could do this. I could figure this out. I had the cornbread sitting on the stove from the night before. I had leftover biscuits in the freezer. I could do it. I would figure it out.

  “Whatcha so tense about, Beulah?” Luke’s voice caused me to jump.

  “Oh, sorry.” My hand traveled to my throat. “Ginger has informed me I will be making the dressing.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve never made the dressing before.”

  “And?”

  “It’s the second most important part of Thanksgiving after the turkey!” I hissed. “No, I like the dressing better than the turkey. If I don’t get the dressing right, I’ll ruin Thanksgiving!”

  He kissed me on the forehead. “No, the most important part of Thanksgiving is giving thanks. That would put the dressing at least second on the list. And you’re going to do great.”

  “But what if I ruin it?” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets to keep from wringing them.

  Luke took me by the shoulders. “Do you like to eat dressing?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Then you can make dressing. You just have to have a little faith.”

  I chewed on my lip. “We’re not talking about dressing anymore, are we?”

  He kissed me on the lips. Gently. “Nope.”

  He went to check on Bill—the bird, not the man—and I thought about every time I’d watched Ginger make dressing. I got out the biggest bowl we had and started crumbling cornbread and biscuits then added what seemed to be the right amount of stuffing mix. I decided to leave out the onions as well as the celery. I left out the sage because the stuffing mix already had some in it. I added salt and pepper, four eggs instead of three, and kept adding chicken broth and cream of chicken soup until it looked right.

  It looked about as sloppy as it did when Ginger poured it into the pan. It smelled right. I guessed it couldn’t hurt to say a little prayer that it came out edible for everyone, then I poured the soupy concoction into the pan. I slid the pan into the oven, careful not to spill any over the sides.

  Every now and then I would look into the living room to see what balloon was passing by or, later, to see if the Detroit Lions were going to pull out an unlikely victory. For the most part, however, I stayed in the kitchen, checking on green beans, peeling potatoes, and putting them on to cook. I made a corn soufflé and a sweet potato casserole. Then I had Luke put the marshmallows on top.

  “Stop eating them! And put them closer together,” I commanded.

  He popped another marshmallow into his mouth while looking me dead in the eye, and I slugged him on the arm.

  “Ow! You’re going to be a tough momma. Tough, but fair!”

  He turned back to the task at hand, and I wondered if I would ever get to be a momma. If Hunter had lived he would have been ten, going on eleven. I tried to picture an energetic boy jumping on the couch cushions in the living room while watching the parade with his aunt Tiffany and uncle Sam, but the picture wasn’t there.

  My Hunter would always be a baby to me, a sweet, sweet baby with intense blue eyes. He would always be a newborn who never got a chance to smile or to sit up. Luke slid up behind me and kissed me on the top of the head. “I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean to make you think about what might have been.”

  “How do you do it?” I wheeled around on him.

  “How do I do what?”

  “How do you always know what I’m thinking? What I’ve been through? Are you psychic?”

  “Beulah, you wear your heart on your sleeve. I don’t know where you got the idea you were some kind of tough guy, because your emotions are always out there for anyone to read. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

  His eyes widened. He hadn’t meant to say that, to put himself out there quite yet. My heart was a jackhammer on a particularly stubborn piece of concrete. What could I say?

  “Luke Daniels, I have loved you from the moment you walked into The Fountain looking like a khaki fish out of water, even if I did try really hard not to at first.”

  “Hmm. Maybe I’m an acquired taste, too.”

  He kissed me again just in time for Tiffany to waddle into the kitchen in search of a snack. “Geez, would the two of you get a room? For real.”

  We sat down at the table, and Luke blessed the food. As we ate, we had to tell at least one thing we were thankful for—a Ginger Belmont house rule.

  “I’m thankful I got transferred here to Ellery and that I met all of you,” Luke said with a grin as he looked straight at me.

  “I’m thankful I got to quit being a waitress even if I had to get pregnant to get out of it. And I’m really glad I met you, Sam.” Tiffany took out a scoop of corn soufflé and passed him the casserole.

  “Your turn,” Ginger said to him.

  He cleared his throat and loosened his already unbuttoned collar. “I think I’d like to go last,” he said.

  “Fine.” Ginger shrugged. “Beulah, it’s your turn.”

  I was sampling the dressing because I hadn’t expected it to be my turn already. It was divine. “I am thankful for Luke, and for you, and for having Tiffany come into our lives. And I’m thankful the dressing came out right. And for you, too, Sam.”

  “Glad to see the dressing rates higher than me,” he muttered. Then he took a bite of the dressing and nodded in my direction. “Okay, the dressing does rate better than me.”

  Tiffany slapped him lightly on the arm.

  “I’m thankful for so many things,” Ginger said. “I’m thankful for a long life and good friends. I’m thankful the good Lord sent me Beulah, even if I didn’t like the way He did it. I’m thankful Tiffany’s safe and sound and that we have two strapping young boys to improve the scenery around here. Most of all, I’m thankful to have made it this far, and I’m looking forward to seeing Tiffany’s baby.”

  “Here, here,” I said as I raised my glass of sweet tea. We all clinked our glasses around the table.

  “Sam,” Ginger said, “your turn.”

  I frowned. Maybe Sam was a little shy about such things; I knew I was when I first moved in with Ginger. Maybe—

  “It’s true I’m thankful for all of you,” Sam said. “And I’m so happy I was singing in the Piggly Wiggly that day and that I got up the courage to go to Bible study at the bar and join the choir when Beulah asked me because if I hadn’t then I would have never met you.”

  Then that tall, lanky boy dropped down to one knee. “Tiffany Davis, will you do me the honor of becoming this poor farmer’s wife?”

  Too much, too soon? I bit my tongue. They’d figure it out if it was.

  Something bumped under the table, and we all gasped that Tiffany had hit her belly. “Yes, yes, a million times yes!”


  She scanned our faces looking for happiness, then our concern over the bump registered. “It was my knee, y’all.”

  “Thank goodness,” Ginger muttered, and we all clapped and cheered. Even better, Tiffany finally got her PG-13 kiss.

  We ate happily until we could do nothing more but lay on the couch, chair, and floor like a group of beached whales. Tiffany held out her hand and watched her modest diamond twinkle while Sam dozed with a protective arm around her shoulders. Ginger snored softly in her recliner, holding her breath before each one in a way we’d all learned to live with. I cheered for the Cowboys, while everyone else napped. At halftime I looked up to see Luke’s seat empty.

  When I entered the kitchen, there he stood with his sleeves rolled up, rhythmically washing dishes.

  A ping of desire shot through me, no longer an unwanted or alien feeling. “What are you doing?”

  “The dishes.”

  “Obviously. I was going to get those in a while,” I said.

  “Yes, but you did the cooking, and you were watching the game.”

  I cocked my head to one side. To my father, football on Thanksgiving Day was a sacred tradition only to be interrupted by the large meal he ate between the two games. I had never seen him wash a dish. “But don’t you want to watch the game, too?”

  “I’ll watch the fourth quarter, since that’s the only part that counts,” he said with a smile. “You go rest.”

  I dare any woman to say there’s anything sexier than a smiling man with his sleeves rolled up and his hands in the sink. I thought that then, and it holds true today.

  If only that Thanksgiving, one of the best days of my life, could’ve lasted a little longer.

  Chapter 32

  We put up the tree later that weekend, an artificial monstrosity from when Ginger had had chemo before and her immune system had been too compromised for a real one. Luke and Sam took turns helping to decorate the top of the tree or to string lights outside. By the end of November, all we needed were some gingerbread cookies, Santa, and December. Ginger was walking about, sometimes with a cane instead of the walker, and we were thankful for that early Christmas gift. Tiffany was due at the end of the month, and I couldn’t remember a Christmas I had been happier. Not even Day-to-Night Barbie was going to top this one.

  On the Friday before my recording session I sat down at the table with Ginger to chat about my trip to Nashville. She had me making French toast that morning. And she knew how I felt about the stuff, but at least I was making it instead of her—that made me feel much better. In fact, she was working the crossword puzzle in the paper and sipping her coffee like a lady of leisure.

  “Beulah, what’s his name? ‘The Entertainer.’ ” Her face wrinkled even more as she screwed it up while her brain grasped for an answer she should have known.

  “Scott Joplin.” I turned back to the stove, frowning. Ginger had taught me about Scott Joplin, and now she couldn’t remember his name? The tumor had to be getting worse.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind if I go? It should be an up-’n’-back if I leave early enough in the morning.”

  She looked up from the paper and peered over her reading glasses at me. “I’m fine. You’re only a couple of hours away.”

  “Basically, three hours away, and—”

  She waved away my concern. “You need a job and this is what you’ve always wanted to do. Besides, I have Tiffany here, and I was thinking about catching up on all of my favorite Christmas movies.”

  “White Christmas?” I flipped each piece of toast for what would be the last time.

  She drew a hand over her heart. “Of course!”

  “Holiday Inn?”

  “You know I’m a sucker for old Bing.”

  “Rudolph and Frosty?” I slid the first piece onto a plate.

  “Classics.” She looked back at her crossword puzzle.

  With a sly smile I slid pieces two and three onto separate plates and reached into the microwave for the bacon. “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  That got her attention, and she looked up at me with a frown. “I just don’t see what the big deal is on that one. Jimmy Stewart off stuttering around and complaining about his life. And we don’t even know for sure if everything turns out all right in the end. Maybe the angel should’ve let him be.”

  “Hey, we all want to feel like we’ve made a difference in this world.” I shrugged as I slid a plate of French toast in front of her.

  “And you call me the sentimentalist,” she said, her fork poised and her penciled-in eyebrow arched. I exhaled at the sight of Ginger with lipstick and eyebrows—even her clip-on faux-pearl earrings. Today was going to be a good day.

  She took a bite. “This is not bad. Not bad at all. You can cook some French toast if you want to.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I slipped some bacon onto a plate for Tiffany then some onto my own. “As I always say, I learned from the best.”

  “Tiffany!” I hollered upstairs before sliding into my spot and taking a bite of bacon.

  Ginger studied me. “You need to give your momma a little more credit.”

  I almost choked. She had waited for me to take a bite to say that. “Aw, why do you have to ruin a pleasant morning by bringing up my mother?”

  “I bet she’s lonely without you and your daddy,” she said as she took another bite. We heard the flutter of wings as birds squawked at the bird feeder outside the window. A lone blue jay was trying his darnedest to run off our cardinals.

  I thought of the stoop-shouldered, gray-haired woman my mother had become. I thought of the identical lilies she had placed on both Hunter’s grave and my father’s. “Yeah, well, she should have thought about that before she got out her spoon without hearing my side of the story.”

  “You could tell her your side of the story,” Ginger said.

  My fork hit my plate. She didn’t even know the whole story. Did she? I looked straight into her bleary, cataract-filmed eyes, and I said some words I regret to this day: “Making up with my momma is not a favor I will do for you, so don’t even ask.”

  She shrugged and went about her breakfast as though I hadn’t hurt her feelings, but, of course, I had.

  Tiffany barged into the kitchen either not noticing our tense moment or not caring. She fixed herself a half cup of coffee then sat down at the table with us. “I LOVE French toast! Beulah, did you make this?”

  I nodded.

  She took a bite and closed her eyes, savoring her breakfast with an idiotic grin. “I think this is the closest thing to heaven on this earth.”

  Ginger sniffed. “Chocolate-chip pancakes would be closer.”

  The next day I had to leave for Nashville before five in the morning, so I tiptoed out the front door to avoid waking anyone else up. I didn’t need coffee because I was so keyed up by the possibility of playing the piano in a real studio for a real song that was going to be on a real album or, even better, played on the radio.

  My iPod was crammed with road songs, everything from “I Can’t Drive 55” to “Route 66.” I jammed along with each song, easily switching genres. I was singing a particularly spirited rendition of “Eastbound and Down” when the phone rang.

  I recognized the number, and my heart soared. “Luke, I just made Nashville city limits while singing Jerry Reed! How cool is that!”

  “Beulah—”

  “I’m almost to the recording studio, and—” As usual, my mouth was about ten miles ahead of my brain. Halfway through that sentence, my brain registered the tone of his voice. “This isn’t a social call, is it?”

  “You might want to pull over.”

  “Spit it out. Is it Ginger? Did she fall or something? Oh, no, Tiffany. She’s not due for another few weeks—she’s not already in labor, is she?”

  “Beulah, pull over.”

  “I’m on the freaking interstate doing sixty in six lanes of traffic. I can’t exactly pull over right now, so you’re going to have to tell me.”

  “Ginge
r passed away some time this morning.”

  Cars streaked past me on either side. People laid on their horns behind me, and I realized I had taken my foot off the gas. I eased the car to the shoulder in a zigzag pattern. And I didn’t care.

  She had been sleeping so peacefully when I left.

  It was only going to be for a day.

  “What . . . ?”

  “Another stroke, a bad one. She’d passed by the time Tiffany found her, but the doctor said she didn’t suffer. It was instantaneous.”

  That damn French toast. She made me make the French toast. I will never, ever make French toast again as long as I live, because she knew. She somehow knew, and she sent me off to Nashville anyway because she wouldn’t know how to be selfish if she tried.

  Because she really wanted chocolate-chip pancakes.

  “I’m coming home.”

  “But,” Luke hesitated, “what about your recording session?” His agony on my behalf would have comforted me if I had been capable of receiving comfort at that moment.

  “I’ll call them and tell them I can’t come. Either they’ll understand or they won’t.”

  He paused on the other end. “Let me come get you. I don’t think you need to be driving right now.”

  “I’m not a baby. And I couldn’t stand to sit still and wait for you anyway. I’m driving home. Now.”

  “Beulah, be care—”

  I hung up on him. My first instinct was to dive across those lanes of traffic straight into the concrete pylon, but I took several deep breaths. Then the sobs came. Deep, body-racking sobs. I slammed my head into the steering wheel, and my Toyota wailed, too. Drivers answered with short, angry beeps.

  I had to make it home.

  I forced myself to take long, deep breaths to keep panic’s hyperventilation away.

  I had to see to arrangements.

  I had to take care of Tiffany.

  Pulling back on to the interstate, I told myself to find an exit where I could turn around. Tears streamed down my face, but I swiped them away as fast as I could.