Chapter 19: Before the Veil

The seamstress had six pins in her mouth and a tape measure around her neck, and she did not like my posture.

"Stand still, honey," she said around the pins. "You sway like a bandstand."

"I sing for a living."

"Then sing standing still."

I stood on the little round platform in the ivory dress while Roz took pictures of my hem with her phone.

Marjorie sat in a velvet chair with her purse in her lap.

Joanna had come straight from the office.

She leaned in the doorway in her gray suit with her arms crossed, and she hadn't stopped looking since I'd stepped up.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm assessing."

"What's the assessment?"

"That Saturday is a very long way off," Joanna said.

Roz made a retching noise and pretended to take a picture of the ceiling.

Marjorie smiled into her handkerchief.

I couldn't look at her for long.

Every time I met her eyes, the church kitchen came back, and the promise I'd made in it.

Roz caught me at the water cooler afterward and bumped my shoulder with hers.

"You've got your quiet face on," she said. "I've seen it before. You wore it the week your eviction letter came."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. Is it the money?"

"No."

"Is it her?"

"It's me," I said. "I'm just nervous."

"Mm," said Roz, who has known me since we were nineteen.

She let it go with a look that said she was keeping it for later.

That night in the loft, Joanna sat on the piano bench with a legal pad and a pencil.

"I'd like to learn the answer line properly," she said, in her board voice.

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to sing it on Saturday, at the wedding, in front of everyone. Standing up. In tune."

I put my coffee down.

"You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't. I want to. I've been practicing in the car."

"For how long?"

"Since Memphis," she admitted. "Every red light."

She played one note on the piano, and sang it.

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