The Lost Songs (27 page)

Aunt Tamika called Lutie’s cell.

Lutie muted the TV she was watching from Aunt Tamika’s big sofa.

“We didn’t find Saravette, Lutie. She’s not answering her phone. Nobody at the building where she was last month has seen her. Grace went into shelters. I tried a soup kitchen.”

Good, thought Lutie. Lost is the best place for her.

At four o’clock that afternoon, Doria was in yet another church. Mr. Bates’s, where he was the organist and directed the choir and gave lessons.

It was a megachurch, complete with escalators to the upper tiers of seating, huge screens on which the minister could be seen from a distance, a symphonic band to supplement the organ and a professional choir. It had its own coffee shop and
bookstore. It held services in Spanish and Korean, and had dedicated ministers for both those languages. It seated five thousand.

Doria told Mr. Bates about the Laundry List.

He was fascinated. “Sing the songs for me,” he said.

Doria slid off the organ bench. “I think I have to stand. Lutie stands.”

“Is Lutie our new measure of perfection?”

“At Court Hill High, she is.” Doria stood on the edge of the massive stage, facing all those seats. Good thing they were empty. She liked an audience, but an audience that big would definitely be a test.

She sang the two songs she knew.

When she finished, Mr. Bates said, “Doria, I had no idea. Your voice is like liquid silver.”

“Oh, thanks, but the songs need Lutie. She just has so much power.”

“You mean volume or that her delivery is powerful?”

“Both,” she said, sliding back onto the bench.

“I haven’t met Professor Durham,” said Mr. Bates, “but he’s well known in his field. I think you should coax Lutie to work with him. The worst thing would be for the songs to get lost after all, and that could so easily happen. Lutie seems to be the only caretaker, as it were. Suppose she goes to college and gets into other stuff. She becomes a doctor or a lawyer and doesn’t have time for music and loses interest in church and goes bigtime into some splashy career on the West Coast and Court Hill is just a memory. Then the songs evaporate.”

Doria was tired of the Laundry List. She said, “Mr. Bates, I don’t want to have my church job anymore.”

“No! Doria! You need it for a thousand reasons. You get to perform every week. Very few musicians have that privilege. You always have something to work for, because you always
need more music. You give up your church job, then you’re learning music just for your own sake, and the pressure of the world can make that too hard.”

“But it’s so dorky. And everybody’s on my case not to practice alone in the church in the dark.”

“And do you?”

“Of course I do. So do you. So does every organist. And the other thing I’m thinking of is, I’m thinking of graduating a year early.”

“Don’t. College is enough of a shock. You don’t want to be younger than everybody else.”

“You’re the one who says I’m too mature for my age.”

“Yeah, well, that’s high school. In college, when everyone’s drinking and partying and sleeping around, you have to be strong to steer clear. You need that extra year, Doria. Now, about last Sunday at St. Bartholomew’s. They applauded when you did the Vierne?”

“Yes.”

“Did they stand up? Was it a real ovation?”

“They’re Presbyterians. They don’t get that excited.”

“But it’s a goal,” said Mr. Bates. “Get them on their feet. Now play that Vierne for me, and I want it more powerful than Lutie. I want to be forced to stand because I’m so excited.”

“Dad!” said Pierce, choking on his dinner. “You talked to Train yourself?”

“Train was intimidated. If he had any plans, he won’t try them now. Pass the hot sauce.”

“Dad! If you intimidated him, it’s even worse! Now he’s got to prove that cops can’t shove him around. I’m the person he’ll prove it to.”

Pierce’s mother was beside herself. She wanted Pierce in private school, or out of state, or maybe she should leave the whole marriage and this stupid person who thought he was a law enforcement officer, but in fact was putting his own son’s life and eyesight at risk!

Pierce’s parents rarely argued in his presence and he liked to believe they rarely argued at all. He went into the backyard rather than be proven wrong.

Around him stretched big brick houses with their big green yards. He saw Fountain Ridge suddenly as a sort of classy prison: you could hide out here, safe in your matching sets of bushes and trees, safe among three-car garages and the weed-whacked edges of lawns. Nothing could touch you here. They didn’t even have insects in Fountain Ridge, because everything was sprayed and treated.

He thought of Train, the least sprayed and treated person in Court Hill High.

Aunt Tamika got home early.

Aunt Grace got home with her.

Uncle Dean drove up at the same time.

They walked into the house together, an out-of-step trio at the wrong time of day.

“What?” said Lutie. She didn’t care if they knew she’d skipped school today. They should get used to it.

Aunt Grace shook her head.

“What?” said Lutie again.

Aunt Tamika was crying.

“What?” shouted Lutie.

“Saravette,” said Uncle Dean. “She’s dead.”

“T
he police found her,” said Aunt Tamika. “She went on a binge. Drinking, drugs, pills, everything she could find. Police got her to the ER and called me. Dean and I drove as fast as we could. She had already passed.”

Lutie thought of MeeMaw on the porch in the dark, singing “Be You Still Alive?”

No. Not anymore.

“She’s been heading that way for a long while,” said Tamika. “I don’t think she minded going offstage forever. It was a terrible death in a terrible place, but one good thing.” Aunt Tamika smiled shakily at Lutie. “She told the person she loved good-bye and I’m sorry.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“But if she loved me …”

“Saravette was desperate all her life, Lutie. Desperate for what, I never knew. She couldn’t be satisfied with anything. She couldn’t stick to anything. She couldn’t work hard for anything. She could only thrash around.”

“But when she was sober and straight, Lutie,” said Uncle Dean, “she was a precious gem.”

“How often was she sober and straight?” asked Lutie.

There was a pause. “Actually, I never saw her like that,” said her uncle. “I just want to believe that every human is a precious gem if the circumstances are right. But Saravette made her own circumstances. We tried to fix things, time after time. Time after time she wouldn’t let us.”

Death had come. They needed their pastor.

They got in Uncle Dean’s car and drove to Chalk, where Miss Veola was waiting for them in the little yard under the big trees. They held each other and wept.

“I want the funeral to be private,” said Lutie.

Miss Veola gave her a strange look.

“Nobody knows Saravette anymore,” said Lutie.

“They know you, honey. Funeral’s for you, too. You need to pray and sing and rejoice in the presence of the Lord and your friends.”

“I still want it private,” said Lutie.

“You just don’t want them to know what kind of life Saravette led,” said Miss Veola. “
I
don’t want to know what life she led.
I
don’t want to face the facts.
I
don’t want proof that I failed one of my babies. Or that she failed me. You and I, we don’t know which one it was. Only the Lord knows. But funerals—they’re not about protecting our reputation. They’re about sending the soul of somebody we loved to Jesus.”

Aunt Tamika and Aunt Grace wept.

But I didn’t love her, thought Lutie. I hardly knew her.

Lutie believed in heaven. She had never been able to close in on hell. But there had to be opposites. If the good people had eternal life in the presence of the Lord, then what about the bad people? Where did they go? Or were they all God’s
children in the end, folded in the arms of the Lord? Did he say, “It’s okay. You’re here now. Let’s not worry about what happened then.”

Lutie hoped not. Lutie hoped Saravette had to worry.

“I hurt too,” said Miss Veola finally. “I hurt for my dear friend Eunice, who tried to be the best mama she knew how. Two out of three daughters turned out beautifully, and one was lost. But we have wept over that enough. Now is our time to give Saravette Painter food for her journey.”

A
zure Lee went to find Pierce. “Is it true your daddy showed up in school to yell at Train?”

“Yup,” said Pierce glumly.

“This is not good,” said Azure Lee. “Train knew perfectly well that you and I stopped that late bus because it was getting dark and Doria can be dumb as a stump and Train is not the person to hang with. Train probably already hates you. Why’d your daddy do that, anyway?”

“Evan at Youth Group said something about Train, and I thought it was my civic duty to call my daddy.”

“You forgot what happened to Nate when he had that same idea?”

“I know, it was stupid.”

“Watch yourself,” said Azure Lee. Then she smiled. “Remember how Doria laughed at us the first time she heard us call our daddies
daddy
?”