Maybe the Moon

an enemy, either.
    “Why didn’t you tell me she was doing that?” This time Linda was addressing her ex-husband, and he, in turn, was looking awkward beyond belief. I wondered suddenly if the song had once meant something to them. If, perish the thought, it had been their song. It was Neil, after all, who’d suggested that number, who’d included it in our repertoire in the first place. It gave me the willies to think that all this time I might have been acting out some sort of postmarital delusion for him.
    Walter spoke up before the question could be resolved. “Say, I don’t suppose you’d mind…?”
    “Walter…” This was Mary, admonishing her husband with a stern glance, having read his mind. “I’m sure Miss Roth didn’t come prepared to sing today.”
    I was struck dumb for a moment.
    “You’re right,” said Walter. “We wouldn’t dream of asking you that.”
    “We certainly wouldn’t.”
    Linda was giving me a plaintive, cow-eyed look that said: Think how much it would mean to them.
    Neil was studying his shoes, no help at all.
    “The thing is,” I said, “I’m used to working with accompaniment.”
    “They’ve got a piano,” Linda burbled. “Neil, you could play.”
    At this new development, Walter gazed hopefully at Mary, Neil gazed at me, and I gazed into another dimension, where I was just tall enough to reach out and throttle Linda’s scrawny neck.
    “It isn’t as strange as you might think,” Mary informed me, clearly beginning to warm to the idea. “We have a little program planned. Janet’s grandmother is singing a few of her favorite hymns.” She smiled at me sweetly. “Funerals are really for the living, aren’t they?”
    Lucky Janet, I thought, to be missing all this.
    “Well,” I said finally, “if you don’t mind a few rough edges.”
    “Of course not!” The Gliddens spoke in unison, united in their joy.
    Linda was positively ecstatic at the prospect of something new to organize. She offered her services to Walter and Mary on the spot, then engaged them in a brief discussion about folding chairs and placement of the piano. Charged with purpose, the three of them scuttled off toward the house, leaving me and Neil alone on the lawn.
    “You’re dead meat,” I said.
    Neil chuckled.
    “I mean it.”
    “Well…it’s the least we can do.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “For such a supremely gifted artist.”
    I gave him the evilest eye I could muster.
    “I think you’re wonderful,” he said.

    There must have been thirty people crammed into that tiny living room—including Janet, who now resided on the mantel, I wastold, in a piece of vintage Catalina crockery. My opening act, as promised, was Janet’s grandmother, who did a creditable job with those hymns of hers, despite a brief dental mishap. The audience rewarded her with polite applause and several dutiful pecks on the cheek.
    Then Walter took the floor.
    “And now it’s a great honor for me to introduce a special guest, a person our Janet was working with when—uh—this year. Some of you know this young lady starred in Mr. Woods , the—uh—second, I believe, most popular movie of all time, and went on to star in Janet’s most recent movie…film; excuse me.” He displayed a tepid smile. “Janet preferred the term ‘film.’ Anyway , before I mess this up…Cadence Ross.”
    He made an ineffectual flourish toward the ancestral upright, where Neil and I were both seated—him on the stool; me, rather precariously, on top. Feeling oddly like a saloon girl, I explained to the audience that I had sung this song in Janet’s brilliant but sadly unfinished film, that it had always been a personal favorite of mine, that I hoped it would mean something special to each and every one of them.
    I was surprised by how well it worked. I was in decent voice—thanks to all that fresh air, no doubt—and Neil played with a tenderness that seemed perfectly tailored for the occasion. It was easily our best performance, far better than anything we’d ever done for that stupid video. Something just clicked that had never clicked before. And the music seemed uncannily appropriate. Especially the soaring part at the end that sounds like an ascent into heaven.
    As that last wistful note lingered in the balmy air, I closed my eyes and let my head drop humbly to my chest. There was a moment of total silence before the audience could convert its raw-edged emotion into thunderous and sustained applause. I basked in