Page 5 of Bless This Hot Mess

Her eyes stung anyway and she dabbed at them with the inside of her blazer sleeve, leaving a faint damp patch. The street smelled of exhaust, last night’s rain, and the bakery three doors down, tempting her to make a sandwich of her feelings between two jelly donuts. She decided discipline never hurt anyone and took a deep breath of the delicious temptation, then squared her shoulders and continued to walk up the chipped concrete sidewalk.

The town received her like it always did, indifferent but familiar. A pickup rolled past, country radio rambling faintly through the open window. Two kids argued about Pokémon cards near the newspaper box. Somewhere, a dog barked at nothing and everything, equally made miserable by the sheer act of facing the day.

The ache behind her ribs swelled, looking for a way out. And then, like it often did when she was backed into a corner by fate, bureaucracy, or a poorly timed request to cover one more volunteer shift at the soup kitchen, her brain did the only thing it knew would somehow make it all a little better. It turned her life into a musical.

The melody rose in her chest before she could stop it. It wasn’t loud at first. Just a thread of sound, soft and tentative and a little off-key. She could have swallowed it, admonished herself curtly as now was hardly the time for singing.

She didn’t. Instead, she let it out on a mournful sigh that had been waiting for days to escape her.

“Everyone keeps looking at me,

Like I inherited a map…”

The words slipped out before her conscience could veto them. She kept walking, eyes straight ahead, pretending she was just a normal woman muttering to herself and not someone who had just turned Greater Napanee into the setting for her own overture.

“...of how to run a station,

How to hold a town together…”

Her voice was warmer now, stronger. The tune grew in confidence and slid beneath the lines until they locked together into place, like they’d been waiting patiently there for her all along.

“...when the ones who taught me everything,

Vanished past the reach of weather.”

She reached the bakery at the corner though she’d most certainly not intended to be drawn back into its clutches. The yeasty, sugary air rolled over her like a carb-based blessing. Mrs. Feinberg stepped out at that moment, holding a paper bag in one hand and a leash in the other. The leash led to a chihuahua who hated everything but wore a knit pumpkin sweater anyway. The reason for its earlier complaints was now apparent–orange was rarely flattering on anyone. Mrs. Feinberg took one look at Emma-Lou, at the black dress, the folder, the shining eyes, and her expression softened. She reached out, squeezing Emma-Lou’s forearm gently.

“Oh, honey,” she said quietly. “Bless your heart.”

For a second, Emma-Lou’s voice faltered on the next line,

“They boarded that plane with sunscreen and scripture,

A vacation with an unholy twist…”

She could see them so clearly in her mind’s eye: her mother waving a floppy sun hat at the airport; her father insisting on carrying a Bible in his carry-on (“In case of turbulence, Lou-Lou. The Lord likes a man prepared.”)

“But somewhere past the line of sight,

The world swallowed them into mist.”

Her throat swelled aroundmist. She let the word break and turned it into vibrato, because if she was going to fall apart in public, she might as well make it a show worth watching. A kid weighed down by a paper route messenger bag zoomed by on a scooter, slowed in curiosity, and glanced back, brow furrowed as a woman in musical mourning was not a usual sight seen on his daily delivery. Emma-Lou kept walking.

The sidewalk under her feet was cracked and slightly sticky from last night’s spilled 7-11 Slushies. The light bounced off parked cars. A busker leaned against the wall near the pharmacy, half-heartedly coaxing a tune out of an old harmonica. He cocked his head, listened to her next few notes, and after a beat, slid in underneath her melody with a thin, reedy harmony of his own.

She almost laughed. Of course, her grief would come with accompaniment. Her steps fell into rhythm as she reached the corner. Her shoulders squared a little, and the music in her chest shifted, moving toward something bigger, braver. Her voice climbed into the pre-chorus, the words coming now as surely as her own breath, without effort or restraint,

“Their absence hums through every hallway,

A chord I cannot tune or trace.

Still, something in the radio static

Whispers, Child, step into our place.”

Onstatic, she could practically hear it: that faint hiss in the WWJD soundboard when the levels weren’t quite right, the one her father always fixed with two fingers and a frown. The image made her eyes burn again, but the note came out steady and strong.

She reached the crosswalk. The DON’T WALK hand blinked red at her like an accusation. She pressed the button and as the world waited, so did the music. A wind picked up, riffling the papers in her folder. She clamped them tighter against her chest. The sign flashed at her and encouraged her to WALK. She looked both ways, then stepped out into the street and into her own chorus,