Jodi had done the wise thing, and eaten small servings of everything. I just plowed ahead and ate from one end of the table to the other, and paid the price with pain in my stomach later. Then again, I always eat more when I’m nervous, and damn-all but I was nervous tonight. Bad enough I was watching them decide what to think about my fiancée, but I had to worry about what Adam had stirred up at Mamma’s orders.
I started to relax as the dinner wound down. Jodi got up and insisted on helping Mamma clean up. Even though cleanup’s a lot easier with an industrial-sized dishwasher, there’s still work to be done after a king-sized feeding like that one, and Jodi was scoring big points with Mamma by showing that, city girl or not, she’d do her share. I just hoped she didn’t end up washing the actual pots and pans. Willing Jodi might be, good at cleaning dishes she wasn’t. I always ended up having to rewash the ones she thought she’d scrubbed. And if Mamma found a spot of food left on one of her big pans . . . well, it’d be the Big Lecture for me.
Apparently that passed without incident, because Jodi and Mamma came out with Mamma reeling off her recipe for the sweet potato pie and leading Jodi into the big family room, where the instruments were being dragged out from the huge closets on the sides or taken down from the dark-paneled walls. The family room was just about large enough to play tennis in, but what with all the little tables, big comfy chairs and couches and all, it seemed right cozy.
“I hear tell from Clint you’re a damn fine singer,” Grandpa Marlon said. “The Slades always been a musical family too; mind if we indulge?”
“No, please do,” Jodi said.
“Join in if you feel like it, dear.”
I sat down to watch and join in the singing. I liked listening, and I felt too rusty to just join in right away. Mamma was on the piano—Nellie was better than she was, but of course Nellie wasn’t here—Grandpa had his banjo, Father a guitar, Adam the big standup bass, and of course Jonah had an electric guitar, as might’ve been expected. Without Helen, we were short our main vocals. The family did several numbers Jodi didn’t know, though I could hear her start to hum along with the choruses, but when we started up “Amazing Grace,” she sat up; I knew she liked that song. I’d wondered about that, like how she could perform in Handel’s Messiah with her background—to which she’d replied: “Oy, don’t be silly. First, I’m a terrible Jew—I eat trayf sometimes. Second, beautiful music is beautiful music. I even like Wagner, which my grandfather would be like to explode over if I said it to his face. But Wagner was a great musician, just a complete schmendrick as a person.”
I’ve always liked “Amazing Grace” myself; but once Jodi started singing it, you could see that even the rest of the Slades hadn’t heard anything like it before. That voice, that could fill a concert hall without a single bit of electronic assistance, took the old spiritual and made it Jodi’s own song of joy and thankfulness. There was a hush in the family room when the song ended, everyone else having stopped playing to hear her last notes. Grandpa spoke, finally. “Young lady, if’n I were wearin’ a hat, I’d take it off to you. As it is, I have to say Clint didn’t do you justice. Sing just like the angels, you do.”
This time it was Jodi who blushed crimson. “More like a bellowing angel. I’m a belter, not a real singer.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I said. “You’re the best singer I know, Jodi.”
“Can she do the glass trick?” Mamma wanted to know.
“Mamma!”
Jodi laughed. “Don’t worry, Clint. Believe it or not, singers like me do sometimes get that question. I could, Mamma Slade, but it usually only works with pretty good glasses, and I wouldn’t want to break anything valuable.”
“Nonsense! I can always get more glasses—why, with all these young ‘uns I’ve had through the years, I’ve gone through more’n one set of them anyways. But I’ve always thought that was just some fancy trick on stage.”