Aunt Alice warned me that Jake wanted to pay me for singing at Vika’s funeral.
“You know he doesn’t have to pay me,” I protested. “I’m glad to do this no matter what.”
“You let him pay you!” Aunt Alice chided. “He’ll be insulted if you don’t take it.”
Which, of course, I knew. I wouldn’t dream of insulting Jake like that. Even when gratitude can’t be quantified, there must be a gesture. It must be solid. And it must be accepted.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jake at the funeral. It wasn’t the time. I was not inside the grief. I was there to do a job, provide a simple service, add something to the beauty that can be found in good-bye. So I stayed in my place. Unobtrusively obtrusive. Background soundtrack.
Jake approached me on Sunday as I was sliding the hymn numbers into place on the board. I turned with a smile, the smile I can’t help in the warm-welcoming of Sacred Heart Parish. He thrust an envelope towards me, pulled me in for a hug, and kissed my cheek. His eyes looked a little red as he thanked me and I offered the most graceful response I could muster. Knowing what was in the envelope and not wanting to be tacky, I tucked it in my purse without opening it.
After Mass, I went down for coffee instead of packing up my guitar and sneaking away to run my weekend errands. I sat with Aunt Alice and Daisy and the woman whose name I never learned but who I hug during the Sign of Peace. And Jake. Aunt Alice chattered as she does — delightfully unceasingly. When she left to get a refill, Jake leaned into the gap.
“I want to thank you again.” His thick Polish accent made me drop my ear towards him. “You did such a good job.” A pause. “Is it enough?”
The mind quadruples and quintuples layers of thought when confronted with an unexpected, unthoughtof question. Somewhere I wanted to say, I don’t know, it didn’t occur to me to check. Part of me wondered what would happen if I said no, it’s not enough. I wondered what kind of people say no. My brain raced to decide if I should act as if it was too much for the little-big thing I did, to attempt a guess at an amount that could be anywhere from three dollars to three hundred.
The strange-awkward social graces a person acquires came to my rescue.
“Oh, absolutely. Thank you.” And I hid within a styrofoam cup of muddy Church basement coffee and Aunt Alice’s resumed bubbling stream of gossip.