Page 30 of Born to be Wilder

I stood frozen, staring out at the crowd now cheering for me and calling my name. I didn’t even think I could run away if I tried. My legs felt like the bones had been replaced with cotton.

Suddenly, they were moving.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

One after another I moved toward the stage.

I walked up the wooden steps, then stopped in front of the microphone, squinting against the harsh, unforgiving yellow spotlight.

My heart wasn’t beating anymore; it was trying to punch its way out of my sternum. If I’d thought standing on a bridge, preparing to jump off it would be scary, then this… this was terrifying.

Before I had time to process my horrifying new reality, the opening notes started.

Familiar. Comforting. The soundtrack to my life with the widows.

The intro to “Time of My Life” started.

The lyrics scrolled across the monitor. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I tried again. A sound emerged that was part wheeze, part whimper. I was off-key by three zip codes. A guy at the bar winced.

I looked at Alice. She was leaning forward, her face full of hope.

I sang the next line, my voice cracking like a dry twig.

Embarrassment rushed through every inch of my body, crippling and suffocating, and I fully regretted every decision I’d ever made in all my life that had led to this moment.

From the table, Marge stood up and screamed while Doris and Alice clapped along with the beat.

I kept going.

Tried to.

I lost track of the words, the panic, or maybe the tequila, causing my vision to blur.

My ears started to ring, drowning out the melody. The hot prickle of tears burned behind my eyes, and suddenly, I couldn’t see the words on the screen. Words I didn’t need because I knew this song by heart, yet it seemed every word had packed up and left my mind, too embarrassed to be associated with me.

The panic started to close in—the hot-faced, heart-pounding awareness of every eye in the place staring at me.

Judging me.

I couldn’t do it. The fear was too big. The stage was too bright. I took a step back, ready to drop the mic and run back to Bertha.

I looked at my widows for support, but the table was empty.

And then they were there. All three of them, climbing up onto the stage beside me—Marge took my arm on one side, Doris appeared on the other, and Alice stepped up front and center with the easy confidence of a woman who had never been afraid of being looked at in her life, grabbing the second mic from the stand like it belonged to her.

And then they started singing.

The bar went absolutely wild.

We were a disaster. A beautiful, magnificent disaster—four women of a certain age mangling a Dirty Dancing classic on a stage in a bar in a town none of us would ever be able to find on a map again. Doris was a beat behind on every line. Marge was belting out in a voice so deep she might as well have been Patrick Swayze himself. Alice was, of course, actually good, and if she hadn’t loved dancing so much, she could have had a career as a singer instead.

And now with them at my side, I found the courage to sing… to really sing.

I belted out my off-key and ear-shattering notes without a care in the world.