Read Online Wait Until Tomorrow by Pat MacEnulty - Free Book Online Page B

interest in earrings. In fact, I was the one who had insisted that at fourteen, it was time. She had shrugged noncommittally and said, okay. It was only when it looked like it might not happen in time for graduation that she had finally pleaded, “Can we please go get my ears pierced today?”
    We pull up to the country club for the graduation ceremony. Emmy looks as if she is going to a hanging.
    â€œWill you please tell her that she looks nice?” I hiss to Hank right before we go into the reception room.
    â€œWhat?” He’s clueless. “Oh. You look nice, babe.”
    That helps a little, but the day is doomed from the start. She is leaving a school she loves and sixteen close friends. And worst of all, she will not be getting an award.

    She smiles through everything—the family portrait, the tedious speeches, the snapshots with happy friends, the hugs and goodbyes. She smiles and smiles and smiles until finally we are in the car on the way home and then she weeps. She weeps like a little girl.

FOUR
    SUMMER 2004
    Shortly after Emmy’s graduation, I am driving down a busy street in Charlotte when my station wagon, my quintessential “mom” car, makes an awful grinding sound and then shudders to a halt. It only takes a couple of hours for the tow truck to arrive and take me and the Blue Monster, so named by one of Emmy’s friends, to the transmission shop, where the experts are baffled.
    This is not a happy time for me. My collection of short stories came out recently, and while the reviews were generally favorable, several said the stories were “depressing.” But mostly I am worried about my mother.
    Then comes the call. Sandy, my mother’s landlord, tells me that my mother is in the hospital for something unspecified. I call the hospital and speak to Mom.
    â€œDo you need me to come get you?” I ask.
    â€œNo, it’s too much of a bother,” she says. Then she begins to cry.
    My car is in the shop, so I find a ride to a car rental place, rent a little white economy car, and drive the five hours to Edenton. When I walk into the hospital room, I find my mother lying in the bed looking like a bewildered child. For a moment it is as if we are strangers.

    A nurse comes in, smiles, and busies herself taking my mother’s stats. I stare out the window at the flat silver lake on the other side of the parking lot and wonder what’s coming next.
    The doctors can’t find anything seriously wrong with my mother. She’s dehydrated, they say, so they pump her full of fluids and the next day she’s ready to go home. Before she’s released I go over to the church and meet with several of her choir members, hoping to find some way that she can stay in Edenton. They knit their brows. They’re concerned, but they aren’t her family. I can’t expect anyone to take her in and care for her.
    â€œMom, I think you should come home with me. I’ve found an assisted-living place near my house,” I tell her.
    â€œNo, no. We can’t afford it,” she says.
    So I leave her with a makeshift care arrangement and drive home feeling as if I have abandoned her on an ice floe.
    When I get home, my car is supposedly fixed. I have my summer arts camp job, and for two weeks I forget about my problems as I revel in poetry and playwriting with my brilliant teenage prodigies.
    But the car is not fixed, and neither is my mother. Mom is back in the hospital. This time I decide I will not leave without her.

    Hank and Emmy are not thrilled. My mother’s plaintive cry “Pat!” rings through our house. She needs help getting to the bathroom. She can’t get out of the chair. She forgets which door is the closet and which is the bathroom. She throws our busy lives into slow motion. They don’t understand. They can’t see who she really is. They can’t see past the illusion of the body, sheathed in papery
skin. I know