Wait Until Tomorrow Part 20

"I don't think you've proven yourself yet," she says.

But she comes along easier than I dared to hope. She knows that resistance is futile. I've made that much clear.

The drive down is easy as well. We stop periodically at rest areas. We have a drill. Edward gets the wheelchair out of the back. David maneuvers Mom in the wheelchair and I bring her into the bathroom, take the leg rests off and get her onto the toilet. I've developed my own little patter: "Okay, plant your feet, Mom. Plant them under your knees. Are your feet planted? Now I want you to grab the bar here and stand. Stand all the way up. One two three. Good. Okay. Now pivot, move your foot, pivot, pivot, and go ahead and sit down, Mom. Good."

I schedule eight hours for the trip but it takes less than seven. And then we are in the hotel. My brother Jo and his girlfriend Laurie are there with Sharen, my niece, who is going to sing the soprano solo in the performance on Sunday.

We're all parked in the little sitting area of David's hotel room when Jo pulls out the newspaper. The front page of the Florida Times-Union on Sat.u.r.day, February 21, shows a contrite Tiger Woods and the words "I am so sorry" emblazoned above his face. But we are not interested in section A. We are interested in the next section-the state and local news. And on the front page of section B-above the fold even-is this headline: "City's Music Master Returns." The story takes up a solid column at the bottom of which is a picture of my mother from 1967. She looks like a movie star, like Joan Crawford or Jane Russell. She wears an old movie-star-style blouse with a collar that points out like the petals of a flower. Everyone comments on the blouse. The story continues inside, includes quotations from yours truly, and mistakenly refers to my brother David as "Mark MacEnulty." We get a laugh out of this, but none of us is too worried about the name mix-up because the writer has the essence of the story-the grande dame is back for a special appearance at her old home, the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Jo and I congratulate ourselves later.

"We did it!" Jo says.

"You're the wide receiver, man," I tell him. "All I did was throw the ball. You're the one who caught it and made a touchdown."

It's true. He spent countless hours making scores for the chorus and orchestra and organist. He raised money. All his talents and skills from his former stint as conductor and managing director for a community orchestra in Illinois have paid off. I had planned to pay for any expenses myself. But it turns out all I'm paying for is gas, some food, and a hotel room.

Our family friend Karen managed to find the chorus and conductor for us, generate publicity, and get us a deal on the hotel rooms. And now she's invited our family over for dinner at her house. But when Jo and David are together, conversation and reminiscence take precedence. I actually do have a duty-herding this family of cats outside and into our respective vehicles.

The dinner is wonderful. Even though not everyone is here, there are more of our family members in one spot than have been together since Sharen's wedding ten years earlier. They start telling Roz stories at the table. Karen tells us about a man who, for some reason, stopped Mother on one of her walks and began to tell her his woes. He had lost his wife and now his dog. He told my mother he couldn't see any reason to keep living. And apparently she agreed with him. I'm thinking that's not the sweetest story in the world. I'm thinking she was a more sympathetic person than that. But perhaps her methodology in this case was to shed light on his self-pitying.

Even though earlier, in the car, she asked if the four of us were all somehow related, Mom holds her own during the conversation at the table. If she's not fully cognizant, she's got a h.e.l.l of a good act.

This day has gone so well that it's inevitable that I screw up. I do this by taking a bite of the incredibly delicious chocolate cake that Karen made. Oh h.e.l.l. You might as well tell a crackhead "just one hit." I scarf down my piece and half of my mom's. While this may not seem a terrible sin, you have to know that chocolate has caffeine and my body is akin to a finely tuned scientific instrument geared to detect the most minute portions of caffeine in any substance. I am not going to go to sleep for hours.

We come back to the hotel. The bed is too high for Mom, so I put her in the fold-out bed in the "suite" area. There's a wall between us but it only goes halfway into the room. The time we spent together today was fun, and we're both feeling rather sisterly. I lift her from the wheelchair and she drops onto the bed. Then I stand on the bed and pull her into a p.r.o.ne position. I place pillows under her head and feet and cover her with a blanket, leaving her feet uncovered per her instructions. At ten thirty I actually lie down in the king-size bed as if I'm heading directly to that adored world, that realm of happiness: sleep. But it is not to be. The chocolate cake, which by the way was the tastiest piece of cake ever created by human hands, has sent its caffeine brigands to hijack my brain. They are celebrating Carnivale with lights, music, and dancing.

Eventually, however, the relaxation herb I take kicks in and I can just begin to taste the elixir of sleep. Around midnight, as I'm finally thinking I might go down the tunnel, the horror show begins. The whimpering, the groaning, the moaning, the tiny grunts.

"What is it, Mom?"

"I hurt."

I get up and give her some pain pills and crawl back into bed. Now what is this? Oh, rapturous sleep. The thoughts in my head are deliciously nonsensical, a sure sign that I'm entering the sacred realm.

Then my mother whines and I am yanked out of paradise. I know just how the cavewoman must have felt when the boorish caveman grabbed her by a shank of hair and dragged her out of her warm cave.

"Stop it!" I growl.

For maybe five minutes there is silence. Then it comes back.

I beg, I plead, I cajole, I threaten, but Mother cannot be quiet. For hours, every time I start to drift off, she cuts off my oxygen supply. The CIA should employ my mother to torture terrorists. At about five in the morning, out of helpless desperation, I take the comforter and a pillow from the bed into the bathroom where I shut the door and lie on the floor. I quickly drop down into oblivion and for maybe forty-five minutes it works. I cannot hear my mother.

So she ups the ante. She no longer whimpers. Now she yells out: "Help! Help!"

I stagger out of the bathroom.

"What is it, Mom? What's wrong?"

She looks up at me helplessly and says, "I need some water." She's already had a gla.s.s of water.

In a dry voice, I tell her, "If I had a gun right now, you'd be dead."

"Why? What have I done?" she asks. Then she turns her face from me and says, "No one has ever treated me with such hatred, and it saddens me."

"I'm just trying to sleep. Can you please please please just give me that?"

But she can't. And I can't help myself either. We're playing our roles-the victim and the martyr. Later I will realize she does not know what she's doing, but right now I'm cranky as h.e.l.l and desperate for sleep. Later when I'm complaining to all and sundry about my sleep deprivation Sharen will mention that her other grandmother was the same way. The call it "sundowners." The sun goes down and some old people lose their minds. Her other grandmother thought people were trying to kill her at night.

"I'll just leave," my mother says. "I'll go back where we came from."

"You can't do that," I say.

At 6:30 a.m. I call Jo.

"She's killing me," I tell him. He shows up at my door a few minutes later. We get her out of bed. I take her into the bathroom and clean her up and get a pretty dress on her. Jo takes her downstairs for breakfast. I try to get some sleep. But it's hopeless. I cannot sleep now. I get up in frustration and head downstairs, too.

That day I am a zombie. The performance is at 6 p.m., and I can't begin to imagine going there and smiling at people and trying to traverse the pathways of common conversation. People I haven't seen in forty years will be there. And I'm going to look like someone who just escaped from a mental inst.i.tution. I look in the mirror and am frightened.

While Jo and Laurie go to my father's old Unitarian church where Jo is giving a flute concert, the rest of us wind up having lunch at some bizarre place on the river decorated with stuffed wild animals.

We order gator tail for an appetizer. I don't eat mammals and have even stopped eating fowl, but a gator is a different story. I will eat a piece of gator in the hopes that someday I'll stop having nightmares about the scary b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I order for Mother, just like I used to do for Emmy. We gorge on fried shrimp and fabulous creamy key lime pie-de rigueur Florida fare. Then we zoom over to the church so Sharen can vocalize before the rehearsal. David wants to take pictures. Mom wants to stay in the car. I wander around with Edward, showing him where the choir kids all scrawled their names on the wall.

"There's my name," I say and point it out, remembering the hours I spent in this room turning pages for my mother as she played the piano.

As we leave the church parking lot and head back to the hotel, my mother asks where we just were.

"At the church," I tell her.

"What church?"

"The Good Shepherd. The church where you worked for thirty-something years."

"Oh, that church," she says.

The day is bright with a yellow sun in a merciful sky. But I'm totally off my game. My brain is filled with awful buzzing. Pam, Gary, and Theo arrive from Tallaha.s.see and call me on my cell phone, but I can't go hang with them. I send them off to eat. The big night is finally here and I'm in misery.

When we get back to the hotel, I leave Mom with David and Edward. For an hour I sleep! Sleep, glorious sleep. When I wake the world has been magically restored. Everything that was fractured is now whole. The night is almost here, so I slip into pantyhose, a shimmery dress, and high heels. I brush my hair and put on makeup and d.a.m.n-I can actually pa.s.s for a member of the human species.

Theo, Pam, and Gary come over to the hotel. My G.o.d, my friends, I think. They come upstairs with me and my mom and wait in the sitting area while I get Mom ready for the performance. They can overhear me in the bathroom.

"I'm going to get you your pain pills," I tell my mother in a loud voice because her hearing is "not what it used to be" as she says.

"What?"

"Pain pills."

"What? Petticoats?"

"Pain pills, Mom. Pain pills," I shout.

I go back to the sitting area for Mom's bag of medicine and pull out the sheet of Tramadols.

"Do you have enough for all of us?" Gary asks. Within seconds Pam and I are staggering with laughter.

I return to the bathroom with my mother's pills. Although the night before was one of my worst nights ever with my mother, today is filled with tenderness and connection. I stand behind her in the bathroom, facing the mirror, gently ma.s.saging her face with oil and then lightly rubbing in foundation.

"You do know I love you," I say, and she knows I am asking for forgiveness.

"Yes," she says. "I know."

We have been as close on this trip as we have ever been. My disappointment that Emmy's schoolwork prevents her from being with us sits like a stone in my gut, but I realize that this time is for me and my mom. If Emmy were here, it would not be the same. I would be focused on my daughter and not on my mother.

A few minutes later Mom is dressed in her purple velvet dress with tiny pearl beads sewn into the collar. Her silver mane is brushed and I've put makeup on her. She converses with my friends while I finish getting ready.

"Your mother is so eloquent," Pam tells me as we head outside. "Her language is sophisticated and playful for someone her age and in her situation. It's such a contrast-there she is in a wheelchair, with her memory going, but her mind is still journeying all over the place."

She's right. My mother's wit refuses to die.

We arrive at the church; nothing is as I imagined it would be. It is so much better. The church is not too cold as we feared it might be. A half hour before the concert and already the place is getting filled. Edward takes charge of pushing Mother's wheelchair. And the homage begins. Friends from thirty, forty, fifty years ago file in. They all want to see her. I watch her face as it lights up in recognition over and over again. She yelps in delight when her old friend Henson shows up. Another woman introduces herself to me, and my mother wheels around. "Did I hear you say Kaye? Kaye Bullock?!?" She knows everyone. She laughs joyfully. And they are so pleased to see her, to hold her hand, to tell her she hasn't changed.

"Oh yes, I have," she says with a laugh.

We are surrounded. Not just with her friends but with some of mine, too. Walking in the door is Katie and Nella. Katie was my best friend from the age of five to about ten. And her mother Nella was my second mother.

"I always said, we moved in and you moved over," Nella tells me. Nella is the one who opened the door for me on that terrible night. And I still feel a bond with her all these years later.

By six o'clock, the church pews are filled. We have seats in the middle. I have Mother's wheelchair right next to me. Theo, Pam, and Gary are on my other side. Jo, Laurie, and Edward are in the row behind us. David is in the balcony with his camera. The new organist-a young man-plays a couple of pieces as an opening act, to let my mother hear the organ she played for thirty-two years. She was a ship captain and the organ was her vessel.

Then the priest comes out to give an introduction to the requiem. He starts by telling the audience about her past service to the church and to the community. Most of us know all this, but everyone wants to hear him say it anyway. He's a good speaker, and at the end of the introduction he looks down the aisle and says to my mother, "Welcome home."

Then everyone (somewhere between three hundred and four hundred people) stands and turns to face my mother, clapping and clapping. Holy s.h.i.t, I'm thinking. I wasn't expecting this. Tears roll out of my eyes in hot beads. Finally, the clapping ceases and the performance begins.

The concert is heartbreakingly beautiful. When my niece Sharen stands up and sings the soprano solo, her necklace glitters in the light from the hanging lanterns, and her voice soars into the nave. I have loved her madly ever since she was five and I was fifteen and we lived together one year in my brother's house in Webster Groves. We pretended we were sisters. When I was in prison in Florida she came to visit me once. She was a teenager, and I remember running down the sidewalk to the visiting park, my hands waving in nervous excitement. When I saw her as Maria in West Side Story at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, I wept the whole time. She has that kind of effect on me. So now when her voice arches its back and fills the room, my chest tightens and for one holy moment I am fully present-right there in the now with my fingers wrapped around my mother's hand.

Daylight leaves and the stained gla.s.s windows grow dark. The musical complexity of the piece is evident to my ears now. Layer upon layer of voices and orchestra. A beautiful young African American man sings the tenor part. His mother sits a few rows in front of us. Even from behind I can tell she is beaming. Sharen told us earlier that he was originally a gospel singer and that he enjoyed the challenge of this cla.s.sical piece. Tonight he is meeting that challenge in full metal jacket.

Not only is my blood family here, but my church family is here, too-all those gentle people who hovered in the background of my childhood. Not one of them ever judged me when I went off the rails-or if they did, they've let it go by now. And I am happy because my friends are here, too, and they had no idea that my mother is this woman-this woman who composed such a work of art. Maybe the rest of the world doesn't know about her. But everyone in this room does. We know we are privileged tonight.

I clutch my mother's hand throughout the performance, watchful to make sure she doesn't drift off. But my fears abate. She's thoroughly engrossed as if hearing it for the first time. And in a way she is, because in the past she was always behind the organ. This is the first time she's had the chance to hear her music the way her audience has heard it.

At the end of the concert, Edward runs to the back of the church and comes back with flowers for my mother and once again it happens. The people stand and turn to face her and they clap for all they are worth. Somewhat abashed, she raises a regal hand and waves, saying graciously "Thank you. Thank you."

I thought I would feel relief that the whole thing was over. I thought that I would be happy once it was successfully completed. But instead what I feel is a rare elation. I want this moment to last forever. My brothers and I exchange hugs and high fives. My G.o.dfather hugs me. My former flute teacher shows up to warmly shake my hand. And her husband Bill, who owned the music store where Mother shopped for music and ma.n.u.script paper, is there, too. His child was one of the sons who died, one of those who inspired the original requiem. Bill is ninety years old now. I can still remember smelling the sweet musty smell of his music store and following my mother around as she perused the sheets of anthems.

People line up to pay their respects to my mother, and I leave her in Edward's capable hands. I stop the young tenor to congratulate him.

"Oh, I just love her," he gushes. "As soon as I saw this piece, I loved her. It's such a powerful piece of music. And such a challenge. I learned so much."

We look into each other's eyes. He is someone who will never have to read a self-help book, I'm thinking. I'm also thinking that she's gone and done it again. Touched another generation.

In the reception hall, my friend Mike, with his thick hair in a ponytail and an arm draped over his wife Katherine, comes over. They drove over from the beach to be here. I feel like a birthday girl.

When Mike was a teenager he played drums in a band that would later become Lynyrd Skynyrd. Mike ultimately chose surfing over drumming. The early band played many a Friday night in the church hall across the courtyard from the sanctuary.

A few days earlier Mike and I were talking on the phone. His father had recently died, and Mike had warned me to make sure that all my mother's a.s.sets were in order. He was having to pay an attorney to straighten out his deceased father's financial affairs.

"It's not a lot," he said. "Maybe a hundred grand, but still."

A hundred grand? I swallowed. "I don't think that will be a problem for us. Mom is basically living on Social Security and our monthly contributions." If you're middle cla.s.s you're supposed to have parents with "a.s.sets." We feel we're ent.i.tled to some kind of inheritance. My brothers and I had thought that surely our father would have left us something. He didn't. But standing here tonight, I don't care about that. I've gotten all the legacy from my mother I'll ever need.

Just then Edward proudly wheels his grandmother into the reception. A group of young female singers in their long black dresses look at her shyly with awed eyes. My mother is smiling happily. Her eyes glow.

Theo comes up and places an arm around my shoulders.

"Good job," he says.

Yes, I think, I was the catalyst for this event. But she's the one who tore out her heart and put it on a stave for all the world to hear.

EPILOGUE.

A Sunday morning in December, 2010. I pull out of the parking garage at the Charlotte Airport and into the bright morning light. I have just watched Emmy walk through the line to the security checkpoint. She glanced back at me with a nervous smile. We waved goodbye. She is on her way to see her father for the first time in two and a half years.

As I drive along the interstate, I am not sure how I feel. I try to imagine their reunion. Will she burst into tears? Will he? Or will they simply hug and be done with it?

So often in the past when Emmy has gone away, I've felt as hollow as a bell. Today I search for signs of impending sorrow that she will not be with me for Christmas. Traffic on the road is light and the sky is laced with wispy clouds. I notice a swelling in my chest-not of unhappiness, but of something like joy. This is the right ending to this story, I realize. Because every ending should also be a beginning. And I am pretty sure this is a new beginning for Hank and Emmy, and I am happy for them.

As for me, I've got to get back home and start cleaning for the party Lorri and I will have for my wonderful circle of friends on Christmas Eve. Theo will come to visit, and we'll have Christmas dinner with my mother at the a.s.sisted-living place before driving down to Florida for a few days.

I eject the Bright Eyes CD that Emmy and I were listening to on the way to the airport-Emmy's comfort music. And I randomly select a different CD and slide it into the player. It's the birthday mix-old show tunes and popular standards that I asked Theo to make for me. For some reason I've fallen in love with the songs that my mother's various community choral groups sang over the years: "More," "The Look of Love," "Autumn Leaves," "Moon River," "Summertime," and "My Funny Valentine." I thought the music was schmaltzy when I was a kid, but a few weeks ago, while listening to my mother play one of them on the piano, I yearned to hear them all again. Now the music I once disdained sounds both hip and glamorous. I smile when I hear the first track: Frank Sinatra singing "Let's take it nice and easy . . ."

I pull off the highway onto the road that leads home. The trees are bare, their spindly branches reaching toward the pale-blue sky. I look up at a tiny point that I know is a jet cutting a straight white line like an arrow. The road rolls underneath me as I drive toward the rising sun, listening to Frank. It's Sunday morning, and I am fine.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

My dear and supportive friends Pamela Ball and Patti Wood read this book in its patchwork quilt form and gave invaluable support and advice. My Charlotte writing group-Tamara t.i.tus, Vicki Moreland, Tom Cullen, Becky Aijala, Sherry Shaw, and Ka.r.s.en Price-read and gave great suggestions for many little sections that they had to read without the benefit of the whole. The eversupportive Joe Straub provided the final proofing. Thanks and love to all of the above.