Read Missing Mom for Free Online Page A

a single call. (I knew Mom would notice. Seeming so unsuspicious, Gwen Eaton had eyes in the back of her head, and ears, too.) I was feeling empowered not having called my voice mail in Chautauqua Falls which would determine for me had I been expecting a call, or not; was I hoping for a call, or indifferent; was I oblivious of what might, or might not, be waiting for me on my voice mail in my darkened apartment in Chautauqua Falls.
    In fact, I couldn’t risk it. Hearing the recording click in.
    You have no new messages.
     
    “This has gone better than we expected.”
    “Well, Nikki! That isn’t saying much.”
    Next morning Clare and I would have to concede, speaking on the phone, that the crazy quilt of Mom’s guests had worked, sort of. If we’d taken Mom out to dinner at the stately Mr. Ephraim Inn she’d have fretted over the prices (“Twenty-two dollars for chicken ! Twenty-eight dollars for lamb !”), she’d have been overly friendly with our waitress out of an embarrassment with being waited on (“I’m never waited on at home, am I? I can go to that service station and pour ice water for myself, it’s no trouble”) and, when the check came, she’d have tried to talk Rob into letting her “help out.”
    At 9 P . M . Mom’s guests were still at the dining room table. Showing no signs of preparing to depart. Wexley and Danto and Rob Chisholm had established an unexpected alliance, criticizing state government officials. In the kitchen Mom was brewing fresh coffee (“real” and decaf ). Through the evening she’d been on her feet half the time, into and out of the kitchen in her usual flurried zeal to serve her guests. Mom was a small woman but could be fierce in forbidding anyone to help her: “Now! You’re my guests tonight. Even my daughters, you just sit .” As if Aunt Tabitha and oldest girlfriend Alyce needed to be told.
    In the midst of a meal Mom had a way of slipping into the kitchen to surreptitiously rinse a few plates at the sink, place them in the dishwasher and return smiling innocently to the table. Getting a headstart on cleanup was for Mom what illicit sex was for other people.
    I followed Mom into the kitchen carrying dirtied plates. And there came Clare with more. When Clare scolded, her nostrils flared: “Mom! For goodness sake let Nikki and me take over. Enjoy your guests, you invited them.”
    I laughed. Clare glanced at me, incensed.
    “Well, it’s so. No one but Gwen Eaton would have invited these people, thrown them together to sink or swim, and hopped up and down from the table all evening abandoning them to one another.”
    Mom mildly protested, “Clare, I have not. I have not been hopping up and down and abandoning my guests. You’re being unfair.”
    Quickly I intervened: “Clare is being Clare, Mom.”
    Clare had been doubtful of the evening from the start. Tomorrow was a school day for Lilja and Foster and that meant getting up early and getting the children up etcetera. Worse, Rob seemed to be drinking more than usual. And enjoying himself more than usual.
    I smiled to think this wasn’t Rob Chisholm at home.
    Mom was asking, anxiously, “Don’t you think the evening is going well, really?” and Clare and I said, “Oh, Mom: yes. Of course.” I complimented Mom on such “lively, original” guests and Clare complimented Mom on “how pretty” the table looked. “But do you think people really like the food, or are they just having seconds to be polite?” Mom asked, all but wringing her hands, and Clare and I laughed at the very question: “Mom, the food is delicious. Of course.”
    “But the Hawaiian chicken, Tabitha thought was too sweet…”
    “Tabitha!” Clare laughed. “Didn’t you notice, she heaped her plate at least twice?”
    “She said the rice was undercooked.”
    “Because it wasn’t gummy,” I said. “Aunt Tabitha doesn’t know the first thing about serious cooking.”
    “Well. Maybe.”
    “Mom, please! You’re a terrific