Wait Until Tomorrow (34 page)

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 shit, 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 glass 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 classical 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 godfather 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 manuscript 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 assets 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 class you're supposed to have parents with “assets.” We feel we're entitled 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.

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 assisted-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.

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 Titus, Vicki Moreland, Tom Cullen, Becky Aijala, Sherry Shaw, and Karsen 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.

Much gratitude to Sy Safransky and the editors at the
Sun Magazine
for publishing “At Her Feet”—the essay that was the seed for this book. A few sections of the book also appeared on my Open Salon blog and in
Brain Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers
. Much gratitude to Amy Scholder, editor for my first four books and now this, for her support and encouragement as well as her discerning eye.

Without my brothers and my daughter, I couldn't have survived this era of my life, much less written about it. Thanks to Sylvia and Cathy—angels who made it easier.

Much thanks to Jo for all the work he did to make sure the
American Requiem
performance happened; to Sharen Camille Becker for contributing her amazing vocal talents; to David and Edward for helping me transport my mother and keeping me sane;
to the “Requiem Production Team,” especially my godfather Jim Taylor for logistical support; to R. Wayne Bailey and the Chorale of Florida State College at Jacksonville (including soloists Ebony Johnson, Andre Troutman, and Mark Mansilungan) as well as the orchestra performers and organist Shannon Gallier—an extraordinary group of talented people; to the many friends and admirers of my mother who contributed money and time and energy to make the performance happen. Thanks to Reverend Douglas G. Hodsdon and all those at the Church of the Good Shepherd for welcoming us home.

And of course undying gratitude to my mother, Rosalind MacEnulty, for her endless patience, love, and forgiveness and for giving me her blessing to write this book.

Published in 2011 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016

 

Text copyright © 2011 by Pat MacEnulty

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

 

 

 

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacEnulty, Pat.

Wait until tomorrow : a daughter's memoir / by Pat MacEnulty.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-558-61702-5

1. MacEnulty, Pat—Family. 2. Novelists, American—21st century—Family relationships. 3. Mothers and daughters—United States—Biography. 4. Aging parents—Care—United States. I. Title.

PS3613.A272Z469 2011

818'.603—dc22

2011002856