Missing Mom Read Online Free PDF

this table!
    And upon me, her supposedly beloved daughter.
    She doesn’t know me. Doesn’t want to know me.
    As usual, Mom was oblivious of any discomfort that wasn’t obvious. As long as her guests appeared to be enjoying themselves, eating her food and accepting offers of seconds, what else mattered? Gwen Eaton, incurable optimist! It was hopeless to be angry with my mother, she meant so well. She wanted her Nikki to be happy like her Clare and that meant marriage, kids, home. Family .
    Inspired by Danto whose swaggering self-confidence must have annoyed him, Rob confided to the table how, as a boy, he’d wanted to be a bacteriologist, or maybe an epidemiologist: “Somebody who would do good in the world not just make money.”
    Aunt Tabitha crinkled her nose as if Rob had said something vaguely obscene. Alyce Proxmire shuddered, staring at him in disbelief. Clare was looking embarrassed as if Rob had suddenly revealed an intimate secret and Sonja Szyszko clapped her ungainly hands together as if she’d misunderstood.
    “Why Rob,” Mom protested. “You do good, in your line of work. ‘Electronics.’ ‘Sales.’ There has to be electronics in our world, doesn’t there? There has to be business, and making money, or there wouldn’t be other things like science, would there? You couldn’t make a living just from tiny things you can see only through a microscope, who’d have invented and manufactured the microscope without business and money? Bacteria are so little, not like birds or even bugs.” Mom spoke gaily, giddily. She was being funny without knowing why, and seemed pleased at the smiling response.
    Danto said belligerently, “Bugs have their own bacteria, you better believe it. Like ticks? Lyme disease? It ain’t the ticks that cause the disease, it’s bacteria.”
    “Actually, it’s a virus,” Rob said curtly. “Lyme disease is caused by a virus.”
    The subject shifted to Lyme disease: everyone knew someone who’d had it. Alyce Proxmire seemed to come alive for the first time that evening, speaking excitedly of how, two summers ago, in this very house, she’d made the near-fatal mistake of holding Gwen’s gray cat in her lap and in so doing she must have picked up a tick from the cat’s fur because early next morning she was wakened by a terrible throbbing in her scalp, and managed to see in the mirror an angry red swelling of the kind that is a danger sign meaning infection, and Lyme disease, if you aren’t treated immediately with antibiotics.
    “I might be paralyzed right now! I might be in an iron lung, right this minute! Thanks to Gwen and one of her strays.”
    Alyce meant to be joking, even as she was seriously chiding Mom, but her voice quavered with dread.
    Mom said apologetically: “Oh, Alyce. I feel so bad about that! Right away I examined Smoky, and took him to the vet, and Dr. McKay could not find a single tick on him, honestly. Not even a flea. ‘Smoky is one of the cleanest animals in my practice,’ he said, truly, Alyce! I’ve explained to you. Maybe you did pick up a tick at my house, out in the grass, remember we were walking in the lawn, there are always deer crossing the lawns in this neighborhood, and Lyme disease comes from deer ticks. I’m sure the tick didn’t come from Smoky.”
    Alyce murmured petulantly that Gwen always defended the cat, as she always defended her strays. Aunt Tabitha smiled grimly, agreeing: there was no telling how many of Gwen’s strays were underfoot, she was sure she’d felt something brush against her ankle beneath the table. In her teacherly way of shutting down a subject Clare intervened: “Mom is a sucker for stray animals but her family keeps a close watch on her, she’s down to just one.”
    Mom said, sighing, “Well. Morning Glory passed away. Now there’s just Smoky.”
    “But there was a time, not long ago,” Clare said, “when you had four cats. You know how Dad felt about that.”
    “Oh, dear. Your dad