Page 9 of Close Match

Cackling, I slip into a pair of slides and make my way out the door. I’m already pulling up the Uber app. There’s no way I’m making it back home without some assistance.

Ten minutes later, I’m settled in my Uber on the way back to the Upper West Side. With some amazement, it hits me my mother has to be some kind of genetic freak to be thirty years older than me and still able to maintain this pace.

Five

Evangeline

Mom and I have the audience in the palm of our hands. Our voices are in perfect harmony even as we sing opposite one another through a standing mirror without glass about how much we miss the other. We’re pouring our souls into the final lyrics about how our hearts don’t work right without the other’s, how a man shouldn’t come between our love, when I catch the tears glistening in her eyes. Her face is slightly flushed.

My eyes narrow, but she shakes her wigged head, setting the curls dancing. My eyes dart upward at the hot stage lights.

We step around the mirror to wrap up the final song. “My heart was filled with pain,” my voice projects.

Mom’s voice sings, “I’ll be with you wherever you go.”

“I’ll be with you wherever.”

Mom sings, “Forgive me,” before I cut in and we sing together, “Our love is forever. Miss me no more.” We hold the last note as we step around the mirror, our fingers touching. The sheer curtain envelops us as the audience jumps to its feet as Kate and her mother reunite in the final scene.

And my mother collapses in my arms, completely unscripted. The red velvet curtain which had begun to descend hides her weight almost entirely knocking me off my feet. The noise of the crowd masks my cries. “Help! Help!” I sink forward, still clutching my mother to me. Her eyes are wide and frightened on me, her breath heavily labored. She tries to talk, but I lean down. “Hush, Mom. I’m trying to get… Oh, Pas. Thank God. We need help! Something’s wrong with Mom!” Tears are streaming down my face as I face our director.

“9-1-1 has already been called. We have to move her off the stage, Evangeline. You have to take your bows,” he says grimly.

“Are you mad? I’m going with my mother to the hospital!” I snap.

He grabs me by my shoulders. “If we don’t keep the theater seated, it’s going to be a madhouse trying to get your mother out of here. We have to do the curtain call without your mother. We’re going to make an announcement she twisted her ankle backstage.”

Right. Think, Linnie. “I’m not leaving her until the EMTs get here.” I slide the wig off my mother’s head. Pulling the stocking cap off, her natural gray-streaked hair falls around her shoulders. My fingers glide through it.

“I’ll have the announcement made now. I’ll let people know we’ll be starting in five…”

“There’s no need for that,” Simon joins us. “Give me the mic.” His face is strained with anguish as he takes in my mother. “I’ll go on stage and tell a story about what happens after.”

“But…nothing happens after! John Thomas is going to freak.” Pasquale sputters.

“Let him,” Simon says harshly. “Where’s the damn mic?”

Within seconds, Simon is entering the side stage and weaving a soft tale about how mother and daughter reunited in time for Michael to ask for her hand in marriage. Even as the EMTs roll their stretcher urgently toward my mother, I hear him say, “The most important thing is to remove all the obstacles preventing you from finding love.”

The audience gives him another standing ovation.

When he’s done, Simon comes straight to us. My mother has an oxygen mask over her face. They’re ready to wheel her out. Simon kisses her cheek and murmurs, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

She blinks her eyes at him before darting them over to me. Her mouth tries to move underneath the mask. I hush her. “Shh, Mom. Whatever it is can wait. I love you. I’ll be with you soon.” Squeezing her hand, I ask the EMTs, “Which hospital is she going to?”

“NYU,” one tells me.

“We’ll be there in less than thirty minutes. Keep her safe,” I order. Simon slips his arm around me as the EMTs wheel my mother to the waiting ambulance.

“She’ll be okay,” Simon’s whispers.

“She has to be.” But I’m so worried. How on earth did she go from singing her soul out one minute to collapsing the next?

“Come on, Linnie. Let’s get this over with so we can get to her. Bris is going to be a wreck by the time we get there.”

Knowing that’s the truth, I exit stage left, still shaking. When it’s time for my mother to come out, the calm announcement about my mother’s fall backstage is met with a standing ovation.

She’d love it, I think with a teary smile.