Small Town Girl

CHAPTER THREE

Tess slept through her alarm and awakened with a start when her mother called up the stairs, "Tess? Time to get up, dear. It's five after five already."

Five after five… Lord o' mercy, did people actually get up at such a reprehensible hour?

"Okay, Mom, I'm awake," she croaked, and sat up unsteadily. A faint peachiness had begun tinting the east window shade. She scratched her head while peering at it with one eye squinted. Pulling herself to the edge of the bed by her heels, she tried to fix in her mind the fact that she really had to rise and get dressed. No time for a shower-oh, shoot, that's right, there was no shower, only a tub.

Her head felt like the surf was up at the base of her skull. "Hey, Momma?" she called, shuffling to the railing and calling down. "Where we going again?"

"To Poplar Bluff." Wintergreen was too small to have a hospital of its own.

"Thirty minutes?"

"Thirty minutes, same as always."

Heading for the stairs, Tess passed the east window and pulled up the shade to verify that it really was the sun coming up. It was. In about twenty minutes or so it would splat up right over the top of Kenny Kronek's house. Grimacing, she jerked the shade back into place and grunted off in search of her toothbrush.

With little time for morning ablutions, she managed with only a quick splash and a smear of lipstick before dragging on jeans, cowboy boots, and a polo shirt over which she pulled a white sweatshirt with the word Boss plastered across the front in huge black letters. She spared time to hook on her earrings-she felt naked without earrings, no matter what kind of clothing she had on-then clattered back downstairs to see what she could do with her hair. While she was in the bathroom realizing the hair was hopeless on such short notice, Mary called from outside the door, "You just about set, Tess? We should be leaving."

"Yeah, just a sec."

In the end she finally rubber-banded it into a frowsy tail and pulled the tail through the hole of a bill cap that said Azalea Trail 10K Run across the top. Boy, did she look bad. But surgery schedules wouldn't wait, and her mother was hovering outside the bathroom door with her purse handle over her wrist.

Tess told her, "I'll take your suitcase out and put it in the car, then I'll come back to help you down the back steps. Now, you wait for me, okay?"

She returned to the house to find Mary in the kitchen with her hand on the light switch, surveying the room as if afraid she might never see it again. Her eyes moved in an affectionate sweep over her aged possessions: the stove on which she'd cooked for decades, the glass canisters shaped like vegetables with chips on the edges of their covers, the worn countertops, the garish wallpaper, the table with that ugly plastic doily getting uglier by the day.

On the doily sat the potted ivy. Mary's eyes stopped on it. "I watered my houseplants yesterday, so they should be okay."

"Everything will be just fine back here. I'll take care of everything."

"Judy brought milk and bread for you, and some ham-burger she put in the freezer. Oh, and eggs! The eggs are fresh."

"Don't worry about me."

Still Mary hesitated, looking back at the room. Tess waited while her mother searched for other excuses to delay. A single word, uttered last night by Kenny Kronek, came back to Tess. "Scared?" he'd asked, hunkered down beside Mary's chair. At the time Tess had so much resented his presence and his familiarity with her mother that she'd disregarded the conversation. Now, watching Mary's hesitation, she realized she herself hadn't bothered wondering if her mother was scared to face this second surgery. It appeared she was.

"Come on, Mom," she urged gently. "We'd better go. I'll take care of everything, don't worry."

They left the house with the sun bending their long shadows against the back steps and up the wall beside the door. Watching her mother cling to the sturdy iron railing while painfully negotiating the three steps, Tess felt pity, and the greatest wave of love since she'd arrived home. She'd given little consideration to what her mother had been going through with the cartilage in her hips deteriorating. Principally, she'd thought, It's a common surgery today. A lot of people have it. She'll pull through just fine like she did the first time. Watching Mary's painful struggle from the house-the first time she'd observed her on steps-brought her condition into sharper focus. Tess took her momma's arm and helped her along the narrow back sidewalk toward the alley.

As they passed the newly planted garden, Mary said, "You'll water the garden, won't you, Tess?"

"Sure I will."

"The hoses are-" She tried to turn and point, but winced and shot a hand to her hip, trying not to gasp aloud.

"I'll find the hoses. Don't worry about it."

"If you don't know where anything is, just ask Kenny. The yard's going to need mowing before I get back, but maybe you can get Nicky to do it. He's pretty busy with his sports right now, so I don't know if he'll have time, but… well, you can ask him. Otherwise, sometimes if Kenny sees it needs doing, he just comes over and does it without asking."

Oh, for Pete's sake! Was she getting sick of hearing about Kenny! Fat chance she'd ask that man anything.

They reached the Z and Tess opened the passenger door, but it was apparent from Mary's first effort that getting into the car was going to be too painful for her. The seat was low slung and would require her to bend too far.

"Mom, wait! It's…" Tess glanced at the closed garage door. "This is silly… can you stand here and wait while I get your car out? I think we'd better take it instead."

"I think so, too."

"Have you got the keys in your purse?"

"No, they're on the hook beside the door."

Tess ran back to the house and got them, but before getting Mary's car out of the garage she had to move her own. She maneuvered it backward into the cramped alley, left the engine running and got out.

Mary said, "Use the activator on my key chain. I've got a new automatic garage-door opener."

"You do? Wow! Way to go, Mom!"

"Kenny installed it for me."

Tess's exuberance soured. Saint Kenny the Garage Door Installer. What did the guy do, live over here?

The new garage door rolled up smoothly and Tess shimmied into the crowded building beside her mother's sensible five-year-old Ford Tempo, backed it out, got out to transfer Mary's suitcase… and found her mother smiling at Saint Kenny himself, who'd come walking over from across the alley. He was dressed in gray sweats and moccasins and hadn't showered or shaved yet. His brown hair stood in tufts as if shot with a pellet gun. His skin looked rough with morning whiskers. He didn't seem to care.

Tess stood beside her mother's car, motionless and ignored while her Z idled in a rich baritone.

"Morning, Mary," he said pleasantly.

"Good morning. What are you doing up so early?"

"Having coffee. Reading the paper. Saw you out here so I came to see you off. Got everything?"

"My suitcase is still in Tess's car. We were going to take hers but mine is roomier."

"Want me to get it?"

"Well… sure, if you don't mind. She's trying to shuffle both of these cars here and…"

He went to the Z, opened the passenger door and extracted the suitcase from the cramped space behind the seats. He took it to Mary's car, opened the back door and shoved it inside, then opened the front door for her and helped her get in.

"Careful, now," he said while she hung on to the roof with one hand and gingerly fit herself inside.

"Oh, these old bones"-she gave a breathless chuckle-"just don't want to fold up so good anymore." When she was in she peered up at Kenny and said, "I was just telling Tess that if she wants to know where anything is she can ask you. The sprinklers and hose… oh, I forgot about gas for the mower. I think Nicky is going to have to mow while I'm gone, but he doesn't know you have to mix the gas with the oil otherwise it'll-"

"Don't worry about it. I'll see that it gets done."

"The gas can is-"

"I know where the gas can is, Mary, you just worry about getting that new hip." He reached in and squeezed her shoulder. " 'Bye, now, and good luck."

He slammed the door and for the first time that morning looked over the roof of the car at Tess. He could keep his expression as deliberately flat as Tommy Lee Jones. Contrarily, she waited to see if he'd greet her in any way at all. He did not, only let his eyes drop to the word Boss on her chest, then sweep critically over her silver-and-turquoise earrings that shimmered like suspended raindrops at her jaws. Finally he stepped back and waited for her to get in and back the car up.

She threw herself into the driver's seat and slammed the door so hard her eardrums popped. She'd back the car up all right! Right over his damned clumsy feet, if she could!

Ringing an arm along the top of the seat, she shot backward only to discover, to her chagrin, that she had not backed her own car far enough out of the way. Another foot and she'd have hit it. Exasperated, she rammed the Ford into park and threw her door open.

"I'll get it," he said, and headed for the Z.

"Don't bother!" she shouted, a deprecation and an order rolled into one.

He ignored her and got into the forty-two-thousand-dollar black bullet-every man's dream car-leaving her sputtering with anger. The Z moved backwards and waited. All she could do was slam into her mother's Ford and pull ahead to make room for him.

Mary said innocently, "That Kenny is so thoughtful."

Yeah, Tess thought, Saint Kenny the Z Mover. Probably got a hard-on right now, just sitting in the thing.

She rolled down her window and waited, seething, while he veered her car into the slot before the garage, got out and took his sweet old time glancing along the length of the sexy black vehicle that he'd probably give his left nut for. If he had a left nut.

He sauntered over, dropped the keys into her outstretched hand and said, "Nice car."

She retracted her arm like a sprung window shade and took off up the alley with as great a burst of speed as a four-cylinder can muster. (Where was her three-hundred engine when she needed it?)

Reaching the north end of the alley, she glanced in the rearview mirror to find him ignoring her retreat while continuing to ogle her car.

She made a left turn onto Peach Street and her mother said, "You shouldn't be so rude to Kenny, Tess."

"He was rude to me! And nobody touches my car! Nobody!"

"Why, Tess, he was just being helpful."

"If he wants to help me, he can stay out of my way!"

"I don't see what harm it did for him to move your car such a tiny ways. He's a careful man."

"He didn't even ask me! He just…just got in as if it were somebody's old junker! Do you know how much that car is worth? Forty-two thousand dollars, that's how much! And he just couldn't wait to get in it, could he! Probably gonna run all over town telling people he drove it! Nobody but me has ever driven that car! Nobody! I don't even let valets park it!"

Mary was staring at her daughter in dumbstruck surprise.

"Why, Tess."

"Aw, hell, just forget it, Mom. He and I absolutely rub each other the wrong way."

"Why, you've barely spoken to each other. How can you rub each other the wrong way?"

"Mom, I said forget it! Will you?" Tess realized she was yelling but was unable to stop herself.

After a perplexed pause Mary mumbled, "Well, all right… I just…" Her voice trailed off as she turned her face to the side window.

I shouldn't have yelled at her, Tess thought, especially not today. But sometimes she could be so dense! Prattling on about what a good boy Kenny was, totally ignoring the fact that he'd snubbed her for the second time, unaware of how unacceptable it was for him to touch a car worth that much money without permission. She could tell from the silence, and from the way Mary kept her face turned away, that she didn't believe she'd said anything wrong and was trying to figure out why she'd been snapped at.

"Momma?" Mary looked over with hurt in her eyes. Apologies had never come easy to Tess, and this one stayed locked in her mind. "Just forget it, okay?"

They drove on for a while but the silence remained heavy. Outside the sun sat smack in the middle of Highway 160, forcing Tess to slip on her sunglasses. Things here looked the same as always. This was a poor county, Ripley, its chief income generated by transfer payments-Social Security, survivors' benefits, unemployment and welfare checks. Seemed as if half the residents of Ripley County lived in trailer houses. But the land was pretty. Red clay earth, green grass, lots of creeks, a few dogwoods on the fringes of the woods, big patches of yellow buttercups in bloom, rolling Ozark foothills, horse farms and little country churches about every five miles. They passed fields where biscuit-colored cows grazed, and a farm where goats stood on the tin roof of their shelter and a great whiskey-brown turkey fanned its tail and watched them pass. Farther along, they rumbled over the Little Black River, which ran full and brilliant as it was struck by the morning sun.

While they rode, Tess let the beautiful morning do what her absent apology should have done-take the edge off the tension in the car.

Finally she asked, "Want to hear my new song, Momma?"

Mary turned from her absorption with the view, eager to be in Tess's good graces again. "Of course I do."

Tess snapped her tape into the deck and a musical intro came on.

Mary asked, "This the one with the bad note?"

"This is the one."

They rode toward the sunrise with Tess's voice singing about a marriage in jeopardy.

When the song ended Mary said, "Not a thing wrong that I could hear. That's very nice, honey. Will they be playing it on the radio soon?"

"Not till fall. There's another single-maybe two-they're going to release first before the album comes out."

"Has it got a title yet?"

"The album? No, we're still waffling on that. Jack wants me to call it Water Under the Bridge, which is the name of the first single, but the label executives say it makes me sound like I'm water under the bridge. So they don't want that. I kind of wanted to call it Single Girl, from an old Mary Travers song we revamped, but the MCA guys don't want to name it after a song that's been done before, no matter how old it is or how different from our version, so I don't know what's going to happen."

"Single Girl would be appropriate for you, I suppose," Mary remarked.

Tess repressed a sigh of exasperation. "I know you wish I'd get married, Momma, but it's just not practical in my career. And besides, I haven't met anybody."

"Well, what about this Burt?"

They reached the intersection of Highway 67 and Tess turned left toward Poplar Bluff. "I hardly know him. Don't push this, please, Momma. I'm happy doing what I'm doing, and until I'm not, marriage isn't something I'm interested in."

"But you're thirty-five already."

"Meaning what? No children?"

"Well, it's something to think about."

"I'd make a terrible mother."

"No, you wouldn't. You've just never given the idea a chance."

"Please, Mom…"

"Your sisters are good mothers. What makes you think you wouldn't be?"

"Momma, I don't want to be!"

"Why, that's nonsense. Every woman wants to be a mother."

Every woman did not want to be, but there was no convincing Mary. She was of the old school who believed it was every female's mandate to give birth just because she was born with the right equipment. She probably believed that every homeless person deserved to be on the streets, and every person with the HIV virus was homosexual, too. Though she never raised her voice, there was a relentless-ness in the quiet attitude that never changed, a stubbornness that warned, Mind closed. It was the same way at home about changing the house, cooking fatty foods, throwing away old clothes and planting a garden. Day two of Tess's stint back home, and four weeks were beginning to look longer and longer.

"Mom, I'm not going to argue anymore."

"Why, Tess, I'm not arguing," Mary claimed, in the same sweet voice that made Tess want to hook the seat belt across her mouth. "I'm just saying, it's not natural to stay single and not have babies. Turn left here. The hospital's on Pine."

By the time she pulled up beneath the porte cochere of Doctors Hospital, Tess was more than ready to get out of the car.

"Stay here, Mom. I'll get a wheelchair for you."

She drew in a humongous breath to calm her nerves as she headed into the brown brick building. How can I love her and want to throttle her at the same time?

Two women looked up from behind the reception desk. One was stocky, about thirty, with brittle brown hair and fat cheeks, wearing a snagged white sweater. Her name tag said Maria. The other was older, trimmer, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and rimless glasses. Her name tag said Catherine.

"Good morning. I need a wheelchair for my mother. She's having surgery today."

The stocky woman gaped. "Why, you're… you're Tess McPhail, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

"Oh, my gosh, I love your music!"

"Thanks."

"I've got two of your albums."

"That's nice. Any chance of getting a wheelchair?"

"Oh! Of course."

Maria nearly broke her legs hurtling around the desk. As Tess strode toward the entrance Maria followed with the chair, her adulating eyes as wide as Judy Garland's when she was planning some musical shindig with Mickey Rooney.

"Got any new records coming out?"

"I'm working on an album now," Tess replied tersely, aware of how readily people who recognized her could become starstruck. The reactions were varied. Some became transfixed. Some acted as if they'd known her since childhood and had a right to pepper her with questions. Others became overly solicitous, ignoring everything else around them. Maria did all three.

"When's it coming out?"

"In the fall."

"Gosh, wait till I tell my mother. She's the one who introduced me to your music when-"

"Excuse me, but I'd like to introduce you to my mother, Mary McPhail."

"Oh, gosh, sure. So this is the mother of Butler County's most famous person. Well, you must be mighty proud!" Maria gushed as she helped Mary out of the car.

"Ripley County. We're from Wintergreen."

"I always heard you were from Poplar Bluff."

Tess was accustomed to people believing they knew everything about her. She'd heard stories about people who became argumentative, insisting they were right when they were dead wrong. She found herself wishing that her mother hadn't bothered to correct the woman.

Though the attention was supposed to be focused on the patient, it more often shifted back to Tess, who accompanied her mother inside and saw her through the necessary computer work of registering. The older receptionist, Catherine, managed to act more professionally than Maria, but Tess suspected she'd alerted some of her friends on the hospital staff that a famous person was in admitting, for several people came and went during those minutes at the registration desk, dropping off papers, opening file drawers or using copy machines, their gazes seeking out Tess and lingering on her as they reluctantly moved off.

When registration was complete, Maria passed a paper over the counter and said, "Could I have your autograph, Mac? It's okay if I call you Mac, isn't it?"

"Me, too," Catherine added.

Tess quickly signed for both of them, flashed them a generic smile and reminded them, "Mother's surgery is set for six-thirty. Shouldn't we get going?"

In the surgery wing Mary was taken away to get prepped by staff members whose grins announced that they, too, had been informed of Tess's presence. She, meanwhile, was directed to a family lounge. It was located on the second floor and had a bank of windows overlooking a small garden area with park benches and a couple of picnic tables. The room was empty when Tess walked in. On a high wall bracket a television with its sound turned off flickered drearily through some morning newscast. The furniture was standard waiting-room fare-burnt-orange sofa and brown armchairs, a round cafeteria table with stackable chairs. A small sink shared a wall alcove with an electric coffeemaker on which a red light glowed. Tess dropped her big gray bag on a chair and headed straight for it.

The coffee was steaming and fragrant. She filled a foam cup and lifted it to her lips. Turning, she encountered her sister Judy in the doorway.

The cup lowered slowly while the two sisters stared at each other and Tess remained where she was.

Judy offered no spontaneous exuberance, as Renee had. Instead, she let her purse strap slip from her shoulder and said, "Well…" as she advanced into the room with a touch of Roseanne Barr insolence in her slow waddle.

"Hello, Judy."

"I see you got her here on time."

"Well, that's a nice greeting."

"Too early in the morning for nice greetings." Judy's thongs slapped as she went to the coffee machine and filled a foam cup for herself. Watching her from behind, Tess thought, she's gained weight again. She was shaped like a hogshead and covered her mammoth curves with oversized tops that hid everything but her rather stubby lower legs. Today she wore a giant white T-shirt with a Mickey Mouse logo over a pair of faded black knee-length tights. She owned a beauty shop, so her hair was always kept dyed and styled, and she wore a modest amount of makeup, but the truth was, Judy was a very unattractive woman. Mary had always said, "Judy got her looks from Daddy's side of the family." Smiling, her eyes seemed to get lost above her cheeks; unsmiling, she looked overly jowly. Her mouth was too small to be pretty, and she had, unfortunately, chosen to style her hair in a broom cut that accented how pudgy her face was.

For years Tess had held the conviction that the reason she and Judy didn't get along was because Judy was jealous.

As the older sister turned with a cup of coffee in her hand, the contrast between the two women pointed out the likelihood. Even thrown together as Tess was this morning, she was cute and thin in her skinny jeans. The unfussy fringe around her face gave a hint of the stylish haircut disguised by her cap. With nothing but lipstick for makeup her features broadcast the photogenic quality that had put her on the covers of dozens of magazines both in and out of the music trade-milky skin with a hint of freckles, almond eyes with auburn lashes and a pretty pair of lips. Her hands were eye-catching as well, her trademark nails nearly an inch long, painted persimmon and cultured to catch gazes. Judy lifted her cup with blunt fingers whose nails were cropped short and unpainted.

Given the marked difference in the two women's size and appearance, a stranger who walked in would never have guessed they were sisters.

Judy said, "The truth is, I really didn't think you'd come."

"The truth is, I didn't like how I was asked."

"I suppose nobody you work with gives you orders."

"You don't know the first thing about the people I work with or how we operate, because you never ask. You just make assumptions."

"That's right. And I assumed you'd do like you've been doing since you left Wintergreen, which is to leave every bit of Mother's care up to Renee and me and the guys."

"You could have asked, Judy."

"And what would you have said? That you had to go on tour in Texas, or that you had some rehearsals for some awards shows or whatever else is so God-almighty important that everything in the world should revolve around your schedule?"

"When did I ever say anything like that?"

"You didn't even come home for her birthday! Or last Christmas!"

"I sent her a birthday gift from Seattle, and last Christmas I was so exhausted I had only forty-eight hours off."

"She doesn't want gifts, don't you know that? All she wants is to see you now and then."

"You make it sound like I never come home."

"How long since you were here last time?"

"Judy, could we just…" Tess raised both hands as if pushing open a heavy plate-glass door. Her eyelids slammed closed, then opened again. "Shelve this and try to get along while I'm here? And the next time you need something from me, don't call and issue an imperial order. Just try asking, okay? I'm not sleeping in the farthest bed from the steps anymore, and I'm not your baby sister who's always getting into your diary and using your makeup. I'm all grown-up now and I don't take orders from you, okay?"

"Well, you did this time, didn't you… Mac?"

Nobody in the family called her Mac. To them she had remained Tess, while Mac had become her professional nickname. It was the one her fans had coined, the one they chanted as they waited for her to come onstage, the one that was printed on the shirts she sold at concerts, the one the nation recognized as they recognized only a select group of other entertainers who'd gone by single names-Elvis, Sting, Prince.

Mac.

While the word reverberated in the room, a woman in a white uniform came to the door and said, "Miss McPhail? I heard you were in here. If it's not too much trouble, may I have your autograph? I'll just leave this on the table and you can drop it at the nurses' station whenever. My name's Elly." She was the ideal fan, in Tess's eyes, bringing respect along with good taste in her request. Tess loved the way she'd asked. Leaving the room, the nurse said over her shoulder, "Thanks a lot. You've got a super voice."

It was more than Judy had ever said in her life.

Tess sat down at the table, set her cup aside and signed the paper while Judy looked down her nose in silence.

As Tess finished, Renee showed up in the doorway. "Hey, you two, here's where you are! I just passed somebody in a uniform who says they want us down the hall before they take Momma in. Come on."

Tess got up and took off like a shot, passing Renee in the doorway.

"What's wrong with her?" Renee asked Judy.

"Same thing as always. Thinks she's too good for the rest of us."

"Judy! Do you have to be at her all the time? She just got here, for heaven's sake."

" 'Bout time, too," Judy grumbled as the two followed.

In the hall Mary was lying on a gurney, covered to the shoulders. By turns, her children bent over her, kissed her and hid their sibling animosities.

"We'll be right here when you wake up, Momma," Tess told her.

Renee added, "It's going to go just great, just like last time. Don't you worry."

"The kids and Ed all said to send you their love and to tell you they'd be up to visit," Judy said. "See you soon."

They watched the gurney roll away and stood motionless, three sisters in the middle of a hospital corridor experiencing some tempering of the discord among them as their concern was funneled toward the mother they all loved. She had looked defenseless, lying flat, her cheeks and jowls drawn backward by gravity, her hair smelling medicinal and looking tatty after back-to-back washings and no stylings. Hip replacement was certainly a common surgery in this day and age, but at seventy-four, who knew what could happen? She was getting set in her ways, occasionally forgetful, stubborn at times, and exasperating at others. But she was the reason they were sisters. She was the source of so many of their mutual childhood memories, the provider of sustenance and love that had been ever present in their lives. And for those few seconds while they stood watching her being rolled away into the care of strangers whose competence they were forced to trust, the trio bonded.

The doors swung shut behind the gurney and the squishy-soled white shoes and blue scrubs disappeared. A soft bell bonged on an overhead speaker. A feminine voice said quietly, "Doctor Diamond… Doctor Diamond." Then nothing more.

Renee sighed and turned to the others. "What do you say to a hot cup of coffee in the cafeteria?" She had been cast in the role of peacemaker for so many years it was natural for her to resume it now that they were together again. Taking their elbows, she forced them to walk with her. "Come on, now, you two, you're going to stop your squabbling."

There were perhaps a dozen people at various tables in the cafeteria, plus two workers behind the counter. One was in her fifties with a corkscrew home perm in her brown hair. She quit loading cartons of juice onto the stainless-steel cooler and did a double take when she saw Tess.

" 'Mornin'," she said.

"Good morning."

Behind the cash register another middle-aged woman with a poor complexion and outdated glasses took their money. When the three McPhails settled into their chairs it was obvious the two behind the counter were trying to decide if they were right about who Tess was. Tess deliberately sat down with her back to them.

Finally the one with the tight perm came over.

"Say, aren't you somebody I ought to know?"

Tess had been through this before. She knew the best way to handle it.

"I'm Tess McPhail."

"See, I told you, Blanche! It's her!" the woman trumpeted across the cafeteria. "I heard you were born and raised someplace around here. Say, you wouldn't mind signing an autograph for me, would you? I don't have any paper but you can use this." She pulled Tess's own napkin to the edge of the table. "My husband'll never believe me otherwise. Sorry, I don't have a pen, but you must have one in that great big bag of yours someplace, haven't you?"

Tess had hung her bag on the back of her chair. As she began to reach for it, a pen appeared from across the table.

Renee handed it over, telegraphing dry amusement in the set of her mouth and eyebrows.

Tess began to write. The fan said, "Would you make it to Delores? And say something about how good the food was in here or something like that, just so people will believe you really came in here and ate."

When she finished she handed the napkin to the woman who beamed at it and said, "'Thanks, honey. Say, you sure are a little bit of a thing, and just as nice as you are cute. Thanks again." She gave Tess a whap on the back that hurt clear to the front, then went off examining the napkin and smiling.

When she was gone, Renee extended her open hand for the pen. Tess gave it to her and pushed back from the table.

"Excuse me," she said wryly. "Seems I need a new napkin."

As she returned with one, Renee began aping the fan Delores, using a pronounced Southern drawl. "Mah Gawd, it's Mac McPhail, and damned if she don't eat and use napkins just like othuh human bein's. Wha, Ah thought all she did was sing them country songs and get on awards shows and go to the bank with her money." Dropping the accent she added, "Lord-a-frighty, are they all like that?"

"Thank God, no. Some of them have brains in their heads."

"How often do you meet this kind?"

"Too often."

Renee started laughing behind her napkin. "I thought she was going to knock you right off your chair when she patted your back."

"That's better than the ones who want to hug you."

"Eek."

"Yeah. Eek."

"Mom told me about the one you found in your dressing room."

"That was scary."

"How'd he get in there?"

"Nobody knows for sure. There's always security when we're at a concert site, but somehow he got past it. I opened the door and there he was, smelling a bottle of my perfume. It was creepy."

"Momma was really spooked when she told me. She worries about you a lot when she knows you're out on the road."

"It's a lot safer now that we don't use the bus anymore, plus I'm usually with the guys from the band, and like I said, there's always security at the venue. There's really nothing to worry about."

"Till you find a man in your dressing room sniffing your perfume."

They exchanged sober looks, and Tess suggested. "Let's change the subject."

Throughout the entire cafeteria scene Judy had said nothing. She'd sat by as if the fans, the autographing and the story about the intruder had never happened. Her silent antipathy was a felt thing that colored the feelings among the three sisters as they ate their breakfasts.

Renee had ordered oatmeal.

Tess was eating a half a grapefruit and a toasted English muffin, dry.

Judy ate two doughnuts and a cup of hot chocolate.

Watching her, Tess thought, Don't you have any more respect for your body than that? Three hundred calories apiece and you're pushing them down your fat neck in pairs. Apparently Judy did not, for she polished off the first two doughnuts and went away to get a third.

Tess's eyes followed her to the counter.

"She should go on a diet."

"But as long as you're tinier than she is, she can disdain you for that as well as for your success, can't she?"

"You noticed."

"I've always noticed."

"Does she have to treat me like I'm some egomaniacal fan seeker? It's part of my business-an important part-and there are times when I hate it, but fans are my life-blood. She should know that."

"Deep down inside, I'm sure she does."

With a sad expression Tess studied her obese sister across the room. "You know something? She's never said one nice thing about what I do. It's like I don't even do it. She's never told me she bought a tape, or listened to a song on the radio-much less liked anything. Would it hurt her, for God's sake?"

"Judy's not a happy woman, Tess. Shh, here she comes."

Judy returned with an oversized cinnamon roll laced with sticky caramel and pecans. She set the plate down and used a two-handed tabletop press to lower her bulk to the chair.

Lifting the caramel roll, she looked up at the wall clock. "Well, Mom's about half done by now," she said, diverting attention from her addiction. And with that remark she also managed to continue her long-standing emotional embargo on her younger sister.