Tess smiled and removed her sunglasses. “It’s just me.” She held her hands out at her sides.
“Just you. That’s for sure—just you who I haven’t seen for nine whole months.” Mary shook her finger under Tess’s nose.
“I know. I’m sorry, Momma. It’s been crazy, as usual.”
“Your hair is different.” Mary held her in place by both elbows, giving her the once-over. Tess’s hair was cut in a shag that fell in disheveled layers well below the neck of her T-shirt in back, while in front it just covered her ears.
“They styled it for my next album cover.”
“Who?”
“Cathy.”
“Who’s Cathy again?”
“Cathy Mack, my stylist—I’ve told you about Cathy.”
Mary flapped a hand. “I guess you have, but you got so many people working for you I can’t keep ‘em straight. And land, girl, you’re so skinny. Don’t they feed you down there in Nashville?”
“I work at keeping thin, Momma, you know that—and you know it doesn’t come naturally—so please don’t start pushing food on me already, okay?”
Mary turned away and hobbled into the house. “Well, I should think, making the kind of money you do, that you could eat a little better.”
Tess resisted rolling her eyes and stuck her sunglasses back on, following Mary inside. They went through a shallow living room that stretched across the entire front of the house, a west-facing room with bumpy stucco walls and well-used furniture, dominated by an upright piano. Three archways led off the opposite wall, the center one upstairs, the right one to the bathroom and Mary’s bedroom, the left one to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Mary stomped through the left one, still talking.
“I thought country singers wore big hair.”
“That’s old, Momma. Things’re changing in country.”
“But you flattened all them pretty natural curls right out of it. I always loved them natural curls of yours.”
“They want me to look up-to-date.”
Mary’s own hair could use some styling, Tess thought, studying a pinwheel of exposed skull on the back of her head. She’d given up coloring it and let it go natural, which proved to be a peachy gray. The remains of an old set clearly disclosed the need for an update. More important, however, was the pained gait with which she moved, lurching sharply to the right each time she put weight on that leg, using whatever furniture or walls were available for support.
“Are you sure you should be walking, Momma?”
“They’ll have me off my feet plenty after the operation’s over. Long as I can hobble around I’m going to.”
She was a squat, squarish woman of seventy-four, wearing a disgusting old slacks set made of polyester knit that had begun to pill. The pants were solid lavender, the top had been white once, and was stamped with a cluster of pansies so faded their edges had lost distinction. The outfit had to be a good fifteen years old. Tess wondered if this was what her mother had worn when she went to tour the hospital today. She also wondered about the stylish silk trouser outfit she’d had shipped from Nordstrom’s last fall when she’d been on tour in Seattle.
“The kitchen looks the same,” she remarked while Mary turned on the water and began filling a coffeemaker.
“It’s old but I like it this way.”
The kitchen had white metal cupboards with brown Formica tops that were so worn they looked white in places. No matter how many times Tess had scolded Mary for not using a cutting board, she continued doing her chopping directly on the Formica to the left of the sink. The kitchen walls were papered in a ghastly orange floral, the two windows hung with orange floral tie-backs from a mail-order catalogue. There was a wall clock with a painting of a lake on its face, an electric stove with a chip in the porcelain where Judy had clunked it with a kettle one time when all three girls were fighting about who would make the popcorn. And beside the stove, on the dull brown Formica countertop, a homemade pecan pie loaded with about three hundred calories per slice.
Tess’s eyes moved no further. “Oh, Momma, you didn’t.”
Mary turned around and saw what Tess was ogling. “’Course I did. I couldn’t let my little girl come home and not find her favorites.”
What was it about being called her little girl that touched a nerve in Tess? She was thirty-five and had been gone from home since she’d graduated from high school. Her face and name were as familiar to most Americans as those of the president, and her income topped his many times over. She had accomplished it all with her own talent, creativity, and a business acumen worthy of Wall Street. But her mother insisted on referring to Tess as “her little girl.” The few times Tess had corrected her, saying, “I’m not your little girl anymore,” Mary had looked baffled and hurt. So Tess let it pass this time.
“Are you making that coffee for me?” she asked.
“Can’t have pecan pie without coffee.”
“I really don’t drink coffee much anymore, Momma … and I really shouldn’t eat the pie either.”
Mary glanced over her shoulder. Her exuberance faded and she slowly shut off the water. The baffled look had entered her eyes again, that of one generation struggling to understand the next. “Oh … well, then … shoot…” She glanced down dubiously at the half-filled pot, then turned on the tap and resumed filling it. “I’ll go ahead and cook some for myself then.”
“Do you have any fruit, Mom?” Tess went to the refrigerator and opened the door.
“Fruit?” Mary asked, as if her daughter had asked for păté de foie gras.
“I eat a lot of fruit now and I could sure use a piece. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“I’ve got some canned peaches.” Mary opened a lower cupboard door and attempted to lean over stiffly.
“Yeah, that’ll be great, but I can get ‘em. Here, why don’t you sit down and let me?”
“It’s no better when I sit. I’ll do it. Why don’t you get your things out of the car and take them upstairs?” Mary had found the peaches and was taking a can opener from a drawer. Tess reached into the drawer and covered her mother’s hand.
“’Cause I came home to take care of you, not the other way around. Now here, you give me that.”
The peaches were packed in heavy syrup and had a rubbery skin surrounding mushy insides, but Tess took a fork and began eating them straight from the can, wandering around the kitchen, glancing at some notes that were pinned on a small bulletin board by the phone. The bulletin board itself had an ugly frame of molded plastic made to resemble spilled green peas. It held school pictures of her nieces and nephews, a reminder to check the long-distance bill to see if they’d charged a wrong number, and some grocery cou pons cut out of magazines. Tide—twenty-five cents off. Once again Tess wondered what her mother did with the money she sent her. It was irritating that Mary would continue to use twenty-five-cent-off coupons when it was so damned unnecessary!
Mary opened the refrigerator and said, “I made your favorite hot dish—hamburger and Tater Tots. I suppose I could put it in the oven now but”—she checked the wall clock—“it’s only four o’clock and it’ll take an hour to cook. Five o’clock is too early to eat, so maybe we ought to wait a while and—”
“The peaches are fine for now, Momma. I know you don’t usually eat till six.”
She watched the concern fade from Mary’s face once she was reassured the danger of altering the supper hour had passed. Tater Tot hot dish had been Tess’s favorite when she was twelve years old. These days, beef was a once-a-week meat, and deep-fried Tater Tots never passed her lips. Not when she had a collection of custom-made concert clothes in size seven that cost between eight and ten thousand dollars apiece. She took the can of peaches to the kitchen table and sat down. In the middle of the table a potted plant sat on the worst-looking plastic doily Tess had ever seen. It, like Mary’s shirt, had been white once. It was now as yellow and curled as an old fish scale.
Mary poured herself a cup of
coffee and sat, too, lowering herself gingerly to the chrome-legged chair with a cracked vinyl seat that was hidden beneath a tie-on cushion of brown-and-orange floral. She glanced at Tess’s oversized white T-shirt that was silk-screened with four faces and a logo.
“What’s that, then, ‘Southern Smoke’?” she asked.
Tess glanced down at her chest. “Oh, that’s the name of a band I know. They’ve been trying to break out, but so far it hasn’t happened. I’ve been sort of dating one of the guitar players. This one … see?” Tess spread the shirt and pointed to a bearded face.
Mary squinted. “What’s his name?”
“Burt Sheer.”
“Burt Sheer, huh? How long you been seein’ him?”
“Oh, just a couple of months.”
“Is it serious?”
“In this business?” Tess laughed. “It better not be.”
“Why not?”
“With his schedule on the road, plus me gone all over America singing a hundred and fifty concerts a year? Plus I’m cutting this new album right now that’s taking an enormous amount of time, and doing promotions whenever and wherever the label thinks I should … well, anyway, I’ve seen Burt exactly four times. And a couple of those times I had to argue with Jack because he thought I should go home and get some sleep instead of going to hear Burt’s band at the Stockyard after I finished in the studio at ten P.M.“
“What’s the Stockyard?”
“A restaurant and club we go to.”
“And who’s Jack again?”
“Jack Greaves … my record producer.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Tess watched the gleam of hope fade from her mother’s eyes and knew Mary really did not see. She would never accept the fact that her youngest daughter had chosen a career over marriage and children. To a consummate mother like Mary McPhail that was tantamount to squandering your life.
“Which reminds me—I really should call Jack. He’s laying down some harmony tracks on one of my new songs and I need to talk to him about it. It’ll just take me a minute.”
She called, using her credit card, from the wall phone at the end of the kitchen cabinets and reached Jack at Wild-wood Studio, where she knew he’d be working.
“Hi, Jack!”
“Mac! Good to hear from you. You at your mother’s?”
“Yes, sir. Got here safe and sound.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Middling.”
“Well, now, you tell her I hope it all goes well for her.”
“Thanks, I will. Hey, I listened to Tarnished Gold’ all the way down, and the harmony on the word ‘mistaken’ still bothers me. I think it’s got to be an E-flat instead of an E. When it becomes a minor it gets an edge that puts added pathos on the word itself.” She sang the phrase, gesturing with her hand as if directing the quartet of canisters on the kitchen cupboard to sing along. “Know what I mean, Jack? … Can you get Carla back in there to record it again? … She still having trouble with her voice? … Well, ask her, will you? … Thanks, Jack, then FedEx it to me as soon as you’ve got it, but don’t spend a lot of time mixing it till I’ve heard the new harmony, okay? You’ve got my mother’s phone number and address, right? I won’t be here tomorrow—tomorrow’s the surgery—but I’ll call you from the hospital. Sure. Thanks, Jack. ‘Bye.”
When she’d hung up, her mother wore an astonished expression. “You’d record something again just because of a single word?”
“It’s done all the time. Sometimes we record an entire harmony track and never use it at all. Last week Jack had a concert violinist in the studio at my insistence, ‘cause a violin’s got an entirely different sound from a fiddle and I thought that this one song should have a violin solo in one spot where—”
The phone rang, interrupting, and Mary began to push herself up. She winced and Tess said, “I’ll get it, Momma. I’m right here.” Tess reached for the wall phone and answered, “Hello?”
“Oh … you’re there.” It was her sister Judy, with little warmth in her voice. “I was just calling to make sure.”
“I’m here. Got in about a half an hour ago.”
“You drove, I hear.”
“How’d you hear?”
“People around town saw your license plates.”
Tess turned her back on Mary and said more quietly, “I thought I should have my own car while I’m here. Four weeks is—” She stopped herself short: her mother could hear quite plainly.
Judy said it for her. “A long time … I know. I’m the one who took care of her last time, remember?”
For several seconds silent animosity crackled along the phone line while the two sisters relived the conversation in which Judy had ordered her younger sister home.
Finally Judy asked, “How’s she feeling today? She had to go over to the hospital to have a pre-op check and go through some kind of little explanation and tour thing. I suppose it tired her out.”
Tess turned to Mary. “Judy wants to know how you’re feeling, Momma.”
“Tell her I’m just fine. Nurse says my hemoglobin’s normal and my lung capacity’s good, so everything’s set for tomorrow.”
Tess repeated the message and Judy said, “Well, give her my love. Tell her I can’t come over tonight but I’ll be at the hospital before she goes into surgery in the morning. You have to have her there by six o’clock. Her surgery’s at six-thirty. Did she tell you that?” Judy’s voice snapped out the question.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be there.”
“All right, then. Guess I’ll see you there, too.”
Mary began pushing off her chair again. “Just a minute, let me talk to her.”
“Just a minute, Momma wants to talk to you.”
Mary got up with great effort and made her way to the telephone. While she was speaking Tess moved away and stared out the double window beside the kitchen table. It looked out on the side yard, where some overgrown rhododendron bushes divided the property from the Anderson place next door.
“Hey, dear. Listen, thank you for picking up those groceries for me. I’ll pay you when I see you…. No, no, no, you’re not going to pay for my groceries! I’m fixin’ to pay you back. I just appreciate your picking them up for me. How did Nicky do at his track meet? … Oh, isn’t that wonderful…. And did Tricia find a dress for the prom? … Clear down there! Couldn’t she find nothing in town? … Well, she’ll look darling, I’m sure. You tell her I said to have a real good time and I’ll be thinking of her Saturday night…. Okay, I will … yeah … yeah, ‘bye.”
Listening to Mary’s end of the conversation, Tess felt light-years removed from her family. They shared a day-to-day flow of relationships and concerns that she had given up when she left home. Phone calls from Houston and Oklahoma City were not the same as groceries dropped off and put in a refrigerator, or grandchildren’s lives bumping up against their grandmother’s on a daily basis.
On the other hand the scope of their concerns seemed almost trivial to Tess when compared to her own. Had they sung at governors’ mansions, or accepted awards on prime-time TV? Had they filled an auditorium with thirty thousand fans whose ticket fees meant the livelihoods of dozens of people, from studio technicians to DJs, stage hands to producers, all the way from L.A. to New York? Had they worried about meeting a deadline for delivering a finished album whose advertising, promo and shipping date had been determined even before all its songs were written?
Prom dresses, track meets and groceries—none of them touched Tess’s life anymore. And she wanted it that way.
Mary hung up and said, “I swear … Judy’s got her hands full this week. She gave a wedding shower for Rachel on Tuesday, and prom is coming up this Saturday and every girl in school has made an appointment to have her hair fixed, so she’s awful busy at the shop. Seems like Nicky’s got some sporting event every night after school that she’s got to try to run to, then on top of all that, Tricia insisted on drivin’ clear over to Cape Girardeau to look for a pr
om dress. I keep telling Judy that sometimes she should just say no to those kids.”
“Like you said no to us?” Tess replied.
Mary looked surprised. “Didn’t I say no to you?”
“Couple of times that I can remember. Once when I wanted to get me a padded bra ‘cause I had this huge crush on Kelvin Hazlitt, who was two years older than me and didn’t know I was alive. I thought if I had some breasts like … well, you know”—Tess made two slings of her hands and bounced them at breast level—“like a pregnant rhinoceros, then Kelvin would ask me out. I’m still blamin’ you ‘cause he didn’t.”
Mary chortled and hobbled toward her coffee cup. “Kelvin Hazlitt’s been married three times already. Good thing I said no.”
“One other time you said no was when I wanted to get a tattoo.”
“A tattoo! Lord, I don’t remember that.”
“Sure you do. Mindy got one, and I thought I needed everything Mindy had. By the way, what do you know about Mindy? I drove by her momma and daddy’s house and couldn’t help wondering where she is now.”
“Mindy’s back. She and her husband have an appliance store here, and they’ve got two or three kids in school. One of ‘em’s in the same grade as one of Renee’s, I think.”
While Mary went on talking, Tess put away her peaches in the fridge and dropped her fork into the sink. Through the window above it she had a clear view of Mrs. Kronek’s backyard, across the alley. The block was dissected by that unpaved alley, and the two lots were laid out like mirror images of each other, one on each side. Houses, sidewalks, clotheslines, gardens and garages matched as perfectly as spots on a butterfly’s wings. The garages were old, and single, and sat snugged up against the alley so tightly that their doors were perpendicular to it. While Tess was looking out, the garage door across the alley began to rise, then a car nosed up the alley, veered off and pulled into Mrs. Kronek’s garage. A moment later a tall man in a business suit emerged, carrying a briefcase. He left the garage door open, glanced this way, then went up the sidewalk to Mrs. Kronek’s back door.
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