Small Town Girl (35 page)

"A man who got me started in this business was killed by a robber."

"Who?"

"His name was John Walpole. We called him Papa John."

"Yes, I know about him. I can imagine what he meant to you. I'm sorry, Tess."

"You know about him?"

"I've read about what he did for you, lots of times, in magazine articles."

"You have?" Her grief over Papa John, and her sadness over saying good-bye to her mother—and him—became momentarily eclipsed by wonder at this man. She had peeled back so many layers of him that she thought herself foolish to be amazed by what this new layer revealed.

Wordlessly he went to a file cabinet, opened the drawer marked
M
and pulled out a manila folder. He tossed it on his desk and its contents fanned out in a crooked train, half exposed. Tess glanced down at an array of press clippings she recognized—portions of photos peeked out, one behind another, tear sheets from newspapers, and articles from glossy magazines. She opened the folder and saw a headline and picture of herself from
USA Today
, and a much smaller piece from the
Wintergreen Free Press
telling about her singing with the First Methodist Church choir directed by Ken Kronek. She closed the folder again and met his eyes.

They were leveled on her without the slightest embarrassment.

"All right," he said, "now you know."

She was stunned. "How long have you been collecting these?" she asked.

"Right from the beginning of your career till last week. There are two more folders in the drawer."

"But what was the point?"

"Maybe none, I don't know. Maybe just that you were a hometown girl who made it, somebody I took inspiration from, somebody I tried to kiss one time on a school bus. Hell, I don't know. Old crushes die hard." He scooped up the file and turned away to put it back in the metal cabinet. When the drawer closed he remained facing it, hands bracketing his belt, breathing deeply. She studied the smooth surface of his white shirt back, the rim of his shoulder blades pushing against it like a kite frame in a gusty wind, the neatly trimmed hair above his white collar—so much more conservative than the Nashville shags worn by most of the musicians she hung around with. He could not help himself from giving away the fact that saying good-bye to her was turning out to be far more difficult than they'd expected.

If it was difficult for him, it was no less difficult for her.

"Look, Kenny, I have to go," she said quietly, trying to keep her voice from breaking. "I just wanted you to tell Casey that I'm sorry I couldn't talk to her before I left, but here's my card. It's got my unlisted phone number on it, so she can call me anytime. And I just want you to know that when she comes down to Nashville I'll take very good care of her. She's going to be living with me for a while at least, and as soon as she gets a job I'll help her find someplace to live. I'm going to try to talk her into getting into Vanderbilt in the fall, just in case the music career doesn't fly, and even if it does, she'll never regret college. I'll introduce her to good people and I'll always be there for her, so you don't have to worry, Kenny, honest."

He turned around at last and she saw the pent-up emotion in his face, equal to that within her.

They both spoke at once.

"Tess—"

"Kenny—"

They barely got the names out before she was in his arms, not kissing him, but drawn up high and hard against his chest in a painful good-bye. She clung to his shoulders, her business card bent in half, the pen in his shirt pocket biting into her right breast. He smelled so familiar, and felt so stable and reliable, the rock upon which her mother had leaned long before Tess had learned what a wonderful man he was.

"I'm going to miss you," she whispered.

"I'm going to miss you, too."

She pulled off her sunglasses and they hung against his back while their eyes began to sting. After a long time he put a hand on the back of her head and pressed her forehead against his neck, very tightly, so she couldn't look up. When he spoke, his voice sounded tortured. "On Saturday…" he managed, and swallowed as if unsure he could go on. "When I said to your mother that I just might fall in love anyway, I was talking about—"

"No, don't." She lurched back and covered his lips with her hand. "Don't say it. It's not true anyway. This was just a… a crazy fling at a wedding reception—we both agreed, right?"

He reached up for her wrist and dragged her hand down, freeing his mouth. He held her hand over his hurting heart as they drank each other in, saying good-bye with their eyes and realizing no other ending was possible. "Yes," he whispered sadly. "We both agreed."

When they kissed she was crying and his chest hurt so badly he felt as if he had broken a rib.

The kiss was bittersweet, and when it ended the embrace continued for several more heartbeats.

"Watch after Momma," she whispered.

"I will," he whispered back.

Then she withdrew, letting her palms slide down his arms until only their fingertips touched. They each tried smiling, doing terrible jobs of it.

" 'Bye," she whispered.

" 'Bye," he mouthed, his voice failing at last.

She took a step back and the contact broke, leaving his arms outstretched before they fell uselessly to his sides.

She opened his office door and looked back at him one more time before walking out of his life, back to her own.

She reached Nashville at a quarter to five, exited I-40 and wound her way toward Music Row, southeast of downtown. Home could wait. Right now she needed an infusion of what she had missed, the vitality and energy flowing from those twelve square blocks south of Division Street where the business of record producing created the heartbeat of Music City. As if its lifeblood seeped into her own and powered her, she felt invigorated as she approached her office. At the foot of Demonbreun a larger-than-life-sized likeness of Randy Travis welcomed her from a redbrick wall. Tourists moved in and out of souvenir shops and climbed the ramp into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In front of Sony's offices a sign promoted Mary Chapin Carpenter's latest album. MCA lauded Vince Gill's. Along Music Square East and West, headquarters of industry-related businesses lined both sides of the street—law firms, recording studios, video production companies, music publishing companies, ASCAP and BMI, who tracked radio usage and collected royalties, booking agencies, offices of various record labels, offices of America's best-known country recording artists, and restaurants where number-one parties were thrown for the most successful.

Her own office was located in a century-old Victorian house on Music Square West, a three-story monstrosity painted several shades of yellow with a parking lot shaded by four huge basswood trees that were nearly as old as the house itself. Out front on a wooden signpost, an oval brass plaque announced, simply, Wintergreen Enterprises. She had chosen the name to remind herself of how far she'd come from that little burg in Missouri to the top of the country charts and her place as a respected businesswoman in an industry that for decades had been dominated by men. Under the umbrella of Wintergreen Enterprises fell several individually successful companies that had each been born out of necessity or common sense. Her music-publishing company came about when she realized how many talented writers were approaching her to sing their songs, many of which had neither been copyrighted nor published yet. She figured, Why pay another publishing company royalties on her records when she could be collecting them herself? Her specialty clothing operation created custom-designed concert costumes not only for herself but for other recording artists as well. Five years ago when she'd run into a scheduling snag and been kept on tenterhooks not knowing if her posters and buttons would be made in time for one of her concerts, she had purchased a small printing company that created posters, buttons, fan club newsletters and concert programs for her. and did some highly profitable contract work for other performers as well. There was also the small fleet of jets she used and leased to others.

All of this remained secondary, however, to the phenomenally successful operation that kept Tess McPhail on top of the country charts. That operation scheduled roughly a hundred and twenty concert dates a year and provided the essential organizational force allowing her to coproduce her own albums and videos, act as talent in those videos, do publicity, keep contact with fan clubs in every major city of America, and pay the salaries of over fifty permanent employees required to keep such a behemoth operational.

And Tess McPhail oversaw every aspect of it herself.

When she walked into Wintergreen Enterprises, she walked into the hub of her success.

Physical coolness struck her full force when she opened the back door and stepped from the private rear entry through the kitchen that was now used as a copy room and canteen. She passed the former servants' stairway, the one she commonly used to reach her second-floor office, and heard the hum of various conversations as she entered the central hall. The walls throughout the house were cream, the floors were hardwood, and the windows shuttered in white to hold back Nashville's intense summer heat. Country music played softly on a built-in sound system as she entered the main hall where oversized reproductions of her album covers trimmed the walls.

Her receptionist sat at a desk with her back to the ornate stairwell, her blond hair twisted up high in back but left to trail to her shoulders from the temple.

"Hey, Jan, I'm back."

Jan Nash swiveled her chair slowly and broke into a smile. She was in her mid-thirties, pretty as a Barbie doll and shaped like one. Jan looked smashing in a black scuba dress, her makeup fresh and flattering, silver loops at her ears. She rolled back her chair without hurry and rose in black high-heeled boots.

"Hey, Mac, welcome back. We sure missed you." She had a pronounced Southern drawl that made "you" sound like "yeeuuu."

"Thanks, Jan. It feels great to walk in here. I can't wait to get back to work."

"Sorry to hear about Papa John."

"Isn't it awful?"

Others heard Tess's voice and came out of the various downstairs offices to offer much the same greeting. Soon Tess moved on to her own office upstairs. It occupied the entire width of the rear, which faced east and enjoyed the dappled green shade from the basswoods outside. In a smaller adjoining office Kelly Mendoza was talking on the phone, and turned to smile when she saw her boss approaching through the connecting doorway. Kelly was Cu-ban, twenty-nine, five feet eight and regal, with a mass of long black hair as shiny as spilled ink, worn today in an explosion of ringlets. Her jet eyes tilted up at the corners and her skin was smooth and dark as a pecan shell. She was dressed in a silk suit the color of green tea with a multicolored silk scarf caught under the collar.

"Mac… welcome back."

"It's good to be here."

After seven years of working together, the two women hugged, but not for long. They both were geared to accomplish more in a single workday than most people accomplish in two.