Small Town Girl (8 page)

"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.