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Authors: LaVyrle Spencer

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Small Town Girl (9 page)

BOOK: Small Town Girl
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"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."

BOOK: Small Town Girl
3.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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