"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.
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