LaVyrle Spencer: Small Town Girl

Then there was Tess's middle sister, Renee, on the other side of town, whose daughter, Rachel, was getting married in four weeks. It was understandable that Renee had plenty to do during these last few weeks before the wedding, but couldn't they have scheduled it and the surgery a little further apart? After all, Mom had known she needed this second hip replacement ever since she'd had the first one two years ago.

Tess turned onto Monroe Street and memories rolled back while she traveled the six-block stretch she had walked to elementary school every day for seven years. She pulled up at the curb in front of her mother's house, killed the engine and stared at the place. Lord, how it had deteriorated. She unplugged her cellular phone, removed the tape from the deck, got out of the car and stood beside it, pushing her narrow-legged jeans down off her calves, a size-seven woman in oversized sunglasses, cowboy boots and dangly Indian earrings made of silver and turquoise, with hair the color of an Irish setter and fair, freckly skin.

Her heart sank as she studied the house. How could her mother have let it get so shabby? The post-World War II bungalow was made of red brick, but the white wood trim was peeling and the front steps were listing badly. The yard looked just plain pitiful. The sidewalk was pitted, and the arbor vitae had grown taller than the living room window. Dandelions spangled the yard.

What does Mom do with all the money I send her?

Years past, Mary McPhail wouldn't have stood for any kind of weed disgracing her lawn. But that was when her hips were healthy. Tess reached into the car, shouldered an enormous gray bag of bread-soft leather, slammed the door, then headed for the house. Walking up the cracked side-walk she was reminded of how her little girlfriends used to push their doll buggies along it while she took Melody, her singing doll, and put on performances on the front steps.

As she approached those steps now, her mother appeared in the door above them, beaming. "I thought I heard a car door!" Mary McPhail's joy was unmistakable as she flung open the screen door and both of her arms. "Tess, honey, you're here!"

"Hey, Momma." Tess vaulted up the three steps and scooped her mother up hard. They rocked together while the door sprang shut and nudged them inside a tiny vestibule. Mary was half a head shorter and forty-five pounds heavier than her daughter, with a round face and metal-rimmed glasses. When Tess pulled back to see her, there were tears in Mary's eyes.

"You sure you should be up walkin' around, Momma?" You could still hear southwest Missouri in Tess's voice.

" 'Course I should. Just got back from a tour of the operating room and they drawed some blood and made me blow into some little plastic tube to see if I got 'nuff air in my lungs to withstand the operation, and I do, and if I can manage all that, I can hug my daughter hello. Take them durned glasses off so's I can see what my little girl looks like."

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.