When Mary was gone, Tess gripped both ends of the dish towel and snapped it into a straight line, staring again out the window. Four weeks, she thought. I'll be crazy before two. A moment later the water could be heard running in the bathroom and Tess continued cleaning up the kitchen, trying to ignore the presence of the house across the alley and the fact that its owner had just snubbed her royally.

She could see his kitchen window through this one, and occasionally a head moving past it. The glass porch, which had been added to the back of the house in the sixties, was also lit up, though nobody was in it. Tess had dim memories of playing in it with Kenny when they were both toddlers and their mothers were having coffee together. More clearly she remembered balking at going there to play with him as she grew older.

She was nearly finished washing dishes when the front door opened and a familiar female voice called, "Tess, you here?"

Renee. Tess's heart gladdened at the sound of her other sister's voice, even as she quashed the instinct to run toward her with a hug. Instead, she waited for Renee to appear in the kitchen doorway. Momentarily Renee did-a dark-haired, tall and classically pretty woman with a face composed of smooth lines, like a Walt Disney drawing of a princess. The middle of the three McPhail girls, Renee was thirty-eight but looked thirty. She was dressed in a pastel blue skirt and blouse with a white sweater tied over her shoulders. Her collar-length auburn hair looked as if she'd been driving with her windows down.

"You are here!" she rejoiced, opening her arms and smiling broadly.

"Hi, you little shit."

Renee laughed, got Tess in a hug and rocked her like a bowling pin. "What do you mean, little shit?"

"You know what I mean, ordering me to come home and take care of Momma. I'm so mad at you I could choke you."

Renee found it amusing. "Well, if that's what it took to get you home, I guess we did the right thing."

"You probably got me in a heap of trouble, you know that, don't you?"

"Oh, come on," Renee said disparagingly.

"I've got a record contract and I'm supposed to be in a studio recording right now."

"And I'm supposed to be at home putting supper on the table for my family, but I've been off running down twenty-five potted violets for the tables at a wedding reception, and taste-testing Florentine chicken at a caterer's and trying to find anyone with a white horse-drawn carriage because Rachel insists they're going to arrive at the church in a carriage, and the only ones I can find in the whole country are black and look like they hauled Robert E. Lee through the battlefront."

"Do you know that I had to cancel seven appearances because of this?"

"What do you think we had to cancel the last time Momma had surgery?"

They were no longer hugging but leaning back taking each other's measure.

"But it's easier for you," Tess reasoned. "You live here."

"Try that argument on Judy and see how far it gets you."

"Judy. Ha! I won't have too much to say to Judy after the way she talked to me on the phone."

"She's disgusted with you, too. Has been for the last ten years because you never come home."

"What do you mean, I never come home? I come home!"

"Sure. Once a year or so when your schedule permits. Honey-pie, families deserve more than that."

"But you don't understand."

"Sure we do. You've got your priorities."

"Renee-ay!"

"Te-ess," her sister aped in the same singsong.

"I expected this out of Judy, but not out of you."

Renee said simply, "It's your turn, Tess, and you know it."

They were at a stalemate. Tess returned to the sink, pulled the plug and let the water drain. She

squeezed out the dishcloth and swiped it over the faucets, then turned and gestured toward the

bathroom, whispering, "She's gonna drive me nuts!"

Renee, too, kept her voice lowered. "It's only for four weeks, then I can help her once the wedding's over." "But I don't live like this anymore... eating pecan pie and washing dishes by hand, for heaven's sake." "For the next four weeks you do." "She just doesn't understand, I have to keep in shape. It's part of my public image, and I can't go eating Tater Tot hot dish and pecan pie with whipped cream!" Renee held Tess in place by her rolled-up T-shirt sleeves, looking straight into her amber eyes. "She's your mother. She loves you. It's how she shows it." She dropped her hands. "And how in the world would she know what you eat anymore? You're never around."

Apparently this was going to be a repeated refrain during Tess's time back home; she had difficulty stifling a retort, for none of her family had the vaguest idea of the immensity of the commitments she made and how many people were affected by them. They all thought she was merely caught up in fame, and that whenever she picked up a telephone or received an overnight package she was grandstanding. Any protestations to the contrary would fall on deaf ears.

"Is she in bed already?" Renee asked.

"No, she's taking a bath."

"Well, I'll go tap on her door and say hi and good-bye. I gotta get home. Just wanted to stop by and see

if you got here okay."

Renee went through the living room into a small hall alcove where she tapped on the bathroom door with

her car key.

"Momma? Hi, it's Renee, but I can't stay. Everything go okay today at your pre-op?"

"Just fine. Can't you wait till I get out?"

"Sorry, gotta get home and feed my family, but I'll be there in the morning before they wheel you in,

okay?"

"Okay, dear. Thanks for stopping by."

"Anything you need?"

"Nothing I can think of. But if there is, Tess can get it for me, and Kenny offered, too."

"Okay, then, see you in the morning."

When Renee came back through the living room Tess was there with her hands in the pockets of her

jeans and one shoulder propped against the kitchen archway.

"Kenny again," Tess said with a look of distaste that Renee missed.

"Thank heavens for Kenny. He treats her as if she's his own mother. We should all be plenty grateful to

him. Well, listen... gotta run." Renee pecked Tess on the cheek. "See you in the morning, bright and early. She tell you what time she's got to be there?"

"She told me."

"Can you manage that?"

Tess rolled her gaze to the ceiling and mumbled, "I can't believe this."

"Okay, okay-just asking."

"I meet more schedules in one month than you and Judy will meet in your lifetime."

"Not at that time of day."

"Will you stop treating me like the baby of the family!"

"Okay, all right... I'm going. See you tomorrow."

Tess followed her sister and stood in the front vestibule watching her drive off in a blue van. Evening had fallen and the street was quiet. In the bathroom the tub started draining. The smell in the vestibule never seemed to change. It was one she associated with changeless places from her past-public libraries and churches and school buildings that still had wood floors. The floor in the vestibule was oak, the bound rug old and jute-backed, and the smell was stuffy, like the clothing of old people who don't go outside enough. The vestibule itself was a cramped cubicle with a door to outside and another to the living room, the kind that had been popular in another era before foyers had become integrated with living rooms. It had an antique mirror on the wall, and on the floor in one corner a tarnished brass container holding some old magazines. She stood there feeling disgruntled and misplaced, no longer comfortable in her mother's house and not fully understanding why, wishing she were in the studio in Nashville where she belonged and knew her function and purpose. Here, she felt cast upon a foreign shore. Her connection to it was gone, and she was being blamed for that, yet all she was guilty of was success.

Her mother came out of the bathroom dressed in a flowered cotton nightie and duster that snapped up the front.

"Tess? Is Renee gone?"

"Yes. She had to get home." Tess turned back into the living room where her mother was toweling her hair, releasing a strongly medicinal smell into the room. "Phew! What is that? It stinks."

"They just called it antibacterial soap."

"Can I comb your hair for you? I have my blow-dryer."

"No, thanks, honey. Got my brash right here. I have to use the soap again in the morning anyway-orders from the hospital."

The way Mary was moving Tess could tell she was in pain. "Is your hip worse, Momma?"

Mary put a hand to it and walked with a pronounced heel-slide, perching carefully on the overstuffed arm of a living-room chair whose height made it easier to use than the seat. "It's hard getting in and out of the tub. Always makes it worse."

This time when Tess made her point she did so in much gentler tones than earlier when she was upset with Kenny Kronek. "Then why wouldn't you let me buy you a new house when I wanted to? You could have had a nice roomy shower instead of that cramped little tub."

Mary waved off her remark and tried to make herself comfortable on the arm of the chair, but could not.

"Mom, what can I do for you?"

"Get me a bed pillow and I'll stretch out on the sofa, then sit down and let's talk."

It took some time to get Mary reasonably comfortable on the sofa. When she was, she said, "Now tell me about the places you've been lately."