Working as a makeup artist, Cathy has had hundreds of celebrity interactions and helped Victoria Princ.i.p.al develop a cosmetics line. Some celebrities get very chatty in the makeup chair, confiding in Cathy about their affairs or their deepest secrets. Cathy knows when it's not appropriate to reveal things, even to the Ames girls.

Over the years, she has resisted sharing too many stories with them, even though they were always eager for details. In L.A., she and her fellow makeup artists make the sound of a dish dropping to the ground every time any of them name-drop, just to keep each other in check. So Cathy didn't want to seem like she was bragging to the Ames girls. Still, sometimes she relented and revealed the behind-the-scenes machinations.

She told the Ames girls about the time Martha Stewart's aides-her "people"-demanded that Cathy get new makeup brushes before working on Martha's face for a Kmart commercial. "I was thinking, 'What? My kit is immaculately clean and I've used these brushes on everyone else. I'm not buying all new stuff,' " Cathy said. On the day of filming in Arizona-it was a scene in which Martha was hanging towels across the Grand Canyon-Cathy smiled at the handlers and never told them whether she had or hadn't bought new brushes. Martha arrived and was very pleasant; she never questioned the brushes. "Sometimes, the people around the celebrity are the ones who are most difficult," Cathy said. "Maybe Martha didn't really care."

It's easy to get jaded in her line of work, but once in a while Cathy has encounters that make her feel like a teenaged girl again. Those are the stories she most enjoys telling her Ames friends.

She thrilled them with her description of the night in 1997 when she was called to Sting's house to style his wife Trudie's hair. She and Trudie were in the large master bedroom, and in walked Sting, wearing a silk bathrobe and holding a cup of tea.

"Baby, you need a haircut," Trudie said to him, then turned and said, "Cathy, would you mind cutting my husband's hair, too?"

So Sting sat down and Cathy began tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. From then on, things felt kind of dreamlike. "He actually started singing 'Roxanne'!" she later told the other girls. "It was totally surreal. He was talking about his kids, and I told him I was from a big family from Iowa, and that I liked his music, and then he just started singing . . . 'ROX-anne!!'" (The song had come out in 1978, their soph.o.m.ore year at Ames High, and most of the Ames girls had absolutely loved it. Sting almost rivaled their hero, Rod Stewart.) Sting's hair was already a kind of buzz cut, and Cathy worried that she'd accidentally nick him while he was. .h.i.tting the high notes in "Roxanne." He survived the haircut unscathed.

After the haircut and the impromptu performance, Sting went to the sink and brushed his teeth, still chatting away-or was he still singing?-as he brushed. Just then, his two-year-old son walked in, and Trudie asked if Cathy could give him a haircut, too. So the boy sat on Sting's lap while Cathy cut his hair.

A few minutes later, the door to the bedroom opened and in walked Madonna. Yes, Madonna! Turned out, Sting and Trudie were hosting a fund-raiser dinner party, and Madonna was invited.

She didn't start singing "Material Girl," but she did say to Cathy, "What are you, a barber?"

Trudie explained that Cathy was actually a makeup artist sent by the agency to do her hair.

Cathy never mentioned to Madonna that her mother had the same name. "I had Sting in the chair, his kid on his lap, scissors in my hand, 'Roxanne' in my ears, and Madonna is standing there. So no, at that moment, I wasn't thinking about my mother."

Karla actually credits the conception of her third child to Cathy's glamorous career and her celebrity encounters. It happened in October 1992.

At the time, Cathy was traveling the world on Michael Jackson's eighteen-month-long Dangerous Tour. One night, from her hotel room in Bucharest, Cathy placed a call to Karla, who was still living in Idaho. Christie was then almost three years old. And Karla and Bruce had also welcomed a son, Ben, ten months earlier.

It was late afternoon at Karla's house, and she was sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery. Little Christie was on the floor, playing with their dog. Ben was on Karla's lap.

Like any mother with two young kids, Karla was feeling a bit overwhelmed. It had been a long day, so Karla decided to have a gla.s.s of wine while she waited for Bruce to come home from work. She sipped the wine, rocked Ben, kept an eye on Christie and talked to Cathy.

They had a long conversation, and at first Karla was just enthralled with all of Cathy's stories. Cathy had been hired to apply makeup only on the background singers and dancers, not on Michael Jackson himself. But as Cathy explained, one day Michael's makeup artist had to return to the States unexpectedly.

"So there was a knock on the door of the makeup room," Cathy told Karla, "and Michael's a.s.sistant said to me, 'Cathy, Michael is ready for you now.' I was being summoned to his dressing room.

"So I go walking in with a tray of my stuff, and as usual, he already has on makeup. But for the stage, he'd always enhance it.

"Anyway, Michael looks up at me and smiles, and he signals to me to put down the makeup tray. And we both knew that he didn't need me. He was pretty good at putting on his own makeup every day. So I just said to him, 'You know, Mike, if you need anything, I'm right next door.' And I walked out.'"

Karla ate it all up. Cathy told her about the private jet she and the others on tour were flying around on. "I've never even had a pa.s.sport before, and now I'm seeing the whole world-Oslo, Dublin, Berlin, Barcelona . . . ," she said. She also told Karla that during a rehearsal she had gotten to dance on stage with Michael, just fooling around, and he seemed to enjoy their interaction. For one show, Cathy filled in for the person whose job it was to hand Michael water and a towel on stage toward the end of the show. "He always throws the towel into the audience," Cathy said. "Every night. And no matter what country we're in, people go insane!"

Cathy was just explaining her life with a true sense of wonder. She wasn't bragging. And Karla was completely proud of her. But as the conversation continued, Karla started feeling surprisingly envious. "Here I am," Karla thought, "a stay-at-home mom sitting in a rocking chair in a nursery, and there's Cathy. She's living this incredible life while my life is just here in this house."

She couldn't exactly tell Cathy how she was feeling. So she kept listening and asking questions.

She heard the front door opening. "Bruce just got in," Karla told Cathy. "I've got to go. Stay safe. I love you."

Just then Bruce entered the room, looking awfully handsome to her. Given the combination of the wine, the conversation about Cathy's exciting life, and the swirl of emotions, Karla was feeling pa.s.sionate. She and Bruce had no intention of having another child just yet. After all, Ben was only ten months old.

But that's the night her third child, Jackie, was conceived.

The other Ames girls know the story of that pa.s.sionate night in Idaho-how Cathy (and Michael Jackson) unwittingly helped bring a new life into the world-and it comes up in conversation at the North Carolina reunion. "We were all younger then," Sally says, "and what Cathy was doing was completely impressive to us. It was just a big wow."

"A lot bigger than any of our wows," Marilyn says.

They all say they were excited for Cathy, and slightly envious, too.

Now, of course, Cathy speaks openly of how she often envies the other girls. They all have been married. They all have children. "My life took a different turn," she says.

Cathy had moved to California with a boyfriend from Iowa. They were together nine years. She had thought they probably would get married, but for a variety of reasons, it didn't happen. They broke up when Cathy was thirty years old and they've remained close friends. She has dated ever since, but hasn't found a man she wanted to marry.

Cathy says her marital status does not separate her from the other girls. "I could choose to be the outsider because I'm not married and don't have kids," she says. "If I just wanted to focus on one part of my life, I could certainly alienate myself." She enjoys hearing the domestic details of the other girls' lives, and tries to understand what that's like for them.

Each year at Christmas, she writes a tongue-in-cheek poem and sends it to the other girls. In 2001 it began: "I hope your holiday season is full of joy / I'm still single . . . there isn't a boy / So I don't have a picture of me to send / Unless it's of me, and another gay friend / Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as can be / I still feel sure I'll one day be a 'we' . . ." In another letter to all the girls she wrote: "My love life? Well, I love life. That's about all to report."

Every so often, the other girls find some geographically undesirable Midwesterner to suggest to her. She almost always pa.s.ses, but appreciates the efforts.

In the end, Cathy, living in glamorous Beverly Hills, offers the girls a perspective that took decades to completely get their arms around.

When Karla thinks back to that day in Idaho, she says, "Life felt so ordinary-home with Christie and Ben, changing the umpteenth diaper. And here was Cathy; her life was so special. She was hanging out with celebrities and flying all over the world with Michael Jackson."

For those at home with kids, it was easier to take their lives for granted.

12.Their First Child

From the moment she received it in a Christmas card, Jane has loved a certain black-and-white sepia-toned photo of Karla and her family. It was taken in a studio near their home-they had moved to Edina, Minnesota-in the fall of 2001. Karla, Bruce and their three children are sitting on the floor, their arms nonchalantly on each other's shoulders or knees. They seem so comfortable pressed together, all of them barefoot, in jeans and casual shirts.

Karla looks like an absolute beauty. If the photo were in a clothing catalogue, she'd be the idealized vision of the modern wife and mother. Her legs are tucked sideways as she leans into Bruce, who is cradling the family dog between his arms.

Eight-year-old Jackie, a perky smile on her face, pokes her head between Bruce and Karla. Ben, age nine, is petting the dog with his left hand, and resting his head on Bruce's shoulder. And then there's Christie, age eleven, who is just beaming in her sleeveless shirt, her hand nestled at the edge of Karla's hair. Christie is just starting to lose her little-girl looks. In her pretty face, it's easy to see the teenager to come.Mom, Dad, the three kids, the dog. "This is what people think about when they picture the all-American family," Jane thought to herself the first time she looked at it.

Here in North Carolina, Jane is telling some of the other girls how she decided to use that photo in a psychological study she recently conducted at Stonehill College. The research project, which involved 140 partic.i.p.ants, investigated the effects of family values on s.e.xual prejudice and h.o.m.ophobia. Karla's family was used to get partic.i.p.ants thinking about a traditional family structure.

When Jane asked Karla for permission to use the family photo, Karla was very touched. She tells the other girls she feels honored that Jane would want to use her family in her work. "I really love that photo, too," Karla says softly.

It was a snapshot in time, an image of her family at a serene and very happy moment.

The Ames girls find a lot of admirable traits in each other's children. They've loved watching all twenty-one of the kids grow, and seeing all the personalities develop. When the girls hang out together as families, it's as if they're stepping into the future and back into the past all at once. Being with each other's kids sometimes gives them a feeling of being in a time machine, because when they look at all of their daughters' faces-from certain angles, or when the children grin or giggle-they can again see Kelly, Marilyn, Karen, Sally or Diana as young girls back in Ames. So many of the children's faces feel familiar to them; it's both disorienting and comforting.

The girls first had that feeling when Karla's daughter, Christie, was born. They've always had a very special place in their hearts for Christie. Part of their affection was rooted in the fact that Christie was the first child born to any of them. But there was also something incredibly endearing about Christie herself. She had this life-loving glow about her. Some kids you can just tell are special, and Christie was one of them.

As an infant, she got pa.s.sed around by the other Ames girls as almost a trial child. The girls held her in their arms, looked in her eyes, cooed to her, and thought about the mothers they hoped to be.

Once they all started having children of their own, the girls often turned to Karla to learn what Christie was up to developmentally-walking, talking, potty training, everything-so they'd have a sense of what was ahead for their own children.

From just about the moment she was born on January 9, 1990, Christie had been an easy baby with a contagious smile. She grew into a happy kid, extremely close to both Karla and Bruce. Karla loved observing how comfortable Christie felt in Bruce's strong arms.

As Christie got older, she developed this fun-loving devilish side. She'd get a kick out of manipulating kids, especially her two siblings, Ben and Jackie, who were two and three years younger. In Christie's mind, younger kids lived to serve her. And she was so pleasant and engaging that other kids always fell for whatever she was asking of them.

"You know what would be fun? If you each took turns giving me backrubs," a ten-year-old Christie would say to Jackie and her little friends. "Go ahead. Give it a try. You'll love it."

And so the younger girls would line up and do just that. And they did love it. Being in Christie's presence was a blast.

"There's a deviant side to her," Karla joked in conversations with the other Ames girls. "She's so smart and manipulative. And she never gets caught at it."

Sometimes, Karla would sit nearby and marvel at Christie's audacity.

"Hey, Ben! Hey, Jackie!" Christie would say. "Let's play servant."

Servant?

"I'll sit here and you guys will be my servants."

Karla tried to explain to the other Ames girls why Christie could be such an operator and, at the same time, be so lovable. "Maybe it's because she has the cutest, sweetest giggle. Maybe that's why she gets away with everything. We all just love that giggle."

Christie had Ben and Jackie fetch things and do her bidding. "OK, servants," she'd say. "After you get me a gla.s.s of water, go over there and get me all the Barbies with blond hair."

Given Christie's Barbie collection, the blondes alone were a whole army. But her little servants complied.

Christie loved playing with Barbies, even as a preteen, well after her friends had outgrown them. She had bins of Barbies. She had the Barbie moving van and the deluxe Barbie Town. She had plenty of Kens, too, of course.

"Christie is so mature in so many ways," Karla explained one day to Kelly. "She's got a self-confidence that comes from being wise beyond her years. So her Barbies don't embarra.s.s her."

Karla was secretly pleased that Christie was such a die-hard Barbie lover. "Kids grow up way too fast. I'm glad she's still playing with her Barbies. It's better than doing who-knows-what."

Christie may have held on to her dolls longer than most girls do, but in other ways, she was far ahead of her peers. The Ames girls found Christie to be a thoughtful observer of the world. She was the sort of kid with whom you could have a very adult conversation. She listened intently to what adults were saying. She questioned. She commented. Sometimes Karla felt obliged to tell her to go away; maybe other adults didn't want her horning in on their conversations.

When the Ames girls' families got together, Christie reveled in being mature. She would look after the younger kids like a doting mother hen. She'd enter a room where the adults had gathered, and the other children would tag along behind her. She was like a Pied Piper, rising from the bas.e.m.e.nt with her own entourage.

Christie had taken babysitting courses at age eleven and had become a very popular neighborhood sitter. Parents liked that she was sweet, confident and responsible. Younger girls loved her because she'd go right to the floor with them to play Barbies until bedtime. And she loved turning household objects into playthings. She'd pretend that laundry baskets were boats; she'd have her servants push her around in them. Sometimes she'd push them, too.

Especially when she was young, some of the Ames girls and their kids thought Christie looked just like the Olsen twins from Full House Full House. Christie was completely flattered by that. Karla loved watching her get excited about things. She loved playing soccer, but she also loved being what Karla called "a girly-girl." "She runs like a girl-arms flying," Karla said to Kelly. "When she runs for the school bus, those arms of hers are just everywhere."

Even though none of the Ames girls' children lived in Ames, Christie sensed the importance of carrying on the girls' bonds to this new generation. Once, when the girls' families were gathered together, Christie made friendship bracelets for all the kids to take back to wherever they lived. She saw what her mothers' friends from Ames meant to her, and she wanted to build her own connections with the other "Ames" kids.

"Now you're my friend!" she told the children of the other Ames girls as she handed each one of them a bracelet. "And now I'm your friend."

During the summer of 2002, Christie just wasn't feeling well, and on September 16, after several doctors visits and a lot of tests, Karla and Bruce learned why. Christie was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. It was a devastating moment for Karla and Bruce-Bruce would later call it one of the saddest days of his life-but they quickly went about figuring out their options.

The other Ames girls were alarmed and worried, of course. They called or emailed Karla, each expressing her love, her promise of prayers, her offer of help. Karla appreciated it all, but was overwhelmed with doctors' visits and decisions. She couldn't spend a lot of time on the phone. Within days, however, there was a way for the girls to channel their concern-to remain in Christie's life, and in Karla's.

Christie learned about an organization called Caring Bridge, which allows the families of ill children to post messages and updates on a Web site. Friends and loved ones can visit the site to keep track of a patient's progress and to post messages of their own.

In many cases, the parents write the entries. Christie, then twelve, wanted to write the online diary herself. Her first entry was written from her room at a children's hospital in Minneapolis on September 27, 2002, at 5:19 P.M.: "Hey, thank you everyone for caring about me. I am doing fine now. On Sunday I go to chemo again. I still have my hair!!!" The next day she wrote another short note: "My friend Meggan is here and she has Krispy Kremes!"

In those early entries, Christie certainly sounded like a kid. But over the months that followed, her voice matured as she did. Her writing became philosophical and achingly honest, revealing a courageousness that the Ames girls found remarkable.

She wrote clearly about every detail of her experience. At times, for instance, she had trouble keeping food down. "The doctor said my body is eating itself. So they decided to give me a naso-gastric tube. It goes into my nose and all the way down to the small intestines. The doctor put it there, rather than in the stomach, because it is far enough down so I can't throw up the food. It is pretty much baby formula in a bag. I am already putting the weight on. I will get up to 'fighting weight' in no time." She was concentrating on the bright side. "I really don't like the tube, but I am getting used to it. It's nice to have some of the pressure taken off of me to eat."

Some of the girls thought Christie's diary was reminiscent of Anne Frank's. Day after day, she described a world that had been terribly unfair to her, and yet Christie's sense of hope and optimism rarely wavered. Of course, unlike the diary of Anne Frank, read well after she had died, Christie's diary was read in real time by friends and loved ones. She'd post an entry, and minutes or hours later it was being read by her thirteen-year-old friends and by the Ames girls spread across the country.

As she described her friendships in the online diary, the Ames girls were transported back to their earliest days with each other. Some of them checked the Caring Bridge Web site every few hours, waiting for Christie's latest entry, hoping for good news.

In suburban Philadelphia, Karen felt she was becoming obsessed with Christie's site. She found herself reading and rereading it ten times a day. She'd come home with groceries, and before she even put them away, she would head for the computer to see if there were any postings from Christie or from other Ames girls giving Christie encouragement.

All the Ames girls thought back to their interactions with Christie over the years. Kelly found herself focused on how inquisitive Christie could be. Once, when Christie was almost two years old, she and Kelly were walking together, and Christie kept looking over her shoulder. She seemed to be very frustrated. "What's the problem?" Kelly asked. Christie had found her shadow, it turned out, and each time she tried to step away from it, there it was. "It's stuck to me," she told Kelly.

Whenever the Ames girls had gotten together, Christie had a habit of sidling up to Karla and eavesdropping on the women-trying to figure out the world of adult friendships, eager to chime in. Karla would shoo her away, sending her off to watch the other kids, which seemed appropriate at the time. But Kelly, for one, was now feeling regretful that they had been so dismissive. Her kids had begun doing the same sort of eavesdropping, and Kelly found herself hesitant to send them away. She wished she could go back in time and welcome Christie into the circle of Ames women.

Now all they could do was read Christie's diary, feeling helpless as she described her nausea, fevers and vomiting spells. The Ames girls would read the entries, teary-eyed, wondering how much more her little body could take. But Christie had a way of couching bad news with humor. In one entry she wrote: "My faith in 'everything happening for a reason' is slowly slipping. Just kidding! But I'm sure ready to be done with puking and pain." She'd give regular updates about other ill kids at the hospital, asking her readers to keep them in their hearts, too.

In their postings to Christie, the Ames girls' messages matched their personalities. Jane always found the most positive news and commented on it: "Glad to hear you had a good day, Christie. Your great att.i.tude is so inspiring for all of us, young and old. Continue to stay strong." Jane could be playful, too: "We loved the new pictures of you with your friends! How many rules did you have to break to get all those lovely friends of yours in your hospital room?"

Cathy, usually reluctant to boast of her celebrity connections, made an exception for Christie: "I'm going to be traveling to London with Pink for ten days. Are you a fan? Would you like some 'swag'?" Another time, Cathy was working as Courteney c.o.x's makeup artist. She knew Christie was a huge Friends Friends fan, so she had the show send her mugs, a hat, a T-shirt. fan, so she had the show send her mugs, a hat, a T-shirt.

Meanwhile, Kelly took on the persona of the fun aunt, making funky suggestions. "Does your school celebrate homecoming, Christie?" she asked in one posting. "To get you in the fall spirit, your mom should TP your hospital room. Have the nurses catch her in the act and chase her down the halls. " After the East Coast blackout in the summer of 2003, Kelly wrote to Christie: "We had no idea that the cord we tripped over and disconnected from the wall while touring Niagara Falls would trigger the blackout. . . ."

Still, at times, Kelly's postings had a more reflective tone: "Thanks for being such a wonderful teacher through your Web site, Christie. Many people look forward to your words and we have all learned so much from you."

Christie often wrote about her feelings for Ben and Jackie, wishing they could have a more normal life, despite the abnormal effect her illness was having on the family. In the middle of everything, Jackie had a far-less-serious medical issue; she needed to have her tonsils taken out. Still, Christie didn't dismiss it as trivial. She described her kid sister's recovery and wished her well.

One day, Karla cooked homemade chicken soup for Christie, and Jackie held the container on her lap as they drove it to the hospital. While they were driving, the lid came off and the soup spilled. Jackie ended up with second-degree burns and had to be taken to the hospital's emergency room. The Ames girls couldn't imagine how Karla could cope with all of this-having two daughters on opposite ends of the same hospital.

Jane found herself thinking: "We all love our kids. But Karla loves her kids with a capital bold-faced L. She's so devoted. It seems absolutely cruel for her to be the one going through this."

The Ames girls pooled money to pay for a cleaning service to clean Karla's home and to have catered meals sent in. Karla actually was living at the hospital, in Christie's room. Even though their home was just a few minutes away, Karla didn't go back to the house for a month or six weeks at a time. She didn't want to be away from Christie. One night, because her other two children missed her, she went to the house and Bruce spent the night at the hospital. It didn't feel right.

The Ames girls sent email after email to Karla, letting her know they were thinking about her. Karla rarely responded. When they called, she wouldn't call back or she'd speak only briefly. "I have to get back to Christie," she'd say. The girls found it all very frustrating and painful. Kelly thought to herself: "We're locked out of Karla's life just when she needs us the most."Karla and Christie in Minneapolis As Karla saw it, she had to cast her friends to the side. On the day Christie was diagnosed, a doctor told Karla that Christie could die. Given that, Karla wanted to be with her daughter every possible minute. The Ames girls would have to understand. For the most part, they did.

For a while, Kelly, living in Minnesota, was visiting the hospital every Wednesday, and reporting back to the other girls. "Karla is in good spirits-very positive and upbeat, which fills the room. Christie looked good and was in good spirits," she wrote in one email. "She has the power to transform the air around her."

For Kelly, those Wednesday experiences were life-changing. She saw the loving bonds between Karla and Bruce, and between the couple and their three children. Seeing their strength and closeness, especially given the awful circ.u.mstances, made Kelly reconsider her own home life, her own marriage. It was on those Wednesdays that she began to think seriously about the possibility of ending her marriage.

Kelly's hospital visits had a different effect on Karla, however. Each time Kelly stopped by, her reporter's instincts kicked in, and she'd have a barrage of questions about Christie's care or how Karla was holding up. She meant well, but Karla found it annoying. After a while, Karla began to view Kelly's visits as intrusions, and the questions as "the interrogation." Once, Kelly came with her entire family, and Karla felt churned up inside. "They're making small talk," she thought to herself, "and all I can think about is germs."

Karla had been sleeping night after night, on a pull-out bed in the hospital room, and Kelly was amazed by her commitment to be by Christie's side twenty-four hours a day. Kelly later wrote out her impressions: "How can Karla be there every night, with all the sounds, the glowing lights, the smells of that place? I would not be able to do it. G.o.d forbid if it was my kid, I would have asked my parents or friends to take a shift."

On her visits, Kelly sometimes would ask Karla to take a break, to walk with her down the hall to the visitors' lounge for a few minutes. Invariably, Karla declined to go. "I want to be with Christie," she said.

When the other Ames girls called Karla and asked if they could visit, Karla turned them down. Visitors were hard on Christie, who was often so weak, and they threatened her immune system. If friends were going to be there, Karla decided, they ought to be Christie's friends, not Karla's friends.

Diana came from Arizona to visit, but Karla asked that she just go to the house, not the hospital, and see Bruce, Ben and Jackie. Karla stayed at the hospital. Bruce seemed to be doing OK. He was able to joke around. He said the neighbors had sent over yet another care package dinner of "pity pitas." It all seemed surreal to Diana, so unlike the easy visits of the past.