Small Town Girl

Though they'd have rather snubbed each other, the woman they both loved had had surgery that day. They could hardly pass each other without mentioning it. He stopped and switched the motor to idle.

'How'd it go?' he asked, his weight on one hip, no smile on his mouth.

'Perfect,' she snapped, as rudely as possible.

'And Mary?'

'Doctor says she's doing great. No complications at all. They'll be getting her up to stand tomorrow.'

'Well, that's good news.'

They both felt awkward, speaking with surface civility while wishing they need not.

'I met your daughter today,' she told him.

He reached down, picked up a little stick from the grass in front of the grumbling mower and threw it into the garden. 'She told me she might stop up there. I told her she should wait at least until tomorrow, till Mary was feeling a little better.'

'She's quite refreshingly natural.'

'Meaning she smelled like horses, right?'

Had he been anyone else, Tess would have laughed. Since he was Kenny, she forcibly refrained. 'Some. But she apologized for it.'

'She loves her horses.' He still wouldn't look at her, but sent his gaze roving over the lawn and the backyard buildings, his weight once again on one hip in a stance she found cocky.

'She asked me to come and sing with your church choir.'

He gave her a quarter of a glance and mumbled as if cursing under his breath, then scratched the back of his head under the cap, bouncing the red bill in front. 'I told her not to bug you about it. I hope you don't think I put her up to it.'

She remembered the crush he used to have on her in high school and said with enough sarcasm to nettle him, 'Now, why would I think a thing like that?'

He squared the baseball cap on his head, gave her a drawn-back, deep, disgusted assessment from beneath its visor, then rolled away toward the mower, leading with one shoulder. 'I gotta get back to work.' He turned up the engine till it pounded their eardrums.

She leaned closer and shouted above the roar, 'You didn't have to mow this lawn, you know! I was going to call my nephew!'

'No trouble!' he shouted back.

'I'll be happy to pay you!'

He gave her a look that cut her down to about the height of the grass. 'Around here we don't pay each other for favors,' then he added insolently, 'Ms. McPhail.'

'I was born around here, in case you've forgotten! So don't take that tone with me, Mister Kronek!'

He let his gaze clip the edge of her face and offered, 'Oh, excuse me… Mac, is it?'

'Tess will be fine, whenever you choose to come off your high horse long enough to speak to me!'

'Looks to me like I'm the one who got off his high horse first today!'

'But you sort of forgot who I was in the house last night, didn't you?'

'Bet that doesn't happen too often anymore, does it?'

'No. People are generally better-mannered than that!'

They were both still shouting.

'You know, you always did have an attitude.'

'I do not have an attitude!'

He let out a snort and began pushing the mower away, calling back over his shoulder, 'Look again… Mac!' He could say Mac with such an insulting tone she wanted to run up behind him and trip him! Instead, she stormed into the house and slammed the grocery bag down on the counter, wondering when in the last eighteen years she'd been this riled. All the while she used the bathroom, and changed into a cooler shirt, and opened up the windows in the stuffy loft, and put away her groceries in the refrigerator, the mower kept droning around the house, reminding her he was there, circling.

To distract herself, she decided to call Jack Greaves, who informed her that Carla Niles was coming in to cut a new harmony track on 'Tarnished Gold,' and that he'd have it couriered to her tomorrow. She called Peter Steinberg, who ran some foreign sales figures by her and said Billy Ray Cyrus had called asking if she'd sing at a fund-raiser for a children's hospital in August. She called Kelly Mendoza and asked her to check their August calendar and get back to Cyrus; Kelly gave her a report on the day's mail and phone calls and said a fax had come in with the week's Gavin Report and that her current single, 'Cattin',' had dropped one notch on the radio chart. Also, her custom-made boots had arrived from M. L. Leddy in Fort Worth. Would she like them sent down to Wintergreen?

While Tess was on the kitchen phone a car pulled up and parked behind Kronek's open garage door-the same car as yesterday, a white Dodge Neon. A woman got out and crossed the alley toward him. She was fortyish, wearing low-heeled pumps and a summer business suit of pale peach. As she approached him he stopped mowing and moved a couple steps in her direction. She was carrying a portfolio, which rested against her leg as the two of them talked. She pointed toward his house and continued casually gesturing while they discussed something. Kenny jabbed a thumb toward Mary's house and the woman glanced over briefly. Then she smiled and headed back across the alley while he returned to his mowing.

Who's that! Tess wondered, watching the woman disappear into the glass porch.

A half hour later Tess was washing a head of lettuce when she looked out the window and saw the woman, who had changed into slacks and a white blouse, carrying a tray out the back door to Kenny's picnic table. A moment later Casey followed with another tray. The woman hailed Kenny, who by this time had finished mowing Mary's yard and was halfway through with his own, and the three of them sat down to eat supper.

A mistress? Tess wondered. Could it be Saint Kenny actually led a life of promiscuity? Certainly the woman was more than a mere housekeeper, changing clothes the way she had and joining the family for supper. There was an unmistakable air of familiarity among the three of them as they sat down to share the meal.

Tess caught herself wondering and spun away from the window. Who cares, she thought, as she put a chicken breast on to poach, then went into the living room to do what she'd been eager to do all day long. Armed with a small tape recorder, staff paper and pencil, she sat down at the piano to work on the song idea she'd had last night.

The old upright piano was badly in need of tuning, but the easy action of the keys and its exceptional resonance surpassed many on which she'd played. This was one of her favorite parts of the work she did. Composing seemed like play, always had. At times she found it ludicrous that she should be paid for doing something that gave her such absolute pleasure. Yet the royalties from her original songs brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. She'd always been imaginative, and the process of combining a theme, poetry, and music into one entity sometimes so captivated her that she didn't hear when she was being spoken to. During the years when she and the band had toured by bus she often wrote while they were rolling down the highway, setting down the words first, along with a basic melody line, to which she added chords by using a miniature two-octave electronic keyboard that she could hold on her lap and listen to through earphones. Sometimes her lead guitarist would work with her, especially on the more upbeat songs that would be guitar-driven.

The lines that had entered her head last night in the bathtub began to take concrete musical form. The words gained tune and rhythm.

One-way traffic crawlin' 'round a small town square,

Eightee years've passed since she's been there,

Been around the world, now she's coming back…

The last line of the verse kept eluding her. Ideas came, but she discarded them, one after another. She sang trial lines, picking out an accompaniment on the piano, but still liked none. She was wholly immersed in composing when a voice called from the open kitchen door, 'Hey, Mac? It's me, Casey!' Tess was holding a chord with her left hand and committing it to paper with her right when Casey bounced into the room, uninvited.