Small Town Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

with two of her high school girlfriends; a pink glass dish containing a pearl button, a small ring, a cloth-covered ponytail holder and some dust. Dented into the top of the table, painted over in the years since, was the name
Elvis
,
    pressed there in ballpoint pen by Tess in 1977, the year he died and she graduated from high school. She'd grown up listening to Elvis and he had been her idol: if he could do it, she could do it. She brushed the word with her fingertips, as if it were a headstone, then switched on the familiar little lamp with the cheap flared plastic shade. She switched it off again and opened the single dressing-table drawer. Something went rolling and she reached inside and pulled it out: a tube of Bonne Bell root-beer-flavored Lip Smackers. She removed the cap and sniffed it. Nostalgia came rumbling like a tidal wave—being thirteen again and getting her first pair of panty hose; being fourteen and wearing these adolescent perfumes; being fifteen and going out on her first official dates with boys. She rubbed the Bonne Bell on her lips. It had turned sticky with age and she swiped it off with the side of one hand and dropped the tube back where it had been.
    Bracing her palms on the tabletop she put her face near the window and glanced down at the street where she had watched for cars when her dates had come to pick her up. The trees in the front yard had grown. From up here she could see even more clearly the cracks in the sidewalk, the thin spots in the grass, the weeds. The sun was hovering just above the houses across the street where she used to babysit. On the lawn the dandelions were closing up as the afternoon waned.
    And down below, her mother was calling, "Tess? Should I put the hot dish in now?"
    She murmured to herself, "Yes, Momma, because the world will fall off its axis if it's not on the table at the crack of six." She pushed off the dressing table and called, "I'll do it, Momma! Just let me hang up some clothes first, okay?"
    "Well… okay," Mary replied with grave doubt, then added, "but it's ten after five already and it really should bake for a full hour."
    Tess couldn't help shaking her head. The normal schedule of a professional musician meant rising near noon, doing studio work from about two till nine, with a caterer bringing food in around six. On concert nights it meant performing between eight and eleven and eating supper around midnight; if you were playing clubs and doing a bus tour, packing up at one in the morning and eating your last meal of the day while you were rolling down the highway.
    But Tess dutifully hollered down, "I'll be right there, Mom!"
    Her mother had already put the hot dish in the oven but she let Tess set the table and get the rest of the meal ready. Mary's suggested accompaniments to the fat-filled Tater Tot hot dish were toast (with real butter and homemade raspberry jam), coffee (with cream and sugar, of course) and pecan pie with whipped cream (the real kind, not Cool Whip—add forty calories for the whipped cream, Tess thought).
    A discreet inventory of the refrigerator turned up a head of cabbage but no lettuce, cheddar cheese but no cottage cheese, sour cream but no yogurt, and whole milk but no skim. Just what were these groceries Judy had dropped off anyway?
    In the freezer, thank goodness, Tess found a bag of frozen broccoli. "Mom, do you mind if I cook this?" she asked.
    Mary stared at her daughter as if her feelings were hurt. "There's vegetables in the hot dish."
    Potatoes soaked in oil, plus rich cream of chicken soup.
    "If you're saving it for something else—"
    "No, no, go ahead and cook it!"
    Tess did, but when the main dish was hot and bubbling it smelled so delicious and looked so tempting she dug into it like a soldier after a foot march. She guzzled the damned whole milk, too, because it was the only milk in the house, and had a half a piece of toast slathered with butter and jam. Mary smiled in satisfaction, watching her.
    When