Rainbowland

A fantasy that takes place somewhere over the rainbow,
in one of many possible realities involving Katharine McPhee,
her McPhamily, McPhriends and McPhans

“Okay, quiet everybody!” I said, trying to sound simultaneously important and humble. After all, I wasn’t the star of this show. Writer, producer and director, perhaps, but that was as far as it went. I looked around to make sure everyone was in place: grandpa manning the vidcam, grandma waiting expectantly in her favorite chair, and Mom yawning, trying valiantly to stay awake after a day of last minute sessions with dance coaches. “Are you recording?”  Grandpa nodded, trying to hold the camera steady.

“Okay,” I continued, taking a deep breath. I was more nervous than the star at this point but tried to do my best Ryan Seacrest imitation and be a proper host. “Ladies and gentlemen, McPhans, and viewing audience everywhere, whoever you happen to be, Mc&Mc Productions is proud to present Miss Kaycee McDonald, in her first live performance of The No-No Song. You have to understand, when you’re two, ‘no’ is a very important word, which is probably why she loves this song so much. Plus, it’s her very favorite one of Mommy’s American Idol performances. So—here she is! Kaycee McDonald!”

That was the cue. Our budding star was supposed to march out, toy microphone in hand, and start singing. For some reason everyone seemed to be staring at me. “What’s the matter, is she holding out for a bigger salary or something?” Katharine said with a sly grin.

“Don’t ask me.”

“Well, you’re the producer. Who else should we ask?”

“I’m going to go find her. Then you can ask her,” I said. “Dan, hold it, I’ll be right back.”

A quick check of the surroundings turned up the missing star fast asleep with her head on Lily, an aging black Lab with the kind of disposition that put up with such things with no protest whatsoever. Her silky dark hair blended into Lily’s shoulder to the point that it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. “Katharine Christine McDonald,” I said, “you get your little butt out there right now!” I said. Her eyelids fluttered and she struggled into consciousness.

“My conthert!” she said, horrified that she might have missed a chance to play her favorite game.

“We’re holding the curtain for you. What does grandma always tell you?”

“Show muth go on,” she said solemnly.

“You’re on,” I repeated. “Give me a minute to get back in the other room.” I started off, then turned around. “You know all the words, right?”

“Wight.”

“You know how we practiced the end, right?”

“Juth like Mommy  doth it.”

We tried it again. This time Kaycee was One Take Jake, starting from a very loud “Two, free, four!” through a couple of mixed up lines with words missing but obviously involving horses and trees, lots of enthusiastic Woo-hoos, then sailing right on into a chorus of “No, no, no, no-no-no, I said no, no, you not the one fo’ me!”  Then she executed a remarkably good move involving bringing up one knee, arching her back, and flinging her head back. She probably should have watched the video of Mommy’s rendition of Hound Dog, from which we stole the move, a little more carefully, because she lost her balance and wound up flat on the floor, howling.

“Keep filming!” I yelled, scooping her up in my arms to check for damage. “You’re fine. Now gimme a kiss.” She planted a wet toddler kiss right on my lips. “That was a good one,” I said. “You kiss almost as good as Mommy.”

“Christopher, you’re being recorded!” Katharine said, somewhere between giggly and horrified.

I set Kaycee down on the floor and told her to take a bow. “Right toward the camera,” I said. “Bow toward grandpa.”

She managed that without incident. “A star is born!” he said, and I had a feeling we were both going to be, as he always said, a mess before long. I could feel the tears welling up already.

“Well, P,” I said, “you know what you’ll be doing in another couple of years.”

Grandma nodded and gave a mock sigh. “Yep. Training another one.”

We were strangely silent as we drove home. We usually chattered and bantered and delighted in making each other laugh, but it may have been that the prospect of a long separation was making us unusually serious. We’d talked and talked and discussed and discussed, and had finally decided that Katharine’s Broadway debut was long overdue, it would be good for her, she’d love it, and if they decided to turn the original three month contract into something longer, my boss was willing to make arrangements that would let us keep our family together. By some miracle, he had friends who ran a veterinary clinic in New York City and they would arrange a “doctor exchange” that would allow me to practice in a venue that would put me closer than 3000 miles away from my family.
(continued)

But that couldn’t be arranged immediately, so for the meanwhile, I would have to be content with an occasional commute East while Katharine and her old friend Kellie Pickler stepped into the roles of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart in a revival of Chicago. Multiple performances a week would be vocally challenging, and she was working hard to get her dancing chops up to speed, but basically she was excited at the prospect.

So was I, but that didn’t mean I welcomed the separation. Katharine figured I was a big boy and would survive, but the idea of being away from the kids really tore at her. At their ages, three months would seem an eternity on both sides, and it would disrupt the work she’d been doing with the Eating Disorder Center of California. It was not a decision arrived at easily or quickly, and at least every other day, she would get all teary and tell me she’d made a horrible mistake. I’d let her rant until she got it out of her system, and by the next day she’d be Broadway bound again. I hoped we could make it work. Grandma, Big Sis, and a trustworthy nanny were all onboard. Now all I had to do was keep Katharine focused.

By the time we’d arrived home, Kaycee was deep into a leaden-limbed unconsciousness. I pulled clothes off her and put her down while Katharine struggled with P.K., who, after an evening of sleeping through everything imaginable, had decided to wake up and fuss. “I told you we should have kept her awake,” Katharine said grumpily. “Now she’ll be up all night.”

“No, she won’t,” I said. “Give her here. C’mere, Pookie, Dad’s gonna take care of everything.”

“You and your nicknames. You’re worse than George Bush,” Katharine said, but the prospect of a good night’s sleep with Daddy riding herd on the kids was evidently lightning up her disposition a bit.

“It’s easier than Patricia Kellie,” I said

“Oh fooey, you called both of them Pookie. I think you just like the sound of it.”

By the time Katharine was out of the shower, I was still pacing the floor with a little blue-eyed replica of myself who showed absolutely no signs of being sleepy. “You wanta give this a try?” I asked.

“I should be sparing my vocal cords, but I guess this is an emergency,” she said, giving me one of those slow, sweet smiles that turned my brains to mush, and I suddenly realized that I really, I mean really liked the way she looked in that silky white gown she was wearing. Well, no, I didn’t like the way she looked in the gown, I liked the way the gown looked on her. Subtle difference. She looks good in anything. Then she started singing the song that was probably, if you stretched definitions a bit, responsible for the very existence of the child in her arms.

I never realized how much I loved the song Come Rain or Come Shine until I heard her sing it. I’d been sitting with the family watching her onstage, realizing that the cute little girl I’d known since she was nine years old had definitely turned into a real live grown-up woman, and by God I was going to find a way to talk to her before going home for the evening. I remembered her as she’d been down through the years: a skinny little kid who wanted to be taken seriously and talked to like a grown-up, so I called her Katharine, never any childish nickname, and listened to anything she wanted to tell me; a cute teenager who had a raging crush on me that I had to pretend I knew nothing about; an even cuter young lady who spent a wonderful week with me at a bed-and-breakfast up in the northern wine country before heading off to college.

Then, after sporadic holiday reunions, I discovered a lady lawyer 10 years my senior who enchanted me by being both hard as nails and still a crusader who worked gratis for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a cause dear to my heart. And Katharine discovered the wonderful world of regional theater and all the charismatic, creative types who went along with it. I still occasionally attended the pool parties my boss threw every holiday, and sometimes his neighbors, the McPhees, were there, but their younger daughter usually wasn’t. Our paths had ceased to cross.

Then my lawyer tired of me, dropped me, devastated me, and Katharine’s life took a similar turn. Somehow we found each other again. We started talking, about everything, comparing scars, swapping war stories, commiserating with each other, each finding strength by trying to give strength to the other. I stopped drinking. She found an eating disorders clinic. We shared a pizza and toasted each other in Diet Pepsi while we watched a show called American Idol, and at some point during the evening she said “I think I could do that.” I was sure she could too.

I don’t know why I didn’t attend the first few shows, but instead I watched them from home, although I could probably have persuaded her parents to get me tickets. Perhaps we just wanted to work out our problems on our own, lick our wounds all alone, until we were sure they were really healed. Then one night I knew I wanted to be there. “Go on home,” she’d told her parents. “Chris and I need to talk. He can get a cab later.” Her father seemed ready to protest but her mother talked him out of it. She’d always been in my corner, for some reason, perhaps sensing that Katharine’s will was strong enough that although she deferred to her mother in many things, when she really felt strongly about something, it was best not to stand between her and what she wanted.

Kellie wound up eating stale peanuts in the hotel bar while Katharine and I got reacquainted. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I hadn’t a clue whether or not I even had enough cash on me to pay for a cab home. So a totally giddy Katharine had rounded up some of her new friends and she and Kellie took up a collection for me.

“Ooh-wee!” Bucky teased. “Kat’s got a groupie!” But he chipped in anyway.

“He’s an old friend,” Katharine insisted. “I’ve known him, like, forever.”

Taylor shook my hand, said he was glad to meet me, and seemed to be sizing me up, although in an outwardly quite friendly way. I had the feeling that in some way, she may have found herself a new big brother type, now that I seemed to be stepping into another role. We agreed that the younger ones did not need to hear about my visit, although that was probably a gross underestimation of their maturity level. Actually we were more concerned about their parents and guardians, and the ever-present media looking for any kind of a scoop concerning the most popular group of singers in the country.

“How about Mandisa?” Bucky asked. It was hard to tell if he was being serious or not. He just had that kind of personality.

“Ooh, I dunno,” Katharine said thoughtfully. “She’s been so sweet.” She didn’t have to say more. We all knew what she was thinking.

“I don’t think she’s much into judgin’,” Kellie said. “Although she might have an opinion.”

 It was a totally insane moment in some ways, and although I promised to pay everyone back (and did), I really hoped the gossip rags never got ahold of this one. Before I left, I grabbed her much-put-upon roommate in a bear hug. “Pickle, I owe you one,” I said.

“The day may never come,” Kellie said solemnly, “but someday I may have to ask a favor of y’all, and I’ll make ya an offer ya can’t refuse.”

Her Carolina Brando was just too much for me and I dissolved in laughter. Eventually I wound up hugging both of them at the same time. “Name it, Pickler,” I said. “If I’ve got it, you can have it.”

“Well,” she said, with a delightfully pixie-fied smile, “y’all could always name your first kid after me. I got kind of a unisex type name.”

“Kellie!” Katharine squeaked. “You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself there, girl.”

“Yeah? Well, far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ve had to spend a Tuesday night fightin’ off the advances of strangers in the bar. You two musta had a lot to talk about!”

“Oh my God,” Katharine said, sounding truly horrified. “You mean somebody got obnoxious?”

“I just told the guy I was fifteen, but I didn’t care if he didn’t. Scared the heck out of him.”

“Nobody you knew asked you what you were doing there, did they?” I asked a bit anxiously.

“Naw. You’re safe.”

“You’re weird, Pickle,” I said, “but I’ll be glad to hold the community snot rag for you any day of the week. You’re officially my buddy.”

“Is there any more of him at home?” Kellie asked. “He’s kinda sweet.”

“Only child,” Katharine said, giving Kellie a commiserating pat on the arm. “But I might rent him to you once in awhile, if we could agree on a price.”

That never happened, but we did name our second child Kellie.

Not that we ever called her that. We couldn’t have two Kellies in the family anymore than we could have a Chris and a Christie (Katharine’s choice), so we compromised, gave her both of our names, and intended to call her Katie. Then the initials just sort of took over and eventually she officially becme Kaycee. Pookie’s origins were less complicated. Most of the family called her Pekay, except me. I had called Kaycee Pookie half the time until her sister came along, at which time I had simply transferred it to the newcomer. Dumb, perhaps, but it stuck in my mind with the persistence of a bad snack food jingle. For all I knew, P.K. would be Pookie to me until she was eligible for Social Security and hated the sound of it.

And she was finally, finally asleep.

“Do do that voodoo that you do so well,” I said. “I couldn’t even get her to pass out with John Lennon, and she usually loves it when I sing Beautiful Girl to her.”

By the time I was out of the shower, all the junior members of the clan were down and quiet. I crawled into bed yawning. “Christopher?” said a voice in the darkness. “Why does my child have blue toenails?”

“Oh, crap,” I said, suddenly wide awake again. “I was gonna have her show those off for the camera, but I got sidetracked when I couldn’t find her.”

“Hey, Mister Director. I think you’d better keep your day job.” I could hear the amusement in her voice.

“I’ll have you know I’m a very good osteopathic surgeon,” I said. “I don’t forget anything important when I’m doing a spinal fusion so some poor paralyzed dog can walk again.”

“I’m just teasing. Are you gonna ignore me all night?”

“I’m not ignoring you. I’m talking.”

“Not what I had in mind.”

I turned over and reached for her. “What happened to that nice silky clingy gown you had on earlier?”

“I dunno, it’s over there somewhere. On the floor or something. Do we need it?”

“I don’t need it. Do you need it?”

“If you don’t know what I need by now, you’re NOT the one for me,” she said, then sang a sly little “Woo hoo” right in my ear.

I lost no time proving her wrong.

At 3 AM I was wide awake, pacing around the darkened house, going to the bathroom to see if that was the problem (it wasn’t, but why waste a trip), finally sneaking into the babies’ room because it always made me feel good to watch them when they were asleep, quiet, beautiful, probably growing right before my eyes even though I couldn’t see it. Their room was packed with Katharine’s souvenirs from concerts and appearances and gifts from fans, not so much the kind of memorabilia you’d want to preserve under glass or hang up too high to be reached, but more the kind of stuff you wanted to touch, or use in some way.

Kaycee slept on a pillow someone had embroidered with her mother’s name in her tour color, orange. It was now hers and she had to try hard to hide her uneasiness when it was in the wash. For some reason it played a large role in her ability to have a peaceful night’s sleep. Pookie had a matching one in pink, a gift from Aunt Kellie, who had gotten it from the same fan group.

There were a couple of big catch-all cases with animal faces on them, which were used as toy boxes. They’d been fan gifts from the Idol Tour and we’d been told they were named Bucky Ducky and Elliott Elephant, so that was what Kaycee called them, or tried to. She had a large vocabulary but her tongue had trouble negotiating a lot of the English language. At one time they’d been filled with all manner of snacks, bathroom necessities, writing materials, games and movies for the benefit of five people traversing the continent crammed into one bus.

I could never quite understand how the ten of them managed to survive that tour. They crisscrossed the country in several mammoth buses that served as rolling hotels and were equipped with some version of all the necessities. Luxuries were a thing of the past. Real hotels were available, with real showers and real beds, but there wasn’t much time for them. It was summer, sometimes the heat was inhuman, as was the pace, and days off were rare. At least one Idol seemed to be sick every week with everything from laryngitis to allergies. Exhaustion became the order of the day. I’d spent a lot of time texting frantic and almost incomprehensible messages about “tkng vtmns?” or “hws ft?”

Finally there was a whole day off. My boss told me to go pamper my princess for a day if I couldn’t rescue her forever. I spent the day on a plane, Katharine spent hers on a bus, and I beat her to the hotel. If only the concert had been that night instead of the next, so I could have actually seen her onstage, but that wasn’t the way the schedule had been put together. A small thing, perhaps, but I loved watching her perform. So I bummed around the hotel, then wandered outside, nearly choking at the viciousness of the steamy southern heat. I found a rib joint down the street and treated myself to barbecue and corn on the cob but was too keyed up to eat it all.

I was pacing around the hotel lobby when I caught a glimpse of the buses turning down an alley to head for the back of the building. What had we said we’d do? Meet in the lobby? In the parking garage? Oh crap. What if we played Keystone Kops games chasing around the hotel looking for each other? The desk clerk looked at me like I might be the world’s clumsiest Al Qaeda operative when I asked where the Idol Tour buses came in. Finally I had a revelation and got on my cell phone. She’d meet me in the lobby by the elevators. The others were going a more roundabout way but she didn’t want to miss me.

I spotted her down the hall, coming out of an elevator on its way up from the lower levels, and we did our best imitation of one of those slo-mo commercials where two people run across a field of wild flowers for a joyous reunion. We collided, clinched, kissed frantically, finally pulled apart, breathless but happy. “Hey, Barbecue Breath,” she said with an enchanting grin, “I’ve missed you so-o o much.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “The airline confiscated my Scope. Me too.”

“I’ll fix you up as soon as we get upstairs. You’d never believe the stuff the fans have been sending us. You can have your own little bottle of citrus flavored Listerine,” she said. Then she grabbed me and kissed me again, barbecue and all.

For reasons known only to 19E and God, this time everyone had separate rooms. First rattle out of the box, everyone got to simply unpack and chill out. Later there would be a short orientation meeting so everyone would know the schedule, as this stop was a little different because of the extra day. Days off were only partly vacations. There was always some kind of media to talk to or some kind of official business to attend to, but right at this moment The Powers That Be were being beneficent deities and allowing their hard-working subjects to rest.

As the Idols were all grouped in the same area, there was a lot of waving and signalling as suitcases and miscellania were brought up to the various rooms. We ducked inside, hung out the Do Not Disturb sign, and unpacked a few necessities. “Look,” Katharine said, “my fans even sent me an orange tooth brush. Isn’t that something? You can borrow it if you like. I see you’re traveling light.”

“Not that light.  I did put a toothbrush in my backpack. It’s not as pretty as yours, though.”

Even though it was a reasonably classy hotel, I thought the bed was hard as a cement driveway. “This is definitely not my sleep number,” I said.

“What do you care?” Katharine said. “You’re not going to be sleeping much.”

We all met in the hotel coffee shop later. The girls were still doing some kind of publicity but I saw Taylor and Bucky in one of the booths and joined them. Ace and Elliott wandered in shortly thereafter but sat on the other side of what was actually two completely separate large booths with panels that could be lowered between them in order to facilitate conversation. Chris was nowhere to be seen. Why we decided to have drinks I will never know—two shots of anything and I’m brainless--and it would probably have been worse if I hadn’t found the rib joint earlier and put something in my stomach. Before long we were all acting like a bunch of sleep deprived, punch drunk yahoos. Suddenly everything was funny, the stupider the better.

We decided to toast…well, we weren’t sure what. “Okay, “ Ace said, “here’s the deal. You have to name something you like, the first thing that pops into your mind. No fair thinking. First thing. Taylor?”

“How come I have to go first?”

“Oh, shut up and name something,” Bucky said good naturedly.

“Here’s to bathrooms that don’t move because they aren’t on wheels,” Taylor said, taking a swig of his drink. “Ace?”

“I like funny hats. Elliott?”

“Cookies made with real sugar. But I’m not supposed to have them. Bucky?”

“I like sleepin’ in my own bed with my own wife. Damn. Why’d you have to bring that up?”

“I didn’t, you did.”

“Okay, California Boy,” Bucky said, turning to face me. “Whatta you miss, your surf board?”

“You’re getting a little snockered,” Taylor said. “You need to eat.”

“I need a weekend at home in my own bed,” Bucky insisted.

“Okay, we gotcha. Nothing we can do about that right now. And the question is what do you like? Well, Chris, what do you like?”

Sometimes I swear to God, my mouth exists on a totally different life support system from the rest of me. At times it certainly has no connection to my brain. “Boobs that defy gravity,” I said.

There was a moment of silence before everyone burst into hooting, snorting, and howling. “Oh crap,” I said. “I didn’t say that out loud, did I? I did.”

Chris Daughtry picked that moment to show up and Ace filled him in, after which we all started howling again. Totally embarrassed, I did the exact wrong thing and took another swig of my drink. Then Chris and Bucky decided to toast their wives. “You gonna toast Katharine?” Bucky asked.

“I thought I already did,” I said. The silence was deafening. The other guys could claim mid-tour plateau, boredom, and exhaustion, but I had no excuse. I could blame the heat, the excitement of seeing Katharine again, or the booze, but none of that really mattered. “Oh crud, I did it again. I am such a horse’s ass.”

Then we were all laughing like madmen with tears streaming down our faces. When I could shut up and breathe, I said “Wait a minute. I’m swearing all of you to silence. Anyone who repeats what I just said, I will track down and murder slowly. If anybody else said something that disrespectful about her around me, I’d reach down his throat, grab him by the family jewels and turn him inside out. I mean, well, damn, I’ve known her since she was in the fourth grade and I just love her to death.”

“Hey, we all talk trash sometimes,” Taylor said.

“Not about the woman you plan to marry,” I said, suddenly feeling very sober and very stupid. In a way, it was nice to hear Taylor defending me, and in another way it angered me that he didn’t stand up for her, even to me.

“You guys gonna get married?” Elliott said. “Congratulations.”

“Come on, you know Katharine can’t do anything like that. None of you can,” I said. “And the ones of you who are married already may as well not be. You guys’ careers just got the turbo boost of a lifetime and that’s all you dare think about right now. You’ve gotta take it and run with it. Otherwise you’re the horse’s ass.”

With perfect timing, Katharine picked that exact moment to walk up behind me, lean over my shoulder and say “Who you calling that? I thought you guys all got along.”

“Me,” I said.

“We all get along just fine, Hon,” Taylor said.

“In fact we were all just drinking a big toast to our sweeties,” Bucky said.

“Any excuse to drink a toast,” Ace said.

“Can I show them my ring?” Katharine said, scooting into the booth beside me. “That’s why we were late. I had to show it to all the girls. You don’t mind, do you?” She stuck her right hand somewhere between Taylor and Bucky. “You explain it.”

“It’s called a Claddagh Ring,” I said. “It’s an old Gaelic thing, got a long story behind it, but the point is that you wear it on your right hand, point out if you’re free, point up, toward your heart, if you’re spoken for.”

“Looks like I’m spoken for,” Katharine said. She just couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

Bucky caught my eye and made an exaggerated “my lips are locked” motion with one hand. Then he winked at me. “What’s that little doodad on the heart?” he asked, leaning over to rub his leg where I’d just kicked him under the table.

“It’s a heart wearing a crown and being held by two hands,” I said. “The heart stands for passion, the hands for friendship, and the crown for loyalty, the three ingredients of a successful…well, relationship, I guess.”

“So if I’ve got this correct,” Katharine said impishly, “it’s more than a friendship ring, but less than an engagement ring, so it kind of means that we’re engaged to be engaged?”

“Something like that. By the way, did I ever tell you that you just look cuter’n hell in those glasses? But if you’re trying to be incognito, I don’t think it’s working.”

She wrinkled her nose at me. “Didn’t they teach you anything in med school? You need to take contacts out now and then. Besides, it works for Superman. He just takes off the cape, puts on the specs, and nobody knows who he is.”

“Nah,” I insisted. “Even in specs and jeans, you still look like an idol.”

It was a short, funny, frantic twenty-four hours. Sometimes we were all together, sometimes we played cards with Mandisa and Kellie, or flipped across the tv looking for anything remotely interesting, and sometimes we wanted no one else around.

She laughed at me for staring at her foot when she removed the cast and teased me about treating her like she might break. “I just cracked the bone, I didn’t fracture anything. All that cast does, mostly, is just redistribute the weight and protect me from hurting it again.”

“I know what a walking cast is for,” I sniffed.

“Well, you act like you expect to see protruding bones or something. Just don’t….sit on my foot or anything.”

“I’m not into kinky stuff,” I said. But I still moved more gingerly than usual.

We had a long talk about the vagaries and vicissitudes of life as an Idol while soaking in a tub full of aromatic bubble bath sent by fans to make life on the road more palatable. “This is just like that scene in Pretty Woman,” I said, leaning my head back onto her shoulder.

“I know,” she said. “Life imitates art. Isn’t that cool?”

“You know what? One night I was being all lonely and watching videos of you on YouTube, and there you were, limping along through a parking lot after you got off the bus, struggling with two big bags, and no knight in shining armor came to your rescue. I thought that was totally shameful.”

“Aw-w-w, did you worry about me?”

“Not that you weren’t perfectly capable of taking care of yourself,” I added. “But somebody could have helped you.”

She leaned forward and nuzzled my ear, then bit me on the earlobe. “That’s todally with a ‘d’,” she corrected. I was forever teasing her about needing an interpreter who spoke Valleygirlese. Sometimes she had to retaliate.

Airline travel was in a terrorist-induced state of diciness, so I didn’t dare stay too long the next day. We had a leisurely breakfast and strolled around the immediate area holding hands and looking in shop windows before it got too wiltingly hot, but tour management got nervous if they strayed too far from the hotel. By afternoon the Idols were being herded off to the performance arena for more press, pre-show meet-and-greets, and whatever last minute preparations were necessary. Katharine showed me around the superbus, then followed me outside.

“Call me tonight,” she said. “We’ll be on the road by midnight. I just want to know you’re safely on your way home. You can call me when you land, too.”

“Why all this concern?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Well, just as I was getting used to having you around again, you went from being a real live person to just a voice on the phone and a snapshot in my purse, and just when I was starting to adjust to that, I get a reminder that you’re a real live person who puts too much salt on his food and snores when he sleeps on his back--”

“What a way to be remembered.”

“I was gonna say, and gives great back rubs, and…stuff,” she said.

It took us awhile to get the goodbye all finished. I would have gladly stayed there all day with my nose buried in a silky mane that smelled like peaches, but a man’s voice calling to me broke into the reverie. “Hey there, California!” it said. “You’re holdin’ up The Greatest Show On Earth!”

I looked over to see Bucky loping toward the bus. When he saw he’d caught my eye, he slowed down and did a short version of The Bucky Slide. I shook a playful fist at him, and he laughed and tipped his hat to me as he danced up the bus steps. The last to board was Taylor, who looked over at us and smiled. I couldn’t help myself, I yelled “Soul Patrol!” as loud as I could, to which he responded with an ear-splitting “Whoooooo!”

“You guys are all crazy,” Katharine said.

“Come ON, Kat!” Kellie shouted down from the top of the stairs. “You’ve missed enough of this tour. Get your butt on the bus!”

In heels we were pretty even, but when she wore sneakers she had to lean up just slightly to kiss me. Then I watched the bus pull out, feeling a lump in my throat the size of Georgia. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I saw Katharine sending me one of those funny little two-handed Mickey Mouse Club waves through the heavily tinted front windows. There appeared to be a third arm waving as well, which I took to be Kellie.

When I dug in my back pack for a Kleenex, I found a baggy containing an orange toothbrush with a name inscribed on it in white letters. There was a note on an orange Post It reading “Just so you don’t forget, that’s Katharine with two a’s,” and a small scribbled heart. Nothing expensive or romantic, just a small necessity of life that had been a gift to her, given with love, care and consideration. Then I really needed the Kleenex.

Everything had seemed so tentative then, and so powerful, and fresh, like a wonderful adventure full of highs and lows with nothing in between. We didn’t quite know where we were going, and yet somewhere in the back of both our minds, we did, with a certainty that was almost frightening.

Kaycee mumbled something in her sleep, frowning. What could she be dreaming about, I wondered. Was it something bad? Frightening? Vexing? Was she imagining being on a real stage, with a real microphone, singing her own songs to her own audience of people who weren’t parents and grandparents? Or was that just some kind of little baby reflex passing through, signifying nothing? And why did I care? There was no answer to that one, or rather none that needed to be spoken or explained. Everything about those two little rosebuds concerned me. Vitally. Intimately.

I remembered an afternoon, years earlier, sitting in a Starbuck’s having a mocha latte with the woman who was now my mother-in-law. She’d called and asked if we could meet because Katharine had come home in tears and shut herself in her room, apparently intending to hibernate for awhile. One of the few recognizable words she’d garnered from a conversation held through the closed door had been my name. “What’s up with you and my daughter?” she said, conversationally enough, but I had the feeling she was not nearly as calm as she appeared.

“Nothing,” I said, realizing at once how empty and false that sounded. But it was essentially true.

My parents had been friends with the McPhees’ next-door neighbors for years. We were all kind of an extended family group and had attended parties and various gatherings together for as long as the man who had become my boss had lived in the neighboring house. How on earth could I explain to this woman what had just transpired between me and her daughter? I sighed. I frowned. Confusion reigned.

“Just say it. I have to know what I’m dealing with. Chris, I’ve known you for what, nine years? Have you ever seen me bite someone?”

“I’ve seen you look like you wanted to, when something bad happened to one of your kids. But that’s just it. See, nothing happened. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Then why is she so upset?”

Finally I managed to stutter and stammer out the essence of my dilemma. “What she’s talking about, well, it’s a big responsibility, you know? I&