URA LEE'S WINDOW Ura Lee Smitcher looked out the window of her house on the corner of Burnside and Sanchez as two boys walked by on the other side of the street, carrying skateboards. "There's your son with that Raymond boy from out on Coliseum."

Madeline Tucker sat on Ura Lee's couch, drinking coffee. She didn't even look up from People Magazine. "I know all about Raymo Vine."

"I hope what you know is he's heading for jail, because he is."

"That's exactly what I know," said Madeline. "But what can I do? I forbid Cecil to see him, and that just guarantees he'll sneak off. Right now Ceese got no habit of lying to me."

Ura Lee almost said something.

Madeline Tucker didn't miss much. "I know what you going to say."

"I ain't going to say a thing," said Ura Lee, putting on her silkiest, southernest voice.

"You going to say, What good if he tell you the truth, if what's true is he's going to hell in a wheelbarrow?"

She was dead on, but Ura Lee wasn't about to say it in so many words. "I likely would have said 'handbasket,' " said Ura Lee. "Though truth to tell, I don't know what the hell a handbasket is."

And now it was Madeline's turn to hesitate and refrain from saying what she was thinking.

"Oh, you don't have to say it," said Ura Lee. "Women who never had a child, they all expert on raising other women's children."

"I was not going to say that," said Madeline.

"Good thing," said Ura Lee, "because you best remember I chose not to give you advice. You just guessed what I was thinking, but I refuse to be blamed for meddling when I didn't say it."

"And I refuse to be blamed for persecuting you when I didn't say it either."

"You know," said Ura Lee, "we'd get along a lot better if we wasn't a couple of mind readers."

"Or maybe that's why we get along so good."