"Oh, Momma, that's what you always said, because he was Lucille's boy, and she was your best friend. But you know as well as I do that he was a dork of the highest magnitude. Why, he couldn't walk a chalk line without tripping on it. And all those pimples! I can still smell the acne medication on him."

"Kenny took care of his mother till her dying day, and not every nice person in this world is coordinated, Tess. Besides that, he's a real good father and he takes real good care of the property since Lucille died, so I don't have a complaint in the world about him."

"You mean somebody actually married him?"

"Well, of course somebody married him. A girl he met in college. Stephanie. But they're divorced now."

"No wonder," Tess mumbled under her breath, turning away from the window.

"Tess," her mother scolded with a gentle glower.

"Well, he was always"-Tess's hands stirred the air as if to turn up the right word-"looking at me. You know what I mean?" She faked a shudder. "He was such a creep."

"I never thought so."

"Not you, but every girl in school, that's for sure."

"Oh, Tess, come on."

"Well, it's true. The only class we were ever in together was choir when I was a junior and he was a senior, and remember when we went to Choir Festival in St. Louis? We went on the bus, and Kenny came over and sat with me and I couldn't get rid of him. There he sat, with his pimples and his long, gawky neck with that Adam's apple that looked like a grapefruit in a sock, blushing so hard I thought he was going to have a nosebleed right on the spot. And his hair-mercy, Mother, remember how he used to comb his hair! So we're on this bus trip, and he comes over and sits with me and he tries to hold my hand!"

"Well, what's so wrong with that?"

"Mother, it was the seventies! Half the girls I knew were already sleeping with their boyfriends and Kenny Kronek-the nerd of all nerds-comes over and tries to work up the courage to hold my hand! I swear, all my friends teased me so bad I thought I'd die."