An electronics executive, forty-six-year-old Hans had quit his job two years earlier, taken his retirement fund and all his savings and mortgaged his home to open a dot-com company to sell software he had designed. After a promising start, with orders rushing in and the warehouse filled with inventory, the technology industry had crashed. Then the cancellations began. In desperate need of immediate cash, and in an effort to keep the business afloat, he had borrowed from the Badgett brothers. Unfortunately, his efforts so far hadn’t paid off.

There’s no way on God’s earth I can raise the two hundred thousand dollars I borrowed from them, not to mention the fifty percent interest they’ve added, he despaired.

I must have been out of my mind to go near them. But I’ve got a great line of products, he reasoned. If I can just hang in there, things will turn around. Only now I’ve got to convince the Badgetts to let me renew the note.

In the year since his financial troubles began, Hans had lost twenty pounds. His light brown hair had become streaked with gray. He knew his wife, Lee, was worried sick about him, although she had no idea how bad the situation was. He hadn’t told her about the loan, opting instead to tell her only that they needed to cut back on their spending. Why, they’d even practically given up going out for dinner.

The next exit off the expressway led to the Badgett mansion. Hans felt his palms begin to sweat. I was so cocky, he thought as he flicked on the turn signal. Came over here from Switzerland when I was twelve years old and didn’t speak a word of English. Graduated from M.I.T. with high honors and thought I’d set the world on fire. And I did for a while. I thought I was immune to failure.

Five minutes later he was approaching the Badgett estate. The gates were open. Cars were lined up, waiting to be admitted by a guard at the foot of the long and winding driveway. Obviously the Badgetts were having a party.

Hans was both relieved and disappointed. I’ll phone and leave a message, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll give me an extension.

As he made a U-turn, he tried to ignore the voice inside him that warned that people like the Badgetts never give extensions.

Sterling, Nor, and Billy entered the rear door of the Badgett mansion just in time to hear the insults being heaped on the hapless pastry chef. Sterling hastened into the kitchen to see what was going on and found the chef frantically adjusting something in the lettering on the cake.

Wrong age? Sterling wondered. He’d been at a party once where the twelve-year-old daughter had baked a birthday cake as a surprise for her mother. When she proudly carried out the cake, candles blazing, the mother had nearly fainted. The age she had so carefully concealed was starkly revealed in hot-pink lettering on the vanilla cake. I remember thinking that anyone who couldn’t read could always count, Sterling thought. That wasn’t too charitable of me.

Fortunately this chef’s mistake was small. With a few twirls of his pastry tube, he changed Betty-Anna to Heddy-Anna. Nor and Billy had been drawn to the kitchen by the uproar. “Just make sure not to sing ‘Happy Birthday, Betty-Anna,’ ” Nor whispered to Billy.

“I’m tempted, but I want to get out of here alive.”

Sterling tagged along as they went into the salon. Nor ran her fingers over the piano; Billy took his guitar out of the case, and they tested the microphones and sound system.

Charlie Santoli had the responsibility of giving them a list of songs that were favorites of the brothers. “They don’t want you blasting your music so loud that people can’t think,” he said nervously.

“We’re musicians. We don’t blast,” Nor snapped.

“But when Mama is hooked up via satellite, you’ll be leading the ‘Happy Birthday’ song, and then they want you to really project.”

The bell rang and the first wave of guests were admitted.

Sterling had always liked being around people. He studied the guests as they came in, and as he listened, realized that there were some pretty important people present.

His general impression was that they were here purely because of the largesse of the donation to the senior citizens center, and that after the party they would be happy to forget the Badgett brothers. But a number of the guests stopped to admire the portrait that would be hanging in the new wing.

“Your mother is a beautiful woman,” the president of the center’s board of governors said sincerely, nodding at the portrait. “So elegant, so dignified. Does she come to visit you often?”

“My precious mother isn’t a good traveler,” Junior told her.

“Mama gets airsick and seasick,” Eddie mourned.

“Then of course you visit her in Wallonia,” she suggested.

Charlie Santoli had joined them. “Of course they do, as frequently as possible,” he said smoothly.

Sterling shook his head. He’s not telling the truth.

Billy and Nor started their first song and were immediately surrounded by an appreciative audience. Nor was a fine musician with an attractive, husky voice. Billy, however, was exceptional. Standing in the crowd, Sterling listened to the murmured comments.

“He’s a young Billy Joel…”

“He’s going to be a star…”

“And he’s gorgeous,” the daughter of one of the board members cooed.

“Billy, let’s hear ‘Be There When I Awake.’ ”

The request brought spontaneous applause.

His fingers moving lightly on the strings of the guitar, Billy began to sing, “I know what I want… I know what I need.”

That must be his hit record, Sterling thought. Even to my out-of-date ears, it’s great.

Thanks to the music, the atmosphere at the party loosened up. The guests began interacting, allowing their glasses to be refilled with the excellent wines, and piling their plates with the truly spectacular food.

By 7:15 the Badgett brothers were beaming. Their party was a success. They were a success.

At that point, Junior picked up the microphone and cleared his throat. “I wanna welcome all of you, and my brother and me hope you’re enjoying yourselves very much. It is our pleasure to have you as our guests, and we are very, very happy to have given you the money, I mean donated the money, for the wing of the senior citizens center to be known as the Mama Heddy-Anna wing in honor of our saintly mother’s eighty-fifth birthday. And now, by the miracle of satellite, from the historic village of Kizkek where my brother and me were raised, our mama will appear. Mama stayed up way past her bedtime to be with us ’cause she’s so honored. Now I ask all of you to join in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. Our wonderful Billy Campbell and his mother, that doll Nor Kelly, will lead us in song.”

There was a faint smattering of applause. The birthday cake was rolled out, ablaze with eighty-six candles, one to grow on. The ten-foot screen dropped down from the ceiling, and Mama Heddy-Anna’s dour face emerged to fill it.

She was seated in her rocking chair, sipping grappa.

Eddie’s eyes streamed with tears, and Junior blew kisses at the screen as the guests dutifully sang “Happy Birthday, Heddy-Anna” in Wallonian, working from phonetically marked song sheets.

Her cheeks puffed like twin red balloons, Mama blew out the candles on the cake her sons had sent by chartered plane to Wallonia. That was when it became all too clear that she’d filled the hours past her usual bedtime by drinking more than her share of grappa. In broken English she started cursing and complaining loudly that her sons never came to see her and she wasn’t feeling so hot.

Junior quickly turned down the volume but not before she had screamed, “How much bad things you two do, you can’t come see your mama before she die? Not once you come in all these years.”

Billy and Nor immediately started another vigorous round of “Happy Birthday, Heddy-Anna.” This time no one joined in, however, and the telecast closed on the unforgettable sight of Mama thumbing her nose at her offspring and their guests, as she came down with a case of the hiccups.