She briefly waitressed and checked coats, then got a gig doing backup vocals for R&B; singer Brenda K. Starr. In November 1988, Starr dragged Carey to a record - industry party where Carey tried to hand her demo tape to another Sony executive, but Mottola grabbed it. Then she began living out her dream. Happily Ever After? Fear of becoming tabloid fodder has made Carey understandably reticent when it comes to talking about specifics of the separation. Even Oprah couldn't get her to illuminate the particulars, except that she's now on a path to "personal growth." Tonight, she leaves the recording studio via five flights of stairs, despite her three-inch wedges, declaring, "the elevator here takes forever." Then she takes a waiting limo back to her temporary quarters in a hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Before she addresses the big "Why?" Carey pours herself a glass of red wine, kicks off her 9 1/2 shoes, stretches her suprisinlgy tall 5 - foot - 8 1/2 inch frame on a couch, and pulls up a blanket. She's nursing a sore throat (nothing serious: allergies and smoky clubs) and proudly pulls out a sonogram of her improving vocal cords like a mother might of an infant in the womb, adding, "All I need is two days of good sleep and I bounce back. But I haven't had that." Accustomed to working all night and sleeping till noon, she's been taking melatonin to help her slumbers, "but," she says, "it gives you weird dreams."

She incorporated one into the video for "Butterfly" - she chases something but it leaps over a barbed wired fence, and she tries to follow, she can't and cuts her finger. " I didn't put blood in the video," she says. "Too gory." Is the split with Mottola gory to explain? "It's hard - I don't want to look like I'm dissing him or trying to garner sympathy for myself," Carey finally says. Her most revealing statement is her description of her life when she first started seeing Mottola: "I had my own apartment. I was independent. I was still connected to my past. I had more of my friends from when I was growing up around me." Though she had always claimed Tommy was her best friend, clearly, as they spent more time together, she felt isolated, dependent, and depressed. She never enjoyed the self-discovery allowed most people in their 20s. Bye Bye Bedford She and Mottola built their $10 million mansion together - "financially down the middle, because I didn't want to be in a position where someone could ever say, 'Get out of my house." But, she says, "I prefer not be there right now," despite the home's private recording studio, indoor pool, rifle range, and other luxuries.

The house has yet to be put on the market, but Carey is looking to buy a place in Manhattan. Her advice to women going through separation is "Don't look to someone else, don't do the rebound thing, just try to understand how you can grow from the experience." She's unsure what her own romantic life will bring. "I have a lot of time. If I'm with somebody, it's going to be because I really love him, not because I feel the need to go wild." If she does ever settle again, she says, it will be to have kids,"and I'm not emotionally prepared to do that yet. To have children and not be 100 percent focused on them would be really negligent. I would never want someone else raising my child. I would have a nanny, because we all need a little help, but I would have to be the dominant force in my child's life and have a positive role - model father on the scene."

Careys fingers the chain she wears around her neck; on it hangs cross, a heart, and two rings. One ring is from a high - school boyfriend, the other from her sister. They're nothing fancy - once's cubic zirconium, the other a "cheesy flea - market ring." But she's always worn them, even after they were "busted, bent, and the zirconium had fallen out." And when she signed her first record deal, after buying an apartment, her first present to herself was getting the rings melted down and restored. Today, she never takes the chain off. "It's a part of me, from then to now. It's like holding on to myself." Carey falls silent. Those rings are still with her; the six - carat, pear - shaped diamond wedding ring is not. A few nights earlier, at her record release party, she'd been all smiles as she was interviewed by CNN, Access Hollywood, Vibe, and others. And every now and then, her right hand would toy with the ring finger on her left hand, now bare. Old habits die hard.