Love in a Small Town (2 page)

She thought how he’d rather be down there watching a movie than up with her, but she didn’t think it would improve anything at all to say it. She didn’t think she could say it, because then it would be thrown out there like the bald truth and they’d both have to face it.

She said, “Would you like to sit on the porch for a few minutes? There’s a couple of cinnamon rolls left. I’ll pop them in the microwave.”

She watched his face, watched his gaze dart back down into his coffee cup. Hiding there.

With a shake of his head, he said, “I’m already greasy. I might as well finish here first. I’m a week behind on this engine for Cormac.”

Hurt sliced through Molly, so strong it brought an actual pain across her shoulders and a knot beneath her breastbone. She felt rather like she was shriveling and at any moment she would be no more than a tiny dried lump on the floor, where she could be swept up with the bits of greasy dirt and engine carbon and thrown away with all the other stuff Tommy Lee had no use for.

Tommy Lee said, “I’ll be up for lunch,” but that didn’t make her feel a lot better. She told herself to quit being an overly sensitive child and that she, too, had a lot of things to do. Saturday was housecleaning day, and she was always behind on the business accounts.

Turning, she looked around for dirty dishes to take back to the house. Tommy Lee, and Woody Wilson, his part-time helper, were forever bringing their drinks and snacks out and leaving their dishes. She found three empty ice tea glasses, a plate of crumbs, and a fat glass half filled with milk. The milk was still cool, obviously left from that morning.

Molly went to the door and called, “Kitty, kitty.” The fat gray tabby, Ace, came at a quick waddle. The dog, Jake, rose from beneath the workbench and came over, too. He appeared more stiff than usual. He had been shot two years ago by Mr. Gil for chasing Mr. Gil’s longhorns, and the shot had creased his backbone. After the vet bill, Tommy Lee said Jake was the most expensive free stray dog they’d ever had. At least Jake couldn’t chase cattle any longer.

Molly tipped the glass first for the cat and then let Jake have a couple of licks.

“Geez, Molly, do you have to do that?”

“What?” She looked up to see Tommy Lee frowning. She’d forgotten that Tommy Lee never liked for her to feed the animals out of the house dishes. Usually she made certain he didn’t see. She said now, “I’ve fed them from the house dishes for years.”

“I know that, Molly,” he said, his blue eyes sharp. “But plates are one thing and a glass is another. We put our mouths on the glasses.”

“I do wash them, Tommy Lee, same as the plates. I put them in the dishwasher and that sterilizes them."

By now Ace had quit sticking his head in the glass and had gone to wetting his paw in the bit of milk and licking it. Jake had lain back down.

“It’s still not a sanitary practice. I just don’t like the thought, okay?” Tommy Lee said, as if his word was to be obeyed.

Molly lifted the glass and straightened, and she said, “When you eat at a restaurant, you put the fork all the way into your mouth—a fork that you know not in whose mouth it has been or even if it has been properly cleaned. I should think if you’re willing to do that, you’d have very little problem with drinking out of a glass you can be certain has been through the dishwasher after an animal has licked it.”

Tommy Lee shook his head and looked down at the part he was wiping with a rag.

Molly clamped her mouth shut and took the dishes and went back to the house. As she opened the porch screen door, she heard the music start up again, with a blast, as if to smack her back into the house. Like an invisible door slammed against her.

In retaliation, she marched over and turned up the volume of the little radio on the kitchen counter. Then she stared at all the dirty dishes, in the sink and out of it, and heard her mother-in-law’s voice:
“I’ve always believed that a woman should get her kitchen straight before bed
.
”

That was a good idea that Molly had let slide a number of years ago, when she started keeping the books for Tommy Lee’s shop and then somehow had found herself with her own full-fledged business. She simply had never been able to keep the house as orderly as her mother-in-law had, as orderly as Tommy Lee would like.

With resignation she began rinsing the dishes in the sink and putting them into the dishwasher. A dark line on one of the plates caught her eye, and she paused, gazing at it. The plate was one of the set her mother had bought for them up at the old TG&Y store in Oklahoma City when she and Tommy Lee had gotten married. The plates were cream colored, with a black-and-yellow line and a single spray of yellow daisies around the rim of each plate and cup. There were only three of them left, and the dark line on this one was where it had been broken and glued back together. Staring at that line, Molly counted back the years and thought maybe she should send a letter of testimony to the makers of Super Glue.

She thought, too, how the plate was a reflection of her marriage.

The next instant, she lifted that plate and smacked it on the divider of the white enamel sink.

Sounded like a ball going through a window. Molly scrunched her eyes as tiny pieces of china peppered her face and flew into the air and out across the counter and down on the floor. The bigger pieces clattered into the sink.

Molly was shocked. She stared at the shards.

Goodness!
What had she done?

Mortification crept in. It simply wasn’t done breaking an innocent plate, no matter that it had a glue line. It certainly wasn’t done by Molly Jean Hayes, mother of three grown children, certified public accountant, and upstanding member of both the chamber of commerce and Methodist church. The action was destructive, wasteful . . . and possibly a little deranged.

But by golly the reckless act felt so darn good that she did it twice more with the two yellow daisy plates remaining in the sink. Lifted the plate and brought it down, felt the impact and the disintegration, and heard all the shattering, then did it again.

There. She supposed she could break a few dishes in her lifetime if she wanted to.

Breathing as hard as if she’d run a mile, Molly stared at the broken china. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Turning, she went to the pantry, brought back a broom and dust pan and began to clean the slivers off the floor. She cried silently, feeling totally lost and confused and alone.

Tommy Lee came in as Molly got to cleaning the bigger pieces out of the sink. She heard the familiar thump of his Wolverines cross the back porch and enter the laundry room behind the kitchen. Quickly she sniffed back her tears and tried to gulp down her shaky sobs.

She knew before he said a word that he was going to ask her where something was, and sure enough, he said, “Molly, have you seen my box knife?”

“In by your chair.”

She heard him go through to the living room and then come back again and stop on the far side of the breakfast bar. She felt him looking at her, but she didn’t look at him. She didn’t want him to see her face. Very carefully, she kept picking the big pieces out of the sink and putting them into the plastic trash basket.

“What happened?” Tommy Lee asked.

She thought for a moment, then said, “I broke some plates.”

Quite possibly she should have offered him some explanation, but she refused to do so. A piece of the china bit into her finger. She pressed harder against it.

“Is it because of what I said about lettin’ the cat eat out of the glass? Are you mad about that?”

Molly said, “I’m not mad about that. You have a right not to like the animals eating out of your dishes if you want . . . even if it is a stupid opinion.”

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel him looking at her, could feel his anger hitting like darts. And then he had to go and ask a really dumb question.

“What’s the
matter
with you?”

It was the tone of his voice, not the question that sent smoke coming out Molly’s ears. Tommy Lee could ask the silliest questions. So many times, when Molly got up in the night to go to the bathroom, he asked, “Where you goin’?”

For the first ten years or so, Molly had actually answered, “To the bathroom,” and then one time she finally said, “Dancing.” He still asked sometimes, and she went to saying things like “To the dentist” or “To the movies."

Then there were the times when she would be lying in bed, under the covers, with the pillow over her head, and he would come over and lean down close, lift up the pillow, and say, “Are you asleep?”

Lord, men could be so stupid. Molly had a private theory that the reason many women like her stayed married was that they were convinced their man needed them—like Tammy Wynette sang in “Stand by Your Man.”

Molly at last lifted her eyes to meet his. His eyes were cool as a winter sky and slapped her the same as if he’d reached out with his hand.

She said, “We haven’t made love in over three months, and you’re askin’ me what’s wrong?” She threw a shard of china into the trash. “I guess you askin’ that question pretty much shows just how wrong things are.”

He did that rolling his eyes thing, and Molly wanted to smack his face. Then he said acidly, “So you’re gonna break all our dishes? Is that gonna explain things to me?”

Tommy Lee always managed to make her feel stupid. Well, what she thought right then was
You can take your f—— ridicule and stuff it.

She pulled up straight and tall and said quietly, “It made me feel better. And I guess I can break half the dishes in this cabinet if I want. Half of them are mine."

Pure shock crossed his face, and the next instant his pale blue eyes shot fire, and he came flying around the breakfast bar, saying, “By God . . ."

Molly stepped backward and bumped against the counter, automatically putting her hands up in front of her. Tommy Lee had never laid a hand on her—he never physically fought with anyone—but he sure looked like he was going to kill her at that moment.

Then he stopped and pain crossed his features, pain so strong it went right across and sliced Molly’s heart.

“I don’t want us to fight, Molly.” He looked away, and his shoulders slumped.

It made her ache to reach out to him, but she just stood there, feeling like her arms had turned to wood, and he stood far away from her. It was as if she were speeding back from him, watching him as she got farther and farther away.

Half turning, hardly aware of what she was doing, she reached for the blue checked dishtowel. “I don’t, either,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper. She felt like she couldn’t breathe and that loneliness was swallowing her whole.

“Tommy Lee, I’m not happy with the way things are between us, and I can’t go on pretending everything’s just hunky-dory when it isn’t. Not for me, anyway."

He just stared at the countertop.

“Are they for you?” she asked, prodding him, wanting him to say something for her to take hold of. She was willing to settle for him saying just about anything at all.

He shook his head. “No,” he said tightly, which was a whole lot less than anything at all. Then he rubbed the back of his neck and looked tired of living.

Molly said, “We just don’t have anything in common anymore, Tommy Lee. We don’t even
know
each other anymore."

But Tommy Lee said nothing to that, either, just kept on looking tired.

So damn tired, as if life with her was just one big trial.

That’s when she said it, tossing down the blue checked cloth and stating, “I think I’ll go live at Aunt Hestie’s for a while.”

At that his head swiveled up, and he stared at her, his blue eyes going wide. Her pronouncement had struck him, and she would have had to admit that she was glad to see it.

Then he said, real tight, “If that’s what you want,” and his blue eyes got small and shot fire.

What I want?
Molly thought, every muscle rigid. He wanted to see it that way, to put it on her like that. Fine! There was just nothing she could say to that. And as if she knew what she was doing, she walked swiftly to the stairway and up the stairs.

From the big closet, she dragged out the tapestry luggage—the set she had bought for the planned trip to Mexico City last year after they’d gotten Colter, their last, settled in college, a trip that they had never taken because Tommy Lee had bought that ‘65 Corvette instead, for which they’d had to drive to California and spend four days with a car club there. Tommy Lee had always wanted a classic Corvette, and Molly hadn’t wanted to begrudge him his precious dream. But she guessed she still did.

She jerked clothes from the closet and pulled them from dresser drawers and stuffed the bags. Suddenly she sat down on the bed, her legs gone weak.

Yanking a tissue from the box, she blew her nose. She tried to pray, asking God to help her get control of her anger. God. . . oh Lord, help me. . . .

Her attention veered away because she was listening for Tommy Lee’s footsteps. She listened so hard that she heard the trees rustle outside the window and the drip of the toilet.

Oh, God, what am I doin’? I don’t know, but I do know I just can’t go on livin’ like this anymore. It hurts too bad.

When she heard the back door slam, she jumped up and ran across to the window. There was Tommy Lee down below, sauntering over to his shop. Sauntering in that way he had of resting down in his lean hips, all those hard muscles moving along in his hell-with-you stride, swinging a can of Coca-Cola in his hand.

Molly jerked back, dropped the blind and began singing loud and full, “You don’t even know who I am. . . ." Her tears stopped. Like turning off a faucet. By heaven, she didn’t need to stay where she wasn’t wanted.

Moving coolly, feeling her earrings sway, she pulled off her Keds and tugged on her boots. She gave her hair a few swipes with the brush and let it go, hanging straight back past her collar. In the bathroom, she scooped up her Estée Lauder kit and toiletries and dumped them into the cosmetic case. When it wouldn’t close, she left it halfway unzipped. The entire time she was singing, went from all verses of “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” into “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’,” just that chorus, because she couldn’t recall the rest of it, and that was all that pertained to her heart at the moment.