Love in a Small Town (7 page)

She had known he would say that, and truth be told she had counted on it. She had no idea what she would have done if Tommy Lee hadn’t married her. She had been seventeen and pregnant and with no job skills of any kind and no one but Tommy Lee to turn to.

They had gotten married at the Free Methodist Church, by Pastor Howell, who had christened Molly as a little girl. She had felt so guilty about being pregnant that she’d had to tell the pastor, but he only smiled and said it made no difference. Of course that wasn’t true at all. In those days, people still raised eyebrows at being pregnant, at least in little towns like Valentine, Middle America. Molly’s being pregnant certainly made a great deal of difference to Virginia Hayes, who could hardly say a word to her, and to Kaye, who said Molly should most definitely
not
wear white.

Molly did wear white, partly to annoy Kaye but mostly because she didn’t want to embarrass Tommy Lee or disappoint her sisters and Mama, who was so proud of having found a bolt of antique lace to use for the dress.

“Molly . . ." Her mama was so excited that she had shone like a star. “Molly, I found this lace for your dress. It’s Irish lace, antique, honey.” She had the lace and a dress pattern, too. “I never had a real wedding dress,” Mama said, “not even that first time, when I married Al.” There were tears in Mama’s eyes then, and a look that Molly had never seen before, a look that reflected longings and dreams Molly had never associated with her mother.

Rennie and Stirling helped Molly sew up the dress in three days. Stirling, who was still married to Mama at the time, not only hand embroidered the buttonholes on the wedding dress, but he took care of many of the wedding preparations, such as getting the flowers and the refreshments for the reception. Mama hadn’t been able to do any of that because she had been busy with the opening weeks of her bookstore up in Lawton at the time. In defense of Mama, the bookstore had been her lifelong dream. She had even been late getting to the wedding and hadn’t been there to keep the whiskey away from Molly’s daddy, who managed to get Virginia Hayes, who never had touched a drop of liquor in her life, drunk.

Because it was rainy and hot, and the church had central air-conditioning, those in the wedding party got dressed at the church, using the Sunday school rooms. This was the best way to keep all the women’s hair-dos from falling. While he was dressing, Molly’s daddy managed to rip the zipper of his pants. While Stirling sewed up his pants, Daddy, wearing his shirt, coat, tie, socks and shoes, and boxers shorts, wandered off where he could sneak snorts out of the bottle hid in his coat pocket.

This was when he found Tommy Lee’s mother sitting alone. When she said she had a sick headache—she seemed to get a sick headache whenever around a lot of people—he offered her a drink from his bottle. Daddy had about the softest heart anyone could ever have and was always eager to be helpful. One time, when he’d still been married to Mama, he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and had gone down and made Mr. Blaine open the drugstore and sell him a jar of Vicks Vapo Rub and bottle of aspirin for Mama’s cold. He did things like that all the time, as if he couldn’t get enough of helping people.

Molly could imagine how Virginia Hayes had probably rebuked her daddy in a huff. Virginia had not approved of liquor or Daddy, and certainly not Daddy in boxer shorts. But insults just went over Daddy’s fuzzy head. He went into the fellowship hall and kindly brought her back a glass of punch.

“She told me that was the best punch she ever drank,” Daddy said later, and quite proudly.

Daddy had spiked it, of course, with “the smoothest bourbon Kentucky has to offer,” he said. Not knowing what liquor tasted like, Virginia hadn’t known—or else she simply liked bourbon and punch.

She had liked it so much that Daddy had gone back and gotten her another. Three glasses of punch in all and Virginia felt much better. By the time the guests started arriving, Virginia didn’t have her headache anymore, and she didn’t have her hat, either, and she was waltzing around the fellowship hall with Daddy, with the front of her dress unbuttoned near to her waist, exposing her voluptuous slip-covered breasts.

“That woman was corked in too tight,” had been Daddy’s defense. “She needed air.”

Stirling called Daddy to put his pants back on, and Pastor Howell’s wife got Virginia put back together to go down the aisle on the arm of the usher, although everyone noticed something strange about her. Her hat kept trying to slide off, and she unbuttoned the top buttons of her dress again and was fanning herself. Tommy Lee’s father, Thomas, sat beside her rigid as a statue, while Virginia turned and waved her handkerchief at Daddy, as he escorted Molly down the isle.

Molly stumbled when she saw Virginia, her iron gray hair poking wildly, fluttering her hanky. As it was, Molly was sort of weaving because she was shaking so hard, and Daddy wasn’t much help in steadying her. Just before they started down the aisle, he’d offered her a drink from his bottle, and she’d been sorely tempted, but she’d been more afraid that everyone would smell the liquor on her breath and that she might throw up.

It turned out that it was Tommy Lee who threw up. He stood there at the front of the sanctuary, looking so strange in his dark suit. So skinny, and so somber. Molly had never before seen Tommy Lee in a suit. She had the startling thought that he looked as if he should be laid out in a casket. She got so tickled over this thought that she started shaking harder.

Then, just when she reached his side, Tommy Lee mumbled something that sounded like “Oh shit,” right there in God’s house, and bolted back down the aisle.

Sam Ketchum, the best man, was the first to make a move, running after Tommy Lee, and then Molly and Pastor Howell went hard on his heels. Molly’s dress was tea length, with no train to hold her back, so she quickly passed the portly pastor. She caught sight of Sam running into the ladies room. Tommy Lee had gone in there, rather than going all the way on the other side of the church to the men’s.

Molly burst into the ladies room and stopped at the sight of Sam’s wide shoulders blocking the stall door and the sound of Tommy Lee retching. In that same instant, she caught the faint scent of whiskey and figured her daddy had been trying to be helpful to Tommy Lee.

Then Pastor Howell was coming through the door and others were trying to crowd after him. The pastor pushed them out. “You, too, Virginia. . . . Let Sam and Molly handle it for now.” And he firmly closed the door and locked it.

“Are you okay, buddy?” Sam said.

“How is he?” Molly asked, pressing up to Sam. “Tommy Lee?”

“I need a drink of water,” Tommy Lee mumbled, and Molly jumped to get it, only there weren’t any cups.

“There aren’t any cups.” Oh, Lord, she didn’t know what to do.

Pastor Howell rolled down a length of brown paper towel and soaked it under the faucet; then he gently eased around Molly and squeezed Sam out of the way. Pastor Howell was a rotund man and used to squeezing around people.

“How are you now, son?” he asked Tommy Lee.

Molly heard Tommy Lee mumble, “Better.”

She was thinking that maybe she should leave, that she should never have come busting in here in the first place, and Sam was looking at her as if he was thinking all of the same things. But then she thought of all those people ready to pounce on her when she opened the door and lost courage. Besides, Tommy Lee might need her. Oh, Lord, here she was pregnant and scared to death and in the ladies room with three men.

“Okay . . ." Pastor Howell gave Sam a nudge. “You go on out of here, Sam.” Sam left as fast as he could, and Molly prepared to follow, but the pastor said, “Molly, you stay here. Tommy Lee, you come on to the sink and wash your face and rinse your mouth.”

Tommy Lee came out of the stall, but he kept his eyes cast downward. Molly stepped back to give him space. It was getting hot in the room now, and she could feel herself starting to perspire between her breasts and getting sticky under her arms. She began to think of how she would soak her wedding dress, but how that wouldn’t matter because Tommy Lee was probably going to say the whole thing was off. She’d have to go live with her mother to have the baby, and it would grow up in the same crazy household she herself had. She had sinned, and she was going to have to pay for it and so was her baby, that was all.
Oh, Lord . .
.
oh, please, Lord . . .

Her stomach started churning and she burned with shame, thinking of Virginia Hayes with her hat all askew, and Thomas Hayes with his granite face, and the knowing looks on all the women’s faces every time they eyed her. She looked at Tommy Lee and knew his condition was all her fault. She felt as if she might throw up, too, but she thought she would choke before she threw up right there in front of Tommy Lee and the pastor.

Pastor Howell said, “I imagine Tommy Lee would feel a lot better if he could brush his teeth, Molly. Would you have a toothbrush in all that paraphernalia there?” He gestured at the array of cosmetic bags stacked on the edge of the counter.

After a second of surprise, of watching Tommy Lee splash water on his face and mouth, Molly nodded.

She quickly moved to find it. Only then did she realize she was still holding her bouquet, had it clutched in a death grip. She set it aside in order to dig into the bags; she and her sisters had just thrown everything together when they’d been putting on their makeup.

She found her toothbrush and the little tube of Crest right with it. “Here.” She held them toward Tommy Lee.

He took them, and she noticed his calloused hands were shaking. He did a swift job of brushing his teeth and then straightened, and Molly braced herself to hear him say that the whole thing was off.

Just then Pastor Howell said, “I think I can pronounce you man and wife right now.”

Molly saw he was beaming at them and wondered what in the world had suddenly made him so happy and why he would say such a thing. Tommy Lee looked as puzzled as Molly felt.

Pastor Howell said, “Molly, you never hesitated to lend Tommy Lee your toothbrush, and Tommy Lee, you never hesitated to use it. That is as good a test of two people being able to share their lives as any there is. If you both can use the same toothbrush, you are both capable of sharing any other intimate and messy parts of life.”

Molly slowly looked at Tommy Lee. His gaze came hesitantly to hers, and as they looked at each other, his blue eyes warmed. He didn’t look like he was going to call it off.

‘‘I don’t care to say my vows in the bathroom," Molly said to Pastor Howell because she thought maybe that was what he intended.

They went out and faced everyone and got married in the chapel, as they were supposed to do, but to this day, Molly didn’t remember a thing about it. She didn’t remember a word of her vows, or anything anybody said at all. She couldn’t recall anything that happened after Pastor Howell pronounced them man and wife in the church ladies room.

And what she had never told Tommy Lee or anyone was that she had thrown that toothbrush away after Tommy Lee had used it. All she’d been able to think of was Tommy Lee vomiting and then using it, and she just couldn’t brush with it.

She had quickly grown worried, however, about throwing that toothbrush away. It occurred to her that she simply could have washed it in hot water and dunked it in peroxide. The more she had thought of having thrown it away, the more worried she had become, as if maybe she had jinxed their marriage, not that she believed in jinxing or anything, but it seemed like Pastor Howell had put such stock in their sharing the toothbrush and that she had possibly done a very unwise thing, possibly a disloyal thing in throwing it away.

So on the second night of their honeymoon down in that old New Orleans hotel, which Mama had paid for, she had made certain to brush her teeth with Tommy Lee’s toothbrush. To try to make things right again, she had done it every night for a week, as well as a number of times throughout the years since.

Now here she was, her marriage in pieces, and it could all be because she had thrown away that toothbrush. It seemed a silly supposition, but she couldn’t quite dismiss it.

Maybe what had happened to her and Tommy Lee had been that they had had a very poor beginning, Molly thought. In all truth she had gotten exactly what she wanted, because she had never wanted anything but to marry Tommy Lee Hayes and have his children. She had needed his responsibility and dependability, and more than anything in this world she had wanted Tommy Lee to love her best of anything in his.

But Tommy Lee had wanted other things, besides Molly.

Tommy Lee had wanted to design and build and run race cars for top drivers on the stock car circuit. He had been on his way to doing just that, too. Right after high school graduation, he had gotten a job as a mechanic on the team of a small-time racer and was looking ahead to moving on up to the big leagues.

He would have done it, too. Molly knew this without a doubt. If it hadn’t been that he’d had to leave it all and marry her and take on a child, he would have made himself a major name in racing.

Maybe he could have gone back to it, and once he did try, but again he had been caught by Molly and another child coming along. Molly honestly hadn’t planned that to happen, had been as surprised as Tommy Lee about it. Each of their children had been a surprise, although much loved ones.

Through all the years, Molly had held inside of her the suspicion that Tommy Lee was married to her because he was caught by his sense of responsibility. And of late she had come to think that twenty-five years was long enough for either herself or Tommy Lee to live on false pretenses. She thought that she could not live another day feeling beholden to him, or guilty for holding him where he didn’t want to be.

Chapter 5

Hold Me

At dawn Molly went into the kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee. The coffee was a cheap generic brand that came from her mother’s refrigerator and had an expiration date of the year before, but it was coffee and obviously not lethal because Molly drank six cups and kept breathing.