Love in a Small Town (8 page)

The sun rose higher and filtered through the trees, but Molly continued to sit at the tiny maple table in the kitchen with a cup of instant coffee and the warming summer breeze wafting through the back door screen. She had put on her sunglasses again, which made the room dim and seeing the numbers on the telephone dial a little difficult. The telephone was an old black rotary model, connected to the wall plug by a fifty-foot line, so it could go anywhere in the cottage and even out the back door. A number of times Molly reached out and took hold of the receiver, but she never lifted it.

She had told Tommy Lee that she would call their children. What was she going to say to them? How could she tell them that she had left their daddy? She couldn’t even stand to think the words: “left Tommy Lee.”

The sound of a car startled her, and she jumped to look out the window, thinking immediately of Tommy Lee. What would she
say
to him?

But then she saw it was Kaye’s Buick. Molly was so disappointed that it wasn’t Tommy Lee—angry, even. She didn’t want to speak to him, and it wouldn’t help either of them, but she really would have liked for him to try to initiate contact again.

She was sick that it was Kaye.
Why did it have to be Kaye?
The fact that it was Sunday cut through her hazy brain. Every Sunday morning Kaye stopped by Mama’s on her way to church, to have a cup of coffee and to try to talk Mama into going to church with her. Mama had given up church after Season had moved out; she said she didn’t need to go to a special building to have church. She preferred to have church in her own house.

“The Lord wants me as I am,” she always said. “I can be myself in my robe in my own home. When I start thinking of church, I start thinking of what will I wear and that’s not thinking of the Lord.”

“The Bible tells us to go to church,” Kaye argued. “Where two or three are gathered—that’s where the Lord is. That’s what it says in the Bible.”

“It also says when you pray to go into your closet.” Mama took that literally. When she did heavy-duty praying, she went into the big closet she’d had made when the house was remodeled. “I’ll go to church, but only in my robe,” Mama sometimes said.

Kaye never responded to that threat; she knew, just as everyone did, that Mama would get a kick out of doing something so outrageous.

It was Molly’s opinion that church had little to do with bringing Kaye to Mama’s every Sunday. She believed Kaye came to escape her dull husband and to indulge in verbal sparring with someone who was her equal in intelligence. Of the five of them, Kaye was the closest to their mother. Those two had the most in common—both having keen minds, if a little screwy, and a passion for books. Also, Mama always tried to give Kaye extra attention, trying to make up for not producing a sister-companion for her eldest.

Not having a full-blood sister was a bitter pill for Kaye. “Molly and Rennie have each other, and Lillybeth and Season have each other, but I’m just out there on my own,” she would say, and she always gave this little wave when she said ‘‘out there on my own," as if she were a cast-off orphan.

Kaye seemed to have been born with a great need for special attention. This inordinate need had led her to marry Walter Upchurch, a meek and rich man who bored her to death but who worshiped the ground she walked on. It was Molly’s private opinion that Kaye’s need for attention had led her to decide not to have children, with whom she would have to compete for Walter’s and everyone else’s attention. It helped that Walter had been in line to be mayor of Valentine after his daddy, thus making Kaye the wife of the mayor and a woman of some importance worthy of attention.

Still, Molly guessed all the attention in the world would not be enough for Kaye, who could never be given the one thing she really and truly wanted, a blood sister. This disappointment was probably why Kaye was so annoying much of the time. Since she had taken on the exalted position of sales representative for Country Interior Designs she had become even more annoying than usual; she kept pressuring everyone to have Country Interior parties.

Through the window, Molly watched as Kaye got out of her car, looked from Molly’s El Camino to the cottage, and then came striding across the lawn, not giving way to the pointy heels of her pumps that sunk into the soft ground.

Molly squeezed her eyes closed and sat back down. “Well!” Kaye said, standing there staring in through the screen door. She stood there for a long moment before jerking open the door and striding inside. "Well . . . I knew the day you and Tommy Lee got married that this was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Molly said, “Thank you for that comment, Kaye. It was real helpful.”

Kaye’s heels clicked across the linoleum. She gave a breast-heaving sigh and plopped her patent leather purse on the table.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses? Oh, Lord, did Tommy Lee beat you up?” She brought her hand to her heart.

Molly took off the sunglasses.

“Oh. Well, you look awful enough to wear the glasses,” Kaye said, with a little dismissing wave.

Molly put the sunglasses back on. Kaye had already turned and was looking around the room. She went over and looked into the sink, touched a cabinet. “I haven’t been in here for years,” she said absently. She went and peeked into the living room. “God, this place always gave me the creeps. I hated living here.”

Hidden hurts vibrated in her voice, and Molly didn’t care to hear them. She had enough hidden hurts of her own to deal with at the moment. She got up and turned on the flame beneath the kettle.

Kaye said she would take a cup of coffee, too. She pulled out the opposite chair; Ace was curled there, and she unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. He gave a hiss and streaked from the room.

Kaye picked up the jar of instant coffee and looked at the date. “Oh, Lord, you’ve been drinking this? Yes . . . I still want some.”

She let Molly make it for her and frowned when told there was no cream or milk. Kaye could get more mileage out of a frown than anyone Molly knew. Then they were sitting across from each other, sipping the coffee.

“I don’t think you are sitting here because you came over for a vacation,” Kaye said. She carefully set her cup down and leaned forward. “I don’t believe, either, that Tommy Lee tossed you out. He isn’t the sort to do that. So that means that you got into a snit and
left.”

“You certainly do save me the trouble of tellin’ you anything,” Molly said. “And why would you think he beat me up, if you don’t think he would throw me out?”

“You in those glasses jangled me for a second. It is pretty strange, you sitting inside a dim kitchen in dark glasses.”

Molly said, “I imagine you would be a good judge as to what was strange, Kaye.”

Kaye gave her a patronizing smile and then arched her left eyebrow, which she had expertly penciled on. "So—is it serious? It certainly must be if you’re here. The only place you’ve ever gone without Tommy Lee is on a trail ride. What happened—did you catch him runnin’ around?” The eyebrow went higher.

“No, of course not.”

The idea somewhat startled Molly. It hadn’t really been presented before. Of course, the wife is the last to know. She didn’t see where Tommy Lee would have the time for another woman, though, between his engines and his BarcaLounger.

Kaye looked disappointed, and she gazed at Molly for a long minute, waiting for an explanation. Molly thought she might should explain things to her sister, but she couldn’t say a coherent word. There were no words inside her, only tangled feelings, which she didn’t understand but which didn’t seem very nice because the way Kaye was looking at her made Molly have the faint urge to knock Kaye right off the chair.

Kaye inclined her head to the telephone. “So . . . are you waiting for him to call?”

Molly remembered then what she had been doing. She looked down at the phone and swallowed. “I need to call the children . . . to tell them.” Her words came out a hoarse whisper, and she kept staring at the phone.

After a moment, Kaye said, “Do you want me to call them?” The gentleness of her tone surprised Molly. She lifted her eyes to see her sister’s face all filled with pity. “It may even be better for me to tell them.”

Molly grasped at that idea for an instant, then let it go. With a shake of her head, she said, “No. I need to do it.”

“Well, in that case,” Kaye said practically, “you should take a shower first and get yourself dressed. You’ll feel more like you can handle it if you’re put together. Come on, honey,” she put her arm around Molly.

With Kaye urging her, even going on in and starting the water warming, Molly went to take a shower. She seemed to have no will of her own. She felt adrift and unable to focus and was even grateful to Kaye for giving direction.

One thing about Kaye, she always did have a clear head. Except for when she had run home from college, Molly couldn’t think of a time she had seen Kaye make an emotional decision. Kaye seemed so devoid of passion. Molly thought this sad, but yet, despite herself, she harbored a secret admiration of her sister’s strong self-discipline.

When Molly came out of the shower, Kaye was just hanging up the phone. Molly got a terribly sinking feeling as Kaye told her that she had called Lillybeth and Season up in Oklahoma City. “They are comin’ right down,” she said.

“What for?” Molly stood there, again wearing the sunglasses and her blue robe, which had a propensity for hanging off one shoulder or the other, and with her wet hair wrapped in a towel.

“Well, to be with you, of course. I know Rennie must already know about everything, but I did go ahead and call her. She wasn’t home, so I left a message on her machine that we were all gatherin’ here. Lord only knows when she’ll come in. . . . You know she’s with some man."

Kaye wrinkled her nose when she said the word ‘‘man.’’ She was clearing the table of wadded-up tissues and dirty cups and the ashtray with three half-smoked cigarettes, walking back and forth between the sink and table and saying, “You’d better not start smoking again, Molly. That will be no help at all. Mama’s gonna bring over that big coffee maker she has—the one she got for Aunt Lulu’s seventieth birthday party—and when she gets here and can stay with you, I’ll go to the store and get some decent coffee.”

Molly felt confused, as if she had missed something. As if she had suddenly contracted a fatal disease and her family was gathering to spend the last hours with her.

Then Kaye said, “I called and told Murlene Swanda that she would have to go solo at church. We were supposed to sing a special today, but I told her that I just couldn’t make it because we all need to be together at this time.”

“You told Murlene about me and Tommy Lee?”

“Well, of course. I don’t have secrets from Murlene. She
is
my best friend.” She pointed at the phone, at a slip of paper tucked beneath its foot. “Murlene gave me the name of her sister’s divorce lawyer. Murlene says he did very good by her sister.”

The word “divorce” unnerved Molly and momentarily set her off track. “I never said I was getting a divorce.”

Kaye looked up from the sink. “Well, I know it’s all a strain right now. And maybe you and Tommy Lee will get back together”—she rubbed Molly’s upper arm—"but right now is when you need to know where you stand, Molly. You don’t want to let it wait. A woman always needs to know where she stands.”

Molly felt like her head came off. “I appear to be standin’ in the path of a blabbermouth who is tellin’ my business all around town!”

Then she stretched over, snatched up the phone and stalked out of the room. Kaye came hurrying after, her pumps clicking on the linoleum, then thumping on the living room rug.

“I did not tell Murlene anything she didn’t already have an idea of,” Kaye declared. “She was already wonderin’, after Eugene told her that Rennie had come in the hardware store yesterday to buy fuses for the cottage. He had to choose them for her, even, because Rennie didn’t know what kind to get. And she asked him if he thought there was a way to run an air conditioner in the cottage. You think all that didn’t tell him someone was movin' in here again?”

Molly had to stop in the hallway and untangle the long telephone line.

“Murlene’s lived here all her life.” Kaye was nearly screaming in Molly’s ear. “She knows about Aunt Hestie’s cottage, and since you and I are the only two married Collier girls and she knows I’m with Walter, it wasn’t hard for her to settle on
whom
to wonder about. She has a right to know, Molly. She is my supervisor for Country Interior Designs, and she is entitled to know anything and everything that may affect my performance as a representative for the company."

“Well, she certainly knows it all now, doesn’t she? She has the scoop, and she’s tellin’ it to all and sundry at church . . . which I guess means that you won’t get that satisfaction.”

Molly slammed the bedroom door in Kaye’s face. She told herself that she had a right to do that. She had almost yelled “Fuck you, Kaye,” and that was all Kaye’s fault, too, because only Kaye could get her so mad that she would erupt with something so disgusting.

Sitting on the vanity bench, the phone in her lap, she wondered wildly if Kaye had already called the kids, but then she remembered that Kaye wouldn’t have the phone numbers and calmed down a little.

Slowly she turned her head and looked at her reflection in the smoky mirror. She didn’t look dangerous. She looked, felt, small and confused and lost. Maybe a little crazed—a woman in sunglasses and with a towel wrapped around her head.

The towel tilted at a precarious angle, and she knew her hair was drying beneath it and would be shaped funny around her face. She didn’t want to unwrap it, though, because her hair all damp and knotted would not be an improvement. She thought that she certainly couldn’t consider herself—in her bathrobe, a towel around her head—being put together enough to make the calls she needed to make, but she wouldn’t set the phone down to get dressed because she may not pick it up again. And she had to telephone her children now that Murlene Swanda was on the loose at church. Ruthann Johnson went to the same church, and Ruthann was Savannah’s best friend. It was entirely probable that Ruthann would be on the phone to Savannah as soon as church was out. Savannah had let slip that Stephen was angry about the phone bills due to calls to Molly and Ruthann; six months, and Savannah had not adjusted to moving to Arkansas.