Love in a Small Town

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “We still share it,” she said. “My havin’ my own doesn’t change that.”

  “Then why do you have it?”

  “To have my own money, Tommy Lee. I want my own."

  She jabbed at her chest, and her robe slipped off one shoulder, seeming to shake there with her fury, a fury he only just then saw and that startled him. He gazed at her, and she gazed at him, her chin lifted.

  He said, “I’ve always taken care of you, Molly.”

  No matter what else, he’d always made certain to take care of her, and he couldn’t understand how she could think he wouldn’t.

  “I know you have always taken care of me, Tommy Lee.”

  The flat way she said it and the sudden slump of her shoulders confused him. A roaring went off in his head, and he went to poking his finger at her again.

  “You think you’re the only one who has complaints? Well, let me tell you that I’ve got plenty of my own. I’ve done my best to make you happy, Molly Jean. But I’m done tryin’.”

  Those final words came spewing out before he even realized they were coming. They came out and sat there while he and Molly stared at each other, Molly with tears flowing down her cheeks.

  Then Tommy Lee turned around and jerked the screen door so hard it ripped off its hinges. He held it for an instant, his mind not comprehending what had happened. Then he tossed it aside with a clatter, stalked out into the blackness, and vaulted over into the Corvette seat. He was out of there with engine roaring and gravel flying, and when he hit the blacktop, his tires squealed and smoked. He shifted gears, letting the power of the machine flow into him.

  When he found himself in the middle of town, he wondered where in the hell he was going. He pulled into the Texaco, came to a screeching halt, hopped out, and strode inside. He bought a pack of Marlboros and came right back outside. He felt as if everything was crowding in on him and he needed air. He stopped on the cooling concrete, the night soft and cooling around him. He felt as if he were steaming in it. He tapped the pack and opened it, shook out a cigarette and tucked it in his mouth. He’d stopped smoking for eight years, but he couldn’t tell it.

  He stood there, smoking his cigarette and looking at a group of teens gathered beneath the light on the far side of the street. A gleaming Camaro drove by with young arms waving out the windows and shouts of, “Hey, buddy . . . cool, man!” at his Corvette.

  Flicking his cigarette into the big sand catcher, Tommy Lee walked rapidly to the pay phone attached to the end of the brick building, plugged in a coin and dialed.

  There was a bit of confusion when both Odessa and Molly answered, and then he heard a click and Molly said, “It’s just me now. Tommy Lee?” she added when he didn’t say anything.

  He thought of her sad green eyes.

  He swallowed. God, he hated telephones. His tongue didn’t seem to want to work. Finally he got out, “Savannah called today, left a message on the machine. She and Stephen are plannin’ on comin’ down the Thursday before the anniversary party.” He had to clear his throat.

  She said something, and he couldn’t catch it.

  “What?”

  “I said . . . I’ll call her. I’ll call each of them.”

  He breathed deeply. “Well . . . Colter called, too, just to say he was doin’ fine.”

  “I’ll call him. Tomorrow.”

  The line hummed between them. Tommy Lee leaned close to the phone and gripped the receiver. “What happened to us, Molly?”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . maybe . . . we got . . . we never . . ."

  “Molly . . . I can’t understand you. Don’t . . ." She was sobbing good now, and he knew she couldn’t hear him. Molly didn’t cry often, but when she did, she could cry louder and harder than anyone he knew. He felt the sinking feeling of loss.

  Then she said, clearly enough to be understood, “Thank you, Tommy Lee,” and hung up, leaving him standing in the Texaco parking lot, holding the phone, wondering why she told him thank you and why her saying that was worse than her blaming him.

  Chapter 4

  Time Passes By

  With Tommy Lee’s words, “What’s happened to us?” ringing in her ears, Molly hung up the phone and threw herself on the sofa, sobbing so loudly that she frightened herself and Ace went scurrying out of the room. She was certainly glad Tommy Lee wasn’t there to see her. She was glad no one could see her. . . . It was embarrassing even to think that God could see her. Once Rennie had told her, “Sissy, for such a pretty girl, you sure do go downhill when you cry.”

  Pressing her face into one of the big old throw pillows, she strove to quell her sobs and muffle her voice, which was nearly screaming with fury and pain. But then she was gulping air and shaking and so full of emotion that she thought she might shatter into a million pieces.

  Gradually her sobs dropped to shudders. It was almost surprising to find herself alive and still in one piece. She sat there, in a strange place between exhaustion and fear.

  If she had died from crying, she thought, no one would know until God knew when. She had told Rennie she didn’t need her, that she wanted to be alone, and Mama would be over in her living room with her books until the early hours of the morning and probably wouldn’t think a thing about not seeing Molly for a day or maybe two. It was a new and disturbing situation she found herself in. Getting off on her own did have certain drawbacks.

  Moving on instinct, she forced herself up and into the bathroom to rinse her face and brush her teeth. The next instant, she spit out the toothpaste and dropped the brush into the sink, threw up the window, freed the screen and tossed it aside, and poked herself clean outside, gulping in the fresh night air. She stayed there, half hanging out the window, asking herself exactly what Tommy Lee had asked: “What happened to us?”

  Molly thought that she could have answered, “It was the toothbrush.”

  She was fairly certain the toothbrush had something to do with it, although she wouldn’t have told anyone she thought that, because they would think her crazy. And the mistake with the toothbrush wasn’t the whole of it. It all began much earlier than the toothbrush. It could have begun many lifetimes ago, according to her mother. Molly was inclined to feel that starting with her childhood this time around would be enough for anyone to digest.

  Molly recalled clearly the first time she had seen Tommy Lee. He had come riding up on his own horse to the pond where she and her daddy were fishing. It was about the second or third time she and her daddy had been fishing on the Hayeses’ farm.

  Daddy had greeted Tommy Lee with his usual charm. “Well, by golly, young man, we’re pleased to make your acquaintance.” Daddy had a way of making everyone feel special, and in minutes he had the boy down off the horse and fishing with them.

  Although Tommy Lee had only been one year older than Molly, which made him only six, he had been tall for his age and the best-looking boy she had ever seen, and riding his own horse—which had really been a pinto pony but seemed so big because of Molly being so small—made him very mature in Molly’s eyes.

  Sensing his power over her, Tommy Lee had very shortly taken charge.

  “You hafta watch out for copperheads around here,” he told her. And, “Keep your shoes on when you wade into that water. You better not go out too far. Here, let me help you with baitin’ that hook.”

  Pretty soon Daddy had just gone over, stretched out beneath a cottonwood, took secretive nips from the bottle he always brought with him, put his hat over his face, and gone to sleep. Thereafter, whenever Daddy took her fishing, he did a whole lot more sleeping than fishing. Tommy Lee always watched Daddy’s line, too.

  Oh, yes, it was true: From the very beginning Tommy Lee had taken care of her. And she’d welcomed it as only a little girl who at the age of five was already in charge of a household could.

  Her mother had not been a bad mother, simply a preoccupied one. Her mind had been divided between her “endeavors at growth,” as she called each job she took on, her phi
losophy books, and her husbands. When each new baby came, Mama doted on it for six months, when she believed babies should be breast-fed, but after that the baby was given over to the care of her sisters and whatever young girl Mama had coming in to help at the time.

  It was Mama’s belief that everyone had to do their own growing. She had seen to it that her daughters had a roof over their heads and healthful food in the kitchen, but the details of everyday living were left to the girls themselves.

  By the age of three, Molly was setting cereal on the table for herself and Kaye and had virtually taken over Rennie, diapers and all. When Lillybeth and then Season came along, it was Molly who rocked the croup out of them and fixed their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. She was even the one to sign their school absence excuses.

  By rights it should have been Kaye, as the oldest, who looked out for them all, but Kaye was preoccupied, too, with books as Mama was, but mostly with herself.

  “I’m goin’ somewhere out of here,” Kaye said often. “I’m gonna study and be somebody.”

  Kaye truly had been a scholar, achieving the highest grades of anyone before or since at Valentine High School. She received a full scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, but she came home sick after four weeks and never went back. She couldn’t bear to leave her home, although she never had admitted this. She liked to see it as circumstances conspiring against her.

  On occasion Molly’s daddy, Lloyd Bennett, and later Stirling made stabs at being responsible fathers.

  Molly’s daddy had been a charmer. He used to call himself a stockbroker. He bought and sold—brokered—cattle, horses, hogs, sheep, when he worked. Mostly, though, he drank. His efforts at parenting primarily consisted of cooking breakfast—his favorite being omelets stuffed with sausage and mushrooms and hot peppers—and taking his girls fishing. Kaye never would go, though, and Rennie had been only a toddler. The first and only time Daddy took Rennie fishing, she had gotten a sunburn so bad that Mama had had to take her to the hospital. After that Daddy wasn’t allowed to take Rennie anywhere for a long time.

  Stirling, who had looked like a California bodybuilder, had focused his fatherly attention on their clothes. He’d had something of a passion for washing clothes, and he even could sew quite well. He had never cared where his daughters went in their clothes, or what they did, but he wanted them to be dressed nice at all times.

  As the years had gone on, it had been Tommy Lee who got the fishing hook out of Molly’s head when her daddy had cast his line and caught her instead; Tommy Lee who took her to Doc Nordstrom’s office when she’d gotten bumped off a horse and broken her wrist; Tommy Lee who had taught her how to put out a fire in a pan of grease, and saved the house from burning; and taught her how to ride a bicycle and a horse; and how to drive a car with a stick shift.

  It had been Tommy Lee who taught her to kiss, right out there in the horse barn, and it had been Tommy Lee who had taught her how to have satisfaction without going all the way, thus keeping her a virgin, when she wanted to give herself to him. And when they finally had succumbed to their long-denied passions, it had been Tommy Lee who had married her because he’d gotten her pregnant, as he saw it.

  Molly couldn’t say for certain, but she suspected that she had been determined to get Tommy Lee to make love to her and get her pregnant. She had been frightened and ashamed right from the first that this could possibly be true, and she had told Tommy Lee straight away that he didn’t have to marry her.

  But he’d said, “Of course I’m marryin’ you, Molly. Don’t be stupid.”

  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 unbutton
ed 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.