Love in a Small Town

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “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.

  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,” s
he 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.