Love in a Small Town

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  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.

  Molly wondered what she could possibly say to her children. As easily as she could think the F-word, she couldn’t think the word “divorce,” much less say it.

  Of course she didn’t want a divorce, she thought, now gazing at her wedding band and turning it around on her finger. Who in the world ever wanted a divorce? Any sane person didn’t get married simply because they wanted a divorce. Although in this world there were quite a few strange people who might.

  She sighed heavily. A divorce wasn’t something she wanted, but she didn’t want a whole lot of other things that had been going on, either.

  She didn’t want to continue to see Tommy Lee avoiding looking at her; she didn’t want to continue to avoid looking at him. She didn’t want to continually feel so angry at him that she wanted to smack him, or to feel guilty that she was keeping him from fully living his life. She didn’t want to continue to go to bed so hungry for his touch that she might die without it.

  Oh, God . . . after all these years, she still wanted Tommy Lee to love her best of anyone in the world. She still wanted that, and she didn’t understand it. She didn’t believe it would happen, and yet, she could not throw away the longing.

  She supposed she wanted it all: the romance and the passion. She felt a little silly, wanting all that. Wasn’t it natural for romance and passion to fade as people grew older and used to each other?

  Maybe it was, she thought, but she couldn’t seem to accept it. It made her angry at life because it was life that took passion away.

  When a couple was young, what did they have to think about but being in love and making love and all their lovely lives ahead? But then day-to-day living seeped up and flooded over before a person even realized it: first the monthly rent and then babies and diapers and mortgages and five o’clock in the morning five days a week and stopped-up toilets and leaky roofs and bills and five o’clock in the morning six days a week. Pretty soon being in love and making love became something two people do in between trying to hold everything else together, and the lovely life they have imagined was only going to happen if Ed McMahon came to their door—which was less likely to happen than snow in July.

  All these thoughts made Molly start to feel a sort of panic, and she cast about, looking for some good memories to hold on to. There were some—she and Tommy Lee had shared more than a few moments of romance and passion during their married years together.

  Memories flickered like movie scenes through her mind. There had been those times early on, when Tommy Lee would return from the racing circuit and she would run across the little, weedy yard to meet him, and he would grab her and whirl her around in the air, his strong hands holding her easily by the waist—just like in the movies. Their eyes, all full, would caress each other and they would sit side by side in the porch swing and hardly be able to keep their hands off each other until they could get Savannah down to sleep and be alone.

  Once, when things had been tough between them, they had packed up all three children and gone on a driving vacation to the panhandle of Texas and into New Mexico. Tommy Lee hadn’t wanted to go; he had never wanted to go anywhere once he’d stopped the racing circuit.

  “Geez, Molly, it’s crazy to spend a week cooped up in a car with three kids under the age of eight.”

  “It will widen their world. Do you want your children to grow up with no concept of life beyond Valentine?”

  “How wide a world do they need at their ages? They can’t be crossing the street alone—I don’t think we need to press on with seein’ America until they can do that.”

  But Molly had insisted, because she needed to have her own narrow world widened, and because it had irked her that Tommy Lee had gone off for those years but had never been inclined to take her with him. And because she felt their passion slipping away, and she so desperately wanted to have Tommy Lee all to herself.

  They’d had a grand time. On the afternoon of the second day, while they were walking the trail through Palo Duro Canyon, Tommy Lee had taken her hand and looked long int
o her eyes and said, “I’m glad you made me come.” Then he’d put his fingertips on her chin, tilted her face to his, and kissed her in that way that seduced her body and soul.

  Because they had been spending every night in a motel with the children in the bed right beside them, they had not been able to make love, but they had been driven to the brink of madness by their mounting passions. Finally, on the last night before heading home, they went out to the car—Mama’s Oldsmobile, which they had borrowed because they’d possessed only an aging Camaro at the time—and made love in the backseat.

  Lord, Molly’s face burned just remembering it. Her eyes teared. Their time together in that Oldsmobile had been some of the sweetest love they had ever shared. It had been so wild and pure at the same time, springing from a well of love so deep that for weeks afterward Molly would think of it and cry.

  She sat there now, remembering the cool vinyl seat against her back and Tommy Lee’s hot mouth on her breasts. Remembering the scent of Brut on Tommy Lee’s neck and hair. Remembering how they’d struggled for an accommodating position, and how she’d been afraid someone would walk by and look in, but then hadn’t cared about anything but what was happening to her. Remembering how she had come so hard that she had held on and screamed, and Tommy Lee had covered her mouth with his to muffle her voice. And remembering how he had held her as she had cried against his chest.

  Suddenly Molly realized she was quivering, aching with longing. She wiped her cheeks and sighed and wished heartily that their problems now could be solved by a trip away. But she couldn’t drum up enough enthusiasm to propose a trip . . . and she was too afraid Tommy Lee would say no. She knew perfectly well he would say no, and she had no energy, no belief, to talk him into it. She didn’t want to have to talk him into it. She wanted him to sweep her off her feet, a thought that brought her near tears again.

  At last, she lifted the receiver and began to dial Savannah’s number with a shaking hand.

  She called them by birth order, she realized when she had finished. Savannah first, then Boone, then Colter. She told them each that she was staying for a time at Aunt Hestie’s—she did not use the term separated—and that unfortunately the anniversary party was off. She spoke calmly, having practiced many times in her years as a mother, a role that required being calm on the outside even though she might be screaming her head off on the inside.

  “Oh, God . . . oh, my God,” was Savannah’s first response, and she sounded as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “Now, honey, calm down,” Molly said, thinking of her pregnant daughter. “It isn’t the end of the world, and you cannot afford to get upset.”

  “Well, if you didn’t want me to get upset, you shouldn’t be doin’ this!” Savannah wailed. “Has Daddy been havin’ an affair? Oh, God, he’s at that age, but I just never thought . . ."

  “Of course not, Savannah. And I’m not certain there’s a special age for that sort of thing.”

  “Then you’ve found someone else.” Her voice rose even higher.

  “No, Savannah.”

  “Then what is it? You’ve been married for twenty-five years. What? Have you just decided to call it quits? Just like that? And now it’s all been for nothing?”

  That jolted Molly. “I don’t think so, no.”

  It hasn’t been for nothing. . . . It couldn’t have been.

  This was racing through her mind, but she had to pay attention to Savannah. She gripped the receiver and listened as Savannah was yelling, demanding, “What is going on, Mama? Have you both gone crazy? I’m comin’ down there. I want to know what is going on.’’

  “Savannah, this is between your father and I,” Molly said, summoning her most firm mother voice. The thought of Savannah racing down, of having to face her daughter, made Molly feel as if she would fly to pieces. “This is a decision we have made right now, and it is between us, not you.” An inner censor told her that it was a decision Molly herself had made, but she thought to word it that way would simply add to the confusion.

  “Just don’t do anything rash, Mama. I really can’t come down there right now. Stephen can’t just pick up and leave, and he would have a fit if I went without him.”

  That little remark pricked Molly, but she didn’t think she needed to comment on it.

  “Oh, Mama, my baby’s gonna have divorced grandparents.” Savannah began to cry.

  Molly calmed Savannah, and when she finally told her good-bye and hung up, she moved down to sit on the floor and rest her back against the vanity and take deep breaths.

  She took only enough time to get her breathing even, however, before dialing Boone’s number. His voice answered, but it was his answering machine. More often than not, she got his machine when she called. Boone lived down near Fort Worth and worked in partnership with Cyrus Shubert as a promoter for rodeos and performance horse shows.

  His work required that he travel a lot, and he loved it. It seemed Boone had been leaving home from the time he was nine years old, when a circus came to town and he ran off with it. He had left home for good the day after he had graduated from high school, early, at the age of sixteen, having skipped a grade, and he had never seemed to look back. Molly couldn’t figure out why Boone was this way; he’d never been disciplined harshly, never even been spanked. Molly had never cared for spanking, and Boone hadn’t needed it. He’d never done anything wrong, except annoy her and Tommy Lee no end because he’d always seemed off in his own world, which was that of the old cowboy ways.

  Once, feeling as if she must have done something to make him feel unwanted at home, Molly had asked Boone about it.

  He had shaken his head and cast that half grin of his that was so much like Tommy Lee’s. “Aww, Mom. It isn’t that I dislike bein’ here at home. . . . It’s that I really like seem’ other places. They just tug at me, Mom.”

  Molly was so nervous at trying to figure out the message to leave on his machine that she forgot to wait for the beep. When it sounded she was already speaking and went to stumbling all over her words.

  “Mom?” Boone cut in.

  He was there, groggy from sleep. How did she tell him, when he’d just woke up?

  “Boone.. . I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “That’s okay. What’s up with my best girl?”

  Molly heard whispering in the background—a feminine whisper, and Boone telling the person that it was his mother. It was as embarrassing as could be, catching her son in bed with his lover. She wondered if it was Cheryl, the girl he had brought home the past April when they’d celebrated his birthday. Cheryl had struck Molly as a very sweet girl, well mannered and certainly caring of Boone. But a mere twenty-four hours didn’t allow much time to get to know her.

  “Sorry, Mom.. . . What’s goin’ on?”

  If he was surprised when she told him, he certainly didn’t show it, other than a long pause before saying, “I wasn’t sure I could get home for the party, anyway, Mom.” As if he needed to say something cold.

  “We’re still right here, if you need us,” Molly told him. “Your daddy’s at home, and I’m here at your grandma’s number.” She gave him the number, and then he was saying that he had another call coming in.

  “I need to get it, Mom... . This is the business phone, too.” And then he was gone, leaving her listening to a dead line.

  She squeezed her eyes closed. It hurt more because she had tried all of his life to understand this dear son, and she had never succeeded enough. It would have been easy to believe that Boone had taken it in stride, but Molly had her doubts. Then she thought, Oh, I don’t know anything anymore.

  She stood, still clutching the phone, took deep breaths, and walked around the room. She thought of calling Tommy Lee and asking him to call Colter.

  But that would be unfair; she was the one who had left. Besides, Tommy Lee had such a time talking on the telephone. He seemed to consider the phone in the same manner he did a snake—as if it might bite him any moment. He always let Molly make any busin
ess calls that didn’t specifically require his input. Anytime he had to speak at length on the phone, he would pace back and forth, or doodle heavily on paper, or pace and then doodle and pace and then doodle. If he happened to sit down, one or both of his legs would bounce at an incredible rate. Tommy Lee probably could have handled talking to the children in person but not on the phone.

  Finally she went over, opened the small closet door, went inside and sat on the floor. The toe of a boot poked her rear end, and she had to move it. Then she pulled the door closed, but not all the way, because she felt she might suffocate. The scent of the cottage was strong in the closet. She closed her eyes and prayed for words and quieted herself. Then she removed her sunglasses and stuck her face close to the telephone dial in order to make out the numbers.

  Colter’s warm “Hello, Mom,” went like an arrow into her heart.

  She couldn’t tell him right off; she had to ask him about school. He was enthused. He was pleased to have stayed down to take summer classes and work on campus. Doing that gave him an opportunity to really get to know some professors and a number of other students. One of his engineering classes would be having a competition against another; they were each going to strive to build the best robot.

  Molly chatted with him for ten minutes before she finally managed to tell him what she had to say.

  “Mom, are you okay?” he asked, his voice anxious.

  “Yes, honey.” She squeezed her eyes against tears.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” And that sounded really stupid; she was sitting in a closet, for heavensakes. She cleared her throat. “Your daddy and I simply need this time apart. It isn’t his fault, Colter. . . . It isn’t anyone’s fault. This just happens sometimes, honey.” It occurred to her that her explanation sounded like what was happening was the same thing as getting a cold.

  When she finally hung up, she sat there, staring at the closet door, suddenly so exhausted. Children grow up, she thought. They grow up and go into their own lives, and they aren’t even a part of you anymore and their lives really have no connection to their parents any longer, except at holidays, when they would come for the big supper gatherings and reminiscing. That’s what it all came down to.