Love in a Small Town (11 page)

“And just what am I supposed to do while you’re doin’ this
thinkin’
?”

Molly’s first thought was that he ought to try thinking a little so he might come up with an answer to that.

She said, “I guess you can go on doin’ what you’ve been doin’ for months. . . . anything you want to do.”

That led to another long silence, and Molly thought that she was not doing well at all in holding her tongue. She was so tired of measuring words. She was tired, period.

“I’m really tired, Tommy Lee. I can’t talk about this anymore.” She climbed over the fence, turned and started hauling her gear down from it.

“Yeah . . . okay,” Tommy Lee said, coming after her.

He jerked her gear out of her arms. It was annoying that he could carry it so easily. She hurried ahead and opened the tack door of the trailer. At least she could do that. After he stuck the gear inside, she slammed the door.

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Goodnight,” he said.

She headed for the cottage, and he headed for the Corvette. She had just reached the back door when he came zipping through the trees and headed away down the drive. Molly went on inside, let the screen door slam behind her, and strode through the cottage to the bedroom, where she tore off her hat and flopped down on the vanity bench.

The image that gazed out at her from the mirror was not an encouraging one.

Chapter 7

Whole Lotta Holes

Early the following morning Molly went riding again, and when she returned her mother’s gleaming black Lincoln was just pulling around to the backyard. Her mother got out—she was wearing her fuchsia robe—and called to Molly. “Come have breakfast with me.” She lifted two Hardee’s paper bags.

Molly waved and nodded her assent. She dismounted, slowly and stiffly, her legs quivering. Her pelvis bones were bruised and screaming about it, too. Over six hours of riding the previous day and four this morning were about five times more than she was used to in two days’ time. More than Marker was used to, too. That morning he’d been so annoyed at the prospect of being ridden again that he’d tried to buck her off. At least now he’d had the spit and vinegar worked out of him; he was quiet and obedient, even appreciative of her care.

“Did you go into Hardee’s in your robe?” Molly asked as she came in her mother’s back door and went to the sink to wash up. Although not quite eleven, the day had become hot, and Molly’s clothes stuck to her skin.

“I went through the drive-up,” her mother answered, then added, “I have gone into Hardee’s in my robe. Not on purpose. I just forgot. No one seemed to pay much attention. There’s only a couple of old farts in there this late in the morning, anyway, lingerin’ over their coffee. The morning crew are all senior citizens, too—women, thank God. Men are just no good in fast-food restaurants or handlin’ grocery checkouts.

“That’s quite a sexist view,” Molly put in.

Mama gave a dismissing wave. “It’s a fact of nature. And that morning crew is the most efficient one J.R. has—J.R. Morehouse runs it now, and you ought to see
him
try to work behind the counter.” She rolled her eyes. “J.R. started out with just Geneva Whitefield, and when he saw how efficient she was, he asked her if she knew anyone else her age who might want to work the breakfast shift because he can’t hardly get kids to do it. Pretty soon he had a whole Gray Crew— that’s what they call themselves because all of them have gray hair. Except Doris Torres. She’s black, and she wears her hair cut close, and it is black. She says she doesn’t dye it, but I’m not certain that color could be real.” She sighed. “I always wanted black hair, and I hated going gray so early. Doris says that as a rule black people don’t gray as early as white people. I’ll have to research the statistics on that, if there are any. Doris is the one who saves me these cinnamon biscuits, so I can get them even if I don’t get up there until after they’ve quit servin’ breakfast.”

While she was speaking, Mama was setting the table with festive breakfast plates and cloth napkins and orange juice glasses and small butter knives. She enjoyed her breakfast in the middle of the morning. With the refrigerator open, she poured milk into a dish on the floor for Ace, who came running.

Molly had decided to leave Ace with her mother when she went riding. She felt Ace might get lonely in a strange place, and she had long thought that her mother should consider getting a pet. She thought maybe her mother would be won over by Ace and go out and get her own cat, which would be company for her.

Molly worried sometimes about her mother getting lonely. It saddened her to think of her mother married so many times and ending up alone, although her mother seemed happy with it. Molly wasn’t certain she herself would be happy, and it scared her now to think that she was on the brink of being as alone as her mother.

Ace sniffed at the milk. “Mama, that milk isn’t ruined, is it?”

“A cat won’t eat something that will make him sick,” Mama said.

Molly thought of how Ace would throw up hair, but didn’t say anything. Ace went to lapping the milk.

Mama said, “I really like this cat.”

“You do?” Molly was pleased, but then a little sad, because she liked Ace. Last night he had lain on her belly and soothed her into sleep with his purring. She really didn’t want to have to give Ace to her mother.

Her mother nodded. “He never bothers me, and he comes when I give him milk, then goes off again.” She spoke as if Ace’s behavior was unique. She then brought orange juice from the refrigerator and saw Molly’s questioning look. “It’s fresh. I bought it just yesterday.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

Her mother had brought brewed coffee from Hardee’s, too. As Molly poured it from the styrofoam cup into the china mug her mother gave her, she inhaled the aroma.

Mama took the opposite chair and motioned at Molly’s hat, which she’d forgotten to take off. She’d become used to the tight feeling around her brow and felt a little light-headed when she removed the hat.

“Where have you gone on your rides?” Mama asked.

Molly sipped her orange juice, then replied, “Oh, around the home place—somebody’s cut the back fence, by the way. And I’ve been over onto Salyer’s place . . . and down the hole-in-the-rock road to the old schoolhouse.”

For some reason, when Molly rode she didn’t feel the pressing urge to think. She simply rode, enjoying the feeling of the horse beneath her and the view of the countryside and the quiet all around her. What she liked most about riding a horse was the stark quiet in which it was easy to hear the slightest rustle of the trees and critters moving in the grass.

Mama spooned honey into her coffee. “I forgot about the fence. Loren Settle told me back last winter that he’d cut it one night while he was coon hunting. He said he’d fix it, but I told him to leave it, since we didn’t have cattle anymore, and that way he wouldn’t have to cut it again.”

“You let hunters chase coons on our property?”

Molly didn’t like the thought at all. Men with guns running around in the dark seemed a reckless proposition, not to mention that they were after a defenseless little animal. Molly didn’t approve of hunting in this day and age, anyway, with meat readily available at any supermarket, and she especially didn’t care for it on land that at least in part belonged to her. Or would someday. The Collier land was reduced to only eighty acres now. Half of that was woods and little pastures and the other half was planted in an alfalfa field, which Mama cut and baled herself four or more times a year.

“Well, honey,” Mama said in some surprise, “Loren brings his own coons.”

There didn’t seem to be anything for Molly to say to that, so she fell quiet, and Mama did, too, each into their own thoughts.

Molly thought of men with guns and dogs chasing coons all over the countryside she had ridden through. She had ridden the miles of dirt roads south and west of Valentine, and through pastures and down canyons on the farms and ranches where she knew the owners wouldn’t mind. Most people didn’t mind riders coming across their land, as long as the gates that were supposed to be closed were left closed. And thinking of this, she supposed she wasn’t much different than a coon hunter, except that she wasn’t out killing a defenseless animal.

Just then Mama said, “Loren doesn’t kill the coon—not his own in summer anyway. He can only kill a coon in season, which is sometime in the winter. In the summer he has his dogs chase it up a tree. They’re trained to do that, and the dogs get points or something for doing it. It’s a sport.”

Molly heard her, but what she said was, “This is the most riding I’ve done since that trail ride we went on with Boone when he was in school. There just never seems to be any time to ride, and if I take the time, I usually feel guilty, because Tommy Lee doesn’t ride anymore and half the time I end up leaving him with a sandwich for supper. Or the house is a mess, and Tommy Lee is workin’ in his shop, and I feel I should be doin’ things that need to be done.”

“I’ve always thought Tommy Lee quite intelligent and capable,” Mama said, dabbing a chunk of butter on her already oil-rich egg biscuit. “If he wanted a hot supper, I imagine he could cook it, or would know where to go buy it.”

“Tommy Lee likes sandwiches,” Molly said after a moment. She felt she had made him out in a bad light and needed to correct the impression. “A sandwich is about his favorite thing to eat, next to a hamburger. It isn’t that he complains. He isn’t one to complain at all. He never says anything about the house being a mess or me riding."

Molly sat there a minute, holding her coffee mug with both hands. “Tommy Lee probably could be described as nearly a perfect husband. He doesn’t complain, he works hard to provide a secure home for us, and he never says a word about how much money I spend.” She raised her eyes and looked at her mother. “And I am so mad at him, Mama. I’m so mad, and I feel so guilty because he hasn’t really done anything wrong at all.”

She knotted her napkin in her hand. She felt the guilt falling all over her shoulders in proportion to the anger and confusion welling up in her chest. What did she want from Tommy Lee? He gave her exactly what she told her mother—he was a husband most other women would give their eyeteeth for, and yet she couldn’t be content. She wanted his attention, which she had tried, and failed, to gain. Obviously she was the one at fault.

“No one is perfect,” Mama pointed out. “Everyone does things that annoy other people.”

“Well of course they do,” Molly said, now annoyed at Mama. “I didn’t say he was perfect. He leaves his clothes around for me to pick up and expects me to know where
everything
is. And he is critical about things I try to do, like painting the house trim—he didn’t like the way I held the brush. I used the glue gun in the joints of the old chairs, and he has to tell me the glue won’t hold. I use a nail instead of a drill to poke a little hole in the wall and his hair about stands on end. He wants me to watch shows on television that he likes, but he won’t watch ones I like, and he never goes riding with me anymore. If we are both in my El Camino, he has to be the one that drives. He doesn’t even ask if I want to drive—he asks me for the keys and just gets in.” Suddenly Molly heard herself and shut her mouth tight.

“If that is a description of a nearly perfect husband, I wouldn’t want to see one who was slightly imperfect,” Mama said.

Molly might have laughed, but she suddenly thought she might cry if she made any sound at all. She took her coffee mug and rose, walked to the counter, and sighed deeply.

“None of that amounts to a hill of beans,” she said, after she was certain she wasn’t going to cry. She felt totally at a loss now and sinking beyond tears. “Most of the time I never notice those things—and heaven knows I have as many annoying little habits as Tommy Lee. But now it’s as if every little thing we each do separates us. We are so far apart, Mama, and that’s what I’m angry about. I’m blaming Tommy Lee because I’m so mad at him that I can’t love him, even though I know good and well I share as much of the blame for us being where we are."

She squeezed her eyes closed and thought how much she wanted to be rid of the pain inside.

“Well, Molly dear, a person can, and usually does, hold certain strong beliefs, while finding it quite difficult to put those beliefs into practice. Take, for example, my firm belief that we should never judge another person. ‘Judge not’ is a guiding phrase for me. Judging does no one any good, and God knows we all have our weaknesses. Yet, I would have to admit that my opinion of Ella Mae Jolley is that she is a woman of very low character, who wants something for nothing and refuses to own up to the fact that she is poor because she is lazy and graspy and envious and devious, and by that very fact she draws similar ugly things to herself. I have tried to like the woman, but I cannot, because I judge her, and I’m quite put out with her for being the despicable type of woman she is, which leads me to judge her.”

Mama gracefully lifted her china cup and drank her coffee.

Molly said, “I think the same thing you do about Ella Mae Jolley.”

Mama’s eyes sparkled and her lips twitched. “That will remain our secret shame.” Then Mama looked at her with tender regard, and Molly felt an easing inside. A certain acceptance.

She set her empty mug on the counter and ran her fingers along the edge of the cool enamel tiles. “Mama, I just couldn’t stand the way I was feeling around Tommy Lee. I didn’t leave because I couldn’t stand to be around him—oh, I have always loved to be with Tommy Lee. But when I’m with him now, I can’t stand the hurt and I can’t stand me.” She brought her fist to her heart, then let it drop.

“I feel like I’ve failed him and like I’ll never be what he needs or wants, and that I’m just so tired of tryin’ to be whatever that is.” Her voice dropped. “And now he’s so angry at me because I left him . . . and maybe he’ll want a divorce."

Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them go in front of her mother. Mama rarely cried and tended to get irritable when anyone else did. As it was, she knew Molly was near tears, and tossing her napkin on the table, she spoke with impatience.