Love in a Small Town (12 page)

“Of course he is angry with you. You are forcing him to think deeply. To look into himself, and if there’s anything men hate, it is havin’ to look into themselves. Men avoid deep thinking and looking into themselves the same way they avoid cleaning a bathroom. They prefer to shut the door on anything unpleasant and hope it will go away.”

She took a deep breath and let it out in a loud sigh. “It is not a great sin to have taken some time away from your husband, Molly Jean. You haven’t run off with another man. Getting angry and leavin’ doesn’t mean your marriage is over, that you’ve sunk it with one shot. If you can sink it with this one shot, then there isn’t enough left to be called a marriage anyway."

Mama moved her legs from beneath the table, crossed them, and adjusted her robe. “When I lost Al Moss, I was thrown into such pain and to escape it, I ran right straight to your father, without takin’ time to truly think and understand my needs and wants. I did this repeatedly, because I was avoiding lookin’ into myself. It was quite difficult to face what I saw in myself, so I avoided it, until finally I was alone and there was nothing else to do.

“You are at that point now, Molly, and it is not your nature to run from things. You have always faced them head-on. In fact, you have always raced ahead to meet them,” Mama allowed, and not quite in a complimentary tone.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” Molly said, whispering. “I’ve never felt so . . ." She was at a loss.

“Disappointed,” Mama pronounced.

Molly wasn’t certain if disappointed was exactly it; she was trying the word on for size, though, and it seemed to fit.

Mama said, “Tommy Lee and marriage and most of all you yourself have not turned out to be all that you’d thought. That is a great disappointment. It happens sooner or later to all of us, honey. You suddenly must face that life isn’t ever going to be as you thought and dreamt it would be . . . and that you and Tommy Lee aren’t, either. So now comes the time when you begin to appreciate things as they really are.”

“Well, I don’t know if Tommy Lee can appreciate me as I really am.”

“Do you think you can appreciate him as he really is?” Mama asked.

“I don’t know,” Molly said truthfully.

“You both must find that out,” Mama said with firmness and finality. The next instant she was on her feet and bringing her dishes to the sink. “The best thing you can do is to give you both time to relax a bit, not try to work so hard at the marriage. Just see what happens. In my opinion, you and Tommy Lee have become much too stodgy, anyway.”

Then she gave Molly a hug and went off to get dressed, saying she had an afternoon date with the hairdresser.

Molly found her mother’s sudden buoyant mood and abrupt departure a little thoughtless. Then she told herself there was no need for her mother’s life to be set askew because of her own problems. And Mama had always swung from low to high, so she was staying right in form.

A few seconds later, Mama poked her head back in the doorway. “I selected a few books you might want to read,” she said, wagging her finger at a small stack on the end of the counter. With a little wave, she whirled away again, but Molly called to her.

“Mama.” Her mother stopped and looked over her shoulder. Molly said through a tight throat, “I love you very much.”

Mama smiled softly. “Me, too, you,” and she swept away.

Molly went over and looked at the books; an early one of anecdotes by Erma Bombeck; a mystery novel by Rita Mae Brown; a slim volume of the Book of Psalms; and the essay by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “Gift from the Sea.” Mama liked to cover all the bases, Molly thought.

Suddenly she felt very tired. She plopped her hat on her head, found Ace in the living room, curled on her mother’s ottoman, and took him up in one arm, sweeping the books up in the other, and went back across to the cottage. After a shower, she turned on the old black fan and stretched out on the bed. In only a large T-shirt and panties, she thought the breeze from the fan felt delicious. Ace came to lie on her belly, and she stroked his soft fur.

She considered what her mother had said about her and Tommy Lee becoming stodgy. For some reason this statement stood out in her mind—it pricked her like a needle. It annoyed her. It was the truth, but it annoyed her. Why did Mama have to say that one thing, after giving her all that wise and comforting advice?

Her mother had a number of times stated that Molly was being stodgy, and Molly resented the statement. For one thing, “stodgy” was an ugly word. It was hard and unappealing to say or to see. But more to the point, “stodgy” was a critical term. A more positive term, a more accurate term, would have been to say that Molly was “steady,” which was as she knew herself to be. “Dependable” would also have been a good word to use. “Steady” and “dependable” were pleasant words, and Molly had always considered herself a rather pleasant person. Other people certainly seemed to find her so.

Molly reflected that she never had taken criticism very well, most especially from certain people, such as Mama or Tommy Lee. Or any of her three children. Kaye could tell her all day long that she was stodgy or bossy or stubborn, and Molly would only laugh at her or tell her to kiss my ass, but when Mama or Tommy Lee or the children criticized her, she was bruised.

It was because she loved them so much, she thought with sudden clarity, and because when they were critical of her, she felt unloved.

 Of course that was not true. Simply because a person uttered a criticism did not mean they didn’t love you. How many times had she let slip criticism to her children or Mama or Tommy Lee—or been placed in the tricky position of having to criticize them for their own good? And she certainly still loved them completely. Why should she feel they didn’t love her?

She didn’t know. It was simply the way she felt, and thinking of this made her very depressed. She felt not only stodgy, but crumpled, too.

Then an inner whisper came:
I wasn’t so stodgy when I broke those dishes.

It was this other side of herself who was suddenly demanding to be heard, she thought. A bolder, wilder Molly, who kept getting all emotional and crying and breaking plates. It was this Molly who wanted to break free and do all manner of outrageous things—such as telling someone to fuck off. It was this Molly who was strong and confident, and who shrugged off criticisms.

Molly sighed. She longed to let the bolder side of her nature have free rein. But she worried that maybe she would go too far, and that the other side to her personality might lead her into places she would end up being sorry to have gone. She reflected that Tommy Lee had been horrified at the bolder Molly who had broken their wedding dishes. Although she had gotten his attention when she’d done that.

Chapter 8

Life Gets Away From Us All

Tommy Lee found himself feeling perpetually confused. For the better part of twenty-five years Molly had been within shouting distance most of the time; Molly not being near was something he couldn’t seem to believe had happened. When he looked up and saw his mother-in-law’s black Lincoln pulling up in front of the shop, he felt more confused than ever.

His wife driving out of his life and his mother-in-law driving in, he thought, as he wiped his hands on a shop towel and reached over to lower the volume on the stereo.

“Hello, Tommy Lee,” Odessa said.

She came around the front of the car, holding her wide-brimmed hat against the wind. Odessa had always favored big hats that dared the wind. She wore dresses, too, that caught in the breeze and lifted and showed still-beautiful legs. Tommy Lee had always thought Odessa a little bold, especially for a woman who was the mother of five daughters. He thought women who had children should look and behave like mothers. To his mind Odessa never had.

Sometimes Molly didn’t appear exactly as he thought a mother should, either. He had tried to tell her what she should do, but she would get annoyed, or hurt, and in any case it never had come out as he’d wished. Molly had been and still was a great mother, however, whereas Odessa never had been too good at the job, in his opinion. He supposed she had tried.

“Hello, Odessa,” he said. He tossed the shop towel aside, and they gazed at each other for several seconds.

Odessa’s coming to see him was quite a surprise. In all the years he had been acquainted with the woman, the two of them had rarely been called upon to hold a direct conversation. They were inevitably surrounded by Collier women, and they each took care not to be alone together in the same room.

A grin played at Odessa’s lips. “There’s no need to look at me like I might slap you any minute, Tommy Lee.”

Bold, like she always was. She made him feel a little silly, and this irritated him. He wouldn’t let her make him look away.

“You’re as talkative as ever, I see,” she said, moving past him into the shop and out of the wind. Not bothering to be invited, either.

Tommy Lee walked over to the small refrigerator, saying, “I’ve never felt that you required a great deal of conversation on my part, Odessa.”

He pulled a can of Coca-Cola out of the refrigerator and held it up in a silent offering. Odessa shook her head. She stood there, hand on her hip and legs splayed slightly, a decidedly sexual stance that was natural to her . . . and for one sharp instant Tommy Lee saw Molly. The resemblance took him by surprise, and something like pain flashed through him. He popped the tab on the Coke and took a deep drink.

Odessa said, “I suppose you could call our relationship over the years one of mutual evasion. Would you agree?”

Swallowing, Tommy Lee nodded. “If you could say we have a relationship.”

“We share disapproval,” she said in a teasing tone. “I think that could be called a relationship.”

Tommy Lee didn’t think there was anything for him to say to that. He noticed Odessa appeared a little nervous. She put her hand to the back of her cheek and then laid it on the tall tool chest, but then she snatched it away and checked for grease. Seeing Odessa nervous made Tommy Lee nervous.

“How’s Molly doin’?” he asked before he realized he was going to. He could have kicked himself.

“I think it could be said that Molly is doing along the same way you are—confused, aggravated, hurt. I’ll tell her you asked, and maybe that will make her feel better. It might make you feel better to know that we were speakin’ of you just this mornin’. She said a lot of good things about you. You are very much in her heart and on her mind.”

Tommy Lee breathed deeply. He did feel a little better, hearing Molly was thinking about him. It was funny how a little thing like that could make him feel better.

Odessa said, “I want you to know that I have never spoken of my feelings about you to Molly, and I appreciate that you have never spoken yours about me. I know you haven’t, or Molly would have let it slip somewhere. She can’t hide her feelings. No matter how she tries, they will come out eventually. I’ve always thought that her charm . . . and her irritation.”

“Molly’s honest,” Tommy Lee said. “A person always knows where he stands with her.”

He didn’t think Odessa was quite honest. Maybe few people were as honest as Molly. Tommy Lee didn’t want to agree with Odessa, but Molly’s honesty at times did get on his nerves. Still, if Molly said she loved you, she meant it, and if she said she was mad, she meant that, too. A person didn’t have to wonder if she was saying one thing but thinking another. Of course, sometimes he wasn’t certain
why
Molly was mad, and she generally wouldn’t tell.

“I’ve always admired that you haven’t said anything to cause trouble between me and Molly,” Odessa said. “Only a strong man would control his tongue.”

“Well, only a fool would criticize you to Molly’s face.”

He thought maybe he should add that he admired Odessa for her control, too, but he was uncomfortable with talking about this—whatever
this
was.

“Odessa, I imagine you have a point to this conversation, but—no offense meant—to my mind some things are better left alone.” He straightened. “What’s goin’ on between Molly and me right now is our business.”

“Of course it is,” Odessa said quickly, and in a way he knew she was going to worm it around to make it hers, which she did in the next breath. “Although I am Molly’s mother, and I feel I have a certain right to interfere when her happiness is at stake. What I have to say concerns all three of us. There are some things I have to say, Tommy Lee, and that I feel you must hear, even though you don’t want to, and it may not help you at all.”

He read what she was talking about in her eyes, and dread shimmied through him. He shook his head.

“It happened almost thirty years ago. It’s dead and buried, Odessa,” he said, walking to the door.

But even as he spoke, the memory of his father dancing with the woman who stood behind him now came across his mind. The memory had faded with the years, but some things made an indelible impression on a fifteen-year-old boy. After all this time, he could recall his father’s strong bare arms sticking out from his white undershirt and how his pot belly pushed his belt buckle against Odessa, whom he held tightly in his arms, his big hand splayed over her rounded bottom, beefy and dark against the shiny satin of her dress.

Tommy Lee asked himself a thousand times afterward why it was that he and Sam had decided the place to hide the quart of vodka was in a cabinet in Molly’s cottage. Why hadn’t they asked Sam’s older brother, who’d bought it, to hold on to it? Sam’s mother went through all his things because she was a snoop, and Tommy Lee’s mother did the same because she was a neat freak, so their own places were out. It was well known that Odessa didn’t hardly go near the kitchen, and Molly agreed to slip it in a bottom cabinet. Later on he wondered why they hadn’t simply slipped it under a bush somewhere.

There was no accounting for how young teens think, especially when prodded onward by older teens. The vodka was for the school Christmas dance, to spike the punch, on a dare from Red Stocker, a senior and the toughest guy in school. Tommy Lee took Molly to the dance, of course. She was living at the cottage, only for a couple of months, as he recalled. His dad drove him to pick her up because Odessa wouldn’t let Molly go in a car yet with him and Sam Ketchum, who had turned sixteen and gotten his license.