Love in a Small Town (28 page)

And then flowers came. Roses.

Fitch Grace delivered them, in the bright yellow Grace Florist van that he parked in the yard, in the fork where the driveway split between her mother’s big house and the cottage, as if he hadn’t been able to decide which driveway to take.

Molly was coming home from the office, and when she saw the van, the first thought to tumble through her mind was: Maybe Tommy Lee had sent flowers. Then she dampened that silly notion by thinking realistically that Mama had probably gotten flowers. Fitch Grace, the original owner of the flower shop who still worked in it part-time, said that it was Mama’s beaus who had kept him in business during his first twenty years. Mama still got a lot of flowers. Sometimes she would have a bouquet delivered to herself.

Nevertheless, Molly found herself holding her breath, the virus of foolish hope running rampant through her veins as she removed her sunglasses and got out of the El Camino. Fitch, carrying an
enormous
bouquet of red roses, came from around the back of Mama’s house. He peered around the big bouquet, as if through jungle ferns. He must not have remembered her because he said, “Are ya’ Molly Hayes?” as he came toward her with a rickety gait. The bouquet got bigger and bigger.

“Yes . . . yes, I am.” Molly stared at the mass of roses, crimson, just ready to bloom against the green leaves.
For me? Oh, my God.

“Nobody to home at either place, and I wadn’t sure where t’ leave ‘em. Here they are, fer Mol-ly Hayes.”

“Thank you.” She reached out and took the vase. Almost dropped it, and he helped her.

“Got it now? Want me to take it inside fer ya’?”

Molly shook her head. “No . . . I have it . . . thank you."

“Well, you’d better add a bit of water to ‘em. It’s a scorcher, ain’t it?”

“Yes . . . I will.”

The vase was cool to her hands; the fragrance of roses filled her nostrils. She went straight for the cottage, set the vase on the kitchen table. It was big. The entire arrangement was big. Grand. Roses.
Ohmygod.
Through the window she saw the van leave. Then she was gazing at the flowers again, heart beating like a wild thing. From Tommy Lee? Oh, my mercy.

She looked long at the note card sticking up on the plastic spear. Her name written there, but not in Tommy Lee’s hand. It might have been written by whoever had taken the order at the florist. She inhaled deeply, held her breath a second, opened the card.

Just want you to know I’m here.

Love, Sam

Written in his own hand, quite a jerky scrawl for someone who could draw beautiful pictures.
Love, Sam.

Molly sank slowly into the maple chair, dropped the hand holding the card into her lap, and gazed at the roses.

Oh . . .
oh!
Disappointment thick and heavy, but gladness poking at her, too. Flattered. Flattery could always be counted on.

The roses were beautiful . . . they really were. There was no way she could send them back. Florists didn’t take back flowers, and the scandal should she try! She couldn’t take them to Sam, either, because his feelings would be so hurt. It was wonderful that he had sent them. . . . It really was. She loved flowers. Wasn’t a woman on the earth who couldn’t be touched by flowers. Sam knew it. But Tommy Lee didn’t. Tommy Lee didn’t send them. Tommy Lee didn’t want to touch her.

“What happened to us, Molly?”

The roses reached out to her with their scent. She sat there staring at the mass of sweet fragrant crimson while the warm summer breeze stirred through the back door.

Rennie came and found her like that, sitting in the kitchen as the sun set and cast golden patches of light where it slanted through the back screen door. With her hand on the worn door pull, Rennie looked through the grayness of the screen and immediately her heart hit her shoes. She needed Molly now; she really did. Then she gathered herself and tried to find good sense.

“Hi, Sissy,” she said, opening the screen door with a shaking hand. She had been having too many cigarettes and too little food for the past few days. She made her voice light and gay, hoping she had been wrong about Molly’s mood.

Molly turned and gave a wan smile, and Rennie thought that at least it was a smile.

Then Rennie got a full view of the flowers. “Well, my gosh, roses! Aren’t you the lucky lady. Who sent them?” She leaned forward, inhaled their fragrance and felt their scent seep sweetly through her body.

Molly handed her the card. Rennie read it, looked at Molly, and raised and eyebrow. “So?” It all seemed awfully romantic to Rennie.

“So, I don’t know.” Molly pushed herself up and moved to the sink, began to make coffee.

Rennie said, “Well, it is wonderful to get roses.”

Rennie had received three bouquets of roses in her life. For a woman, at least an ordinary woman, not a movie star or some such rich celebrity who likely got bouquets every day of the week, each bouquet she received remained embedded in memory—and roses! Well, a woman held the count of the rose bouquets she received in her heart and each detail about them in her soul. Again Rennie was drawn to putting her nose to a blossom and inhaling. Ah . . . their scent was heady in the warm room.

The memories came: her first bouquet of roses from sweet Lyle Jennings, her beau in the tenth grade. Her second bouquet of roses Mama had given her upon graduating college. Her third bouquet, the grandest thing, thirty roses for her thirtieth birthday, from Jonathan Hart, the only man she had ever truly loved, and had let slip away. In between those times she had received a number of single roses, or roses with carnations, but those a woman didn’t keep as close a count on.

Rennie straightened and looked around at Molly, who was looking so sad that she made Rennie shake. “You haven’t heard from Tommy Lee yet, have you?”

Molly shook her head.

“But these came from Sam,” Rennie said encouragingly.

“Yes.”

Rennie was at a loss. If roses from a man could put Molly into such gloom, there didn’t seem to be anything puny words could say to help.

Then Molly was shaking her head. “It’s all my own fault with Tommy Lee.”

“Oh, please,” Rennie said, irritated. “Women always take the blame. Why can’t it be on him? Any relationship is fifty-fifty, Molly. You can’t take it all.”

Molly pressed back against the sink and looked at the flowers. “No, Rennie . . . relationships are rarely fifty-fifty. Sometimes they’re sixty-forty, and sometimes twenty-eighty, and sometimes one in the relationship has to give a lot more than one hundred percent. I was better equipped to understand and deal with our problem simply because I am a woman. Men . . . oh, Rennie, they have such a hard time with it all.”

She looked at Rennie. “Isn’t it funny how when you’re doin’ something, it’s really hard to see why you’re doin’ it? All you know is that you have to do it. That’s how I felt when I left Tommy Lee. . . . That’s how I’ve felt all these days. I told myself that I was setting us both free. Tommy Lee just didn’t seem to care about me anymore, so I was setting him free.

“I think now, deep down in my heart, I was countin’ that he’d miss me and realize how much he needed me and loved me. I wanted him to find that out on his own, because that’s the only way it’s really worth anything.” She spoke earnestly, knotting her fist.

Rennie went over and again put her arm around Molly. “It isn’t too late yet, Sissy. It’s only been just over a week. Men can be really slow, you know.”

“I don’t think so,” Molly said, shaking her head vehemently. “I think he found out something all right. He found out that he doesn’t need me, doesn’t want me. Oh, Rennie, I never should have left. That was a big mistake. It was just runnin’ away and leavin’ him wide open to be carried away by the part of him that really did want to break away . . . and by someone like Annette. Oh, Rennie, men can be so stupid about women. They just can’t see! I should have stayed and made myself indispensable to him.

made myself someone he did love.”

“You can’t make people love you, Sissy. Either they do or they don’t. You can’t be turnin’ yourself inside out, trying to be someone you’re not. But I do know that Tommy Lee has been crazy about you all these years.
You
. . . just as you are. And if you feel you’ve made a mistake, nothin’ is stoppin’ you from gettin’ in that car and drivin’ out there and movin’ right back in.”

“No," Molly said, shaking her head, her face all filled with despair. “No. I just can’t. I can’t go, knowin’ he doesn’t want me.”

Rennie felt helpless. She wished Molly would get straightened out because she had her own problems, and she needed Molly to help her have courage. Rennie felt really badly for feeling all of this. And she felt Molly sinking and herself going after her.

“Let’s go up to the cafe and get some fried chicken and onion rings,” she said.

* * * *

Tommy Lee lined up and hit the two and three and seven balls into pockets on the same shot. The two and three balls went into the same corner pocket, while the seven went into the side.

He had gotten so good at pool now that he could earn a living at it. He had returned to playing pool at Rodeo Rio’s every day around four o’clock, when the place was all but deserted. He did this partly because he was truly addicted to the game now. It was the only thing that seemed to fill his mind too full to think of Molly. And he did it partly because he wasn’t going to let the possible presence of Sam run him off. He figured he had as much right to be at Rio’s as Sam did—more, he guessed, because he hadn’t been the one to betray a best friend. The way Tommy Lee saw it, it was his duty to come into Rio’s and be an annoyance to Sam.

Sam had only shown up twice, though, and each time he hadn’t lingered. He’d spoken to Winn and gone back out again, never saying a word to Tommy Lee, which Tommy Lee considered remarkably intelligent on Sam’s part. It was a comfort to think he was keeping Sam from Rio’s.

Annette arrived for her night shift and came right over to him. “Do you want another beer?”

Tommy Lee pointed to his glass, said he still had some, and began racking the balls again. He didn’t look at Annette, but he knew that she looked at him before she went away and busied herself with whatever it was she had to do to get ready for later in the evening.

The one real complication with coming to Rio’s to enjoy pool and annoy Sam was Annette. She would push her big breasts out in front of his nose and touch him whenever she had the chance and simply just waft around him like a hot Gulf breeze. Tommy Lee would have had to admit to being a little flattered, but he was mostly nervous as a buck deer at hunting season. Being nervous struck him as being childish, so he set himself to ignore it.

After a while, Annette came over again, lit up a cigarette, and used the ashtray sitting on the table with his beer. She asked him if he wanted a steak, and he said he wasn’t too hungry and kept his eyes on the table.

Then she said, “Sam sent Molly two dozen red roses today.”

That made Tommy Lee look at her, in spite of himself. He quickly put his gaze back on the pool table and tried to figure out which ball he’d been thinking of shooting, while the words “Sam bought Molly roses” kept echoing around in his head.

Annette just stood there smoking and looking at him. Tommy Lee didn’t intend to enter into the conversation with her, but her saying something like that irritated him so much that he found himself saying, “You’re a wealth of information.” He hit the five ball with his cue; it missed the pocket.

“I just thought you ought to know,” Annette said. “My friend, Leanne, works at Grace Florist, and she told me. Mr. Grace only had half a dozen roses left when Sam ordered them, and Sam thought those were poor anyway, so he had Mr. Grace send a special truck to the market in Dallas and get what he wanted fresh. It cost a bundle, too.”

Tommy Lee couldn’t think of a thing to say to any of it and came to the conclusion he’d rather be silent. For about five minutes, Annette stood there, as if expecting something from him, and then she finally walked off, her hips swaying like a clock pendulum.

Tommy Lee kept hitting balls, kept lining up his shots and hitting the balls into the pockets. He moved with rhythm, like a machine,
crack crack
as the balls hit each other and
kerplunk kerplunk
as they fell into the pockets, never taking his gaze off the green felt of the table. When the table was empty, he fished out the balls, set them up, and went at it again, all with an economy of motion.

All of a sudden he looked up and saw that at least six people had gathered round to watch. “Man, you’re good,” one man said.

Tommy Lee put down his pool cue and walked away. Annette was at the cash register. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter as he passed.

“Tommy Lee.”

He stopped and turned. She leaned forward, giving him a good look.

“I’m sorry about you and Molly,” she said. “If you want company, I can get off . . . now, or any time. We don’t have to talk. Sometimes a person just needs another warm body around. No strings, either.”

Tommy Lee just shook his head. “Thanks anyway.” He went out, jumped into the Corvette, threw gravel as he peeled out of the lot, shifted hard, and went flying down the highway.

He drove and drove, and then he found himself driving past Aunt Hestie’s cottage and then back by it again. Molly’s El Camino wasn’t there the first time and was there the second time. He slowed down, gazing at the cottage with the faint glow of light showing in the windows. Then he pressed the accelerator and roared away.

Molly would have to get straight about Sam on her own, he thought. He wasn’t going to interfere. Molly was the one making her own choices. Besides, what could he do to top two dozen of the finest roses brought up from Dallas? Nothing. He wasn’t even going to try. He’d look foolish if he tried. He didn’t think he ought to have to try.

* * * *

“Wait a minute, Rennie!”

Molly took up the big vase of roses and hurried out the screen door after her sister. Her wrapped robe fell open and off one shoulder. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning. Rennie had stayed the night and was leaving early in order to get to her own home, shower, and change before she had to teach class.