Love in a Small Town (16 page)

“Where were you today when Savannah was tryin’ to call you?” he asked suddenly, jarring her from her thoughts.

“Out riding.”

She wondered why he was looking at her like he was, with his blue eyes so intense as to bore into her.

She said, “I really don’t think I have to be by the phone every minute just in case Savannah might call.” She felt guilty, though.

“Have you found someone else? Is that what this is all about?”

His question so surprised her that she couldn’t say anything for several seconds. She almost laughed, and then she got annoyed.

“No, of course I haven’t found anyone else. And that is not what this is all about. This is about you and me and what’s happened between us. And it’s about me trying to figure out my feelings. I need space, and I’m givin’ you space.”

Tommy Lee said, “Maybe I don’t want space.”

His expression was stubborn and angry. Hateful. Molly gazed at him and her stomach quivered.

She swallowed and then said, “Well, what do you want, Tommy Lee?”

His jawline tightened, and he stared down into the glass he held with both hands. Molly’s gaze went over his strong shoulders and slipped down his sinewy arms to his calloused hands holding the glass. She thought that she could stand there as long as he could sit there looking at that stupid glass.

“God, I don’t know,” he admitted finally.

He raised his gaze to hers. His blue eyes were glistening, despairing.

Molly breathed deeply, then went over and lowered herself into a chair at the table. She was at once relieved and disappointed as she had ever before been.

After a long minute, she said, “I don’t know what I want, either. I don’t feel like I know who you are, and I certainly don’t know who I am. Lord, I hardly know
where
I am these days.”

They sat there, Tommy Lee on his stool and Molly over at the table. Molly wished Tommy Lee would say something, but she doubted he was going to. For all of their twenty-five years, it most generally ended up being Molly who talked. Right that moment jumbled words were pushing up from her chest, and she kept swallowing them back down. She wasn’t certain they would make any sense, and besides, she felt that all of her talking during the years had not kept them from getting to this strange place. Maybe a change would help. Her not talking would really be a change, and maybe it would give Tommy Lee some of his own medicine.

It occurred to her that her attitude was a poor one, certainly less than positive. But it was what she truly felt. And she really did think she needed to learn to be quiet and to listen. She had tried before to do this, with the result that she had always seemed to end up listening to Tommy Lee’s silences.

Tommy Lee remained staring silently at the glass in his hand. Molly had the urge to go over and knock it winding. Then pity fell all over her. He looked so sad, and he couldn’t manage to speak of it.

Picking up the duffel bag and files, she quietly left. She thought to herself that now she had left her husband twice.

* * * *

Tommy Lee finished the tequila in his glass and then went to drinking out of the bottle. He got choked with the first gulps and took smaller swigs. After a bit, he decided the tequila was starting to taste quite good.

He took the bottle out onto the front porch and sat on the top step. Jake came to join him. It was a bit pleasant at first, just sitting there drinking, and he talked to the dog a bit.

“Where you been, buddy? It must be nice, roamin’ around all day and comin’ home at night, knowin’ you’re gonna get fed.”

Jake laid his head in Tommy Lee’s lap, and Tommy Lee stroked it. “I bet you’ve been out screwin’ the ladies.”

Jake looked up at him, and Tommy Lee thought he looked a little guilty.

“You’re gettin’ pretty old,” he told the dog, stroking the dog’s white muzzle. “How is it for a dog gettin’ old? You probably don’t even know it. Well, let me tell you, people know it. One day a man wakes up and sees there’s a whole lot of dreams he’s never gonna get done. Hell, he wakes up and realizes he forgot all his dreams.”

He drank more from the bottle and then said to the dog, “I like talkin’ to you, buddy, but it would be better if you could talk back.”

Pushing to his feet, Tommy Lee stumbled on the top step but caught himself before falling. His head was spinning. He had apparently lost what little tolerance for liquor he had ever had, which struck him as a money-saving proposition. He could be a cheap drunk.

He decided to call Sam, but he didn’t know the number, so he had to find the address book. He found it buried on his desk and took it into the living room, where he sat in his BarcaLounger. He had some difficulty finding Sam’s number and then in dialing. He mistakenly got a man who was highly annoyed. Tommy Lee apologized profusely, but the man hung up on him with a loud reverberating click.

Carefully, he dialed again. As the ringing sounded across the line, he wondered if he had dialed incorrectly again and held the phone an inch from his ear, just in case. He tried to figure out what time it would be in Santa Fe. He had scooted up on the edge of the chair, and just as Sam answered, his elbow slid off his knee, and he almost dropped the phone.

“You
sound soused,” Sam said.

“I think I am,” Tommy Lee said. “But not too bad.”

“What’s happened?”

“How do you know somethin’ happened? Maybe I’m just callin’ to shoot the shit.”

“Not you. You’re afraid of phones.”

“I am not afraid of phones,” Tommy Lee insisted. "I don’t like them a lot. I find them annoying. But that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of them. Who in the hell would be afraid of a phone?”

“I wasn’t insultin’ you, buddy. Everyone has fears. I’m afraid of garbage disposals myself—they make my skin crawl, ever since I saw a movie where the bad guys stuck the good guy’s hand in one and turned it on. I can’t remember the movie or the actors, but I sure never forgot that scene with that guy gettin’ his hand chewed up. Geez, it makes my skin crawl just to talk about it. Darlene got real aggravated at me when I wouldn’t let her put a garbage disposal in our kitchen. That was one of the things she cited at the divorce."

“I saw that movie. Maybe it was a
Rockford Files
show. Darlene used that in the divorce?”

“She used it as one of my strange idiosyncrasies, showin’ why I was such a bad husband,” Sam said. “So—why are you soused?”

Tommy Lee sighed deeply. “I guess because the tequila is here . . . and Molly isn’t.”

“What? Has somethin’ happened to Molly?” Sam’s voice came loud across the line.

“She left me.” He was sort of embarrassed to say it, but Sam was his best friend. Sam would understand.

“Geez,” Sam said after a few long seconds, “I can’t hardly believe that.”

“Well, it’s true. I wouldn’t lie about it.”

“I know that,” Sam said. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Why would you think I did something?”

“Because I don’t think Molly would just leave you.”

“Well, she did. She broke our wedding dishes and said she was goin’ to Hestie’s cottage and walked out.”

“That sure doesn’t sound like Molly.”

“Well, she’s changed,” Tommy Lee told him emphatically. He was the wounded party in this, and he wanted Sam to know it.

“The cottage isn’t so far,” Sam said. “When did this happen?”

“Saturday. We had sort of an argument. . . . Well,  we’ve been havin’ a sort of argument for a while.” Tommy Lee sat back in the chair and rubbed a hand over his face.

“What have you been arguin’ about?”

“God, I don’t know.” He reached for the tequila bottle and held it by the neck. “You know—life.”

Sam said he was awfully sorry. “I imagine she’ll come back when she calms down.”

“Maybe,” Tommy Lee said.

“I know this is tough for you, buddy,” Sam said. “I’ve been in that place before, and it’s tough.”

“I always thought you were glad when you split with each one of your wives.” Tommy Lee halfway resented Sam saying he had been in the same place. Sam had never been married longer than two years at a time, which was nowhere near Tommy Lee’s place.

“Well, I was sort of relieved, I guess,” Sam said. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t tough. And Darlene got a whole hunk of my income. That was tough.” He paused, then added, “Molly isn’t like that, though. You won’t have that problem."

Tommy Lee felt sick at the thought of divorce legalities. How would they possibly split things up? The attic alone would take five years to go through.

Then Sam said in a low voice, “She didn’t find out, did she . . . about that time when you were in Charleston?”

Tommy Lee swallowed. “That was a long time ago and forgotten.”

“I’m sorry, T.L. . . . really sorry. Sometimes I say things before I think. God, things just seem to be goin’ too fast for me these days. It’s just hard to imagine . . . you and Molly not together.”

Tommy Lee laid his head back and squeezed his eyes closed. Tears slipped out and ran down his cheeks. He was sure glad Sam couldn’t see him. He couldn’t talk because he didn’t want Sam to know he was crying.

He choked back the lump in his throat and looked at the tequila bottle he balanced on his leg. Then he told Sam about the macho feeling that came over him when he held a tequila bottle by the neck. Tommy Lee could tell Sam things like that. Sam said he knew that feeling and that it was one of the reasons he liked to drink long-neck beers. Tommy Lee felt a little less lonely. He’d been hesitant to call Sam, afraid he might feel stupid, even with his best friend, but now he was really glad he had called.

He was feeling so close to Sam that he said, “It’s sure lonely in this big house."

“I hear that,” Sam said. “My place isn’t too big, but sometimes it echoes.”

“I always sort of thought you preferred being single. At least you don’t have to be tryin’ to please someone all the time. You can do what you want.”

“That gets a little old,” Sam said, and something in his voice touched Tommy Lee.

“Maybe I’ll come out to see you for a few days,” he said, grasping at the idea. “We can cut up. Have it like old times.

“You come on, buddy. You’re always welcome here. You know that.”

“Well, I might.” But the idea was already losing its shine. He was thinking about the two engines he had waiting in the shop; and he really didn’t want to go anywhere. It kind of frightened him to think of leaving home. If he left, he may never get back with Molly.

He and Sam talked a little longer—mostly Sam did the talking, about old times and the young woman who had her own plane and Tanya Tucker, who had come into his shop and bought a pair of earrings.

Tommy Lee didn’t want to let Sam off the phone, but he couldn’t think of a lot to say, and then Sam was gone. Tommy Lee sat totally alone in the BarcaLounger, holding the tequila bottle, while the memory he didn’t want came pushing and shoving itself forward, as if floating up through the layers of the years.

“So you slipped up,” Sam had told him back all those years ago. “It didn’t mean anything, and the worse thing you can do is tell Molly. You’ll be doin’ it to ease your conscience, and in the process you’ll make Molly have to pay for your mistake with a broken heart. Don’t do that to her. You just live with it, and forget it, if you can.”

Sam had been pretty put out with him, which had made Tommy Lee feel even worse, if that was possible. He had not expected Sam to condemn him, although Sam was Molly’s friend, too, and sometimes pretty protective of her. Tommy Lee had felt so badly, he’d asked Sam to punch him, but Sam had looked shocked and told him not to be crazy.

Tommy Lee had tried to forget, and mostly he had succeeded. Sam had been right. The mistake was his to live with, and there would be no good in making Molly have to live with it, too. But sometimes he suspected she knew.

He’d been out on the circuit for two months with the racing team. Been staying for three days at the Holiday Inn in Charleston, and of all nights for her to call, Molly had called that fateful night he had gone crazy and slept with Josey Hightower. At least that’s what he thought her name was; he had so completely blocked the shameful incident from his mind that he was no longer exactly certain of what the woman’s name was.

“Tommy Lee?” Molly had said his name in a questioning way, but she hadn’t asked the name of the woman who had answered the phone.

Tommy Lee had told her, though. “That was just Josey . . . you know, the woman I told you who manages the payroll and everything.” He held the receiver with his shoulder while he slipped into his jeans. “A few of the guys are here . . . you know, havin’ a few beers. It’s rainin’ like crazy outside. Nothin’ to do. You know.”

As he said that, he went over to turn up the television. On the bed, Josey was propped up on the pillows. She had the sheet tucked up beneath her arms, flattening her little breasts, and was lighting a cigarette. Suddenly Tommy Lee wondered who she was and how she came to be in his bed. She was about fifteen years older than him, and suddenly she really looked it, and hard, too, where only minutes before he’d thought she was really pretty.

After he’d hung up with Molly, he put on his shirt and boots and told Josey that he was going out. He didn’t remember now what she had said, if she said anything. He remembered her blowing smoke into the air. He stayed out the rest of the night, sat in a booth at the 76 truck stop across the street, smoking Camels and drinking about a gallon of coffee and wishing some crazed trucker would come in and shoot him. There had recently been an incident like that at a truck stop near Houston, where a trucker had gone crazy on amphetamines and blasted out windows with a shotgun, killing several people in the process. Tommy Lee kept looking out the window for any mean-looking trucker carrying a gun, or even a club, but all he saw were tired faces.

When he finally got up the nerve to go back to his motel room—at dawn, and he figured Josey would be gone—he picked a fight with a trucker coming in the door as he was going out, hoping to get the shit kicked out of himself, but the guy was an easygoing bear of a man and simply laughed and held the door and waved Tommy Lee through. Tommy Lee had thought that incident showed the hand of God intent on making him feel even more guilty.