Love in a Small Town (35 page)

Was that why she had kept after all those men? Was feeling the black sheep of the family what made her continually sink her own chances for happiness—because she felt unworthy? Why would Rennie feel unworthy? Why would she feel any less than the rest of them? They’d all had it tough . . . . Look at Kaye, she didn’t feel unworthy. She thought she was God’s gift to the world, no matter the evidence to the contrary. Then there was Season, with her depressions . . . and Lillybeth didn’t trust men. Actually she hated men. And there was Molly herself, who so much of the time felt a heavy dread that she never quite understood. Finding out the why of any of it would take a lifetime, and probably wouldn’t be of much help, either. Walk on, Mama said. Mama was an example that doing so worked.

Oh, I love you, Rennie.
Molly looked around the table.
Oh, I love you all.

It was one of those moments that struck a person, one that brought with it no particular understanding and yet an understanding beyond words. Molly got up and began clearing dishes, moving in and out between the chairs, refreshing coffee, touching each one, feeling glad for the moment and tucking it away in her heart.

Later, when she got a moment alone in the kitchen with Kaye—the others were upstairs in Rennie’s bedroom looking through old photographs—she said, “I want to thank you for what you’ve given Rennie today, Kaye. You might not realize it, but she was terrified you were going to criticize her, blame this thing with Eddie Pendarvis all on her. She has been blaming herself, you know.”

Kaye looked surprised. “Why would I do that? Good Lord, you both must think me an ogre.” Her bottom lip sort of quivered.

“No!” Molly said quickly, startled at seeing that bottom lip. “It’s just that you and Rennie often clash . . . and well, she needed you so much right now, and you came through. I just wanted you to know what it means to her. It means the world, Kaye.”

“Oh.” Kaye turned abruptly away, went and shut the back door, saying, “Mama keeps this house too darn hot. I’m turnin’ on the cooler.”

Then she was just standing there, looking at Molly. “I know I can be harsh sometimes,” she said, and right in front of Molly’s eyes she seemed to wilt. “I know I criticize. It’s just that I have standards, you know, and it seems like no one keeps standards anymore. Look at the
world,
Molly!” Then, eyes straight on Molly’s, she said coolly, “Walter is havin’ an affair.”

Molly could not have been more surprised if Kaye herself had said she was having an affair.

“Oh, Kaye.” She didn’t think she wanted to hear this. Oh,
why
did everyone insist upon confiding in her? Kaye’s bottom lip had begun to quiver again.

“I know I criticize him,” Kaye said, “and he’s found someone who hangs on his every word.” She kept her chin up, but her bottom lip continued to quiver dangerously.

“Maybe you’re mistaken. Not Walter. I don’t believe it.” Now that she thought of it, Molly could not believe it. “I imagine you saw something that looked suspicious but is truly nothin’ at all. Have you asked him about it?”

“I heard it, Molly. I picked up the extension in the bedroom to call Murlene, and Walter was on the telephone with Fayrene Gardner. They didn’t hear me because Fayrene’s voice—you know how it is.”

“Fayrene Gardner from the cafe?” She simply could not believe it.

“Yes. She was complimenting him on what a man he is and how he made her feel so much a woman. She said she couldn’t wait to see him again.”

Ohmygod,
Molly thought. A shocking image of Walter in bed with a woman flashed through her mind and she chased it out. Before her face Kaye was holding on and crumbling at the same time. “Oh, Kaye.” Molly stepped forward to embrace her sister, but Kaye’s stance caused her to drop her arms. “What are you goin’ to do?” she asked.

Kaye’s bottom lip quit quivering. “I went to Fayrene and I told her that I was not about to throw twenty-one years of marriage down the drain. That I would tell her husband and would broadcast her indiscretion all over town, and when I saw her out anywhere I would attack her and snatch her bald and that she would never know a moment’s peace from me.”

“Oh, Kaye.” Molly could imagine all of it. Kaye was like everyone, weak in some areas, strong in others, and where she was strong, she was granite.

“I know a lot of people may not think that Walter is much.”

“Oh, Kaye . . . Walter is a fine man.”

“I know that people think I henpeck him and that he is weak, and in a way, in the
world’s
way, maybe that is so. But we are not of this world, Molly. The Bible says so. Walter has loved me, and he is my world. And Fayrene is right—he is so much more a man than anyone realizes. He’s strong enough to love me. Only brave people can love, Molly.”

“Oh, Kaye.” Molly felt reduced to that one phrase. She did think, as she hadn’t before, that it would take a strong man to love Kaye. She began to see in Walter someone she had never seen before.

“Well,” Kaye said, quite matter-of-factly, “I’m going to hang on to him and
make
him glad to have me.”

Molly gave herself over and went to embrace her sister, but Kaye stood woodenly and after a minute, Molly let go.

“I will hold my head high, no matter who knows, but I would prefer that you didn’t tell the others,” Kaye said and left the room, head still high.

When Molly thought about it, she couldn’t recall a time she had ever seen Kaye cry. And thinking about that, Molly began to cry, feeling both despair and a strange happiness. She went home to the cottage so no one would hear her cry, and when she had stopped, she called Tommy Lee and chatted with him about almost nothing.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” she told him.

After she hung up with him she called each of her children and told them about Rennie and asked them what was going on in their lives. After that she was too exhausted to think and fell asleep with Ace on her stomach.

Sometime later Tommy Lee called and woke her and asked if she wanted to go to supper and a movie. Of course she said yes.

“No pressure,” Tommy Lee said. “Let’s just forget everything for a while and have a nice time.”

And of course she said yes to that, too. Tommy Lee didn’t know it, but she was in the mood to say yes to everything he said.

She hung up and sat with her hand still on the receiver, wondering why in the world she wasn’t at home with him. Kaye had said that she was going to
make
Walter glad to have her. How did she propose to do that, and why didn’t Molly see things in that light? Was it her pride? Why couldn’t she get herself straightened out?

She was certainly confused, but she did know one thing: If she'd been at home with Tommy Lee, he wouldn’t have called her for a date.

Chapter 24

Then Again

Molly was startled to realize she had gotten so preoccupied thinking about her date with Tommy Lee that she had clean forgotten about the horrible threat of Eddie Pendarvis. The sound of a car driving into the yard reminded her. Visions of a man jumping out of a vehicle with a gun made her leave her makeup spread all over the bathroom sink and run to go look out the window.

Why, it was Sam, and he had parked on Mama’s side of the drive.

Gazing at him, Molly thought she should speak. That she was disheveled didn’t matter. She
had
to speak to him, and wondering exactly what she would say, she hurried out the back door to catch him.

At her call, he turned. Barefoot, she stayed on the back step, arms wrapped around herself, while he came toward her, a cautious look on his face. She thought of how he used to come toward her with a happy, expectant look on his face.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you did for us last night, Sam.” His eyes jumped, an odd look. “It was very kind of you to come with Tommy Lee and help bring us home.”

“Oh . . . it wasn’t anything.” He was looking in the vicinity of her chin.

“I’m glad you and Tommy Lee worked things out,” she said earnestly. She was so very glad; she didn’t want to carry the guilt of having broken up a rare, lifelong friendship.

“We never have stayed mad long, I guess.” His eyes seemed to drift up and meet hers. They were sad, yet intent. She found herself saying, “I loved your roses. I really did.”

He didn’t say anything.

Molly said, “I . . . well, if things weren’t as they are, I would have kept them.”

His sad eyes gazed at her intently, and the understanding passed between them. She hadn’t taken his heart for granted. She cared, he cared . . .
another time, another place.

“Do you think we can get back to bein’ the friends that we were?” Molly asked. Searching his eyes, she thought maybe she shouldn’t have asked that. Maybe there wasn’t an answer for that.

Then suddenly Sam bent and brushed his lips across hers in a kiss that was light yet intimate.

Trembling, Molly made a smile for him. When he smiled in return, hers became real, smiles to let go and accept.

“You’re goin’ in to see Rennie?”

“Thought I might.”

They looked at each other again.

“Well . . . I’m glad.” She told herself that she really was.

He went off, and she watched him a moment and felt a little peculiar. Rather like closing a door and wondering if she had forgotten something just on the other side. Molly decided on the chambray dress Lillybeth had given her, a bra but
no
panties—ohmygosh, but it was her little intimate secret fun!—her new shoes with the ribbons tied up around her legs, hair pulled back loosely because she would be riding in the Corvette, silver earrings, Chanel dabbed between her breasts. The perfume sort of dribbled with the perspiration there. Molly stood in front of the fan to dry herself. At the last minute, when she heard the unmistakable sound of Tommy Lee’s Corvette coming down the drive, she slipped on the bangle bracelets Rennie had left on the dresser. In the past Molly never had felt she could wear bangle bracelets, but she really thought she could now.

From the kitchen window, she saw Tommy Lee stop the Corvette, saw him smooth his hair with both hands and then unfold himself out of the car. He wore his azure blue sport shirt, long sleeves, cuffs turned up like he preferred, showing his strong wrists. For him, it was dressed up. He was so handsome in that shirt!

Molly pushed from the sink, grabbed her small purse, and ran to the back door to meet him. His eyes jumped when he saw her, and then he told her she looked nice. His blue eyes were shining and all for her. She told him he looked nice and let her eyes shine all for him.

He had brought her a present!

It was in a small box with a red satin ribbon. The way the ribbon was tied, she knew he had done it. She opened it, there, on the step. A set of wind chimes. They were brass pipes and calibrated for certain tones, so beautiful that Molly kept looking at them and saying, “Thank you, oh,
thank
you.”

Here she had run off from him and he was having to make his own meals and pick up after himself, and he had given her a rose bush and wind chimes. She held up the chimes and jiggled them, delighting in the sound.

“They’re door chimes,” Tommy Lee said. “You hang them where they jingle when you open the door.”

He was gazing at her. . . as if she was a desirable woman. She looked back at him. No pressure, he had said.
“Just forget everything for a while and have a nice time.”
What a relief to do that, to not think that she
had
to know what to do,
had
to make a decision. She could let herself look at him, flirt with him . . . let decisions and doubt and fear just blow away.

Tommy Lee was driving down the road before they even settled on where to go for supper. He always did that. He couldn’t just sit behind the wheel of the car and wait until they decided where they were going. He had to
drive.

“Where are we goin’?” Molly asked.

“I don’t know. Where do you want to eat?”

“You’re drivin’.”

“What would you like to eat?”

He had no idea where he was going, but he was heading right on through town like he did.

“You’re drivin’,” Molly said. “You choose. You just drive, until we come to some place.”

He sort of slowed down. “I don’t know where,” he said.

“We’ll come to someplace.”

Forget everything .
. .
have a nice time.
Molly felt herself drifting upward on a beautiful balloon, cracking right through the clouds of dread. Tommy Lee kept glancing over at her, grinning, his eyes sparkling. As if he was glad to be with her. She felt so glad to be with him. Happiness just seemed to be wafting up around them. It was like in an old romantic movie, that’s what it was like.

So he kept driving, and they went all the way to the lake, where there was a little restaurant. Neither of them had been to the lake in years, and the restaurant had changed.

“What do you think?” Tommy Lee asked, looking doubtfully at the new restaurant. It was a strange place, and he didn’t much care for strange places.

“We should try it,” Molly said. She didn’t usually care for strange restaurants, either, but she thought she needed to get beyond that. She needed to get beyond a lot of things. “I’m really starving.”

The place turned out not to be a real restaurant but more or less a take-out place that served fried catfish and barbecue and hamburger baskets, with soft drinks in styrofoam cups. There were nice tables, though, out on a wooden deck at the edge of the lake. Molly wondered at the few people there, and when they began to eat, they discovered why. The food was awful, just awful.

“So much for trying a new restaurant,” Molly said, dumping their baskets into the trash; she wouldn’t even feed it to the ducks. She was still starving, and when she got hungry, her mood generally turned poor.

“I guess,” Tommy Lee said, and he looked so dejected that Molly tried to think of something to praise.

“It’s nice to sit out here . . . nice it isn’t crowded, either.”

“Are you still hungry?” Tommy Lee asked.