Love in a Small Town (27 page)

Of course that didn’t faze Mama, who went right on with, “You should just call him up and tell him how you feel. How you
really
feel, which is that you want to make up.”

“I can’t,” Molly said.

“Can’t and won’t are about the same thing,” Mama said and got up and left.

Molly called after her, “You’re one to be talkin’,” but that really was a weak retort, and really childish, too, which did nothing to help Molly’s poor mood.

Then, at the office, when the phone did ring, it was like a fire alarm, because Molly had switched it to the loudest setting to make certain she would hear it should she be in the bathroom when it rang. At her desk in Jaydee’s offices, Sophia yelped. Molly started for the phone and realized she was carrying the pot in one hand and the cup in the other, hot coffee sloshing all over her hand. Phone ringing, Molly crying, “Yeow!” and shoving pot and cup onto the counter, patting a napkin on her hand as she sprinted across the hall and to her desk, tripping on the chair she’d left pushed out and answering breathlessly.

Hearing Sam’s voice, it took her a moment to bring her mind around that it wasn’t Tommy Lee.

“Oh, hello, Sam.” Then Molly lowered her voice and carried the telephone as far as the cord would reach across to the door. Sophia was watching from her desk with a stretched-out ear. Molly pushed the door closed with her hip.

Sam asked her to lunch, and when she declined, he asked her to supper. Slowly lowering herself into her chair, Molly gripped the receiver and told him she didn’t think it was a good idea for them to go on seeing each other.

“The truth of it is that it’s more than friendship between us, and there just isn’t room for that right now.”

It occurred to her that she sounded overly dramatic, and she had an instant of feeling silly. It was possible that she had misconstrued Sam’s kindness to her as something more.

But he said, “I’m in this, Molly. I don’t see how you can ignore that.”

His voice was sexy, like he could make it when he wanted to. Molly realized she was damp between her breasts—Sam’s tone was the sort that made a woman realize she had breasts.

She got ahold of herself. “Oh, Sam, I’m tryin’ to be honest with you. I’m confused enough with my marriage right now, without adding . . . well, whatever it is we would be adding. I have nothin’ to offer you. It wouldn’t be fair to you. . . . I’d just be usin’ you.”

“So, use me. I’m beggin’ for it.”

She swallowed, smiling and teary at the same time. “I can’t, Sam . . . and I don’t want to cause an argument between you and Tommy Lee.” Although she wasn’t certain Tommy Lee would argue over her.

“Too late,” Sam said.

“Too late?”

“Tommy Lee and I already had our fight, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

“You had a fight?” She shouldn’t feel excited. That was awful of her, she thought, trying to shove the emotion aside, even as she held her breath to hear details.

All Sam said was, “Just a bit of an argument. Nothin’ serious."

“Oh, Sam.” She rubbed her forehead. “I still can’t see you,” she said, the words squeezing out her throat.

“Okay. I can accept that . . . but I’m still here,” he said and hung up.

Molly replaced the receiver and sat there at her desk, staring at papers in front of her, hearing Sam’s voice. It was true, she thought. She could say no to Sam all the day long, but the fact was that he was still there, offering his warm eyes and strong hands and just about anything she may want from him. And her lonely heart knew it.

Her body began to melt with the thought, to seem to buzz and jingle and seep out her toes. She did not think she could stand to go on this way,
needing
something but uncertain as to the exact nature of the need. A yearning, that’s what it was.

Then, as she pondered this and tried to find a way to pacify the awful yearning, the telephone rang again.

Molly stared at it, actually doubting she had heard the ring. But it came again, and she jumped. Was it Sam again? What would she say to him? Maybe it was Tommy Lee.

She snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Molly, this is JoEllen Bloom, and Tommy Lee’s lost a bunch of accounts on his computer, and he’s drivin’ me crazy.”

JoEllen’s speech pattern was to string all of her sentences together with hardly a breath. She was always in a hurry. As the owner, installer, and maintenance person for the local computer store, which she’d opened after she’d retired from the air force, she was kept busy. She said it was working all of her life with computers that made her go racing through her days.

Molly, gripping the receiver, listened as JoEllen said that she couldn’t get out to help Tommy Lee today because she was in the midst of putting in a new system for Dr. Greene, who dealt with life and death and so of course had to come first.

“Tommy Lee has called me at least half a dozen times, and the last time he hollered so loud that standing next to me Eugenia jumped and threw files for three different patients all up in the air, and now their records are all screwed up, so I just hope none of them needed a heart transplant.”

Tommy Lee did get crazy over a computer. For someone so smart about any intricate mechanical thing, he was awfully dumb about using a computer. He’d taken lessons JoEllen offered when she set their system up, but he had never gotten very far. When working at the computer, he tended to get so wrought up that every muscle in his body got locked, except his knees, which he bounced at racing speed. He had ended up turning all computer operation over to Molly, who appeared to have an innate ability for working a computer. She talked to it, as if it were a human intelligence at her disposal. This drove Tommy Lee wild. He would walk out of the room when she did that.

“I know about you two,” JoEllen said in a low tone, as if it were a secret, “but, Lord, Molly, he’s drivin’ me crazy, so do you suppose you could go help him?”

Molly cleared her throat. “I’ll go see what I can do.” She went to the rest room and freshened her makeup, combed her hair. She started to dab on Chanel, told herself to stop it, then dabbed quickly down her bosom. Out on the road she turned the El Camino’s air-conditioning on full blast and willed herself not to sweat.

She made herself slow down for Eulalee Harris's chickens wandering all over the road. At the entry to her own drive, she stopped, the memory of her and Tommy Lee’s fight coming back and causing her to sink. She checked herself in the mirror and applied fresh lipstick. Her hand was shaking. Then she went on down the drive and pulled the El Camino to a stop in front of the garage doors, beside Tommy Lee’s old green pickup. Jake came to greet Molly as she went to the back steps. “Hello, fella.” She let her fingers linger in the thick fur at his neck.

Tommy Lee was in the office. She heard his cursing as she entered the house. Suddenly he came storming out and almost knocked her down. Upon seeing her, his eyes went wide.

Molly said, “JoEllen called. She said you’re havin’ computer problems."

He stared at her. His bottom lip had a small scab— and there was a bruise by his eye!

Had he and Sam come to blows? Sam hadn’t said that. Molly wasn’t going to ask. She dropped her gaze. “I’ll go in and take a look at it,” she said and slipped around him, hurrying through to the office.

She sat in the chair, heard Tommy Lee’s footsteps, the swish of his jeans as he came behind her. She smelled the scent of him. Her pulse beat hard, and all of her body listened for his touch.
Just touch me, Tommy Lee.

The computer blinked at her: bad or missing command interpreter.

Molly said, “What happened?”

“Hell, I don’t know. If I knew what happened, I would have corrected it.”

Tommy Lee guessed reading the instruction manual was his first mistake. Using the damn machine at all was his first mistake. Pencil and paper didn’t have to be plugged in, and he’d long ago mastered the use of them. He shifted from foot to foot and looked downward at Molly’s shiny, silky hair. At the creamy skin of her softly rounded shoulders showing below the curve of the sleeveless dress. He imagined putting his hand there, slipping his thumb beneath the fabric of the dress.

“Well, what accounts were you workin’ with?” Molly asked. “I sort of need a place to start.”

He shifted his stance again. “Uh . . ."

He pulled over the invoices he’d been working with. His arm brushed her shoulder, and he jumped slightly. Maybe she wouldn’t want him touching her. He didn’t want to show he cared. He wasn’t the one who had walked out.

“These. I thought I’d just post ‘em up, but I saved them in the wrong place. I found ‘em, but, well, hell, I don’t know what happened.”

There was no way he could explain what he’d done. He felt foolish. The entire situation, Molly right there under his nose after all they had said to each other yesterday, acting like nothing was wrong, was confusing. He had no idea what he should do,
what he should feel.

Molly started typing. “I told you I would go on takin’ care of the business records.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. Her saying that annoyed him, as did her being able to get the machine to work. As he watched, she typed as if she knew exactly what to type, and the screen changed. He turned and went into the kitchen and got a can of Coca-Cola from the refrigerator, wandered around the kitchen for a minute. He didn’t want to watch her work the computer when he had such trouble with it. That did not seem the correct nature of things.

It struck him that he was glad she was there. Almost glad enough to cry, which shook him considerably.

Then suddenly Molly cried, “Oh! Tommy Lee . . . oh!”

He sprinted for the office. Molly was dancing around and hollering, “Fire! Fire!” in front of the computer, where a veil of smoke wafted out from the disk drive. “Oh, God—get the fire extinguisher,” she yelled and dashed through the door.

One long stride, and Tommy Lee pulled the desk away from the wall, reached down, and jerked the computer’s plug out of the receptacle. Then he had to grab the extinguisher from Molly before she soaked foam all over everything. “It’s okay now.” The smoke had faded to a dying spiral slithering out of the disk drive.

“Oh, my goodness,” Molly said, shaking.

“It was just a little smoke,” Tommy Lee said, feeling on firm ground once more. Mechanical breakdowns he could handle. He took her hand. “Here . . . sit down. Are you okay?” Molly had gone white as the wall.

"It just surprised me is all. Whoever thought a computer would catch fire?”

“It’s electrical. Anything electrical can catch fire. But you never spray it with anything wet, at least not until it’s unplugged.”

“I know . . . you’ve told me. I just got so jangled. Fire just scares me.”

“Bein’ scared is better than bein’ unprepared,” Tommy Lee allowed. People who lived as far as they did from a fire department were trained by circumstances to have a healthy fear of fire. They kept fire extinguishers handy and taught the kids early how to use them.

For a few minutes they both stared at the now innocent-looking disk drive. Tommy Lee wondered aloud if he’d done it, but Molly said she didn’t think so.

“I really don’t think you can get a computer to start on fire by getting the software all messed up. Maybe it was having problems and that’s why you got all messed up."

Then they were gazing at each other. Her eyes were very green in the light of the office, her skin soft looking, her lips moist.

The next instant, so quickly Tommy Lee took a half step backward, Molly got to her feet and started gathering up the invoices and files, saying she would take it all down and update everything on her office computer. “If you’ll carry it out to my car, I’ll take the computer in for JoEllen to repair.”

The wall between them had crumbled for an instant, but it was firmly in place once again, Tommy Lee thought as he lifted the machine and carried it out to the El Camino. He had just shut the car door when Molly came out of the house. They stood looking at each other, squinting in the hot sun.

Then Molly said, “I’m sorry about the other day, Tommy Lee. I said things that I didn’t really mean.” Her eyes looked sad and earnest.

“I know. I did, too.” That seemed too little to offer, so he added, “Thanks for comin’ out to try to help me today.”

There, with his hands stuffed into his pockets, gazing into her luminous green eyes, his entire body sort of leaned toward her, without moving a fraction. Then she was tucking her hair behind her ear and moving away from him, murmuring, “Well, I’d better get back. I have the monthly taxes to take care of.” He watched her earring sway as she ducked into the car seat.

He let her go, stood there and watched the El Camino disappear into the road dust, feeling his heart sort of settle like the dust did, all parched and desolate.

Tommy Lee didn’t know why he didn’t ask her to stay.

A big part of him was afraid she would say no. He thought that if she had wanted to stay, she would have. Maybe she wanted him to ask her to stay, but he didn’t think he ought to have to ask.

Turning, he swung his fist down hard on the hood of his old green pickup.

* * * *

Molly told herself that her marriage was over. She told herself to be practical. To look the thing in the face and accept it. There was no way to revive the marriage, so the quicker she let it go, the quicker she would be over the pain.

At the office, she turned the telephone ringer back to low and let the answering machine pick up. At the cottage, she put the telephone in the refrigerator. She told herself she wouldn’t speak to Tommy Lee if he begged her. They were simply too far apart now. They had not been able to scale the wall that afternoon, and she didn’t see that they ever would. She was going to put him behind her and walk on.

Yet, she never could bring herself to take her wedding ring off her finger, and stubborn, painful, annoying hope simply would not die. Hope appeared to be like the flu virus and would simply have to run its course, she told herself.
Hope springs eternal.
Who was it to first say that? Whoever did say it probably meant it more as a threat than a positive point.