Love in a Small Town Read Free

dishes for years.”
    “I know that, Molly,” he said, his blue eyes sharp. “But plates are one thing and a glass is another. We put our mouths on the glasses.”
    “I do wash them, Tommy Lee, same as the plates. I put them in the dishwasher and that sterilizes them."
    By now Ace had quit sticking his head in the glass and had gone to wetting his paw in the bit of milk and licking it. Jake had lain back down.
    “It’s still not a sanitary practice. I just don’t like the thought, okay?” Tommy Lee said, as if his word was to be obeyed.
    Molly lifted the glass and straightened, and she said, “When you eat at a restaurant, you put the fork all the way into your mouth—a fork that you know not in whose mouth it has been or even if it has been properly cleaned. I should think if you’re willing to do that, you’d have very little problem with drinking out of a glass you can be certain has been through the dishwasher after an animal has licked it.”
    Tommy Lee shook his head and looked down at the part he was wiping with a rag.
    Molly clamped her mouth shut and took the dishes and went back to the house. As she opened the porch screen door, she heard the music start up again, with a blast, as if to smack her back into the house. Like an invisible door slammed against her.
    In retaliation, she marched over and turned up the volume of the little radio on the kitchen counter. Then she stared at all the dirty dishes, in the sink and out of it, and heard her mother-in-law’s voice: “I’ve always believed that a woman should get her kitchen straight before bed . ”
    That was a good idea that Molly had let slide a number of years ago, when she started keeping the books for Tommy Lee’s shop and then somehow had found herself with her own full-fledged business. She simply had never been able to keep the house as orderly as her mother-in-law had, as orderly as Tommy Lee would like.
    With resignation she began rinsing the dishes in the sink and putting them into the dishwasher. A dark line on one of the plates caught her eye, and she paused, gazing at it. The plate was one of the set her mother had bought for them up at the old TG&Y store in Oklahoma City when she and Tommy Lee had gotten married. The plates were cream colored, with a black-and-yellow line and a single spray of yellow daisies around the rim of each plate and cup. There were only three of them left, and the dark line on this one was where it had been broken and glued back together. Staring at that line, Molly counted back the years and thought maybe she should send a letter of testimony to the makers of Super Glue.
    She thought, too, how the plate was a reflection of her marriage.
    The next instant, she lifted that plate and smacked it on the divider of the white enamel sink.
    Sounded like a ball going through a window. Molly scrunched her eyes as tiny pieces of china peppered her face and flew into the air and out across the counter and down on the floor. The bigger pieces clattered into the sink.
    Molly was shocked. She stared at the shards.
    Goodness! What had she done?
    Mortification crept in. It simply wasn’t done breaking an innocent plate, no matter that it had a glue line. It certainly wasn’t done by Molly Jean Hayes, mother of three grown children, certified public accountant, and upstanding member of both the chamber of commerce and Methodist church. The action was destructive, wasteful . . . and possibly a little deranged.
    But by golly the reckless act felt so darn good that she did it twice more with the two yellow daisy plates remaining in the sink. Lifted the plate and brought it down, felt the impact and the disintegration, and heard all the shattering, then did it again.
    There. She supposed she could break a few dishes in her lifetime if she wanted to.
    Breathing as hard as if she’d run a mile, Molly stared at the broken china. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Turning, she went to the pantry, brought back a broom