Love Is Where You Find It

Part 5

Loretta expected more resistance than usually from the kids tonight, but somehow she ends up with the opposite. Maybe it's the food in their bellies or maybe they are sensing that today is not the day to give her a hard time. Loretta turns off the light and tiptoes out of the room, past her father and into the kitchen. The dishes are waiting in the sink. Loretta wrinkles her nose at them. She jumps upon hearing a deep chuckle behind her.

"You never liked doin' dishes," Ted says. "Remember when you'd hide them under the floor board just so you wouldn't have to do em."

"Hmm." She certainly does, but she doesn't want to think of that now, of the days when life was simple and doing the dishes amounted to a tragedy that might as well end her life.

"I'll help you," he offers.

Normally Loretta would argue, but she's too tired. She hands him a towel to dry what she has washed.

"Not gonna listen to the radio?" Ted asks. "Today's your country music hour from Seattle, ain't it?"

Warmth spreads through her because her daddy remembers. It's not enough to overshadow the sick anticipation though.

"Yes," she finally responds. The radio runs on batteries, just like the one at home used to. Loretta switches it on and finds the right channel. The country music hour has started already. Together they do the dishes and listen to the music; it's almost comfortable that way. They play that Kitty Wells song she likes- It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. Loretta admittedly never really understood what it's about but she knows that it's for the ladies and it was a number one hit just around the time she had Cissie.

But all too soon the dishes are done and country music hour doesn't last forever. She barely turned the radio off when her father asks, "How long since he's been gone?"

"A few weeks," Loretta says. The truth is that he's been gone for the entire year of 1957 thus far. He left sometime in between Christmas and New Years Day.

"You're not gonna stay here by yourself," her father declares in that tone she knows from her childhood. There is no arguing with him when he uses that tone.

"I won't."

She can't anyway. They're being evicted. That's not something to tell her daddy though. Loretta hates the way he is looking at her; the same way he'd look at her when she was a little girl and had done something very bad.

Like hiding dishes under the floor board.

When she married Doo, she broke her daddy's heart. When things got bad she tried to convince herself that she and Doo would love each other forever because she couldn't fathom the concept that it was all for naught.

"You gotta come to Indiana with me," Ted says.

"I can't," Loretta responds immediately. "I live here. My life's here."

"What do you have here? I can't leave you here all by your lonesome with them kids."

"I wouldn't be no better off in Indiana. I don't have no work there."

"I don't either," Ted says. She stops arguing because of the pain in his voice. She knows that her mommy is the one who is pretty much providing for the whole family now and it bothers her daddy.

"And that's why I can't come," Loretta says after a drawn out pause. "I don't wanna...you and mommy got three little girls and Donald Ray..."

"Girl, I ain't leavin' you here. I can't do that."

"Then stay a while." Loretta knows that she's grasping at straws. But she can't face her mommy and the humiliation, nor can she impose herself on her parents. They told her, repeatably, that it wouldn't work.