Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel)

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

  “I always had an idea that Amy was disappointed in me. She could see my father and my brothers and was really impressed, and she had these ideas of what could happen with her life attached to mine. But she began to see the truth of me a long time before my family or I could. Amy wanted a man who had a lot more ambition than I was ever going to have.”

  “Ambition for what?” Rainey asked, already forming her own ideas.

  “Oh, Amy wanted to host a lot of important parties with important people, and she pretty well figured out I wasn’t going to come up to that. She ended up marrying a senator. Biggest wedding I’ve ever seen. Governor came, and television news anchors. My mother was really disappointed not to be the mother of the groom at it.”

  She glanced over to see him thoughtfully popping Cracker Jack into his mouth. “You are tellin’ me that you have not had anyone in your life but this Amy?” Who sounded pretty much like a gold digger and not his type at all.

  “I’ve had dates…a couple of wild ones, too. But, no, Amy was the only one that might be considered important. So tell me about these fools who let you go.”

  She looked ahead at the beams of light on the road, then glanced over at him, seeing his face in the silver glow from the dashboard. The atmosphere lent itself to bringing things out of hidden places, sitting there as they had been for miles and miles, only a foot from each other in the dimly lit truck cab. Breathing the same air and hearing the same sounds. He regarded her patiently.

  “Robert was a lot like you,” she said, and his eyebrows went up.

  She thought about this for several seconds and shot another glance at him. “No, he wasn’t anything like you,” she said, revising her opinion.

  “Well, I think I’m relieved.”

  She said, “He liked fine things—watches, designer clothes, European sports cars…and blues. He liked blues and jazz.”

  “I probably don’t want to say this, but he had taste.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. If he had not, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.”

  “You did love him, then.”

  “Well, of course. I married him. I’m not somebody who would go around marryin’ somebody if I didn’t love him.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think you were.”

  She popped the rest of her handful of Cracker Jack into her mouth and focused on the road illuminated ahead. “Robert was very particular. It was never goin’ to work with us from the get-go. We were so very different,” she said, not wanting to sound critical of Robert.

  “Opposites attract, so they say.”

  “Well, they certainly did—at first, anyway. We were crazy for each other. But in the long term, we got annoyed with each other, too. I think he got disappointed before I did, and then I got disappointed that he was disappointed. I never could give Robert what he wanted.” She sighed. “I guess I was pretty much of an embarrassment to him.”

  “An embarrassment?” he asked, holding the Cracker Jack bag toward her again. “Couldn’t be. He had to be a foolish fellow.”

  She dug out another handful of caramel corn. “I’m so glad you are so much on my side.”

  He almost grinned.

  “Robert’s sophistication was what I liked about him in the beginnin’. He was a such a contrast. Physically he looked rough, but he dressed and talked very suave. He knew exactly what to say, what wine to order, drove a Mercedes and read all these highbrow books. I met him in my first year of college, so I was all impressionable and everything, naturally.”

  “Very naturally. And you were perfect to stoke his low self-esteem.”

  She glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “Sorry. Sometimes the stuff I learned in therapy just naturally comes out.”

  She inclined her head. “I suppose it was like that a little. The thing about Robert was that he’d actually come from a little town over in eastern Oklahoma and from dirt-poor parents he wouldn’t even go back to visit. Once he’d told me that his daddy had beaten him and that he had escaped that kind of life and would never go back.”

  A glance at him, and she saw understanding flicker over his face. He looked ahead out the windshield.

  “Robert had made himself over into this sophisticated kind of guy, and he thought I would want to do the same thing. I did, sort of, at the time. He tried to help me, but I never really could do it. He’d get so annoyed that I found the books he wanted me to read boring, and he just about pulled his hair out at the way I talk. Whenever I said, ‘Well…’ he’d say, ‘That’s a deep subject.’ He made great fun of my accent.

  “The instant it ended—after I’d put him through his last two years of schooling and he’d gotten a position on the university faculty, I might add—” she heard the pain in her voice, after all this time “—was when I wrecked the Mercedes, and he came yelling at me for that, never askin’ how I was.”

  She gazed at the headlights on the road, remembering, feeling again how small and worthless she had felt when Robert had yelled at her like that, while the nurse put a bandage on her head. She had felt herself shrinking, even as she realized that Robert had been making her feel worthless for a long time. In her panic that she might completely disappear, she had yelled at Robert, “Screw you,” which had given her enough strength in that minute not to disappear.

  She laughed in the telling of it. “You know what he said to me? He said, ‘That is about what I would expect you to say.’ Oh, I was already so embarrassed that I’d said that and right in front of the nurse. I screamed it,” she admitted, wincing.

  “Then I looked over and saw the scissors right there. I jumped off that emergency room table, snatched up those scissors and cut Robert’s fifty-dollar tie right in half, then handed him the cut half and walked out, leaving him standing there with a stunned expression and his half a tie.”

  Harry laughed at all of this, and she thought that was great of him.

  “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you really laugh,” she said.

  “It’s a great story,” he said.

  “It is, isn’t it?” They laughed again and she felt a warmth washing over her. She realized she had let go of the embarrassment at the memory.

  He told her, “I’ve seen a number of marriages break up in an emergency room. It’s a really good place for it. If there’s any violence, it can be handled, and if anyone collapses, that can be handled, too. What about your second husband? What happened with him?”

  He shot her a raised eyebrow. He was an incredibly handsome man.

  “Monte? Oh, Monte was just one of those foolish mistakes a woman makes when she’s in a terribly low period, seeing the years slip by and wishin’…oh, just wishin’.” She sighed. “What a girl ought to do when she finds herself in such a condition is to lock herself in her kitchen with lots of herb tea and study the Bible and all those self-help books that tell a woman how to find herself. Perversely, what most of us do is what I did—I went crazy over Monte and got pregnant and ended up marrying him.”

  “Pregnant?” he said, obviously startled. “You have a child?”

  She hadn’t meant to tell it. She had meant to skip that part, because even after all these years, she sometimes cried.

  She shook her head. “No. I miscarried at four months.” She blinked rapidly as the glow of the headlights on the road blurred.

  “Oh.”

  She felt his eyes on her; he was that way, didn’t try to hide his curiosity.

  “It was hard on Monte. He had been so excited. We hung in there for almost two years, but it just never worked. I couldn’t fill the hole in Monte, and he couldn’t fill the hole in me. You know what I think causes divorce? I think it is not a lack of love but way too much disappointment. You have so much hope for someone’s love to conquer all, to help fill you up, but then you find out that it doesn’t. That is hard to love through.”

  She glanced at him, somewhat amazed at herself for revealing such intimate thoughts.

  “I never would have thought I w
ould be married twice,” she said. “I mean, I really don’t believe in divorce. Sometimes I wonder if I know myself at all. My mother used to say, ‘It seemed the thing to do at the time.’ That seems to be how it is, at least for me.”

  “I think Robert and Monte were fools.”

  “You do?” She glanced at him, surprised at his words and his tone. It was decidedly intimate. His gaze was, too.

  “Any man’s a fool who lets you get away.”

  “Well,” she said, not quite certain what to say to that, “I suppose we were all fools, but I have learned. I learned mainly that married love had better be much more than a feeling. The feeling—the fire—burns out, but real love is an action. It is something you do. And in marriage both people have to do it, even when they’d rather not.”

  She motioned for him to pass across the Cracker Jack bag, and they shared what remained. When he dug out the last kernel, he offered it to her, put it right in her mouth.

  Just outside Amarillo, she pulled beneath a pole lamp and got the puppy up in the seat between them. She did not want to take a chance that he would see something on a city street and jump out, and she didn’t feel like tying him. The night air had cooled considerably, and she had begun to get tired, to experience a strong sinking sensation. Whenever she got tired, she did so very quickly and wanted nothing but to lie down. This tended to make her a little impatient, and peevish, too. She tried not to be this way, but she didn’t seem to make much headway. She was too tired to make headway.

  “So far Roscoe hasn’t jumped out while the truck is moving,” Harry said, petting the dog’s head.

  “The key words are so far,” she said. “He ruined my confidence back there, and now that I have settled on keepin’ him, I don’t want to lose him, which is probably exactly what will happen, but I’ll do my best anyway. And his name is not Roscoe.”

  The dark streets were nearly empty, the most traffic coming as cars left the fairgrounds that grew up behind a tall chain-link fence. The colorful lights were lit, but the Ferris wheel was still and empty.

  Slowly turning into the entry for participants, she lowered her window to speak to a man in a thick coat, who took note of her truck and trailer, then told her to park where she found room, but advised that all the camper hookups were already taken.

  She drove past trucks and trailers looking for a space. The only space she found was far from the barn and the rest rooms, and she had to back the trailer into place. She had to ask Harry to get out to help guide her. Inexperienced, he gave her all sorts of confusing hand motions and looked more like he was directing an orchestra.

  “Just yell ‘stop’ if I’m about to hit that trailer there,” she told him.

  She suddenly wondered what Harry thought of the primitive accommodations and felt very self-conscious. She knew what Robert would have said. As long as she’d been divorced from him, she thought, he could still haunt her.

  “I usually just sleep in my trailer until the morning,” she said, more forcefully than she had intended, “rather than go to all the trouble of unhooking to drive to the motel. I have a reservation over at the La Quinta for tomorrow. For now, you can have the entire front seat, and I’ll get you a blanket and pillow.”

  She didn’t look at him. She was annoyed with the way she felt, all defensive, and this made her all the more annoyed with him. She thought that if he hadn’t been along, she wouldn’t have this feeling, and she would be free to simply be how she was. That was the problem with entanglements. One had to accommodate oneself to others—and so many times, once one did that, the other one up and left.

  “Okay by me,” he answered smoothly, drawing her gaze to see that it really did seem okay with him.

  “Well, good.”

  Outside the truck, the high-plains breeze was downright cold, ruffling their hair and whispering through their jackets. It brought the aroma of greasy fair food, and the scents of animals and damp earth. From the carnival on the far side of the fairgrounds, music abruptly stopped, and colorful lights began to go out.

  By the light in the trailer and the glow of sparsely placed pole lamps, she got Lulu out and led her to a stall in the barn. Harry and the puppy followed along. It was all new to both of them, and while Rainey readied Lulu and the stall, they avidly investigated the block walls of the stalls, the other horses, the small arena in which a few people rode even at this time of night. He helped her to get the hay and water for Lulu and was in such good humor that Rainey had to remark on it.

  “I’m used to odd hours,” he said. “I can pretty much drop to sleep or wake up at an instant’s notice.”

  “Well, I’m tired, and when I get tired, I can’t hardly stand anyone in a good mood.” She felt that if she didn’t lie down, she was going to fall over right there. Possibly she would not go directly to sleep, but she needed to get off her feet.

  She got the things from the room of her trailer. “I think this is all you’ll need. Oh, and the keys are in the ignition. That way I have light back in the trailer. You might want to listen to the radio. The battery’s real good.”

  She felt anxious now to please him in any way that she could, since she was in such poor humor.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll take the pup. I have more room.”

  “Okay.”

  She called the puppy to come with her, trying out the name of Duke. The puppy, pricking his ears, looked from her to Harry, who was opening the truck door. “Here, pup,” she said more firmly, and he came, wagging his tail.

  She threw a towel down for the puppy to lie on, took off her boots and turned out the light, then climbed up onto the quilt-covered mattress that served as a comfortable bed in the goose-neck of the trailer. She thought of the need to remove her makeup but was too tired.

  Out the narrow window at the front, she could look down into the rear window of the truck. She saw his shadow. He was still sitting up. The light from the dash showed he had turned on the radio; she thought she could hear it, but there was music playing from somewhere else, too. There was the sound of cars on the road, the squeak of metal from somewhere.

  His shadow moved as he lay down in the seat. She stared at the window another minute, and then she rolled to her back and lay there thinking about him and how he looked at her and the way he made her feel.

  But she could not trust her feelings when it came to men. And she was way too tired to be thinking on it, anyway. She had enough trouble thinking rationally without being tired.

  Pulling up the blanket, she closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER 16

  First Light After a Long Night

  A voice and the puppy whining and scratching at the door awoke her. It was first light, barely. There was a thump on her door, and then recognition of Harry’s voice came through her foggy brain.

  “Rainey…I got coffee.”

  Harry and coffee! That got her up, falling from the mattress up in the gooseneck and stumbling over her boots, making a great deal of noise and trying to smooth her hair as she went to open the door. The puppy jumped out, and then she was staring at Harry, who stood there holding two white foam cups.

  She winced inwardly at the cup, but she was desperate for the coffee and took it immediately, sipping from it, while he got the puppy and brought him back.

  “What happened to the warm weather?” he said, as he and the puppy came into the trailer.

  “You are now in North Texas,” she said, “and it isn’t even daylight.”

  “It’s daylight,” he said, glancing out the window with puzzlement, as if making certain he had not mistaken things.

  “It may be light, but the sun isn’t up yet. That qualifies as not yet daylight.”

  “Oh.”

  She told him to have a seat on the trunk, the only other place to sit besides up on the mattress in the gooseneck. He would not have fit up there; his head would have bumped the ceiling.

  She sipped the steaming coffee again and decided it definitely had a foam taste. Rif
fling around in the cabinet in the corner, she found her favorite ceramic mug. She poured the coffee into it, and then she happened to look over at him. He was watching her.

  “I only have this one ceramic cup,” she said, holding it with both hands. “I had another one, but it broke.”

  She rather heard the voice of Saint Peter prodding her to offer him her cup, but she held on to it. She figured that, as a doctor, he probably drank out of foam cups a lot and didn’t mind it. She managed to climb back up on the mattress, where she held the warm cup in both hands, inhaling the aroma of the coffee.

  “You’re pretty much a mess in the mornings,” he said.

  She looked up to see him grinning at her. “This is still night to me. And you need a shave.”

  Then she saw him rubbing his chin. “Maybe I’ll grow a beard.”

  She shook her head. “No. Won’t fit you.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  His voice brought her eyes to him again. He looked as disappointed as a boy. He was wanting to be new and different, and she had dampened him.

  “Well, you might try it. Just to see. I could be wrong. I am on rare occasions.” The burst of energy that drummed up the answer faded, and she went back to sipping her coffee.

  “This looks pretty cozy,” he said, looking around. “Mama had it fixed up for sleeping comfortably. It has an air conditioner.” She pointed. “But she didn’t want cooking equipment or a portable toilet. She said that’s why there are restaurants and gas station bathrooms.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  That made her think how Freddy had said on a number of occasions that the words reasonable and Mama did not go together. She didn’t comment on that, though. She felt as if her mind was too weak for her to trust speaking much of what came out of it.

  He told her that he had found a great place to get breakfast. “They have biscuits and gravy.” He seemed eager about the prospect.

  “That’s good.” She sipped her coffee, yawned and sniffed her runny nose, self-consciously keeping her eyes from his because of the disheveled way she knew she looked.