Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “Mason sounds to me like he is a sweet, old-fashioned sort of guy. He came to visit you bringing flowers.” She paused, then added, “And then, as Mason was leaving, Joey was coming in and saw him.”

  “He did?” Charlene seemed both shocked and dismayed.

  “Yes. He asked Danny J. what Mason wanted, and Danny J. told him that he wanted to see you.”

  “Well, it does not matter what Joey might think about it,” Charlene said in a snappy tone Rainey appreciated. “Nor does Mason coming to see me matter. I really don’t want any involvement with a man right now.”

  Rainey asked, just for clarification, “Joey, either?”

  Confusion flickered over her sister’s face. “I still don’t know about Joey and me,” she said. “Right now I have to deal with myself and what I’m going to do.”

  At last, Rainey thought with relief, Charlene was returning to her stalwart self.

  “Let me have the phone,” Charlene said, motioning. “I want to call Danny J.”

  “Are you goin’ to ask him about Mason?” Rainey asked wickedly.

  Later that night, when Jojo was watching a Disney movie with Harry and Roscoe in the living room, Charlene brought Rainey a cup of warm milk, shoved the big flowered chair close to the bed and curled into it, and told Rainey about the white-haired woman who loved roses. She talked about first meeting the woman on Main Street that day, and then told of encountering her at church. She told about the woman’s lively expressions and the way she gave Charlene a rose each time.

  “I think she could be Mama,” she confessed and watched Rainey’s eyes get wide. “I know it sounds outlandish, but she just seems to appear and disappear.”

  Rainey said with skepticism, “If she is Mama, why didn’t you recognize her right off? Doesn’t she look like Mama? There shouldn’t be a question here, Charlene.”

  “She resembles Mama,” Charlene said, unable to say that the woman definitely looked like her mother. “Maybe she looks more like Mama did back when she was younger.”

  “Maybe she’s an angel,” Rainey said, obviously wanting to agree to something. “People have reported visits from angels.”

  To which Charlene said practically, “Rainey, if you can believe she is an angel, why would it be more outlandish to believe she is Mama? She sure talks like Mama,” she added.

  Charlene really could not be certain of her suspicion about the white-haired woman. And none of the theories made any difference, she decided. No matter if the woman was real, or a ghost, or even a hallucination, she had come to Charlene like a gift, at a time when Charlene truly needed her. So Rainey was probably right: the woman was an angel.

  The next day Harry began his leave of absence in order to take care of Rainey, and Charlene knew it was time for her to go home. She could see that Rainey was getting irritated by her and Jojo’s presence. Her sister wanted time alone with her husband.

  Sitting on the side of the bed, wearing her new dress, she told Rainey, “I can’t thank you enough for letting Jojo and me come up.”

  “Oh, honey, thank you for comin’. You’ve taken such good care of me. It really did ease Harry’s mind. And I’ve enjoyed visitin’ with both of you so much.”

  They gazed long at each other, then Charlene said, “Well, I sure needed to get away…like Freddy hidin’ in the hospital. Everyone needs to get away sometime.”

  “Yes,” Rainey said, understanding bright in her eyes. “Everyone’s on the way to somewhere, Charlene. You’ll know when you get there.”

  Charlene blinked away sudden tears. “I guess I’m ready to go home and get started.”

  Rainey laid a hand on her arm, and Charlene looked down at it for a long second, then laid a hand over Rainey’s. “We’ve wasted a lot of time,” she said, her throat tightening. “All these years we could have been better sisters to each other.”

  “Everything in its time,” Rainey said. “I guess we didn’t really need each other so much when we had Mama. Now we do.”

  Charlene thought about Rainey’s comment as well as many other sentimental things during the bus trip back to Valentine. She sat with Jojo’s head resting in her lap and gazed out the tinted window at the scenery racing past, while what she saw were memories of yesterday and images of the possible future.

  She sighed deeply. That was what visiting Rainey had done most for her—enabled her to breathe again. She had not realized until she had been at Rainey’s and away from everything in Valentine for several days that she was finally breathing easily again. Change of scene, it was called. It was the oddest thing, how physical distance had helped her put her life back into perspective.

  Somewhere along the way, she seemed to have lost her panic about the future, and, most blessed of all, she could pray again and felt that God heard her. That He was watching over her all along, even in her angry state, and was leading her to wherever it was she needed to go.

  Plans began to flow through her mind like a vibrant river. She would immediately have Larry Joe help her with getting back to driving. She thought briefly that maybe her father could help, but of course that would very much be the blind leading the blind. She told herself that she didn’t need to fear driving. She had driven for many years in the past, and likely it was a skill like bicycle riding, which, once learned, you just had to brush up a bit.

  She would go to Dixie’s to apply for a job doing nails, and if that did not work out, she would find something else. Something would work out. She just had to believe it would. To picture it unfolding and all working out. She would watch Danny J. ride a bucking horse, and she would speak to the bank about a loan to help Larry Joe with college and enable him to continue on to the school in Michigan. She had to let him go and be a man. She needed to go see Freddy; she had told her father she would and had completely forgotten. Maybe if she and Rainey could grow closer, she and Freddy could, too. Admittedly, given Freddy, this did not seem highly likely, but she needed to try.

  She did not know what she would do about Joey. She still could not even think the word divorce without having a horrible pain. And there was Mason. My goodness, the very thought of him, who she saw with his brilliant blue eyes when he asked if he could come to call on her, started an excited twanging inside her.

  She would get through all of it, she told herself. All she had to do was keep going down the various roads with faith that all would turn out.

  The outskirts of Valentine appeared, and Jojo sat up. Charlene looked over Jojo’s shoulder out the window, watching homes and then the first businesses pass.

  “Mama, look! The clock is working on the City Hall.”

  “Why, it sure is.” The digital lights read 5:30, then the temperature at 100°.

  The brakes whooshed, and the bus pulled to a stop in front of the Main Street Cafe. Charlene suddenly felt that she had been gone an entire lifetime, instead of just six days.

  She and Jojo stepped off the bus onto the hot, dusty concrete. Then there were Larry Joe and Danny J. and her father. And they seemed as eager to see her as she was to see them.

  “I tell you, Daughter,” her father said, walking with his arm around her shoulder, “ain’t none of us can get along without you.”

  “That is sweet to know, Daddy, because I need you all to need me.” And she didn’t feel afraid of that anymore.

  Twenty-Two

  The City Hall thermometer reads 90°

  Charlene was sitting at the kitchen table, folding clothes—a week’s worth of laundry from Larry Joe and Danny J. She heard Joey come in the front, and Jojo call out with pleasure, “Hi, Daddy!”

  She paused, holding a T-shirt, and cocked her head, listening to the voices in the living room, Jojo saying she wanted to show her father her new clothes and Joey’s low answer. The voices faded to the far end of the house.

  A short while later Joey appeared in the doorway, his hat in his hand. When she raised her gaze to look at him, she saw a startled expression on his face. She realized he was staring at her h
air, which he had not seen since her new style and rinse.

  After their initial greeting, he came in and sat gingerly in a chair across the table, twirling his hat between his fingers and bouncing his knee. She knew he had something on his mind. That he might be trying to approach the subject of divorce occurred to her. He would have to begin the subject, she thought, because she was not ready to do so.

  He said, “Jojo sure is excited about her new school clothes.”

  “Uh-huh. She picked all of them out herself.”

  Their eyes met, and then Charlene averted her gaze to the jeans she was folding.

  He asked about Rainey and the new baby, and she told him. She questioned him about Danny J.’s bucking horse, and he said he had found three retired rodeo broncs at a ranch over near Frederick. They would still buck but were growing mellow. Charlene felt reassured, and pleased that Joey was having sense enough to look for such a horse.

  “I thought I’d take Danny J. with me and he could choose,” Joey said. “Uh…would you want me to keep it over with me?” He did not call the Arnett ranch by name.

  “Bring it here,” she told him instantly. “You can come to help him here, and that way I can watch, too.” She definitely was not going over to that slut’s place, and she did not like the idea of her children over there, either. “But I want the rule understood that if he gets on that horse without one of us there, the horse goes.”

  “Okay,” Joey said with a nod, his gaze sliding down once more to his hat.

  She then told him about Larry Joe’s decision to start at the junior college that semester and his further ambition to go to automotive design school in Michigan. “I’m going to speak to Gerald down at the bank,” she said, “to see what kind of loan we can get to help him. He can’t be working long hours and keep his studies up, too.”

  “Whatever you think is best,” he said, which annoyed her. She wished he would have an opinion or a suggestion. But then, seeing his frown of worry, she felt a little more tender. They already had a sizable loan at the bank. She thought about it as she smoothed wrinkles from a pair of Danny J.’s jeans.

  When he said, “Your hair looks nice short like that,” she looked at him, greatly surprised.

  “Thank you,” she said. His eyes were on her in an intent manner that she had not seen in some time. In a way that made her glad and frightened at the same time. And he was bouncing his knee again.

  She broke the gaze and stretched down to draw an armload of underwear from the basket, dropping several pieces.

  Joey reached to pick them up, handing them to her—a pair of her panties and a lacy pink bra, starkly delicate against his thick, work-roughened fingers.

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  He leaned forward and propped his forearms on his thighs and twirled his hat with his fingers. She cast glances at him as she folded the pieces from her lap and put each neatly in the appropriate stack on the table. He was still a very handsome man, she thought. She could understand Sheila’s interest.

  Joey said, “You know, I suddenly realized that last week was the anniversary of my daddy’s death. I drove up to the cemetery and checked the date on the stone. It was Thursday.”

  Charlene dropped her hands and the T-shirt she had just folded into her lap and gazed at him.

  He lifted his eyes and said with a puzzled look, “He was only two years older than me when he died.”

  “I know.”

  He returned his eyes to his hat, and she sat staring at him, feeling him tugging at her, requiring of her. Her heart felt resistant to giving. And she wasn’t certain she had anything left to give him.

  “I just began to feel that nothing was ending up how I wanted it to be,” he said. “I felt like my life was runnin’ out, and I wasn’t getting anything done that I’d started out to do. It made me go a little crazy, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself.”

  He sat there staring at his hat, and she saw lines on his face that she hadn’t noticed before. Her heart began to melt and run all over her chest.

  He said, “I guess I’ve been runnin’, Charlene, thinkin’ that I was going to end up like my dad.” He lifted his eyes to her. “Can you understand that?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice thick. “Yes, I can, Joey.”

  “I went crazy, leaving here. I know that now. I just felt so lost and scared because of it. There didn’t seem to be any way to fix it here.”

  She listened to this, to the sorrow in his voice mingled with the unasked and hopeful question. He wanted to come home, she knew as she sat there holding the T-shirt knotted in her fists. She thought she needed to tell him it was okay, but she could not.

  The buzzer sounded from the dryer in the laundry room and caused her to jump. She got up and went to attend to the clothes. A moment later Joey came to stand in the door. She felt his eyes roaming over her body. Her breasts tingled, and her stomach quivered, and the memory of how his touch used to make her feel flashed through her mind. She couldn’t bring her gaze to his.

  He stepped closer. “Charlene, don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Joey,” she said, breathlessly, feeling tears welling up. “I’ve loved you for twenty-one years. I can’t just turn that off.” Then she stilled her hands and looked at him. “What are you wanting me to say? That now you can come home? I can’t say it, Joey.” Her heart thudded in her ears. “I just don’t know if I can do that.”

  His eyes shifted, and he changed hands with his hat. After another moment he said, “I’ll call about pickin’ Danny J. up to go get that horse.”

  “That’ll be fine.” Their eyes met and held. She saw ripe questions in his, questions that she could not answer, and so she looked away.

  “Well, good night,” he said.

  “Good night.”

  Then she stood there listening to his slow footsteps and the faint jingle of his spurs as he went back through the house, to voices as he told his children good-night, and then to the closing of the door.

  She took a step and stopped, remaining stock-still, listening to the sound of his truck engine start and then fade away.

  Guilt and panic washed over her. She had let him walk out. She might have missed her chance to stay a married woman and to keep her children’s daddy for them. How could she have done that?

  Charlene tossed and turned in the bed, while her mind tossed and turned with wondering why she had not jumped to make things up with Joey. She could not understand herself. She had her children to think of. She should do all she could to keep their daddy for them.

  Hadn’t she told Joey that she had loved him for twenty-one years? A person couldn’t stop loving after that time. But, God help her, she wasn’t certain she could be married to him anymore.

  Something had gone wrong inside of her, she thought. Something had gone horribly wrong.

  Finally, in the early hours of the morning, she fell asleep, only to be awakened by a startling clap of thunder. It was just after two, and with the next flash of light, she came fully awake. Immediately she switched on the bedside lamp, got the flashlight from the drawer and tested it to find it in working order. Then it was down the hall, peeking into each of the children’s rooms to see them still fast asleep, despite the heavy crashes of thunder above them.

  Another crash of thunder and more lightning so close she thought that it surely had hit a tree, and she went back and unplugged the stereos in both Danny J.’s and Larry Joe’s rooms, unplugged the living room stereo and television, then turned on the one in the kitchen to see the report that their county was under a tornado watch and flood warning.

  Rain began with hard splats against the night black window, and wind rattled the panes. Then the rain came as fast as water rushing from a big open spigot.

  The rain continued as she made coffee, all the while vigilant for the sound of a tornado. Of course, by all reports once one was heard, it was too late. She sat to watch an old movie and to monitor the weather updates by weathermen with rolled-
up sleeves, loosened ties and eyes as baggy as her own. She wondered a number of times about Joey. When he had been living with her, he would remain sound asleep through any storm, relying on her to watch for a possible tornado. She wondered if Sheila watched for him.

  By five o’clock the storms had moved on north. Charlene went out the back door, padded down the wet back steps and across to the rain gauge on the corner fence post. It had rained an inch and a half in three hours.

  She stood there in the blessed moistness. The sky in the east was beginning to glow with morning, and the dark storm clouds could be seen to the north. It was a sight that stirred her, made her know how big and powerful life was, and that if she really knew the power of it, she wouldn’t be able to stand it. Then she felt the first cooling breeze in two months touch her face.

  The temperature had dropped, she thought, and Joey seemed to be at last coming to his senses. She was reminded of what her mother used to say: This, too, will pass. Always does.

  The heat had passed, but it wasn’t going to be something people forgot very quickly. They would be watching for it to flare up again before summer finished its run.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 80°

  “The ground is really soggy. Just make sure you stay on the gravel,” Larry Joe told her on her first driving excursion. He sounded like she had never driven before.

  “I only need to warm up,” Charlene said. “I know how to drive.” She felt a tiny bit of panic rising in her chest. She fought it, reminding herself she had practiced driving up and down the driveway. She could do this now.

  As she made the turn onto the highway, however, Larry Joe started shouting at her to quit turning so sharply, and the next thing the right rear wheel felt like it hit a pothole.

  “You went in the ditch,” Larry Joe said, when she pressed the accelerator and the vehicle didn’t move.

  “Well, you scared me when you shouted.”

  Larry Joe was already out of the truck. She followed and found him staring at the truck’s chassis, which was stuck on the culvert.