Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  Charlene would listen and nod and get ice tea, and massage lotion into dry skin and brighten fingernails, and the customer would leave relaxed and smiling. Charlene would imagine at times that she had given mothers hope for their children and wives patience for their husbands.

  One afternoon a woman of about her own age was brought in by her husband. That the woman was very ill was readily apparent. Her skin was translucent, and the woman looked, standing there, holding on to her husband, as if she was about to crumple at any minute. Dixie had that day, which was a rare busy one, begun Charlene washing hair. Charlene’s initial reaction was one of hesitancy to touch the woman, indeed, to run and hide in the bathroom. She had never been very good with sickness. Her mother and Rainey had been the nurses in the family, and Charlene never felt adequate to deal with a sick individual. She knew so little of medications, always calling Rainey to double-check when she needed to medicate the children.

  The woman was thrust upon Charlene, however, and she did what she knew to do, which was to lay her back in the chair and start warm water running over her head. She watched the woman’s eyes fall contentedly closed as she gave out a large sigh.

  “Oh, that shampoo smells lovely,” the woman said, smiling softly. “And your hands feel so good.”

  “I’m washing some starch into you,” Charlene said, and then she saw Oralee smile at her.

  When she helped the woman to Dixie’s chair, the woman admired her nails and asked if Charlene could do hers, too. “I’d like that red color, too,” she said, seeming to perk up. “Tom, you don’t mind if I get my nails painted red, do you?”

  Her husband said, “Honey, you get them any color you want.” Charlene thought they should give him a badge of honor.

  Although short, the woman’s nails were well-formed. Charlene filed them and moisturized them and painted them bright and shiny, pointing out that the color matched the bits of red flower in the woman’s cotton skirt. She doubted that the woman had ever had her nails painted before. The woman left smiling and strong enough to walk unaided beside her husband, who was smiling, too.

  Charlene had to go to the back because she was crying. Dixie found her there.

  “I think she’s going to die,” Charlene told Dixie. “I felt for a minute the life running right out of her. My mother used to say that was what happened, that life slipped away to heaven well before the body knew it, and I felt it today.”

  Dixie smiled tenderly and said, “You gave her what she needed. You have a gift for that, Charlene. I like to think that we have a ministry here, and it is to make women feel better about themselves so they are happier and can give to others. I don’t think it is any less a service than doctors and nurses.”

  Oralee, never one to dismiss herself, said, “I know I have saved lives. I have had women in this chair that were wrought up enough to kill, and I’ve laid hands on them and prayed while I’ve fixed their hair, and I know I kept them from going home and either stickin’ their heads in their own gas ovens, or beatin’ the tar out of their children and slashing their husbands’ throats.”

  Charlene believed that Oralee was not far off in her estimation. Quite a number of their customers came in saying they were so tired of the heat of this summer that seemed to go on forever that they were about to pull their hair out and decided instead to come to the beauty shop, where they could spend some idle time being tended in the air-conditioning. From Charlene’s own experience, she knew a new hairdo or manicure could save a woman from a breakdown.

  She found greater satisfaction in her work than she could have imagined. Often Dixie would say, “I do not know what we did without you, Charlene.” To which Oralee would reply, “I know what we did—I did it, and I was worn to a frazzle from it, too.”

  What was lacking, however, in the job was money. Thus far, despite Dixie’s assurances that business was picking up with the addition of Charlene’s services, and Charlene was making a little more money each day, she did not at this point and time come anywhere close to earning the imagined sums Oralee had led her to believe possible. Oralee said that she ought to report Joey as a runaway father, but Charlene would not consider this. It would cost money to seek legal action, even if anyone knew where Joey had gone.

  What Charlene made at the shop was enough to buy food and incidentals. She was not making enough to pay the house payment, utilities and insurance, too. Her worry about what she was going to do increased daily. She wondered if Joey would send money, but she had little hope that he would. She had visions of being put out of the house and having to go live with her father, of her children crying at night because of being jerked out of their home. Sometimes she cursed Joey, and each night when she went to bed, she would pray, “God, please give me strength and send the money we need.” And she wished she didn’t have so much doubt.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 85°

  Gerald was a second cousin on her mother’s side. Although only thirty, he was balding. He looked, Charlene thought, exactly like a banker. Indeed, his father had sat in exactly the same place in the tall-backed chair behind the wide walnut desk, as head loan officer of the First Valentine Bank. She had never particularly liked Gerald, and this did not help now, when he told her that he could not give her any money.

  “You and Joey have a loan here now,” he reminded her. “If you can’t pay on that, I don’t see how we can give you any more.”

  “What people come to a bank for, Gerald, is to get money because they need money.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlene. I just can’t do it.” He sat back and looked at her, waiting for her to leave.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 78°

  She got Larry Joe up early in the morning to drive her to Lawton, to the state aid offices. It poured rain on them the entire drive, making Charlene’s spirits sink even lower. She had been told that it would take weeks to get the aid started.

  A bored-looking woman called her name, “Darnell.”

  Charlene went over and sat in the chair in front of the white metal desk, while the woman asked her questions and jotted down the answers on a form. Then the woman opened a drawer and started pulling out forms. She handed the stack to Charlene. “You can go over to one of those tables and fill these out, or take them home and mail them to the address indicated.”

  “Thank you.”

  The woman was already turning her attention to another person.

  Charlene took the papers and sat at the big table. She scanned the papers, and after a minute, she got up and left. It was still raining. She wanted to throw the papers in the big puddle in front of her, but instead she rolled them and tucked them into her purse, then held her purse close as she ran across the parking lot to the Suburban.

  Larry Joe, who had been leaning back, napping, came sitting up with a start.

  “I have a bunch of papers to fill out,” she told him. “I’ll do it at home.”

  That night she sat at the table and spread out the forms. She wrote her name and address in the blanks, then looked at the questions. There were a million. They could not ask her religion, but somewhere on there they probably asked what brand of soap powder she used.

  Pushing herself up from the table, she went to the refrigerator and gazed into it for a long time, finding nothing that would do. With a sense of desperation, she tried the freezer, and let out a, “Hallelujah!” By some miracle a box of Ding-Dongs had been overlooked. She tore into the box, then turned it up and emptied the little cakes out onto the table and immediately snatched one, unwrapping it quickly and taking a big bite. As she ate the cake, she switched on the television and tuned to CMT. Then she unwrapped another chocolate cake and ate it as she settled herself to fill out the forms.

  Twenty-Six

  The City Hall thermometer reads 85°

  When Charlene came out of work and laid eyes on the Suburban, she went around to the driver’s door and told her son she wanted to drive.

  “Are you sure you want to drive in town?” La
rry Joe asked.

  “Yes.” She motioned him to move over, throwing her purse in the seat. Seeing his look of doubt—mild doubt, but doubt just the same—she added, “It’s only a few blocks.” They were not headed home as usual at this time, but to her father’s house. Both Danny J. and Jojo had after-school activities, and Charlene needed to speak with her father.

  Charlene felt determined to progress in her driving. She had managed to grab hold of this determined mood, after having struggled all day to keep her spirit from sagging into a low ditch where it seemed to perpetually lie these days. She got behind the wheel, carefully adjusted the seat for her shorter legs, and shifted into gear. Since she was already out of her own driveway, she felt confident she could navigate the wide streets.

  About halfway through the Main Street intersection, despite having taken her B vitamins and drunk a cup of chamomile tea, the panic attack started. She felt her breath coming short, and heat sweeping her from head to toe. She let up off the accelerator and went slower, and kept thinking of pulling over, but she could not reveal her foolish panic to Larry Joe. A mother could not be panicky in front of her child.

  At her father’s street, she inched around the corner, and then, seeing the big Victorian house come into view, she pressed on the gas, confidence returning that she was indeed going to make it without mishap or acting a fool.

  There was a workman’s van sitting out front. And the curious sight of a metal pole being erected in the front yard.

  “What do you suppose that is?” Charlene said, turning into the driveway.

  “I don’t know, but you are gonna run over the lilac bushes.”

  “Oh!” She braked and twisted to look, then got out and saw the smashed limbs of the bush, where she had run over half of it. “It really needs pruning back,” she told Larry Joe. “It’s grown right into the driveway.”

  She had driven through town and the only casualty was half a lilac bush. She found that acceptable, and her determined mood rose once again. She turned from the truck and walked with her son across the yard toward the men.

  They discovered that the pole was a flagpole. “Twenty feet,” her father told them smartly. “What’d ya think, Larry Joy?” he said, using his pet name for his grandson.

  “Looks like it ought to fly a flag, Grandad.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s gonna fly a heck of a flag.”

  Charlene thought to caution her father about flying the Confederate flag in these modern times of political correctness. But then she saw his face. He was an old man whose delight was a lovely thing to see. He carried with him wounds from World War II and had always struggled to do the right thing by his family and his country. She was not going to dampen his little bit of fun in his old age.

  The two men from Goode Plumbing finished tapping the ground solid around the pole. “Now, you can’t fly that flag for a few days, Mr. Valentine,” one of the men said, standing back and wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “You gotta let the concrete in the ground set up good. We’ll come back tomorrow like we said and lay the pad around it, too.”

  The other man was nodding, and then he said, “You might want to catch your vehicle.”

  Because of his monotone voice and expression, it took several seconds for Charlene to realize that he was talking to her. It was Larry Joe taking off running that made her turn and see the Suburban slowly rolling backward.

  “Ohmygosh!”

  Charlene threw down her purse and took off after her son, hollering, “Let it go! You’ll get run over!” One of the flagpole workers came running past her and got up beside Larry Joe, who had reached the Suburban, which had gained speed and was rolling at a pretty good clip backward across the street toward the Northrupts’ front yard.

  Charlene saw Larry Joe grab for the door and miss, and then grab again. She hollered for him to get out of the way.

  The worker from Goode Plumbing put his hand on the Suburban’s fender, as if he could slow it down. It did slow as it bounced up over the low curb. Larry Joe got the door open, threw himself inside and jammed on the brakes to stop the truck halfway along the Northrupts’ neat brick walk. A few more yards and it would have rammed their porch.

  Gasping for breath, Charlene reached the Suburban. It seemed very strange to be standing in the neighbors’ front yard, gazing at her son behind the wheel of the truck.

  She and her son looked at each other.

  “Mom,” Larry Joe said, quite calmly, “you have to put the lever in park when you stop, not in neutral. Especially on a hill.”

  “I thought I did,” she said, experiencing a sharp stab of regret for her failure. It was more than regret at her carelessness with the gearshift, but regret that she seemed to repeatedly be leaning on her son. Now he was jumping into moving vehicles to save her.

  Charlene sent Larry Joe on to the Texaco, saying, “I’ll walk down to the station after I visit awhile with Daddy.”

  “Don’t forget I have class tonight,” he said, furrowing his brow in a way that she wished to ease.

  “I haven’t forgotten. I won’t be long.”

  She watched the Suburban head away down the road, driven by her eldest son.

  Then she went over to her father, who was instructing the two workmen about where to reposition the lights when they returned the following day. She thought, as she spied her purse on the ground and retrieved it, that she might pour all her worries out to her father as soon as the two workmen left. She really needed to talk. They could sit on the front porch, and she would talk to him and tell him all her worries over Larry Joe and money and everything.

  As she stood waiting for her father, Mildred came out the front door and called to her. “Charlene, did you bring those coupons you said you’ve been saving up for me?”

  “Oh, yes, I have them.” She dug into her purse. “Oralee gave me some for you, too. For the mayonnaise and Kellogg’s.”

  “Well, wasn’t that nice of her,” Mildred said, reaching eagerly for the envelope and looking inside of it to pull out the one for the cereal. “I just love to get those little boxes of cereal. They’re really good to keep in my purse for if we get stuck somewhere. Like that time we had the flat at the rest stop and Larry Joe drove out to fix it. I had these two boxes of cereal for Ruthanne and me. Your father doesn’t like them.”

  “What do you do for milk?” Charlene asked.

  “Oh, we just used water. It’s just about as good. And I always have a bottle of water in the car. Bottled water is too heavy to carry in my purse, though. Makes my arms hurt tryin’ to carry it. You want to come in out of the heat, honey?”

  “No, I’ll just wait here. I want to talk to Daddy when he’s finished.”

  “Well, okay.” She started back inside, then stopped. “Are we havin’ Sunday dinner at your house this week?” Mildred’s face was very hopeful.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good. Can we have ham?”

  “Why don’t I call you later, and we’ll make up the menu together? You jot down some things you’d like to have.” Charlene’s spirits sort of fluttered back up with the knowledge that she had always been able to nurture her family with food.

  Mildred was thrilled with the prospect of giving recommendations and went in the house to get started on a list of her favorites.

  The two men were leaving in the plumbing truck, and her father was standing there looking up proudly at his flagpole. Charlene went to capture him, but then Everett Northrupt came pulling into his driveway across the street.

  “What do you think, Northrupt?” her father hollered, when his neighbor was standing and staring across at them. “Twenty feet. It ought to fly a dandy flag.”

  Charlene’s urge to speak to her father about her worries fizzled. He was a man so enamored with a flagpole that likely he would not hear what she had to say. And she didn’t think she could explain, anyway. Suddenly she could not speak of any of it.

  Northrupt went into his house, letting the screen door slam, and her
father continued to walk around and look up at the flagpole and smile happily.

  Charlene took that moment to force herself to ask her father for five hundred dollars. “I want to pay Larry Joe’s college bill. Joey left him some money, and we’ve paid some, but I want it all paid. I don’t want Larry Joe to have to think about earning money. He needs to focus his attention on his studies.”

  Her father, still distracted with checking the pole for straightness, immediately pulled bills from his wallet, three hundred dollar bills, and handed them across to her, telling her to wait a minute and he would get the rest from the house. That he would carry around so much cash did not surprise Charlene. He had done so as long as she could recall, had been known to carry over a thousand dollars in big bills. She used to get onto him about the danger of carrying around so much money, but his answer was that the most that could happen was he would be robbed and the thief get a good haul. He wanted to carry the money to be prepared in case the opportunity to get a good deal on something came along.

  “I don’t know when I can pay you back,” she told him, when he handed her the rest from a drawer in the desk in the hallway.

  He gave a dismissing wave and said, “Let me show you the flag I bought to go on the pole. Northrupt’s gonna go green as grass.”

  She admired the flag at great length, and then made her goodbyes and left, pulling the door closed behind her with relief that she had not given way to her irritation. It was not her father’s fault that she felt overwhelmed but was too reticent to speak of the things weighing on her mind. He would have made the effort to be supportive, if she had talked to him. Still, with lingering frustration, she acknowledged there was an enormous gap between making an effort and succeeding.

  In that moment, feeling terribly disloyal, she nevertheless felt a little of what Freddy had obviously always felt, that their father, despite great strides, remained mostly unavailable and always would be. It was a hard truth, and an even harder truth was that their mother had loved her children and at the same time had in her own way been unavailable. It was for Charlene, herself as a mother, a very depressing thought. She had wanted to be the perfect mother, in order to make up for those years when she had felt motherless. She was now coming face-to-face with the fact that being the perfect mother was impossible.