Driving Lessons Read online

  “I think I should tell you something,” Mason confessed.

  Charlene propped her arms on his shoulders. Their warm bodies touched intimately, separated by only threads of clothing and discipline, while their thoughts ran wild every which way.

  “I’ve been in love with you since the first time I ever saw you.”

  She didn’t know what to say. His expression was serious and anxious, studying her for a reaction.

  Struck to the core, she pulled away from his embrace and raked a hand through her hair. “Oh, Mason.”

  “I wanted to tell you so you would know how I feel. That this isn’t some passing attraction. I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  “Curtiss Ann Matlock blends reality with romance to perfection.”

  —Romantic Times

  Also available from MIRA Books and

  CURTISS ANN MATLOCK

  LOST HIGHWAYS

  Curtiss Ann Matlock

  DRIVING LESSONS

  For Lou, my angel, my teacher, my friend.

  “If you keep on going, you will eventually

  get where you want to go, no matter

  how many wrong roads you go down.”

  —Cowetta Valentine

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  One

  Valentine, Oklahoma

  The City Hall thermometer reads 101°

  Charlene had made tomato pudding for this Sunday’s dinner. Normally that was considered more of a fall and winter dish, but she had made it this hot day anyway for her husband Joey, in case he got home in time. Joey loved her tomato pudding so much that he might just smell it up there in Missouri and come home faster.

  She burned her fingers getting it out of the oven. Plunking the dish on the counter beside the ham, she rushed, shaking her fingers, to the sink and stuck them in the stream of cold water. She wondered why people shook burnt fingers. Maybe it was about the same as blowing on them. She did not think either action helped all that much.

  It was the every other Sunday when Charlene had dinner at her house for the family—her husband and three children, and her father and his two boarders were the regulars. Sometimes one of the kids had a friend over, and every once in a while her sister and brother-in-law, Rainey and Harry, drove down from Oklahoma City to join them. On very rare occasions her brother Freddy and his wife Helen bent themselves to show up, although not in the months since Freddy had suffered his breakdown and pulled a gun on the IRS agent and wound up in the hospital.

  “Mama…” Danny J. sauntered into the kitchen and went straight to sniffing over the food “…is Dad comin’ home today?” He got to the chocolate cake and scooped a fingertip in the icing.

  “Quit that!” She smacked at his hand and kissed his head at the same time. He pulled away; he was thirteen now.

  “When’s Dad comin’ home?”

  “Tonight sometime, I think.”

  “Then why’d you make tomato puddin’? No one else likes it.” His eyes focused on her.

  “I like it,” Charlene said. She stuck her fingers back under the water. She didn’t want Danny J. to see her hands shaking. She felt her whole body shaking. “Now, take the trash out for me.”

  He frowned and slumped his shoulders all over but did what she asked. As he went out the back door, Charlene reminded him to put the lids tight on the trash cans so the raccoons wouldn’t get in them. Joey kept saying he was going to have to shoot those raccoons, which upset Jojo considerably. Charlene had to take her aside and tell her, “You know your daddy isn’t goin’ to shoot those raccoons. For one thing, he doesn’t have a gun.” Joey wasn’t a man who could kill anything. He made sure the barn doors were open so birds could fly in to their nests. Joey was like that.

  She was patting her hands dry with her apron, when she heard the sound of a vehicle. She raced to the window.

  But no, it wasn’t Joey.

  She stared at the car coming like gangbusters—her daddy’s maroon Oldsmobile. Daddy and his girls—that was what everyone had started calling Charlene’s father and his elderly women boarders. For the past four months there had only been two, but he’d had as many as four at times the past year.

  The big Oldsmobile rolled up the concrete drive and came to an immediate and jerky halt, enough to throw them all through the window had they not been wearing seat belts. Her father was awfully proud to still be driving at his age. Charlene was a little worried.

  She stood there holding her fingers in her apron and watching as Rainey and Larry Joe went out to greet the new arrivals. Rainey escorted the elderly ladies toward the house, and Larry Joe stood beside his grandfather to chat. Daddy liked to stand out there and smoke a Camel before coming inside.

  Charlene turned back to the stove and then just stood there, head cocked, the babble of feminine voices floating to her from the living room.

  Someone said her name. Footsteps were coming toward the kitchen.

  Snatching up a Tupperware bowl, she hurried out the back door, closing it softly behind her.

  On the back step, she put her arm up against the glare of the bright sun. Good-golly it was hot. She looked around for Danny J., only just then remembering him. The trash can lids were firmly in place, showing that he had made quick work of his job and scooted away before he could be assigned another.

  As she went down the path to her little garden, grass-hoppers jumped here and there, startled by her movements. Her garden was pretty much burnt right up. She had tried to keep it watered, but morning and night, day after day, had just gotten too much.

  This summer was one of the hottest and driest on record. There had been no rain since the first of June, and temperatures had soared over a hundred for days on end. Creeks and ponds were going dry, pasture grass was withering and concrete cracking. It had been reported in the Valentine Voice that there was a doubling in county-wide arrests because of people all over the place getting into fights over portable air conditioners and yard sprinklers. Some evenings lately Charlene had begun to feel that if it did not rain, she was going to go crazy.

  In the garden, cucumbers were barely hanging on. She found one that was not too shriveled, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. The tomato plants were pretty much giving up the ghost. She bent and rooted around in the weeds for the thin salad onions. Her daddy and the kids liked to put salt in a saucer and dip slices of cucumber and the salad onions in it and eat them. Daddy had taught the kids that.

  She came up with three pitiful-looking onions and slowly walked back toward the house. Her burned fingers had beg
un to throb, and the skin was getting quite red, starting to bubble up, too. Inside at the sink, she stuck them under cold water again as she washed the vegetables. Voices high and low floated from the living room.

  Rainey came in and over to Charlene’s shoulder. “Do you know Mildred brought her own margarine? Country Crock in those little singles. She pulled it out of her purse. Does she always do that?”

  “Uh-huh.” Charlene nodded. “She carries all sorts of stuff in her purse. Once she brought out Hellmann’s mayonnaise.”

  “Good grief. She might get food poisoning. Did you burn your fingers?”

  “Just a bit.” Charlene was wrapping them in a wet paper towel. “Joey didn’t come in, did he?” She thought it possible she had missed him. Maybe he was parked over by the barn, where he had to unload the horses.

  “No. Let me see your fingers.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Charlene. Let me look at your fingers.”

  “Leave me be, Rainey.”

  Rainey stared at her. Charlene told Rainey to please go get the cloth napkins from the buffet drawer. “It’s a special dinner,” she said, giving a smile to try to make up.

  Rainey studied her.

  Charlene turned quickly to get a frying pan from the cupboard. “And use Mama’s good silver. There’s eight settings.”

  She heard Rainey leave. Pushing stray hair from her face with the back of her hand, she went to the refrigerator for flour and milk to make gravy. The biscuits would be out of the oven in five minutes. There was a big ham with pineapple slices over it, cornbread dressing and gravy, fresh green beans, corn on the cob, a gelatin salad, the tomato pudding and a chocolate cake. She had managed to turn out a really good meal.

  Jojo came in. “Maa-maa?” she said, dragging it out in the way children seemed to enjoy saying the name just to be saying it. After a minute, she repeated with a definite tone, “Mama?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Aunt Rainey’s gonna tell everyone about her baby at dinner, isn’t she?”

  Charlene looked down into her daughter’s upturned face and cupped her small chin. “Yes. Don’t let out the secret.”

  “I won’t,” Jojo said, as if wounded. Then her blue eyes searched Charlene’s face in the worried fashion that had become her habit in the last months.

  “Take that plate of garden veggies in to the table for me, won’t you, sweetie,” Charlene said.

  “Okay, Mama.” She very carefully took the plate. Jojo had been trying so hard for the past year to be good. To make her world right by her goodness.

  Charlene stirred the gravy, an activity that caused her to swing her entire body in pleasant rhythm, and remembered when she had told everyone she was going to have Jojo. Her mother had held a dinner just like this one. Charlene had been thirty-seven, and Freddy, Mr. By-the-book, had made a lot of comments on that. Rainey was only a year younger now, and this would be her first. The years just flew past. Here Jojo was nine years old. Charlene had so wanted another child. But God had not seen things her way, and He knew best, although sometimes how things turned out was really hard to take.

  Realizing she’d gotten lost in thought, she had to stir the gravy hard; it was starting to stick.

  “Table’s all set,” Rainey said, striding into the kitchen. “Ready for me to take this stuff out?”

  “Yes. Oh, let me carve the ham in here.”

  She again splashed cold water over her fingers in the paper towel. It was tricky slicing the ham while holding those fingers out. She heard her family gathering in the dining room, heard Danny J. and Larry Joe roughhousing. They didn’t do that so much anymore. She thought she heard a vehicle…but no, it was just the wind picking up, she guessed.

  She arranged the ham neatly on two big plates that could sit at each end of the table. It was easier for people to serve themselves that way. When Rainey came in to fill ice tea glasses, Charlene told her to set out the wineglasses, too.

  “I have a bottle of wine I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”

  With a cocky grin, Rainey breezed out of the kitchen with the walk she had adopted that appeared to accommodate a belly she didn’t yet have.

  “Where’s Joey today?” Daddy asked, when Charlene carried in the ham.

  “He’s up in Missouri at a horse show. He went up on Friday.”

  She shouldn’t have tried to carry both plates at once. Feeling pressure on her burnt fingers, she almost dropped one plate right on Ruthanne, one of her father’s elderly boarders, who had already sat down. Ruthanne’s place was always the same. It was important not to confuse Ruthanne, who was having a little trouble remembering what year it was. The doctors said it was a form of senility, but as long as she remained in familiar surroundings, it would likely progress slowly. Sometimes Ruthanne would have to be reminded of who people were, but she was such a sweet thing that no one minded.

  “Daddy, you go ahead and sit there at the end of the table, and Rainey can sit at this end today.”

  Whenever Joey wasn’t present, her father would sit in the big chair at the end of the table, but he always waited to be told. There was not a hurried bone in her daddy’s tall and lanky body. He had iron gray hair, more iron than gray, and there was an air of old gentleman about him in his white short-sleeved Sunday shirt. After the matter of where he would sit was settled, he would help Mildred into a seat on his right or left.

  Mildred Covington had finally gotten what she wanted, being able to hold on to Daddy. Since she had had her stroke, she used a cane and very often Daddy’s arm. The woman managed to be within a foot of him at all times. Charlene had noticed that when Daddy wasn’t present, Mildred managed fine on her own, but when Daddy was around, she made good use of him.

  Mildred had her big purse right with her, of course, white vinyl, with lots of pockets. As soon as she got sat down, she pulled out three pink packets to sweeten her tea and a small cloth to wipe her dishes. As she wiped her ice tea spoon, she said, “It all looks so good, Charlene, dear, but did you remember I can’t have any of that dressing if there’s celery in it? I just can’t tolerate celery.”

  “I made you some without, Miss Mildred. Larry Joe and Danny J., you boys come on now,” Charlene called.

  Jojo was giving her granddaddy a hug and whispering in his ear. He whispered back in hers, and she danced and rubbed her ear. He picked up the wineglass in front of his plate.

  “Are we celebratin’ something?”

  “Yeah, Grandaddy,” Danny J. said. “That you’re alive another day.”

  “Remember to respect the elderly, boy,” his grandfather shot back.

  The remark came to Charlene as she went back to the kitchen. Somehow her father never quite seemed to fit the term “elderly.” Although he was. He was eighty-seven this year, she thought. All of them just getting older and older.

  Charlene got the bottle of wine from the bottom of the refrigerator, where she’d halfway hidden it beneath a bag of flour tortillas. It had red curly ribbon around the neck and a note that said: For Charlene and Joey on their twenty-first anniversary. It had been a present from Rainey and Harry, but she and Joey had never gotten around to drinking it. They’d gone out to supper, but Joey had been too tired when they came home to open the wine. Charlene tore off the note. Likely Rainey wouldn’t notice it was the same bottle.

  Charlene never had used a corkscrew, and she ended up breaking off the cork. Larry Joe came in and dug it out with his pocket knife. Rainey teased him about where that knife had been.

  Charlene made a flourish out of the announcement. “Everybody, our Rainey has big news,” she said, and stood back from the table while all eyes turned to Rainey, who sat glowing appropriately like the star of Bethlehem, her joy so bright that Charlene had to look away.

  Rainey said, “Harry and I are gonna have a baby.”

  While congratulations were exchanged and Rainey explained how Harry hadn’t been able to get away to have dinner with them, an
d how she was extremely healthy and all was proceeding correctly, Charlene went around the table filling the wineglasses. A splash for the children and a swallow for Rainey. Half a glass for Ruthanne, who looked a little vacant, if pleasantly so.

  Charlene raised her glass. “To our Rainey and Harry and their rare and special union, and to this very lucky child that is come to bless their hearts and teach them all sorts of things they never imagined.”

  Daddy said, “Here, here! God bless Little Bit,” which was what Daddy always called Rainey. His nickname for Charlene was Daughter, which had always hurt just a little because it sounded so simple and flat.

  There was a lot of grinning and to-do about clinking the glasses together. Jojo looked at her glass wide-eyed and took a sip and made a face. Danny J. was quick to swallow all of his and then hold up his glass, as if Charlene might refill it. “Dang,” he said, when she took the glass away.

  Ruthanne was very demure, sipping and saying in her lovely soft voice, “Congratulations, Rainey dear, to you and your husband Charles.”

  “That is Harry, Ruthanne,” Mildred corrected in the loud voice she always employed with Ruthanne, as if Ruthanne was hard-of-hearing instead of confused. “Let me get a picture of the mother-to-be,” and she pulled one of those little disposable cameras out of her purse.

  Charlene disappeared into the kitchen, taking the bottle of wine. Standing at the sink, looking out the window to the drive where Joey’s blue truck would be seen if it were coming, she tipped back her head and downed her first glass, then poured what was left in the bottle and finished that, too.

  She looked at the clock and out the window again. She told herself that Joey would be home soon. Likely one or two of his horses had done really well and had to show again today. And it was a long drive. Silly of her to expect him before night.

  But she knew, the way a woman can know things, especially about a man she has been married to for twenty-one years, that Joey wasn’t coming home. He had been leaving her for the past year, and now he was long gone.