Driving Lessons Read online

The City Hall thermometer reads 96°

  That evening at sundown, when she and Jojo were the only ones at the house and went out to feed and water the horses, Charlene wasn’t too surprised to find every one of Joey’s saddles and all of his bits and bridles gone from the tack room.

  She stood in the door and stared at the little dusty room, until Jojo came up and asked, “What is it, Mama?”

  “Nothing, hon. Let’s get the outside waterin’ done and get in out of this heat.”

  They went inside, and Charlene went back to her bedroom closet and saw that all four pairs of Joey’s favorite boots were gone, as were each of his Mobetta shirts. The only remaining jeans were ones Charlene was supposed to hem.

  She had not seen all of this before because she had been afraid to look.

  “Mama, will you paint my fingernails?” Jojo asked.

  “We’ll paint our fingernails and our toenails,” Charlene told her and got her manicure supplies. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, where Charlene put Wild Plum on Jojo’s fingers and toes, and Coral Sunset on her own. It took her a little longer than usual because of her burned fingers, which she kept wrapped in a wet bit of paper towel. Jojo laughed at Charlene’s little half reading glasses.

  “Don’t make fun of your mother,” Charlene told her and gave her a kiss.

  Her father was getting older and so was she. This was what happened to women growing older: they lost their eyesight, their hormones and their husbands.

  Then Jojo wanted to watch a movie—she wanted to watch some thriller called Scream, but Charlene wouldn’t let her and put in the videotape of The Wizard of Oz. She sat on the couch with Jojo lying in her lap and the cordless phone on the end table beside her. Jojo fell asleep halfway through the movie, but Charlene continued to watch. Dorothy was just clicking her heels to fly home to Kansas when the telephone rang. Charlene answered it before the first ring ended. She didn’t want Jojo to wake.

  It was Joey, and she asked him to hold on while she got Jojo slid off her lap. She walked with the phone into the kitchen and listened as he said he wasn’t coming home.

  She said, “Oh, is the show runnin’ on? I thought it was just a weekend show.”

  She didn’t think she should jump to conclusions. He might have meant he was just not coming home that night. She wanted to give him every opportunity to reconsider.

  “I meant I’m not comin’ home at all, Charlene.”

  That sent her sinking down into a kitchen chair. She changed ears with the phone, as if that would help her to find sanity and make sense of the words jamming her throat. What she ended up saying was, “I made you tomato pudding for Sunday dinner. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  The line hummed for long seconds after that, and then he said, “Thank you. I’m sorry to have missed it.”

  Silence again. Charlene’s throat seemed to swell shut.

  “I’m sorry, Charlene, I just can’t come home.”

  “Well, why not? Why not just come home, Joey?” She didn’t think her tone was encouraging.

  Silence, and then Joey said, “I’ve called my customers to come pick up their horses still in the barn. Will you please feed them until then? It’ll only be a couple of days. You can just go to feedin’ them hay, if you want.”

  She kept her voice even and said she would feed the horses. Maybe she should tell him she wouldn’t, she thought, but that sounded so mean, and he would know very well she wouldn’t take things out on innocent animals.

  “I’ll talk to you about this soon, Charlene. When I get it straightened out in my mind.”

  Her ears were ringing. “What?”

  “I said I’ll call you. When I can get things straight.”

  What could she say to it? She wanted to beg him to come home, wanted to scream at him and bang the receiver on the table and scream at him some more. But that would be out of control.

  “Okay,” she said faintly, having lost her voice.

  “You have my pager number, if you need me.”

  “Yes.” Tears started, and she was melting down on the table.

  “Goodbye, Charlene.”

  She didn’t say anything, just tried to find the button to cut off the phone. She had trouble seeing because of her tears.

  Immediately regret washed over her. She should have said something more to him. Something to make him stop the craziness and come home. She should have asked him if he was sure of what he was doing. She should have instructed him to get himself home this instant.

  She should have told him that she loved him.

  After a few minutes of sitting there and staring, she got up and went to the sink and ran cold water over her wrapped fingers. She thought maybe she should look at them, but she didn’t have the energy. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out the casserole dish of tomato pudding. There was one scoop out of it where she had sampled it at dinner.

  She got a spoon and sat at the table and proceeded to eat right out of the casserole dish. She thought it was some of the best tomato pudding she had ever made. Joey had never had tomato pudding until they married and she made it for him. He had liked it so much that he’d requested she make it for him all the time; once they sat in bed after making love and ate tomato pudding, feeding it to each other. What made Charlene’s special was that she used hamburger buns instead of sliced bread. Usually she made it from her own home-grown and canned tomatoes, but with the heat demolishing her plants this year, she had used Del Monte’s instead.

  Two

  The City Hall thermometer reads 84°

  Winston Valentine’s house sat up a hill from the town named for his own family. In reality the house had belonged to his wife, but after living in it so long, he thought of it as his own, and most everyone referred to it as the Valentine house.

  Whenever he came out of his front door, the first sight he saw was the town laid out below. He could also see the roof of his son’s home at the north edge of town, and before his eyesight got so poor, he’d been able to see all the way across to the cluster of buildings that was Charlene’s place out on the far side of town.

  This morning when Winston came out on the front porch, bringing the flag, just as he did first thing every morning, after half a cup of coffee, the town was awash with the faint golden glow of a sun ready to burst over the horizon.

  “Hey, Mr. Valentine!” The paperboy was pedaling right along on down the street, tossing newspapers into yards with practiced ease.

  “Hello to you, Leo.”

  Perry Blaine, in his black Lincoln, drove slowly past the boy. He was on his way to the drugstore, where he would sit and have coffee and work the crossword puzzle in isolated peace away from his wife and thirty-year-old daughter Belinda, who showed no signs of moving out of his house.

  Across the street Everett Northrupt was coming out onto his front porch with his flag, too. Already a few steps ahead of him, Winston hurried to get his flag set in the holder on the post before Everett, who was ten years younger but not nearly so agile as Winston.

  When the flag was set, Winston paused and waited for Everett to glance his way. Then he pulled the string and the flag gracefully unfurled. Snapping to attention, Winston saluted the cross bars and stars of the Confederacy waving from his porch.

  Across the street, Northrupt let his flag unfurl. The Stars and Bars of the United States came halfway down, but then got tangled.

  Northrupt, all red-faced, jumped to get it straight, while Winston, thoroughly satisfied and whistling “Dixie,” went down his steps and out across his lawn to get the Friday edition of the Valentine Voice. As he retrieved the rolled paper, he saw Northrupt saluting. He waved his paper at his neighbor, who saluted him in place of coming over and knocking his block off.

  It could be a sad commentary on his life, Winston thought, that irritating his neighbor had become a major highlight of his day. But then, he was fairly certain his irritating Everett helped to keep the man’s heart pumping, and so he could consider it in a noble l
ight.

  “Mornin’, Winston!”

  It was Mason MacCoy coming along and casting a wave out the open window of his pickup truck. Mason’s place was east down the road about four miles. He often passed at this time, on his way to the IGA bakery or the Main Street Cafe.

  “Good mornin’,” Winston called and waved back. He liked Mason. He didn’t treat Winston like an old codger, as so many did.

  As he headed around to the side of the house, here came another truck. Busy street this morning. Why, it was Joey in his new blue Dodge—only pickup in town that color—Winston saw with surprise, and he instantly thought, Coming into town the back way.

  Instinctively he raised his hand in a wave. No need not to wave; Joey’s and Charlene’s disagreements were their own, and he’d always liked Joey just fine.

  Joey saw him and looked startled. Then he cast a brief wave and seemed to speed up going down the hill.

  Winston stood there a moment watching the rear of his son-in-law’s truck and feeling all manner of great sadness and pity. By not coming home, Joey had made an ass of himself, as men will on occasion. Things did not appear to be improving on that score.

  Raising his eyes, Winston looked across at what he took for his son Freddy’s rooftop and then on farther to about where Charlene’s rooftop would be, if he could see that far. The town was starting to stir. Another day going on, people loving and arguing and living and dying.

  “Well, I’m not dead yet,” he muttered.

  Around the side of the house, he went to tending his dead wife’s rosebushes, which was what he always did after the flag raising. The fragrance of twenty blooming rosebushes swirled around him as he turned on the faucet and checked to make certain the soakers were dripping at the base of each bush. Pulling clippers from his back pocket, he pruned stems where necessary and cut blossoms just beginning to open, flowers of yellow and red and pink.

  “Good mornin’, Coweta,” he said in a hushed voice, feeling someone looking at him.

  Sometimes his wife came and visited with him. When it had first happened, he had been very worried about his faculties, but as all around him seemed perfectly normal—he could still see and hear everyone else just fine and didn’t confuse them and hadn’t started peeing in his pants—he figured he was okay and Coweta really was there, as she assured him that she was. In fact, in the course of their visits, she had explained all sorts of things about the soul and earth and heaven.

  Of course, he didn’t go around telling people he visited with Coweta. They would think he was looney, just the way they thought Ruthanne was because she forgot the year and often talked to her sisters, who’d passed away a long time ago. Actually, Winston, too, thought Ruthanne was a little looney. But since he could see Coweta, he figured it was a good bet Ruthanne could see people others couldn’t, either. There was a guy over in Tillman County who claimed the Virgin Mary came to a hill on his place, and he was making a bit of money off it. Some people got called crazy, and others made money.

  This minute, however, when he looked over his shoulder, Coweta was not there.

  Straightening, Winston looked up and down the street. There wasn’t a soul in sight, except for Dixie Love’s little black cocker let out in the front yard to do his business.

  This was somewhat disconcerting. Winston hoped he was not losing his faculties after all. The older he got, the greater became the fear of ending up sitting in a nursing home hallway, peeing in his pants.

  Winston was not losing his faculties. It was Vella Blaine, watching him with Perry’s binoculars pressed up to the venetian blinds of her dining room window.

  Just then Vella saw Mildred come around from the back. Mildred was in a robe—a flowery silky kind such as fancy women wore—and her hair was wrapped up in a flaming pink turban. She ought to be ashamed wearing such a getup at her size and age. She said something to Winston, and the two went back inside. Mildred at least seemed in a hurry.

  When all she gazed at were the blooming rosebushes, Vella lowered the binoculars and went into her own kitchen, where her daughter still sat in her robe and slippers, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Vella wished she would leave. She couldn’t call Minnie with Belinda sitting there.

  “Well, something is goin’ on over to the Valentines’,” Vella said. “Mildred just came out, and she looked in a state, and she and Winston went hurrying back inside. I wonder if Ruthanne’s broke a hip or something.”

  Belinda lowered the newspaper and eyed the binoculars. “Are you spyin’ on the neighbors again?”

  “I am not spyin’ on the neighbors. I was just watchin’ birds, and I happened to see.”

  “Oh, Mama, you are never in this world watchin’ birds. You’re watchin’ the neighbors.”

  “I am not. I have my book and everything.”

  Vella reached around to grab her bird book for evidence, but it wasn’t on the end of the counter. “I was watchin’ blue jays this morning. One went after Dixie Love’s dog. Dived right down at him.” At last she found the book, under a couple copies of the Conservative Chronicle and a Ladies Home Journal on the microwave cart.

  Belinda had the paper up in front of her face again.

  Vella refreshed the cup of coffee she’d left to go peer out the window and sat down at the table. “Winston was clipping a bunch of rose blossoms again this morning. I just can’t understand it. It has been over a hundred every day. My bushes and everyone else’s have only put on a bud here and there. My Fragrant Cloud may even die, and I’ve kept it watered and shaded.”

  “Maybe you’ve got those nematode things in your soil,” Belinda said, not looking out from her newspaper.

  Vella looked at the newspaper and wished her daughter would get some gumption.

  She said, “If I’ve got nematodes, then Winston is the only one in town that doesn’t have them, because he is the only one with rosebushes blooming like there’s no tomorrow.” She added silently to herself, And he is the only old man in this town livin’ with a bunch of women.

  As soon as Belinda went upstairs to dress, Vella telephoned Minnie Oakes to give a report on Winston’s activities, on Mildred running out dressed like a dancer in a forties picture show. Minnie agreed with her that Winston and the women needed watching. Women were coming and going at his house, and that just wasn’t right. A couple of times Vella had mentioned her puzzlement over Winston’s getting all those blossoms from his rosebushes, but Minnie wasn’t interested in this. Minnie only did vegetable gardening.

  Three

  The City Hall thermometer reads 102°

  Charlene felt as if her skin were too tight and might at any moment tear apart. It was very hard work, trying to appear normal and not like someone who wanted to get a gun and go shoot her husband. If she shot Joey, then he never would be able to come home.

  And Charlene very much wanted Joey to come home. She didn’t care about him running off, if he would just come home. She believed the heat was the biggest cause of Joey up and leaving. As a horse trainer, Joey worked outside in the sun a great deal. It was hard for a person to hold up under such persistent heat, not to mention the heavy pile of disappointments twenty-one years of marriage managed to accumulate. She considered his wild behavior now something akin to heatstroke that caused him to go a little crazy, but when the episode was over, and the temperatures dropped, he would regain his senses and come home and take up their normal life again, just like none of this had ever happened. What she had to do was hold on until then.

  She managed to do that all week, until Friday afternoon when she came out of the IGA and looked up and saw her husband, his cowboy hat set back like he wore it sometimes, sitting at the new stoplight in his new, bright blue one-ton Dodge, with black-haired Sheila Arnett in the seat beside him.

  Charlene, clinging to the grocery sack of two dozen eggs, quart of orange juice and pound of bananas, stopped and stared.

  “Charlene? What…? Oh.”

  It was Rainey’s voice, coming to her d
imly, while she could not tear her eyes from the sight of Joey and that woman in his truck. She thought that the moment was like something that would happen in a soap opera. She wished heartily that she looked better. None of those women in a soap would be looking like she did when this happened to them. They would have all their makeup on and certainly wouldn’t be wearing old jeans and a sleeveless shirt, with their pudgy arms stuck out, and their hair pulled back carelessly into a ponytail.

  She ducked her head. Oh, Lord, please don’t let him see me. She would just die if Joey saw her. Maybe she would just die anyway. It would be easier.

  “Come on, Mama.”

  Her eldest son’s voice broke through the fog of despair, and she looked over at him. With a pained expression, Larry Joe took her sack, shifted it and the one he carried onto his right arm, and put his left arm around her shoulders. “Bubba, come on now,” he called to Danny J., who was over at the soft drink machine at the corner of the store.

  With a bit of alarm, Charlene saw her younger son beating up the Coke machine. She knew she should reprimand him, but she was too preoccupied with watching her husband and his girlfriend drive on past. She didn’t think Joey saw her.

  Rainey called out, “Jojo, you get right to the truck and stay there.”

  Charlene saw her little girl crossing the blacktopped lot. Jojo was gazing down the road. Likely she had seen her father driving with another woman, when she needed to be watching for traffic.

  “That machine took my money, Mama,” Danny J. complained, trotting up to her.

  “Just get on to the truck,” Larry Joe said, his arm pressing Charlene to walk along beside him.

  “Just because Daddy’s gone, you ain’t the boss of me,” Danny J. said.

  Charlene got up voice enough to say, “Danny J., please go on to the truck and watch your little sister.”

  He peered at her, then ducked his head and shuffled off, mumbling, “Watch her do what?”

  Daddy’s gone. The words echoed in Charlene’s mind.

  “Good golly this blacktop is hot,” Rainey said. “It just soaks up the sun. It’s all this blacktop ever’where raisin’ the temperature. My baby’s gonna come out parboiled.”