Driving Lessons Read online

  Rainey had stayed to help Charlene at this time of crisis, which was very welcome, but more and more Rainey was working on Charlene’s last nerve. Rainey had become obsessed about avoiding the heat and cranky when not in an air-conditioned space. This annoyed Charlene, who thought a straying husband of a whole lot more significance than the heat.

  “You didn’t have to come with us, Rainey,” Charlene said. “You could have stayed at the house, in the air-conditioning, with all the curtains pulled, too.”

  The attack took Rainey by surprise. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Char. It’s just so dang hot there isn’t any point to walk slow over this parking lot. It’s not healthy, hon.”

  Clamping her jaw tight, her eyes flashing, Charlene broke into rapid steps and walked straight to the rear of the Suburban.

  “Charlene…”

  Charlene got to the rear of the Suburban and had to wait for Larry Joe, who had the key. He came jogging over, and she said brightly, “Tie that bag closed, Larry Joe. I just hate these plastic bags. If we put them in right, the ones with the milk won’t fall over. Those milk caps do leak. Danny J., hon, stop wipin’ that car with the back of your T-shirt. You and your sister get on in the truck.

  “The seats are burnin’ hot, Mama,” Jojo said in that worried voice she’d used all week.

  “We’ll just wait a minute,” Rainey suggested, “and let Larry Joe start the engine and get the air conditioner cooling things off. I wished I’d remembered to put towels on the seats.”

  Charlene ignored them and walked up to the front passenger door, took hold of the handle and felt it burning her palm. She slipped into the front seat, and while Larry Joe started the engine and the air conditioner, she sat perfectly straight, feeling the heat of the seat through her jeans and the beads of sweat break out on her skin, run down her temples and between her breasts. She felt each bead of sweat deliberately and gave anticipating thought to having heatstroke and dying, but then who would take care of her babies, since her husband was off driving around with his black-haired girlfriend?

  When her sister and younger children got into the back seat and closed the doors, Charlene said, “How ’bout if we go to the Dairy Freeze and get an ice cream? That’d be nice in this heat.”

  She looked around and found everyone staring at her. Larry Joe’s jaw was so tight that he might be in danger of breaking a tooth. Her gaze went to Rainey, who was frowning deeply and wiping the hair from her forehead, and then over to her two younger children, who were staring at her in that odd way she’d seen on their faces so often the past week. An accusing and painful way.

  Jojo shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest, while Danny J. went and turned his face right out the window.

  Rainey said in a very practical voice, “Charlene, we just bought ice cream in the store. We might as well go home to have it in the air-conditioning.”

  “Well, okay.”

  Charlene faced forward as Larry Joe headed for the street. The afternoon sun was so bright, bouncing off the hood. Confusion filled her chest, made it hard to breathe. She felt as if she might scream.

  Oh, my gosh, she really might scream, she thought, feeling a peculiar fury welling up in her chest. It was possible that she might start screaming and smack out the window glass. She gripped the armrest to keep control of her hand, but she could not seem to swallow the emotion that had now swelled into her throat.

  “Larry Joe,” she said, all of a sudden. What are you thinking, Charlene?

  “Yes?” He cast her a curious, questioning look.

  “Just turn right and let’s see if we can catch sight of your daddy. I have something I need to tell him.”

  Larry Joe looked at her for a long second, and then he hit the pedal and sent them out on the road.

  “Oh, Mama….Mama, our ice cream’s gonna melt,” Jojo said.

  “It’ll be all right for a bit,” Rainey said quickly. “That boy packaged it right in that freezer bag. Here…I’ll move this vent so the cold air is blowin’ right on the bag with the ice cream. It’ll be fine, sugar.”

  Charlene kept her gaze out the windshield, her eyes searching like revolving radar for her husband’s blue truck. She didn’t see it anywhere on Main Street. Like it had disappeared from the earth, in the same manner as he had from their lives.

  That was how it was, no more pretending he had not gone. No more pretending that what she feared had not come about. No more pretending that he could come back as if he’d been away on vacation. They were too far past that now, since she herself had seen him with Sheila Arnett.

  Why did he have to leave me, God? What’s wrong with me? Why did he stop loving me?

  “Rainey, do you have a lipstick?”

  Rainey could always be counted on for a lipstick, and she produced one instantly. “Here—Burnt Sunset. It’s perfect for you.”

  Charlene peered into the mirror on the visor and applied the lipstick. It helped a little, but her eyes were still the eyes of a forty-six-year-old woman who had been crying every night into her pillow. And there just wasn’t anything she could do about her hair. As she smoothed stray strands, she caught sight of her rosy painted fingernails. At least she had her hands looking good, womanly. She’d done her nails at three o’clock in the morning, when she couldn’t sleep and couldn’t stand to wrestle the sheets and pillows anymore.

  She caught Jojo’s worried little angel face in the mirror, then flipped up the visor.

  She looked at Larry Joe’s hands on the steering wheel, the rough hands of a man now, and wondered if she should tell him to stop and just go on home. She didn’t want to have a scene in front of her children.

  “There’s Daddy’s truck at the feed store,” Danny J. said. His nose was pressed against the window glass.

  Charlene saw Joey’s blue truck sitting out front of MacCoy’s Feed and Seed. Then Larry Joe was whipping the Suburban around and heading back toward it. He glanced at Charlene with a questioning eyebrow.

  She looked at him and then at the blue pickup gleaming in the sun.

  “Just pull over here to the side,” she said, a sense of wild determination coming over her. “Here. Stop here.”

  She wanted the children far enough away so they could not hear, should she lose her temper and yell. Children should never see their parents acting rudely. Thank you, God. Sheila Arnett is not in Joey’s truck. She must have gone inside the store with him. Just running around with him, bold as brass.

  “Y’all stay here. I’ll only be a few minutes,” Charlene said, as if she were running into the Texaco for a cold drink.

  “Just go on.” Rainey shooed her with her hand and spoke in a tone that said, Do it, do it.

  Charlene got out and slammed the door of the Suburban and stood there a moment, her hand pressed on the door, sort of stuck there. Staring at the feed store, she thought, I cannot go in there.

  But she couldn’t stand there hanging on to the Suburban, either, so she started off toward Joey’s blue truck. Her feet crunched on stray gravel. She should have brought her sunglasses. She fought hard not to squint, which she knew did nothing but accentuate the wrinkles around her eyes. It was almost impossible not to squint, though, with the glare coming up off the white concrete parking lot. Brand-new paving. The MacCoy brothers owned the elevator and had money. She sure wished she looked better. Wiping a dribble from her temple, she thought, Back straight—a woman always looks in business when she walks with a straight back. That was what their mother used to tell them. Their mother had had a straight back until the day she died, and their daddy had never left her.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 103°

  One second Mason MacCoy had been taking a big drink of ice tea from a foam cup, wishing Fayrene Gardner over at the cafe would learn he liked lemon in his tea so he didn’t have to ask every time, and the next he had turned his head and absently looked out the yawning door of the feed store warehouse like he did a hundred times a day, and he saw the woman walking across t
he lot in the bright sun.

  He took a second look, moving forward to the loading dock.

  She seemed familiar, and he hadn’t expected to see anyone familiar. Not a familiar woman. Certainly not in the heat of the day, when nothing was stirring.

  Why, it was Charlene Darnell. He knew that shiny-penny colored hair and that way of moving that was sort of a glide.

  He took a few more steps forward and peered hard into the brightness of the lot, his gaze followed the line from where she had come, and he saw her faded red and white Suburban. He could see shadows inside, possibly her kids.

  Ohh, buddy.

  He watched her slow down, round her husband’s blue truck and then stand there uncertainly.

  Darnell had to be inside. Everyone knew about Joey Darnell getting crazy and leaving his wife and kids and shacking up over there at Sheila Arnett’s place. Darnell claimed it was business, but no one believed him.

  It occurred to him that Charlene Darnell might have come to shoot her husband. Or Sheila Arnett. That was how these things happened, normally sane people going all crazy. He himself had done that, gone crazy over a woman once. And it had been hot like this then, too.

  Uh-oh, buddy. He didn’t see a gun in her hand. Okay.

  He watched her place a hand on the open window of Darnell’s truck, look inside, and then lean back against the door. She was sort of in the shade there.

  She might have a gun, he thought, one of those small ones, tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Her full breasts caused her shirt to hang out enough to hide a gun, if it were tucked into her jeans.

  Mason gazed at her full breasts.

  He thought Charlene Darnell had some fine breasts, the way they were so upright and womanly.

  And then he thought how small she looked there. Like she might melt away. While her husband hid from her inside.

  The way she looked caused a wince deep down inside Mason. It was a shame…and she could have a gun hidden in her waistband. If so, someone had to stop her before she did something foolish…someone needed to see to her.

  And almost before he knew it, he had taken hold of the hand-truck he had piled with feed bags and started down the incline and across the lot to Darnell’s pickup. When he hit the lot, he began to whistle; that seemed a good thing to do to cover what he suddenly realized might be a really foolish action on his part.

  She heard him, and her head swung around. At the sight of her lovely face, the wisps of hair blowing round it, his heart sort of jumped.

  “Hello,” he said, casting her a smile.

  She sent him a return smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Her expression was on the verge of tears. That really unnerved him. He wouldn’t know what in the hell to do if she broke down crying.

  He jumped right in with, “Well, it is another scorcher, tenth in a row now over a hundred.” He checked out her waist and didn’t see any evidence of a gun.

  “Yes, a hundred and three, the thermometer on City Hall said a minute ago.” Her voice was sort of faint.

  The worry that he’d made a mistake in coming out here swept him hard. He had butted into someone else’s business, which was never a good idea. He sure hoped he had not gone and gotten himself into a fix. Lord, please don’t let me have gotten in a fix.

  “I wished they’d never put up that stupid sign,” Mason said as he set about loading the feed sacks into Darnell’s truckbed. “They still can’t get the clock to work, and that thermometer just makes everybody hotter. Ever’body’s always readin’ the temperature and talkin’ about it.”

  The sun lit her hair like a halo. Mason couldn’t quit looking at it.

  He slammed the tailgate closed, saying, “People try to make like this heat is something unusual. Like this sort of heat hasn’t ever happened before. Global warming and everything. We’ve had droughts before, though, and likely we’ll have them again. Had a bad summer some ten years or so ago, no rain from June to September.”

  “I remember that,” she said. “It was eleven years ago. My son was only two, and over the summer he’d forgotten what rain was like. He went out in the yard and just stood there in it.” She brushed stray hairs from her face and glanced from her Suburban to the store door with a worried expression.

  It was a poor situation, Mason thought. Someone in there needed to shove that lily-livered Darnell out the door.

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say about the weather. He ought to ask her if she wanted him to go in and get her no-’count husband. He couldn’t just go back to the warehouse and leave her standing out here all alone like she was. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t see anything else for him to do but go into the store. That was what he would have to do. He’d go in the store, and probably all he’d have to do was look at Darnell. He would speak if he had to, though.

  Watching the man take hold of the dolly, about to leave, Charlene came out with, “They’re ready to seed the clouds. They reported it on the news last night. The governor came on and said the airplanes are ready to go up and seed whenever the conditions are right.”

  She felt a sense of panic. She did not know what in the world to do if he went off and left her standing out there.

  “That’s a tricky deal, that seeding,” the man said, relaxing and leaning on his dolly. “One minute can be dry, and the next you can end up with flooding.” His eyes were on her intently. Really bright blue eyes.

  “I always thought that was a tale, about the seeding, but I guess it’s true.” She felt silly not being able to think of his name. One of the MacCoy brothers, the youngest. He often delivered feed to their place, and he always spoke to her when he saw her. He knew manners. She remembered his blue eyes.

  “No…it’s true. Conditions have to be right, though. Can’t seed just any clouds.”

  She couldn’t think of what to say to that. It was time to quit all this, too. She would just have to go in the store to get Joey, because she couldn’t leave now.

  Right at the moment the MacCoy man nodded at her and moved to leave, the glass door to the store opened behind them. Charlene glanced over her shoulder to see Joey step out.

  He came down the couple of steps, keeping his head pointed downward, showing the crown of his hat. He didn’t raise his head until he reached them, and then he didn’t look at Charlene, but at the man beside her.

  “I don’t believe I ordered any cattle feed, Mason,” Joey said. “I told Adam I wanted the fourteen percent pellet horse feed. Thirty sacks of it.” Charlene had always marveled that Joey could speak as if all was normal, even if a tornado was about to sweep them away.

  “Oh?” The MacCoy brother—Mason—raised his eyebrows. “Well, I guess I got your order mixed up with someone else’s. I’ll just unload ’em.”

  “No. I’ll drive over to the warehouse in a few minutes, and you can unload them there,” Joey said in a short manner Charlene didn’t think was called for.

  “Well, okay, if you’re sure. I don’t mind takin’ them back now. I got the dolly.”

  “I’m sure. You can just go on.”

  Mason MacCoy’s blue eyes came over to hers, and he smiled with them and nodded again, same as tipping his ball cap. She nodded back, and then he rolled his dolly off toward the warehouse, walking with easy strides.

  Joey looked from Mason back to Charlene. He had a peculiar sense that something was going on here that he didn’t understand. For some reason Mason had been jerking him around. But it seemed to Joey like he couldn’t understand a lot these days.

  “What do you want, Charlene?” he asked, finally looking at her.

  By the look on her face, he knew immediately he had said the wrong thing. It seemed even more of a crime on his part, since he had meant very much to say the right thing. Or to at least avoid saying anything really wrong, and here he’d gone and done it right off.

  “What do I want?” she said.

  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He imagined Sheila and the others in the store watching,
and this did not help his thought processes.

  “What do you think I want?” She was yelling now, and gesturing wildly. “You called me on the phone to say you were leaving me. On the phone, Joey.”

  He didn’t know why using the telephone so they didn’t have to go through a scene was a bad thing. He didn’t think he should say so, though.

  “You are just runnin’ around with her in front of everyone. How can you do that? How can you carry on with her right in front of your children?” She was leaning forward and looking a little wild-eyed.

  “Carryin’ on? I’m not carryin’ on,” he said, feeling prodded into speech.

  He didn’t think he had ever seen Charlene this mad. And he sure didn’t want her to get hysterical right here, but then he followed her pointing hand and was startled to see the old Suburban sitting there off the side of the road. He’d been so jolted by seeing Charlene that he hadn’t given a thought to how she had arrived.

  “They saw you drivin’ her around. How do you think that looks to them…their daddy with his new girlfriend, and he hasn’t even spoken to them in a week.”

  “My girlfriend? She isn’t my girlfriend, Charlene.” He lowered his voice, hoping to encourage her to lower hers. He sure didn’t want Sheila to hear him. “She was just ridin’ in the passenger seat. I wasn’t touchin’ her or anything.”

  “Fine,” she said. “You are drivin’ her around in the passenger seat and you have not bothered to come see your children in a week.”

  She was throwing the accusations at him, and he didn’t know which one to answer first.

  “I told you I would come by, Charlene. I told you I knew we had to work it out, but that I needed some time to think things through. We agreed we both needed time, and you said that was okay,” he reminded her.

  She had folded her arms in a way that pushed her breasts out. He wished she wouldn’t do that. Looking down into her accusing eyes, he had the shocking urge to take a hold of her and shake her. He didn’t think she should have done this right here. This was not the place. There was the telephone.