Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel)

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

“I love you, Harry. I love you, and I need you, but right now my father needs me. I don’t know what to do.”

  The words burst from her unexpectedly, causing her heart to pound and all manner of feelings to swell in her chest.

  Harry nodded, reached out and took her hand. His sad expression made her quiver and hold his hand tightly.

  “He’s my father, and he’s old and alone,” she said. “I can’t just let them move him off to a home. It’s fifty miles from here, from the place where he’s lived for most of his life, from his friends…from everything he knows. He will die then.”

  “And this is your home, too,” Harry said. His gaze was direct, and disconcerting.

  “Yes, it is.”

  She pulled her hand away, turning, looking toward the house. “I grew up here. I came running here when I got hurt as a child, when I lost boyfriends, and when each of my marriages failed. And Mama and Daddy were always here for me, putting me back together.

  “I can hardly stand the thought of Helen moving in here. She won’t have a vinyl cloth on the kitchen table. That’s too cheap-looking for her. She’ll move the dining room set out, and Charlene won’t take it, and I don’t have anywhere to put it, and it is ugly, but I grew up eating at it, and I can’t let it go.”

  She realized she was getting a little overwrought and tried to keep calm. “I can’t run away with you, Harry. I simply can’t let go of any of this. Not yet.”

  She dropped her gaze, embarrassed at the unnamed fears churning inside.

  He reached for her and drew her against him. She breathed in the scent of him, a scent she had come to adore. She heard his heart beat beneath her ear.

  “I’m going to have to leave tomorrow,” Harry said.

  They were in the kitchen, and the entire time they had walked back to the house, Rainey had known he was going to say that. Probably she had heard him thinking about the best way to say it, but really, there wasn’t a best way.

  “I know. You’ve postponed your own life for me long enough.” He had to get on with things, with dealing with his family and with being a psychiatrist and all the other things he might wish to do.

  “I don’t think of it like that,” Harry said, seeming a little startled. “I haven’t postponed my life at all. I think I have been truly living for the first time in my life. I’ve wanted to be with you. I still want to be with you, but I have a need to pursue my path, too.”

  “I know that.”

  She gazed at him and thought that she could not bear to have her heart broken again, and that she didn’t want to begin some pattern of foolish living.

  “I’m not exactly certain about what I’ll be doing,” he said, stroking the back of his head as he usually did when thinking. “I hope I can get into psychiatry school pretty quickly. I already took a number of courses…guess it was always in the back of my mind. But I’ll call you, Rainey, and we can write, and as soon as one of us can, we’ll fly back and forth.”

  She looked away, turned to get a bowl of water and set it down for Roscoe.

  “I don’t want it to end here, Rainey. Do you?”

  “No.” But she wondered how it would end.

  “I love you, Rainey. I’ve never felt like this before…but I know I love you.”

  “Oh, Harry.” She had made such poor decisions with Robert and Monte. “We’re so very different, Harry.”

  “Not that different…not in any way that matters.”

  They gazed at each other for a long moment.

  “Oh, Harry, what if we don’t make it?”

  “Why look at failure before we even begin?” he said in that amused, dry tone.

  He waited for her.

  Another moment of being overcome by doubts all around, and then she went to him.

  They kissed hot and hard and long, and Rainey thought that no man she had ever kissed had done so quite as wonderfully.

  When she broke from him, her chest heaving, she turned and led the way to the stairs, tugging him along by the hand.

  At the bottom step he jerked her to him and kissed her again, causing her blood to flow liquid and hot and burn up any hesitation she might have had left. Two more steps up, she turned and kissed him, and another three steps and he kissed her in such a manner as to cause her to take hold of the bannister to remain on her feet.

  She continued upward with shaky legs, while behind her, he began stripping out of his shirt.

  At the top of the stairs, he sent the shirt flying across the hallway and shoved her against the wall, pressed himself against her and kissed her until every cell in her body was singing and sweating.

  “Harry…”

  “Rainey?”

  He kissed her neck, ran his hands firmly up and down her sides, and then cupped her bottom and brought her against him.

  “Ohh, Harry.”

  His dark hair was silky beneath her fingertips, his body hard and urgent against her.

  Her legs began to buckle. He surprised her by scooping her up into his arms and carrying her to her room, managing, probably strengthened in his passion, to do so quite easily.

  He sat her on the bed, and the next thing he was down on the floor, slipping off her shoes and caressing her feet and causing all sorts of sensual sensations that Rainey had never associated with feet. With surprised curiosity, she watched him kiss her instep and then proceed to taste his way up the inside of her bare leg. Her leg began to quiver.

  “Harry,” she said breathlessly, her leg jerking of its own accord.

  “Rainey?” He shot her a grin and continued.

  When he reached her thigh, she cried out.

  He lifted his head and smiled softly, promisingly, and his eyes were so eager she thought she could not stand it.

  She reached for him, crying softly with the sweet ache of wanting, and he came to her, kissing her lips and her cheeks and her neck, unfastening the small buttons at the front of her dress, and all the while whispering tender words of love.

  He proceeded to find every tender spot on her body and to play it in such a manner as to bring forth hidden passions that caused her to spread open her body and her heart and to call out his name again and again. Then, when she lay spent and thankful in his arms, he very slowly and gently proceeded to begin all over again.

  “Harry?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where did you learn…all this? For someone who says he never had a serious girlfriend, you must have had a lot of practice.”

  He chuckled. “I paid attention in anatomy class.”

  “Well, it was never like this before…with Robert or Monte.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. With them, it was like somethin’ they went after.” She thought hard. “With you, it’s like something you are giving.”

  His response was to kiss her breast as if he were worshiping it.

  “I love you, Harry,” she whispered and dug her hand into his thick hair.

  And she thought that if this was not true and lasting love, then she would never find it.

  They gave themselves to each other all night, and in the morning Harry left.

  “I’ll just take a bus to Wichita Falls and catch a commuter down to Houston,” he said.

  “No. I’ll drive you down.”

  “You have enough to do with getting your father. I’ll rent a car and drive home.”

  “You cannot rent a car in Valentine. Maybe Freddy would lend you a car. I imagine he would rent you one.”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  In the end he took the bus, saying that he really wanted to try it. One more new experience. Rainey thought that they were getting their first lesson in the inconvenience of traveling between Valentine and Houston.

  The Main Street Café served as the bus station, and they had breakfast there. Rainey could tell Harry seemed anxious to leave now. To get back to his life and get on with things. A number of times he talked of this therapist or that doctor with whom
he wanted to talk and study. Now that he had made the choice of pursuing psychiatry, he was enthused and focused. She tried to pay attention and be supportive. She felt supportiveness was her talent, although as the minutes ticked past she felt herself getting wound tighter and tighter, and she really wanted to just jump up and say, “Give it up and stay here and we’ll go back to bed!” Her emotional state was not helped by all the people who kept stopping at their table and inquiring about her daddy and looking Harry over, so as soon as they finished their meal, Rainey suggested they go outside, where they could have the last few minutes alone before the bus arrived.

  Unfortunately when they stepped out on the sidewalk, the first person they ran into was Monte.

  “Hi, Rainey.”

  Monte’s eyes were on Harry as he spoke the greeting, and Rainey made the introductions.

  Always polite, Monte shook Harry’s hand, apparently feeling the need to say, “I was Rainey’s last husband.”

  “She told me,” Harry said with his dry amusement.

  “Oh.” He looked at Rainey, crossing his arms and sticking his hands up under his armpits, as if he intended to stand there and converse for some time. “I heard about your daddy, and you comin’ home. How’s Winston doin’?”

  “Very well. I’ll bring him home this afternoon. How’s Janna?”

  “She’s doin’ okay, I guess. Maybe I’ll stop in to see your daddy tonight. I always enjoyed your daddy.”

  Just then, over Monte’s shoulder, Rainey saw the sun glinting on the silver bus coming down the street. She looked anxiously at Harry.

  “The bus is comin’.”

  “Oh, are you leavin’ on the bus?” Monte inquired.

  “Yes,” Rainey and Harry answered at the same time, having eyes only for each other.

  Rainey forgot all about Monte then, forgot about everyone and even where she was. She got lost in Harry’s brown eyes, thinking, I must remember them…in case this is the last time.

  Harry draped an arm on her shoulder and bent his head, blocking the sunlight and the world with his hat, and kissed her softly, seductively.

  “We’ll work it out,” he said, his brown eyes reassuring her.

  She nodded.

  “I love you, Rainey.”

  Words choked in her throat. Men had told her they loved her before.

  “Can you say it?” he asked.

  “I love you, Harry.”

  He pressed her head to his chest, and she gripped his shirt, inhaling the scent of him and pressing it into memory.

  And then here came the bus, stopping in the street with a whoosh of brakes and a squeal as the doors opened. Several people got off.

  He kissed her boldly right there in front of the doors, a kiss that lifted one of her feet off the ground and almost made her faint.

  “I’ll call you tonight,” he said in a husky tone, and then he turned, swinging the maroon bag that Uncle Doyle had given him over his shoulder and mounting the steps in the boots he had bought. His hat was shoved backward on his head, showing his thick shiny hair.

  Then he was gone into the bus, a shadow moving along behind the dark glass. He knocked on the glass about halfway down the bus, and she moved to peer at him, and to wave.

  And then the bus was going away down Main Street, and she was left standing there, watching it go in a puff of exhaust and dust and thinking, “Well, we’ll see what happens.”

  “Rainey, you okay?”

  Monte rather startled her with his question. She had forgotten all about him and had gone directly to her truck, opening the door with blurred vision. She saw him now, peering to look at her face.

  “Yes.” She wiped her eyes with a napkin from the glove box.

  “He’s somebody special, huh?”

  “Yes…he is.”

  “Well, I hope it goes okay for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve always been sorry we couldn’t make it,” he said, looking sorrowful. Monte could look very sorrowful.

  “I know, Monte. I have my regrets, too. There’s a part of me that will always love you…you know.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, his face very long. Then he said, “Do you suppose I could borrow a couple of twenties until payday?”

  She stared at him. Then she dug quickly into her purse, pulled out the bills and handed them to him, telling him not to ask for any more in the future. “It’s over, Monte. I don’t have anything left to give you.”

  He looked a little confused as he walked away in his rundown boots, but she thought he would understand after he thought about it.

  She started her truck, backed out and drove to her parents’ house, where she went straight to her traveling bags in her bedroom and got the framed photographs of Robert and Monte that she had been hauling around with her for over two months. She carried them to her truck and drove quickly to her cottage, raced into the stuffy rooms which had not been opened for weeks, gathering all her pictures of Robert and Monte that she had tucked away, along with some early poems Robert had written for her during his literary phase, tied together and stuffed in her lingerie drawer, still, after all these years. She also got her marriage certificates and copies of her divorce decrees.

  She took all these things out to the gravel drive and burnt them in a pile.

  “What are you doin’?” Charlene asked, coming up to see.

  “Leavin’ yesterday behind,” Rainey said, feeding a picture of Robert into the fire. She thought that he would find her actions foolish, but, at last, she did not hear his critical voice.

  “Are you goin’ to marry Harry?” Charlene asked.

  “I don’t know what’s goin’ to happen with Harry. He just left on the bus.” She added, “He said he’d call.”

  She wondered if he would. People so often changed their minds. So often things just fell apart, she thought, looking at the small fire of memories.

  CHAPTER 30

  Long Stretch of Lonesome

  From the minute that she came into the house with her daddy, Rainey began to listen for the phone. Since Harry had departed, Rainey vacillated from believing she would hear from him to believing she had lost her mind to think he would call. And either way, some bit of heart was required of her, and she wasn’t certain she had any to spare. She felt herself getting wound tighter than a spool of thread, and if anyone jerked too hard, she was going to snap in two, a state that was not helped by the emotional turmoil all around her.

  Because of Rainey taking the time to burn away her history with men, she and Charlene were late getting their daddy from the hospital, and he was not at all happy about it. The nurse told them he had been dressed and waiting since before breakfast and long before the doctor had formally discharged him.

  He grumbled all the way home, saying things like, “I could have had another nap, if I’d known you were goin’ to be late,” and “I’m almost too tired to go now, and it is lunchtime,” and “I could have called Bill Yearwood to come get me, if I’d known it was goin’ to be so much trouble for you.”

  With the last statement, Charlene rather exploded. “Oh, Daddy, Bill Yearwood lost his license last month. He can’t see to drive anymore.”

  Rainey thought Charlene needn’t have said that, as it just pointed up their father’s own dependency.

  “He still drives, which is more than you do,” their daddy said, surprising Rainey with his sharpness.

  “I could, if I wanted to. I keep my license current,” Charlene said in a defensive tone.

  Rainey hoped Charlene wouldn’t start crying; she didn’t know what she would do if her sister broke down. If her sister started crying, Daddy might have another heart attack, and even as she thought this, Rainey realized she had to cut off that foolish line of thinking.

  She was relieved when Charlene left right after they got Daddy situated on the couch, where he could lie and watch television. Charlene fairly raced away down the porch steps, saying she was going to get her hair done and did not want to be late. L
arry Joe would pick her up from the beauty shop.

  Then the telephone rang, and Rainey hurried to answer, knowing it was not at all logical to expect the caller to be Harry—who surely wouldn’t be any farther than Wichita Falls—but even so, he might call her.

  It was Freddy.

  Rainey informed him that things were in hand, and, with a sigh, he said, “Well, I guess you’d better let me talk to him.”

  Rainey passed the receiver to their father, who listened for a full minute and then said, “I’m here on the couch, and all I’m gonna do is watch television, if everyone will leave me alone to do so.”

  He extended the receiver to Rainey and went to clicking television channels.

  “You brought this on yourself, you know,” Freddy said to her and hung up.

  Rainey carefully replaced the receiver, wondering how all of their lives could be falling apart, and wishing very much for her mother, actually listening for her mother’s movements in the kitchen.

  “I guess it’d be easier all the way around if I’d go to Prairie View Manor,” her daddy said.

  Rainey sank into the chair that had been her mother’s favorite. She gazed at her father, who stared at the television. After a minute she asked, “Daddy, do you want to go to Prairie View Manor?”

  He didn’t answer, kept his eyes glued on the television.

  Rainey set herself to force a conversation, but this intention was interrupted by the doorbell. It was Mildred Covington, the first of a stream of visitors who came in perky and smiling to cheer Daddy. Unfortunately, Daddy resisted cheering and focused completely on the Western Channel, so none of his visitors stayed more than ten minutes.

  “Rainey?”

  “Harry?” she said in surprise.

  “Were you expecting someone else?” He sort of laughed.

  “Well, people have been calling to talk to Daddy all day. Are you in Houston already?” It was only three o’clock, she saw by the clock on the oven. And her heart had begun to pound as she thought, He called.

  “No. I’m in Dallas, at the train station. I only have a couple of minutes.”

  Much to her surprise, he went on to tell her that he had continued on the bus because it was so easy, and now he was going to take a train to Houston, because he had met a man on the bus who was doing that, and he thought he would take the opportunity while it presented itself to try the experience.