Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “Oh, nonsense.” Dixie Love captured her by the shoulders.

  “We take walk-ins. We’re just about done with these ladies and can fit you right in.”

  She escorted Charlene to a chair, eased her down and swirled a cape around her shoulders, and introduced her to the tall, skinny woman, whose name was Oralee. Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, she produced a tumbler of sweet ice tea, which she tucked into Charlene’s hand, while chatting on about remembering that Charlene herself had been a beautician and saying that she thought the short haircut was “just the thing for Charlene’s features,” but maybe they could give it some lift.

  “What do you think, Oralee?” Dixie Love asked. “Maybe we should cut more back here and encourage it up on top.”

  Oralee’s ebony eyes gave Charlene a quick, penetrating survey. “Uh-huh, and a rinse. That new red highlight rinse that just come in. Not a dye,” she said to Charlene. “You don’t want to dye.”

  “No, I don’t want to dye,” Charlene said.

  “What you ought to do, Charlene, is give Joe a lesson. Show him what a mistake he has made,” Kaye Upchurch said.

  “Yes…get another man and make him jealous, and Joey’ll come runnin’ home,” Mildred said, her lips forming a firm line.

  “Where’d Joey go?” asked Ruthanne, who now had her hair all fixed and was sitting primly in a chair near the door.

  “He ran off with a girlfriend, Ruthanne,” Mildred said loudly.

  Charlene, having abandoned herself to the fate of being openly discussed, sat there occasionally sipping her ice tea and watching the tall, skinny woman’s dark hands tease up Mildred’s bright gold hair and Dixie Love’s pale ones pile Kaye Upchurch’s brown curls on top of her head.

  “I am not talking about bringing him home,” Kaye said. “She doesn’t need him to come home, not after this sort of thing. You won’t be able to trust him ever again. He just needs to get a lesson. You make sure he knows what he’s missing out on, and when he realizes that and tries to come home, just shut the door in his face.”

  Charlene didn’t know what to say to that, but apparently no reply was required. Quite quickly the tall Oralee said, “A man’s nothin’ but trouble anyway. A woman’s better off without. I’ve had three, and none of them gave me nothin’ but trouble.”

  “Then why are you always lookin’ around for another one?” Dixie Love asked, amusement ringing in her voice.

  “Well, they are trouble, but they are good for one thing,” Mildred said in a knowing fashion.

  Charlene’s eyes popped wide at the statement that instantly caused her to think of Mildred and her daddy—together. She ran her gaze over Mildred, thinking of it.

  “Oh, that is not worth having a man hangin’ around your neck,” Kaye Upchurch said in a matter-of-fact fashion that further surprised Charlene. “That is not what makes up life, anyway. Not worth the annoyance.”

  It was very hard to imagine Kaye Upchurch, a deacon in polyester, saying such a thing.

  Oralee said, “I think she ought to chase him down and scratch his eyes out. A woman needs to stick up for herself.”

  Charlene looked at her and thought: Oralee. A pretty name. Her voice sure is deep for such a skinny woman. Probably she could do Ruthanne’s hair well because it was so kinky. Oralee’s own hair was in a million braids, what that was called Charlene couldn’t remember, but it looked so artsy on the young woman.

  “Look at her fingernails,” Oralee said, jumping over and snatching up one of Charlene’s hands to display to everyone. “You could mark him good with those. Do you do them yourself?”

  “Yes.” Charlene looked at her hand in the same manner as everyone else.

  “Well, you ought to give him a scratch, just to pick your pride up, and then take all his money,” Oralee said, dropping Charlene’s hand and returning to Mildred’s hair.

  “Oralee, you do not mean that,” Dixie Love said. “She doesn’t mean that, Charlene. She is pullin’ your leg. And all bitterness does for a woman is give her wrinkles.”

  Dixie Love herself had a face right out of an Ivory soap commercial, pale and creamy and absolutely smooth. Charlene did quick calculations and came up with near sixty years for the woman, which was amazing. She wondered if Dixie Love had had plastic surgery. Maybe it was the woman’s last name of Love; maybe she was just filled up with it.

  “I did not say anything about being bitter,” Oralee said. She was quick as a wink putting Mildred’s hair in place. “No…bitterness only eats up the soul. You have to forgive like the Good Book says, but you can forgive at the same time that you give him the smack he needs. You give him the smack because he deserves it. You can’t respect yourself if you just let them men walk all over you, and they don’t respect you, either. You can’t give forgiveness if it isn’t asked for,” she added practically.

  Was that what Joey had done? Walked all over her? He had walked out, that was certain.

  “Oralee is right about getting what money you can,” Kaye said pointedly to Charlene. Then she returned her face to the mirror and expounded at some length on how forgiveness did not mean one should be foolish and how a woman needed to look after her future.

  “A woman is the one in charge of the home, and she needs to be capable to support it,” she said. “She needs to understand the finances involved. I pay all the bills and manage all the money. If it was left to Walter, we’d be in the poorhouse. And then you never know when a husband is going to die or run off, like yours has done. That’s why I started my own business sellin’ Country Home decor. You might want to consider that, Charlene. I can get you started.” She was looking at Charlene in the mirror.

  “I…I’m not sure.”

  Mildred said, “You do need to think about your finances, dear.” She was digging into her purse, pulling out her wiping cloth and packets of mustard. “You mostly need to think about retirement income. Too many women…like Ruthanne…” she whispered, “…never thought of it. Just left it to their husbands or daddies, and then you get to a certain age, and there’s nothing but Social Security, and a person would starve on Social Security alone.”

  Charlene knew that Mildred herself had only a small bit of income from the sale of her home.

  “You could go to work as a nail tech,” Oralee said to her. “Around here that brings you about two hundred a day on average, which may not be a fortune but sure isn’t starvin’, and a lot of it is in cash.”

  Charlene was amazed at the figure. “For doin’ finger-nails?” She had not been a manicurist when she had worked as a beautician.

  “Oh, yeah, honey, fingernails are big business. You got manicures and artificials and wraps. And then there’s sellin’ products, too. You can make upwards of three hundred a day at one of those salons up in Lawton. I’m fixin’ to go up there myself, where I’m not overwhelmed with all these white people’s hair.”

  Oralee cast Dixie Love a pointed expression, and Dixie Love only gave her a serene smile in return.

  “I don’t have a license anymore,” Charlene said. “I’d have to go back to school and all.”

  “Not necessarily. I’m a licensed teacher,” Dixie Love put in quietly. “You could work under my supervision. I have an opening, if you’re interested.”

  Charlene gazed at her. “I really don’t know what I’m going to do.” The idea unnerved her. She didn’t want to commit to anything that might interfere with Joey coming back home.

  Mildred had succeeded in finding her checkbook and wrote a check for services rendered. Before she left, she asked, “Are we still havin’ Sunday supper at your house this week?”

  “Oh…yes,” Charlene said, because she couldn’t think of a reason why not.

  The next instant Oralee was laying her back and spraying warm water over her head. Oralee’s ebony eyes hovered over her and shone with unexpected warmth.

  Then suddenly there was Kaye Upchurch’s face jutting in beside Oralee’s above her. “Here’s my card. You call me, if yo
u want to become your own boss selling Country Home decor.” She dropped the card in Charlene’s lap and was gone.

  Oralee said, “Whew, that woman can wear you out with her righteousness. Now, sweetie, you just close your eyes and enjoy this. You’ll feel a whole lot better when I get done. We’re gonna put some starch back into you.”

  Charlene closed her eyes and imagined the sultry Oralee pouring starch from the shampoo bottle and working it into her head with her massaging hands. Then she thought how sad a woman she must appear, needing starch.

  Dixie swung the chair around, and Charlene saw herself in the plate glass mirror.

  “Oh…”

  Tentatively she reached up to touch her hair. It was soft. She moved her head this way and that. She had not imagined simply cutting and curling her hair could do this, make her look so much more alive. Her hair had come alive. Big, bold curls that set off the coppery color. And she’d had her eyebrows waxed and a facial and new makeup applied, too.

  “Here’s an extra.” Oralee dabbed perfume on Charlene’s neck and wrists, a very sweet, sultry scent.

  As Charlene rose from the chair and paid Dixie Love, she kept glancing in the mirrors all around. An emotion she could not name began to rise in her. It made her heart beat faster, made her feel as if she could feel her blood pumping through all her cells.

  A last look in the mirror and she said to the two women, “Oh, thank you both so much!”

  Oralee’s lips formed a rare grin, “Honey, we didn’t make the material. God did that, and it is fine. Just worn and needin’ a little starch to make it seem like brand-new.”

  Charlene did feel brand-new. All along the sidewalk on her way to the cafe, where Larry Joe was supposed to pick her up, she caught her reflection in window after plate glass window. The sense of newness, boldness, just grew and grew. She felt like a woman who would go without her panties and not worry a bit.

  As she passed the saddle shop, a man came out—a very handsome man—and he smiled at her. She smiled back before she knew.

  Then she quickly averted her eyes, walking on and marveling at the feelings whirling inside. She felt so good, and she wanted to share it all around. It was a feeling of strength, she thought, like a starched shirt had. It was a feeling she knew as vaguely familiar, from a long time ago, when she’d been young and fresh and without the scars of twenty-plus years of daily living.

  She began to wish very much to run into Joey. At that moment anything seemed possible, and a surge of eagerness went through her. She looked up and down the street for his blue truck; he often had lunch at the cafe because he liked their country fried steak.

  That she didn’t see his truck was a little disappointing, and when she got to the door of the cafe, she had a moment of uncertainty about going inside all alone. She wished she’d told Larry Joe to pick her up at the drugstore, and then she could have perused the magazines until he came.

  But, catching sight of her reflection in the glass door, she thought that a starched shirt was ready to go anywhere, so she pushed right on through the door, telling herself that if Joey happened to be inside after all and Sheila were with him, she would go right over and shove the slut out of the booth.

  She very quickly, and with some disappointment, saw that Joey was not there. She went to sit at the counter—she had read in one of those magazines that the comfortable way for a woman to eat alone was to sit at the counter—and while waiting for Larry Joe, she enjoyed a glass of ice tea, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and Fayrene Gardner going on and on about how great her hair looked.

  “It just suits you to a t,” Fayrene said. “To a capital T. You know, it looks like Marilyn Monroe’s hair…only yours is red, of course. But just like hers in Some Like It Hot. Don’t you think it does, Judy?” she asked the waitress working with her.

  “Does what?”

  “Look like Marilyn Monroe’s hair in Some Like It Hot.” Charlene was getting embarrassed. A man sitting several stools away was looking at her hair, and she didn’t even know him.

  “That was before my time, Fayrene,” Judy said. She couldn’t have been but thirty. “But your hair does look great,” she offered to Charlene.

  Then, the next thing, Ray Horn, the agricultural teacher from school and a longtime customer of Joey’s, came over to her. Charlene didn’t see him until he was slipping right onto the stool beside her and saying, “Well, hello, Charlene.” He sat loosely with one foot stretched to the floor.

  Charlene quickly wiped her mouth in case she had mayonnaise on it. “Hello, Ray.” She felt uncertain. She had never said much to him beyond commenting on how pretty his horse was or questioning Danny J.’s performance in class.

  Ray tossed his restaurant check and money on the counter for Fayrene; apparently he’d already had his lunch and wasn’t going to sit there and eat with Charlene, thank goodness. She had always thought he had the most beautiful head of hair, but his face and neck were way too thick for her taste.

  “How’s Danny J. doin’?” he asked. “Am I gonna have him in FFA this year?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t said.”

  The number of weeks until school began and thoughts of all the clothes she would need to buy were going around in Charlene’s head, when Ray said, “I was sorry to hear about you and Joey.”

  “Thank you,” she said and smoothed her folded napkin.

  “Me and Susie broke up, too.”

  “You did?” She had seen his wife, a petite woman with frosted hair, but had not known her name.

  He nodded and twisted his stool back and forth. “It wasn’t a surprise. It’d been comin’ for some time. We saw a counselor and everything. We tried, but…you know.”

  He had dropped his gaze.

  Charlene thought frantically for something to say and came up with, “I’m sorry for you and Susie.”

  He nodded again and then cocked his head. “Maybe you’d like to go out, have dinner or somethin’.”

  “Joey and I aren’t divorced. We’re separated, but we aren’t divorced.”

  “Susie and I are just separated right now, too, but the divorce is pending. It might be nice for you and me to have dinner…to commiserate with each other.”

  Charlene’s gaze slid from his hopeful face to his neck so thick it didn’t look like he had one. “I’m pretty busy with the kids right now.”

  Surely he wouldn’t press it. But she saw that he was going to.

  Then here came Larry Joe—thank you, God—through the door. “Here’s my son now. He’s giving me a ride home, and he has to get back to work.”

  She was off that stool and out of the restaurant, tugging Larry Joe along with her.

  When Larry Joe let her out in front of the house, she went straight in the front door and strode through to the kitchen, pausing for a minute to check her reflection in the mirror over the buffet, and then threw her purse on the table and picked up the telephone to dial Joey’s pager number.

  We need to talk, Joey. How about if we go out to the lake?

  After punching in his number, she hung up and stood there, gazing at the phone and waiting for it to instantly ring. When it did not, she made herself get busy making a pitcher of ice tea. Lord, please give me the words.

  When Joey had still not called by the time she had poured a glass of tea, she picked up the phone and dialed his pager number again.

  Then she sat at the kitchen table and stared at the telephone, having no way of knowing that Joey’s little black pager was beeping like crazy where Joey had left it—lying on top of the fake wood dresser in the small camper trailer.

  It took some time for her father to come to the phone. Mildred had to go look for him, and she made a point of saying, “I move slow since my stroke, you know.”

  Charlene sat at the kitchen table, gripping the receiver and pressing it tight to her ear.

  “Charlene, are you still on here?” Her father’s voice came across the line.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

>   “I’m sorry I took so long. I was just outside at the rosebushes with Vella Blaine—she came down here chasin’ after an armadillo with her shotgun, and I was tryin’ to help her. I guess it was too dark for Mildred to see me through the window. She could have just hollered at me, if she would have opened the window.”

  “That’s okay.” She got up and moved to the counter, speaking low into the receiver. “Daddy, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “I need you to go out to Sheila Arnett’s and tell Joey I want to speak to him. I’ve been paging him all afternoon and evening, and he hasn’t answered. Maybe he has it off or something, but he doesn’t usually do that. Maybe he’s gotten hurt.”

  “Okay, Daughter,” her father said slowly. “Do you want me to go right now?”

  “If you can.”

  “Well, sure. I’ll drive out there right now.”

  “Thank you, Daddy. Now, don’t hurry. You be careful.”

  She sat and waited and worried about asking her father to drive in the night. What if, because of her selfish need, he had an accident. She prayed for God to keep him safe and promised to get a better grip on herself. She switched on the television, turned to the bluegrass music station that she had recently discovered, and poured another cup of coffee, holding it in both hands while her gaze went again and again to the clock on the wall. She walked over and looked out the window. The moon was bright.

  And then she saw the flicker of headlights. She looked, her mind going automatically to hopes and visions of Joey coming, but then she saw her father’s big sedan pull up beneath the tall pole lamp. She went out the front door, hearing as she opened it Danny J’s. radio going in his room.

  “Honey, Joey isn’t at the Arnett ranch tonight,” her father told her.

  “He isn’t?”

  “No. He and Sheila went down to Dallas this mornin’ and aren’t expected back until tomorrow evening.”

  She searched her father’s face. “He went to Dallas with her?”

  “Yes.”

  She hugged her father’s neck and told him she was okay, and then she went back into the house. She unplugged the coffeemaker, turned off the television and turned out the kitchen light. Passing Larry Joe’s closed door, she pressed her palm against it, then moved on to Danny J.’s room. His door was open, and he was sprawled atop his bed, one bare foot hanging off. She turned off his radio, and bent and kissed his head. She stood for a moment in Jojo’s doorway, then went on to her own room and bathroom, where she stripped off her clothes, got in the shower, put her face into the spray, and cried and cried. When she got out and wrapped herself in a towel, she slipped to the floor in a heap and cried some more because her husband had gone off to Dallas with another woman.