Driving Lessons

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “I never did that with the Cherokee,” she said, perplexed.

  Larry Joe looked at her. “Mom, the Cherokee was a lot shorter than the Suburban.”

  With the help of the tractor, her sons got the Suburban out of the ditch, and Larry Joe said very uncertainly, “Do you still want to drive to town? I have to be at work at eleven today.”

  “You take me,” Charlene said. “I really need to get groceries in this house.” It was evident to her that, for some people at least, driving was not the same as riding a bicycle. One could lose the ability.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 85°

  She went to see Freddy with her father. As concerned as she was about his driving abilities deteriorating with age, she had to admit that her father easily negotiated getting out of the driveway and up on the highway.

  The hospital shone blinding bright in the late afternoon sun. Her father said, “I hope he’s dressed. I think they should make them get out of their pajamas by afternoon.”

  The interior walls were soft tans and blues, calming colors. The hall was even carpeted. Charlene, feeling tired, had a brief fantasy about lying down on one of the beds. Since she had let her husband go, let her dream go, she thought maybe she could use some therapy to get straightened out.

  Freddy surprised her by seeming to be very pleased to see her. It had been a long time since she could recall Freddy being pleased about seeing her, or any of them. From his teens, Freddy had more or less separated himself from the family, seeming to come back only to get in a good argument with their mother at holidays or on a Sunday afternoon here and there, when he could fit it into his schedule as a fast-rising businessman.

  Since their mother’s death, Charlene could probably count on her fingers the number of times she had seen her brother. When he and Helen had come to Sunday dinner, it was always some business with their father that brought him, something Helen wanted from the house, or maybe just to check in to make certain they were still on the inheritance list.

  “It’s good to see you dressed,” their father said, sizing up Freddy.

  “Yeah.” Freddy nodded and ran his hand over his head, his hair close-cropped, the way he always wore it. Charlene was a little startled to see how much Freddy had begun to resemble their father. She had never thought her brother looked like anyone in the family. Freddy himself had at times asked if he was adopted.

  He was also freshly shaved, she noted, and although his clothes were just a touch wrinkled and he wore slippers, at least they were his own leather slippers and not the terry cloth ones given by the hospital and worn by a number of the other patients.

  Since Freddy’s roommate was lying in bed, his hands folded on his chest while he stared up at the ceiling—“Looks like a dang corpse,” their father said in a not-so-hushed whisper—they went down to the communal visiting room, a friendly place with big windows and a volunteer serving coffee and ice tea to the numerous patients and their visitors.

  As Charlene got three paper cups of ice tea, she noted that a very thin man beside her didn’t have a belt, and his pants looked precariously like they might fall down. Wondering if he were a patient, and if belts were prohibited, she looked around. Of the men who were dressed, a number did not wear belts. She wondered if this was some rule for the patients, or if they were simply poorly dressed visitors. It was a little disconcerting to realize she could not be certain exactly who were the visitors and who were the patients. She wondered if any of these people were violent.

  Taking the cups of tea to her father and brother, who had chosen comfortable chairs in a corner, she noticed Freddy wore a belt. Possibly he was not considered a danger.

  They conversed a little haltingly, sitting in silence between subjects while each of them thought of something to say, in the manner of the strangers they were, Charlene thought, saddened. She had come to the hospital with the high intention of encouraging a closer relationship with Freddy, but looking at him, at the three of them sitting there, she had trouble persuading herself that any such thing was possible. She was quite blue about how she had behaved at Joey’s offer to reconcile.

  They had fallen into silence for several minutes when their father suddenly said, “I’m gonna go get me a cold drink from the machine.”

  “You still have your tea, Daddy,” Charlene said.

  “I don’t want it. Either of you want a Coca-Cola?”

  Charlene and Freddy both said no, and their father headed out the door. Charlene’s eye lingered on the bent and stiff set of her father’s back, and when her eyes shifted back to Freddy, she saw he had been watching their father, too.

  “He’s really gonna go smoke,” Freddy said.

  “I know.”

  “I guess he isn’t ever gonna quit.”

  “I guess he figures at eighty-seven there isn’t much reason to quit.”

  Freddy nodded and looked down at his hands.

  “You know, Daddy misses you,” Charlene said.

  To that Freddy said in a sharp manner, “Dad and I weren’t never close. Don’t try to change history. Dad didn’t ever need anyone but Mama.”

  Charlene was surprised to see the hurt plain on his face for a split second, before he looked away. She had never realized her brother’s hurt.

  “I can agree with that, but now he doesn’t have her,” Charlene said, hoping to make her brother understand. “Rainey is gone away with Harry, and I have the kids, at least. Daddy has those women to keep him company, but mostly it is him looking after them, and a lot of times they drive him nuts. He’s as sharp as he ever was, and he misses having someone to discuss real subjects with. All Mildred talks about is food, and Ruthanne hums a lot. Since Bill Yearwood passed away last spring, Daddy hasn’t had another close male friend. Most of the men die off before they get to Daddy’s age.”

  “It’s just how things happen, I guess,” Freddy said, a comment Charlene didn’t find at all satisfactory.

  “Maybe now you and Daddy could finally get to know each other. Before it’s too late, Freddy.” She was certain this was the silver lining that would help both men.

  Freddy sat there looking at Charlene’s expectant face. Then he said, “Our family is not the Waltons from television, Charlene.”

  Confusion flickered across her face, and then hurt. “I just think it would be good for you and Daddy,” she said.

  Freddy felt a bit of remorse pluck at his annoyance. The thing about Charlene that had always gotten on his nerves was that she always seemed to expect so much. The thing she expected the most was for them all to be like one big perfectly happy family. She would give those big family dinners and expect them all to show up and spend a couple of hours in a group hug or something.

  Looking at his sister now, he could recall her as a girl, taking their mother’s and father’s hands to walk down the sidewalk, while he was always left to walk a little ahead or behind. From Charlene’s birth, it had been as if his parents had pushed him aside. “You’re the big boy now,” he could remember both his father and mother saying. Even before Charlene came along, his mother and father had seemed taken up with themselves, leaving him in the care of a nanny. And then Rainey, who hadn’t even been his father’s child, had come along. His parents had pretty much dropped Freddy and Charlene and focused all their attention on the new, adored late child, as Freddy thought of his sister, and on themselves. They had not had time or energy left over for anyone else.

  Or maybe it was him. That was what the doctor here had suggested to him, that Freddy himself had trouble getting close and letting others be close. The doctor had consulted his father, and though the doctor never really said, Freddy gathered his father had said something that led the doctor to conclude Freddy had from birth been aloof and different. That was a load of crap, and went to show his father’s view that Freddy just didn’t fit.

  “Freddy?” Charlene said, a little worried.

  “Charlene, it’s too late.” He thought for a bare instant that he shouldn’t be so
blunt, so hard, but it was the way he was, and he stubbornly had to cling to that right now. He had lost himself for a while and was finally finding himself now, and he was holding on desperately.

  “Why would you say that? Daddy’s still alive. He’s still tryin’ to be your daddy,” she said, her voice sort of small. “Maybe he sees his mistakes in the past, Freddy. Every parent does, and he’s tryin’ to make up.”

  He saw he’d hurt her and was moved to be a little more tender. “I know he’s alive, Charlene. And I am, too. And we are still the same people we always were.” He leaned forward. “I guess maybe I could try to be the close son to Dad now. Maybe he does need that, but my time for being that son passed years ago. He was the one let it pass, Charlene. He never needed me, or you, as long as he had Mom and then Rainey. Well, now I need somebody, and it isn’t Dad. I need Helen. And I’ll do what I have to do to keep her, just like Dad did to keep Mom. I understand that much now.”

  They gazed at each other, Charlene searching his face with her green eyes.

  “I’m sellin’ the store,” he told her then, speaking of the dealership. “The IRS hasn’t found enough to seize it. They’ve tried to find problems with my real estate and well-service businesses, too, but they haven’t done it,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m sellin’ the dealership before anything more comes up. As soon as my lawyer can fix it, me and Helen are movin’ out to California.”

  “California?” Charlene came up straight with this piece of news.

  She had understood about his resentment of their father and his determination to hold on to his wife. She had followed him up to this point, but to move away from his home, where he had lived for all of his fifty-plus years, and where his family lived and his father would surely die, was a foreign thing to Charlene. She would have understood if he had said he was moving to Dallas. Lots of people moved down to Dallas, not more than three hours drive away. But California was a half the country away, and filled with smog and loonies.

  “Helen wants to go to California,” he told her. “Out to Palm Springs, where it never gets cold. She wants to belong to one of those nice country clubs.”

  “Palm Springs? Where rich people live?” She had once read an article on the place in a travel magazine at the doctor’s office.

  “I have plenty of money,” Freddy said.

  Charlene, the first of her shock abating, had to admit she could picture Helen in such a setting. “I guess you’ll be getting out of the hospital soon, then,” she said.

  Freddy nodded. “This last week has been mostly to give my lawyer time to set a few things up.”

  That was Freddy—use being in a mental hospital to set up business.

  Charlene could not think of much of anything else to say to any of it. Her father rejoined them, bringing his can of Coca-Cola, and she noted the age in his hands and on his face. She knew he had never expected to outlive their mother.

  She wondered if she would live to be old, and who would be there for her when her skin was like wrinkled paper. She thought of how she had let Joey walk out of the house and felt guilt settle on her again.

  They left Freddy at his room and walked silently down the hall and out into the sunlight. As they were getting into the Oldsmobile to leave, there came Helen, in a brand-new champagne-colored Lincoln, whipping into a parking place several cars down. She had to see them, yet she never looked their way, did not give a call or wave or any notice at all to her father-in-law and sister-in-law.

  Charlene stared at her, amazed to see that in slim pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, wearing dark glasses and with a pale scarf wrapped around her head and neck, Helen looked amazingly young.

  “She looks like she’s practicin’ for California,” Charlene said.

  “What?” Her father shot her a puzzled expression.

  “Oh, Daddy. Start the car. I’ll tell you on the way home.”

  When she had done with the telling, her father’s only comment was, “It’ll be perfect for Helen. She likes modern.”

  After a minute of looking at the passing scenery, Charlene said, “What about Freddy, Daddy? Will it be perfect for him?”

  “I expect so, or he wouldn’t be doin’ it. Freddy isn’t one to do what doesn’t suit him.”

  Twenty-Three

  The City Hall thermometer reads 88°

  The bell jingled over the blue door as it opened, and she stepped into the blue world.

  “Welcome, Charlene,” Dixie Love said, sweeping forward with her familiar smile and long strides.

  There were two women under the dryers and two in the chairs, and all of them were looking at Charlene. She came closer to the counter and said, “Would that offer of a job still be open?”

  “Well, yes!” Dixie smiled a warm, lovely smile. “We’d love to have you. You can start right now, if you want.” And she gestured toward the manicurist table, which sat as if ready and waiting.

  Charlene stared at her and finally got out, “Oh. Yes, I can.”

  She had been sitting there, feeling as if she had stepped into another world and looking over everything for twenty minutes, when she remembered she had left Larry Joe waiting in the Suburban. She jumped up and raced out to tell him, “I have a job. I’ll call you to come get me!”

  “Way to go, Mom.” He gave her a thumbs-up and backed out.

  Her gaze lingered on him and then the Suburban as he drove away. She thought that she needed to quit leaning on him so much. And she was awfully glad Larry Joe was her son, and not like Freddy. Maybe it was because of the mother she had been, she thought with a start, feeling a little disloyal to her own mother.

  The City Hall thermometer reads 94°

  She did not have very many customers that day, but that was okay, because she spent time getting familiar with the points of working toward her license. She would be working under Dixie, who was a registered instructor and taught at the beauty college up in Lawton. She kept telling herself that getting started at something was the main thing at this point. She found that while she had dreaded the thought of getting a job, she was now very excited about it. It was perfect for her, right there in town, and Dixie agreed Charlene would only work school hours.

  She realized that when she had left the house that morning, she had left behind so many of the worries and regrets that plagued her. Here in the shop those concerns seemed almost like bad dreams, of no importance. A number of times through the day, as she arranged her station to suit her, she would glance up and see herself in the mirror and wonder just who that woman was and how had she come to be where she was.

  Early in the afternoon, when the shop was momentarily empty of customers, Oralee suggested Charlene make herself useful and go around to get them all fountain drinks from the cafe. “It’ll give you somethin’ to do, and bein’ the new girl, you get the job of goin’ out in the heat, and I don’t have to.”

  Charlene was not quite certain of how to take Oralee, who very often seemed quite bossy and ill-humored.

  “Oh, that would be nice, Charlene,” Dixie said, in the pleasant manner she always employed. “Oralee does not like canned or bottled soft drinks.”

  “They don’t agree with me,” Oralee said.

  “She gets quite cranky when she has not had a Coca-Cola about this time,” Dixie said, handing Charlene several bills.

  Charlene tried to refuse the money, feeling very indebted to the woman already, but Dixie pressed the bills in her hand, saying the shop always bought.

  “You had better take what bonuses you can, workin’ in this place,” Oralee said.

  Charlene didn’t know what to make of that.

  She stepped out the door into light so bright she wished she had her sunglasses. She realized she was still wearing the pale blue smock Dixie had given her. She walked to the corner and turned down Main, glancing at the thermometer on the City Hall building. It read ninety-four. It was hot, but not as hot as it had been, thank goodness.

  “My gosh, gal, what are you doin’
here in the middle of the day?” Fayrene asked her when she approached the counter at the cafe.

  “I’m workin’ down at the Cut and Curl. I just started,” she added, not quite feeling like a full working woman yet.

  “You are?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m doing fingernails. Hand massage, too.”

  Fayrene’s gaze went to Charlene’s nails. “Well, I might just come down. I’ve always wanted nails, and Judy here wears those acrylics. She says they wear like iron.”

  “They do. I could do them for you.” She stopped short of mentioning the price, feeling it might not be polite.

  She ordered the drinks, and Fayrene said, “Oh, yes, it is time for Oralee’s Coke. She gets testy when she doesn’t have her daily Coca-Cola.”

  Charlene paid, and Fayrene handed the drinks over in a paper sack. “Make sure you hold the bottom, too,” she cautioned.

  Charlene went happily out the door, thinking so hard about being a working woman, that she apparently wasn’t watching where she was walking. She turned onto the sidewalk and ran right into Mason MacCoy.

  “Oh!”

  He took her by the upper arms to steady her. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it was my fault. I wasn’t watchin’ where I was going.”

  And then they were standing there looking at each other, Charlene staring into his blue eyes. Very blue eyes. And then the question of why he had not been to see her came to mind.

  He averted his eyes. “I was just going in for something to drink, too,” he said, indicating the sack of drinks she held.

  “Oh.” She couldn’t think of a thing to say and came out with, “I’m taking these around to the beauty shop. I’m working there now, at the Cut and Curl.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed the side of his nose and began, “I was—” but then he was cut off when two women came out of the cafe and one bumped his back.

  “Excuse us,” Charlene and Mason said in unison. The woman who had bumped Mason said she was sorry, but she was frowning in irritation.