Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) (25 page)

The Only Thing That Stays The Same

C
harlene burst into tears in the Kmart parking lot.

Rainey had just stopped the Suburban and put it into park but had not turned off the engine. She sat there with her foot on the brake, pressing it even though it wasn’t needed, gazing with surprise at her sister, who had covered her face with her hands. One minute Charlene had been cautioning about the close proximity of the Oldsmobile on the right, and the next she was sobbing.

They had come to buy their father some khaki slacks and a new shirt for him to come home in. When Rainey had gone through his clothes, she had found them all terribly worn. She had thought it would make him feel better to have some new clothes—rather like he had a reason to live, if he had new clothes. And she thought it necessary, too, to show him there was still someone to buy them. Their mother had always bought their daddy’s clothes, all those years. Rainey recalled that the previous Christmas their mother had bought the khakis, the only type of slacks their daddy would wear, at Kmart. She had
gotten the name on the label of his old ones, hoping to get the same kind, since he was so picky about them. She hoped to please him and lift his spirits.

She felt a little desperate to boost her father. She had left Harry shaving him, because she felt he was more up to the job than anyone else.

There was a way about Harry. He could boost anyone, even though he himself did not seem an especially jolly person. He was an accepting person. She had begun to think that, faced with an armed robber, Harry would probably say something like, “I’m sure you need to rob me, and I’ll help you.”

With this thought, she put her hand over on Charlene’s shoulder and patted, thinking maybe what her sister needed was for Rainey to accept the crying and let her go at it, purge herself.

After a couple of minutes, Charlene sniffed and dug into her purse for a tissue. Rainey found a napkin in her glove box and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” Charlene said and blew her nose. “This is just such a bad time for all of this with Daddy.”

“I know.”

“My hormones are leaking out my toes, Rainey,” Charlene said dolefully and screwed the rearview mirror around to have a look at herself and dab underneath her eyes. “Look at my hair. Look at all that gray. Joey asked me if I was goin’ to dye it.”

“I think it’s pretty. I thought you liked it.”

“I guess I thought it was sort of distinguished, but really all it says is that I’m getting old. How many pregnant women have you ever seen with gray hair?”

“Are you pregnant?” Rainey asked, a little surprised, but being careful to appear neither positive nor negative, until she knew the leaning of Charlene’s emotions.

Charlene shook her head and gave out a little sob. “Oh,
Rainey, I can’t get pregnant—” some more sobs and head shaking “—and Joey and I are havin’ problems, and I need to pay attention to my marriage. I just don’t have much left to help with Daddy.”

Rainey was startled by her sister’s revelation. Charlene and Joey had been married for so long. From the time she had met him, Charlene had been crazy about Joey. Rainey could not imagine a threat to their marriage. She didn’t want to imagine it. It seemed that if Charlene and Joey could not make it, there was no hope for any marriage. Most especially any marriage Rainey might consider.

“It’s all right, Charlene,” she said, trying to control a frantic feeling welling inside. “This is just a hard time for everyone, but it will work out. Daddy is going to be fine. We’ll get him home, and he’ll get back to his old self. You don’t worry about him.”

“Rainey, Daddy is never goin’ to be like his old self,” Charlene said, wadding up the wet napkin and tossing it into her purse. “That went when Mama did. We all have to face up to the fact that Daddy is weakening now, too.”

She gazed for long seconds at Rainey, who gazed back.

“I know he is weakening,” Rainey said. “But he isn’t dead yet.”

Charlene sighed. “Of course he isn’t. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. What I’m saying is that we do have to look at things as they are. I know you think that Freddy is unfeeling, but he isn’t. There’s a lot to what he’s sayin’. He’s bein’ honest, and he is putting forth what he thinks is best for everyone.”

Rainey looked out the windshield, at the sun glinting on the red hood.

“We all have lives to live, Rainey. We can’t put them on hold or change them all around just for Daddy. You just can’t give up your life for him. I don’t like the way Freddy says it, but you
being their late child, Mama and Daddy sort of gathered you to them. You were their special child, yes, but a lot of that was them using you to heal their marriage. You tied them together, and you were tied to them. But you can’t just stop your life and go home to take care of him.”

It seemed like Charlene was gathering back her strength by attacking a tender spot in Rainey.

“I’m not stoppin’ my life,” Rainey said. “I want to go home to live.”

Charlene again checked her reflection in the mirror. “What about Harry? He seems awfully taken with you.”

“Harry and I are still tryin’ to find out about us.”

“And how are you goin’ to do that if you set yourself to takin’ care of Daddy? If you try to hold on to what is passin’ away? Things are changing, Rainey. It’s the way life is—the only constant in life is change, and you can’t stop it. No matter how hard you try, you cannot keep Daddy and the house and everything like it was.”

“Freddy and Helen want the house,” Rainey said. “They are just goin’ to scoot Daddy out of there and take it, and you’re goin’ to let them.”

“That is not so. I am not going to let them do any such thing. I’m just facing that Daddy could fare well at Prairie View Manor, maybe a whole lot better than rattlin’ around in that big old house. He’d have good companionship for one thing. More than That Hussy Mildred.”

When Rainey didn’t reply, Charlene said, “Rainey, you’ll focus so much on Daddy and on tryin’ to hold on to what is passin’ that you won’t have anything left over for a relationship with Harry. Don’t do that, Rain. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.”

“I don’t really know what sort of opportunity I have with
Harry,” Rainey said with impatience that seemed to swell as she spoke. “But I know what I have with our Daddy. I know what I have to do there. Either it will work out with Harry and me in the midst of all this or it won’t, but right now I want to go home to live, okay?”

“I think you should keep in mind one question,” Charlene said, having always been intent on getting the last word. “What will you do with yourself when Daddy dies? What will you do, if you have made him your life?”

“And how can I abandon him, Charlene?” She had begun to shake. “Maybe you and Freddy don’t want to see it like that, but that is how I see it. I can’t just walk away, not from Daddy, and not from our family’s home. Now, can we just go in and get Daddy some pants?”

Immediately she regretted sounding so hateful. Charlene looked for a minute like she was going to start crying again. Upset herself, Rainey started to get out of the Suburban and then realized she had still not switched off the motor. She sat back down, turned the key, got out and slammed the door, and headed toward the store with rapid though shaky strides.

She had not realized how depressing her family could be until that minute. Likely Harry could have an entire career simply psychoanalyzing her family.

And she and Charlene definitely did better talking on the telephone.

Rainey walked down the corridor, carrying the paper sack with her father’s new clothes. When she came to his room, she found the door ajar. Through the opening she saw her father sitting up in his bed, and Harry sitting in the vinyl upholstered chair pulled up close.

She stopped and stepped back out of sight. She hesitated
about eavesdropping, remembering what her mother always said about people who eavesdropped generally hearing what they deserved.

“You in love with Rainey, son?” her daddy asked.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

Her heartbeat picked up. She hugged the sack of clothes close.

“Hmm…well, you aren’t the first. Ever since she was a baby, boys been comin’ around Little Bit. Them Overton girls are lookers.”

“I can imagine that.”

Rainey smiled.

“Well, I’m pretty certain she’s in love with you, or you wouldn’t be with her now. I hope you aren’t gonna break her heart.”

“I don’t plan to.”

“We never plan those things. We just manage to do them. I’ll give you some advice, and that is, don’t take anything for granted. We do that too much in this life, take things for granted, think we’re gonna live forever. You know, I never knew I was old until my wife died.”

Hearing her father’s voice sound so sad, Rainey squeezed her eyes closed.

“Widowhood ain’t really any enjoyment,” her father said. “You remember I told you that, and you’ll appreciate Rainey more while she’s alive. Now, there are less men widows than women widows, and so I do get a lot of women comin’ after me.” He sighed again. “But they’re all old.”

Clutching the shopping bag against her, Rainey clapped a hand over her mouth. Feeling any moment that she was going to burst out into either sobs or laughter, she turned and hurried back outside.
Oh, Daddy…oh, Daddy…

It was tears that came, not laughter.

Swimming That River

A
t sunset they walked, hand in hand, out to the corral to give Lulu a Twinkie cake. Her pale gray coat had a golden tint in the sunset light. Golden rays shone on their faces, on the trees, on the fencing. Roscoe ran sniffing around them, and then sniffing around Lulu, who ignored him. Harry’s shirt, the silk one, was unbuttoned halfway down. Rainey had come to realize that Harry simply hated the binding of a shirt. She wore a flowing cotton knit dress that fell softly over her curves down to just above her ankles, total femininity, which she had planned, of course, and the only things she wore beneath were a lacy bra and barely-there panties. There were sensual thoughts in the back of her mind, which she kept trying to keep tucked aside, while she spoke of apple trees.

“Daddy planted these trees when he and Mama moved into this house,” she told Harry as she leaned on the corral fence. “They moved here when Mama’s mother and father needed
care. My grandfather died in the living room.” She glanced at him. “You’re good for my father.”

“I like him. He’s tough, like Thurman. I admire people like that.”

“You’re tough.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I guess I’m learning to be,” he said, with that amused dry tone.

“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.