From: Vella Blaine
To: <haltg@mailectric. com>
Sent: May 20, 1997, 6:30 p. m.
Subject: Hello from Valentine
Dear Harold,
I want to say that you pay me a lovely compliment to
take the time to let me know of the good that the sore gum
remedy I posted on the caretaker list has done your wife.
My husband, Perry, was a very fine pharmacist for fifty
years and invented the tooth powder for his own uncle's
sore gums. We have used that powder on our teeth for
thirty years, and we still have every one of them —
teeth, not years, although I guess we have those, too.
Of course now, after Perry's stroke, I am the one to
use it on his teeth. I guess he'll have his teeth, even
if there isn't much left of the rest of him. It worries me
that with him like he is, I may not know if he has a
toothache, so I like to keep up with his dental hygiene.
And yes, I live in a real town named Valentine. It's
in Oklahoma. Some people think the name is romantic, but
there was no romance intended; it was simply the name of
one of the early families. The town might have ended up
being named Blaine, from my husband's family, who were
most prominent, but the Valentines were always a pushy
bunch and got their way.
Valentine certainly isn't much compared to your
Newark, I'm sure, although I have not seen Newark. I
have never traveled all that far and wide. I used to go
with some regularity to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to buy
for our drugstore — Blaine's Drugstore and Soda
Fountain, providing a young, upto-date pharmacist an
extensive selection of health and beauty aids, and
drinks, ice cream and sandwiches. Our store is a town
landmark, seventy-five years old, seventy of those in the
same place on Main Street, and still going strong. It's
harder for me to get away from the store these days, since
I have both it and Perry to handle.
One place I went years ago was Galveston. Oh, my, I
loved the beach, but Perry wanted to get home, so we
didn't get to stay more than three days. That used to be
Perry's limit anywhere, three days, and then he quit
going at all, even to see his mother after she married for
a fourth time and went off to Tulsa. Perry always used to
say that Valentine was his home and there was no place like
home.
I can agree with that. There likely isn't, or else
why would one ever want to get away and see someplace else?
Well, thank you again for letting me know the sore
gum remedy helped you and your wife. What is her name? I
know your struggle as a caretaker, and it pleases me to
think that I helped you in some small way.
Vella, in Valentine.
She pressed the send button, then sat there for a
few seconds, staring at the silvery screen of the computer
monitor. She always had the odd feeling of wondering where
her message went and imagined it disappearing into thin
air. She imagined typed words floating out into space.
Maybe her message would be stuck with thousands of other
messages on one of those countless satellites that she had
heard of on CNN, ones that didn't even work anymore but
were just space debris.
Who knew what alien might read her message from
Valentine and look down on it, a small town in a great big
world.
It kind of made her wary of what she said.
Shreveport, Louisiana
Sometimes a person sees or hears something at a
particularly pivotal moment. Behind the moment, though,
is a lot of time, years maybe, where all manner of unfed
desires and dashed dreams have been jammed down and
compressed, very much like packing in an explosive. Then
comes that particular moment that ignites the fuse. The
lid is blown off, and all those desires and dreams come
spewing forth, which accounts for all manner of both
passionate crimes and daring new lives.
This is what happened one evening to Claire, a lonely
but mostly reasonable woman, when she read the words on
the bathroom wall: On my way, just passing through,
looking for real life — wish her well, this Lily
Donnell!
It was on the inside of the stall door of the ladies'
room at the truck stop out on I-20, where Claire and R.
K. had ended up coming for supper because R. K. loved
their ribs and no one bothered him. R. K. was a television
weatherman of long-standing for the prime-time news hour
— the weatherman with the highest ratings in the
market — but most people at the truck stop restaurant
were travelers and thus didn't recognize him, and those
regulars who did had seen him eat ribs often enough to no
longer be impressed by him.
Inside the bathroom stall, Claire studied the comment
as she adjusted her black thigh-high panty hose. It was
written in blue marker, right between Call Heather for a
good time and the phone number, and I love Johnny
Deland in Bossier City in a big lipstick heart.
Just passing through…looking for real life.
"My, Lord, aren't we all? I wish you well, Lily
Donnell, " Claire muttered.
Her mind went into a buzz as she almost slammed out of
the stall, washed her hands at the sink and applied
lipstick in the mirror.
She paused and looked at herself. A blank face gazed
back at her.
Oh, she was attractive enough. She caught the eye of
many a man, and both R. K. and her ex-husband Andrew
termed her a good-looking woman. Had she not been,
neither of them would have been interested in her; such was
their nature, and that was not criticism but truth.
She took the paper towel to the mirror, wondering if
it were filmy. It wasn't. The woman looking back at her
was gray. She needed something. A new hairdo. A new
shade of lipstick.
A life.
She went back to the table, played with her napkin,
and broke things off with R. K. She waited for him to
finish his ribs, though. After the lengthy months of
feeling like she needed to break off with him and not doing
it, she didn't see any point now to hurry and ruin his
supper.
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