The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (16 page)

Every Mother’s Day was a command performance, and it was all about Lenore. Never mind that Sookie was a mother herself and had four children. Lenore said, “Sookie, you may be a mother now, but remember, I was a mother first!”

God, when she thought about all those years she’d been sure to buy her a Mother’s Day corsage and made sure all the kids had presents for her and had them get all dressed up, because they had to look just perfect for Grandmother, and they always had to go to the big Mother’s Day buffet at the hotel, because it was where all Lenore’s friends went, and she wanted to show off her grandchildren. As usual, Sookie had just been another person at the table while Lenore had held court.

On Lenore’s birthday, Sookie always had to plan a huge celebration somewhere and make sure she received lots of presents. Even on Sookie’s birthday, Lenore had hogged the spotlight, and they all had to hear about how she had been in labor with Sookie for over forty-eight hours and how Sookie had been such a large baby. But that was Lenore: the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.

Maybe the fact that Lenore hadn’t had a mother herself was one of the reasons she had such poor parenting skills. Or maybe, as Buck said, she was as crazy as a loon. But whatever the problem was, Sookie was convinced that a lifetime with Lenore had wrecked her nervous system. Thank God, Earle had built her the greenhouse, where she could go out and sit and be quiet for a couple of hours.

Whenever she had complained to Buck about something Lenore
had done, he would say, “Oh, Sis, don’t let her bother you. Just ignore her like I do.” But Sookie couldn’t just ignore her. She was far too close to ignore. Even now, she could hear Lenore sitting out on her pier and talking. No surprise. If the wind was right, people in Mobile could probably hear her all the way across the bay.

It wasn’t fair. Her real mother was probably some nice, quiet, little Polish woman.

F
OR THE NEXT FEW YEARS
, B
ILLY AND
F
RITZI PERFORMED ALMOST
every weekend all through the Midwest and did a few shows as far away as Canada. And because of Billy, Fritzi had met a lot of the great old-time barnstormers. She even took a plane ride with the most famous of all, Clyde “Upside Down” Pangborn, who taught her how to improve her spins and loops and how to pull out of a stall.

Sure, it was dangerous, and as she found out, flying with the circus was a hard-living, hard-drinking life. But it was also fun and exciting, and as Fritzi always said, “A hell of a lot better than my old job working at the pickle factory.”

On most Monday mornings, after doing their show on the weekend, Billy was usually too hungover to fly, so Fritzi would have to fly by herself to the next town where they were performing and drop the flyers advertising their upcoming show. But she didn’t mind. There was something thrilling about being up in the air all alone, just her and the plane, flying with the wind in her face. Sometimes, when she didn’t get back until after dark, and it was just her and the stars, she felt like she could stay up there forever. She loved flying in and out of the silver clouds and seeing the lights of the little towns below. Of course, she missed her family something awful, but other than that, life was good and getting better all the time. After only a short while, she was already a headliner.

And they were spectacular stunts. Fritzi, dressed in her purple leather flying outfit with her long white scarf, tall boots, and helmet, would crawl out on the wings and do her stunts and dance for a while. Then, at a certain point, Billy, who was wearing a parachute, would level the plane and crawl out of the cockpit onto the other wing and walk to the end and jump off. People on the ground would scream in terror. “Oh, no! He’s left the girl up there all alone! She’ll be killed!” In the meantime, Fritzi would crawl back into the cockpit and take over the controls. And then, to the audience’s surprise, she would perform rolls, loops, and tumbling spins almost all the way down, then, at the very last second, pull up and do the same thing again, leaving the audience screaming and breathless, thinking she would crash at any minute while Billy slowly floated to the ground in his parachute.

The crossover in the air looked dangerous to the crowd, but Billy, who left nothing to chance, had timed it to the last second.

When Fritzi would finally come in for a landing, her plane would be mobbed with fans. She liked that, and so did Billy. While Fritzi was still out on the field, signing autographs and posing for pictures and taking people up for ten-minute rides at five dollars a pop, Billy would be over at the airport bar, having drinks and “counting the gate.” Some weekends, Fritzi’s cut was almost seventy-five dollars.

Fritzi was glad she could send a little money home to help out. Momma still worried about her night and day, but Poppa said, “She’s happy, Linka.”

“Yes, she’s happy she’s showing off,” Momma would say with a sigh. “But at least she’s showing off for money.”

S
OOKIE WAS WORRIED ABOUT TELLING THE CHILDREN AND WAS TRYING
to figure out the best way to do it. What could she do to soften the blow? She picked up her new cookbook,
Polish Cuisine.
Maybe she would have them all over for dinner and fix nothing but traditional Polish dishes, and if they liked it, she could say something like, “Well, I’m glad, because as it turns out, you all have Polish DNA.” She read the recipes to see what she could do, but everything had too many beets and too much sauerkraut.

She knew her kids, and they would definitely not like golonka, pork knuckles cooked with vegetables, or zrazy, stuffed slices of beef and tripe. Besides, she didn’t know what tripe was. She tried her best to find something fun she could make, but it was no use. She finally just gave up trying when she came to something called czernina, duck blood soup. Oh, dear. This was not going to work at all. She would just have to find another way. She supposed that when she did tell the children, she should probably start with Dee Dee first. And that was going to be very hard.

Lenore had filled Dee Dee’s head with the Simmons family history and all that silly First Families of Virginia nonsense, and at times, Dee Dee could be a little snobbish. When Dee Dee was thirteen, Sookie overheard her saying to a new little girl in the neighborhood, “My grandmother is a sixth-generation Simmons from England. Who are
your people?” She had made Dee Dee immediately apologize to the little girl. She also asked Lenore to please stop telling Dee Dee that she was better than everyone else. But, as usual, Lenore was absolutely no help. “Well, Sookie,” she said. “Do you want me to lie to the child? Breeding counts in animals. Why not in people as well?”

As the days went by, Sookie started feeling a little steadier than she had. And, thankfully, after that one close call when she had driven by the cemetery, she had been able to successfully avoid seeing her mother. Then one morning she ran downtown for just a second to pick up the dry-cleaning and ran smack into her.

Sookie managed a pleasant hello, but Lenore just stared at her and said not, “How are you?” or “Are you feeling any better?” but “Good Lord, Sookie, your skin looks terrible. How long has it been since you’ve had a facial?” It was all Sookie could do not to strangle her right in front of the hardware store. As she walked away, her heart was pounding, and her hands felt all sweaty. It was at that moment she realized she must be more upset than she knew.

When she got home she called Dena.

“Sookie! I’m so glad you called. How are you, honey?”

“Terrible.”

“Oh, no. Are you having problems?”

“Well, if you consider wanting to murder someone in broad daylight, only a half block from the police station, problematic, then yes.”

“Oh, honey, that doesn’t sound like you.”

“No, it doesn’t. I could be right in the middle of a nervous breakdown and not even know it.”

“Are you concerned?”

“Yes, I’m concerned. Considering the fact that I don’t know about my real genetic makeup, who knows what I might be capable of doing? I could have relatives sitting in jail right now. I could be a danger to myself and others.”

“Oh, Sookie, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Really?”

“No, of course not. I’m sure that you come from a lovely, sweet family. You wouldn’t be you if you hadn’t.”

After they hung up, Sookie hoped what Dena had said was true. She had done a little research on the subject and she knew that there
were twenty-three chromosomes from each parent. She may never know about the unknown father, but she supposed for the kids’ sake, for health reasons alone, she should try and find out a little something about her mother’s side of the family—and for her sake as well. If by any slight chance she did have homicidal tendencies, she needed to know now, rather than later.

A
FTER A FEW HOURS
, Sookie finally got up her nerve and called information and got the number for the Pulaski, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce. She grabbed a small paper bag just in case she started to hyperventilate. When she dialed area code 920 and the number, a woman with a very blunt and definite accent that was alien to Sookie’s ears answered and said, “This is Marian. Can I help you?”

“Oh … hello. You don’t know me, but I’m calling to inquire about a family there named Jurdabralinski?”

“Who?”

She spelled the name for her. “J-U-R-D-A-B-R-A-L-I-N-S-K-I.”

“Oh, the Jurdabralinskis. The Gas Station Family.”

“Pardon me?”

“They used to run the gas station in town.”

“Oh, I see.… Well, do you happen to know if the family was healthy?”

“Healthy?”

“Yes. Any history of diabetes, heart problems, any mental issues, cancer, or alcoholism?”

“Oh, geez. I never heard anything about that. My mom went to school with a couple of the Jurdabralinski gals, and as I recall, there were four girls and a boy, and two of the girls were twins.”

“Twins? Really? Oh for heaven’s sake.”

“Oh, yeah. And one of the girls became a nun. And they were all healthy as far as I know.”

“Do you know if any of them are still around?”

“Oh, let’s see.… I think Tula Tanawaski was a Jurdabralinski before she married Norbert, but they moved to Madison. Are you a relative?”

“Oh, no. I’m just a college student doing some research on old Polish families.”

“Well, we’ve sure got a lot of them in Pulaski. Now, I can find out more about the Jurdabralinskis for you, where they are and so forth, but it’ll take a few days. We’re awful busy here this week. We’ve got the Pulaski Polka Days going on, and we’re up to our ears in activities, with the parade and all.”

“Oh, well, I won’t keep you, then. I’ll call back next week.”

“Give me your name, hon.”

“My name?” Sookie panicked. “Oh, it’s Alice. Alice Finch.”

“Well, okay, Alice. I’ll talk to ya next week, then.”

She hated to lie to the woman, and she was sure she didn’t sound like a college student, but she had to protect her real mother and Lenore as well. As she was quickly finding out, one deception begets a hundred others. At least she had gotten a little information. The woman said the Jurdabralinskis were healthy as far as she knew. That was all the information she really needed. Her hands were shaking as it was. What if her mother was the one who became a nun? Then she really wouldn’t want me showing up. And if she found out that her child had not been raised Catholic, she wouldn’t like that, either. She had enough information. Too much really. She was afraid to call back. Who knows what else she might find out?

Oh, dear. Dena was right. She really did need professional help.

P
OINT
C
LEAR
, A
LABAMA

“H
ELLO
, D
R
. S
HAPIRO
?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t know me, but I was wondering. I just live ten minutes from your office. Do you ever make house calls?”

“Oh, are you housebound?” he asked with some concern.

“Yes … well, sort of. I have a problem that, for many reasons, needs to remain anonymous.”

“I understand, but I assure you that anything we discuss in session is confidential. Would you like to set up an appointment?”

“I would, but I can’t. I know it’s probably hard for you to understand, but my problem has to do with my mother. And if anybody saw me going in or coming out of your office, she would hear about it. She just knows everybody.”