The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (2 page)

Against all odds, she had just survived the last wedding of their three daughters, Dee Dee, Ce Ce, and Le Le. Their only unmarried child now was their twenty-five-year-old son, Carter, who lived in Atlanta. And some other poor (God help her), beleaguered mother of the bride would be in charge of planning that happy occasion. All she and Earle would have to do for Carter’s wedding was show up and smile. And today, other than one short stop at the bank and picking up a couple of pork chops for dinner, she didn’t have another single thing she had to do. She was almost giddy with relief.

Of course, Sookie absolutely worshipped and adored her girls, but having to plan three large weddings in fewer than two years had been a grueling, never-ending, twenty-four-hours-a-day job, with all the bridal showers, picking out patterns, shopping, fittings, writing invitations, meeting with caterers, figuring out seating arrangements, ordering flowers, etc. And between dealing with out-of-town guests and new in-laws, figuring out where to put everyone, plus last-minute bridal hysteria, at this point, she was simply weddinged out.

And no wonder. If you counted Dee Dee’s last one, technically there had really been four large weddings, which meant shopping and being fitted for four different mother-of-the-bride dresses (you can’t wear the same one twice) in less than two years.

Dee Dee had married, then promptly divorced. And after they had spent weeks returning all the wedding gifts, she had turned around and remarried the exact same husband. Her second wedding hadn’t been quite as expensive as the first, but every bit as stressful.

When she and Earle had married in 1968, it had been just a typical church affair: white wedding gown, bridesmaids in matching pastel dresses and shoes, ring bearer, best man, reception, over and out. But now everybody had to have some kind of a theme.

Dee Dee had insisted on having an authentic Old South
Gone with the Wind
wedding, complete with a Scarlett O’Hara dress, large
hoop skirt and all, and at the last minute, she had to be driven to the church standing up in the back of a small moving van.

Le Le and her groom wanted an entirely red and white wedding, including the invitations, food, drinks, and all the decorations, in honor of the University of Alabama football team.

And Ce Ce, Le Le’s twin sister, the last girl to marry, had carried her ten-pound Persian cat, Peek-a-Boo, down the aisle instead of a wedding bouquet, and the groom’s German shepherd, dressed in a tux, had served as best man. And if that wasn’t bad enough, someone’s turtle was the ring bearer. The entire thing had just been excruciating. You can’t hurry a turtle.

L
OOKING BACK ON IT
now, Sookie realized she really should have put her foot down when Ce Ce and James invited all their friends to bring their pets to the reception, but she had made a sacred vow to never bully her children. Nevertheless, having to replace an entire banquet room’s wall-to-wall carpeting at the Grand Hotel was going to cost them a fortune. Oh, well. Too late now. Hopefully, all that was behind her, and evidently not a minute too soon.

Two days ago, when Ce Ce left for her honeymoon, Sookie had broken down and sobbed uncontrollably. She didn’t know if she was experiencing empty-nest syndrome or just plain exhaustion. She knew she must be tired. At the reception, she had introduced a man to his own wife. Twice.

The truth was, as sad as she was to see Ce Ce and James drive off, she had been secretly looking forward to going home, taking off all her clothes, and crawling into bed for about five years, but even that had been put on hold. At the last minute, James’s parents, his sister, and her husband had decided to stay over an extra night, so she had to quickly try and whip up a little “going away” brunch for them.

Granted, it wasn’t much: Earle’s coconut margaritas, an assortment of crackers, cream cheese and pepper jelly, shrimp and grits, crab cakes with coleslaw, and tomato aspic on the side. But still, it had taken some effort.

W
HEN
S
OOKIE DROVE INTO
the little town of Point Clear and passed the Page and Palette bookstore, it occurred to her that maybe tomorrow, she would stop in and pick up a good book. She hadn’t had time to read anything other than her daily horoscope, the Kappa newsletter, and an occasional
Birds and Blooms
magazine. We could be at war for all she knew. But now, she was actually going to be able to read an entire book again.

She suddenly felt like doing the twist right there in the front seat, which only reminded her how long it had been since she and Earle had learned a new dance step. She had probably even forgotten how to do the hokey pokey.

All she really had left to deal with was her eighty-eight-year-old mother, the formidable Mrs. Lenore Simmons Krackenberry, who absolutely refused to move to the perfectly lovely assisted-living facility right across town. And it would be so much easier on everybody if she would. The maintenance on her mother’s yard alone was extremely expensive, not to mention the yearly insurance. Since the hurricane, the insurance on everybody’s house on the Mobile Bay had gone sky-high. But Lenore was adamant about never leaving her home and had announced with a dramatic gesture, “Until they carry me out feetfirst.”

Sookie couldn’t imagine her mother leaving anywhere feetfirst. As long as she and her brother, Buck, could remember, Lenore, a large imposing woman who wore lots of scatter pins and long, flowing scarves, and had her silver hair teased and sprayed into a perfect winged-back flip, had always rushed into a room headfirst. Buck said she looked like something that should be on the hood of a car, and they had secretly referred to her as “Winged Victory” ever since. And Winged Victory never just left a room; she whisked out with a flourish, leaving a cloud of expensive perfume in her wake. Never a quiet woman in any sense of the word, much like a show horse in the Rose Parade, she could be heard coming a mile away, due to the loud jingling of the numerous bracelets, bangles, and beads she always wore. And she was usually speaking long before she came in sight. Lenore had a loud booming voice and had studied “Expression” while attending Judson College for women, and to the family’s everlasting regret, the teacher had encouraged her.

Now, due to certain recent events, including her setting her own kitchen on fire, they had been forced to hire a twenty-four-hour live-in nurse for Lenore. Earle was a successful dentist with a nice practice, but they were by no means rich, and certainly not now, with all the money they had spent sending the children to college, the weddings, Lenore’s mortgage, and now the nurse. Poor Earle might not be able to retire until he was ninety, but the nurse was a definite necessity.

Lenore, who was not only loud but also extremely opinionated and voiced her opinion to everyone within earshot, had suddenly started calling total strangers long-distance. Last year, she had called the pope in Rome, and that call alone had cost them more than three hundred dollars. When confronted with the bill, Lenore had been incensed and said that she shouldn’t have to pay a dime because she had been on hold the entire time. Try telling that to the phone company. And there was no reasoning with her. When Sookie asked why she had called the pope, considering that she was a sixth-generation dyed-in-the-wool Methodist, Lenore had thought for a moment and said, “Oh … just to chat.”

“To chat?”

“Yes, and you mustn’t be so closed-minded, Sookie. One can certainly be on speaking terms with Catholics. You don’t want to marry one, but a friendly chat can’t hurt.”

And there had been other incidents. At a chamber of commerce meeting, Lenore had called the mayor a pointy-headed little carpetbagger and a horse thief and was sued for defamation of character. Sookie had been worried to death, but Lenore remained unfazed. “They have to prove what I said was not true, and no jury in their right mind would dare convict me!” In the end, the judge had thrown the case out, but still, it had been very embarrassing. All last year, Sookie had to try to avoid running into the mayor and his wife, and in such a small town, it had been almost impossible. They were just everywhere.

Since the lawsuit, they had been through three different nurses. Two quit, and one left in the middle of the night, along with one of Lenore’s dinner rings and a frozen turkey. But now, after months of searching, Sookie felt she had finally found the perfect nurse, a darling older Filipino lady named Angel, who was so patient and so sweet,
even though Lenore continued to call her Conchita, because she said she looked exactly like the Mexican woman who had worked for her in Texas in the forties, when Sookie’s father had been stationed there.

The good news was, now that Lenore had Angel, Sookie was finally going to be able to attend the Kappa reunion in Dallas, and her old college roommate, Dena Nordstrom, had promised to meet her there. They talked on the phone regularly, but she hadn’t seen Dena in a long time, and she couldn’t wait.

A
S
S
OOKIE SAT AT
the intersection waiting for the red light to change, she pulled down the visor and looked at herself in the mirror. Good God, that was a mistake. She guessed that after fifty, nobody looked good in the bright sun, but even so, she really had neglected herself. She hadn’t seen her eye doctor in over three years, and she clearly needed a new prescription.

Last month at church, she had embarrassed herself half to death. The correct quote was, “I am a vessel for God’s love,” but she had read out loud in front of the entire congregation, “I am a weasel for God’s love.” Earle had said that no one had noticed, but of course, they had.

Sookie glanced at herself in the mirror again. Oh, Lord, no wonder she looked so terrible. She had run out the door this morning without a stitch of makeup. Now she was going to have to drive all the way home and throw some on. She always tried to look somewhat presentable. Thankfully, she wasn’t as vain as her mother, or she would never have left home at all. Outward appearances meant everything to Lenore. She was particularly proud of what she called “the Simmons foot” and her small, slightly turned-up nose. Sookie had gotten her father’s longer nose, and wouldn’t you know it, Buck got the cute one. Oh, well. At least she got the Simmons foot.

J
UST AS THE LIGHT
changed, Netta Verp, Sookie’s next-door neighbor, whizzed by in her huge 1989 Ford Fairlane, probably on her way out to Costco, and tooted her horn. Sookie tooted back. Sookie loved Netta. She was a good old soul. She and Netta were both Leos.

Netta’s house was in between their house and Lenore’s. Poor thing. She had been stuck in the middle, with all the Poole children and animals on one side and Lenore on the other, calling her night and day, but she never complained. She said, “Hell, I’m a widow. What else am I going to do for fun?”

S
OOKIE SUPPOSED SHE SHOULDN
’
T
have been surprised that Ce Ce’s wedding theme had been “Pets Are People, Too.” At one point, there had been eleven animals living in the Poole house, including an alligator that had crawled out of the bay and up the back-porch stairs, three cats, and four dogs, one being Earle’s beloved Great Dane, Tiny, who was the size of a small horse.

All the dogs, cats, and hamsters—and the one blind raccoon—were fine, but she had drawn the line with the alligator and insisted that it stay in the basement. She loved animals, too, but when you’re scared to get up at night and go to the bathroom, it’s time to put your foot down, and hopefully not on top of something that could bite it off.

The hard part of having animals, for her, was losing them. Two years before, Mr. Henry, their eighteen-year-old cat, had died, and she still couldn’t see an orange cat without going to pieces. After Mr. Henry died she told Earle no more pets. She just couldn’t take the heartbreak.

S
OOKIE DROVE STRAIGHT ON
through town, waved at Doris, the tomato lady on the corner, then headed down the hill, toward her house on the bay.

The old historic scenic route was lined on both sides with large oak trees planted before the Civil War. On the right side, facing the water, were miles of old wooden bay houses built mostly by people from Mobile as summer homes. Sookie guessed that if she had a penny for every time she had driven on this road over the years, she would be a millionaire by now.

She had been eight the first time her father had brought the family
down from Selma to spend the summer. They had arrived in Point Clear on a warm, balmy evening, and the air had been filled with the scent of honeysuckle and wisteria.

She could still remember coming down the hill and seeing the lights of Mobile, sparkling and twinkling across the water, just like a jeweled necklace. It was as if they had just entered into a fairyland. The Spanish moss hanging from the trees had looked bright silver in the moonlight and made dancing shadows all along the road. And the shrimp boats out in the bay, with their little blinking green lights, had looked just like Christmas to Sookie. For her, there had always been something magical about Point Clear, and there still was.

A
BOUT A MILE PAST
the Grand Hotel, Sookie turned in and drove up her long crushed-oyster-shell driveway and pulled into the carport. Netta’s house was almost identical to theirs, but Netta’s yard was much prettier. As soon as she could get rested enough, one of the first things Sookie was going to do was prune. Her azalea bushes were a disgrace, and her limelight hydrangeas had just gone completely wild.