The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (21 page)

“Not unless you want to,” he said.

“No. I like just talking.”

“Good. Same time next week?”

“I’ll be here.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, S
OOKIE CALLED
her friend Dena. “I’m so sorry. I know I promised, but I can’t go to the Kappa reunion this year.”

“Oh, no … why?”

“Well, first of all, I just couldn’t face everybody, knowing that I am an imposter.”

“Oh, Sookie. You know that’s not true.”

“Well, even so. I can’t leave now. I really need to keep seeing Dr. Shapiro, the poor thing. He’s so sweet and, honestly, Dena, I think I may be his only patient, and I can’t let him down. He depends on me to show up.”

P
ULASKI
, W
ISCONSIN

T
HAT SPRING
,
WHEN THE STATION GOT BUSY
, G
ERTRUDE AND
T
ULA
came up with an idea of their own to help speed up customer service. They presented it to Fritzi, and she approved.

After that, the minute a car pulled in, Gertrude and Tula, wearing cute little caps and short skirts with fringe on them, would fly out of the station on roller skates, and while Fritzi was filling the car with gas, they would clean all the windows, the lights, and the tag in less than two minutes. And, sometimes, if the boys inside the car were cute, they added extra little twists and twirls and skated backward as they cleaned.

Momma watched them out the window one day and later said to Fritzi, “Don’t you think that all that skating around is a little too show-offy?”

“No, I don’t.”

Momma laughed. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“And it brings in the customers like crazy.”

“Well, whatever you think, Fritzi. I don’t know what we would have done without you. If anything happens to me or Poppa, I can die happy, because I know you’ll take care of the girls.”

“Sure, Momma.”

“But I worry about you sleeping in the station all night. Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Sure, I’m sure. Don’t you worry about a thing, Momma.”

Fritzi didn’t tell Momma, but being on roller skates at a gas station could be dangerous. One day, Tula had shot out of the station to the tune of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” with a rag in her hand and had hit a grease spot. To everyone’s amazement, she skidded underneath a big eighteen-wheeler truck, came out the other side, and ended up all the way across the street. Without missing a beat, she had skated back across the street to the station and finished cleaning the windows of a Packard.

After all their initial bellyaching, Gertrude and Tula came to love working at the filling station. Gertrude’s boyfriend, Nard, had proposed to her in a letter, and she had written back and accepted, so she wasn’t dating, and all the boys Tula had been dating were in the service, so there wasn’t much else to do but work. And Fritzi always made sure there was something fun going on all the time, including weekly Friday night dances out on the big platform on the side of the filling station. One week, Fritzi got Quiren Kohlbeck and his Orange Crush Orchestra to come all the way from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and play on the back of a truck, and that night, the town of Pulaski bought more war bonds than the next five towns over combined, and they were very proud of that fact.

It was mostly girls jitterbugging with other girls, but they did have a good turnout from the guys still home working at the factories nearby and some of the Coast Guard boys stationed over in Sturgeon Bay. Sometimes the music went on until after midnight, but nobody in town complained. Everybody was working hard, and they deserved a little recreation. Even the nuns from Saint Mary’s came over and sat with Momma on the porch and watched the fun.

It was a busy time for everyone. When Momma and Angie weren’t cooking, they were rolling bandages for the Red Cross or tending to the big victory garden in the back. In their spare time, all the girls wrote to the servicemen and sent packages of good Polish food to all the boys from Pulaski.

The youngest girl, Sophie Marie, had just graduated from high
school and was still torn about what to do. She felt she had a religious vocation, and she had planned on entering the convent right away, but she also knew her sisters needed her at home to help at the filling station. She cried when she told Sister Mary Patricia that she would have to wait until her brother, Wink, came home after the war to take over. Sister Mary Patricia was very understanding. She said, “Sophie, it could be for the best. I entered at seventeen, and not that I regret my decision, but I often wish I had lived a little more out in the world. I think it might have helped me understand more what the girls are going through. And, sometimes, we can serve Him best by serving our families and our country.”

Fritzi hadn’t said anything, because she hadn’t wanted to be a bad influence on the kid, but she was glad Sophie was staying. She was a big draw with the customers. And as Fritzi figured it, after the war, none of the girls would ever have the chance to run a gas station again. Besides, Sophie had the rest of her life to be a nun, so why not have a little fun while you can? The only downside with Sophie was that Fritzi had to watch her language around her, and she hated that. She just loved to cuss a blue streak and shock the truck drivers.

All the Jurdabralinski girls, including Momma and Angie, were kept busy morning, noon, and night, but they were not too busy not to be worried about Wink. They had not heard from him in a while. When they finally received a V-mail letter from him, they were so relieved they called Poppa in Hot Springs and read it to him over the phone.

POINT CLEAR
,
ALABAMA

E
VERY MORNING
, S
OOKIE WALKED AROUND AND FILLED HER BIRD
feeders. She couldn’t let the blue jays go hungry, but she still missed her small birds. They wouldn’t come to the small-bird feeders she’d tried, either. Every once in a while, one or two would come and feed on the seeds that had fallen on the ground, but she still had more blue jays than anything. Mr. Nadleshaft at the Birds-R-Us store said it was a common problem, but so far, nobody seemed to have an answer.

When Sookie came in from the yard, the phone in the kitchen was ringing. It was Lenore, who sang into the phone, “I know a little girl who’s having a big birthday on the thirty-first.”

Sookie wanted to sing back, “No, I’m not,” but she didn’t.

“What I want to know is where are we going this year? Have you thought about it? I know where I think we should go.”

“Mother, I have thought about it, and I really don’t want to do anything this year. I just want to skip it.”

“What? Skip your birthday? Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly. I really just want to be with Earle and spend a quiet evening at home.”

“A quiet evening at home? On your birthday? Sookie, what in the world is wrong with you? Are you over there drinking? I swear, you are
just getting more peculiar every day. You can have a quiet evening alone with Earle anytime, but you are not going to skip your birthday, for heaven’s sake. And, anyhow, it’s not just about you. I’m the one who gave birth to you. So don’t make me have to come over there and spank you. Besides, I’ve already written the funniest poem, and I’ve set it to music. ‘Roses are red, my dear, violets are blue, after forty-eight hours, then there was you!’ Oh, and it goes on and on.”

A thousand smart replies went through Sookie’s mind, but what was the use? No matter what she said, the woman was determined to continue perpetuating this lie to the grave.

“Sookie, are you still there?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I think we should have the party out on my pier this year.”

“I see. Are you going to cook?”

“Of course not. We’ll have it catered. And you need to start thinking about who all you want to invite.”

She supposed she would just have to go along with the charade. She was still confused about how to handle the situation and she wasn’t up for a fight with Lenore over it. And so once again, she would be celebrating the wrong birthday. Oh, Lord what a mess.

S
OOKIE FOUND HERSELF IN
a strange position. She was grateful to Lenore for adopting her, but now that she knew she was not a Simmons, it was hard for her to keep on pretending. She went back and forth between being grateful and wanting to kill her, but as Dr. Shapiro had said, it was natural to feel that way. Still, it did make it hard when Lenore blathered on and on about how proud she was to have the small and delicate Simmons foot.

Lenore hadn’t had the Simmons foot for years. She just didn’t know it. Lenore was so vain she wouldn’t wear her glasses, and so when Sookie took her shopping and she would ask to see a shoe in a size 6, Sookie would quietly walk back to the storeroom and ask the clerk to bring her mother the same shoe, only in a size 7½. It was a small white lie, but Sookie knew that any other way Winged Victory would cause a scene and insist they were all wrong. Once Lenore believed in something, you could never convince her otherwise.

She believed she was perfectly self-sufficient, too, but she wasn’t. Lenore wouldn’t even be going to water therapy three times a week if she had let them get her a walk-in tub. “Those are for invalids,” she had said, and then she proceeded to fall getting out of her bath, knocked herself out, nearly broke her hip, and wound up at the emergency room. When she woke up in the hospital, Lenore thought she was dying and called everyone and told them if they wanted to see her alive, they needed to get there right away. “I doubt I will live through the night,” she said. All the kids had dropped everything and run home from college, and Buck and Bunny had flown in all the way from North Carolina. The next day, when she woke up alive, Lenore turned to Sookie and said, “Sookie, call Jo Ellen and tell her I need her to come over here and fix my hair, and tell that orderly she needs to water these flowers.”

That afternoon, when everyone had gone home, Sookie had asked her, “Mother, do you know how much trouble you caused? You scared everybody half to death, calling them like that. Carter almost killed himself speeding to get here in time.”

Lenore said, “Well, you’re just lucky I survived, but if I had died, they needed to be here.” Then she added, “Good heavens, Sookie, you sound like you’re
sorry
I didn’t die.”