The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (4 page)

“Yes, I believe she is.”

Sookie was standing there, trying to decide between the lemon icebox and the pecan pie, when her friend Marvaleen walked up. “Oh, hi, Marvaleen. What do you think would go better with pork chops? The pecan or the lemon icebox?”

“If it were me, I’d go for the key lime, but then, I’m a fool for key lime.” Sookie bought the key lime.

Sookie was glad she had run into Marvaleen. She seemed so much calmer now. Marvaleen had recently gone through a divorce and, for a time, had been quite intense. She had been seeing a life coach over in Mobile named Edna Yorba Zorbra, and all she wanted to do when you saw her was tell you in great detail what Edna Yorba Zorbra had just said.

A few months ago, Sookie had been at the store and in a hurry, and she had tried to hide, but Marvaleen had spotted her and cornered her in the frozen food department. “Sookie, do you journal?”

“What?”

“Do you journal? Write things down?”

“Oh, like lists. Yes, I have to. I went to the store four times before I remembered to buy Parmesan cheese.”

“No, Sookie, I mean seriously journal. Write down your innermost thoughts. Edna Yorba Zorbra says it’s essential to maintain a healthy psyche. I can’t tell you what a difference it’s made in my life. I would never have divorced Ralph if I hadn’t started journaling. I didn’t realize how much I hated him until I saw it written down in black and white. Oh, you must journal, Sookie. I didn’t know who I really was until I started journaling.”

Well … that was fine for Marvaleen, she guessed, but she couldn’t
imagine anything she would rather not do than write about her innermost feelings. And besides, she already knew exactly who she was and, unfortunately, so did everyone else within a five-hundred-mile radius.

Driving home, Sookie passed by the cemetery, and sure enough, there was Lenore’s car parked at the entrance. Every Monday, she put fresh flowers on her Grandfather Simmons’s grave and inspected the grounds and made sure to call anyone whose relative’s blooms were fading and lecture them about honoring the dead. Most people had moved on and were more interested in the recent dead. But not Lenore. The woman was obsessed with her ancestors.

Lenore’s own mother had died in childbirth, and she had been raised by her grandmother. That probably explained a lot about Lenore and her propensity to live not just in the past, but in the distant past. Sookie’s Great-Grandmother Simmons had been born during the Civil War, and her memories of that time were still raw and somewhat bitter. From early childhood, the message given to Lenore almost daily at her grandmother’s knee was that in order to survive in this world, she was to remain strong and proud. The South had been bloodied and defeated, yes, but never bowed. They had lost everything but their pride and their good name.

At seventeen, Lenore was sent to Judson College and became president of her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and valedictorian of her class. It was at Judson where Lenore had met Sookie’s father, Alton Carter Krackenberry. He had been a cadet attending the Marion Military Institute nearby. And from the first moment he met her in the receiving line, he had been blinded by love for life.

During World War II, Sookie’s father had commanded an entire unit of men in Brownsville, Texas. But at home, Lenore always ruled the roost. He spoiled her terribly and did pretty much whatever Lenore wanted him to do. No matter how many insane things she did, he would just look at her and exclaim to his children, “Look at her—isn’t she just wonderful?” To the day he died, he said that Lenore had been the most beautiful girl at the Senior Military Ball, a fact that Lenore had agreed with most wholeheartedly. And often.

A
FTER
S
OOKIE GOT HOME
and put the groceries away, she went into the sunroom with the paper and sat down to read when Peek-a-Boo jumped up in her lap. Oh, dear. She was perfectly happy to keep her until Ce Ce came back from her honeymoon, but she didn’t want to get attached to her, so she picked her up and put her down on the floor. But the cat jumped right back up again. Sookie sighed and said, “Oh, Peek-a-Boo. Honey … don’t make me like you. Go on now,” and she put her back down again. But she jumped right back up. The poor thing was obviously starved for affection, and so against her better judgment, Sookie started to pet her. After a minute, Peek-a-Boo was purring and kneading Sookie’s legs, looking up at her, happy and content. “Oh, well, bless your heart.… You miss your mother, don’t you? But she’ll be back, don’t you worry. Do you want me to get you some more bites? Is that what you want, precious? Do you want to play with your little toy?”

Oh, Lord. She had only had the cat forty-eight hours, and she was already talking baby talk to it. But what could she do? She couldn’t just ignore the poor thing … and she was so cute.

When Earle came home from work, Peek-a-Boo was happily chasing her mouse on a string that Sookie was pulling all through the house. Earle said, “Hi, sweetie. What did you do today?”

Sookie had been waiting for years to say this: “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

T
HAT NIGHT IN BED
, Earle was fast asleep, and so was Peek-a-Boo, who was now cuddled up next to her, but as usual, Sookie was still wide awake. Earle’s big surprise was that he was going to take her on a second honeymoon and she was so happy about it. She wanted to spend as much time with Earle as she possibly could, while she still could. With her future being as uncertain as it was, Sookie really didn’t know how much time she had left.

It was the curse of the Simmonses. When they reached a certain age, some of them (her Aunt Lily and Uncle Baby) had to be sent to Pleasant Hill Sanitarium. As the doctor said, “When a fifty-eight-year-old man goes downtown dressed up in a Dale Evans cowgirl outfit, complete with a skirt with fringe, it’s time,” and after Aunt Lily’s
unfortunate incident with the paperboy, it was obvious she needed to be committed. But with Lenore, it was hard to tell. When Sookie had called Dr. Childress in Selma about her mother’s latest exploits and asked what he thought, he sighed and said, “Sookie, honey, I’ve known your mother all my life, and the problem with Lenore has always been trying to figure out what behavior is just ‘delightfully eccentric’ and what’s ‘as batty as hell.’ I know it’s not an official diagnosis, but every Simmons I ever knew had a loose screw somewhere.”

Dr. Childress had been the family doctor for years, and Sookie wished he had told her this before, not after, she had had four children. Who knows what wacko genes she may have passed on? Being second-generation, the children could be safe, but she was a genetic time bomb waiting to go off any minute. She lived in fear and dread of one day embarrassing her husband and children, and at one of the weddings, having someone point at her and say, “That lady in the corner talking to herself and batting at imaginary flies is the mother of the bride.”

When she tried to tell Earle how worried she was about the Simmons curse, he had always dismissed it. “Oh, Sookie, don’t be silly. You’re not going to lose your mind. You’re as sane as I am.” She hoped he was right. But a few weeks ago, she had gone for a dress fitting in Mobile and had left the dress at home. Hopefully, now that she was almost sixty, it was just a normal senior moment and not the beginning of something worse. She didn’t know, but she had written her family a letter and put it in the safety-deposit box at the bank, just in case.

She also wished Carter would get married sooner rather than later. He had always been popular. A couple of his old girlfriends still called her, wanting to know about him, so she was hopeful. The other day, he had said, “Mom, I want to get married … it’s just that I haven’t found anybody, yet, and it’s getting pretty discouraging.”

“Oh, I know, darling, but I promise one day, you’ll meet the exact right one, and when you do, you will know it.”

“How?”

“You just will, that’s all.”

Sookie knew it was a stupid answer, but it had happened to her, sort of. She’d known Earle Poole, Jr., since grammar school. She just
hadn’t known he was the right one until years later. Granted, her life had not always been a bowl of cherries—but then, whose had? Even if her life were to end tomorrow, she still had so much to be grateful for. First and foremost, for Earle.

And her children had mostly been a joy. The twins, Ce Ce and Le Le, had never given her a minute’s trouble. They had always been happy, probably because they had each other. From the moment they could talk, they just chattered away together. They were like their own separate little unit, and she was amazed at how well they got along. She had read that some twins hated to dress alike, but not hers. They loved it and had to have matching underwear and pajamas. They even spoke in stereo. One would start a sentence, and the other would finish it.

Raising Carter had been easy. He was just like her brother, Buck. Send him outside with a ball to play with, and he was fine. Dee Dee was the one she worried about the most. She had never been a particularly happy young girl, and her teenage years had been especially painful. She had always been a little on the chunky side, and unlike the twins and Carter, who had inherited Lenore’s perfect complexion, she’d had terrible acne all through high school. Each new pimple brought on a new set of histrionics. Almost every afternoon, Dee Dee would come home from school, run to her room, and fling herself across her bed in tears, because some boy hadn’t spoken to her or she hadn’t been invited to some party or something equally as devastating. Sookie had spent hours sitting with her, holding her hand, while she cried and sobbed about how terrible her life was. “Oh, Mother,” she would sob. “You just don’t know how it feels to be me. Everybody’s always telling me how cute and darling the twins are. All my life, people have fallen all over them and just ignored me.” Then, inevitably, she would wail, “Oh, Mother … why did you have to have twins? Why couldn’t you have just
one
like a normal person!”

Sookie tried to explain. “I’m sorry, honey. It wasn’t anything I planned. It just happened. It was a surprise to me, too. They are the first twins on either side of the family. It was just a fluke.”

“Well, I hope you’re happy! You’ve ruined my entire life. I will always be some ugly fat lump with bad skin that nobody wants.” And so it went, on and on. She tried to give Dee Dee special attention and
be patient with her, because, unfortunately, what she said was true. Whenever the girls went anywhere, especially when they were younger, people made a huge fuss over the twins and left poor Dee Dee standing there, having to listen to them ooh and aah about how absolutely adorable they were. It broke Sookie’s heart to see her suffer so. And she did know how it felt. Growing up with Lenore, she had always felt like a little brown wren, hopping along behind a huge colorful peacock.

J
UNE
7, 2005

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, S
OOKIE WOKE UP EARLY
,
PREPARED TO TRY TO
solve her bird problem. Earle had just walked out the door when the phone in the kitchen started ringing, and she wondered who in the world was calling her so early. It couldn’t be Lenore; she was on her way to water therapy at the senior center. Oh, dear God, please don’t let it be Dee Dee saying she was moving back home. She knew she was having marital problems again and today’s horoscope had warned her to “Expect the unexpected.” Sookie looked at the phone with trepidation and read the number on the readout. It wasn’t Dee Dee. It was that same area code as yesterday, probably the same phone solicitor, so she didn’t pick up. She didn’t have time to talk to anybody now. She had to concentrate on her bird-feeding plan. It was going to be tricky. She’d seen how those blue jays could go through all their food in just a matter of minutes, so she was going to have to move very fast.

Sookie quickly rinsed off the breakfast dishes and stuck them in the dishwasher, but whoever was calling wouldn’t hang up, and it was distracting. They used to have an answering machine, but Lenore thought it was an open mike for her to speak into on any subject at any time and had left fifteen- and twenty-minute messages on it, sometimes in the middle of the night, so they had to get rid of it.