The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (40 page)

It was a beautiful service, just as Lenore had wished. Of course, it all cost more than they thought it would. The weeping angel statue was so large, they had to buy two full cemetery plots. As Sookie stood at the graveside, she had many mixed feelings, but she realized the woman they were now lowering in the ground would always be a huge part of her life. Whom the heart first loves does not know or care if they are related by blood. The fact was that her mother—the only mother she had ever known—was dead. That impossible woman had driven her crazy and caused her much heartbreak, and yet, despite it all, she would miss her every day for the rest of her life.

P
OINT
C
LEAR
, A
LABAMA

A
FEW WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL
, S
OOKIE WALKED OVER TO THE
house to start the process of cleaning out all her mother’s things. When she unlocked the front door and walked in, the faint fragrance of her mother’s perfume was still lingering in the air. She half-expected to hear Lenore’s voice calling out from another room at any second, but it was eerily quiet. As she made her way back to the kitchen and looked around, it was so strange to see all the small things left behind—little objects that once would have meant nothing, but now seemed so important. She looked at the notepad on the wall and saw her mother’s handwriting. “Tell Sookie I need more coffee.” The sight of the handwritten note made her realize what a cruel trick death really was. One moment, a person is here, alive and talking, and the next, presto, she’s vanished into thin air. Death was still the great mystery, the question that no one can really answer. She wandered around the house and wound up in the dining room. She opened the large mahogany breakfront drawer, and there it was: all that silver … just waiting.

She sighed and walked into the kitchen and came back with a rag, her mother’s white cotton gloves, and the silver polish and sat down at the dining room table. What else could she do? She could almost hear Lenore’s voice as she polished: “Remember, Sookie, nothing says more
about a family than good silver and real pearls. The rest is just fluff.” It was such a big house, but Lenore had filled every room. Now without Lenore, she felt so small, but she kept polishing.

That afternoon, Sookie picked up the phone. “Dee Dee, it’s Mother calling. Honey, I’ve been cleaning a few things out, and I wondered if you would like to have Grandmother’s silver?”

“The Francis the First?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, then she said, “No, not really. It would be kind of useless to me, and I’d never use it. Unless, of course, you’d let me sell it and buy something else, and I know you won’t let me do that.”

“No, Grandmother was insistent that it be handed down to someone in the family.”

“Why don’t you ask the twins? Maybe they want it.”

“I can’t. I promised her that I would never split it up, and I can’t give it all to just one of them.”

“That’s true, and you know Carter doesn’t want it.”

“No. Anyhow, I was thinking that if you really don’t want it, would you mind very much if I offered it to Buck and Bunny?”

“No, not at all. I think that’s a great idea. Knowing Bunny, she’d love to have it.”

Sookie was not a real Simmons, nor were any of her children, and so by rights, Buck and Bunny were the ones it should go to. Besides, Bunny was now the most Southern person she knew. In the past few years, she had developed more of a Southern accent than Sookie had.

A week later, Sookie packed the car and drove up to North Carolina. Bunny, as expected, was over the moon. “Oh, Sookie, you just don’t know how happy I am to have it, and, of course, you can always borrow it anytime, but I can’t tell you how much I’ve always loved it,” she said, caressing the large soup ladle. “I think it was one of the reasons I first fell in love with Buck. I had never met anyone whose mother had a complete set of Francis the First. And now that it’s ours, I feel like a real Simmons at last.” Bunny gasped when she realized what she had said. “Oh, Sookie, I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean … well, of course, you are a real Simmons. Oh, I could just kill myself for saying that.”

Sookie shrugged it off. “Oh, Bunny, don’t worry about it. Believe me, I’m so happy you have it.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, and all I ask is that you promise me one thing.”

“Oh, of course, anything. Anything at all.”

“Promise me you won’t break up the set.”

Bunny suddenly recoiled in horror. “Break up the set? Break up the set? I would never ever think of doing a thing like that! Why, it would be a total sacrilege. I would sooner starve to death than break up a complete set of Francis the First.” Sookie laughed and walked over and hugged her.

As Sookie was driving home, she smiled. She didn’t know how it happened, but a little part of Winged Victory must have latched on to Bunny and was hanging on for dear life. Sookie had done the right thing. The Simmons torch and all that damn silverware had been officially passed on, and she suddenly felt about twenty pounds lighter.

On Sookie’s first morning home from North Carolina, she was out in her garden working and looked over and saw a beautiful bright blue dragonfly with silver wings flittering all around in her flowers. That had to be a sign. If Lenore had come back to say hello, it would be just like her to be a bright blue dragonfly. Lenore was a spring, and blue was one of her colors.

A few weeks later, Sookie picked up the phone and heard Dee Dee almost screaming with excitement. “Mother! Are you sitting down?”

“No, but I will—”

“You are not going to believe this!”

“Okay …”

“You know that woman I contacted in London to look up the Brunston family tree?”

“Yes?”

“Well, she just found a wedding announcement in the London
Times
for your father’s grandparents published in 1881, and it says that on that June twenty-second, Reginald James Brunston married the former Miss Victoria Anne Simmons at Saint James Cathedral.”

“That’s nice.”

“Mother! Don’t you understand what this means? Your real great-grandmother’s
maiden name was Simmons, so we are Simmonses after all!

“Oh. Well, I don’t know if that’s good news or bad news.”

“It’s
great
news, Mother. Thank God I didn’t throw out the Simmons family crest. And not only that, she also found out that your real father’s grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, was a fifth cousin, twice removed, of Queen Victoria!”

Oh, dear. Bless Dee Dee’s heart. It was probably not the same Simmons family at all, but she was obviously thrilled to pieces with this information and would no doubt tell everyone she knew.

S
HE WAS GLAD
D
EE
Dee was so happy. It didn’t make all that much difference to her except that at least now, she didn’t have to feel too bad about the Kappa legacy. At least there was a Simmons somewhere in her background. She guessed her only regret was that Winged Victory never knew, and it would have pleased her so to know she had been right all along.

A
FEW WEEKS LATER
, S
OOKIE RAN INTO
M
ARVALEEN AT THE STORE
, and she said, “You are not going to believe this, Sookie, but Ralph and I are dating again.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, I realized that I really didn’t hate him as much as I thought I did. It was the institution of marriage I hated.”

“I see. And what does Edna Yorba Zorbra say about it?”

“Oh, I haven’t seen her since she moved to Las Vegas. She doesn’t do life coaching anymore.”

“Oh, well, that’s a shame.”

“Yes, she’s promoting a new line of jewelry now, made entirely of feathers.”

“Really?”

“Yes, she’s one-quarter Native American, you know, and they just love their feathers. Anyway, so far, it’s been going pretty well with Ralph, so we’re thinking about just moving in together and having sex. That’s the only reason I married him in the first place. He was always great in bed. Of course, he’s not as young as he used to be, but being a doctor, he can get all the Viagra he wants.”

“Ah. Well, I’m glad things are working out for you. I’ve got to run, but great to see you.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’ll keep you posted. See you later.”

Oh, Lord, Marvaleen. She always offered far too much personal information, or at least more than Sookie wanted to know. Ralph was Sookie’s gynecologist, and now she would never feel the same way having a pelvic again.

B
UT THE GOOD NEWS
was that she and Dena finally did get to the Kappa reunion, and to her surprise, even after she told them the truth, they elected her chairman of the following year’s reunion committee.

But then, so many surprising things had happened. The town mayor who had once sued Lenore for calling him a carpetbagger and a horse thief had been convicted and sentenced to jail for embezzlement. Dee Dee finally left her husband for good, and had promised Sookie that if she ever did marry again, it would be only a small courthouse affair. Both Ce Ce and Le Le were pregnant. And Fritzi had just sent her a photograph of herself that had appeared in the Solvang paper. She had won the senior’s cup at the Alisal Golf Tournament.

Later, when Earle and Carter went on their once-a-year camping trip, she missed Earle, but it gave her a little time to reflect. She realized that thanks to Dr. Shapiro, she had learned that being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome. And she had overcome something that, for her, was huge. She had overcome her fear of displeasing her mother and had married the right man. And no, she wasn’t a leader in society, or a rich and famous ballerina, but her husband and her children loved her. And, really, what more could a person ask for?

That night Sookie sat out on the pier all by herself and smiled. She sat there until all the stars came out, and the church bells from town rang up and down the bay.

D
EE
D
EE HAD BECOME SO FASCINATED WITH THE HISTORY OF THE
WASPs that when she found out that they were having a World War II military plane exhibit in New Mexico, she bought two plane tickets, and she and Sookie went.

Sookie told the man at the gate, “My daughter and I have come all the way from Alabama to see this today. Thank you so much for having this exhibition.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am. Glad you could come.”

Sookie and Dee Dee stood in line to tour the B-17 Flying Fortress, the last one flying in the world. First of all, she couldn’t get over the size of the thing. It was huge. As they walked around it, she read all the names written on the sides of the plane of the pilots who had flown it. She looked for her mother’s name, but did not find it. There were only men’s names.

Dee Dee was snapping pictures and called to her to get in line to go inside the plane. As they stood there waiting, a man affiliated with the exhibit was holding court, explaining to another group of men how he had flown one just like it at the end of the war, when most of them were sold to Russia. Sookie walked over and listened for a while, and then she said, “You know, women flew this plane, too. My mother and aunt flew this model right from the factory.”

The group of men looked at her in surprise, and one said, “Really? A
woman
flew one of these?”

The man with the exhibit who was lecturing looked at her and, without much enthusiasm, said, “Yeah, a few of them did,” then continued his speech to the men.

As Sookie and Dee Dee climbed the stairs and entered the plane, she could not believe how raw and stark it was inside—nothing but open sides of dark green metal and corrugated metal floors. They moved through the plane, and she was amazed that everything was so hard, with no softness anywhere. This might have been the same plane she had been flown to Houston in that night with Fritzi and Pinks.

When they reached the front of the plane and looked in at the crude cockpit and what looked to her like a hundred levers, instruments, and dials and the huge metal pedals on the floor, she was completely awestruck. My God, how could a 120-pound girl possibly fly this thing? Where did she ever get the nerve? Sookie couldn’t imagine what it must have been like flying in the blistering heat of the day and in the freezing cold.

As she stood there, she suddenly became overwhelmed with the enormity of courage it must have taken, and she burst into tears. It was one thing to read about it and see photos, but to be standing inside the exact plane the girls had flown gave her a sense of overwhelming pride.

I
T HAD NOT BEEN
easy getting in and crawling from the front to the back of the plane and climbing down the narrow, hot metal steps. When they came out the other side, both Dee Dee and Sookie had grease all over their hands from holding on to the metal sides. There sure weren’t any frills or comforts on this plane.