The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion Read Free Page A

you will never, under any circumstances, break up the set.”
    Sookie was so relieved it wasn’t about the call to Westminster Village, and said, “Oh, Mother … I do appreciate it … but really, why don’t you leave it all to Bunny? She and Buck entertain much more than I do.”
    “What?” Lenore gasped and clutched at her pearls. “Bunny? Leave it to Bunny? Oh, Sookie,” she said with wounded eyes. “Do you have any idea what was sacrificed to keep it in the family?” Sookie sighed. She had heard the story a thousand times before, but Lenore loved to tell it over and over, with large dramatic gestures included. “Grandmother Simmons said that at one point during the war, all that stood between them and the entire family going hungry was your great-grandmother’s silver. And do you know what she did?”
    “No, Mother, what?”
    “She chose to go hungry, that’s what! Why, she said there weredays when all they had to eat was a pitiful little handful of pecans. And they had to bury the silver in a different spot every night to keep the Yankee soldiers from finding it, but she saved the silver! And now you say, ‘Oh, just give it to Bunny’? Who’s not even a Simmons—and not even from Alabama? Why don’t you just cut my heart out and throw it out in the yard?”
    “Oh, God. All right.… I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just … well, if you want me to have it, then thank you.”
    Sookie certainly hadn’t meant to hurt her mother’s feelings about the silverware, but she really had no use for it. She didn’t know anybody who used a pickle fork or a grapefruit spoon anymore, and you can’t put real silver in the dishwasher. You have to wash each piece by hand. And she certainly didn’t want to have to polish silver all day. The Francis I pattern had twenty-eight pieces of carved fruit on the knife handle alone, not to mention the tea service, the coffee service, and the two sets of formal candlesticks.
    Sookie realized she probably should care more about the silver. After all, it had come all the way from England and had been in the family for generations. But she just wasn’t as formal as her mother. Winged Victory would die of epilepsy if she knew her daughter sometimes used paper plates and plastic knives and forks and just hated polishing silverware.
    Lenore dearly loved to polish silver and, once a month, would sit at the dining room table wearing white cotton gloves with all of it spread out before her. “Nothing relaxes me more than cleaning my silver.”
    Oh, well. Too late now. The die was cast. Sookie was stuck with it. She swore on the Bible that not only would she never break up the set, but that she personally would polish it regularly. “Don’t ever let tarnish get a head start on you,” Lenore said.
    What could she do? Being Lenore’s daughter meant she had come into the world with preordained duties. First, to proudly carry on the Simmons family line that, according to Lenore, could be traced all the way back to fifteenth-century England. Second, to protect the family silver.
    It was such a beautiful warm day, and after Sookie left her mother’s house, she took her shoes off and walked back home along the bay.As she strolled along, she suddenly wondered how many times she and the children had walked back and forth to Lenore’s house over the years. It seemed like only yesterday when all day long, the kids were running back and forth to her house and theirs.
    Time was so strange. When the children were younger, she used to marvel at the tiny little footsteps they left in the sand, but those days were gone forever. They were all grown up now … and, bless their hearts, not a one of them had the Simmons foot, and three had the Poole ears. But that was another story.
    A FEW MINUTES LATER , after she had thrown on a little makeup, Sookie drove back to town and was sitting in line at the drive-in bank waiting to make a deposit to cover yet another one of Lenore’s unexpected