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

expenses. About ten years ago, Lenore had suddenly started bouncing checks all over town and hadn’t seemed the least bit concerned. “I hate fiddling with figures,” she said. So now all Lenore’s mail was delivered to Sookie to handle, including all her bills. Lenore’s letters alone were almost a full-time job. She was always firing off editorials to the newspaper. The last one, suggesting that we do away with the vote for people under fifty-five, had brought in more than one hundred letters that Sookie had to answer. Lenore never looked at her own mail. “Just tell me if something is important,” she said. The woman ordered almost everything she saw on television, and Sookie always had to send it back. Why would anybody over eighty want a ThighMaster?
    Lenore was her mother, and she loved her, but
Lord,
she was a lot of trouble. When Earle had first bought the dental practice and they had moved down to Point Clear for good, Lenore insisted that before she would move with the family from Selma, Sookie’s Great-Grandfather Simmons must be moved from the Selma Cemetery and transferred down to the Soldier’s Rest Cemetery in Point Clear. “I would just die if I didn’t have Grandfather Simmons to decorate. He was a general, Sookie!” And, naturally, Sookie was the one who ended up having to deal with all the endless red tape of trying to arrange it. After weeks of hassling back and forth with the cemetery people, having to sign paper after paper, she finally just begged them to please digup anything—dog, cat, or horse—and send it on. At that point, she was so tired, she didn’t care.
    The car in front of Sookie moved one space closer to the teller, and she moved up with it. She looked at herself in the mirror again. She looked a little better with her makeup on, but, of course, she had forgotten to put on her earrings. Honestly, between the weddings and dealing with her mother, it really was a miracle she was still sane at all.
    She had always had a delicate nervous system and a tendency to faint under pressure. And it was very stressful never knowing what her mother was going to do next. Lenore had shown up at Ce Ce’s wedding wearing a large yellow hat with two live lovebirds in a cage sitting on top. God only knows where she got that.
    Thank heavens, all Sookie’s kids had been good kids, because when they were growing up, she had let them do pretty much what they pleased. She had wanted them to have a carefree childhood. Hers certainly hadn’t been, with Lenore pushing her into everything. She had always been basically shy. She never wanted to be a Magnolia Trail Maiden or a cheerleader or to join all those organizations. But she had had no choice. Lenore ruled with an iron hand. “You owe it to the Simmons name to be a leader in society, Sookie!” she said.
    Well … that certainly hadn’t worked out. She knew she was a disappointment to her mother, but what could she do? She didn’t know why, but in school, as hard as she tried, she had never been able to get more than a C average while Buck had made all A’s. And those ballet lessons Lenore had pushed her into had been a complete disaster.
    Sookie was finally at the drive-through window and handed the bank teller her deposit and suddenly noticed that she had developed a strange tic in her right eye, probably some leftover stress from the wedding. Thankfully, Earle had finally just picked the turtle up and handed it to James or they would probably all still be sitting there. The girl in the window pushed the drawer back out with her receipt and said over the speakerphone, “Thank you, Mrs. Poole, have a nice day.”
    “Oh, thank you, Susie. You, too.”
    “Tell your mother I said hello.”
    “I will.”
    After she left the bank, Sookie ran into the market and picked upa few pork chops and, as an afterthought, a can of sliced pineapple. Earle said he had a big surprise for her tonight, so she thought she might spice up the chops a bit.
    S