JUST AS THE LIGHT changed, Netta Verp, Sookie’s next-door neighbor, whizzed by in her huge 1989 Ford Fairlane, probably on her way out to Costco, and tooted her horn. Sookie tooted back. Sookie loved Netta. She was a good old soul. She and Netta were both Leos.
Netta’s house was in between their house and Lenore’s. Poor thing. She had been stuck in the middle, with all the Poole children and animals on one side and Lenore on the other, calling her night and day, but she never complained. She said, “Hell, I’m a widow. What else am I going to do for fun?”
SOOKIE SUPPOSED SHE SHOULDN’T have been surprised that Ce Ce’s wedding theme had been “Pets Are People, Too.” At one point, there had been eleven animals living in the Poole house, including an alligator that had crawled out of the bay and up the back-porch stairs, three cats, and four dogs, one being Earle’s beloved Great Dane, Tiny, who was the size of a small horse.
All the dogs, cats, and hamsters—and the one blind raccoon—were fine, but she had drawn the line with the alligator and insisted that it stay in the basement. She loved animals, too, but when you’re scared to get up at night and go to the bathroom, it’s time to put your foot down, and hopefully not on top of something that could bite it off.
The hard part of having animals, for her, was losing them. Two years before, Mr. Henry, their eighteen-year-old cat, had died, and she still couldn’t see an orange cat without going to pieces. After Mr. Henry died she told Earle no more pets. She just couldn’t take the heartbreak.
SOOKIE DROVE STRAIGHT ON through town, waved at Doris, the tomato lady on the corner, then headed down the hill, toward her house on the bay.
The old historic scenic route was lined on both sides with large oak trees planted before the Civil War. On the right side, facing the water, were miles of old wooden bay houses built mostly by people from Mobile as summer homes. Sookie guessed that if she had a penny for every time she had driven on this road over the years, she would be a millionaire by now.
She had been eight the first time her father had brought the family down from Selma to spend the summer. They had arrived in Point Clear on a warm, balmy evening, and the air had been filled with the scent of honeysuckle and wisteria.
She could still remember coming down the hill and seeing the lights of Mobile, sparkling and twinkling across the water, just like a jeweled necklace. It was as if they had just entered into a fairyland. The Spanish moss hanging from the trees had looked bright silver in the moonlight and made dancing shadows all along the road. And the shrimp boats out in the bay, with their little blinking green lights, had looked just like Christmas to Sookie. For her, there had always been something magical about Point Clear, and there still was.
ABOUT A MILE PAST the Grand Hotel, Sookie turned in and drove up her long crushed-oyster-shell driveway and pulled into the carport. Netta’s house was almost identical to theirs, but Netta’s yard was much prettier. As soon as she could get rested enough, one of the first things Sookie was going to do was prune. Her azalea bushes were a disgrace, and her limelight hydrangeas had just gone completely wild.
Their house, like most of the others along the scenic route, was a large white wooden home with dark green shutters. Most of the bay houses had been built long before air-conditioning and had a wide center hall that ran all the way to a large screened-in porch in back overlooking the bay. And like their neighbors, they had a long gray wooden pier with a small seating area with a tin roof on the end. When the kids had been much younger, she and Earle used to go sit there almost every evening to watch the sunset and listen to the church bells that rang up and down the bay. They hadn’t done that in years. She was so looking forward to being alone with Earle again.
Sookie took the two bags of seeds out of the car and put them in the little greenhouse Earle had built for her, where she kept her bird supplies. A few minutes later, after she went inside, Sookie suddenly noticed how quiet the house was. Almost eerily quiet. As she stood there, all she could hear was the ticking of the kitchen clock and the cry of the seagulls out on the bay. It was so strange not to hear a door slamming or someone running up and down the stairs. How pleasant to have peace and quiet, and not hear loud music blaring from someone’s room. So pleasant, in fact, she thought maybe she would fix herself a cup of tea and sit and relax a few minutes before she headed out again.
Just as she was reaching for a tea bag, the kitchen phone rang. Now that the house was empty, it sounded like a fire alarm going off. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID number. It was a long-distance call, but not from an area code she recognized, so she just let it ring. She was too tired to talk to anyone if she didn’t have to. In the past few days she’d had to smile and talk to so many people that her face still hurt.
Sookie stuck a cup of water in the microwave, grabbed her tea bag, and went out on the screened-in porch to enjoy it. She sat down in her big white wicker chair. The bay was as smooth as glass, not a ripple in sight.
She noticed that her gardenia bushes were still in bloom and thought she might cut off a few and float them in a dish in the living room. They always made the house smell so sweet. She took a deep breath of fresh air and was about to have her first sip of tea when the phone started ringing again. Oh, Lord, it was obviously somebody calling the wrong number or a solicitor trying to sell her something, and if she didn’t answer they would probably drive her crazy all day. She got up and went back to the kitchen and picked up. It was her mother.
“Sookie, I need you to come over here right now.”
“Mother, is something wrong?”
“I have something extremely important to discuss with you.”
“Oh, Mother, can’t it wait? I just got home.”
“No, it cannot!”
“Oh, well … all right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Sookie frowned as she hung up. That particular tone in her mother’s voice always made her a little anxious. Had Lenore found out she had spoken to the woman at Westminster Village about assisted living? She had just been inquiring about the price, and it had only been one short call. But if someone had told Lenore she would be furious.
A few minutes later, Sookie walked over, and the nurse, who was in the front yard cutting fresh flowers, looked up and said, “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Poole,” then added with a sympathetic little smile, “God bless you.”
“Thank you, Angel,” said Sookie.
Oh, Lord … it must be worse than she thought. As Sookie walked into the house, she called out, “Mother?”
“I’m here.”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“In the dining room, Sookie.”
Sookie went in and saw her mother seated at the large Georgian dining room table with the twelve Queen Anne chairs. On the table, placed in front of her, was the large leather box with the maroon velvet inside that held her set of the Francis I silverware. Next to the box was the large Simmons family Bible.
“What’s going on, Mother?”
“Sit down.”
Sookie sat down and waited for whatever was coming. Lenore looked at her and said, “Sookie, I called you here today because I am not entirely convinced that you fully appreciate what you will be receiving upon my demise. As my only daughter, you will be inheriting the entire set of the Simmons family silver … and before I can die in peace, I want you to swear on this Bible that 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 o
ne 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 were days 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 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 dig up 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 up a 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.
SOOKIE WAS STANDING IN the “less than six items” checkout line when she heard someone call out her name. It was Janice, a pretty blond girl and one of Ce Ce’s bridesmaids, who rushed over from the produce department, still holding a head of lettuce, and hugged her. “Oh, Mrs. Poole, I’m so happy to see you! How are you? You must be exhausted from all the excitement … but I just had to tell you, that was one of the nicest weddings I have ever been in. And such fun, too! Ce Ce and Peek-a-Boo looked so cute coming up the aisle—and it’s always so wonderful to see your precious mother. I swear she never changes. She’s still the prettiest thing … and funny. I wish you could have been at our table—she had us all just screaming with laughter. And that hat with those birds! How does she come up with these things?”
“I have no idea,” said Sookie.
“What a character, and she was so sweet to bring her little Mexican nurse with her.”
As Sookie moved one person closer to the checkout girl, Janice moved with her. “Oh, and listen, Mrs. Poole, I was going to drop you a note and apologize for Tinker Bell’s terrible behavior at the reception. I don’t know what got into him. He usually just loves
cats to death.”
Sookie said, “Oh, don’t worry about it, honey.… After all, dogs will be dogs.”
Janice thought about it for a second and said, “Yes, I guess you’re right. They just can’t help themselves, can they?” Then she made a sad face. “How are you holding up? You must be so blue with Carter and all the girls gone—but thank heavens, you still have your mother to keep you company … and I’ll bet she just keeps you entertained twenty-four hours a day doesn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, she certainly does,” said Sookie.
Finally, it was Sookie’s turn at the cash register, and Janice said, “Well, I’d better run. ’Bye, Mrs. Poole, so nice to see you. Be sure and tell your mother I said hey.”
“I sure will, honey.”
When she came out of the market, she saw that the Elks Club ladies had set up a bake sale, so she walked over to see what they had. Dot Yeager, sitting behind the table, said, “Don’t they all look good?”
“Oh, they do.”
“Your mother looked so pretty at church yesterday in that bright blue dress with her silver hair. I wish I could wear that shade of blue, but it just fades me out to nothing. I had my colors done, and I’m a fall, but Lenore is definitely a spring, isn’t she?”
“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.