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

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’sunfortunate 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 justhadn’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