LENORE'S BIG DAY

POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA.

JANUARY 2006.

LENORE HAD A BIRTHDAY COMING UP, SO IT WAS TIME TO START PLANNING, and she always had a list of instructions for Sookie about how she wanted to celebrate.

Sookie got out her notebook and walked over to her house. Angel told her Lenore was back in her little den off the alcove. When she went inside, she found her mother fully made up but still in her floral dressing gown, sitting at her desk looking forlorn. "Hey, what are you doing? I came over to find out what you wanted to do this year to celebrate your birthday."

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. When you're my age, there's nothing to celebrate."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"I'm so upset."

"Why?"

"Oh, Sookie, it's so awful to be old. Look at my phone book. Almost everyone I know is dead. n.o.body is left that remembers me when I was young. I don't have anybody left to reminisce with. If it weren't for you and Buck, n.o.body would remember me at all. I'm being pushed into the past. Oh, it's terrible when you don't have a future or anything to look forward to. I used to think that after you and Buck were grown, I'd go on the stage, but then your daddy got sick, and I had so many club obligations, I guess I just misjudged time. And when your daddy died, it was too late. Oh, I could write a book. I'd call it A Life of Regret or The Things I Didn't Do. And I could have done so many things. I was always good at anything I put my mind to, you know that."

"That's true. You could do anything and do it better than anybody else. But you know, Mother, I have always wondered: Did it make you happy?"

"What?"

"Have you ever been happy?"

"Oh, Sookie, why do you ask me these silly questions? I must say I liked you better when you were busy raising children. Lord, all you do now is sit around and think, and thinking is not good for you, Sookie."

"Thank you, Mother."

"Well, Sookie, your mother is the only one who will ever tell you the truth. You know I'm right, Sookie."

"Okay, Mother. Whatever you say. But what do you want to do about your birthday this year?"

"Oh, I suppose I owe it to the children to have some sort of celebration. It means so much to them, and who knows? I may not be here next year, so maybe we should do a little something."

Sookie sighed. "How many people?"

"Oh, no more than thirty. I'm just not up to it this year."

"Yes, Mother."

"And if we do go to Lakewood, don't let them talk you into putting us in the smaller room."

"Yes, Mother."

That meant she wanted to go to Lakewood and be in the big room. And knowing Lenore, she would start adding more and more people as it got closer.

But that was Lenore. Her birthday was a big thing to her and she a.s.sumed it was for everyone else in town as well.

As Sookie walked back home, she began to think about the situation regarding her own birthday. Her real birthday, in October, had quietly come and gone. She wondered about the woman listed on her birth certificate. It was strange to think that somewhere out there, someone she had never met might have been remembering that day too.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU.

POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA.

SOOKIE HAD ALWAYS WORRIED THAT SHE AND DEE DEE HAD NEVER been as close as she would have liked, but Dee Dee had started calling and asking her to meet for lunch almost every week now. And it was nice getting to know her daughter just a little better.

They were sitting outside at Sandra's Sidewalk Cafe one afternoon, when Dee Dee said, "Oh, Mother, did I tell you that I finally got the Poole family crest reframed?"

"No, you didn't. Are you pleased with how it looks?"

"Oh, yes. I think I like the gold even better than the red."

"Oh, good." Sookie took a sip of her iced tea and said, "You know, Dee Dee, I just realized something."

"What?"

"Well, just think, you are a Poole by blood, and I only married a Poole, so you are even more related to your father than I am. And none of us are related to the Simmonses at all. Isn't that strange? I mean, what is genetics, and what is environment? And why am I the way I am?"

"Oh, Mother, who cares? We certainly don't. The only thing that matters is who you are now. And besides, this is America, and you are free to be anybody you want to be. You can even change your name legally, if you want to, and not be a Simmons or a Jurdabralinski. You can be whoever you want to be."

Sookie smiled. "Can I be Queen Latifah?"

Dee Dee laughed. "No, but you could call yourself Lucille Flypaper or Tiddly Winks McGee, if you want."

"I know you're kidding, but you know, it might be fun to be someone different, just for a change. 'Sookie' is way too babyish for a sixty-one-year-old woman, don't you think?" Sookie took a bite of her salad and then said, "Virginia Meadowood."

"What?"

"From now on, I want to be known as Virginia Meadowood."

"Yes, Mother."

"Do you think I'm too old to start over?"

"No, Mother, sixty-one is young."

"I wish I could start over. I would do things so differently if I had the chance."

"Oh, what?"

"Oh, I wouldn't have let so many things bother me, and I would have stood up to your grandmother more, of course. But then if I were someone else, I might never have been a Kappa, and I wouldn't have married your father. You would have had a completely different father or else you might not have been born at all or I could have had four totally different children. I can't imagine. It just boggles my mind thinking about all the what-ifs, wondering why things turned out how they did and if it was supposed to be that way or is your life just an accident."

"It's a mystery, isn't it? But, Mother, you may want to change and be someone different, and we will support you in anything you want to do, but we've all talked about it, and we're really glad you married Daddy, and we admire you for having so much patience with us and with Grandmother."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. But seriously, Mother, you are not who you think you are."

Sookie had heard that before. "How so?"

"Well, it's true that Grandmother is flashy and flamboyant and all that, but she's a little shallow. You think you're not important, but you are. You have heart, Mother. You are a real human being."

Sookie was suddenly overwhelmed to be hearing this from her daughter, and tears sprang up in her eyes. "Well, thank you, honey. That means a lot to me."

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, SOOKIE called Dena. "I'm telling you, Dena, when you live long enough to see your children begin to look at you with different eyes, and you can look at them not as your children, but as people, it's worth getting older with all the creaks and wrinkles."

PACKAGE FOR ALICE.

POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA.

PETE THE MAILMAN WALKED TO SOOKIE'S DOOR AND KNOCKED JUST AS Lenore was coming up the stairs with a sack of B & B pecans she had picked up for Sookie. When Sookie opened the door, she saw them both and said, "Well, good morning!"

Pete said, "Good morning. I've got another package for Alice Finch."

"Oh, thank you, Pete. I'll take it."

"She's been here for quite a while now. She must like it here."

"Yes, she does. Thank you, Pete," Sookie said. "Have a nice day."

As Lenore walked in the door, she asked, "Who's Alice Finch?"

"Just a friend."

"What friend?"

"You don't know her, Mother."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"I know everybody who's moved here. I've never heard of anyone named Alice Finch."

"She's a friend of Marvaleen's."

"Oh, well, no wonder. Why are you getting her mail?"

"Mother, do you have to know everything?"

"Yes, I do. Here are your pecans."

"Thank you."

"Do you have any of Earle's coffee left? I need a little more. Conchita makes the weakest cup of coffee known to man."

"No, but I can make some. Did I tell you I spoke to Carter?"

"No."

"He has a new girlfriend, but he isn't serious about her, he says."

"Well I certainly didn't like the last one he brought home. She was far too loud and aggressive for my taste."

ALTHOUGH SOOKIE REMAINED PLEASANT on the outside, the next hour and a half was sheer torture. She was dying for her mother to leave so she could open her package, and the minute she heard the front door shut, she tore into it.

Dear Alice, Here are a few articles and other stuff. Some of the pictures are a little faded, but I thought you might want to see them. Will send more when I find it.

She opened the folder and saw a newspaper clipping with a picture of a slender young woman wearing jodhpurs, lace-up leather boots, and a white shirt standing by a plane with her hands in her pockets.

Sookie knew this was a special moment in her life. She was looking at a picture of her real mother for the very first time. The pretty dark-haired girl smiling at the camera couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen, but she looked so confident and self-a.s.sured. Underneath the picture was the headline: MISS FRITZI JURDABRALINSKI OF PULASKI.

BECOMES WISCONSIN'S FIRST GIRL PILOT Pulaski News 1939.

Miss Fritzi Jurdabralinaki, Pulaski's own Amelia Earhart, will be appearing with the famous Billy Bevins Flying Circus.

Then Sookie saw a clipping with another photo of Fritzi.

SISTER JOINS HER BROTHER IN THE AIR, FLYING FOR THE USA.

Green Bay Journal 1943.

Miss Fritzi Jurdabralinski, a licensed pilot, has joined a group of women fliers who have volunteered their flying services to the United States government. She will be going to Houston, Texas, for training. "I am very happy and hopefully, with women taking over the domestic ferrying of planes, we will be able to get this war over sooner." Fritzi is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stanislaw Jurdabralinski of Pulaski, Wisconsin.

Sookie sat staring at the glamorous girl in the photos. She liked her face and the way she stood, looking like she was ready to go out and conquer the world.

Before that, Fritzi had just been a name on a piece of paper, but now that Sookie saw that she was a real person, the enormity of it all hit her. This was her mother, who had carried her for nine months. This pretty girl was the one who had given birth to her. Had she held her, she wondered? Or had she not even looked at her? Why had she handed her over to strangers? Had she done something wrong? Had her mother not liked her? Earle was right. She had to try to find her. She might not like the answers, but she couldn't go on not knowing. Now she was worried she had waited too long.