The Southern Belles of Honeysuckle Way - Hardcover

Bruckheimer, Linda

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194 ratings by Goodreads

9780525944546: The Southern Belles of Honeysuckle Way

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525944540 ISBN 13: 9780525944546

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 2004

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Sisters Rebecca and Carleen, along with their daughters, head cross country for Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky, for a reunion with their sister Irene and their mother's seventy-fifth birthday, and find themselves dealing with ruthless real-estate developers out to destroy local landmarks, a devious insurance scheme, an attractive McDonalds' executive, and their feisty mother, Lila Mae.

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About the Author:

Linda Bruckheimer is the author of the national bestseller Dreaming Southern. Ms. Bruckheimer divides her time between a farm in rural Kentucky and Los Angeles, California, where she lives with her husband, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Prologue

Rebecca Somewhere Out in the Wild Black Yonder

AUGUST 1999 It is way beyond midnight, an oven-hot August evening, and I am drifting along a strand of Louisiana asphalt that I can�t quite locate on any map. The wisp of a road bounces across an alligator-infested swamp, and the air is thick with the stench of stagnant water. Fluttering before the windshield like poison jewels and disappearing into the bayou are glowing, snapping insects. Several miles behind me was the last vestige of civilization�a weathered gothic church with a sign saying: FREE TRIP TO HEAVEN�DETAILS INSIDE.

The skyscape around me, though, is cloaked in summer finery: The Big Dipper�s silver stars twinkle above the oak trees. A huge Japanese lantern of a moon illuminates the night. And there�s the Milky Way, trailing across the sky in misty, billowy tufts like miles and miles of bridal veil.

An ordinary motorist would admit they were lost, or at the very least, misplaced or off-kilter. Lila Mae, my wayfaring mother and a utopian traveler, would simply call the situation �the scenic route. It is true that I don�t know where I am at the moment. It is even, as an old song put it, a little worse than that: �I don�t know where I�ve come from, �cause I don�t know where I�ve been. Or so the lyrics go.

If the accounts I�ve heard from gas station attendants and tollbooth operators are to be believed, it is not an opportune time to be drifting. Percolating somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico is a hurricane, one that�s threatening to sweep ashore. Because of this, my nerves are drawn tight as the strings of a Stradivarius. But, there is magic in the night, and I am infused with excitement, as if the wings of some exotic bird were flapping inside me.

Sprinkled like melting snowflakes along this lonely trail and causing me to pause every few miles or so are the remains of Louisiana plantations, their Corinthian columns rotten, and the majestic all�es of old, mere petrified soldiers of twisted bark. In the age-old grapple between purity and evil, their limbs climb upward as if reaching for the heavens, while their long arthritic roots burrow deep into the clay earth. Corroded iron gates lean in the wind; bits of their broken curlicues are hidden in the tall grass like Easter eggs.

I am both fascinated and repelled by this region, the Old South in its glory days of magnolia blossoms and bloodstained ground, where soiled Confederate gray and the boom of cannons still pierce the night. If I close my eyes, from some ancient crevice comes the tinkle of banjo music and the crackling of burning sugar cane and the rat-a-tat-tat of a thousand dancing belles. Decades before, I wandered through similar fields and picked pearls of cotton, which I tucked into the pocket of my pink toreador pants, a trinket of my home turf to keep my dreams squirming with life. Perhaps these mansions, these ash ghosts that rattle the cages of my memory, are the exact houses that caught my girlish fancy as I wished on stars and conjured images of the perfect future.

Officially, this current adventure is nothing more than a means to an end. My younger sister, Carleen, and I are on our way to Kentucky from California, where we will join Irene, our Baby Sister, Miss Olive, our grandmother; plus dozens of friends and relatives to celebrate Lila Mae�s seventy-fifth birthday. Unlike the others who have chosen the lickety-split friendly skies, we have opted to leave a few weeks early, wending our way across the American landscape in a car�the scenic route, if you will�the exact route (if such an absurd thing is even possible) that Lila Mae, our discombobulated mother, and her four young children took several decades ago when our family set out for California on Route 66.

The object of our desire is a glimpse of the good old days, before progress and the bulldozer ambushed our heritage. Simple as this task sounds, Carleen and I might as well be on all fours, scraping around for a misplaced gold doubloon.

At my side, darting in and out of consciousness, is Carleen. Cradling an assortment of road maps and nestled in bittersweet dreams, her blond head is tipped against the car frame. A tiny fractured robin, she is, with her feathery hair blowing across her face and the disappointment of her life somehow settling in her wings. She shifts and slides and twitches her mouth into a tortured smile. Every once in a while, she will bolt upright and say, �Where are we, Rebecca?

Sound asleep in the backseat are our teenage daughters, Ava and Cassie, or, as Carleen and I refer to them when we don�t think they�re listening: Lolita Number One (mine) and Lolita Number Two (hers). They are adorned in grape nail polish, tank tops, and hoops that pierce various parts of their bodies, all of which clash with the notion that Carleen and I coddle of ourselves as strict mothers.

I roll down all the windows, turn on the CD player and select Johnny Cash. His voice�gravel spliced with black velvet�fills the air as he sings �Folsom Prison Blues. A second wind sweeps through the car as Carleen jumps up and the girls stir. We turn up the music and sing along, our lungs bubbling with the Southern humidity.

I hear the train a comin� it�s rolling round the bend, and I ain�t seen the sunshine since I don�t know when I�m stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps draggin� on But that train keeps rollin� on down to San Antone. Sing, Johnny, sing! Carleen yippees and churns the dial until the speakers thunder. If I had eyes in the back of my head, I would see that the girls, now wide awake and trussed in headphone wires, are plugging their ears and flashing their eyes to the heavens. Donning their metal headbands, they listen to CDs while Carleen paws the floor, searching for the Styrofoam cooler of Coca-Colas. She flips one open and hands it to me, our normal symbol of armistice when we�ve been bickering and want to reseal our sisterly bond. We�ve grown up believing that all rifts can be chinked with a Coca-Cola.

For the past few days, we have had beaucoup unfinished business, stemming from what is commonly known as the sweating skull incident. The skull is nothing spectacular�an amateurish drawing on a concrete wall of a skeleton with beads of sweat flying from it, an ice bag and a sign that says: WARNING�700 MILES OF DESERT.

It is flabbergasting, even to me, but the sign was the number one item on my list of things to see on this trip. Because Carleen read the map wrong, we looped around with the last streaks of daylight above us, ending up nowhere near the skull. Missing it, I badgered Carleen, was tantamount to traveling to Egypt without seeing the pyramids, or Paris sans the Eiffel Tower, or Peru minus Machu Picchu. On and on I ranted, ending with one of my Homeric, end of civilization as we know it speeches. Fed up with my harangue, Cassie finally hollered, Gosh, Aunt Beck, it�s ONLY a sweating skull!

Through the day, I have lambasted Carleen for taking after the Stalkers, our mother�s side of the family, who have the sense of direction of an amnesiac hummingbird, and she has crucified me for being high strung and demanding�Wooten tendencies. Had she only known, Carleen informs me, that the Queen of Sheba would make me the reader of maps, pumper of gas, dispenser of junk food, snapper of photos, and tracker of funnel clouds, I would have taken the blasted plane to Kentucky.

The two Lolitas amuse themselves with their electronic paraphernalia, and drive us crazy with the incessant chant, How far are we from the Smithsonian? Unsuspecting bystanders might be impressed by the budding culture vultures, but in truth our young lasses have other interests at heart: seeing Sonny and Cher�s bell-bottoms and linking up with two teenage boys they met at the El Tovar Lodge at the Grand Canyon who are now summer tour guides at the Washington, D.C. museum.

Suddenly, a panel of storm clouds moves across the sky. The wind tickles the willows, making a sound like the rustling of taffeta ball gowns. A bolt of heat lightning springs to life every few seconds, something that causes Carleen, a world-class scaredy-cat, to gasp and shriek. Go back to sleep, I tell her. As unlikely as it is, Carleen has spotted a vagrant and slams her foot against an imaginary brake pedal. Nobody else can even see the man, but from yards away in the black night, Carleen swears he is the Night Stalker.

I�m not kidding! she insists. It�s him!

I assure her that Richard Ramirez, the Los Angeles serial killer nicknamed the Night Stalker, had been sentenced to prison long ago. (It deserves mention that today alone Carleen has already spotted a grizzly bear, a wild dingo, a Gila monster, three funnel clouds, and yet another rambler who was Charles Manson�s double!)

But, regardless of these far-fetched notions, Carleen, much like our mother, has a knack for getting everybody all riled up. In spite of ourselves, we begin talking about Martians, Tasmanian devils, and the killer nobody ever found who had strangled the schoolgirl in the lime green socks and left her by the wayside.

Imagine, I think, if we were on a movie screen with an audience watching us, traipsing across the treacherous open road, two young daughters under our protective charge. Perhaps at this very moment, knowing there�s a villain waiting to pounce, they are shouting warnings: Stop! Wait! No! It�s possible, too, that they are snorting to themselves, Morons, what did they expect when they hightailed it across country by themselves?

Hovering over the treetops like a crown of rosebuds is the glow of an approaching town. In an empty field our headlights illuminate a white-robed Jesus standing like a lonely hitchhiker. PREPARE TO MEET THY MAKER, it warns. The Savior, crackled like an Italian fresco, stretches his arms east and west and stares us down with eyes pricked with bullet holes.

We zoom along the highway, passing motels with kidney-shaped swimming pools and coin- operated palominos. We pass roadside stands selling spiced pecans and a fireworks shack named Big Daddy�s, which even in the wee hours, has a sizable crowd purchasing Black Cats and Killer Bees. TURN AROUND, the girls holler. STOP! Carleen gives in, rummaging through her wallet to find change. But I press the accelerator, making them pout, We never do anything fun! When I tell them we can�t keep stopping for this and that and the other, Carleen chuckles, You sound just like Mom, an observation that makes me wince.

With that, from a peephole of my memory, I see our last innocent decade. It is 1959 and there is a rickety Packard filled with four screaming meemies and a starry-eyed woman enveloped in Arpege. Above us are the Texas stars as bright as Christmas ornaments and on the radio Elvis is singing All Shook Up. Behind the wheel Lila Mae is begging her unruly kids to cut out all that racket, irked that the Queen of Sheba�s too busy with them movie magazines to pitch in! All the while, there is talk of fresh starts and dreams of gold-cobbled streets.

When that trip, which should have taken several days, took several months, Lila Mae�s explanation for the delay came in a windfall of verbiage: I got waylaid, I was sidetracked, as if the expressions themselves were the culprits that had ensnared her, not her own bad decisions. Through the decades, Carleen and I have toiled in the garden�hoeing, tilling, pulling all suspect matter by the roots, searching for proof that we are not our mother�s daughters. But, we are obviously trapped in Lila Mae�s gypsy footprints. As behind schedule as we are, Carleen and I are easily coaxed, often pulling to the roadside simply to marvel at the freight trains and summer thunderheads. We stop for chili dogs in the Gator Cafe, a diner with an enormous alligator perched on the roof like a bizarre bonnet. We stay in the Valdosta Arms, where every room has a velvet painting of Martin Luther King, Jr. For hours, we travel behind a grass-green Volvo that bounces like a covered wagon, staring at the bumper sticker: VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS.

With the wind velocity approaching ferocious, and dawn looming before us, we enter St. John�s Parish, checking into the Magnolia Plantation Lodge, an inn with faux Greek columns and a crystal-chandeliered lobby. The female employees wear crinolines and the night clerk, a marble- white man named Bud Coffey, is dressed as Rhett Butler.

Soon enough, we are in our room with its frizzy carpeting and chenille spread and a rackety swamp cooler. But, at least there is a television that will give us an update on the hurricane. I open my travel book, thinking I will scout the pages for interesting sights along our path, but I am drowsy.

With the moonlight blanching the drapes, I drift to sleep, remembering places we stayed years ago, wondering if this might even be one of them. When I close my eyes, I still can�t shake the image of Lila Mae, one that blinks to me from a movie screen in another galaxy. She is a chatterbox in deep conversation witha truck-stop waitress, then she�s a confused figure hooked over a road map, a helpful filling station attendant at her elbow. I see the wind sweeping her print dress around her legs as she stands by an isolated roadside, waving a hankie, hoping for someone to help us with a flat tire or broken radiator. She is trying to avoid serious trouble, when all the while we suspected we were already in it.

Thinking her arthritic knee would slow us down and her singing would drive us crazy, Carleen and I have left her behind in California, cushioning our farewell with assurances and avowals: Someday, you�ll have to come along with us, Mom. It would be so much fun, I said to her, never explaining why she couldn�t come on that particular trip, never defining when someday might turn out to be, acting as if the decision to stay behind had been her idea, even though the choice to come with us was never presented to her in any formal fashion.

Oh, honeeee! I would love that! She makes two fists and pumps them as if rooting for her favorite ball team. In the Los Angeles sky is a froth of coral smog and a hazy sun. Lila Mae stands shadowed by the crepe myrtle and a swing from my grandmother�s porch and cheers, I really would love that!

We should do it then, right, Carleen? I say. Absolutely! she replies. Everybody realizes that this is a now-or-never trip, and we also know that there is still time for Lila Mae to pack�not in her usual way of taking every item she owns�but certainly enough notice to gather the basic essentials. Butm we remain dead silent, careful not to prompt her into actually joining us. Even as the tide of promise rises and buoys our spirits, sadness envelops me. We all know a trip of that sort is never to be.

Don�t forget to call me, girls. And you take good care of my little grandbabies, she laments. She is wearing the morose gaze of a convict facing the electric chair. Who knows, this could be the last time we ever see each other again. When I tell her to cut out the dramatic stuff, that she�s fit as a fiddle, she retorts, Well, for someone who almost had both legs amputated, I suppose I�m doin� okay. Won�t you be surprised if I DO kick the bucket! In her eye is a decoy of a thought, one that she�s surrounded with velvet ropes. You might not be celebrating my birthday a...

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