Lucy and Mrs. Dryver’s friendship, united by their love of Dolly Parton
Dumplin'Lucy and Mrs. Dryver’s friendship, united by their love of Dolly Parton, joined shared enthusiasm to a deeper act of companionship: Mrs. Dryver helped Lucy venture beyond the life she might otherwise have felt confined to. Through Willowdean’s memories and the objects left behind, the friendship emerges as a source of courage, an intimate history between two women, and a reminder that affection could not by itself remove the physical and social barriers Lucy faced.
A Friendship Built Around Dolly Parton
Mrs. Dryver was known in that part of Texas as a Dolly Parton impersonator, with a petite build and voice suited to the role. Lucy, meanwhile, had served as vice president of a regional Dolly Parton fan club until a few years before the events Willowdean recounts. Their paths crossed regularly through that shared enthusiasm, giving them a reason to meet and a world of admiration they could inhabit together.
Dolly mattered to them for more than her appearance. Willowdean understands the attraction as an attitude: Dolly knew people thought she looked ridiculous, yet did not change herself because she felt good as she was. To Lucy and Ellen, that confidence made Dolly seem invincible. Their devotion therefore carried an idea of self-possession as well as fandom, though the contrast between that ideal and Lucy’s experience would remain painful.
The Photograph and Lucy’s Braver Self
Mrs. Dryver gives Willowdean a photograph of herself and Lucy in front of the neon sign for The Hideaway. A large, smoke-filled crowd fills the background. Mrs. Dryver wears fitted overalls and a tight red shirt; Lucy wears one of her familiar sack dresses, but has added blue eye shadow. Willowdean has never seen her aunt wearing makeup before. The image records Lucy in a place she would not have gone to on her own, and in a version of herself that seems to have taken a small risk.
For Willowdean, the photograph makes Mrs. Dryver’s effect on Lucy visible: she brought out Lucy’s bravest parts. The bond also ran in the other direction. Willowdean recognizes that Mrs. Dryver mattered greatly to Lucy, and that Lucy was a lifeline for Mrs. Dryver. The photograph is therefore not simply a keepsake of a night out; it preserves evidence of mutual attachment and of a side of Lucy that her family may rarely have seen.
Yet the picture hurts Willowdean as well as delighting her. She compares Mrs. Dryver’s polished Dolly likeness with Lucy’s thick, pale legs and flat hair, and sees the blue eye shadow as an unspoken call toward the person Lucy wanted to be. She cannot stop measuring Lucy against the image of what she was not, even while recognizing that Mrs. Dryver had helped her become bolder. Her response is conflicted: loving the photograph, grieving its implications, and feeling disloyal for seeing Lucy through the same narrow comparison that made her appear diminished. That tension shows how the friendship’s gift of possibility existed alongside the judgments that shadowed Lucy’s life.
A Journey Lucy Could Not Take
The friendship also centered on a dream shared by Lucy and Mrs. Dryver: visiting Dollywood. When Mrs. Dryver won airline tickets at work, she immediately offered the second ticket to Lucy. The prospect was not casual; they made plans, looked at hotels and rental cars, and drove three hours to the nearest airport. Their preparation makes the eventual obstacle especially stark: Lucy could not fit into one airplane seat and would have to purchase an additional seat.
The airline, as Lucy later described it, was kind but firm. Mortified, she chose to go home rather than take up two seats. Mrs. Dryver returned with a Dollywood Christmas ornament for her, a white iridescent globe decorated with puckered red lips and Dolly’s signature in gold. Its red velvet ribbon in place of a metal hook marks it as an expensive souvenir, but its meaning is less in its price than in the trip it stands for. Mrs. Dryver could bring Lucy a memento; she could not make the journey’s exclusion disappear.
The ornament survives among Lucy’s belongings beside the memories that Willowdean is trying to piece together. It embodies both the closeness of the friends and the limit imposed on their plans: Mrs. Dryver offered Lucy a place beside her, and together they made the attempt, but the airline’s seating requirement turned a long-imagined visit into a source of shame. Their friendship is shown not as a cure for that exclusion but as the care that remained after it.
What the Friendship Leaves Behind
Lucy’s connection to Dolly extended beyond her fan-club work and her friendship with Mrs. Dryver. She had many gay friends online and described Dolly as the patron saint of gay men. When Willowdean later goes to The Hideaway, she initially struggles to imagine Lucy in that setting; remembering the bright blue eye shadow in Mrs. Dryver’s photograph makes the possibility less remote. The recollection links Lucy’s private keepsake to a wider social world that Willowdean is only beginning to recognize.
After Lucy’s death, the photograph and ornament do more than identify what she liked. They preserve evidence of relationships and ambitions that Willowdean cannot reconstruct from a pageant form or the ordinary contents of a drawer alone. Mrs. Dryver’s friendship shows Lucy outside the family’s familiar image of her: willing to go to a bar, wear makeup, plan a trip, and imagine a different experience of the world. Its lasting significance lies in that fuller portrait. Dolly Parton provided the shared point of entry, but the friendship mattered because Mrs. Dryver made room for Lucy to be braver, and because Lucy, in turn, was someone whose presence mattered profoundly to her.
