The fountain stared at me from the south side of Forsythe Park. One fifty. It was time to do the work of a journalist. It was time to discover my story.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be done here in the car, even though my sore behind had finally found a comfortable position on Old Betsy’s pillow. I wasn’t sure I wanted this story anymore, or this job or this chaos or this changing relationship with my father. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to change. Maybe I should go back and get my doctorate in how to become a professional student. Maybe I shouldn’t move out. Maybe I’m pressuring myself to grow up before I’m ready. My word, I’m only twenty-four. I’m just a babe. Babes shouldn’t be putting their lives in danger for a dumb beauty pageant. Babes should be curled up on chairs with their mothers. Sharing stories with their fathers. But I am not a babe. I, Savannah Phillips, am a grown woman. Extricating myself from the car, I began a slow but determined walk to the fountain.
At five ’til two, I saw her at the top of the main path leading to the fountain. She was wearing a beautiful peach linen pantsuit. I stopped before she saw me. This was no time for a Vicky encounter. I was too frustrated to see her anyway, and whoever was meeting me didn’t want to have to deal with two Phillips women at once. So I withdrew to the other side of the sidewalk. I watched her for a minute from behind some shrubbery. At least she wasn’t tucked away in her office coordinating hula dancers and knife throwers. You need to go to a meeting or a walking tour or a trolley ride or something. But she wasn’t with anyone. She was standing in front of the fountain as if she were waiting.
As if struck by a flying tiara, the realization hit me: She was waiting for me. Vicky was my appointment.
My thoughts ran out of control. What did she know? Had she been a part of something? Did I know my mother at all?
Must a woman have all her life-changing moments in the course of one day?
I looked at her again. Even from here I could see the concern on her face, the intensity of her brow. Now granted, Vicky was always intense, but this was a different expression. I saw a mother about to play a different role in her daughter’s life than either had ever known.
I could run, but no number of miles would ever create enough distance to leave behind what I had seen at the fountain. I knew that going forward was the only option. Vicky knew too. I reset my step.
She turned around and saw me coming, then smiled at me in a bashful way never before directed toward me. Dad had received this smile a thousand times. It was half “I’m sorry,” half “You’ll appreciate me after you hear what I actually have to say” kind of smile.
“Hello, darling, I can only imagine what you’re thinking,” she said, trying to offer a faint laugh.
“I’m not sure that you can. I don’t even know what I’m thinking.” I stared at her blankly.
“Would you like to walk?” she asked, motioning to the side of the fountain.
“Sure.” I followed her lead.
“I haven’t really been able to sleep since our conversation the other night. And after your conversation with Mr. Cummings and after reading your article in the paper, I knew you needed to know the whole story. I wish I had told you earlier. It could have spared all of us pain, especially Emma.”
“You know something that could have stopped me from writing that article?”
“I just need you to listen to me.”
My agitation grew. “I’m not sure that I want to listen to you.”
“Savannah, watch your tone. I’m sure you’ve had an eventful day, but I’m still your mother.”
“Eventful? Eventful? I would say so. I’ve been reprimanded by my father, screamed at by Emma, and embarrassed in front of my entire office. And now you’re here with information that could have stopped it all. Why now?”
“Why now am I telling you, or just why now?”
“Why, after all these years of sticking your nose into everything from the very beginning, would you wait until now, after a tombstone’s being carved with my initials?”
“Savannah, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know good and well what I’m talking about!”
“I know good and well that my hand is about to meet your face if you speak to me that way again.”
I tried to pull back my tone, but I was so angry that trying to contain twenty-four years of whys was virtually impossible.“You’re why I’m here. I wouldn’t be going through any of this if you would have just stayed out of my fiction contest at school. But no, you had to get involved. You couldn’t just let me win on my own.”
“You think I helped you win that contest?”
“Mother, please, let’s lose the drama. I know you had everything to do with me winning that contest.”
Vicky hooked her arm in mine and tugged my rigid frame along beside her. “You think you’re all grown up, don’t you, Savannah? You think you know everything, I can tell. Well, you walk and listen; I’ll talk. Understand?”
I harrumphed.“Talk away.” Her heels made an irritating clicking sound on the sidewalk.
“During my reign as Miss Georgia United States of America, I found out that the pageant was rigged. One night during my preparation for the Miss United States of America Pageant I was over at Mr. and Mrs. Todd’s house going over my schedule of appearances. Mr. and Mrs. Cummings were there as well. I had found out the families were good friends, but I had never thought much about it. That night, I left them at the table after dinner and went to the bathroom. As I was returning, I heard Mr. Cummings mention to Mr. Todd that the sale of the program pages had been extremely high. Something inside me told me to just stop and listen. So I stayed tucked away in the hallway where they couldn’t see me.
“Mr. Cummings asked Mr. Todd what he had done to encourage such high sales. Mr. Todd started laughing and said that somehow the girls had gotten the idea that the more pages they sold the more likely they were to win. He said the girls had set themselves into competition with each other before the pageant had ever started. ‘It’s so funny, isn’t it?’ he said.‘Watching those girls try so hard, knowing I decide the winner on the final night myself. The god of the pageant, that’s me. I know who I want, and I have to live with her for a year, so you bet I’m going to choose her.’”
“He said that?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” After all this time, judging the pageant had been about nothing but power. The craziness of it all was just settling in when she continued.“Well, then Mrs. Todd asked Mrs. Cummings if she had received her thank-you note and gift.
Mr. Cummings answered for her, saying she had and that was what made him realize they had sold a substantial amount of pages.”
“So it was true.”
“Yes, it was. Mr. Todd thanked Mrs. Cummings for her company’s fine printing job and laughed again and called it the most expensive comped service anyone had ever been given. At that point, I didn’t know how I was ever going to return to that room without my face giving away what I knew.”
“How did you do it?”
“I just summoned all my acting experience and gave the best performance I’d ever given,” she said, putting her hand on her chest.
I almost said, “Up to that moment,” but I didn’t want to stop her momentum.
She continued.“When they saw me come around the corner, they immediately changed the subject to the Georgia weather. Everyone finished dinner, and Mr. and Mrs. Cummings left. I told them I needed to leave as well. I climbed in my car and cried the whole way home. At that moment, I knew I hadn’t won legitimately. I had been picked by two sickening individuals, not by five legitimate judges, and certainly not because of my all-around talent and personality.”
“And you do have that.”
“Well, I think so. Anyway, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t want to tell anyone, because I was so mortified. How could I tell people that I wasn’t really Miss Georgia United States of America, but I was Miss Money Market Miss?”
“I know you did not just call yourself Miss Money Market Miss.’”
“Yes, I did. I felt cheapened, violated. I felt like someone had stolen my greatest dream from me.”
I couldn’t let her go with that. I slipped out of her arm and made her look at me square in the eye.“I can’t believe that was your greatest dream. And I don’t mean any offense, but I don’t know how you can compare losing a beauty pageant to what I’ve lost. I mean, it is nothing more than a group of women strutting around in bathing suits, vying for five people’s approval, and sauntering across a stage in expensive and hideous gowns.”
“Not all of them are hideous.”
“Mother, honestly, how can that be your greatest dream? Those women are a bunch of overcooked, overemotional, over-the-top phonies.”
“That’s enough, Savannah Phillips!” Mother said with a tone I had heard only in moments about to involve extreme contact. “Sit down and let me explain before you make me out to be some mindless twit.”
She sat down and turned to stare me straight in the eye. Now she was scaring me.
“I’ve always known you have never understood pageants. I’ve always known that you thought I was whacked, or whatever word you girls use these days, simply because I enjoyed competing in beauty pageants. But let me explain it to you as clearly as possible, Savannah.” I sat quietly.“It was never about fame or fortune to me. It was never about people’s applause or even their approval. It was about being part of an organization that offered me opportunities to take the things that I believed in, that I enjoyed, and bring them to a more visible stage. I knew if I ever became Miss United States of America, that it would open doors for me like nothing else could ever do. And it was fun, Savannah. Believe it or not, it was just a lot of fun.”
“Fun?”
“Yes, Miss Priss, fun. I got to meet wonderful women. They’re not all as you say, Savannah. And after all of that—after the sequined dresses, big hair, and tacky talent costumes—I was able to travel the state and meet people and talk to them about my dreams and my ideals. And do you know what, Savannah? People listened.”
“I have no doubt you captured their full attention.”
“Well, they didn’t listen to me because my name was Victoria Musick. They listened to me because I was Miss Georgia United States of America. Granted, times have changed. Granted, the women’s movement has tried to make us look like a bunch of hollow, high-heeled, out-of-touch simpletons. But some of those women today are just like I was over twenty-five years ago. They have goals and dreams. They have things to say that people need to hear. And they see beauty pageants as the avenue to open those doors.”
“I’m sure not all of them feel that way.”
“Sure, some of them have other goals. Some of them just want to say they’re the best at something, at anything. But there really are some who, just like you, want to author books or write articles to reveal to the world that they have something of value to say. Is it old-fashioned? Maybe to some. Is it still enjoyable to others? Absolutely. Does it hurt anyone? Obviously it does. Do we all have to know how to win gracefully as well as lose gracefully? Eventually. Because each of us will do both at one point or another. And I think you’ve learned that yourself today.”
“Yes, ma’am. I think I have.”
We are good women, with good hearts, though some push the limits with their obsession. But some . . . no, many, Savannah, are women just like you, except their book is a pageant. Their story is a song or a ballet or a moment in front of a willing audience. They may never get a record deal, or tour with the New York Metropolitan Ballet, but to their parents, every moment was exceptional.”
“As it should be to any parent.”
“And it is with yours, rest assured. So for that one magical moment they are living a dream. Now, you can dilute that to mindlessness if you’d like, but you’d have to include me in your sweeping generalizations. And I may enjoy things that are different from you, Savannah, but that doesn’t make me any less capable than you. It just makes me different. I have always encouraged your dreams. It is time that you at least try to understand mine.” She paused. She breathed. But she did not cry.“For many girls, Savannah, losing can cause them to feel their lives are over.”
“Mother, how can losing a pageant cause someone to think that life is over?”
“It’s the death of a dream, Savannah. It’s me watching them crown someone else Miss United States of America, when all my life that is what I thought I would be. It’s you watching Grant marry someone else, or writing your first article for the paper and it not being received the way you had hoped. It’s not that you don’t think better things will come your way. It’s that this one thing is lost forever. And like anything, it is a loss that you grieve. And for one moment, I thought I had lost my dream.”
My anger flared up again, “I hope you can remember that feeling, because that’s how you made me feel. You stole my greatest dream.”
She looked at me exasperated, wondering, I’m sure, if I had heard one word she just said.“I didn’t rig your contest, Savannah. A friend of mine from college noticed your name and where you were from and called to see if you were my daughter. He just happened to be the head of the publishing company. We hadn’t spoken in years. I told him you were and that you were an excellent writer. I let him know, however, very clearly, that I didn’t want you to know we had even spoken. If you didn’t deserve to win that contest, then you shouldn’t be the winner, regardless of our friendship.”
“But your name was on my notification. I called them. They thought I was you . . .” Even as I said it and replayed the conversation, I realized that Mr. Peterson had said nothing to indicate that Mother had asked for their special favor in any way. It was only my assumption. My assumptions made me give away my publishing deal. My stupid assumptions made me write an article that should never have been written. My assumptions had me sitting on a park bench with my mother, realizing I had just totally and successfully screwed up my life. “I threw it all away!” I buried my head in my hands.“I threw it all away to prove a point to you!”
She sat down and wrapped her arms around me.“Well now, you’re experiencing the loss of a dream. It hurts. And it blinds. But there was a greater plan for you, darling. And you found it, wrapped in a newspaper. You’re a great writer. Today’s experience will make you a more compassionate writer. Don’t lose what you feel today, because it will forever change who you are and what you write.”
I looked up at her and saw my mother in a different light. She was not trying to manipulate this moment. She was trying to help me encounter her feelings. She had stated her case, and I could accept or ignore it. But it wouldn’t change it. This was who she was. She was a woman who’d experienced dreams and losses. A woman like me.
We would never dress alike, walk alike, talk alike, or ever think alike, rest assured. But we were still the same in this regard. Her dreams led her down runways; mine led me down hallways. Hers required lipstick and hairspray; mine required laptops and Post-it notes.
“Forgive me, Mom,” I said, looking at her very similarly to the way I had looked at my father earlier that morning, knowing our relationship would never be the same.
She stared back at me.“‘Mom.’ I like that.”
“All these years I couldn’t understand what this fascination was, this craving for this type of life. Then I met Emma and Katherine. Each of you walked the same road and yet are so different. You are not mindless, and please don’t ever think I have thought that about you. But today I’ve seen something in you I’ve never seen before. I see me.”
“Well, now, that took a while, didn’t it?” she said with a smile.
I laughed.“I always thought I got my drive from Dad, and this idea that I have a destiny, a place, an actual calling. But I got it from you.”
“That knowledge is in the core of each of us, Savannah. And at the end of the day, there really is only one dream: to touch some part of the world with something of eternal value. The only thing that differentiates the call is the method.”
“I love you. If I become half the woman you are, I will have achieved great things. Will you tell me the rest of your story?”
“Sure.”We stood and continued our walk.“I called your father after I gathered myself. We hadn’t been dating long, but I knew I was going to marry Jake the first time I saw him.” She still spoke his name with tenderness, even after twenty-five years. “I’ve never met a stronger, yet gentler, man. He holds us together. He’s that quiet strength. I’m that flamboyant moment!” Her face revealed a delicate smile. “He just did it for me. You know what I mean?”
“Would you stop trying to talk like a teenager? I do not want to know all of your intimate feelings. I know you love him. Now, focus. On with the story.”
“OK, OK. But you’re a lucky girl to have two parents who love each other like we do.”
“Yes, I am,” not adding how lucky we all were to have Jake to balance the chaos.
“Anyway, he told me that I needed to get to the bottom of it. Even if it meant finding out I was an illegitimate winner. He let me know that I couldn’t be a part of something that was a lie. And if it meant giving up my dream, then I would have to give up a dream and wait for another to replace it. So the next day I went straight back to the Todds’ house and told Mr. Todd what I had overheard the night before. He assured me I had misunderstood, that none of it was anything more than two old friends cracking jokes and acting crazy, that I had been the unanimous choice. I didn’t know what else to do but believe what he told me. Your father and I agreed that I would continue with my preparation, and we would just try to find out anything to the contrary that we could.”
“So Dad’s known about this all along as well?”
“Yes, he has.”
“You two are good.”
“We know,” she said matter-of-factly.“Anyway, for the next six months I prepared for the Miss United States of America Pageant and your father tried to find out anything he could to disprove what Mr. Todd had said. But we were young. We didn’t have any connections with anyone and very little spare time. He was in graduate school full-time, and I was an eighteen-year-old dreamer. We were more concerned really with seeing each other when we could. And honestly, Savannah, once I met your father, all I was really excited about was getting married. Then, when I didn’t win the Miss United States of America Pageant, I just wished the next six months away.”
“When it was time to give up my crown, there was a beautiful young lady competing that year. She was so petite and talented, and people had been talking about her all over the state. She had emceed numerous local pageants and the word was that she was magical. She could captivate an audience. Well, everyone compared her to me,” she said with a big smile, apparently proud that she was captivating and magical.
“But for some reason, every time her name was mentioned by anyone,Mr. Todd got irate. He accused her of taking another girl’s song for her talent competition. I know it’s totally ludicrous, but no one even gave her the opportunity to defend herself. Looking back, I believe it was her character in general he had a problem with. Word got back to me about another girl who was competing for her third time in the pageant. Mr. Todd had nothing but wonderful things to say about her. So I decided I would just watch. Not being in the middle of it gave me the ability to be far more objective.
“During the competition, the petite one just captured everyone’s heart. She was a lady. She was extremely talented and even won the swimsuit competition. The other girl was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But the petite one stole the audience. But when the evening ended, the one Mr. Todd loved walked away with the crown. The whole audience gasped at the announcement. And I left knowing I was going to get to the bottom of that mess,” Her southern indignation rose even now.
“Two days after giving up my title I went back to their house. I told him I didn’t believe what he had said, and that I was going to be keeping my eye on them. If they were up to anything, I was going to make sure that they didn’t ruin another girl’s life in any way, shape, or form.
“I guess my naiveté thought mere talk would work. But it wasn’t until Emma lost that I realized what they were actually doing. That year, I went into undercover mode. I used all the influences of Judge Hoddicks, got all of the bank records with the listing of every deposit made into Patricia Cummings’s account from Mrs. Todd’s account, knew every deposit and every note and everything imaginable. It was documented and categorized. I mean, they were so silly. They didn’t even try to really hide anything. I finally got all of the past score sheets, and they revealed that in each illegitimate win, Mr. Cummings III or IV had scored a woman fairly in the preliminaries so he wouldn’t rouse suspicion among the other judges, then gave her ones in every phase of competition on the final night.”
“And you had actual proof of this?”
“I had every piece of evidence needed not only to prove but to prosecute.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it all to Judge Hoddicks. I asked him not to prosecute unless forced, because I really didn’t feel Emma needed her name slathered in scandal with everything else that she was going through.”
“Unfortunately, I took care of that for you.”
“Yes, you did. But years ago I even went to her house and tried to help her, but she refused. She broke my heart, Savannah. Judge Hoddicks went down to Jackson. He met privately with Judge Tucker, and then they met privately with Mr. Todd and Mr. Cummings III and IV. Judge Hoddicks said it wasn’t pretty, but it was gratifying. They reached a private settlement and all of them were forced to leave their positions. None of them have any part in the pageant anymore, and only by Judge Hoddicks’s mercy are they not serving jail time.
“So that’s what happened. That is all of it,” she said, sitting down on another park bench and dabbing her forehead with a tissue.
I sat down beside her and turned to ask, “How did you feel when you saw your scores and realized that you had only won because they made you win, over someone else?”
“Well, that didn’t happen in every situation. In the year I won and about nine other pageants through the years, the person that actually won had indeed been chosen to be the best by all of the judges. I had actually been the winner. Now, could I have handled it if I wasn’t? I don’t know. It’s a question I never had to ask.”
“You could have. I’m certain of it.”
“I hope I could have. I hope that by now it would be enough for me to be the wife of an incredible man, the mother of fascinatingly passionate children, and a woman who is making a difference in the city she loves. But I’ll never really know the answer to that question, Savannah. I’ll never really know.”We had come full circle, and she stared at the fountain in front of our bench.
“Why did you wait to tell me all of this?” I asked. I wasn’t angry anymore, just puzzled.
“Because I was hoping you would see the bigger picture here, Savannah. There really is one.”
“You’re not the first to say such a thing.”
“Then you might want to listen. The intrigue is great. The stories of mayhem would be entertaining. But are those the things you want people to leave with? Did you leave fiction writing to just uncover real fiction, or did you leave fiction writing to make a difference, to change a city?” She stood up.“What did you give up your dream for, Savannah? Beyond proving something to me?” She bent down, kissed me on my forehead, and simply walked away.
I called after her. “So all those contests I thought you influenced, I really won on my own merit?”
She just raised her hand and shrugged her shoulders. I knew her well enough to know. And I watched as her Coach embroidered sling-back pumps clicked all the way home.
I laughed out loud. I got myself so tickled I couldn’t get up off of the bench. I laughed until my side hurt. I laughed at taping and dresses worn backward, at strange women singing in my car, and at the last week of pent-up anxiety. I laughed at the people who looked at me as if I were crazy. I laughed at the insanity of my life. I laughed at the thought of having to write another story by tomorrow afternoon.
Finally, I headed back to my office to pick up my computer. I had a story to write. Could I do it? Well, I am Savannah from Savannah. Victoria is my mother and Jake is my father. Oh yeah, I could do it. Wasn’t sure I really wanted to, but at least I knew I could.