Sheila Long, Paige’s mother, stopped by Vicky’s latest residence. Dropped in to say hello, I suppose. I stared across the square and watched as my mother pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped off an area of the sidewalk for Sheila to sit down.
I knew perfectly well that this tissue had been wadded in her purse, probably since last Sunday at church. It’s what she always does. And she always says, “It’s clean.”
How a wadded-up tissue in the bottom of a woman’s purse can be considered clean is beyond me. But apparently Sheila fell for it, because she sat down beside Vicky.
Since Mother had a visitor and it was way too early in this beautiful day to throw myself into her world of chaos, I decided to eat. Dad wouldn’t be home until evening, if then, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to delay obedience. I would obey eventually. Now just didn’t feel like the right time. It felt more like teatime.
Saturdays are perfect days for tea. Even though afternoon tea in Savannah is left mostly to tourists and dainty Southern women, I continue to enjoy it. A yearning for hot tea accompanied by crab cakes led me to the Gryphon Tea Room by way of Paige’s. And no, hot tea and coffee are not the same.
I walked into Paige’s small studio behind her parents’ antique store across from St. John’s Cathedral on Abercorn Street. She was wrapping up a painting for a miserably attired elderly couple. One vintage tourist had bejeweled herself with enough baubles for a family of four, and her companion had inadvertently, or maybe not, forgotten the no-white-knee-socks-with-walking-shorts-and-Florsheim-shoes rule. He smelled of an Old Spice train wreck and she looked as if she’d allowed a three-year-old to apply her blue eye shadow.
Paige slipped the sweet-looking gentleman his receipt, and he tried to insert it into his stitched-shut back pocket. He gave up after several attempts and stuffed it into his front pocket. His wife had similar struggles with her white vinyl bag, whose screw-in clasp didn’t want to screw. By the time they were both through, I do believe they were winded.
Yet the wind continued to blow. They talked loud and long, and Paige loved every minute of it . Truth be known, she just liked old people. If all else failed for her, she would start a chain of nursing homes. She would teach the art classes. But she was totally perfect for this setting. She was lively enough to attract all kinds, down-to-earth enough to make them comfortable, and talkative enough to keep them entertained. The colorful duo left totally thrilled with their new purchase.
“Do you smell that?”
She sniffed the air.“Smell what?”
“That. Old-people perfume.”
“You are weird . There is no such thing as old-people perfume.”
“Oh yes there is. Every old lady that sits down in front of me on Sundays at church wears the same old-lady perfume. Just like old men do.”
She moved over to her stool that sat in the corner and picked up a paintbrush to start back on a modern abstract landscape she was working on.“Why are you here? To dissect my clientele?”
“Okay, you made a sale; let’s go eat!”
She ran her left hand through the front of her hair the way she always does, as if straightening it . Yet the very essence of her hairstyle is to look as if it’s always messed up. “I can’t.”
“Why? You’re the owner . You can do whatever you want to.”
“Yes, you’re right. Well, no, technically you’re wrong. My mother is the owner and continues to inform me of such, and my father informed me, just a few moments ago actually, that if I am going to run a business, they would require some things of me.”
“Things?”
“Yes, Savannah, things. Business-owner things. Like punctuality, reliability, those kind of things.”
“Ooh, there’s a cute guy about to come in here, huh?”
She turned her back to me and walked over to a half-finished canvas and picked up a paintbrush.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar!” I laughed.
She turned back with a grin.“Yes I am . Their son is on his way.”
“Excuse me, did you see her and smell him?”
“Yes I did, smarty-pants. But I saw him too.” she said with a giggle. “He passed by with them a little while ago, and I saw him through the window.” She paused for extra effect.“And he is, shall we say, extremely eligible and extremely fine.”
“So you’re choosing ‘fine’ over me and crab cakes?”
She laid down her brush, walked over to me, placed her hand on my back, and pushed me toward the door.“I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I am about to forgo food to meet this handsome stranger.”
“So fickle we are . Well, I hope the boy isn’t crazy about the color blue.”
“I saw flip-flops.”
“Okay. He’ll do. So, is that your final answer?”
“Yes .Now, take that little book you have tucked up under your arm and go have you a lovely lunch. By the way, what did your mother say last night about her little adventure?”
“Well, so much for you and your predictions, but my mother slept outside all night.”
“I know. Mine slept out there with her. Came home walking like she was ninety. Holding her back and fighting tears.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, our prissy-wissy mothers—and I say that totally respectfully— slept outside, all alone . . .”
“Oh, no, they weren’t alone.”
Paige’s face contorted.“What?”
“I mean, my father slept outside too.”
“Oh? Oh . . . oh . . . isn’t that the sweetest thing you have ever heard?”
“Sweet? Ridiculous maybe, but sweet, give me a break. Grown adults, one strapped to a slab of stone, sleeping in sleeping bags on a sidewalk. Not to mention I hear it made the front page . There is nothing sweet about that.”
“Ooh. Like you aren’t in the paper enough,” she said, making shameless reference to the number of times my mother chooses to publicize my performances in print. My cell phone rang. It was my mother. I sent her to voice mail.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She’ll call again.”
“She always does. But back to you . . . this isn’t about me, this, oh yes, this is totally about my parents.” I waved my cell phone at her chest. “And yours too, apparently. Because your mother is with her again today.” I made for the door and turned back around.“Anyway, I’m changing my last name first thing Monday morning.”
“There’s not a soul that would blame you, honey.”
“I know.”
“Eat a crab cake for me.”
“I’m eating two.”
“He should keep his religious convictions to himself,” one storeowner quipped to another . The streets of Savannah were still busy with murmurs.
“Why? So you can be comfortable? That’s part of the problem, isn’t it, that everyone’s so comfortable the truth that used to make us uncomfortable doesn’t anymore?”
“Who are you? God?”
I walked past, losing them somewhere between yelling and cursing. It was evident not much work besides eating, exercising, and engaging were getting done today.
At the Gryphon Tea Room I took a seat in the raised area that looks out the grand picture window at the front of the store. It’s an old apothecary, which still reflects the practice of an era gone by with its deep, rich, wood-encased window seats and chairs. Small drawers line the back wall . Today it is known more for its crab cakes and desserts than its medicine. Of course, their cheesecake can cure anything that ails as far as I’m concerned.
After placing my order, I took up my book and ignored the blinking message light on my phone. But a rapid movement drew my eye off the page and out the large window. Had I realized before I turned who it was, I simply would not have looked. My book would have become as interesting as a McDonald’s Coke after a twelve-week fast. But no, inquisitive me, Miss Can’t-Let-a-Maniac-Pass-by-a-Window-Without-Looking, looked.
There she stood, dressed like she was going to a parade . The reigning Miss Savannah United States of America,my newfound friend, beamed at me. I call her “friend” because I told her only a couple days ago at lunch that is what I’d be, her friend. She looked pitiful that day. She suckered me in. And now, seeing her out there waving like a hummingbird on speed, I knew with certainty that friends were an evaporating commodity in her world.
I smiled as best I could, hoping she would be appeased and prance on by. No such luck. She pranced herself right up to my table and plopped her prance right down beside me.
“I can’t believe you’re here! Sitting right where we did only a couple weeks ago, when our paths crossed for the first time. I just can’t believe it . This is like fate or something. It’s like our two-week anniversary!”
Eyes darted in our direction, causing my own to grow large. In this day and age, that wasn’t a remark I wanted misconstrued. “Please don’t say that so loud.” I smiled at the gawking patrons. “Anyway, you look mighty nice for a Saturday.”
“Oh well honey, with all the television cameras happening around here, it’s best to look your best.” She giggled, beside herself with the possibility of celebrity. Sun-streaked tresses teased her bare arm, and her flirty brown fifties-style sundress with a pink ribbon waistband spread pretty as a picture on the padded pew.“You know I heard Julia Roberts was discovered on the streets of Smyrna, Georgia, just for her smile.”
“You don’t say? Well, I didn’t know that.” I noticed a tourist across the room taking in the beauty next to me.
“No, I’m joking. But she should have been. She really moved to New York after she graduated from Campbell High School in 1985 and got her first role in the Western Blood Red in 1986. Anyway, people say I have that same fabulous smile.” She grinned from ear to ear, just in case such information was lost on me. “Okay! Enough about me. Can you believe what your mother is doing? I just think it’s awesome. Miss Victoria is such the heroine. Such a woman of power and confidence. I just think she’s amazing. You should be so proud of her, out there strapped to that monument like a beauty queen strapped to a rhinestone.” She slapped me rather forcefully on the arm.
I rubbed the spot. Didn’t we have this conversation yesterday? This caused me to wrinkle my forehead and tilt my head. A move I learned from Duke. Maybe he did know tricks. My food came at that moment, so I didn’t have to worry about pretending to respond to her tribute to my mother, even though none of it warranted a response.
She wrinkled her nose at my beautiful crab cakes, but looked a tad more receptive to the salad. She picked up my unfortunately closed book and studied the cover.“Well, what are you reading? Ooh, Ronald Reagan. I just loved him.”
I stared at her, knowing that the only thing she read was People magazine.“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Oh, yeah. His life was so interesting.”
“And what exactly do you know about his life?” I took a big ol’ bite of my delicious lunch, all covered in a mayonnaise-based dressing.
“Ooh, that’s disgusting,” she said, staring at my mouth as I chewed, but losing interest quickly. “Okay, what do I know about Reagan?” She clasped her hands together and sat more erectly. “Well, he was born on February 6, 1911, as Ronald Wilson Reagan. His mother was Nelle and his father was John, and they had him in Tampico, Illinois.”
I stopped chewing and looked behind me to make sure no one was feeding her this information. I comforted myself with the fact that anyone who knew much about history could know this information. Not that I had remembered it, and I was actually reading a book about him, but that didn’t matter . However, I felt confident that there was no way Miss Amber Topaz herself could know all of this. She was a beauty queen, for crying out loud.
“Well, that’s nice.” At least I could act appreciative of her knowledge.
“Yes, I know that’s nice, but I know tons more from his days at Eureka College, where he played football and starred in their theater program. After he graduated, he married Jane Wyman and had two beautiful children, Maureen and Michael.” I stopped eating and sat back in my chair, crossed my arms, and stared in amazement at this MAC-covered walking encyclopedia.
“So in ’52 he married Nancy, and the rest of their life was lived in front of us.”
She paused to breathe and I was about to congratulate her, when she started again. Now, I thought her pageant stories were bad. I mean, try to sit with this woman through her tales of beauty queens who tape their boobies, wear dresses backward, and spray “sticky tack” on their behinds to keep their bathing suits from riding up, and you just want to cross on over. But I didn’t like history in school, and I really didn’t care to hear the book I was reading recited to me by a beauty-queen bombshell. No matter how long I lived, I would always believe she was fed this information through some earpiece connected to a lunatic outside in a black van.
“He turned to politics eventually and became governor of California in 1966, and then he became the fortieth president in 1980. He had 489 electoral votes to Jimmy Carter’s 49 . How is that for kicking some bu—. Ooh, I almost said the b word. How unseemly for a lady.”
Other than that she didn’t miss a beat.“But nothing can compare to that moment when Reagan stood behind that podium”—and with those words the queen herself rose, put her hand over her heart, and hollered loud enough for the people outside to hear—“MR. GORBACHEV, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL.” However, when Reagan said the word wall, I’m sure it didn’t have two syllables.
The entire restaurant seemed to contemplate whether they needed to rise as well. I’m certain a myriad of thoughts such as saluting, standing, or slapping ran through more minds than my own, because by the time she said Gorbachawf, everyone had whiplash. She sniffled and wiped her eyes of either real or artificial tears . Who could be sure?
She leaned into me. I withdrew. “That very speech, Savannah Phillips, set those people free. Set me free too.” She giggled. “It helped me win the title of Miss Catfish Stomp Festival Queen when I ended my interview competition with it. Those poor judges were ready to enlist by the time I got through.”
If I doubted it before, I now knew for sure that another Victoria actually existed in this world. Amber reached down to pick up my book and studied the cover again.
“Ooh, Peggy Noonan wrote this. I love her too. This is her fifth book, you know?” I can honestly say, I had no idea.“Yes, it is. Her first book was What I Saw at the Revolution followed by Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, then Simply Speaking.” She set the book down. “Oh! And my favorite, The Case Against Hillary Clinton, and now the one you’re reading.”
Finally it seemed that she was finished. My mouth hung somewhere around my chest.
She reached down to pick my book up one more time. I swept in and snatched that puppy away and pulled it to my chest.
“How?” was all I could come up with.
“I know you don’t think I read, Savannah. But to graduate with a 4.0 you have to read sometimes.”
Had I been eating, I would have choked.
She noticed my expression. She had a response. She always has a response.“And if you ever compete in a pageant interview”—she couldn’t be that bright to even conjure up such a scenario—“you’ll know, that one shall not tread those waters ill-prepared . Well, gotta run. So great to talk with you on our two-week anniversary . Your stories always intrigue me.” She leaned over me in a whisper. “Kisses, kisses.”And with that, the personification of Trivial Pursuit for Beauty Pageants made her exit before an audience no less flabbergasted than yours truly.
I hadn’t even graduated with a 4.0.
Truth be told, my writing scores were high, but most other grades proved how inept I was at anything other than telling a tale.
I eyed my cold crab cakes, which didn’t look as appetizing as before. Then the same voice that had filled the restaurant with a Southern-belle rendition of Reagan let loose with a shriek.
“Stop him! Stop him! He stole my purse!”