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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Girl, well, what can I say? You just did an amazing job. I’m not even sure that I would have been more interesting. There is a possibility, but I’m truly not certain,” Paige said on the other end of the line.
“Well, not everyone appreciated it.”
“Oh, the Emma thing. That was a little risky, but it was true. And you have always been a declarer of truth.”
“Yes, well, I about declared my truth all the way to the unemployment line.”
“You almos
t got fired?”
“Not exactly, but really I don’t want to talk about me today. What have you been doing all day?”
“Well, I’ve eaten breakfast, eaten lunch, and jabbered with every plaid Bermuda shorts, kneesock-wearing gentleman that has a hotel reservation in this city tonight. But I sold three pieces of art, and that,my friend, is enough to take the rest of the week off.”
“Ooh, I think that’s a great idea. You should treat yourself.”
“We should both treat ourselves. How about we go grab some dessert after Bible study tonight?You want me to just pick you up?”
“That sounds great. Come about six-thirty.”
“OK. I’ll just honk.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I entered the side door on the first floor and came up the back stairs that lead into the kitchen. There was no reason to return to work because the day was already over. Mother was busy preparing dinner and talking on the phone at the same time.
Dad and Duke apparently weren’t home yet, and Thomas,well, who knows where he was. As I went upstairs to wash my hands and freshen up, I heard Vicky say,“I know. She’s just fabulous. I think I might take out another one of those ads to surprise her. You know, in all these years she’s never guessed that it was me,” she said, laughing. The poor woman had no clue. I wasn’t going to give her one either, but I would have a long talk with my dad about making sure she never placed another ad again.
The Wednesday-night message was timely. With excerpts from Jim Collins’s book From Good to Great, the sermon revealed,“The only ones who accomplish great things that last are those who live a life not swayed by trends, but who hold fast to what they know to be true.”
In the car, Paige put her key into the ignition but didn’t turn it.“Savannah?”
“Yeah?”
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