Hildreth 2-in-1 Read online

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe you figured this out. Me? I would have spent the rest of my life thinking what a coincidence it was that my mother’s name was on my letter.” She was totally serious.“But you’ve always been that way. You could figure out just about anything, about anyone. You remember when someone stole your student-council speech from your locker?” She snickered.

  “Yeah,” I said, laughing myself at the memory.

  “You turned that school and half its students and staff upside down until you finally sneaked into Kimberly Malloy’s house and found it in a shoebox in her closet. You are shameless!” Now her snicker had turned into a belly laugh.

  “Hey, I was doing good until her mother sneaked up on me with a can of Mace, ready to attack the behind that was poking out of her daughter’s closet.”That image made us both hysterical.

  “At least you weren’t cleaning her bathroom,” Paige said, laughing so hard she fell off of the sofa.

  “Maybe that’s it,” I said after we wiped our tears and regained our composure.“Maybe I don’t need to write books. Maybe I need to uncover stories. Maybe I need to write for a newspaper or something.”

  “Yeah! You could move back home and write for our paper.”

  For the first time in the last six hours, I was actually having a rational thought. “You’re right, Paige. I could. Maybe this book-writing thing isn’t what I was really supposed to do. Maybe I’m supposed to be a journalist after all.” That said, I began to pace. “Maybe I could go home,write for the paper, and uncover stories. The first will be ‘Tales of Victoria.’That’s what I need to do. I need to go home and write stories that terrorize my mother.” I was beginning to like this whole idea.

  “You need to just go home and do what you’re good at.”

  “I was able to prove that Victoria rigged this contest. There’s no telling what I could uncover around our fair city. We’ve had a very productive evening, my fine friend.”

  “Yes, we have. Can we eat now?” she asked as she stood to brush the Dorito crumbs off her shirt.

  “Are you not totally sick? You just ate an entire bag of chips.”

  “We’ll call that an appetizer,” she said, then she threw her arm around me and led me toward the door.

  “OK. I need a Coke anyway.”

  Leo’s has the hottest chicken wings north of Hades, accompanied by what Leo calls “raw fries,” thinly sliced potatoes cooked either almost raw or crispy, like I like them. Paige and I munched on celery and blue cheese and ate ourselves sick, then we headed back to my apartment to crash. Around three a.m. we had exhausted both conversation and ourselves. Paige got up with me at seven thirty, and by eight I was in class and she was headed home.

  After my second class, I went to the mailroom and reached into my mailbox, excited to examine the paper and discover where the Savannah Chronicle could most effectively utilize an investigative reporter. But that morning’s edition held more distracting information.“ Local Humanitarian and Writer, Gloria Richardson, Dead at 62” announced the headline. I read in disbelief, feeling as if a friend I loved deeply was gone. This woman, who had made such an impact on my life, was dead of cancer.

  Who knew how many articles she had written about people who overcame insurmountable odds and helped others, in spite of their own circumstances? All the while, she could have been writing her own story. She chose, instead, to keep her battle a secret. Maybe it was the cancer itself that drove her to write some of her more moving pieces. Who could be sure?

  As I closed the paper, I thought about the last six years. Lines from past columns began to fit themselves together in my recollection, as if taking over my senses. Then came thoughts of short stories and novels I had written, chased by images of my misguided mother and the decisions I was now forced to make because of them.

  It was time for me to become a writer. A good writer. A life-altering writer. A Gloria writer. I knew what I would do. I would decline the award. Better yet,Vicky would decline the award on my behalf and with sincere regret for all of Mr. Peterson’s troubles. I would return to Savannah. I would make my own mark right on Vicky’s doorstep.

  The front page of the Savannah Chronicle declared a Mr. Samuel Hicks the editor at large. Within the hour I dialed the number, went through a truly southern receptionist, a rude secretary, and finally landed a rather winded-sounding Mr. Hicks.

  “Uh . . . uh, Mr. Hicks,my name is Savannah. And this is probably not the way you normally handle business, but I, well I, uh, I really felt like I needed to speak to you immediately. I’m here at the University of Georgia, and for the last six years, I’ve consumed every article Gloria Richardson has written. Each one seemed more, well, more powerful than the one before.”

  The phone was so quiet on the other end, I finally asked,“Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” said a perturbed voice.

  “I know her death has left a tremendous void at the Chronicle. I also know that no one will ever totally fill the place that she has left, but I believe I am capable of carrying on her vision, and—”

  “Young lady, I’m not sure who you are or what you think you are capable of, but I won’t be hiring anyone to fill Gloria’s shoes. No one can. We have only entry-level positions available at this time. If you are interested in a job, you can send in a résumé and some writing samples to our human resources department. Now, I have to get to work.” And he hung up.

  I decided at that exact moment that I would have Gloria’s column in less than a month. Vicky wouldn’t be allowed to know. At least not until I decided to tell her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After graduation, I hit the road for home in Old Betsy,my eight-year-old black Saab. She’s a little tired. The fabric on the ceiling is beginning to detach in a couple of places, but that will be an easy fix. When I actually have time to fix it.

  Vicky wanted my dad to buy me a Lincoln Town Car for graduation. She felt it would be safer.“Safe” being the operative word. Safe from anything and everybody. No one would want to be seen with an eighteen-year-old girl in a Lincoln Town Car. My dad graciously salvaged my reputation and refused.

  Something happens to me just north of downtown. Savannah begins to fill my senses. No matter what the time of year, I’m forced to roll down my windows and tug open my sunroof, allowing myself to both feel and smell home. I’ve memorized the story that the streets tell in progression, culminating in the enchantment of the place I call home, the Historic District.

  I know this city. I know it the way a couple who have been married fifty years know where the lines came from around each other’s eyes. I know its stately oak trees covered in moss, its Bradford pear trees blooming in clouds of white. Savannah holds all my secrets shared with best friends,my first kiss,my once-upon-a-time dreams of foreign lands and great adventures, and my discovery of faith. It is 2.2 square miles of history and life’s simple pleasures. It was built of twenty-four squares, many of which held a church, cathedral, or synagogue, and a neighbor who knew not only your name, but your dreams.

  During my high-school years, these were the streets we drove in unforgettable joy, riding with heads stuck out the window. These streets were also home to our own Barney Fife, Sergeant Millings. He always hid on the corner of Oglethorpe and East Jones Streets, waiting for any opportunity to pull one of us kids over and fortify his claim that no one under the age of forty-five should be driving.

  We Phillipses lived in Atlanta until my eleventh birthday, when my father, Jake, sold his multimillion-dollar accounting firm at the ripe old age of forty. My mother had longed to return to the place she called home since I could remember. So Dad said good-bye to insane hours, the pressure of a hundred employees, and an hour-and-a-half commute. He bought a small coffee shop on East State Street in Savannah, packed up the Phillips clan, and settled in to spend the rest of his life enjoying his family and his job.

  Jake’s Coffee Shop is located on Wright Square, between the Chatham
County Legislative Building and the courthouse. His shop is the place where people start their days with some good old-fashioned brew, as he likes to call it.“If you can’t spell it or pronounce it, you surely shouldn’t drink it,” he is fond of saying.

  I proved to be his most difficult customer. I hate coffee. I’ve tried. I’ve tried it every way but in milkshake form, and I may have had it that way as well. But I hate it. I am a confessed Coca-Cola addict. It is one of life’s greatest joys, especially McDonald’s Cokes. They are magical. Their magic lies in that powerful, burning sensation that brings alive every sensory organ known to man. My first taste of a McDonald’s Coke sent me soaring. I had more energy than a carpool of five-year-olds and never forgot the taste. Sure, I had had Coke before—but this, this wasn’t Coke; this was an experience.

  When we moved to Savannah, I commenced my search for the Golden Arches immediately. A quick survey of the area revealed not one within the Historical District. Appalled and persistent, I did what any committed McDonald’s Coke connoisseur would do: I picketed. For one week, I picketed in front of our house before and after school, even sacrificing my after-school recreational reading hour. “Do you people not think I deserve a break today?” I asked the passersby.“Don’t you know I need to start my day with a Coke and a smile? Well, do you see me? I’m not smiling.”

  Mother was mortified. “My stars, Savannah Phillips, I’ll build you one in the backyard with its own play land if you will just get yourself inside.” I refused to be swayed, because we don’t have a backyard.We have a courtyard, overtaken by a lap pool and flowers with names that no one on the face of the earth beside Victoria and Martha Stewart can pronounce.

  By the end of the week, I was worn down. I had been honked at, laughed at, and exploited on the evening news. To top it off, I was dying of thirst. That Friday, Dad picked me up from school and took me straight to his shop. He blindfolded me and led me to the back room. The removal of my blindfold revealed my very own McDonald’s Coke fountain, courtesy of a good friend who owned a franchise. Dad knew an eleven-year-old prepubescent girl didn’t need any extra drama, especially when she had no trouble creating her own already.

  On this beautiful May afternoon, when the front of my house on Abercorn Street came into view, the world was in perfect order. And I was certain I was home. Why so certain? Easy. There were two six-foot signs spanning both of our front balconies. The sign on the balcony to the left of the front door read “Welcome Home,” and the sign to the right read “Savannah.” I truly wished Vicky could have found a more discreet way to express her excitement.

  The house was built with brick made by slave laborers. The people of Savannah in that time believed that if the brick was so inexpensive, it couldn’t be good enough. So they covered the brick with stucco and scored it to make it look like stone. By the 1970s, the same brick that years before had been deemed worthless and in need of covering began to be valued for its actual worth at ten dollars a brick. Its value had homeowners all over Savannah removing their stucco. The brick on our home is undeniably stunning.

  There is more ironwork in the city of Savannah than in any other city in America, the majority of it unquestionably on my house. Two balconies in front of the second-floor windows flank ornate black-painted wooden doors. They are rather simple, but beautiful nonetheless—well, before they were mercilessly draped with vinyl communiqué. Ivy climbs the brick wall and reaches around the front of the house from East Jones to Abercorn. There is also a beautiful iron fence that follows the curves of the house in front of the lower windows.

  When I pulled into the driveway, my little brother, Thomas, who is all of six-foot-one, came flying out of the side door. He had my door opened before I could even reach for the handle.

  “I’m sure you hate the sign,” he burst, “but you would have hated Mom’s first one even more. She had it evenly distributed with ‘Home’ cut in half.”Thomas turned to face our front stoop, pointing first to the left side. “Welcome Ho”—he stopped long enough to point to the right—“me Savannah. We’d’ve had tourists making you the next Savannah attraction.”

  “The eighth wonder of the world, I’m sure.”

  He planted a kiss on my head.“Don’t think so highly of yourself. Fortunately for you, she declared you would rather she cook for you anyway. By now she thinks the whole thing was her idea, and she’s totally satisfied.”

  “Thank you for preserving my reputation.” Duke, Dad’s golden retriever, came pounding out the side door and stood stately at Thomas’s side.

  “Duke, you haven’t changed a bit. Except maybe gained about fifty extra pounds!” I grunted as he put both paws on my shoulders and licked me, obviously expecting me to reciprocate. “Someone has got to get this dog on a meal plan.”

  “He’s on Mom’s-leftovers meal plan. She refuses to spend money on actual dog food for him.”

  “Who does that surprise?”

  “Well, she might not have a choice. The vet told Dad Duke needs to lose fifty pounds. So Dad started walking him.”He stopped and patted Duke on the head. “I think Dad’s lost more than Duke has, though.”

  “Yeah, there’s not much pleasure in a fifty-pound bag of Alpo when compared to pork tenderloin.” Duke’s ears perked up at the mere mention of pork.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, finally stopping long enough to give him a hug.“I thought you had another week of school.”As he walked around to open the trunk, I smiled at his neatly cropped hair.

  Thomas was in his third year at The Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. Vicky was sure he had enrolled to embarrass her, but he had dreamed of going to The Citadel ever since Judge Hoddicks’s son Roger filled his head with stories of life as a cadet. When Thomas came home after his first month with his head shaved, Vicky called the general who was the head of The Citadel and threatened abuse charges.

  “Have you seen my child?”

  “Yes, ma’am. In fact, I have another five hundred that look just like him.”

  “Well, it is criminal, I tell you. Criminal.” She then headed to her room. Dad followed her and, legend has it, made it clear she would call and apologize. Now, Dad lets Vicky think what she will, but trust me, he is the one who has this ship under control. She made that call to the general, albeit brief and very private, then gathered herself, returned downstairs, declared Thomas too thin, and began to cook a feast.

  “I finished up exams early,”Thomas said, bringing me back to the present.

  “Lucky you.”

  “I’d say lucky you by the way Mom has tried to make your graduation the talk of the town. You might need me here to keep you out of the limelight. Especially if you plan to tell Mom about your new career move. All I have to do is bring up women in the Corps, and she will resurrect her letter-writing campaign to the South Carolina Legislature.”

  I had called Thomas to warn him of what I was doing, knowing he could help me with the excruciating task of adjustment. We walked around the sidewalk to the front of the house and up the stairs to the double front doors. In old Georgian homes, the entrances were built on the second floor in an effort to limit the dust and dirt that entered the houses from the horse-drawn carriages traveling the dirt streets. The servants lived on the lower level. Today, most homeowners rent out the lower levels as apartments, but Vicky never has. She, instead, made it a haven where Thomas foolishly relocated his room. Vicky walks around in sheer delight, believing her baby will never want to leave.

  As we reached the top of the front steps, I stopped and turned around to take a moment to breathe in the essence of my life.

  “Been a while, huh,Vanni?”

  Wrapping my arm around the young man who alone could call me by such a name, I closed my eyes and allowed a smile to cross my face.“Mmm hmm . . . it’s been too long.”We walked inside.

  I hadn’t been home at all my last semester, trying to finish my story and finals. It seemed like forever. Yet, the looming foyer bombarded
me with familiarity, right down to the smell in the air, which proclaimed that fried chicken was on the menu.

  The oriental rug still encompassed the majority of the black-marble floor. Two black Armthwaite chairs flanked the opening to the left of the foyer, which held the dining room. One massive arrangement of flowers that Mother replenished on a weekly basis brought it all together, creating an abode that could compete with the pages of Veranda.

  The magnificent staircase with a wrought-iron banister and an oriental stair runner in complimentary tones of rich black, peach, and pink curved around the back of the foyer. I peeked into the “parlor,” as Vicky called it. A living room to any normal person, but not to any person living in Savannah. In front of the window sat the early 1900s burlwood petite grand piano, one of my mother’s most treasured keepsakes. My father had it shipped from London as a wedding gift.

  Above the fireplace in the parlor hangs a picture of Vicky in a white organza gown with hand-beaded flowers all over it, adorned by a bow on each sleeve. All I can say about her hair is that it is big. I have no idea what it is with pageant people and big hair. Maybe they are just trying to make themselves look taller, but most of the time it spreads as wide as it does high. Draped across her is a sash declaring her “Miss Georgia United States of America.” She stands stately in this twenty-seven-year-old photograph, her hand draped ever so deliberately, yet casually, across the back of a French colonial chair. Below the portrait in an acrylic box rests her Miss Georgia United States of America crown. Thomas and I call it the “Ode to Vicky.”This parlor is her own private sanctuary, where she comes often just to stare at her picture, remembering who knows what.

  Thomas came back through the front door, setting down the rest of my bags.“Happy thoughts, I hope.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh as I picked up my bags.“Humorous thoughts. I’m going to get cleaned up for dinner. What about you? Because I have something I want you to do.”