Hildreth 2-in-1

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  Before I could reply, Helen returned. The waitresses here rarely change, and Helen is an icon. She cusses like a sailor, smokes like a forest fire, and talks like a man. She has been reprimanded for the first two offenses a trillion times; the third is out of her control. Oh, and she has a photographic memory. She has never written down an order, and she gets each one right every time. Even down to a table of ten.“Girls, I’m so glad to see you both. But, Savannah, you are too skinny and, Paige, your hair is too blond. I’ll have your BLTs out in a minute.” And away she went.

  “Why is it that you are always skinny, and all she notices about me is my hair color? I’ve had this same color for five years.”

  “And I’ve weighed the same since my senior year in high school.”

  “Anyway, didn’t I ask you about you and your job?”

  “Well, I have successfully told Vicky about forgoing the book deal and kept it a secret that I am trying to get this job at the paper.”

  “Aren’t you the woman?”

  “Well, I’m not so sure I’m all that, not after this morning.”

  “Savannah, what did you do?”

  “Why would your first thought be, what did I do? Why couldn’t it possibly be something someone else did?”

  “Please. What did you do?”

  “I pulled a Vicky,” I told her, crinkling my nose.

  “No!” Both hands slammed down on the table, her eyes wider than a hoot owl.“You pulled a Vicky on the very man who could give you a job? That’s a tad audacious.”

  “Did you just say tad?”

  “Probably. My mother uses it all the time.”

  “Well, thank the Lord! I must have picked it up from you. I was afraid I had picked it up from my mother. Well, it was really a huge mistake.” Paige sat in complete and total silence and listened to the rest of my story. Helen brought our lunch and Paige finished most of her BLT before I’d taken my first bite.

  By the time I was through, all she could say was,“Get out.”

  “I did!” I told her, laughing.

  “Do you think you’ll hear from him?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “Well, since he didn’t call security, odds are I’ll hear something.” I took a sip of my shake.

  Paige looked up and nodded, then swallowed and said,“There is something I need to tell you.”

  “OK. You are way too serious. What is it?”

  She paused long enough to make me look her in the eye. Then as she always does in her rare serious moments, she placed her hand underneath her porcelain chin. She gave up on tanning years ago after a severe burning episode. Now she wears SPF-105. “I heard that Grant is getting married.”

  “Well, we all want to get married one day, don’t we?” I said, hoping she was just joking.

  “Savannah, I’m not joking. He met this girl from Converse College while he was at Clemson. They started dating after he got out of school and started working for his dad’s firm. She is graduating this month, and they are supposed to get married this summer.”

  Grant and I had only seen each other a couple of times since I started graduate school. He had been my best friend through middle school. Then in high school we realized that we felt more for each other than just friendship, and we dated through my senior year in college. Until this halting moment, I had somehow thought that he and I would one day get married. He was the only guy I had ever cared about. Now, I knew that things had changed since graduate school, but we still talked.

  Our last serious conversation had taken place one morning at my dad’s shop, right before I went back to school for my master’s and he started full-time at his dad’s architectural firm on Oglethorpe Square. I’ll never forget how beautifully golden his skin was from spending most of his summer on the ocean. I stared at him through the front window at Jake’s, where I sat at a table facing the sidewalk.

  He walked in wearing wrinkled khaki shorts and a T-shirt, which, like the majority of his wardrobe, bore the name of a local store or a race he had recently participated in.“Out for a day of fun?”

  He gave me a gentle kiss and sat down.“Actually, I’m working today.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “I’m helping Dad do some things in the yard,” he said, laughing.

  “When do you start your real job with your father?”

  Instead of answering, Grant sat and reached across the table to take my hand.“Savannah, I think we have some decisions to make. We’ve done this relationship thing for four years now. Except I’m not sure I would even call it a relationship. I need more. I think it’s time. I want us to take our relationship to the next level. Really focus on our future.”

  I blinked, wishing I had an answer he would want to hear. But school required everything of me. And at that time, I was so consumed with writing, I didn’t know how I could offer a real, committed relationship much of anything.“We’ve got all the time in the world for that,” I responded.“You know I love you. I’ve always loved you. And next to Paige, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I just need to get this master’s behind me. And I just can’t commit to any more right now.”

  I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he left that afternoon. He hugged me a little longer than usual. But school would be over eventually. Then there would be time to solidify our relationship. Obviously, Grant hadn’t been clear on the plan.

  “Earth to Savannah,” Paige said, waving her hand in front of my face.

  “Do you even know her name?”

  “I think it’s Eliza or something like that. One of those real southern kind of names.”

  “Oh, more southern than Savannah?”

  Paige rolled her eyes.

  “Do you think he really loves her or does he just want to get married?”

  “Savannah, you know Grant isn’t going to marry someone he’s not in love with.”

  “Maybe she’s dog ugly.”

  “No such luck,my friend. I saw her over the Christmas holidays.

  He brought her to an exhibit. She was very tall and very gorgeous.”

  Paige turned up her nose in mock disgust.“I mean legs up to—”

  “That really is enough. I bet she’s fake. I bet there isn’t a thing on her that’s real.”

  We wrapped up our lunch and declared that we would do this every Monday.

  “Call me as soon as you hear something about the job. And no cleaning excursions. It’s going to be OK.” She sealed her solace with a hug.

  I watched as she faded up the street, the consummate artist, from the way she dresses to the way she walks. If she weren’t my best friend, I would hate her, so irritatingly perky and cute.

  Looking out over the same street I had viewed only hours before, I was amazed by how a morning could change things.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The beauty of Savannah is that it is a place where people come to fulfill dreams. Sure, we have a lot of old money, the kind that joins the Oglethorpe Club and are members of the Garden Club. But there are a number of people who simply come to make their own way, start a business, raise a family, and leave their mark on their own little corner of the world through life and love and loss.

  As I walked down River Street, I took a left on Perry, crossing in front of Chippewa Square, which holds the familiar statue of General Oglethorpe, Savannah’s founding father, and the concrete wall behind the bench where Forrest Gump had his box of chocolates. The city was planned on paper before Oglethorpe even arrived and before Forrest was a thought. Oglethorpe’s friend Robert Casteel was an architect in England and later jailed in debtor’s prison. It is said that England’s prisons were dismal beyond comprehension. Casteel died there of smallpox, and Oglethorpe dreamed of creating a new life for the poor, the debtors, and the religiously persecuted. Savannah was his canvas.

  In 1733, Oglethorpe’s Savannah had four laws. Law Number One: No hard liquor, only beer and wine allowed. He didn’t want any lushes in his
society. That lasted only in dreams. Law Number Two: No slaves. Oglethorpe wanted Savannah built as a place of equals. That was repealed in 1751, thanks in large part to Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Law Number Three: No Catholics. Oglethorpe feared they would be sympathetic to the Spanish and try to take over this new colony. So much for the religiously persecuted. Law Number Four: No lawyers. That was repealed in 1755, you guessed it, by a lawyer. But until there were lawyers, Savannians needed a way to settle their disputes. So the citizens built the Dueling Field, on the backside of Colonial Park Cemetery.

  As I turned my gaze from the familiar square, I couldn’t help but notice the gray-sided home on the corner whose basement had been transformed into a quaint little bookstore. I have never passed a bookstore without going inside; it’s sacrilegious.

  During my school years, I spent most of my time and money at E. Shavers Booksellers on the corner of Bull and East Harris Streets. My life’s original plan was to open up a little bookstore in the basement of my own home. Since reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, I believed kids needed a place to experience the world of adventure and make-believe, a safe place to get lost in the turmoil of undisciplined youth. Remembering my dreams made me realize I had left little room for someone else’s. Grant had probably figured that out long before.

  Trying not to contemplate Miss Converse’s false beauty any further, I opened the tucked-away door and stepped into an enchanted land, Katherine’s Corner Bookstore.

  Everything was neatly categorized and organized. There was history, fiction, nonfiction, new releases, and, of course, local-interest titles in a prominent display in the front. I laughed when I saw the book that featured pictures of my home—well, not exactly my home. A local publisher doing a new book about Savannah asked Vicky if she would allow them to shoot a couple of our rooms for the book, because our home is on the Historical Register. Well, you would have thought she had been crowned Miss Saint Patrick’s Day Queen. We thought she was going to make us move to a hotel for a week so nothing would be touched once her interior designer came in and did a “fluff.”

  My mother worked frantically to make sure everything was perfect. But in the end, the only pictures that didn’t develop correctly were the ones they had taken of the inside of our house. By the time this was discovered, it was too late to do another photo shoot. Dad would have refused to go through the torture again anyway. So instead of this lovely book having pictures of Vicky’s décor, the publishers used photos someone had taken of the previous owners’ interior.

  You won’t find this lovely picture book lying around in Vicky’s parlor, that’s for sure, but a very nice book it is, even if Vicky’s fluffing has been omitted.

  A striking lady, probably in her late forties, appeared from behind a bookcase. She caught my eye and smiled, her beautiful dark eyes reflecting the soft track lighting. “Can I help you find anything, honey?” she asked.

  She was carrying a stack of magazines to the rack by the front door, and the sun caught her salt-and-pepper hair, a rarity in these parts. Southern women, for the most part, don’t want you to think their hair has ever seen gray, even if they’re eighty and walking with a cane. She wore little makeup, but a stunning color of red lipstick and simple jewelry complemented her natural olive complexion perfectly.

  “No, I was just walking and saw your great little store here. How long have you been open?”

  “Only about a month. But the remodeling took over a year, so it’s really nice to just feel settled.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Here originally, but I moved to Birmingham with my husband when we were first married so he could work in his father’s business. When my husband passed away, I decided to come back home,” she said, taking outdated magazines to the counter.

  “Oh, I’m really sorry.”

  “Well, thank you. Jim suffered for almost two years with cancer. So I was ready to let him go. Don’t take that the wrong way, but when you love someone like that, the last thing you want is to see them suffer.”

  I nodded.

  “Eventually, letting go is easier than holding on. Our children are grown and have all moved away, so I decided there was no better time than now to try out my dreams,” she said, indicating the store with a sweeping gesture.

  “Well, I think you’ve done a wonderful job with your dream. It’s perfectly quaint.”

  “I hope you’ll feel free to stop by anytime. Do you live around here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. On Abercorn Street across from Clary’s.”

  A flicker of recognition came to her eyes as she posed my most dreaded question.“Oh, are you Victoria Phillips’s daughter?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And Jake’s too,” I added for my own peace of mind. “Savannah, Savannah Phillips,” I said, holding my hand out, hoping she would not hold my heritage against me. “Do you know them?”

  “Well, I’ve met your father,” she said, grasping my hand in a solid, confident shake.“Hello, Savannah, I’m Katherine Owens.”

  I smiled back, still wondering.

  “I stop in at your father’s place now and then. He is a doll. And so is that sweet Richard. Now, your mother I haven’t met yet, but I’ve heard a lot about her.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “I heard your mother is responsible for much of the recent restoration around here.”

  “Yes, she is. There’s something about her and this city.”

  “Then perhaps that explains your beautiful name?”

  For some reason Katherine’s question didn’t irritate me. I smiled.“Maybe so.”

  She smiled back. “So are you just here for the summer?”

  “No, I just finished my master’s and moved back here to find a job,” I said, then added, “Actually, I’ve found the place I want to work, but I’m not so sure if they’re going to want me.”

  “Oh, really! What do you mean?”

  “That’s a long story. But let’s just say that I should hear something by this evening.”

  “You sound like a rather interesting character,” she said with a faint laugh. “Well, Savannah, it was a pleasure to meet you. I’m going to go back to my cataloging. New fiction is on the back wall, and new nonfiction is right beside it.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Well, this one isn’t new, but I’ve been rereading some classics lately,” she said, reaching into a shelf and pulling out Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. “It takes me back.”

  “I love that one too,” I said, taking the book from her extended hand.“Atticus Finch, a man to be admired.”

  Leaving the bookstore to head back home, I noticed the decorative fish spout she had put on her gutters. Another indication of the lady she was, so understatedly overstated. She captured my attention without ever changing the volume of her voice. Not like my mother, who had a Chamber-of-Commerce Victoria voice, and a hold-on-to-your-britches “Mama’s home” kind of voice. Katherine was just a lady. A lady to be admired.

  The note on the kitchen counter read, “Vanni, Mom has a late Chamber meeting. I’m meeting Dad after work to do some things at the shop. Dinner is on your own, unless you want to come grab a bite with us later. Love,Thomas.”

  The phone rang, commencing a desperate search for it. Thomas never left it on its cradle, so I didn’t stand a chance of get- ting to it before the person on the other end hung up or was sent off to voice mail heaven. Fortunately, it was close by, underneath the newspaper on the kitchen table.

  “Hello.”

  “Savannah Phillips, please.” I knew immediately who it was.

  “This is she,” I replied, trying to hide the terror in my voice.

  “Ms. Phillips, this is Mr. Hicks. I’ve been reading your work this afternoon, and, well, it’s not bad.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I think.

  “I’ve decided I’m willing to give you a month to prove yourself. I’d like you to start a week from Monday. You can run one human-interest st
ory each week, in two parts. And I’m not going to tell anyone you are Gloria’s replacement until I know that you can handle the pace around here.”

  “I understand.”

  “Most of our entry-level positions start at four hundred dollars a week, with one week’s vacation after the first year. We offer one week’s sick leave your first year and pay health insurance.”

  “I don’t believe this position is entry-level, sir. My articles will probably be the most-read next to your headline news. Doesn’t that alone make me more valuable?”

  “So what do you think you should be paid, young lady?”

  Put on the spot, I backtracked. “You know, Mr. Hicks, four hundred will be fine, actually. I really need six hundred to be able to move out into an apartment. But I’ll just work up to that.”

  He probably believed I was playing him. But I really did need six hundred dollars a week.“How about we meet in the middle, Savannah? I’ll give you five hundred and a week’s vacation this year. But you need to remember, the newspaper business isn’t a place for getting rich; it’s a place for creating change.”

  He got the no-rich part right. I just hoped I could eat. But decided it would be a good excuse for having to eat at my mother’s . Then I almost got mad, realizing if she hadn’t ruined my publishing deal, there’s no telling what I could be making right now.“That will be wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Oh, and one more thing, you’ll make sure you don’t interrupt conversations you are not privy to.”

  I simply replied, “I’ll be there.”

  “Very well. I’ll see you Monday. Your first story is due Tuesday.”

  Tuesday? One could spend a year or two writing a book. How in the world was I going to have two articles ready in a little over a week? “That’s no problem,” I said.“Would you mind if I came in tomorrow and went through Gloria’s research materials?”

  “Not at all. I’ll make sure Rich Greer, our weekend editor, knows you’re coming. I’ll see you in a week.” And with that he hung up the phone.

  I set down the phone and did a jig around the kitchen. I was going to be Gloria. I was going to be a newspaper writer. Grabbing my cell phone, I got in the car to go to Jake’s and called Paige immediately.