Faith Hope & Fiction

By Patricia Crisafulli

Author’s Note: The following is an excerpt from a manuscript I wrote several years ago. Now, as I begin rewriting the book, I wanted to share a favorite scene.

            Savannah watched the morning shadows crawl across the ceiling of her bedroom. A gray sliver near the window had grown fingers of light as she lay there, unable to sleep. No matter how tired her body was, insomnia stirred her mind awake. Savannah sighed loudly enough that Steve might hear her, but her husband didn’t move. Having grown up in a household of four boys and two girls, Steve could sleep through anything. When Shannon was a baby, he’d never hear her crying at night. Thunderstorms, cars with noisy mufflers, dogs barking—nothing ever awakened him.

            No, Savannah reminded herself yet again; she was always the one who got up at the first sound, listening and pacing. Suddenly annoyed at her husband’s ability to block out everything, Savannah wanted to poke him in the back. But Steve had classes to teach and football practice after school, and with the big game tomorrow he couldn’t afford to lose sleep. Besides, she couldn’t tell him what was really troubling her—that box, and the doubts that Augusta had planted in her mind about their mother, about herself.

            Damn her. If only her sister hadn’t torn apart the whole upstairs looking for that stupid old swing coat. Why did she want it anyway? It didn’t fit her. Their mother had been five-foot-five, and Augusta hit six feet without her shoes on. If they’d just stopped at old clothes, they could have enjoyed reminiscing about what they found: the Christmas dresses they’d worn as children, the red wool coats with the black velvet trim. But, no, Augusta just had to keep digging.

            Savannah punched her pillow into a hump and laid her head on it. First they’d found an old book from a high school library somewhere in Pennsylvania, in which someone had written “This book belongs to Mary Margaret Urudell.” So, what if the handwriting looked like their mother’s, Savannah argued silently. People learned proper handwriting in those days. Probably everybody wrote the same.

            Always spiteful, even though their mother had just died, Augusta latched onto that book as proof of what had been her real name. It was preposterous. Everything their mother owned—the house, her car—was in the name of Maggie Louise Gates. And that evidence was far better than some old book.

            Harder to ignore, though, were what they’d uncovered next. Savannah tried to block the images, but they surfaced in her mind as if she were holding the photos they’d found. Their mother as a young woman. Their mother with Augusta, a toddler of two or so. Their mother, Augusta, and some dark-haired man. Based on the clothing and the setting, it was clear those photos had been taken the same day.

            He could have been anybody—a neighbor or a friend, Savannah told herself. But it had been the look on her sister’s face that Savannah couldn’t deny, shock mixed with recognition and the muttered words, I remember him. And then the insinuation that this man could have been Savannah’s father.

            Sitting up in bed, Savannah threw off the covers as if that one motion could scatter every unwanted thought.

            Slipping on her robe and stepping into her slippers, Savannah scoffed at Augusta’s suggestion that she looked like that man. They both had dark hair, but so did three-quarters of the planet. She didn’t look like him—she looked like her mother. Everyone said so.

            Augusta was the odd one—extremely tall with brassy red hair. If anyone ought to wonder where she came from, it was her sister. Suddenly, other possibilities came to mind. Augusta could be the child of some relative, an infant taken in by their parents after they married. Maybe deep down inside, Augusta knew that she wasn’t a real daughter. She was the outsider.

            Savannah had no doubts about her identity, her origin story.

            She’d been in fifth or sixth grade, and the teacher had assigned a family tree. They had to write down the names of their ancestors and where they were born, as far back as they could. At the kitchen table, Savannah waited for her mother to pour a cup of coffee before sitting down beside her.

            “Well, you know this row,” Maggie had said, angling the paper so she could read it. “It’s you and Augusta.” Savannah wrote their names in her best cursive. “And you know my name and your father’s.”

            “But I don’t know your name before you got married,” Savannah said. “That’s what I have to put down.”

            “Well, I’m sure I’ve told you a hundred times what my maiden name is. You just don’t remember. My name is, or was, Lee—like Robert E. Lee, but no relation.”

            Savannah put down all the names until all four rows were filled in. Long after that school assignment, she had memorized her grandparents and great-grandparents. She used to imagine them as guardian angels looking down at her, smiling proudly at what a good girl she was, so smart in school. 

            Reaching the bottom step of the staircase that bisected her small house, Savannah turned toward the kitchen and snapped on the light. The clock on the stove read 5:41. It was the kind of early hour when veils thinned and boundaries became porous. She knew from experience that thoughts she could bury in the busyness of the day were harder to avoid first thing in the morning.

            And here it was again, the fear that their mother’s stories may not have been exactly true. What if, as Augusta always claimed, they had been mostly lies and fabrications?

            Savannah sat down wearily at the kitchen table, trying to talk herself out of eating a donut from the box she’d bought the other day and hidden in the back of the cupboard. Her willpower did not last long.

            Savoring the sugary taste and the buttery feel in her mouth, Savannah comforted herself with her favorite story. When she and Augusta were girls, they’d ask their mother to tell it, over and over. Always, it began with the same line: I was just eighteen years old and in finishing school in Richmond.

            Her teacher, Miss Olivia Pennington, taught young women from the finest Virginia families how to walk and talk, to sit with their ankles crossed and their knees angled to the side, their spines never resting against the back of the chair.

            One day, as she left Miss Pennington’s school, Maggie had to pick up a package for her grandmother at the pharmacist. As she walked down the sidewalk, Maggie came to a gap where the concrete had been broken up. Just as she was about to step off the curb and into the street, a man called out to her: “Young lady, do not move another inch!” Surprised, Maggie turned to see a man in a finely tailored suit running across the street toward her. A truck was parked nearby, loaded with lumber. The man took a wide plank from the back and placed it over the gap in the sidewalk. Then, standing in the street, he took Maggie by the hand ever so gently and guided her across.

            He gave her his card, which Maggie showed to Miss Pennington. At her teacher’s instruction, Maggie wrote a short note, thanking him for his gallantry. Three days later, she received his reply, inviting her to join him for lunch, with a proper chaperone, of course. Miss Pennington, herself, accompanied Maggie to the Commonwealth Club, one of the finest establishments in the state. Sitting there, waiting for her to arrive, was John Worthington Gates.

            The story never disappointed, never failed to reassure her, Savannah thought as she spooned grounds into the coffeemaker. Neither she nor Augusta had any memories of their father; he had died right after Savannah was born. In shock and grief, their mother had left everything behind when she fled north to start a new life with her daughters.

            It all made sense to Savannah. So let Augusta try to poke holes in what they’d been told since childhood. She knew exactly who she was.

            Early morning sunlight filtered through the gap where the shade met the window and spattered against the salmon-pink wall. The tiny bedroom was cold, even though the heat was on. Despite forty years of patches and repairs, this old house was prone to drafts. Augusta shivered and curled under the thin blankets.

            Suddenly she remembered—how when they were children, she used to tell Savannah that a monster lived in the walls and the draft by the window was its icy breath. She’d make up stories about its big hairy body and red eyes that could see in the dark, scaring them both half to death. That’s where their mother would find them: huddled in one bed, the comforter pulled up to their noses.

            Augusta rolled over and scanned the bedroom she’d been staying in since the funeral. The clock on the desk read six-fifteen—not quite five hours of sleep. She’d stayed up too late last night, going over everything they’d found in that box.

            In her mind, the pictures told an obvious story: their mother out on a date with the dark-haired man; only a toddler, she had been brought along. Now she could only speculate about who the man was and his relationship with Maggie, though the photos squirreled away hinted at some special meaning. But she’d bet that this man had fathered Savannah; the resemblance was uncanny.

            Somehow, though, Augusta doubted that dark-haired man in the photo was her father, though she couldn’t say why. And as for the John Worthington Gates saga, she didn’t buy it. If they were descended from some fine Virginia family, where had all those relatives been? And as for their mother’s accent, she’d lay it on thick like an extra coat of mascara, and then nearly drop it altogether.

            But that book, those photographs. No matter what story they hinted at, they were real. Tangible. It’s all she’d ever wanted.

            The cold floor shot needles through the soles of Augusta’s feet as she went downstairs to use the bathroom. Washing her hands in the sink, Augusta studied her reflection, not looking for wrinkles and lines, but for traces of her mother. Always it was the nose—the one feature that she, Savannah, and Maggie shared.

            In the kitchen, Augusta put a filter in the Mister Coffee on the counter and went to the pantry for a can of Maxwell House. Hanging on a peg behind the pantry door was an old wool cardigan, pilled at the elbows. My house sweater, Mother used to call it.

            Augusta clutched the sweater to her chest, feeling the softness of the old knit and knowing that this had been one of the last pieces of clothing her mother had worn, if not on the day she slipped into a coma and died, then the day before or the one before that. It held the last of her.

            By nine in the morning, Augusta had cleaned off most of the shelves in the pantry, separating food that could be donated from what had to be thrown out because it was open or past its expiration date.

            Savannah came in the back door with a plate of apple-cinnamon muffins.

            “You bake like this every morning?” Augusta asked and took a bite.

            “Of course not. I’m usually out the door before Steve and Shannon. But today, I wanted something special.” Savannah looked around the kitchen. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

            “I found Mother’s old house sweater.” Augusta pointed to the cardigan hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.

            “That’s hardly a surprise. She wore it all the time.”

            Augusta ignored her sister’s arched eyebrow that broadcast, not that you’d know, since you rarely ever came to visit. She opened the cupboard and took out another mug. “You want coffee?”

            Savannah nodded.

            For the rest of the morning, they packed boxes with food donations and filled garbage bags with towels, bedding, and clothing. They loaded the trunk and back seat of Savannah’s car, then did the same with Augusta’s rental. In a two-vehicle caravan, Savannah leading the way, they brought it all to Cupper Falls Cares.

            “Oh, Savannah,” one of the volunteers said. “So sorry about your mother. We lost one of our best angels.”

            Savannah accepted the hug. “Mom loved helping out here, especially after she retired. I think she was busier with all her volunteer work, than when she was at the law office.”

            Augusta walked back to the car and brought in another box. “Where can I put this?”

            “Leave it anywhere,” the volunteer said. “We’ll sort through it later.” She turned to Savannah. “Did your mother have any warning that something was wrong, before her brain started bleeding? I never heard of such a thing.”

            “Aneurysm. They call it a cranial hemorrhage,” Savannah explained. “Other than a headache that morning, she had no idea.”

            Augusta went back to get another box. “There’s bedding in this box—all of it clean. There’s even a package of sheets that’s never been opened.”

            The volunteer looked over with a nod.

            Augusta shifted her stance. “Didn’t Savannah tell you? I’m Augusta—Maggie’s other daughter.”

            “Oh, I didn’t know!” the volunteer exclaimed. “You two don’t look anything alike. And I’m not sure I’ve met you before.”

            “She doesn’t come back very often,” Savannah said as she began unpacking one of the boxes. She set a carefully folded stack of sweaters and blouses on a long table where donations were sorted.

            Augusta carried in two large garbage bags, one in each hand. Passing the donations sorting table, she spotted Maggie’s old house sweater. “I don’t think we should give this away,” Augusta said, running her hand down the front where a button was missing.

            “It’s just an old sweater,” Savannah said.

            But when Savannah went back to unpacking, Augusta slipped the sweater off the pile, tucked it under her arm, and carried it out to her car. She couldn’t explain why she’d done that, except that she couldn’t bear the thought of someone else wearing Maggie’s sweater or, more likely, of one of the volunteers discarding it because it was so old and worn.

            Raising it to her nose, Augusta breathed in the familiar scents: Jergen’s hand lotion and L’Air du Temps perfume. It smelled just like her mother.