I Still Dream About You: A Novel (10 page)

I
F MAGGIE HAD LIVED MOST OF HER LIFE UNDER THE SPELL OF HER
childhood, she wasn’t alone. A lot of people still had a few stars left in their eyes, and no wonder, growing up in a place called the Magic City, with all of its lofty aspirations and illusions of grandeur. You could see it everywhere you looked, from the towering smokestacks of the iron, coal, and steel mills to the grand mansions atop Red Mountain to the sparkle in the cement in the downtown sidewalks. The city was bustling and alive, with block after block of elegant stores, where mannequins stood in haughty poses, dressed in the latest fashions and furs from New York and Paris; blocks of showrooms filled with fine rugs, lamps, and furniture, displayed so beautifully you wanted to walk in and live there forever (or at least Maggie had). There had always been an excitement in the air. A feeling that Birmingham, the Fastest-Growing City in the South, was right on the verge of exploding into the biggest city in the world. Even the streets had been laid out extra wide and stood waiting, as if expecting a tremendous rush of traffic at any moment. From the beginning, Birmingham had been bursting with ambition and hated being second to Pittsburgh in steel production and having the second-largest city transit system in the country. Even the towering iron statue of Vulcan, the Greek god of fire and iron, that stood on
the top of Red Mountain was only the second-largest iron statue in the country, and during the war, when headlines announced that Birmingham, Alabama, had been named the number two target city in America to be bombed by Germany and Japan, everybody was terribly disappointed; they would have loved to have been first! Their only consolation: they did have the largest electrical sign in the world, which greeted all visitors as they came out of the train station. It blazed with ten thousand golden light bulbs that spelled out
WELCOME TO MAGIC CITY
. Birmingham was a city with a pulse that you could hear beating, working, and sweating, striving to become number one. The giant iron and steel mills clanked and banged and spewed out pink steam and billowed thick smoke all hours of the day and night. Coal miners worked in shifts around the clock. Streetcars and buses ran twenty-four hours a day, packed full of people either going to or coming home from work.

In the afternoon, parents used to drive their children up the mountain to Vulcan Park to watch the sun set over the city, when the sky would come alive with layers of iridescent green, purple, aqua, red, and orange that streaked across the horizon as far as you could see. Everyone thought it was a special show the city put on just for them. It never occurred to them that the beautiful colors were caused by all the toxins and pollutants spewing out from all of the mills surrounding the city. They also never dreamed that one day, most of old downtown Birmingham, its magnificent movie palaces, restaurants, and department stores with the beautiful shiny brass doors and silver escalators, would all be shut down for good. But they were.

M
AGGIE CRAWLED ALONG THROUGH HEAVY TRAFFIC, AND A GOOD
half hour later, she stopped at the Contri Brothers Gourmet Deli for cold cuts and then at Savage’s Bakery to pick up five dozen assorted cookies. Everyone said that Red Mountain put on the best realtors’ open houses in town. Even in the 1980s, she’d heard, when the market was hot and it had been hard getting agents to show up at all the newly listed houses, Hazel had never failed to draw a huge crowd and had always managed to come up with some attraction. She would send out announcements to “Come and meet Matilda, the World’s Oldest Chicken” or “Henry, the Cat with Fourteen Toes.” But all they could offer today was a free lunch. Maggie was still feeling thrown by what she had heard at the beauty shop, but she forced herself to just keep her mind focused on what she wanted to get done today. She thought that she probably should start dropping a few subtle hints to Brenda about her plans, but it would be tricky. She didn’t want to alarm her, but she did want to try to prepare her as best she could without tipping her hand. She loved Ethel, but of all the people in the world, she guessed she would miss Brenda the most.

Hazel had put Maggie and Brenda together from the very start. Maggie had the looks, the contacts, and certainly the charm to sell
real estate, but she couldn’t do the paperwork if her life depended on it. The only reason she had gotten her real estate license in the first place was that Hazel sat on the real estate board. Maggie’s grades had not been quite high enough to pass, but Hazel had glanced over it, declared, “Close enough,” and pushed it through. Brenda, on the other hand, was a master at reading contracts, crunching numbers, obtaining mortgages, and closing a deal. Any information you needed she could bring up on her BlackBerry in seconds. She was a real treasure in every way: Brenda had been one of the first girls in the Birmingham school system to take Shop, instead of Home Economics, and could fix anything. She always had a large hammer, nails, a wrench, several screwdrivers, measuring tapes, light bulbs, extension cords, and a big flashlight in her purse; anything you could ever need, Brenda had it, including snacks of all kinds. Maggie told her that the boy in the frozen yogurt parking lot who had tried to snatch her purse probably couldn’t have lifted it anyway.

As far as Maggie was concerned the two of them were a perfect pair. Maggie always felt so safe with Brenda around. Just last month, when a creepy-looking man had shown up at an open house because he had liked Maggie’s photo in an ad, Brenda had picked him up and thrown him out the front door. Other than Hazel, Brenda was the most capable woman Maggie had ever known. She just hoped Brenda wouldn’t be too upset at her leaving her in the lurch at work, but it was really only a matter of time. Theirs was the last of the Red Mountain Realty offices that had not been shut down, and it was sure to be bought up by one of the larger companies any day now. Maggie wouldn’t be surprised if it was Babs Bingington’s company, and she was just as glad not to be around when that happened. The way Babs hated her, she was sure to be fired on the spot.

Of course, she should have quit real estate after Hazel died, but at the time, everybody on Team Hazel vowed to carry on out of loyalty; as the business got worse, however, people started to leave. Now there were only three of the original team left: Ethel, Brenda, and herself. Maggie figured that Brenda would be leaving real estate soon to run for mayor, but thank heavens, she hadn’t left yet. Brenda was the only person who could still make her laugh.

Last St. Patrick’s Day, Brenda had come into the office dressed entirely in green—green dress, green shoes, green wig—and had held out her arm to Maggie and asked, “What color would you say I was?”

Maggie looked at Brenda’s arm. “Oh, I don’t know, sort of brown?”

“I
know
that! What sort of brown?”

Maggie looked again. “Well, maybe reddish brown?”

Brenda was delighted with the answer. “That’s what I think! Reddish brown! Mother was more caramel, and Daddy was dark brown, but I’m more of a reddish color, aren’t I?”

“I would say so. Yes.”

“I want one of those DNA tests. I’ve got some freckles; who knows? There could be an Irishman in the woodpile somewhere.”

Brenda had such a good sense of humor about herself—a trait you more or less had to have if you worked for Hazel. Brenda and Hazel had a lot in common on that score. In Brenda’s lifetime, she had gone from being Colored to Negro to Black, and now African American, and it was a running joke between them. Hazel would come in the door and ask Brenda how she was feeling today, and Brenda would say, “Well, I felt very black yesterday, but today I’m feeling a little colored. How about you?” Hazel would think and say, “I think I’m feeling a little more short-statured than height-challenged today.”

Brenda always said to the new people, when they were surprised at some of Hazel’s humor, “She may not be politically correct, but she’s hired more minorities than any other company in town.”

Maggie had hoped to drop a hint while they were preparing the food platters, but when Brenda arrived at the open house, she was in such a state that she couldn’t. Evidently, something had happened to her favorite purse, the one with twenty-seven secret compartments she had ordered from the TravelSmith catalog, and as they were putting out the wine and cheese, Brenda was going on and on about it. “I could just cry. The whole inside was ruined, and I had to throw it out in the garbage.” Maggie was still somewhat confused about the details and asked her why there was a pint of ice cream in her
purse in the first place. Brenda made a face. “Oh, you don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do …”

“No, you don’t.”

“All right, I don’t.”

Brenda sighed. “Oh, well,” she said, throwing a bunch of grapes on a plate. “It was all Robbie’s fault!”

“Robbie? Why?”

“Because she buys summer flavors just so she can catch me, that’s why! Anyhow, I had to run out and get another pint to put back in the freezer, but when I got back, Robbie was already home, so I put it in my purse and I forgot about it until this morning. When Robbie got up, there was this green gooey stuff leaking out all over the floor.”

Maggie had heard something like this before; only the last time, it had been an entire coconut cake Brenda had hidden in the top of the linen closet, and Brenda had blamed the ants for her getting caught.

“Oh dear. What did Robbie say?”

“Oh … you know Robbie. She said, ‘I guess that pint of ice cream just jumped out of the freezer into your purse when you weren’t looking, didn’t it?’ ”

“What did you say?”

“What could I say? Anyhow, I didn’t forget to call Cecil. We have two tickets for the Dervishes. I’m sorry I’m late, but I had to take everything out and wash it all off. My checkbook is just ruined, but enough about me … what did you do last night?”

Maggie started to say something, but a gal from Ingram Realty walked in, and the open house started.

T
HANKFULLY, A LOT
of agents had shown up, including Babs Bingington, who had marched through and, as she left, made her usual snide remark: “Well … it’s not Mountain Brook.” Unfortunately, she was right. Since the market was down, Brenda and Maggie had been happy to get a call from the owners of a midpriced home in a
part of town they didn’t used to handle. But the minute they walked inside, they knew it would be a problem trying to show it. The wife, “Just call me Velma,” collected what she lovingly referred to as “pinecone art.” Everywhere you looked, there were hundreds of pinecones with little plastic eyes, dressed as Santa’s elves or as Scarlett O’Hara in evening dresses, and pinecone babies in diapers or in tiny pinecone cribs, and she informed them with a happy smile, “I’ve got lots more up in the bedroom and out in the garage.”

Oh, dear. How do you tell a nice woman like that that potential buyers wouldn’t find the pinecones just darling, “like part of the family,” as she did? How could they explain, in a nice way, that the pinecones and all the geegaws had to go? Collectors were always a problem. Trying to separate people from their eight hundred spoons from around the world or their collection of ceramic chickens, pigs, cocker spaniels, cats, elephants, cows, birds, deviled egg plates, teapots, or whatever they collected was always difficult. They’d once had a client with forty-two toy Chihuahuas, all named Tinker-Bell. Trying to show that house had been a nightmare. But thankfully, Maggie had managed to talk Velma into letting her put away some of the pinecones for today’s showing.

A
FTER THE OPEN
house, Brenda said she was late for one of her many political meetings. Maggie told her to go on; she would see her later at the office. Maggie didn’t mind closing up. It was nice to see Brenda so excited. Brenda loved politics. The only really strong opinion Maggie ever had about politics, she had learned in the movies. After seeing
Doctor Zhivago
, she knew she could never be a Communist. The scene when poor Dr. Zhivago (Omar Sharif) came back to Moscow after the war and found that his beautiful family home had been taken over by a horde of strangers had really bothered her.