I Still Dream About You: A Novel (35 page)

There was a pause; then Brenda said, “I’ll call you back …” and hung up. She was sorry she had called now, but since she’d never heard Maggie cuss before, she figured she’d better do what Maggie said, so she tapped the lady in front of her on the shoulder and said, “Honey, would you do me a favor? Could you hold my bags and my place in line for me for just a minute? I have a little emergency.” The woman said she would, and Brenda looked around the room and spotted a young security guard backed up against a wall, trying to stay out of the way of the crowd of stampeding women running through the store. The pain in her chest was getting worse as Brenda pushed herself through the crowd, and when she finally got to the guard, she looked at his name tag, then said, “Listen, Dwayne,
I may or may not be having a heart attack, but if I was, what should I do?”

Dwayne looked at her wide-eyed and immediately pulled out a black walkie-talkie and yelled into it, “Heart attack in the basement! Heart attack in the basement!” He then asked her if she was there by herself, and she told him her sister was with her. Brenda started to go and find her, but he stopped her. “Don’t move; wait right here,” he said. “I’ll find her; what does she look like?”

“She’s a heavy-set woman in a black dress, wearing a red wig.”

Dwayne quickly waded into the crowd and suddenly realized that the entire room was full of heavy-set women in red wigs, wearing black dresses.

Maggie stood in the kitchen, not knowing what to do. Should she wait for Brenda to call her back? Oh, Lord … what do you do when someone you know may or may not be having a heart attack? She tried to call Brenda back, but she didn’t pick up. Brenda had been calling Tonya, who was standing in line on the other side of the store, and finally, Tonya answered.

“What?”

“Listen, Tonya, I may or may not be having a heart attack … and I—”

Tonya, who could hardly hear her above the crowd, interrupted: “Who’s having a heart attack?”

“Me. Well, maybe. Anyhow, I have to go to the hospital, but I need you to go to the line at the cash register and pick up my bags from the lady who’s holding them for me and pay for them, okay? She’s wearing a black dress.”

Tonya frantically looked around the room, searching for her sister, but she didn’t see her, because at the moment, Brenda was being taken in a wheelchair to a waiting ambulance. At every big discount sale, there was always an ambulance waiting outside. They knew they would be called sooner or later.

As soon as she saw Brenda in the wheelchair, Tonya dropped all her purchases where she stood and began pushing her way across the store through the crowd, just in time to see Brenda being driven
away in the ambulance with its sirens blaring full blast. Tonya was beside herself; she didn’t know whether to do what she’d been told and go back in and try to find the woman with Brenda’s bags or to just go on to the hospital. As she stood there trying to decide, a lady carrying two large shopping bags came out of the store and walked up to her and asked, “Do you know that lady they just took away?”

“Yes, she’s my sister.”

“Well, here are her bags. When she didn’t come back, I just went ahead and paid for them. Tell her she can send me a check; I put my name and address inside.”

“Oh, thank you so much.”

“Well, that’s all right. Tell her I hope she feels better. She got some great bags!”

A few seconds later, Maggie’s phone rang again, and it was Brenda.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said.

“Brenda! Where are you? Are you all right?”

“Honey, I’m flopped up in the back of an ambulance, so they won’t let me talk long.”

“An ambulance! Oh, no. Where are they taking you?”

Brenda said, “Hold on,” then asked somebody, “Hey, where are y’all taking me?”

Maggie heard a man in the background say, “University Hospital,” and then heard Brenda say, “University? Can’t I go to Providence, out in West End? I’d much rather go there.” Then a man came on the phone and said, “She can’t talk now,” and the phone went dead.

Maggie stood in her kitchen in shock. Oh, my God, her poor friend Brenda was in an ambulance on her way to the hospital. All she could think about now was getting over there as fast as possible. She was in her
FISHERMEN DO IT WITH A BIG POLE
shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. She ran out the door and saw her taxi up the street. Thank heavens, she had a car waiting. She was so upset, she would have probably had another accident trying to get there and trying to park. Once she got in the backseat, she told the driver where to go. As they drove, she dialed Robbie’s number at home,
but no one answered. She just hoped and prayed Robbie was on duty at the hospital today. Although University Hospital was not far from Maggie’s house, getting there turned out to be a long, slow process. Today was the annual Do Dah Parade, and they had to wait at every intersection. Life was so bizarre. While her best friend was possibly dying, she had to sit and watch people marching by with plastic trash cans on their heads.

As they slowly made their way across the south side to the hospital, she started to panic. God, what if Brenda died before she got there? In her preoccupation with making all
her
plans, she’d never dreamed Brenda could go first. What if it was too late? She hadn’t even really said goodbye or told her that of all the people in the world, she would miss her the most. Now she might not be able to tell her anything ever again.

A
LL OF BRENDA’S EFFORTS TO HAVE ROBBIE NOT FIND OUT THAT
she might be having a heart attack had been in vain. She had forgotten that Robbie was the first person listed on all her ID cards to be called in case of emergency. But as the pain in her chest grew worse, and it dawned on her that she might really be having a heart attack, she got scared. When the ambulance finally arrived at the emergency room entrance, Robbie was the first person out the door. Brenda had never been so happy to see anyone in her life, even if she was going to get fussed at.

But Robbie was not mad. She just took Brenda’s hand and smiled and walked alongside the stretcher, giving instructions to the attendants about where to take her. Then she said to Brenda, “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be just fine.”

An hour later, Maggie and Tonya were sitting in the waiting room when Robbie came out and said, “They’re still running tests, but it looks like she’s fine. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more.”

“Is she awake?” asked Maggie.

“Oh, yes, she’s in there babbling away about wanting to get back over to Kate Spade’s before it closes. Tonya, do you know anything about some bags she hadn’t paid for?”

“Yes, tell her I have them.”

Maggie was so glad that Brenda was not dead, she finally began to relax a bit, until she suddenly remembered something. In her haste to get to Brenda, she realized that she had left the “To Whom It May Concern” envelope sitting on the kitchen counter, and now she had to get back home fast before anybody found it and read it. My God, what next?

Maggie told Tonya she would be back as soon as she could. She leapt up and ran out of the emergency room and down a block to the taxi stand on the corner and jumped in. It was now eleven-thirty, and she prayed the parade was over. It wasn’t, and she spent the next forty-five minutes sitting in the back of the cab, a nervous wreck. What if some realtor came by? Finally, when they got closer, she jumped out of the cab and ran the last two blocks. She flew in her door and back to the kitchen and, to her everlasting relief, the letter was still there, exactly where she’d left it, unopened. She had never done so much jumping and running in one day in her life. It had paid off. She had been lucky. It was Saturday, but not one single real estate agent had come by to show the unit, and for the first time, she actually appreciated the terrible market. Unfortunately, in her haste to get to the hospital, she had left some of the goat cheese out, and the entire place smelled a lot like Leroy. She stuck the rest of it in the refrigerator, put the box outside on the patio, and opened all the windows.

She hated to do it, but Maggie had to take the gold watch and Lupe’s cash back. She would need the money to tide her over, in case she had to stay for any length of time. She certainly couldn’t leave while Brenda was still in the hospital. Maggie then took her To Whom It May Concern letter back to her desk drawer in the den.

She would have to wait a few days, until she knew for sure that Brenda was all right, and then reschedule.

A
FEW MINUTES
later, Robbie called with the latest report. Brenda had not had a heart attack, as they’d first suspected. It had been an esophageal spasm, which had similar symptoms.

“Oh, thank heavens.”

“Don’t bother to come back tonight; they just want her to rest.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Oh, yes, you know Brenda; as soon as she found out she wasn’t dying and she got her bags, she was as happy as a clam, sitting up and asking for ice cream. Anyhow, she said to tell you to call her in the morning. We turned her phone off tonight.”

A
FTER THE CALL
, Maggie pulled out another sheet of stationery and started another letter that she would leave in Brenda’s desk before she left.

It was short, but it said exactly what she wanted to say.

M
AGGIE HAD TO FILL IN AT THE OFFICE WHILE BRENDA WAS AT
home recuperating. She couldn’t leave Ethel all alone. It was another delay, but at least she could depart knowing Brenda was going to be all right. Brenda had even promised to go back to Overeaters Anonymous, so the heart attack scare must have done some good.

A week later Brenda was back in the office bright and early and seemed to be happy and doing well. She was happy mostly because in the past week, she had lost seven pounds, and her Overeaters Anonymous sponsor had stopped by her house and given her a gold star. By Friday, with Brenda back to normal, Maggie was satisfied that the time was finally right. On Saturday, she drove back to the river with all her things, and this time around, she didn’t even bother to hide them. No point. She was coming back early the next morning. She thought that since she was all ready to go, this afternoon she would go on her own private little Farewell to Birmingham tour. As she drove, a light misty rain began to fall.

This wasn’t her first farewell ride. When she was five, just before midnight on the night of April 18, 1953, her father had bundled her up and they had ridden on the very last run of the Ensley Streetcar No. 27. It had been packed to the rafters with people and decorated
from stem to stern with balloons and banners. There had been lots of cheering as it pulled into the streetcar barn and shut down for the last time. The wonderful old streetcar was headed to the scrap yard the next day. She supposed today, she was just like Streetcar No. 27, and was making her last run.

She had seen the end of so many things. The wonderful years with Hazel, the end of her one-year reign as Miss Alabama, and her last walk around the runway. There had been lots of tears and loud cheering that night, but today, as she rode through town, there were no tears or cheering; just the sound of her windshield wipers swishing back and forth.

She then drove out to East Lake, to where the old Dreamland Theatre used to be. When she got there, she saw that the entire side of the block was now a used-car lot, but as she passed by she could still remember the theater as it once was, and she wondered what ever happened to that nice man across the street at the Western Union office who used to wave to her?

As she drove up over the mountain and past the Mountain Brook Country Club and past English Village, the image of a young girl popped into her mind, a girl she must have seen in a movie once. But which one? Was it one of the girls in
The Sound of Music?
As the image kept fading in and fading out, she realized who the girl was—she wasn’t from a movie; it was her. She was the one who used to feel this way, that same old melancholy feeling; a strange loneliness had haunted her, a deep yearning for something, but she never quite knew what it was she was yearning for.