I Still Dream About You: A Novel (8 page)

Luckily, in the split second she was thinking about it, a jogger ran across the intersection, and the moment passed. It was probably the first time in her life when indecision had actually worked in her favor, but she knew if she didn’t do something soon, she just might suddenly go berserk and wind up on the television show
Snapped
, which featured stories about women who had suddenly flipped out. She could see the CNN headlines running under a newsreel of her now, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffed, being walked into the jail: “
EX–MISS ALABAMA RUNS OVER RIVAL REAL ESTATE AGENT
.” Of course, she might have gotten away with it. Brenda always said that if Babs was ever murdered, every realtor in Birmingham had a motive and had threatened to kill her at one time or another. But the fact that she, who had a hard time even killing a spider, had actually thought of running someone over in broad daylight
made her realize it might be time to remove herself from society, sooner rather than later. Red Mountain Realty had enough problems right now, and they didn’t need one of their listing agents going to the chair. Or worse yet, going completely insane and winding up in some asylum like poor Olivia de Havilland in the movie
The Snake Pit
. She was already talking to the television set. It was clear to Maggie that she was getting out, not only at the right time, but just in time. She was obviously not coping.

T
HE TRUTH WAS, MAGGIE REALLY
HAD
SEEN TOO MANY MOVIES AS A
child. Not surprising, considering where she had grown up. Her father had been the manager of the Dreamland, a small neighborhood movie theater, and they had lived upstairs in a one-bedroom apartment, right next door to the projection booth, until she was eight. Looking back now, she supposed it had been somewhat unusual to enter and exit your childhood home through a movie theater lobby, but at the time, it had seemed normal to her and, in fact, quite wonderful.

To reach the apartment, she had to walk through a narrow, dark, carpeted stairway that was always cluttered with a few old broken spotlights and signs that read
COMING SOON
or
HELD OVER ANOTHER WEEK
and cardboard boxes full of black plastic letters for the marquee. Inside, the bare concrete-block walls were painted a pale mint green, with dark brown speckled linoleum tile on the floor. The bathroom had a claw-foot tub and one hanging light bulb. The kitchen was only a counter with a hot plate and a small refrigerator under the sink. It was not much to look at in the daytime, but at night, everything changed. As soon as it got dark, everything in the entire apartment, including herself and her parents, would suddenly start to glow a beautiful pink color from the reflection of
the big neon Dreamland Theatre sign outside the window. Everything looked so pretty and cheerful. It had been like living inside a cartoon. And in the small alcove where she slept, there was a porthole in the wall she could open to look down and see the big movie screen downstairs. Every night, Maggie would lie in bed, watching the movie, and eventually be lulled to sleep by the whir of the movie projector next door, the voices coming from the screen, and the sounds of soft laughter coming from the audience below. And on hot summer nights, when her parents left the apartment door open to get a little breeze, she would hear the big red popcorn machine popping downstairs and the cash register bell ringing at the candy counter, and if she was still awake after the last show, when they had closed the doors, the sound of wooden seats being slammed up row by row. Then later, the roar of the big vacuum cleaner sucking up leftover popcorn and an occasional candy wrapper. All her life, the smell of popcorn and candy could transport her right back to that little apartment like it was yesterday.

She had loved growing up in the theater, but Maggie now suspected it was the main reason she had always had such a hard time facing reality. She’d read somewhere that the ages of one to four were formative years, so it must have affected her.

She had been raised in the era of Glorious Technicolor, the time of all the great movie musicals filled with cheerful songs and pretty people, where in the end, the boy always got the girl. And even though she was the only child of older parents, she had never been lonely. Her friends and playmates had been the movie stars, and she had been perfectly happy. But then television became all the rage, and like so many other little theaters, the Dreamland closed down for good, and they had to move into a regular apartment. What a shock that had been.

Out in the real world, there was no background music playing, no popcorn and candy downstairs or pink glow at night. Or even a plot she could follow. Her father had managed to get another job, selling shoes, but money was always tight, and afterward, they had been forced to move from one gloomy, airless apartment to another, and Maggie began to feel lost and anxious. The world around her
seemed so strange and unfamiliar. She didn’t say anything to her parents, but she had an uneasy feeling that somehow a mistake had been made, and she was not where she was supposed to be. She didn’t know where that place was until one hot muggy afternoon in August when she was ten. Her mother had just started working as a seamstress’s assistant to make a little extra money and had taken Maggie along to a dress fitting for a lady who lived in Mountain Brook. Maggie had never been to that part of town before, and when they drove up Red Mountain and she saw Crestview, the big, stately red brick Tudor mansion perched at the very top, the sight of it had taken her breath away. To Maggie, it looked like a castle in the sky, exactly like something right out of a movie. And as they descended down the other side of Red Mountain, into the cool, lush green world of Mountain Brook, with its leafy streets and ivy-covered brick and stone homes with long, rolling, graceful lawns, Maggie felt just like a kidnapped child who had been brought back home again. This was where she belonged, and she felt she could breathe again.

Of course, at the time, she was living across town in a dingy basement apartment with pipes on the ceiling, but even so, seeing Crestview had given her something to dream about. At night, she would lie on the lumpy pullout sofa and fantasize about the big house on the hill. She would imagine herself sitting on the side terrace, sipping tea, looking down on the city below. It had been a foolish childish dream, but it had soothed her during all those years of never being settled, of living in cramped, dark places. Over the years, Crestview became more than just a place to her; it became her ideal, something to strive for.

Many of the seamstress’s clients her mother worked for were women who lived “over the mountain,” and Maggie grew to love going along and seeing the beautifully appointed homes, the furniture, the art, the Oriental rugs, the long staircases leading up to large open and airy bedrooms with balconies overlooking the city. No one had minded her coming; she was always well behaved and quiet. All the ladies had been kind to her, but Maggie had fallen in love especially with Mrs. Roberts, at first sight. To Maggie, she was
all elegance and grace. Mrs. Roberts had no daughters of her own, and she had taken a special interest in Maggie and, from time to time, would ask her mother, “May I take Maggie to tea?” or “May I take Maggie to Easter brunch at the club?”

Maggie had loved going to the Birmingham Country Club, with its big floral chintz chairs and sofas, and she had liked the people “over the mountain” right away: their manners, their clothes, the way they took such good care of everything. She had been fascinated seeing all the exotic foods they ate: Camembert cheese, artichokes, caviar, black olives, smoked salmon. So different from the Franco-American spaghetti from a can she was used to. When she was twelve, Mrs. Roberts had arranged a scholarship for her at Brook Hill, a private girls’ school. If it had not been for Mrs. Roberts taking her under her wing, Maggie could very well have wound up never knowing there was such beauty and grace in the world. Mrs. Roberts had taught her how to appreciate the finer things in life.

And even though she was one of the wealthiest ladies in Birmingham, there was nothing pretentious about her. When she donated money to support numerous causes around town, she did so anonymously. Never class- or race-conscious, she opened her home to all, and all were treated well.

Mrs. Roberts was everything that Maggie had aspired to be. She had spent the rest of her childhood looking in on the seemingly graceful lives of those who lived “over the mountain,” just waiting to grow up and move there. It never occurred to her that it wouldn’t happen. She had always just assumed that she would wind up there someday, living in a beautiful house, married to a wonderful man; but as with so many other things (Richard for one), she had been dead wrong.

Maggie wished she could have ended up like Mrs. Roberts and all the other “over the mountain” ladies. They had such a neat, orderly way of living she so admired. After their husbands died, they sold the big house and moved into a little garden home in English Village. Then, after a certain age, they went on out to St. Martin’s in the Pines, the lovely Episcopal retirement home they all favored, to spend the rest of their days with old friends, most of whom they had
gone to grammar school with, playing bridge and being taken on the St. Martin’s bus to theater, museum, and flower show outings.

St. Martin’s was a three-part facility that made all the unpleasant things about the end of life so much easier. First the little cottage on the grounds, then as a resident’s health started to fail, they were moved to the assisted living section, and thereafter, on out to the family plot. A lovely, practical, and predictable ending, but unfortunately, Maggie didn’t have the money or the desire to wait that long. True, she wasn’t getting the Technicolor ending she had expected, but she couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful beginning.

A
FTER MAGGIE HAD FINALLY GONE BACK TO SLEEP, SHE DREAMED IT
was a warm summer night and she was young again, dressed in a white evening gown and dancing under a thousand stars on a terrace overlooking the city. Was it Charles she was dancing with? She couldn’t quite tell, but it was such a vivid and beautiful dream that when she first woke up, she still felt so warm and happy—until a few seconds later, when that same old familiar wave of cold gray dread washed over her, and the warm glow faded into the harsh reality of the present. It was seven
A.M.
, and once again, she had to summon the strength to get up and face yet another day. She wished she wouldn’t have those dreams; it just made it harder. She felt the hot tears running down her face and reached over and grabbed a Kleenex. Oh Lord, now she would have swollen eyes, and she was showing a house later on this morning. That’s all her client needed was some weepy real estate agent moping around.

After a moment, she got up and went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror and, just as she’d suspected, her eyes did look swollen and puffy. Now she was going to have to put tea bags on them. She would have loved to just go back to bed, but she couldn’t. She had a lot to do today, and she wanted to get an early start. She was meeting Brenda at noon, and it was her turn to buy
the wine and cheese for the realtors’ open house, and also, she wanted to call Cathy Gilmore at the Arts and Lecture office and find out about the Whirling Dervishes’ hotel situation.

As she sat there with the tea bags on her eyes, she realized that at this point, it was completely idiotic that she should even care where a group of perfect strangers she certainly would never see again stayed, but she did care. At exactly one minute after eight, Maggie dialed Cathy at her office. She hoped to reach her before she got on the phone with someone else. They didn’t call her Chatty Cathy for nothing. Fortunately, Cathy picked up right away.

Twenty minutes later, when she was able to gracefully slip in the question about where they were putting the Dervishes, Cathy told her that they were arriving the afternoon of the performance and leaving for Atlanta right after the show that night. They weren’t even going to spend the night in Birmingham.