I Still Dream About You

Mountain.

Why Babs Hated Maggie

THEY SAY ENVY IS A COAL THAT COMES HOT AND HISSING STRAIGHT from hell. If so, it had been burning a hole in Babs Bingington from the moment Hazel Whisenknott had introduced Maggie as her new agent. Babs had hated Maggie at first sight. This has-been beauty queen with all her phony manners, just waltzing into the business on her good looks and her “over the mountain” contacts. It made her sick to see how all the male agents in town acted like fools around her, fawning and preening like idiots. It was bad enough that she had to compete with that damn midget; now this.

Three weeks later, when she found out that Maggie had gotten the Caldwell listing, she was livid. The Caldwell house was on a view lot that the people she dealt with at the construction company wanted. Babs had contacted the Caldwells a month before, and they had told her that they were not selling. And now, that beauty-queen bitch had gone behind her back and stolen her listing. And to make matters worse, she had driven by the Caldwell house on Monday afternoon, expecting to see cleanup trucks everywhere, but there had been absolutely no signs that the house had been flooded. The kid she had hired to go upstairs, plug up the tub, and leave the water running had obviously screwed up. The little shit. She had been hoping to get the bimbo fired and take over the listing. And what had made her twice as furious was that before she had enough time to come up with another scheme, the house had sold.

Nothing had ever come easy for Babs. She had never been a natural beauty, and it had cost her a fortune. She had been through two face-lifts, a nose job, a chin implant, and had her hairline moved up before she was forty. People had always been out to get her from the start. A disgruntled employee had done her in in Newark. After she lost her real estate license in New Jersey, Babs had changed her name and moved to Birmingham, where her son was studying medicine at UAB. And that had not been easy, either. She’d had to push and shove every inch of the way to get into the real estate market here. Those southern girls were so clannish; they were nice to her face, but she knew they all thought they were better than she was. Only she would get her revenge on that phony Miss Goody Two-Shoes, Margaret Fortenberry. For now, she was just biding her time.

Making Arrangements

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

THE NEXT MORNING, MAGGIE WOKE UP AND REALIZED: SHE COULDN’T have picked a better date if she’d tried. Leaving on November 3, the day right before the presidential election, was perfect. Now that the Miss America Pageant was no longer being shown on network television, being an ex-Miss Alabama or even second runner-up at the national level no longer carried the weight it once had. But you could never be sure. Had she done it earlier, on a slow news day, some bored reporter could have picked up the story, and she might have wound up as a joke on a late-night TV show. Some people could be so terribly unkind. They didn’t understand the tremendous pressure and the responsibility that went along with the title or how stressful being a role model could be, but Maggie did, it had taken a large toll on her. And now she was bound and determined not to make her same old mistake: waiting too long to do something until it was too late to do it!

At least she was leaving while she had some of her looks left; her skin was still nice, thanks to the fact that she had always stayed out of the sun and what little gardening she had done, she had done at night with a flashlight. However, she had noticed that what used to be freckles on the backs of her hands were now starting to look a lot like old-age spots. She had a few gray streaks here and there, but Glen had been able to blend them in with her highlights so they looked natural. Even so, there was simply no two ways about it: she was like a carton of milk whose expiration date was just about up.

Of course, Maggie knew that winding up like this was terribly sad, and she could have spent what little time she had left being miserable and feeling sorry for herself, but there was definitely a bright side to departing this world early. Just this morning, she had made out a brand-new “Pros and Cons” list on the subject, and even she had been surprised at the results.

16 Perfectly Good Reasons to Jump in the River

Pros

1. No old age (no face-lifts, knee or hip replacements, etc.)

2. No more hair dyeing

3. No more having to make decisions

4. No more bad TV dinners

5. Dentist or doctor’s appointments, etc.

6. No more unpleasant surprises

7. Answering e-mail

8. No more Babs Bingington

9. No more sleepless nights

10. Having to make a living

11. Paying bills and doing taxes

12. Fighting traffic

13. No more regrets

14. Having to watch bad news on TV

15. No more bad news, period

16. No more worries

Cons

1. Missing spring in Mountain Brook

2. Missing fall in Mountain Brook

When she saw everything written down in black and white, she had to admit that the pros still had it, hands down. Number 16 alone clinched it. Last night, she had lost another two hours of sleep, worrying about Crestview again. Not having to worry about anything ever again was something else she was really looking forward to.

SHE WENT DOWN the hall and pulled out the last box of her parents’ papers and started putting them in stacks. She guessed she could just throw them all out and not bother to shred them. There was no need to be concerned about identity theft now.

A few minutes later, when she saw their burial policies, something suddenly occurred to her. Since she was not going to be using her cemetery plot, maybe she should give it to some needy person. It was in a very nice spot. But her parents had gone to a lot of expense and had bought the plots on a layaway plan because they had wanted the family to be together. What would they think if a total stranger suddenly showed up next to them? She didn’t know if she believed in an afterlife or not, but she decided that on the off chance they would know, she’d better just leave it empty. Then she suddenly realized something else. Since she was their only living relative, she needed to make long-term arrangements about flowers for her parents’ graves, so she pulled out another piece of paper and began another list.