I Still Dream About You

Yearly Floral Arrangements for Mother and Daddy

1. Christmas

2. Easter

3. Mother’s Birthday

4. Daddy’s Birthday

5. Mother’s Day

6. Father’s Day

7. Memorial Day

The only days she could eliminate with a clear conscience would be their birthdays, but even when eliminating the two birthdays, it would still cost around $375 a year. She then made an educated guess at how many more years she might have been around. Considering the fact that she was still pretty healthy, and averaging out the age at which both her parents had died, she thought eighty-five was a fair place to stop the flowers. So, twenty-five times $375 came to… good Lord. That was a lot of money, but she couldn’t just leave them without any remembrance on the holidays.

She looked in the telephone book for the name of a florist on the other side of town. She couldn’t call people she knew, like Bill over at Park Lane or Norton’s Flowers; they might suspect something. She looked in the yellow pages and found a florist she had never heard of; a woman answered.

“Bon-Ton Flowers, may I help you?”

Maggie could tell by her accent that the woman was not southern, and she was glad. She probably didn’t know who she was, or even if she did, she probably wouldn’t care.

“Yes, hello… uh, I’m going to be out of town this Christmas, and I was wondering if I could have flowers delivered to my parents’ graves. Do you deliver to cemeteries?”

“Yes, ma’am, we sure do, and I’d be happy to arrange that for you… Is that going to be Forrest Lawn or Pine Rest?”

“Forrest Lawn. I have the location numbers. Lot 7, Section 196, and the names are Anna Grace and William Herbert Fortenberry.”

“That’s Anna Grace and William Herbert?”

“Yes…”

“And what price range would you like on that, hon?”

“Oh… I was thinking around seventy-five?”

“Seventy-five… alrighty then, we can do up something real nice for that, unless you want balloons. If you want balloons, that’s fifteen dollars extra.”

“No, just the flowers. I think.”

“Okay… that’s fine, and what do you want on the card?”

“The card?” Maggie was suddenly caught off guard; she hadn’t thought about the card. “Oh… well. Oh dear, uh… just say, ‘Love, Margaret,’ I guess.”

“Okay, hon… we’ll have it out there for them bright and early Christmas morning, and how do you want to pay for this?”

“MasterCard.”

“Can I get that credit card number from you?”

“Yes, but I’m also going to need to have you give me the total cost for arrangements for Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Memorial Day.”

The woman sounded surprised. “Oh, I see… well… just how long do you plan to be out of town?”

There was a pause. Then Maggie said, “About twenty-five years.”

The conversation did not go well after that, but after talking to the woman for a while, Maggie convinced her that she was serious, and the woman finally took her credit card number and started the process. Before she left, Maggie would send a check to MasterCard to cover the exact amount plus whatever other expenses she might have.

A FEW MINUTES later, Mrs. Thelma Shellnut, the woman at Bon-Ton Flowers, walked into the back and said to her husband, “I swear, Otis, what some people won’t do to get out of going to the cemetery.”

Otis looked up from his Reader’s Digest article. “What?”

“You should have heard the tall tale this woman told me: said she was going to be traveling and needed to have arrangements delivered for the next twenty-five years. Traveling, my left foot-she’s just too lazy to visit her parents’ graves, if you ask me.”

The truth was, Maggie was not totally without a living relative. She had one: Hector Smoote, a distant cousin of her father’s who lived in western Maine in a double-wide trailer that he and his wife, Mertha, had named Valhalla. Maggie had tried to keep in touch with him after her parents died out of some kind of family obligation, but every time she called, Hector hurt her feelings so badly, that eventually she’d stopped calling altogether. However, under the circumstances, she supposed she should try to end on a good note. Maggie dialed his number.

“Hector. It’s Maggie from Birmingham.”

As usual, he started in. “Well, hey there, little old honey pie… how y’all a-doing way down there in redneck land?”

“Oh, just fine, thank you.”

“How’s my little old country cousin? Are y’all still watching Hee Haw?”

Maggie tried to laugh. “No… not lately… I think it’s been off the air for some time now. Anyhow, I just wanted to call and say hello. I’m sorry we haven’t seen each other in so long.”

“Yeah, me too. Hey, why don’t you move out of that hellhole and come on up here with us? It’s not much, but at least we have running water.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s lovely there… but…”

He interrupted her with “Hey, Maggie, they still shooting Yankees down there?”

“Oh, yes… uh-huh, the streets are piled up with bodies as we speak. Well, anyway… I just called to say hello.”

“I’m glad you did and next time, don’t be such a stranger; let us hear from you more often. You hear?”

“Okay. Well, my best to Mertha. Bye.”

Maggie hung up. It was just no use. She had been thinking about leaving her Miss Alabama crown, sash, and trophy to Hector and Mertha, but it was probably best she didn’t.

If Maggie had any passion left at all, it was for Birmingham and Alabama. Like everyone who loved their home, she was probably far too thin-skinned and had lost her sense of humor, but to her, talking to Hector was like pouring salt in a wound over and over again.

MAGGIE HAD HEARD other people say about their state that they “couldn’t wait to get out and go somewhere else,” but not her; from the first minute she left, she couldn’t wait to get back, and if it hadn’t been for Richard, she would have come home much sooner. She couldn’t imagine being from any other state. What if she had been Miss anywhere else but Alabama? Most of the other girls in the Miss America Pageant had traveled to Atlantic City by plane, an automobile, or by bus, but she had traveled on her own private train car, aboard the beautiful Silver Comet, renamed the Miss Alabama Special for the trip. She had been given a huge send-off at the station, with bands playing and GOOD LUCK banners flying everywhere; and unlike most of the other girls, she had arrived with an entire entourage of people to see to her every need. She had been so surprised when several of the girls told her that winning the title in their state had been no big deal. That was certainly not the case in Alabama. In Alabama, it was the beauty contest, second in size only to the Miss America Pageant, and it offered the largest prize money and scholarship of any pageant in the country.

The reason she had entered the contest was to try and win a scholarship to modeling school. She had done some teen modeling at Loveman’s department store downtown, and her mother’s friend Audrey, who worked there, had encouraged her to try for it. Maggie had certainly not planned on winning, and that night, nobody was more surprised than Maggie. And for a poor girl like herself, winning Miss Alabama had been a very big deal.