I Still Dream About You

ALL 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.”

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

Dear Brenda,

I wanted you to know how much I have always appreciated your friendship and to tell you that afterward, you must never wonder if I knew that you appreciated mine. I did. You always made me smile. Thanks for all your help with the contracts. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Sincerely,

Maggie

P.S. You will make a wonderful mayor.

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

Gus’s Famous Hot Dogs

Early April 2009

MAGGIE 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.

Maggie felt a sudden pang of pity for that poor dumb dreamy girl with so many disappointments ahead, so many illusions to be shattered. Remembering her now was like remembering someone she had known in another lifetime.

Going back home, she drove through downtown, and just as a spur-of-the-moment thing, she did something she hadn’t done in years. After a few times around the block, she found a parking space on the