I Still Dream About You

Sleepless in Mountain Brook

MAGGIE TRIED TO SLEEP, BUT SHE KEPT THINKING ABOUT ALL THE things she had to do to get ready to leave on the third. She had already decided she would donate all her clothes and jewelry to the little community theater around the corner. Her neighbor Boots volunteered in the costume department and said they were always in need of clothes. Everything else-sheets, blankets, towels, dishes, pots and pans-would go to the Salvation Army, but she was still unsure about what to do with her Miss Alabama trophy and her sash and crown. And what about all her family photographs and newspaper clippings? She didn’t know anyone who would want them, but she didn’t want them to wind up at some garage sale either. She supposed she should probably take them down to the office and put them in the big paper shredder in the back room, if she could figure out how to work the thing. The last time she had tried, it had shredded one of her good scarves into a hundred pieces.

After Maggie tossed and turned for another half hour, she finally gave up and went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea and started her “Things to Do Before I Go” list:

1. Cancel subscriptions to Southern Living, Veranda, and Southern Lady magazines

2. Drop a hint to Dottie about unit becoming available

3. Clean out desks at home and work, all drawers and closets

4. Decide what to do with crown and trophy

5. Buy cardboard boxes

6. Pack up clothes for theater

7. Go to Walmart

8. Close out checking account

9. Pay off all credit cards, except MasterCard

10. Finish going through papers

11. Send whatever money left to Visiting Nurses and the Humane Society

She hoped there would be some money left over. The visiting nurses had been so helpful with her parents, and although she had never been able to keep a pet where she lived, she had always loved animals.

She then walked down the hall and started pulling down some of the boxes from the top of the closet. She hadn’t gone through them for years, and she wasn’t sure how much she had, but she saw that she had three entire hatboxes full of Miss Alabama stuff alone, so she thought she might as well get a head start on trying to figure out what to throw out and what to shred.

Later, she sat in the kitchen looking at all the old pictures of herself taken the night she had been crowned Miss Alabama. It was hard for her to believe she had ever been that young. But there she was, in photo after photo, with her bouquet of roses, just smiling away, so happy, so naïve, with absolutely no idea what was to come next.

Maggie wished she could just crawl back through the years and somehow stop time. If she could, she would have stopped it that very night. But time only moves forward and drags you along with it, whether you want to go or not.

As she continued going through the photos and old newspaper clippings, she began to think about the series of events that had led up to today’s decision. She guessed it had all started with the incident in Atlantic City, losing Charles, then Richard, and, later, both her parents in one year. But for her, the final blow, really, had been Hazel.

One day, Hazel was in the office laughing and then the next day, she was gone. When she had died so suddenly, it was such a shock. For weeks afterward, everybody at the office half expected her to come bursting in the door with her daily joke, to make them laugh, cheer them up, flatter them, to make them all feel so smart. Everybody tried to continue on as usual, but as time went by, they all came to the slow, painful realization that she would not be coming back, and life at the office was suddenly dull, the work hard, the days long. There wasn’t a day that passed that someone didn’t start a sentence with “Remember when Hazel said this or when Hazel did that?” or ask how Hazel would have handled a problem. She had been the motor that had kept them all running happily for so many years. Without her, their incentive to work hard and the pride of being a part of Team Hazel was gone. They all missed her terribly. But for Maggie, losing Hazel had kicked the very foundation right out from under her. The year Maggie lost her parents, Hazel had quietly stepped in, and without her even realizing it, Hazel had become her rock, her mentor, her own personal cheerleader. And in a world increasingly lacking in role models, she had been the one person Maggie had admired and looked up to. But then, everyone who had ever known Hazel had looked up to her. Ironic, considering that Hazel Whisenknott had only been three feet, four inches tall.