I Still Dream About You

Another New Day

AFTER 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.

As usual, Maggie had been concerned over nothing, but at least now she knew and she wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. It was so irritating. All her life, she had wasted so many hours, days, years even, worrying about this and that. It was a serious character flaw. Why couldn’t she have been more like Hazel? Hazel never worried. Even when they lost the big new insurance account to Babs Bingington: everybody at the office had been devastated, but when Hazel came in, she just brushed it off and then turned to an agent and said, “Hey, Maxine, ask me why the woman shot her husband with a bow and arrow.” As upset as she was, Maxine tried to smile and asked and Hazel said, “Because she didn’t want to wake up the children.” That afternoon, Hazel had sent them a dozen roses with a card: “Remember, girls, it’s always the darkest right before the glorious dawn.” Hazel had always been so optimistic about the future; unfortunately, Maggie wasn’t Hazel. But then, who was?

Brenda’s first meeting with Hazel, like most people’s, had been memorable. Brenda had just moved back home from Chicago to be closer to her family and had seen an ad in the paper that interested her. Red Mountain Realty was looking for people to train as real estate agents, and Brenda had called and spoken directly with the owner and set up a meeting.

When she walked into Hazel’s office, a tiny little woman, no bigger than a child, jumped down from her chair, walked over, reached up and shook her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Hazel! Do you know any good jokes?” And the next thing Brenda knew, she was hired. A few minutes later, when Brenda came out, she was still in a little bit of shock and walked over to Ethel, who was typing up her papers, and said, “Excuse me… is that lady in there really the owner?” “She sure is,” said Ethel, pushing her purple glasses up on her nose. “Oh… well… does she know she’s a midget?” “Why, no,” said Ethel, never looking up. “But I’m sure if you want to go back in and tell her, she’ll be delighted to know why she’s so short.” “Oh no… I didn’t mean it that way… What I meant was that she acts just like a real person… Oh… I’m not saying she’s not a real person. It’s just… well… she didn’t sound like a midget on the phone.”

“Oh, really.”

“I thought they all had funny little voices like the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz or something. Well, anyhow, I’ll see you Monday morning… I guess,” Brenda said as she tripped all over herself trying to get out the door before she made more of a fool of herself. Ethel, unfazed, went back to her typing. She was used to people’s first reactions. She had been with Hazel from the very beginning and seen it over and over, but after the initial shock, people quickly forgot Hazel’s height, mostly because Hazel didn’t make a big deal out of it herself. She had certain limitations, but she either overlooked them or worked around them. Hazel always carried a small stepladder in her car to help her if necessary and a magician’s extending wand in her purse, in case she was in an elevator alone and needed to punch the button for a higher floor, but other than that, she managed very well.

Of course, she sometimes needed assistance reaching things when she was grocery shopping, and getting on and off buses, but it had never been a problem. As she once said to Ethel, “I’ve had to depend on people my whole life, and they haven’t let me down yet.”

In 1982, Hazel was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “The Biggest Little Real Estate Woman in the World.” And it had tickled her to death.