Fannie Flagg - I Still Dream About You

Oh, dear. How do you tell a nice woman like that that potential buyers wouldn’t find the pinecones just darling, “like part of the family,” as she did? How could they explain, in a nice way, that the pinecones and all the geegaws had to go? Collectors were always a problem. Trying to separate people from their eight hundred spoons from around the world or their collection of ceramic chickens, pigs, cocker spaniels, cats, elephants, cows, birds, deviled egg plates, teapots, or whatever they collected was always difficult. They’d once had a client with forty-two toy Chihuahuas, all named Tinker-Bell. Trying to show that house had been a nightmare. But thankfully, Maggie had managed to talk Velma into letting her put away some of the pinecones for today’s showing.

AFTER THE OPEN house, Brenda said she was late for one of her many political meetings. Maggie told her to go on; she would see her later at the office. Maggie didn’t mind closing up. It was nice to see Brenda so excited. Brenda loved politics. The only really strong opinion Maggie ever had about politics, she had learned in the movies. After seeing Doctor Zhivago , she knew she could never be a Communist. The scene when poor Dr. Zhivago (Omar Sharif) came back to Moscow after the war and found that his beautiful family home had been taken over by a horde of strangers had really bothered her.

Before she left, Maggie had to put all the pinecone art she had hidden back where it had been. She then went into the kitchen and gathered up all the realtors’ business cards they had left on the counter and noticed that Babs had left two cards with BIRMINGHAM’S NUMBER ONE TOP-SELLING REALTOR stamped across the top in bright red ink-just to rub it in.

As usual, when she had come through the house today, Babs had completely ignored Maggie and been rude to everyone else. Maggie had always been so uncomfortable around Babs; it was hard to be around someone who just hated you, particularly when you didn’t know why. As Maggie was locking up, something occurred to her. The next realtors’ open house wasn’t until Wednesday. Today was the last time she would ever have to see Babs Bingington again, and if that wasn’t something to look forward to, she didn’t know what was. In fact, as of Monday, she would be saying goodbye to the never-ending saga of real estate forever, and not a minute too soon.

Besides being physically dangerous, real estate was also an emotional roller coaster. Dealing with people selling their homes was always tricky. Some would not leave the house and would follow the potential buyers from room to room. And there were no guidelines to offer help, no official set of rules for real estate etiquette. She was constantly surprised at the cruel things people would say about another person’s home.

IT WAS ABOUT four o’clock when Maggie pulled into her parking spot behind the office. Red Mountain Realty was located in a charming old stone building right in the middle of the village of Mountain Brook. When Hazel was alive, all twelve desks had been filled with busy agents, the phones ringing, and the place had bustled with activity. But now it was mostly quiet-unless, of course, Ethel was on one of her “in my day” rants.

It was said of Ethel that she was set in her ways, but in fact, Ethel just plain didn’t like the way the world was headed and made no bones about it. And this afternoon, she was on her Hollywood rant (again). “In my day, the movie stars were glamorous, but now they all want to look just like everybody else; they go out in public wearing any old rag. Back then, you’d never catch any of them running out to the store in cut-off blue jeans. In my day, the movie stars were carefree and fun. Now they all have causes and take themselves so seriously, running all over the world, palling around with dictators, bad-mouthing America. But they sure don’t mind taking all the money they make here. I say they should all just keep their big mouths shut and act.”

Brenda laughed. “That would be kind of hard to do.”

“You know what I mean, and I just give up on the movies. Every damn one has the same plot: everybody in authority is corrupt, and every lead character is a murderer, a thief, a dope dealer, or worse. Hell, if I wanted to spend time with criminals, which I don’t, I could go to the jail and visit for free. Why don’t they make movies about nice people? When I go to the movies, I want to be uplifted and feel good after I leave, not worse. Nowadays, if there is a movie about killers, perverts, or child molesters that shows the very worst side of human nature, they just can’t wait to give it the Academy Award. I used to watch the Academy Awards, but the year ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’ beat out Dolly Parton for best song, I just cut it off and never watched it again. Hell, no wonder Western civilization is on the decline.”

Maggie didn’t say anything, but she had to agree. If they didn’t rerun The Sound of Music every Easter at the Alabama Theatre, she would hardly have gone to the movies at all. It was obvious to Maggie that she had lost touch with Hollywood or else Hollywood had lost touch with her; she didn’t know which, but she strongly suspected it was her. She was hopelessly out-of-date. After all these years, Doris Day was still her favorite movie star, and she was the only person she knew who actually liked elevator music-it was the only music Maggie knew the words to anymore. And it wasn’t just music. In the past ten years, modern technology had suddenly taken several quantum leaps forward and had left Maggie in the dust. Things were changing so fast, she couldn’t keep up. By the time she had learned how to work something it was already obsolete. She never had figured out how to program her new oven and couldn’t work a BlackBerry if her life depended on it. She hadn’t even attempted to learn to Twitter.

W HEN MAGGIE GOT HOME FROM WORK, SHE WALKED IN AND picked up the mail. It was mostly junk and another reminder of the annual Halloween night Boo at the Zoo gala. When Hazel was alive, they usually went. Hazel loved any excuse to dress up in a costume, but now Maggie hardly went anywhere anymore. She had lost touch with most of her old friends, and it had been her own doing. It was easier not to see them. She knew they were probably as disappointed in her as she was in herself, but they were just too nice to say so. Besides, she wanted to have all her good clothes packed in boxes by Friday, so she wouldn’t have anything to wear anyway. She would just send a donation.

She went into the bedroom and was putting on her workout clothes for her Tuesday night aerobics class at the gym when it hit her: What was the point of working out now? Why get in shape now? For what? She hated exercise; and no matter what they said about endorphins, exercise never made her feel better, just glad to get it over with. She now realized she would never have to exercise again. What an unexpected perk that was. No more worry about her upper arms or thighs. If cellulite wanted to form, let it. Have a ball. She then took off her clothes, put on a robe, then gathered the rest of her workout clothes, tennis shoes, sweats, socks, etc., and threw them into a big plastic bag for the Salvation Army and promptly called the gym and canceled her membership, and that felt good.

Unfortunately, as hard as she was trying to forget it, the subject of Crestview was still stuck in the back of her mind. But what could she do? She had no way of finding out if it was even true. Of course, she did know one person who would know and might even be able to help, but she really couldn’t impose on a friendship like that. Oh Lord, she wished she hadn’t gone to the beauty parlor today.