I Still Dream About You: A Novel Read Free Page A

no question about it, being pretty is grand while it lasts, but good looks alone don’t bring you happiness; an awful lot of perks, yes, but not a good enough reason to go on. And some would be disappointed that she hadn’t gone into greater detail about her reasons, but she had them. Just last week, she had jotted down sixteen perfectly good reasons, and she was sure there were many more she hadn’t thought of yet.
    Still, she hated leaving people up in the air. But what could she possibly have said? She couldn’t tell them the truth. So, it was best to just bow out gracefully and be grateful she had at least accomplisheda few of her goals. She had never smoked, cursed, raised her voice in public, or received a traffic citation or a parking ticket—no mean feat, considering she still couldn’t parallel park after years of trying. But now, at age sixty, too young to retire and not smart enough to learn a new profession, what was the point? It was obvious that the best of her life was behind her. So, why continue to struggle? Toward
what
?
    Without Hazel, life had become as hard as trying to balance a stick on her nose and juggle six rings in the air while standing on one leg on a big rubber ball. There were times she just wanted to go stark raving mad and run down the street naked, screaming at the top of her lungs, but of course, she couldn’t do that. Not in this day and age, when everybody and his brother had a camera on his phone. There was no privacy left in the world anymore. Somebody was sure to get a photograph of her and put it on YouTube, and something like that could wind up on the Internet for years.
    Brenda was lucky. She still had a lot of goals left. Just last week, she announced she wanted to run for mayor of Birmingham and fire the entire city council. Brenda had ambition and a family who cared about her. Even Ethel Clipp, who they said was at least eighty (nobody knew for sure), had her handbell choir and her two white Persian cats, Eva and Zsa Zsa, that she adored. Brenda and Ethel wanted to keep going and, evidently, so did the world, but she didn’t. So really, it was best that she just step aside and let them go on their merry way.
    She was simply, quietly and discreetly, and with as little fanfare as possible, leaving life a little earlier than expected, that’s all. An extreme avoidance tactic (perhaps), an inability to face reality (of course), a preemptive blow against old age (most certainly). But on the positive side, by leaving now, she would be saving the government an awful lot of Social Security money down the line; making much less of a carbon footprint; using less oxygen, gas, water, food, plastics, and paper goods; and there would be fewer used coffee grounds in the garbage. Al Gore should certainly appreciate it.
    She put the letter in the envelope and placed it in the drawer, underneath the stack of old telephone bills, and was reminded thatshe had to make sure the rest of her bills and credit cards were paid off before she left. She never wanted to give anyone the chance to say that a former Miss Alabama was a deadbeat. She sat up and glanced around the room. Although none of the furniture was hers, she still had a few little personal items to get rid of, but that was about it.
    Dear God, from where she had started out, after all she had aspired to be, where she had actually ended up had come to Maggie as a complete surprise. It was clear now that she had seen far too many movies as a child … and had just naturally expected a happy ending.

The Ice Cream Incident

    A FEW MINUTES LATER, BRENDA WAS ACROSS TOWN WITH A SPOON , eating out of the pint of her sister Robbie’s mint chocolate chip ice cream, ice cream she was not supposed to be eating, having been diagnosed as prediabetic, but she needed to celebrate. Besides, Robbie, an emergency room nurse, was working at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until nine. She was only going to eat a little around the edges of the