I Still Dream About You: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

it. She thought back on a conversation she had had with Ethel earlier that afternoon.
    W HEN M AGGIE HAD come back from lunch, Ethel had said, “God, I miss Hazel. After all this time, I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
    Maggie agreed. “Me neither … every Sunday, I still expect her to call me up and say, ‘Hey, Mags, let’s go roaming.’ She loved to drive that big old car of hers all over town, doing things, and enjoying every minute of it.”
    “Oh yes, no matter what she drug us through, she always had a good time.”
    Maggie said, “Ethel, you knew her better than anybody. Do you think she ever got tired of being so cheerful and always on the go?”
    Ethel shook her head. “Not for one minute
 … we
got tired, but she didn’t, and it was exhausting. Remember all the things she got us into? The softball team, all the parties, the Easter egg hunts, the crazy trips. That woman kept me so busy, I had to get my divorce over the phone.”
    “How did she keep it up, I wonder?”
    “I don’t know, but she wore me out trying to keep up with her. We got older, but she didn’t. Do you remember when she made us all take hula lessons and march in the Do Dah Parade? My hips were sore for two months.”
    Maggie had to be careful how she worded her next question. Ethel was very sensitive about her age. “Ethel … what’s the worst part of … uh … getting older … for you?”
    “The worst part?”
    “Yes.”
    Ethel thought for a moment. “Oh, I guess the older you get, the less you have to look forward to. When you’re young, you look forward to growing up and getting married and having children, and then you look forward to having them move out.”
    M AGGIE SUDDENLY REALIZED that was it. Ethel had hit the nail right on the head. She had absolutely
nothing
to look forward to. Other than missing spring (the flowers and the dogwoods in Mountain Brook were so beautiful) and fall, when the leaves turned such pretty colors, she didn’t have a single reason to hang around.
    Maggie looked down at her watch. It was already nine-fifteen. She figured she’d better eat something or else she would get a headache. She still had to work tomorrow, so she got up and went into the kitchen and pulled out a Stouffer’s frozen dinner, baked chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and vegetables, and stuck it in the oven. She never fixed anything at home except frozen dinners or pop-up waffles because (A) she didn’t want to have to clean up the kitchen and (B) although she could set a beautiful table and fold a napkin in over forty-eight different and interesting ways, she had never been very good at cooking. Not that she hadn’t tried. The first year she went to work for Hazel, she had attempted a small dinner party for the girls in the office, but the yeast rolls she served had not been fully cooked, and after the girls went home, the yeast in the rolls continued to rise, and later that night, all of them wound up at the University Hospital emergency room, except for Brenda, who feltfine. After that, Maggie just stopped cooking all together. But like everything, you paid a price. All the sodium in the frozen dinners made her hands swell.
    As she sat and waited for her dinner to heat up, she picked up the New Age magazine Dottie had left for her with a Post-it note that said, “Great Stuff!!” She leafed through, but all she saw were pages of advertisements for yoga mats, meditation candles, and numerous self-help books:
The Wisdom of Menopause, The Orgasmic Diet, How to Nurture Your Body and Your Libido at the Same Time
, and one entitled
100 Secret Sexual Positions from Ancient Cultures Around the World
. Good Lord. She didn’t want to hurt Dottie’s feelings, but this was not anything she was interested in, certainly not now, so she threw it in the trash can and picked up today’s newspaper.
    Just as Brenda had said, on the front page of the Entertainment section was a large photograph of the Whirling