In the afternoon, parents used to drive their children up the mountain to Vulcan Park to watch the sun set over the city, when the sky would come alive with layers of iridescent green, purple, aqua, red, and orange that streaked across the horizon as far as you could see. Everyone thought it was a special show the city put on just for them. It never occurred to them that the beautiful colors were caused by all the toxins and pollutants spewing out from all of the mills surrounding the city. They also never dreamed that one day, most of old downtown Birmingham, its magnificent movie palaces, restaurants, and department stores with the beautiful shiny brass doors and silver escalators, would all be shut down for good. But they were.
The Open House
MAGGIE CRAWLED ALONG THROUGH HEAVY TRAFFIC, AND A GOOD half hour later, she stopped at the Contri Brothers Gourmet Deli for cold cuts and then at Savage’s Bakery to pick up five dozen assorted cookies. Everyone said that Red Mountain put on the best realtors’ open houses in town. Even in the 1980s, she’d heard, when the market was hot and it had been hard getting agents to show up at all the newly listed houses, Hazel had never failed to draw a huge crowd and had always managed to come up with some attraction. She would send out announcements to “Come and meet Matilda, the World’s Oldest Chicken” or “Henry, the Cat with Fourteen Toes.” But all they could offer today was a free lunch. Maggie was still feeling thrown by what she had heard at the beauty shop, but she forced herself to just keep her mind focused on what she wanted to get done today. She thought that she probably should start dropping a few subtle hints to Brenda about her plans, but it would be tricky. She didn’t want to alarm her, but she did want to try to prepare her as best she could without tipping her hand. She loved Ethel, but of all the people in the world, she guessed she would miss Brenda the most.
Hazel had put Maggie and Brenda together from the very start. Maggie had the looks, the contacts, and certainly the charm to sell real estate, but she couldn’t do the paperwork if her life depended on it. The only reason she had gotten her real estate license in the first place was that Hazel sat on the real estate board. Maggie’s grades had not been quite high enough to pass, but Hazel had glanced over it, declared, “Close enough,” and pushed it through. Brenda, on the other hand, was a master at reading contracts, crunching numbers, obtaining mortgages, and closing a deal. Any information you needed she could bring up on her BlackBerry in seconds. She was a real treasure in every way: Brenda had been one of the first girls in the Birmingham school system to take Shop, instead of Home Economics, and could fix anything. She always had a large hammer, nails, a wrench, several screwdrivers, measuring tapes, light bulbs, extension cords, and a big flashlight in her purse; anything you could ever need, Brenda had it, including snacks of all kinds. Maggie told her that the boy in the frozen yogurt parking lot who had tried to snatch her purse probably couldn’t have lifted it anyway.
As far as Maggie was concerned the two of them were a perfect pair. Maggie always felt so safe with Brenda around. Just last month, when a creepy-looking man had shown up at an open house because he had liked Maggie’s photo in an ad, Brenda had picked him up and thrown him out the front door. Other than Hazel, Brenda was the most capable woman Maggie had ever known. She just hoped Brenda wouldn’t be too upset at her leaving her in the lurch at work, but it was really only a matter of time. Theirs was the last of the Red Mountain Realty offices that had not been shut down, and it was sure to be bought up by one of the larger companies any day now. Maggie wouldn’t be surprised if it was Babs Bingington’s company, and she was just as glad not to be around when that happened. The way Babs hated her, she was sure to be fired on the spot.
Of course, she should have quit real estate after Hazel died, but at the time, everybody on Team Hazel vowed to carry on out of loyalty; as the business got worse, however, people started to leave. Now there were only three of the original team left: Ethel, Brenda, and herself. Maggie figured that Brenda would be leaving real estate soon to run for mayor, but thank heavens, she hadn’t left yet. Brenda was the only person who could still make her laugh.
Last St. Patrick’s Day, Brenda had come into the office dressed entirely in green-green dress, green shoes, green wig-and had held out her arm to Maggie and asked, “What color would you say I was?”
Maggie looked at Brenda’s arm. “Oh, I don’t know, sort of brown?”
“I know that! What sort of brown?”
Maggie looked again. “Well, maybe reddish brown?”
Brenda was delighted with the answer. “That’s what I think! Reddish brown! Mother was more caramel, and Daddy was dark brown, but I’m more of a reddish color, aren’t I?”
“I would say so. Yes.”
“I want one of those DNA tests. I’ve got some freckles; who knows? There could be an Irishman in the woodpile somewhere.”
Brenda had such a good sense of humor about herself-a trait you more or less had to have if you worked for Hazel. Brenda and Hazel had a lot in common on that score. In Brenda’s lifetime, she had gone from being Colored to Negro to Black, and now African American, and it was a running joke between them. Hazel would come in the door and ask Brenda how she was feeling today, and Brenda would say, “Well, I felt very black yesterday, but today I’m feeling a little colored. How about you?” Hazel would think and say, “I think I’m feeling a little more short-statured than height-challenged today.”
Brenda always said to the new people, when they were surprised at some of Hazel’s humor, “She may not be politically correct, but she’s hired more minorities than any other company in town.”
Maggie had hoped to drop a hint while they were preparing the food platters, but when Brenda arrived at the open house, she was in such a state that she couldn’t. Evidently, something had happened to her favorite purse, the one with twenty-seven secret compartments she had ordered from the TravelSmith catalog, and as they were putting out the wine and cheese, Brenda was going on and on about it. “I could just cry. The whole inside was ruined, and I had to throw it out in the garbage.” Maggie was still somewhat confused about the details and asked her why there was a pint of ice cream in her purse in the first place. Brenda made a face. “Oh, you don’t want to know.”