I Still Dream About You: A Novel

334 Pages·2010·1.15 MB·English

by  Fannie Flagg

ALSO BY FANNIE FLAGG
Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven
A Redbird Christmas
Standing in the Rainbow
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
(originally published as Coming Attractions)

I Still Dream About You is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Flagg, Fannie.
I still dream about you: a novel / Fannie Flagg.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60404-4
1. Women real estate agents—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3.
Alabama—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.L26I3 2010 813′.54—dc22 2010036232
www.atrandom.com
v3.1
For Jonni Hartman-Rogers, my friend and press agent for over thirty years, with
love and gratitude
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: September 1955
Epigraph
The Big Decision: Monday, October 27, 2008
Something to Look Forward To
The Ice Cream Incident
Upon Further Reflection
The Lady with the Frozen Arm
Meanwhile, Back at Avon Terrace
So Rare: 1965
The Purple Flash: Monday, October 27, 2008, Midnight
The Beast
Sleepless in Mountain Brook
Hazel Whisenknott Begins: September 21, 1929
Good Timing: Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Growing Up in Dreamland
Another New Day
The Perfect Plan
Magic City
The Open House
Another Unexpected Perk
Political Aspirations
What Had Possessed Her?
Meeting a Friend: 1990
Why Babs Hated Maggie
Making Arrangements: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Dropping a Hint
What Was Bothering Brenda
Maggie’s Rehearsal
The Beauty and the Beast: Thursday, October 30, 2008
Ethel Is Aggravated
What Babs Had Done
T.G.I.F: Friday, October 31, 2008
So Much Hope
Meanwhile, Back in New York
Audrey and the Panty Hose: Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Night-Before Preparations
Why Ethel Hated Babs
The Night of the Whirling Dervishes: Sunday, November 2, 2008
D-Day: Monday, November 3, 2008
Meeting Mrs. Dalton: Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Crestview Begins: Birmingham, Alabama, 1887
Congratulations All Around: Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Big Caper
Another Big Puzzle: Thursday, November 6, 2008
A Crocker Family History
A Lost Object: Saturday, November 8, 2008
The Man on the Wall: Monday, November 10, 2008
Edward Crocker Begins: 1884
A Hard Sale: Mid-November 2008
Officially on the Market: November 23, 2008
Crestview: Birmingham, 1935
Time on Her Hands: Friday, November 28, 2008
Miss Edwina Crocker: London, England, 1920
The Humdrum Motel: Friday, December 5, 2008
A Bad Day: Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Brenda Reflects: Friday, December 19, 2008
Chicago: 1975
Another Side to the Story
’Twas the Day before Christmas: Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas, Maggie: Thursday, December 25, 2008
Woman Scorned: Monday, December 29, 2008
Blast from the Past: Monday, January 19, 2009
Ready to Leave (Again): Saturday, January 31, 2009
Brenda Gets a Surprise: February 2009
The Kate Spade Affair: 8:57 A.M. March 15
It’s Good to Have a Sister
Gus’s Famous Hot Dogs: Early April 2009
Is It Real or Is It Memorex?: April 12, 2009
Home for Good
More Revelations: Friday, April 24, 2009
What the Fly on the Wall Saw: Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22, 1884
Returning Home to Crestview: Scotland, 1946
Beauty Secrets: Friday, May 1, 2009
A Message from Mitzi: Friday, May 22, 2009
Certain Arrangements
Epilogue: A few years later
About the Author
Prologue
September 1955
I
T’S FUNNY WHAT A PERSON WILL REMEMBER SO MANY YEARS LATER; what sticks in
your mind and what doesn’t. Whenever he thought back to the year he had
worked at the Western Union office, he remembered that little girl.
At the time, the entire city of Birmingham was surrounded by a number of
smaller suburban neighborhoods, each with its own name and shopping area.
Most had two or three churches, a drugstore, a grammar school and high school,
a bank, a Masonic hall, a J. C. Penney’s, and a movie theater.
In East Lake, where he worked, the Dreamland Theatre sat directly across the
street from the Western Union office, between the barbershop and the grocery
store. He had been sitting at his desk, looking out the window, when he had
noticed the pretty brown-haired girl in a green plaid dress. She was the tallest of
the three or four little girls walking home from school together that afternoon. It
wasn’t an unusual sight to see groups of kids going by that time of day. He was
used to that, but just as they passed the barbershop, the tall girl stopped in front
of the theater, waved goodbye to her friends, then turned and walked inside the
two big glass doors and disappeared into the lobby.
Dreamland didn’t open until seven P.M. on weeknights, and he wondered what
she was doing going into an empty movie theater all by herself. He even thought
about walking across the street to check on her, but a few minutes later, a light
came on in a second-floor window, next to the big neon sign, and he could see
the silhouettes of a woman and the girl walking back and forth, so he assumed
she must belong there.
But still, every afternoon after that, when he wasn’t busy, he would look over
to make sure she’d made it home safely, and eventually, right before she went
inside, she would turn and shyly wave at him, and he would wave back.
About three months later, he was shipped off to serve in the army, and by the
time he got back to the Western Union office, the theater had closed down for
good, and he never saw her again.
He had six granddaughters of his own now, but to this day, he still wondered
what ever happened to the pretty little girl who had lived upstairs in Dreamland.