THE QUEEN OF THE SKIES

Old houses creaked. Settled. They groaned with the wind-weathered voice of decades--but never with the voice of actual words. However, as Tina sat reading June’s edition of Better Homes and Gardens in the stately living room of the turn-of-the-century mansion she and her family called their Trinidad, Colorado home—Tina could overhear, coming from upstairs, the sound of her daughter conversing with the house.

It spoke with the voice of a woman.

Tina recalled that daytime talk show she had watched the week earlier telling of how imaginary friends were “normal” for a child Kyra’s age.

The voice, though faint, and indistinct, sounded real enough, surely not a voice that the high-pitched vocal-chords of a five-year-old could ever mimic.

The word escaped Tina’s lips, “Haunted…”

Either that, or Kyra had her tablet set on max volume. Or was it just her imagination, or the wind? It was an old house.

Tina wondered if she should chance steps up the creaky stairwell to the third floor and go have a look. Slowly, she stood.

Hearing the sound of giggles, she froze in mid-step.

Tina eased a smile. “Kyra’s having fun watching a video or something on her tablet,” she said, all but convincing herself with the forced resolution in her voice. She fell back with a thump onto the sofa cushions. “She’ll be down in a few minutes for dinner. I’ll ask her then.” Running a hand through her curly, black hair, Tina admired the brass chandelier over-top the foyer that had survived two world wars and eye-witnessed Trinidad’s glory days as frontier town then Sex Change Capital of the World. Smiling at the irony, Tina quickly lost the thought, and herself, as she returned to her magazine article about the restoration of the decorative railings and gingerbread trim-work of Victorian era porches.

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"You have to pick up the stick up without moving the other sticks," the woman chided Kyra, the words reverberating up the troweled plaster walls to settle under the sloped ceiling of the small, third-story chamber.

Kyra had never played this game before. She thought it was fun, especially when all the other sticks came toppling down whenever you picked up the wrong stick.

"But that's called losing," the woman told Kyra, even as the young girl removed a stick at the bottom of the pile that sent the whole pile tumbling. "The point of Pick-up Sticks is to win."

Stretching her black-and-yellow hockey jersey to its fullest length then sandwiching it under her holey jeans and the oaken floorboards, Kyra asked if they could play again. The woman said this was their fourth game in a row. Maybe they might like to play something else. The woman's emerald eyes took on a shine as she recalled the games she had played as a child, "Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey … jacks … hopscotch…”

Kyra stuttered, "What's p-pin the tail on the donkey?"

The woman frowned. "Why, dear, surely you are joking? You must've played this game before. All children have." From her cross-legged position on the floor, the woman craned her long, graceful neck to venture a glance around the room: at the bureau, curtains, bed, the closet filled with clothes...her bureau, her curtains, the Townsend’s bed, the Townsend’s closet filled with her clothes: dresses, shawls, shoes, and that tomato-stained apron the Townsends had been shrewd enough to deduct out of her own paycheck. Nothing here, she concluded, that could be employed as potential toy.

"I've got a better idea," the woman said, not ready to relinquish conversation and leave unanswered the few questions she had concerning this little girl and her presence in her room, and her million questions otherwise. "How about—" the woman’s tallish form with gangly grace jostled about on the floorboards as she looked at the girl "—we play doll house? Have you any dolls?"

"D-Dolls?" Kyra said the word with evident distaste.

The woman exclaimed, "What? Don't like dolls? That’s un-American. What would your good President Mr. Lyndon B. Johnson think of a child who didn’t like dolls?”

Kyra jumped to her feet, her blond curls flailing. Shrugging her shoulder until it met the level of her nose, she stretched her arm, curling it down and up, down and up. She exclaimed, “What animal am I? Guess!”

The woman curved a smile. “Why, I’d say you’re an elephant.”

Kyra giggled. She twisted her lip, thinking. She began to flap her arms. “What am I now?”

The woman’s smile faltered as she beheld the spectacle. She said, flatly, softly, “You’re a pilot.”

“Wrong!” Kyra laughed.

The woman shuddered. Why had she said that, a pilot? She knew why. It was right there on the tip of her tongue. She said, “It’s because… ” But the inkling faded. Of course she knew what this flapping represented. It was—

“A bird, silly,” Kyra said.

The woman sighed. She shifted her legs around underneath her. She wanted to so much ask if they might just have a nice long chat: How about an hour-long session of Q&A? the woman was tempted to ask.

Question #1: Was this her room, indeed? Yes, it must be.

Question #2: Why was she here playing games with this girl? But that was a silly question. She lived here!

At wits end, the woman proposed, "What do you want to play, then? What game might you suggest?"

"I wanna play video games."

The woman knitted her brows. "Why," she said, "I've never heard of that game before. Does it involve running?" Kyra shook her head. "Hiding and seeking?" Kyra said no. "Might it involve matchsticks, marbles, jump rope? The clapping of hands maybe?" Kyra shook her head. "My, this video game doesn't sound like very much fun at all!" The woman’s shoulders slumped "Well, maybe you and I can just gaze out of the window for a good long while.” Under her breath she said, “Or have a nice long chat."

"A video game," Kyra insisted. "Like Minecraft or Plants vs. Zombies."

"Child, what ever are you talking about?"

Kyra sniffled. "You've never played Minecraft? It's fun. I'll teach you how to play." She scanned the empty room. "We don't have a TV in here, so we'll have to go downstairs to play." Kyra thought for a moment. She smiled. "Unless, well, I bring my Xbox One console with wireless controllers and gaming headset up here—"

"Child, child, you speak in tongues. Slow down. I can hardly understand a word of what you say."

Kyra’s blue eyes peered out from under their canopy of willowy blond curls. Shyly, she asked, "Did I frighten you when I came in earlier, Miss Lady?"

The woman smiled. "Mae," she corrected. “Call me Mae.” She looked down at herself, noticing for the first time her unusual attire. "Or at least, that was my name the last time I checked!"

Exhaling with impassioned sighs into a state of reflection, with a far-off look, Mae said, "It was like I was in a dark, far-off place, and then I heard someone call for me. I was awakened." Mae returned her sights to the girl. "You may call me Auntie Mae, if you'd like. And, yes, child, you did frighten me a bit."

"What were you doing over there by that door right ‘afore I called you?"

Mae hesitated. "I, er…” she stammered. “Well, child," she said, regaining control of her voice and angling a look down at the sweater and slacks which covered her person,."Judging by this itchy bathrobe I’ve got on…” Or is it a sweater, Mae wondered, it looks like a sweater. Nope, Mae encouraged herself, it’s a robe, it’s gotta be. How could it not be? She cleared her throat. “Judging by this bathrobe I’ve got on, it would appear that I was about to take a shower!"

"But there’s no shower here on the third floor. The shower is downstairs on the second floor."

Mae said nothing, only stared at the child in amazement. She said, "So it was you who called me, then. Oh, I thought so, I had hoped so. You asked…if you could help me, was that it?”

"I said…" the girl clarified, "what I said was—may I help you? Once, see…" Kyra sent pockets of dust into the air as she scraped her clogs against the floorboards in an effort to reposition herself. "A stranger came to our door, and Mommy asked him 'May I help you’? Those are the magic words you’re supposed to say to strangers when they come visit."

Mae chuckled her agreement. "Yes. And I, too, am such an individual, so you imagine?"

The girl fumbled one of the toothpicks. She snuck it between her teeth, clamped down on it.

Mae peered in. “Those Pick-up Sticks are for playing, dear, not eating.” Or was it a toothpick the girl had in her mouth, not a game piece.

Mae stiffened. Her head spun. She tried to concentrate. She closed her eyes, tightly. At length, she opened them.

Blinking away the sunlight and the un-swept clutter in her mind, Mae focused her attention on the smallish form reposing Indian-style in front of her.

“Child, might I ask,” she said, “where I am? I mean, this place here? Is this the hospice? Did they relocate me because of my atherosclerosis?"

The girl looked down at the toothpicks in her hands. "It's our home," she mumbled. She looked up. "Is looking out the window your favorite game, Auntie Mae?"

“Auntie Mae, Auntie Mae… Who is this…Auntie Mae?” Mae furrowed her brow.

Whirling her long, slender finger to make circles in the dust, she went on, “And why, yes, child, dare I say that gazing out the window is a favorite pastime of mine." Mae sided a glance. She beheld, again, that window framed into the east wall of the room—a window unlike any other. Just to see it sent shivers up her spine. Her heart began to patter, her thoughts to race. She wasn’t sure why.

Why, my window at the hospice is much bigger and nicer than this small, boxy setup here, she speculated. Calming her nerves with a slow and gracious folding of the hands, Mae said, "Why, back in The Springs, I used to spend entire days gazing out of my bay window at Pikes Peak." The woman curved a satisfied smile. "It's rather the thing to do when you've got nothing better to do."

Kyra said, "I don't wanna look out the window. It's boring."

"Why, child, you'll never grow up to shine with the stars, as has yours truly, with an attitude like that! Patience is a virtue. Didn’t Shirley Maclaine once say…?" Something atop the nearby bureau caught the woman's eye. She rubbed her reddened eyes. Looked over. It was her flowered cloche hat, the one she had worn to…the ’62 World’s Fair? That’s right. She rose, stumbled to the bureau, took hat in hand then sat cross-legged alongside the girl again.

"You see this?" She showed her the hat. "Well, these flowers, to be sure, took many months to grow. What variety of flower are they? Hmmm, they're, well, this one looks to be a tulip—" she pointed "—and lilacs, and this one's a daisy."

Mae studied the hat. "Just like the flowers take time to blossom, we too must be patient." Mae stirred. She looked again at the hat. She frowned. The hat wasn’t there.

"I don't see anything," Kyra said, in a tired voice. "Are we playing make believe again, like just earlier when we were playing invisible checkers?"

"Child, don't you see what it means to be patient?"

The girl protested, "I don't see flowers, or a hat. You're holding in your hand a bunch of nothing." She rose to her feet.

Mae exclaimed, "Wait, where are you going?"

"Mommy said that I could play upstairs until five o'clock, then I have to come down for dinner. See...?" Kyra raised her arm to display what appeared to be a wristwatch—one with glowing green numbers on its face in place of minute and hour arms "The first number says five, and the second says zero-zero. That means five o'clock." Kyra waved. "Bye, Auntie Mae."

"Bye, child," the woman said, craning her neck to peer into the hallway. She heard the patter of the child’s footsteps as she made her way down the long spiral staircase.

At length, silence. And a world of questions left unanswered.

Mae placed a hand over her mouth. "Oh dear," she said, with wide eyes. “Why do I have the sneaking feeling this might not be my room at all?”

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Mae sighed. "They’ve relocated me, then," she said, motioning to tie then tighten some unseen something around her waist. “From the hospice to here, in some private home.” She glanced at the free-swinging chimer on the wall. "But that's not the only thing that’s wacky." Pacing in circles around the area rug at the center of the room, she halted. "The child says five o'clock, time for dinner, and yet..." Mae squinted at the clock. "It's morning. Six a.m.."

Mae took a deep breath.

"Video games," she wheezed, taking heavy steps to ease herself gently onto her bed. She lay on the floor.

She allowed her sights to wander to the wardrobe closet. “No, wait. This is my room. Of course it is.”

Was it, though? Her mind was a kaleidoscope of jumbled thoughts and considerations as she was quickly on her feet again, pacing.

It helped her the better to think.

Exhibit A: clothing closet. She eyed the blouses, aprons, homemade dresses, silk slips, the eclectic collection of shoes and boots, all showcasing like long-lost friends through the open bi-fold doors. The cloche hat with the flowers on it, which the child said she couldn't see—there it was, dangling on the hat-rack in all of its fresh, blossomy glory.

She cocked her head in speculation. “But those aren’t my clothes,” she said. “This sweater here—” with wrinkled fingers she plucked a speck of lint off of her sleeve “—is all that I ever wear out nowadays. Along with these slacks that Dottie said she’d purchased for me at Target.”

Mae stopped pacing. Target? What in tarnation is that?

She set a hand to her forehead in an attempt to stop the spinning, the aching, the confusion, to make sure her brains were all still there or to get the cogs inside of it to wheel around better.

She concluded, “Yes, of course, those are my clothes. Why, even this robe here…”

Or was it a sweater she had on? She wasn’t sure.

Reciting a meditation she had learned as a child before the war, she was able to settle her burgeoning nerves to the point, at least, that she no longer felt it necessary to recite meditations.

"The girl," she mused, reseating herself on a mattress so firm and uncompromising that it felt like wood planks underneath her. "The one who just visited me. Glowing wrist-gadgets, doesn’t like dolls, and such strange dress: jeans with holes and tears, and a t-shirt with an imprint striped across the front of some ball-team from the moon called the Penguins.” Mae rubbed her aching legs. "Who is she? This must be her home—yes, in fact she said those very words 'This is our home'." Mae's eyes grew large. "Her home?” she exclaimed. “But this is my room.”

Or was it?

Raising up on roughened, pinkened elbows, Mae ventured a look through the open door into the hallway.

With her heart pounding, she said, “You heard the girl's steps go down a staircase. There are lower levels to this place, then, and other folk, surely, who will be downstairs."

Mae breathed easy. "One thing at a time," she told herself, even as a stab of pain hit her in the chest. Groaning, she clutched at her heart. It was a false alarm. “Fit as a fiddle, I am,” she encouraged herself. “Just a wee bit of fibrillation.”

That helped Mae to relax. With long, drawn-out sighs, she lay back on the bed with its inexplicably hard mattress. "I find myself...” she informed the ceiling “…in a strange room furnished all old-fashioned-like. Old stuff that I myself, coincidentally, used to own. The room appears strangely familiar, like something out of a distant memory, as if maybe…” Maybe what? Mae didn’t know: the thought had escaped her. In an effort to recapture the thought, she made a quick checklist of what she saw:

"No BP or oxygen equipment," she observed, rolling over on her side to get a better look. "On that nightstand over there no medication for my atherosclerosis. Actually, that's not a nightstand, looks more like a writing desk. There’s the nightstand," Mae said, pointing. "And a clock with actual arms on it, thank goodness! Nope,” she concluded. “Definitely not my room at The Springs Hospice."

With bones crackling and nerves singing, Mae rolled herself over. Her thoughts refusing to lie still along with the rest of her, after a moment’s pause, she continued: “I am met by a child who insists this is her home. My old hat makes an appearance after a five-decade absence. The youngster sees things that I don't, and I, that she does not. Most unsettling of all though…" she trained her eyes off to the side "…isn’t the room.” She squinted. “It’s that window!" Mae closed her eyes. "I know this place," she shuddered. She reached for the covers—then stopped.

On the other side of the room, on the backside of the door that led out into the hallway, Mae spotted a full-length mirror. Oh, how fortunate! Her lipstick had surely smudged by now. She required it of herself to always check her dentures for red smudges. She probably looked ghastly what with that long bus ride and all. She sure felt ghastly.

Oh, and didn’t her arthritis hurt like blazes as she dragged her weary old bones across the area rug. “Boo!” she surprised the mirrored-image by declaring. It took a few moments for her failing vision to adjust, but once it did, she could hardly believe what she saw.

It was a woman. A strange, beguiling, beautiful woman with soft blond hair, wrinkle-free skin, and bright blue eyes; a woman who “could steal the hearts of an entire generation of peace-loving, sex-crazed Boomers.”

“Not could.” Mae curved a smile. “Did.”

This was no mystery woman. It was Ardie May.

Ardie May, no doubt, though, long before the bright lights, curtain calls, dinner parties, red carpets, long before her Oscar-winning performance in Amelia: Queen of the Skies, long before Brando with his charm and his red Ferrari. “But I’m so…” she could hardly frame the word she was trembling so; until finally the word fell out of her mouth like Amelia’s Lockheed descending like a bat out of hell through a summer sky

“…young!”

Breath failed her. As did bladder, which voided, and not just because of what she saw, but heard. Voices from downstairs. One of the voices sounded like that of a long dead someone. Whom she knew? Had known?

A friend. No, an old associate, acquaintance? An employer, maybe?

Shivers ran down her spine. She had not heard that voice in a very long time.

The name Lenny—no, Henry—Townsend, popped into her mind. But who was he? She almost had it, it was right there on the edge of her memory…

Townsend…Townsend…

She shimmied her pant leg to flap some of the wetness out, and in an attempt to recall who Lenny—no, Henry—Townsend was, rubbed her forehead, just as Aladdin had rubbed something-or-other in that old story about the Magic Cat—or was it a Magic Lamp? She couldn’t remember which. Everything was so hazy.

Oh, and she had such a headache!

With her thoughts spinning, and an uncomfortable wetness rankling her left thigh, Mae swooned, gritted her teeth, and grunted, as she swam in vain through the murkiness of memory. Nothing was coming clear. She removed her hand from her forehead, opened her eyes.

The room.

It was empty. Bare.

Complete and utter whitewash.

No mirror, no bed, no clothing closet, no blue-and-white abstract composition area rug. Nothing but dusty floorboards, cobwebby corners, scuffed white walls and…

…a window.

Which meant something. But what? Something having to do with maybe…a long bus ride?

Oh, but bus rides are such tenebrous things, she thought. She had been a passenger on a thousand-or-more buses in her lifetime, and to sort out in her mind the special from the un-special from the ultra-special would, in her present state, she reckoned—even as she stumbled back to the center of the room to lay down—be on the level of some impossible task like dancing, checkers, or counting to one-hundred.

With the sense of dizziness not only persisting, but increasing, she jettisoned the thought. Huddled in a fetal position, she cradled a hand underneath her head to pad it against the woody hardness.

Through slit eyes she noticed a cockroach scurrying into a hole in the drywall. Her wheezing exhalations sent eddies of dust spiraling into the stale air.

Another eddy of dust sent spiraling, Mae said, "Those meds at the hospice I made off with before the hour of my departure are making me see things that aren't there, things that once were. Either that…" she curled her arms tighter around her folded knees "…or I've been kidnapped by aliens. Remember Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds?” she asked herself. She smiled despite her knee, back, leg, neck and head pain.

Mae’s smile broadened. “Oh, and what a grand performance that had been, too. Good ol’ Orson, and his alien friends. Fairly good performer in the sack, too. Though not nearly as good as Brando!”

Mae clenched her fists then clamped her eyelids shut as tightly as sore muscle and wrenched tendon would allow.

At length she concluded that it was all just some vivid dream she was having, that she would wake up soon enough to another humdrum day at The Springs Hospice with its view of Pikes Peak, to caretaker Dottie, and to her oxygen concentrator that she never thought she would miss so much. All was well. Bingo would start in an hour down in the lounge. So imagining, she fell asleep.

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Radiant beams of sunlight blazoned the lacy edges of the velour curtains; and in streaming past them, illuminated to glowing the nightstand, writing desk, standing lamp, and the brass bed. The mid-summer rays canvassed the entirety of the small, third-story chamber with atmospheric gold.

It was morning.

Again.

Opening her eyes, Mae reached furled hands to the ceiling and yawned. She swung her legs out from underneath the covers and hopped out of bed.

It was six a.m.

She didn’t even require that alarm clock beside her bed to tell her this, as her internal clock was as good as any mechanical one. No clamoring bells, either.

The Townsends had been her employers for just over a week. Still, the endless routine of nearly two decades of employ at various mansions in the Southwest had imprinted upon her own inner clockwork the precise wakeup time: six a.m.. That’s when the wealthy folk of the land required their breakfasts of salmon, poached eggs, and for dinner—and sometimes breakfast!—wine, always wine, and always white. “Though, maybe this MLK guy will one day put an end to all of that,” she smirked. Well into her thirties, Mae had experienced her fair share of early-morning wake-ups.

Fair share of heartache, too.

So often she would groan, “Oh, but why couldn’t it be midday, noon, or six p.m.!” as now she did, stretching on her stockings. At heart, she had always been a night owl.

With slow, graceless strides Mae ambled her way to the door: it was like she was on autopilot, so unwavering was her step to the mirror. Same routine. Every morning. No lipstick on her teeth, that was good. Granted she didn’t wear lipstick to bed. Still, no harm in checking. Oh, and that mole above her lip, she hated it so. However, didn’t everyone refer to it a beauty mark?

She smiled at her reflection. “All in all, I’m rather striking, aren’t I? I mean…for a maid!” Tying back her long blond hair into a bun, with a wink and a smile, she said, “These Colorado boys don’t know what they’re missing!”

Step Two of morning preparations involved milling about the walk-in closet. She stepped over to it. In a single motion she untied her nightgown and, yanking open the bi-fold doors, reached for her bathrobe. Donning bathrobe, and with her mind wandering, she chided Helen and Henry for the limitations they placed on her free-time activities. Oh, these live-in deals were the pits!

Well, one good thing at least. They did allow her Tuesday evenings to go hang out on the north-side with her best friend, Claire. Oh, and wouldn’t she and Claire have it made in the shade this Tuesday, chatting and sipping Coca-Cola through straws while watching old movies on the black-and-white. This Tuesday’s showcase would be some Film Noir with Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas. Chats and Coca-Cola with Claire on the billiards-room couch at the McCormick mansion was one of the highlights of her week. Claire, of course, had studied drama alongside her. University of New Mexico, Class of ’51.

Knotting the strands of her bathrobe, Mae mused, "Claire knows all the lines, but she can’t pull them off herself. Her delivery—so awkward, no actor’s timing whatsoever. Maybe that’s why she finished with only a 3.1 GPA.”

Mae sighed.

She herself had graduated Summa Cum Laude and could perform even the most dramatic scene with all of the poise and sublimity of a Grace Kelly.

But the school of hard knocks and the demands of everyday life had since left her with little option but to toil with dustpan, bedpan and spatula. Her childhood dream to become an actress once and for all kicked the bucket with that phone call from her mother to inform her that her father had kicked the bucket, finally, from cirrhosis, leaving in his will little for them, and much for the Shriner's. Mae was forced then to find employment in the blue-collar realm allotted to all women of her generation: waitressing, and house maids. Hollywood was never even an option. And the Townsends—God bless them—didn’t help matters, either. They were forever stuck in “Leave it to Beaver” mode. Movies were off limits. They were evil, profane.

All of a sudden, Mae didn’t feel much like getting dressed, or frying eggs for Mr. Townsend, or dusting the curtains for the missus.

Speaking of curtains…

Weren’t her own rather pretty? Sure, the Townsends had all but barricaded her in this fortress of solitude, and yet it was a fortress not without its advantages. The cobalt-blue curtains were velour—a fabric that was all the rage nowadays—yet still retained the flavor of nostalgia with their lacy edges and gilded embroidery.

The woman walked with her arm outstretched, her fingers exploring.

She declared, “Oh, how soft and velvety!” The thought came to her, then, “National Velvet. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney.” Mae paused. Her wandering thoughts led her sights to the window. “Oh, and what a lovely mountain view!” Was it because she had been in Las Animas County for only a three-and-a-half weeks and over that time so busy with household tasks that she had failed to notice this beautiful view featuring Trinidad’s historic downtown area back-dropped by desert and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains?

It was the whole of the Purgatoire River Valley she saw laid out before her.

Then she noticed something else, and which over the minutes following would rock her like Beatlemania. Raising her field of vision with a subtle lift of her chin, she beheld…

The nothingness.

It was a sky clearer and bluer than any she had ever seen before. Unobstructed by that scatter of elm trees Mr. Townsend had the week earlier removed with his trusty ax, it was a sky that seemed to stretch off into eternity. She noticed a speck of metal floating silently through it like a silvery fish in an ocean. An airplane. Oh, how she loved to fly; and how she so wished she could fly on her own. Her father had escorted her quite a few times in his Cessna 172. All of a sudden there was no toast to butter, no armoires to buff, no Townsends to have to deal with. Only another world to gaze into.

Only an opportunity to daydream.

Mae slipped into a state of reverie. As her mind probed its slow, wandering way into, and through, the blue nothingness, she noticed she was no longer gazing into a sky, but down a portal into her own past.

Seconds turned into minutes.

The minutes piled up on top of one another.

Mae stayed her sights on the vacuous blueness stretched out before her and upon which her ruminations pranced, whirled, and wandered. She watched life, nature, time, timelessness, the world, the universe, happen. Mae’s thoughts reeled. As her callused fingers would wring out a dishrag so her thoughts wrung out all of the distractive elements of her retrospection, until at last, freed of them, she was able to discover what it was she had been looking for.

It was her fifteen-year-old self that Mae invariably saw: starry-eyed, idealistic, fiery—like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, sans horse. However, did she really need such things as horses or carriages while she soared on these wings of memory?

Out of this re-envisioned past fluttered a medley of long-forgotten feelings, memories, and faded dreams—and one dream in particular, but that now appeared as clear as a Southern Colorado sky…

She had an idea, suddenly.

It was all so clear in her mind, the details concerning this idea and how it would all work out—so terribly, fearfully clear. She thought, and thought, and reminisced, and trembled all over with excitement.

How was it she had never thought of it before?

Five minutes later the call came.

“Oh, new girl…!” the ballyhooing voice careened up the stairwell. The voice bellowed again, louder, harsher, this time, “We’ve been waiting for our breakfasts for fifteen whole minutes. You’re not down here in five, we’re gettin’ ourselves to a diner and shipping you out the front door!"

It was the voice of the missus, of old Mrs. Townsend.

Mae snapped out of her reverie. "I'll be down in a minute!" she hollered, panic-stricken, "Oh, dear," she thought as she shed her robe and reached for her blouse. "Already got on the missus’s bad side yesterday by folding the towels lengthwise instead of sideways, and now I’ll make her miss breakfast. I haven’t even taken a shower yet!”

Still Mae had the irresistible urge to stay put at her window. If only for one last look, one last reflection, to, if nothing else, brand a kind of officiality into this wonderful idea she had. Her stockinged feet stayed rooted to the area rug.

Like those whitetail deer that would get caught in the headlights of her 56’ Chevy Bel Air on her late-night drives back from the McCormick mansion, dumbstruck, she tried to concentrate. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could.

Moments later, she opened them.

The curtains were gone. The carpet was gone. Her bed was gone. Everything, the whole setup…gone. This wasn’t her room in the hospice, that was for darn sure. Where was she, then?

Mae noticed a window. That window.

She leveled her sights.

Oh, thank heavens! There it was, and so everything would be all right, forever alright!

All right? Everything? But why?

Mae cradled her head in her hands; her thoughts were all here and there. She had such a headache, it was intolerable.

She took a deep breath.

Then, suddenly, Mae knew where she was.

Repeating her response to that interviewer from People magazine back in the 80s, she muttered, “Far, far from the madding crowd. I should like to be there always. Or at least one more time, for old time’s sake,”

She heard a clamoring from down the stairwell then a woman’s voice beckon, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Mrs. Townsend?

Mae reminded herself that the missus had died of emphysema back in ’67. She mumbled, “Wasn’t Claire the one who’d read that obituary in The Chronicle News then telephoned to tell me about it while I was on the set of Purple Haze and Patchouli?”

The stricken appeals from downstairs grew louder. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Mae yelped in response, “Yes, yes!” as she attempted to button the front of her work blouse.

Oh, but it was already buttoned. No, wait—it was a sweater she had on. She closed her eyes. The headache that rumbled through her skull reminded her of the rusty muffler on her Chevy Bel Air as it coughed its way up the hilly streets of this lonely, old town she now called home. She opened her eyes. She called in a faltering voice, “Yes, I’m c-coming, Missus. Quite!”

Mae rushed to grab her work apron—but it wasn’t there. She grabbed at her maid’s bonnet—she seized upon nothing, and was a whirlwind out the door.

The hallway was long. The carpet was, well, there was no carpet. Nothing but dusty, creaky-looking floorboards. Strange. Mae meandered a swerving path until she made it to the end of the hallway and the top of the stairwell. Only her liver-spotted hand that she placed on the banister prevented a catastrophic collapse onto the dreggy floorboards. She peered down the stairwell. It spiraled down, ever downward. She felt dizzy. Nauseous. Like collapsing.

Like dying…

Mae lost her balance then fell to one knee.

“Ah, horsefeathers,” She looked down to assess the damage. Bruise to the shin, no doubt. Also, her shoelace was untied. No, wait, socks on; socks only.

She heard slow, apprehensive steps creak up the stairwell.

She said, in the direction of the steps, “Oh, I’m not too late, am I, Missus? Just on my way to get those eggs all cooked for you. Sunny-side-up, I know. Toast with marmalade jam on the side and light on the butter. Oh, please, don’t inconvenience yourselves with a trip to that greasy-spoon diner…”

She heard a female voice that was wholly unfamiliar. Its mumbles emanated up the stairwell from the floor below. It spoke as if debating with itself.

With bated breath, Mae said, “Mrs. Townsend?” Her heart jack-hammered within its framework of osteoporosis-smitten bones. Her head spun.

And continued to spin, whirl, and reel, until something happened. Clarity.

The light of understanding shown in Mae’s eyes. She smiled. The peace in knowing she had achieved her goal of making it here and that hers was a life well lived helped her to relax the muscles in her face. Her whole body relaxed, went limp. She slumped to the floor. It didn’t matter if it was Mrs. Townsend or not. Nothing mattered. Not anymore.

The window. She had seen it!

​

*      *      *

​

“Will she be alright?” Kyra asked the officer, tugging at the blue button-down that reeled in his capacious midsection.

Detective Taggert scribbled the word “prodigious” on his notepad. “Sure, she’ll be alright. As right as rain.” He glanced over to meet the pained expression on Tina Hudson’s face which asked if the officer might mean “acid” rain.

Taggert clarified, his voice more official-sounding, “The body will be dealt with properly, Mrs. Hudson. She’ll have a good Christian burial. In that regard, at least, everything’ll be alrighty.”

Kyra said, “Is that why she snuck outta the old-folks home, Mom? To have a funeral?”

Detective Taggert exchanged glances with Tina Hudson. He grunted as he squatted his already squat figure. Knees popping, he stooped to the level of the girl. “Sort of,” he said. “It’s what she wanted, something she’d often spoke about with her friends at the hospice—about comin’ back over here, to have one last look outta that special window of hers.”

Standing, Taggert said to Rita, “She had stage six dementia, Mrs. Hudson. It’s a progressive illness, and that started gettin’ real bad for Ms. May. I think that was why she decided to sneak out those few extra doses of Memantine. The Memantine gave her the physical strength and the mental clarity she’d need to escape, make it all the way over here from Colorado Springs, find her way into your house and up all them stairs. Until the effects of the Memantine started to wear off, and on top of that she had heart problems.”

“John and I always told ourselves…we live in the outskirts of a town in the middle of nowhere, why lock the doors?”

The detective’s earnest nods made his double chin appear only more obvious. “A miracle, it was,” he said. “Not only for her to travel all that way over here, but to sneak in and climb all them stairs.” In obsequious display he directed glances this way and that: at the paneled stairwell, the un-sanded oak floors, the chandelier, the hand-carved mantelpiece above the fireplace, the elegant beamed ceiling. “She used to live here, you know. Knew the place well enough, even, to know about that secret back entrance.”

Tina exclaimed, “We didn’t even know about that secret back entrance. That is, until your deputy told us.”

The detective clicked his pen. Flipping a page in his notepad, he scribbled something. He raised his balding head. “Doctors at the clinic said her mind had been goin’ for some time. Once her meds wore off, she was probably havin’ delusions, illusions, protrusions, confusions, contusions, hallucinations, you name it.” The officer grew wistful. “Poor, wretched, courageous, wonderful old Ardie.”

Kyra brightened. “Her name was Ardie, Mom?”

Smiling, Tina nodded.

The detective cleared his throat. “Ardie May was actually her stage name. She assumed that name back in ’65 for her role in, oh, what was the name of that TV show? Anyway, her real name was Mae Sutherland.”

Kyra exclaimed, “Auntie Mae!”

Tina looked up the stairwell. “I couldn’t believe it when she just collapsed at the top of the stairs like that.” Tina thought about it. “She had a smile on her face, though, which I thought was weird at the time but I guess I understand now.” She bit her lip. “I mean, who would have thought that of all persons dead or alive the one-and-only Ardie May would make an appearance in our home?”

The detective shook his head. “Amazing how she was able to get up all them stairs without anyone noticing.”

Pocketing his notepad, and with a tremor in his voice as if speaking of matters wholly reverential, the detective said, “It was a long time ago she lived in this house. That room on the third floor used to be her bedroom. She was the Townsend’s housekeeper. Until one day, just like that, she took off for Hollywood. The rest, of course, is history”

Removing his cap, Taggert ran his hand over the patches of salt-and-pepper hair that three decades of Las Animas County burglars and dope-fiends had been generous enough to leave him with. “Seems to me she came all this ways to visit, one last time, the spot where she’d made that life-changing—world-changing, for that matter—decision of hers.”

Tina nodded. “The deputy told me. That incident she had with our third-story window.”

Taggert raised an eyebrow. “Yes, the window incident. That’s a good way of putting it.” The officer met the young girl’s avaricious glance with return to a pedestrian tone. “Years ago, ya see,” he said, stooping, “Ms. May, like I said, lived here. My Uncle Sherman was police chief back then and knew her personally. She was just a housekeeper at the time. After she become the Hollywood star we all know and love, she’d give interviews, late-night talk shows and stuff. She’d mention about a certain window in a certain old house which on a certain day in July, 1964 she’d found herself gazing out of. It was while starin’ outta that window the thought first came to her to go to Hollywood, world be damned, and pursue her childhood dream of becomin’ an actress.” The detective shook his head. A shadow passed over his sunburned wrinkles and steely blue eyes. “They say animals will seek out a solitary place when they know it’s their time.” The detective sighed. “It was her time, and she knew it. I guess it was that she wanted to pay one last visit before it all ended for her. Bein’ all cooped up in a hospice just wasn’t a way for a glitzy, gutsy gal like Ardie May to go. So, she snatched up some extra meds, hopped a bus, and made her way out here.” The detective swiped his brow. “Well, I guess my business is ‘bout done here.”

Tina shook Taggert’s hand. “Thank you, Detective, for coming,” she said. “I’m so glad that we, our home, and third-story window, were able to give Ms. May that connection she needed with her past.”

The detective put his cap back on. “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at Kyra. “What’s this?” He turned, and said to Tina, “You tell this lil’ daughter of yours here to stop lookin’ all pouty-faced like someone just died. There’s a celebration about to start!”

​

*      *      *

​

The funeral was the biggest the little town of Trinidad, Colorado had seen since its world-renowned sex-change doctor was celebrated then buried at Masonic Cemetery. Thousands of fans from across the globe, and some of the biggest names in Hollywood registered their attendance: Jerry Lewis, Michael Caine, Ellen Burstyn, The Rolling Stones. Even Brando’s son showed up to give the eulogy. With steps over to the casket, he ended it with, “It was in falling out of the sky, Ms. May, that you landed forever in our hearts.” Kyra Hudson attended, as well. While the many distinguished attendees dropped flowers, or pictures, or their condolences upon the gravestone of The Queen of the Skies, Kyra placed a handful of toothpicks (and an invisible checker!) down upon it, even as she read those immortal words chiseled into the marble headstone:

​

“The nothingness.
Inspiring me, I beheld it.
And forevermore I shine with the stars.”