Twenty minutes before she went berserk on the noon news show and tried to kill a two-foot parrot on the air, the local weather girl predicted late afternoon showers. I was still in boxers and a T-shirt watching the show, enjoying a bachelor’s lunch and trying to wake up. From my reclining position on the couch, I glanced out the living room window at the sparkling summer day and wondered if the predicted rain would materialize, or if Casey had screwed up the weather report. It certainly wouldn’t be first time.
It was a slow news day. The anchor team covered the effect of the recession on local malls, an upcoming school carnival, the continuing search for the hit and run killer of a homeless man and vacation spots you could get to on one tank of gas. Up next was the guest of the day, a local author who had written a children’s picture book about Piccadilly, her scarlet macaw. The author, tiny reading glasses perched on her nose, opened her book and began to read while Piccadilly sat next to her on a silver perch. Somewhere between the third and fourth page, the parrot slowly turned his head, fixed his beady eyes on Casey and squawked, Milty! Milty!
It was a bit of a surprise, but nothing compared with what came next – the sight of a stunning brunette in suit and high heels vaulting over the news desk, and grabbing the large bird around the neck while screaming, “No!” In the next ten seconds I had two revelations. One, Casey actually was capable of emotion; and two, scarlet macaws are nothing to mess with. Only the prompt actions of Mike, the station’s security guard saved Casey from certain painful plastic surgery. He grabbed two oven mitts from the station’s cooking expert, and subdued the frightened bird, which was pecking at Casey’s hands in defense. Long after the station cut in with an early commercial break, I sat with a handful of Cheerios suspended between the cereal box and my open mouth. I was no longer sleepy.
We’re not a large metropolitan area, so only a few thousand people watch the weekday noon news show. It airs when most people are out, unless you’re a schoolteacher, like me, or happen to work at home. So ten or fifteen years ago, the story would have played out in a few days and Casey would have faded from public view.
But this is 2009, and we have the world at our fingertips. In the next few days the 33-second clip of Weather Girl Goes Crackers Over Polly (as it became known) drew an astounding YouTube following…. falling somewhere between Pinky, a Very Loving Cat and Susan Boyles’ Britain’s Got Talent Audition. I followed all this with considerable amusement. It’s not that I hate Casey, please understand; nothing in our brief dating history stirred emotions that strong in either of us. But that’s the thing, see. Casey is not a woman given to strong emotions. She is impeccably cool. So her meltdown on live TV drove the Creative Writing teacher in me crazy. I had the who, what, when and where. I simply had to have the “why”.
I roused myself, mowed the lawn (might rain later, I hear) and showered. Dressed in clean jeans and a polo shirt, I fixed myself an iced tea and settled back on the couch with my laptop. I Googled Barbra Kildare, Piccadilly’s owner to obtain her phone number. Since she had a book on the market, her contact information was easy to find. I was fairly confident Barbra would meet with me. Having a few publishing credits to my name comes in handy for opening certain doors, especially those belonging to other writers. Anyway, I was willing to bet she wanted the story told from a bird’s eye view, so to speak. So I called Ms. Kildare up and explained I was a freelance journalist
wanting to follow up on the afternoon news incident. As I suspected, Barbra would love to meet with me. In fact, would I like to join her for dinner? I would.
Barbra lived in a bungalow in an older part of town. Older as in elite and expensive, not run down and dangerous. She welcomed me warmly and led me into a living room that was clean, comfortable and loaded with books. She steered me to the sofa, then disappeared into the kitchen returning shortly with a tray of cheese and glasses of sparkling water garnished with cucumber.
“I know what happened,” she said, “Casey Cornett bears a striking resemblance to my niece, Milty Baker. It’s Mildred, but she’s been called Milty her entire life. That’s why Piccadilly called Ms. Cornett Milty. What I don’t understand is why it upset her so!” That made two of us. Over our cheese, I learned that Barb was a widow of several years, that she was a retired pediatric nurse and that she had always dreamed of writing a children’s book. Later, we shared roasted chicken with asparagus while Piccadilly perched nearby happily enjoying his own meal of fresh fruit.
“He’s so smart,” Barb said with pride. “He’s even paper trained.” We chewed in unison and watched the bird for a few seconds before she continued. “I volunteer at St. Titus Hospital and hope to take him to the hospital for the children to see. They have a pet therapy program at St. Titus and I’m sure Piccadilly would be a hit.”
As if on cue, Piccadilly looked up from his meal and peered our way. “Larb!” he squawked. “Pretty Larb!”
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“Pretty Barb,” she laughed. “Macaws have thick tongues. They can’t pronounce things as distinctly as we can.” Barb pushed a strand of gray hair behind her left ear. “In fact, I wonder if Ms. Cornett misunderstood Piccadilly when he said Milty. Maybe she thought he was calling her Silly or Stilted or, well, who knows?”
Who indeed? Certainly not me.
When I got home around 8:00, I called Casey but she was either screening her calls or avoiding the phone altogether. I called her best friend, Lucy, a sweet-natured, pleasantly plump young woman I had always liked. Lucy answered on the third ring.
“Brad!” she said, “It is great to hear from you!” Then she sobered, “Can you believe what happened? Poor Casey!”
“Exactly what did happen, Lucy? I mean I saw the news, I just don’t understand what set her off.”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t speaking at all when the hospital called me. Her parents are in Europe, if you can believe it, and the doctor found my number on her speed dial. He wants to keep her a couple of days. Someone from work drove her car home for her, so she won’t have to worry about that when she’s released. Otherwise, I don’t know of anything to do.”
“Are her wounds that serious?” Remembering Piccadilly’s strong beak I felt my stomach drop.
“Her wounds? Oh, no. She’s in the Psyche Unit at St. Titus.”
The Psyche Unit. St. Titus! Remembering my conversation with Barb I wondered if they would offer pet therapy and found myself choking down hysterical laughter. Trying to get a grip on myself I took a deep breath and told Lucy I would go to the hospital in the morning and try to see Casey.
“Keep in touch.” She said.
I sat for a few minutes with the phone in my hand remembering the night I met Casey at a friend’s birthday party. She was cute, new in town and seemed like fun. I was handsome enough and I guess she wanted someone to go out with. Anyway, she gave me her number and I called her two days later. We went out casually for a couple of months and it was pretty sweet to date a local celebrity. Sometimes I tagged along with her when she made appearances on behalf of the station. Let me tell you, some of those charities know how to do things up right. Great food and open bars. Casey was everybody’s darling. Neither of us felt we were in it for the long haul, but both of us were content to go out two or three times a week and have a good time.
The changes started in May when the station hired a new anchorwoman. Peaches Snow from Savannah, Georgia. Peaches Snow, can you believe that name? It’s real. You can’t make things like that up. Peaches was a perfect southern belle; small framed, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I’m sure the powers that be thought she and Casey (with her dark eyes, dark hair and tall stature) would be perfect foils for each other. And as it turned out they were right, the ratings soared.
As I’ve mentioned, we don’t live in a metropolitan area, but still you’d think there would be room for two beautiful women to coexist in our town. I didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out, though, that Casey suffered from Peaches envy. She wasn’t the new kid anymore. Also, Peaches got more air time and she knew how to use it. When she reported on the 100th birthday of a nursing home patient she flashed her dimples. Alternately, when she alerted the public to the hit and run death of a homeless man on Third and Ash she looked professionally grim.
Almost overnight I could see changes in Casey’s behavior. First was a car-washing obsession. Casey drove a bright blue mini cooper (surprise, surprise) and suddenly she was washing it every day. Every day! Sometimes she even washed it twice a day. I could only assume she had to have the best-looking car on the lot.
She started losing weight and before long her bright eyes lost their luster. She often turned her cell phone off or didn’t answer it. For someone who used to live on her phone it was a remarkable change. Loud noises of any kind made her tense up. For example one time a police car came from behind us with his siren on and she actually turned white. Long after it was gone she looked shaken.
Of course I was worried and asked her to see a doctor. That went over well. She began to ignore my calls and pretty soon I got word that she was seeing one of the producers at a competing station. I can’t say I was surprised and quite frankly I was ready to move on myself. I sent a bouquet of flowers to the station wishing her well, breathed a sigh of relief and that was that.
I called Lucy back. “Do you think Casey has been acting strange?”
“She tried to murder a bird on live TV. Yes, I think that’s strange.”
“I mean before that.”
“Well, there was the car washing thing,” she said.
“Yes!”
“Then there was the weight loss thing.”
“Right.”
“There’s the Priest thing.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. Lucy went on to tell me about eating with Casey recently at Applebee’s. A priest in a clerical collar came in with four or five other men and Casey insisted on leaving immediately.
“Well, she is Catholic like me,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe she had a bad experience in the church.”
“No, she would have told me,” said Lucy. “Casey has wonderful memories of growing up in the church.”
“Guess it’s just our Catholic guilt thing,” I joked.
“Maybe,” she laughed. We said goodnight again. I yawned and decided to sleep on it.
I dreamed of scarlet macaws. They circled my bed crying Milty, Milty. “Their tongues are thick,” said Barb in my dream. “They can’t speak clearly. Maybe she thought he called her Silly.”
“I’m not silly!” cried Casey, “I’m not Milty.”
A gray haired Priest with a kind smile materialized on my bed. “Would you like to confess?” He asked.
Thoughts were swirling around my head like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces dancing just out of my grasp. Finally I sank into a deep dreamless sleep. When I woke up I knew what was wrong with Casey. I couldn’t go back to sleep and lay there replaying events in my mind, praying I was mistaken. Finally I got up and made coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the sun come up. At eight o’clock I got dressed and drove to Casey’s house where I snapped a few pictures with my cell phone. Then I went to the hospital.
Casey’s room in the Psyche Ward could have passed for a room at the Hilton with plush green carpet and tasteful art. Someone had curled her hair and bandaged her hands. She sat in bed wearing a white nightgown and reading Vogue. Thank God. I was afraid I would find her trussed up and grinning like Anthony Perkins at the end of Psycho. She looked up at me then back down at her magazine.
I sat on a chair near her bed. “Casey, I know what happened.” She stood up and began wandering around the room humming the tune to Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She walked to the window and looked out at the green courtyard, still humming.
I moved next to her and put my cell phone under her face. I showed her the pictures I had taken under her car. The dents. The torn scrap of cloth.
“Casey, the hit and run. That was you. You killed that man and left.”
“No!” She wheeled to face me and screamed. “It wasn’t me. That bird called me guilty, but I’m not. I’m not guilty!”
I turned the phone toward me and dialed 911. Oh, but My Dear, yes you are.
Six months later….
The Christmas lights strung around the bar flashed in rapid cadence highlighting the bartender, a 300-pound gentleman dressed in complete Santa regalia. “What can I get ya?” he asked cheerfully. I requested two white wines and dropped a couple of dollars in his tip jar.
“Merry Christmas to you and yours!” he said.
Me and mine. I liked the sound of that. I wove my way through the crowd to my fiancé and handed her one of the glasses. She was especially lovely tonight in a low-cut red dress. Together we made our way to the front of the room and I handed the second glass of wine to the guest of honor who was chatting with her fans. She smiled her thanks, and then she lifted the top book from the stack on the table beside her.
A familiar feathered face peered from the cover. Piccadilly Solves a Crime was flying off the shelves and promised to soar to the top of the children’s best seller list. Barb opened the flap and wrote inside, To Brad and Lucy. The best is yet to come!
Amen.
