Out of the Blue

BLUE

Garda Parker

Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in...

Chapter One

At the living room window in a second floor apartment in Brooklyn, Majesty Wilde methodically dunked a tea bag into a black-rimmed china cup, and peered through the aluminum screen and budded branches of a maple tree down to the street below.

Spring at last. Buoyed by the freshness of late April breezes, the brownstone-lined neighborhood took on an air of awakening after a long sleep. Filmy curtains flapped outside open windows. People in unfastened jackets spoke to each other as they passed, offering uncustomary eye contact and an occasional smile. Blended strains of classical, salsa, and rock music floated in the air, softening the wail of distant sirens. From the bakery on the corner drifted a cinnamony aroma as the baker placed a wooden sign on the sidewalk advertising fresh hot cross buns.

Maj breathed deeply, feeling she hadn’t noticed spring in years, at least not in the almost two since Jack had been killed.

Behind her Nan Doyle clattered a cup on the coffee table. God, I feel like I’ve been hibernating half my life. I hate winter. I hate being cold, and I always eat too much. How’re you doing? Have you had sex yet?

Maj turned from the window and smiled. I’ll get used to it.

Get used to which?

Being Majesty Wilde again.

Nan stretched out and settled her ample form comfortably on the dark blue overstuffed sofa, and propped herself on her elbow. Her short dark hair curled softly around her face. She dipped one knee over the other, and in her pink sweat suit appeared to be posing for a Rubens painting. Across the cozy room Maj dropped into an art deco-styled chair covered in a muted mauve and blue print fabric, and tucked her stocking feet up under her tweed skirt.

If anyone else came in, it might have looked as if Nan were the client and Maj the psychotherapist, instead of the reverse. Maj couldn’t remember when their relationship had changed from therapist/client to friend/friend, and moved from Nan’s office to one or the other’s living room. On this day they were meeting at Nan’s place. Maj’s choice. She knew she would feel the natural emergence of spring in Brooklyn more than she would in her own apartment in Manhattan.

Nan had ceased to charge Maj a fee when true friendship developed between them. On several occasions their discussions turned to Nan’s own complicated life, especially the time following her second divorce. Sex was a topic she brought up often in their times together, and Maj wondered in good humor for whose benefit.

You’re avoiding the sex question again When Maj raised her eyes in a mock disdainful frown, Nan returned to Maj’s first comment. Well, after all, you were Mrs. Jack Thompson for almost thirty years. It’ll take some getting used to being single again. How do you feel about it?

Blurred, as if I’ve put on a new skin over an old body. Maj plopped the tea bag in the bowl of the spoon, wrapped the string around the wet bag twice, pressed it dry, then set them both next to the saucer.

And?

And?

Nan looked expectantly across the room toward Maj. "Yes. I sense an and in your voice. Or maybe it’s a but."

Maj sipped the tea, then pulled back quickly as it burned her upper lip. I’m restless. And I’m tired. And I just passed my fifty-first birthday, but for the first time in my life I don’t have a list of things to do.

Nan nodded. That happens to widows sometimes, especially childless widows.

Maj drank, her gaze resting unseeing on the beige rug in front of Nan’s sofa. Her regret over her childlessness hung unspoken between them. But that wasn’t by choice. At least not her choice.

I’m over that, Maj said, a hint of surprise in her voice. Being a widow, I mean. She knew she said that too easily, and she looked up quickly for Nan’s reaction. Would it seem too soon after Jack’s death to Nan, as it did to her, that she didn’t miss his presence?

And you’re feeling guilty about not feeling guilty about how fast you came to that conclusion, aren’t you? Like maybe you think you didn’t love him as much as you should have? Nan cast non-accusing dark eyes on Maj’s face.

Maj studied her left hand thoughtfully. I don’t know if I stopped loving him or not, or, if I did, just when it was. Maybe we were a habit with each other, I don’t know. Once in a while I thought about what it might be like not to be married, or at least not married to Jack. She turned her wedding ring around and around. But then I’d get scared, I guess, just thinking about it. I mean, where would I go? What would I do? I had no money of my own. Jack took care of the finances. I guess it was easier for me to stay with the habit rather than try to break out on my own. It wasn’t that bad.

Have you thought about moving out of that apartment yet? Nan asked. She stretched out, her head resting on the plump arm of the couch.

I wouldn’t know what to do with all our things, or even how to move them.

That’s what movers are for. All you have to do is make decisions on where things go.

But all apartments are expensive. At least I know this one. Maj drained her teacup. Maybe I could take on another job to make the financial burden easier.

You’re making excuses, and you’re in a rut, my friend. Have you made any plans at all?

Plans? Plans for what?

Remember how we’ve talked about goals, five-year plans and...

...and bringing joy and pleasure into my life every day, Maj finished. She loved Nan’s theory; she just had difficulty putting it into practice.

Well, what have you written in your journal?

Maj reached for the tapestry-covered journal in her black leather bag. A square pale blue envelope came out with it, caught inside the cover. She dropped it in her lap, opened the journal to a paper-clipped page, and read aloud.

"Today ended almost two years of paternity hearings, and began the resumption of the use of my maiden name. Oddly, that last was my own choice, the first choice it seemed since the spring I turned fourteen. Granddad offered to give me money for the twin sweater set I wanted (all the popular girls in high school were wearing them), or give me a flying lesson in his open-cockpit biplane. I was torn. I wanted the sweater set badly, in the new color. Teal, they called it. Carole Ann, my best friend, said it would set off what she called my honey-gold hair, and reflect the little flecks of green in my blue eyes, and make the boys notice me.

Granddad was always doing that, offering me fishing over dolls and flying over sweaters. I opted for the flying lesson. I can still feel the vibration of the propeller cutting through the wind and shimmying through my feet glued to the pedals, up my legs and body, down my arms to my white-knuckled fingers clamped around the stick as if choosing up sides for a softball game.

Nan cleared her throat. Stick? Hands around a stick?

Maj grinned. Not what you think. The stick was a steering mechanism in those old planes. Before a steering wheel.

Nan nodded and grinned back.

Maj went back to her journal. Imagine me, piloting an airplane, soaring into the blue… She stared at the page, swept away in the memory.

I can, Nan said, I can see you soaring into the wild blue yonder.

Maj came back to the present. You couldn’t soar in that old Stearman. Basically you just vibrated and bumped through the air over the Adirondacks shouting to each other through a tube or over your shoulder through the noise of the engine and the wind in your ears.

Nan laughed. Did you ever get it?

What?

The twin sweater set.

Oh, yes. Mother got it for me for Christmas that year.

And did it do what Carole Ann said it would?

I guess. Jack noticed me. Of course, that was after Carole Ann showed me how to stuff my bra with Kleenex so my chest would stick out. Womanly, she said it was, womanly.

Ah, those were the days, weren’t they? Nan grimaced.

I was pretty flat-chested in those days. Mother refused to buy me a padded bra. Maj smiled, thinking back again. I wasn’t a woman, I was a girl, she said. Although, after my embarrassment at the junior prom, she gave in.

Nan shifted her head, interested. What happened at the prom?

Aunt Muriel lent me one of her many bridesmaid’s dresses. You know how abominable those things can be. But this one wasn’t bad. It was strapless, and Mother said I was too young for such things. Aunt Muriel talked Mother into letting me wear it. It was teal, too. I felt very grown-up and sophisticated wearing it. I can almost feel the netting and bust stays scratching me under the arms. Aunt Muriel was bigger in the bust than me, so of course Carole Ann came to the rescue armed with a box of Kleenex.

Of course, Nan said. Thank God for friends like Carole Ann.

Well, I wasn’t so sure about that then. I was doing some fast dance or other, and my carefully placed Kleenex padding worked its way up and out and perched along the top of my fabricated cleavage.

Nan laughed out loud.

You may laugh, Maj said, watching Nan’s pink sweat suit bounce, but I was mortified. Especially when one of the Kleenexes fell out. White Kleenex. Glaring white. The-better-to-notice-it-in-the-low-lights-of-the-high-school-gym white. The easier for Jack Thompson, big man on campus, I might add, to retrieve it and hand it to me.

Sorry. Nan stifled more laughter. What happened?

I went to the girls’ room and blew my nose and wiped my tears in my chest padding.

Ah, the scars of a teenager.

Yeah. Tell me, doctor, do you think I’m marred for life?

Do you still stuff your bra?

Of course not!

Cured of the dreaded teenage-girl-with-the-flat-chest syndrome, Nan pronounced.

Thank you. It’s a good thing I don’t pay you for this kind of therapy.

Nan sat up and wiped her eyes with a tissue from a nearby Kleenex box. They both laughed when she waved its obvious whiteness.

So, what else did you write in your journal?

Nothing.

Nan watched her friend’s face carefully. You didn’t write anything more about the last hearing?

Maj closed the journal. Absently she picked up the blue envelope and tapped it against her cheek. Her mood darkened.

I couldn’t do it, couldn’t write it. I can still barely think about it.

Nan nodded. Want to talk about it now?

I don’t know, Maj whispered.

Nan waited. What’s the boy’s name? she urged.

Maj knew Nan would do this, would draw it, no, drag it out of her. And she knew she wanted Nan to do just that. She swallowed hard, and plunged in.

John Bryce...Thompson. His mother calls him Jack.

Nan let a breath out. How did he look?

Like Jack. Same stocky build, same small brown eyes, same rust hair. He’s even starting to style it like Jack, with a wave dipping over his forehead like some slick politician.

Maj closed her eyes and leaned her head against the chair back. But, all three of us were in shock by his death. And now I’m over the shock of their appearance at the funeral, and her introducing the young man as Jack’s son. I think I’m into numbed acceptance of it all now.

Did you believe the woman?

The judge obviously did, Maj replied, a tone of weariness in her voice. He said her proof substantiated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Jack’s son. And in case that wasn’t enough, there’s the line on Jack’s life insurance policy naming the boy his beneficiary. I got the Manhattan apartment I can’t afford on one salary, a yellow vintage Mustang convertible which he kept at the hangar and which I was never allowed to drive, and a huge amount of credit card debt. Jack liked to live well, show off on his pilot’s salary.

"I asked if you believed her" Nan pushed.

Maj’s eyes became shiny, but she didn’t cry. She took in a sharp breath. Funny thing, I did believe her, even though I didn’t want to.

I know.

I mean — Maj sat up straight and her voice took on an edge — "Jack was the one who said he didn’t want children. We were too busy living life, he said. Children would get in the way, he said. He knew I understood, he said. But he never understood anything. Never understood what happened to me after…"

I know, Nan said again to soothe.

Maj clamped her eyes shut. I was eighteen when I married him. Barely more than a baby myself, at least emotionally.

Do you believe he loved you?

I believe he loved being a hotshot corporate pilot. I understood about his obsession with flying. After all, Dad was an airline pilot, and Granddad had been a dust pilot in the Thirties. Jack made me feel, I don’t know, invalidated, or something, because I was a secretary in an ad agency. But he liked the money I handed over to him every week.

But you’ve liked your work, your career, haven’t you?

I’m an administrative assistant now, Maj said in a matter-of-fact voice.

And does that make you feel ‘validated’? Nan pushed again.

Jack always said I didn’t work hard enough. He thought I should’ve undercut some of the other reps and taken on the clients myself. I was never going to succeed, he’d say. Well, I guess I wasn’t good enough to succeed, or something. I never undercut anybody, or acquired clients of my own. Truth is, I didn’t want to.

Hey, you’ve worked too long and too hard to let that low self-esteem baggage latch onto you again, Nan chastised.

I know. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t aspire to be an ad rep. I just wanted a good job until I had my family. Maybe that’s what I thought being validated meant. Being a wife and mother. How old fashioned is that? Now Jack’s gone, I’m no longer a wife, and it’s too late anyway for me to have a baby. In a way, it’s still his choice, isn’t it? He controlled our married life, and somehow even after death he controls my single life. Maj examined her thoughts for a moment. Maybe that’s not fair to say. Time controls me now. Time past, time present, and time future. Now I’m fifty-god-damned-one, and too old for much of anything.

You’re not too old for a lot of things. And besides, you don’t look a day over thirty-five.

Maj looked skeptical.

I mean it. And you know it. Your eyes are a lovely blue and your hair is still what Carole Ann would call honey-gold.

Maj squinted. I have crow’s-feet. She lifted the loose bangs that fell over one side of her forehead and leaned over. Look at this hairline. Gray lurks under here!

So what’s a little strain of silver in a gold mine? And I prefer to call those added features near the eyes character lines. You earned every one of those, so just wear them proudly. And look at that figure! You’re probably still as trim as you were when you met Jack. I, on the other hand... She ran her palm over her rounded hip.

You are voluptuous, Maj put in, and I am fifteen pounds overweight.

Aren’t you running? I remember you said you ran a few miles every day to keep in shape. God, what an awful sport running is. Every person I’ve ever seen doing it looks to be in pain. How can that be fun?

Maj laughed. It was fun, sort of. I didn’t run every day. Just a few times a week. It kept me in shape. And I worked off a lot of stress, I think.

It has to be good for something. And it’s clear your bust filled out. Nan laughed, pointing toward Maj’s crisp white blouse.

Maj dropped her chin. Yes, and now it’s going down!

Everybody’s a critic, Nan chided. At least you’ve dated. I haven’t had a date since the guy from Radio Shack installed my fax machine and stayed for a beer because his van wouldn’t start. That was almost two years ago. I’m thinking of calling back for repair service! Nan threw up her hands in mock despair.

If you think going to the launderette with Ernest Bauer and folding sheets is a date...

Nan lowered her voice seductively. "He’s the regional director of your ad agency, and they were his sheets, after all. He was definitely making overtures to you."

He’s old enough to be my father. Well, maybe my older brother. And besides, the sheets were green plaid cotton, for heaven’s sake.

Would it have made a difference if they were black satin? Nan spread her hands.

You are impossible. Maj laughed. Dating. What a concept at my age. Some of the women at the office have fixed me up. I even hate that term, fix up, as if I’ve broken down, or something. What disasters! I’m just not ready for that yet, I guess. Next relationship, if there is one, I choose first. I’m not letting anybody choose me. I’ll pay attention to my head. I’m not eighteen anymore.

What about sex?

All right, I knew we’d have to come back to that sometime. What about sex? Maj asked back.

Don’t you want it?

Want it? Maj cocked her head to one side.

Yes, want it. Crave it. Desire it. Get horny, for God’s sake.

What kind of a question is that?

Don’t avoid this line of questioning. It’s healthy to want sex.

Maj thought for a minute. She’d remembered wanting Jack to make love to her when they were first married. And she remembered the act always left her feeling that something was missing.

Mother always said sex was something a man had to have and a wife had to endure. My intuition told me there was more to it than that.

Our mothers thought differently than we do. Or at least that’s what the told us.

Maj smiled. I remember watching old black and white John Wayne movies on television with my mother. She thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. So I told her I thought so, too, because I knew she had a crush on him. I felt funny knowing that about her, and worrying Dad might find out. And I did think John Wayne was pretty handsome. A cowboy or a pilot, he had a look.

 There’s a psychiatrist’s paycheck right there. Hot for John Wayne, but only as he was in his early life.

Well, you can’t deny that body, the leather jacket and jeans, those eyes, that curly hair… Maj sat up straight. She must have known more about Dad’s private activities than she ever let on.

Most women do, Nan concurred, whether they admit it or not.

That’s why she was so dreamy about John Wayne, Maj went on as if she hadn’t heard Nan’s words. She sat back with a sigh. I never wanted to be like my mother.

Most women don’t.

Maj looked over at her friend. But we are sometimes, aren’t we?

Nan raised a brow, shrugged. Your mother fantasized about something she couldn’t have. And I’ll bet sex was part of it. I think you should fantasize about something you deserve, and sex is part of that as well.

I do. Once in a while. I like to call it making love, though.

Call it whatever you want, just get it.

I thought you were in business to help people.

I am. I’m trying to help you find sex.

There’s a word for people who do that, and I don’t think ‘psychotherapist’ is it. Maj laughed. Then she grew thoughtful. I really don’t know why I did that, change my name back to Wilde. I mean, what’s the point?

I truly believe you just want to start over. Or you will when you take off that wedding ring.

Why? Maj waved her left hand. I sure don’t have another fifty years to do it all again. I don’t even know if I have twenty years of energy just to keep moving. She tapped the envelope against her cheek again.

God, you do need a change! Okay, what’s in the envelope? Nan motioned toward it.

Maj looked down at the blue envelope she’d dropped. Birthday card from Ada and Sam Ferguson.

Who are they?

Partners of Granddad in the West Wind Lodge

Oh, yes, the place at – what was it? Large Elk Lake or something in the mountains you went to in the summer.

Big Moose Lake.

I knew it was named for some woodland creature. Your parents went with you, too, right?

Mother always did. Dad, too, sometimes, when his schedule permitted. Maj stopped for a moment. She remembered one night at the West Wind hearing her mother tell Grandma that she knew Dad was having an affair, had more than one. Mother was always stoic in front of other people, but this time Maj had seen her cry.

And did the Fergusons’ card disturb you for some reason? Nan asked.

A little, I guess. Grandma and Granddad took Ada and Fergie after they’d fallen on hard times. They worked first for food and a roof over their heads, and pretty soon the four of them were as close as a family. The West Wind had been one of the Great Camps. A railroad builder constructed it for his family and friends, and then went broke. So Granddad bought it and turned it into a vacation lodge. Fergie and Ada put their life into it along with him and Grandma, and they became partners. They’ve thought of me as their granddaughter, too.

Are they ill?

I’m not sure, but I sense something is wrong. They were a lot younger than my grandparents, but now they’re getting old, of course. They asked me to visit them soon, sounded urgent in a way. I feel bad about not seeing them for so long. After I was married I still wanted to go up for visits, but Jack never wanted to. I let them know when he’d been killed, and they wrote right back and told me to come up if I needed time to myself. But what with working, and the hearings, I’ve never had the time.

Well, I think you should make the time Nan said. It would do you good to get a change of scene. I think a visit to the Adirondacks is just what the doctor ordered. All that clean air, trees, lakes, a resort vacation. Who could ask for anything more? Except a hot guy in a sleeping bag, maybe.

Maj smiled. I’ll think about it.

Don’t think about it, just do it. Pack your bags tonight. Go back to the place where you felt loved, were adventurous.

Me, adventurous?

Of course. Remember, you chose flying lessons over a sweater set.

I did, didn’t I? Maj smiled.

Yes, you did. Think of yourself in that plane, free as a bird, looking down on the earth, completely in control of that powerful machine. You’re a superwoman!

Maj laughed with her friend, then sobered. Except for one thing.

Now what?

I’ve never soloed.

Nan stared at her, then grinned. Then it’s high time you did, isn’t it?

****

Five days and several arguments with Nan later, Maj arrived at the West Wind in the yellow Mustang with a small bag of clothes for a one-week vacation,  and without the ring she’d been wearing on her third finger left hand for three decades.

A tearful reunion with the wiry Fergie and failing Ada, and finding the once-splendid lodge and adjacent cottages in acute disrepair, left her emotionally drained. In bed that night by ten o’clock in one of the musty-smelling guest rooms, she was unable to sleep.

She sensed Fergie and Ada were holding something back, but not their unabashed delight at seeing her again. In the total blackness of the mountain night Maj felt loved. No, cherished. The drive up into the mountains that day, and the impact of feeling their unconditional love, softened the armored defenses she knew she’d built over the years.

Early the next morning Maj grabbed an old yellow slicker hanging on a peg by the back door and stepped out onto the porch. She started carefully down the slippery steps, and ambled through the six o’clock moisture-laden air across the expanse of lawn toward the wooden dock. Watching steam rising and blending into the mist from the black coffee she carried in a mug, she inhaled deeply, then opened her mouth and tasted the air.

At this end of Big Moose Lake, the cove lay under a blanket of morning fog, surrounded by a bank of red spruces, balsam firs, sugar maples, and towering white pines so dense their tips appeared black against the mist. Their pungent tangy aroma, mixed with damp Adirondack duff, hung in the air.

Somewhere a loon wailed, and without thought Maj called back as she had when she was a child, then moved in the direction of the lonely sound as if it were a commiserating soul.

At the tilted dock, bleached pale gray by years of sun and water, she lifted one white sneaker to the first weathered board and tested her weight. It gave a little, but held. She lifted her other foot, her full weight now on the dock. The slight shifting of it gave her the feeling she’d just stepped onto the first layer of a cloud.

A third of the way down sat a metal lawn chair, the kind she remembered painted in bright primary colors lined up in front of Danbury’s hardware store in the mountain hamlet of Pinewood. The coat of red paint on this one was chipped and faded, and the metal underneath blended with the silver-gray morning. She started carefully toward it.

Lowering her backside toward the seat, she knew that in a few seconds she would feel cold wetness through her jeans just the way she’d felt it through her threadbare dungarees when she was eight years old and Grandma told her not to sit on the chairs before they were wiped with a beach towel. Under her weight the chair swayed back on its curved frame, catching her off balance just the way she remembered, but this time the dock swayed with it. Its underpinnings had shifted, caved, mired, needed shoring up just like her own.

Slipping back her hood, she let her hair absorb the mist. It stuck in wet ringlets to her forehead, and she felt a little naked without the mask of makeup she usually wore to the office. She sipped the coffee, savoring its richness mingled with the spicy-sweet taste in the air of lake and pines and earth, and let her eyes drift across the expanse of mist-swirled water toward the granite faces of the towering, solid Adirondacks.

The loon wailed again, as if checking to see if she was still there. She didn’t respond, not wanting to break the utter peace of the morning. Vaguely she was aware that her backside was wet and cold, but she didn’t move. She just sipped, breathed, stared against the fog, and listened to the quiet, the blessed quiet.

A pair of blue jays landed in a tree near the shore and set up a busy squawk as they went about their morning food hunt. A chickadee responded and was joined by three more, ducking their little black caps among the dripping branches. Maj heard the drone of an airplane from somewhere. She looked toward the sky and guessed the rest of the mountain creatures must be waking. The sun was trying its best to burn through the fog.

The drone of the plane grew louder. The engine seemed to skip. Maj’s senses sharpened. She determined by the low-pitched vibration that it was a small plane, propeller-driven. The drone grew louder, nearer.

Maj stood slowly, started to back herself toward shore. A dark shadow passed through the sun’s narrow rays pushing out of the clouds, and then she heard a splash. There was the whoosh of weight skimming over the lake, then the roar of the engine before it was shut down. A seaplane. She felt the wake from the plane’s landing splash under the boards beneath her feet.

Just as she took a step onto shore, something bumped the dock. She heard a sickening crack as the boards pulled away from the pilings, and then the old familiar sound of pontoons scraping over the stony shore. She mis-stepped. The coffee mug dropped out of her hand and went to the bottom of the lake, and she fell into the wet stones. She crawled quickly up the lawn, then turned around.

Righting herself, she sat up and saw a dark figure wading through the lifting fog. Motionless she sat on the ground as the figure emerged from the mist and materialized into a man.

A tall man.

A man in cowboy boots, slim jeans, a leather jacket open over a white tee shirt.

A man with