Nobody in Pine River knew much about Mrs. Mangham. In fact nobody but Dr. Taylor, the town physician, knew that she was dying. It was cancer. Cancer that by the time it was discovered, had spread so profusely there was nothing Dr. Taylor could say but, "How can we make you more comfortable?"
Of course, they all noticed when Mrs. Mangham's hat shop on Second Street closed.
"It was an odd place," Mrs. Taylor said to her husband one morning over a breakfast of whole-grain toast and hot tea. "And no one really wears hats much anymore, do they? At least not the silly things she was selling there."
Dr. Taylor bit into his toast and nodded. Doctor-patient confidentiality, which he held in the highest regard, restricted him from saying anything else.
Three years earlier, Dr. Taylor had visited Mrs. Mangham's hat shop. He stopped in to pay his condolences for the death of Mr. Mangham, who had been his patient and had passed just a week prior. Mr. Mangham had died quietly in his sleep. Dr. Taylor was called to the Mangham residence at 4 o'clock that morning. Mrs. Mangham was smoking a cigarette and eating a red popsicle on the front porch swing. She looked childish swinging there in plaid pajamas with her grey hair falling down over her face. "The bedroom," she said, slurping the popsicle, "is on the left past the kitchen."
When Dr. Taylor came back outside to confirm the death, Mrs. Mangham was gone. The cigarette butt lay cold on the porch swing, stained with red syrup.
Her strange disappearance had prompted Dr. Taylor to visit the hat shop the next week. A small wind chime jingled over the front door as he entered. Mrs. Mangham, her hair pulled into a tight, serious bun, sat at the back of the store on a wooden stool with her eyes closed. The hats were indeed quite silly. And there were hundreds of them packed into the tiny shop.
The hats hung from floor to ceiling on tall brass hat racks. There was a rack of men's fedoras in brilliant colors: orange, teal, flamingo pink. On the far wall was a towering rack of top hats sorted by size--the ones nearest the ceiling nearly three feet tall. There were three racks of bonnets, ornamented with strange objects. One had a dozen strings of dice hanging from it. Another had taxidermied parrots pinned to it with terrifyingly large safety pins. There were hats upon hats, but nothing he could imagine anyone in Pine River wearing except on Halloween, or to announce a sudden change in sexuality or mental stability.
"Hello doctor," Mrs. Mangham said quietly, her eyes still shut.
"Mrs. Mangham," he stuttered, momentarily forgetting why he had come, "I've never been here before. Interesting place."
"Would you like to try something on?"
"Oh. No, thank you. I really just came by to offer my condolen--"
Mrs. Mangham, eyes still closed, held a finger to her lips to silence him. "Why don't you try the bonnet there? The one you were just looking at."
"I really don't wear bonnets, Mrs. Mangham. I really just came to say--"
"Try it on, my dear doctor. The one there at the bottom, with the sweet birdies. I think you will find you like what you see."
Dr. Taylor plucked the bonnet off the rack, surprised by the weight of the six stuffed red parrots. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching through the shop window, and tied the bonnet to his head.
"Gaah!" Dr. Taylor bellowed as a sudden explosion of noise filled his ears. He instinctively tried to cover them, and was nipped by the sharp beak of one of the birds. "Caaw!" it screeched. The six birds had come alive and flapped fervently to escape the bondage of the large pins that held them to the bonnet. The sound of their beating wings thundered in his ears.
"My dear doctor," Mrs. Mangham's voice came softly, sweetly, but with such clarity it was as though she were inside his head.
"My dear doctor," she said again and Dr. Taylor looked to where she had been sitting. In her place was a young woman, the most beautiful woman Dr. Taylor had ever seen, standing up on the wooden stool, entirely naked.
"What do you see?" she asked him. He said nothing and so she asked, "How do you like the birds?"
At this, Dr. Taylor suddenly felt weightless. The racks of hats all around him began shrinking into the floor. The young woman on the stool sunk downward. The floor moved away from his feet and Dr. Taylor realized he was floating. The birds flew upwards, carrying him by the bonnet toward the high ceiling of the hat shop.
"What is happening?" he called to the woman, his shoes hovering above her head.
"My dear doctor," Mrs. Mangham's voice sounded crystal clear inside his skull, "this is your fantasy. What do you wish to happen?"
"I want to be let down."
At that, the birds ceased flapping and fell stiff against the sides of his head. The floor rushed back up to his dangling body, and he collapsed at the base of the stool.
"Doctor Taylor," Mrs. Mangham, fully dressed, helped him to his feet and removed the bonnet. "You mustn't reveal what you have seen here." Dr. Taylor, who of course held doctor-patient confidentiality in the highest regard, nodded.
"Also, doctor, I would like to set an appointment with you. I'm afraid I've felt an odd lump in my left breast."
Three years later, on the day Mrs. Mangham died, someone reported a flock of bright red birds in the town park--a breed no one recognized. They were seen once and never again, and no one thought much of it except Dr. Taylor who had, for one absurd moment and for the rest of his life, learned how it felt to fly.
