Bewitched and Beyond: The Fan Who Came to Dinner (21 page)

Finally after a moment of silence, she looked over at me with a big smile and said, “Yep, you can do me!” One note of hers always evaded me. It is at the end of the song “After the Ball” in
Showboat.
I told her it was a note only dogs could hear and she laughed at that!

Liza!

Tell me, do I
really
need to add the surname?! One weekend, Kasey and I were flown to Florida by our friends Steve and Thomas for an event benefiting AIDS research, and
Liza
was going to be there. At the time, I was in Atlanta visiting my mom for Easter, so I met up with Kasey in Florida.

The night of the party, Liza came walking in. She was on crutches having just had hip surgery and I remember blurting out: “WOW! You look great!” and she replied, “I do???”

We sat at the head table where I was seated next to the rather gruff Mickey Rooney. I actually made the man laugh which is no easy task, let me tell you!

Liza had started to sing “Maybe This Time” and he tearfully leaned over and said to me, “I
loved
her mother.” Quietly I whispered back, “Every man in this room loved her mother… In fact, every man in this room wants to be her mother!”

His loud guffaw could be heard all over.

Since then, I’ve seen him several times, and to this day, he DOES NOT remember me! HA! But still, I always enjoy the fact that I once made Mickey Rooney laugh.

Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne) and Mrs. Kravitz (Sandra Gould) rest between shots on the Screen Gems/Columbia Ranch while shooting “Samantha’s Thanksgiving to Remember,” September 21st, 1967.

That great stone face, so pretty, so unmoving…

Under the Victorian mirror that Margaret O’Brien donated.

Chapter 30

A Decade with Kasey

Kasey used to paraphrase her favorite quote by John Dryden: “I am wounded but not slain and I’ll arise to fight again.” This was shot in July of 2005 on our last visit to 1164 Morning Glory Circle together. Even with a tracheostomy tube in her neck for air, a G-Tube in her stomach to “eat” and a hundred degrees weather, she was amazingly youthful and active.

2002 saw our 10th anniversary together. I had planned and saved for weeks to be able to buy a diamond and ruby heart shaped necklace for Kasey. I knew she only liked
real
jewelry, so nothing else would do.

That afternoon, we drove up to Oxnard to our favorite Olive Garden restaurant. After dinner was over, she didn’t expect the little box that I handed her. After unwrapping it, she saw the rather delicate little necklace.

Then Kasey did something I had NEVER seen her do. She looked at me and began to puddle up! She ran around the table, threw her arms around me, and just kept weeping into my shoulder! But quickly it all turned to laughter when we noticed that everyone was staring! I fastened it around her neck where it stayed until three years later, the night before she was to go in for her huge throat surgery. On the eve of that night, she put the necklace around my neck with explicit instructions it be given back when she was healed. The necklace remains around my neck to this day, more than seven years later as of this writing.

Our last trip to the Ranch: July 2005

Chapter 31

Spooky Happenings

Kasey and I used to have some unbelievable things happen to us that would pertain to something we were doing or someone we knew, and every time, we’d look at each other and say, “It’s a sign! It’s a sign!”

For instance, one of those early first days together in ’92 we were both in the car going somewhere, and Kasey, a star of
Bewitched,
and me, being the (debatable) number one fan of
Bewitched,
were driving out of a restaurant behind a car whose license plate spelled “BEWITCH.” Now I ask you, what are the odds of that?! But these kinds of things happened constantly, and I can’t stress enough
how
constantly!

Even though she’s now gone, things haven’t changed.

In August of 2006, a month after Kasey’s passing, I decided to call a psychic who was recommended to me. I had never met this woman: Make of this what you will.

The psychic’s name is Cheryl Booth. One of her many gifts is speaking to those who have passed on… (insert creepy music here). Cheryl was living in Phoenix at the time, so she read for me over the phone, recorded our conversation and later sent it to me on CD.

She did not know anything about who I was trying to reach, but quickly determined that it was an “older lady, not a mom, but someone very close” to me.

I asked if
this lady
had been frightened in passing. I was told no; that her brother had been there to meet her. I was a bit stumped. As far as I knew, her brother was alive and well and still living in Burbank.

So I asked his name.

“Charles.”

After hearing that, I was a bit blown away. Kasey DID have a half brother named Charles who had passed away many years before. Only her closest family members would even be able to recall his name, and certainly no fan would have known this information.

A moment later Cheryl said that she was seeing a lot of green smoke.

Amazingly she asked, “Is this
Agnes Moorehead
?” I had to laugh and said, “Could be!” Then I asked if she knew who I was trying to reach. She replied “No, but I’m getting initials.” Then she said: “Now, she didn’t go by these initials, but if I give you a ‘K’ and a ‘C,’ you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

Sheesh!

The reading continued with a few more interesting moments, and then Cheryl said I had a Tiffany lamp in the house. I replied that Kasey and I had several that were that style — table lamps, floor lamps, hanging lamps. “No, this is a table lamp and it sits next to her chair.”

This was absolutely true, but how could she possibly know?!

“Kasey is going to try and make that light flicker on and off in the next couple days to let you know she’s OK.”

Well, now I figured that this gal had really backed herself into a corner. Everything had been pretty interesting up till then, but come on! There’s no way that someone who lives in Phoenix, whom I’d never met, could pull this off!

That night I was at my mom’s when, adding
injury
to
insult
this time, I fell down her steps and hurt my right foot! But I still drove home.

Remember, our condo was thirty-six steps up from the garage, but I managed to get home that Sunday night and climb all those stairs, only to find out the next day that my right foot was broken!

By Wednesday Mom was staying at the condo helping me out. Later that day, we sat down to watch a movie, Mom sitting in my chair, and me in Kasey’s.

Half way through the film, as you might already have guessed, the Tiffany style lamp sitting on the table next to me began to flicker.

My mom and I both stared at it.

Then it began to rapidly
flash
on and off. Then the bulb blew… Then it began to smoke… Then I hobbled over to the breaker! And by then it was all over. I just know that KR was hysterically

laughing at me from “the Ether’s”! And what’s so great about the whole thing is that I had a witness to all this!! Let’s hear it for
Mom
!

Not too far from the condo where Kasey and I lived was a favorite mall of ours that was expanding. Expanding sounds so unimpressive… they
tripled
the size of the place and even installed a two story carousel! Kasey had been looking forward to seeing it when it was all completed. It was to open in the Fall of 2006, but sadly, Kasey wasn’t able to wait.

A few days before Christmas that same year, I decided to go see it. As I was walking around, feeling very sad and alone, and thinking of all the wonderful times Kasey and I had together, especially at the holidays, I suddenly
felt
someone take my arm.

Instinctively, I bent my elbow and grasped my shirt front (like gentlemen did in the Victorian days when escorting a lady) as I had done countless times with Kasey through the years.

When I turned and looked, there was no one there and the sensation passed just as fast as it had begun. But for one brief moment, I could
feel
Kasey take my arm one last time, to see the “new” mall with me, and to share one last Christmas moment together. I feel very blessed by that.