Return To Sender (Part Fifteen)

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Magnus

Member Laureate

since 2001-10-10

Posts 14135
South Carolina, USA

0 posted 2004-01-06 05:01 PM

Quiet, the house was so quiet and still as Bill awoke from his rest. Checking his
watch, Bill realized that he had been asleep for over two hours.  Where could Mary
Lou be?  Rising quickly, feeling a slight chill, one that was not uncommon when
he awoke.....Some woke feeling warm, others woke feeling a slight chill.  This
was Bill, and he accepted that part of his biology as just a normal thing.

Where was Mary Lou?  Had something gone wrong to have caused her to leave
the house?  It was now after Four O’clock and her son should be calling shortly.
Bill went to the back door to see if she were outside.  Finding nothing, Bill went
to the door adjacent to where the car would have been parked.  Finding nothing
again, it was now obvious that Mary Lou had gone off in the rental vehicle.  Bill
was a little unnerved by this and somewhat worried.  Having recently been
in a very traumatic accident, Bill easily became quite anxious.  He went into the
kitchen area, having smelled the aroma of roasted coffee in the air.  Smiling
suddenly, he then knew more of where Mary Lou was,   for a note had been placed
beneath his coffee cup.  She knew Bill very well, knowing that he would head
straight for the kitchen area for one of two things.....a snack, or....old faithful,
a fresh cup of coffee.  Bill could tell that it had not been long since she left,
for the coffee was still freshly brewed and smelled so very goooood.

He unfolded the single sheet of paper and found her writing within.  She
informed Bill that she had gone to the mailbox to drop off a letter to her
insurance company and was then going to go down the highway about two miles.
There was an area at that point where cars could be parked and allow the
drivers to stretch their legs.  A rest area of sorts, though not filled with all
of the mechanized frills of snack machines, soda machines, coffee dispensers
that never seemed to put enough sugar in the cup, even when “extra sugar”
was selected.  Bill always hated those cups, and often carried his own stash
of sugar.  Coffee without sugar was atrocious and running out of sugar a
sin by Bill’s estimate.

Mary Lou had left her cell number and had asked Bill to give her a jingle
if he, the “sleepyhead”,  awoke before she returned.  At the bottom of the
page, the most beautiful and perfectly molded kiss in a delicate but sensual
shade of red....his favorite...one he could never forget.

The ring of the phone startled Bill.  Reaching for it, he felt it would be either
Mary Lou or her son Kyle.  It was time for Kyle to call and Bill was anxious
to meet Kyle, if even only over the phone.    It was....It was Kyle, he was calling
from the highway on the way from Calamity and needed directions.  Bill informed
him that his mother was alongside the highway approximately 8 miles ahead of
him.  She would be parked, if still sitting there, and was driving a new bronze
Saturn Vue.  He should not miss it, after all, rarely did anyone ever park alongside
this road, from nowhere to nowhere....reminded Bill of some of the things that
Rod Serling used to say about the twilight zone.  This place seemed to be a chapter
out of the twilight zone.    Bill felt very comfortable talking to Kyle.  Kyle seemed
to not have difficulties with conversation, though he did not come across as a
person who seemed to know it all or one who would make someone feel inferior.
The moments on the phone went very well and were encouraging.  Then, out
of the blue, Bill’s cell. phone rang.   It was Mary Lou, on her own phone, asking
if Kyle had called yet. Bill told her to hold her horses, for he had Kyle on the phone at that very moment.  He told her to wait a second as he fumbled with the phones and then told them to go ahead.

Bill laughed very heartily at this modern day communication miracle of a pseudo
three way conversation.  Him listening in between the two of them, holding the
phones awkwardly so that his receiver was against the mouthpiece of the telephone,
thus allowing Kyle and Mary Lou to talk.  Finally, after what seemed like hours
of details and references to landmarks that even Bill had not remembered
seeing, they felt that Kyle knew how to traverse the rest of the way to Bill’s home.
Knowing this, Bill graciously bowed out and told the two magpies to hush now,
so that he could hang up and start working on something for them to snack on.

This was a very exciting moment for Bill.  The first time Bill would see Kyle,
his son.  A son who knew much more about his father than his father might
ever know of a son.  So much water had gone under their bridges over the
past twenty years.  Could all of this time ever be made up?  Or, was it too
late?  Bill took a slow sip of his coffee, very much in deep thought, wondering
what their futures held for them, for the four of them.

Sunshine

Administrator

Member Empyrean

since 1999-06-25

Posts 63354
Listening to every heart