06.S08 Chapter Six, Snippet Eight

New Prairie Woman
Susie Rosso Wolf
Chapter 6, con't

Morning came with the rude awakening from the land line ringing off the hook. My hand fumbled behind my pillow, up and over my book cubby to find the receiver sitting in the cradle that sat on top of the headboard. “Hello,” croaked out in my best former smokers’ voice after a long night of laughing and yelling.

“Hello, where is my mother?”

“Bobby?”

“Oh God, please don’t call me that Susie, I’m not five years old anymore, just call me Rob. Can you get Mom please? I’m in a hurry to get to work.”

“Okay, Rob, hold on.” I rolled off the water bed put my feet on the ground, grabbed my robe and wrapped it around me. Padding down the hall with Cutter, Lilly, and Dinky behind me, I could smell cigarette smoke wafting in the living room window. “Brenda? Where are you?”

“I’m out here sitting on the front porch,” she said through the open window. I opened the front door next to the diamond paned windows and found her sitting on the red-brick steps under the white porch covering drinking a cup of coffee.

“Here, take this, your son is on the phone.” I handed the wireless phone to her in my most perturbed manner then walked back into the house. Man oh man did his attitude sour my mood. But a moment later I heard Brenda yelling for me so I walked back to the living room from the kitchen and opened the door again to find her waving the phone at me with one hand and her cigarette in the other. “What’s wrong with your legs old lady, can’t walk this morning to hang it up yourself?”

“Sue, take it, Rob wants a word with you before he goes to work.”

“Oh,” I grumbled. “Hello?”

“Susie, what’s your email address?”

“Um, it’s…” I gave him the address then asked why he wanted it.

“I’m sending you an email, check it out after you wake up. I gotta go, love ya.”

Amazed and confused, I walked over to the desk-top computer in my office and turned it on. Then I walked back to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee that Brenda had already made. I let the dogs back in for their breakfast once I filled up their bowls, and then sat down to get online. My inbox was full but right at the top there were three emails from Robert. Each letter had several attachments of photos. I called Brenda over to sit next to me and together we looked at pictures of his new log cabin style home in Montana, his land, his town, some bridges over a river, mountains, teepees, rustic looking structures that looked quite old and pictures of West Yellowstone. It was obvious that Robert had done well for himself by hooking up with his girlfriend, April, who could afford to buy this beautiful home and the land that it sat on. And it was also obvious that they had worked very hard to make this home a beautiful place as we scrolled through pictures of the interior of the house and the landscaping dressed with massive conifers and Russian Olives and Lilacs that Brenda herself had completely cleared from all of the years of overgrowth debris. She worked her fingers bloody each day while she manicured that land in preparation for the mobile home to be set in place on top of their newly poured concrete foundation.  His home and his town were very beautiful and suddenly I felt happy for him and relieved as well. Remembering my father’s request to “always take care of Bobby” I looked at this set up out there in Montana and knew that this was a good thing for him, that he could live a very nice life there.

I sent Robert an email back telling him how beautiful his place was and how impressed I was by what they have accomplished together to create such a lovely place to live. Brenda and I capped off the morning with a breakfast of her bacon and scrambled eggs and my Belgian waffles. We devoured the food with great enthusiasm while we tamed the growling bellies caused by the hard swim the night before. But just as we finished washing up the breakfast dishes Brenda began packing up her car to head back home to Sun City. In the driveway outside the door of her little blue car we hugged each other as if we’d never see one another again. Tears swam down our faces as the years of friendship came flooding back to both of us, as if we were watching an old flicker movie. We both felt a deep sense of loss and remorse while we wondered, clearly, if this were indeed, our last embrace.

Later that evening after reading my email, Robert called again, this time merely to chat and so we spent over an hour on the phone together. Soon after that day I received many calls from Robert and it was over the telephone that I met the girl he was living with, Miss April. They described their daily lives and sounded so happy and eventually I was speaking to Brenda too, from Montana. After a long but uneventful drive she successfully delivered herself there, to her new life, with her son, future daughter in-law and grandchildren. Whether it would be the improved life that she hoped for remained to be seen.