Chapter 24: The Great Plains and B52s

At 7:30 AM there was a furious knocking at my door. I groaned I was in desperate need of sleep from the last forty eight hours of stress. I wished whoever was banging on the door would go away and let me sleep. I finally got up to answer the knocking.

“What?” I answered the door with some agitation to my voice.

I heard a gasp and an exclamation of “Oh My”

I squinted to look through the blinding morning light and saw the now scarlet Mrs. Jorgeson looking at me with wide open eyes. Then I realized the cause of my embarrassed landlady’s shocked response. Last night when I stripped down for bed I really stripped down. I was standing there at the door in my birthday suit.

I quickly closed my door and ran into the bedroom to put on a t shirt and sweat pants. I opened the door and she was still standing there with a silly grin on her face.

“If I were thirty years younger you would be just a shadow of your former self about now,” she giggled.

“If you were thirty years younger you would experience things you only read about in your romance novels,” I said suggestively

I got her to turn beet red again. I got my revenge for waking me up early.

“Let me get a shower, shave and get dressed and I will be down and we can talk then. I tell you what all happened.” I said.

“Now go fix me breakfast or I will forget the age difference and have my way with you.”

She giggled and turn to go down the steps. “Promises, promises”

I acted like I was coming down the steps after her.

She giggled more and scooted across the drive and into her house.

Thirty minutes later I was sitting down to a farm style breakfast with all the fixings. I would be stuffed after finishing this meal.

I told her everything that had happened to me since the day I left. Told her about the flight, staying in a hotel on S. Michigan Avenue, testifying in the court room. She laughed at how I owned the defense attorney and gave it right back at him. I told her about Ginny B’s behavior in the court room and how the Judge decided how best to deal with her.

“Good, she is going to get everything she has got coming then. That was no way for a lady to act in a court room. Even if she is mentally unhinged she knew better,” Mrs Jorgeson commented.

I knew better than to make a comment and left it go. My landlady was stuck in the 1950s and what was lady like for a woman of Ginny’s social stature.

“Before I forget Agent Foster is coming to the wedding. By the way I learned his first name yesterday when we were talking at the airport. It’s Lawrence.” I said.

“Oh good I have two grand daughters lined up for him to impress.” she smiled.

“I didn’t know you had so many grand daughters. I thought Karen and Sadie were the only two.” I said.

“They are, these two are the grand daughters of a friend of mine. She heard what a fine catch you were and she wanted to know if I knew of any others. So I thought of Agent Foster.” she said so proud of herself.

I snorted at her comment and passed orange juice through my nose.

After breakfast and me helping to do dishes I went out to unload my car. If it stayed nice I thought seriously about going for a motorcycle ride. Just what the doctor ordered to reduce stress and clear my mind and start concentrating on my upcoming marriage and finding a job in Chicago.

After bringing in my bags and hanging things up I thought about laying down for a half hour and recharging my batteries. I laid down and I was out of it as soon as my head hit the pillow. Instead of napping for thirty minutes I slept more closer to three hours. It was mid afternoon when I woke up and started moving. It would be too late to go riding any more this afternoon. I would go instead for a short one after supper. Trying to think what I could do instead and I then realized I hadn’t spoken to my parents in a good long while.

I dialed their number and after the third ring it was picked up.

“Hello,”

I heard my mom answer the phone and I for some reason could not say hello back.

“Hello,” my mom said again.

“Hi, mom” I answered,

“Son whats going on? I don’t hear from you for months and out of the blue you decide to call. Have you heard from Ginny? Its like she dropped off of the face of the earth. I am worried.”mom said sounding extremely upset.

“Mom, you aren’t probably going to like what I have to say,” I said with apprehension.

She didn’t. My mother used words and called me things I didn’t know were in her vocabulary. How could I have betrayed Ginny and poor Ginny ending up in such a terrible place as Elgin MHC. She hoped I was proud of myself. I thought we went through all this before. My mom totally refused to accept the truth and I was the fault of it. Then she dropped the bomb. She and my dad would not attend the wedding and my soon to be spouse would not be welcomed in their home. Being a professional mental health care giver, my mother was in dire need of those skills herself in my opinion. She ended the phone call by slamming the receiver down.

With the phone call ended, I was emotionally done in. Physically I was shaking so bad that I had difficulty putting the handset back on the cradle. My cheeks were wet which I initially thought were from sweat and then realized they wear tears. Something I hadn’t done in a long time. My legs felt rubbery and I had difficulty moving. And to make it worse if I didn’t get them moving I would have a terrible mess to clean up. It was touch and go there for a while, I did make it into the bathroom in time.

Later lying in bed I was trying to make sense of the things that had happened in my life over the past years. How I went from thinking I was the luckiest guy in the world when I started dating Ginny to how quickly that turned in to a nightmare. I thought of the friendships she ruined for me and even more sadly of the loss of friends’ lives she caused. And now the loss of my family that I was just now beginning to feel. Ginny was a demon, no she was the devil. No one more evil than her and all this was from her desire to seek revenge cause I rejected her. I had denied her what she wanted and she wouldn’t accept it. Now we both are suffering from her obsession, me the loss of friends and family and she her personal freedom. For the foreseeable future Ginny’s world would be an eight by ten foot room fogged by the drugs they used to make it easier to maintain control of her.