The Picnic, part two
Sunday July 25th @ 1:30 AM - The
King House.
Will saw his brother, Ted, and Gary pull up to the King house. He
had been watching for them the past half of an hour. This morning, Ted
told Will that he was going to be stopping at the hospital to see their
mom before coming to the picnic, and that he should get there by 1. With
each minute that ticked off after 1, Will was getting a little more
worried. No matter what Bart or Ted say, he still blames himself for
what happened to his mother.
Completely ignoring the frisbee flying toward where he had been,
Will jogged over to Ted. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that
Jenny was also running to Ted. "So, how is she?" was the first thing out
of Will's mouth, followed quickly by, "What took you so long?" Ted
smiles at them and says, "She's fine. Don't worry. We just had to wait
for a test to get done. Mom sends her love to both of you. ... I told
her that tomorrow we'd all be coming together." Will asks, "Well how did
she look?" Ted - "She's looking lot better. They've removed some of the
IV tubes, and there's just a bit of color in her face again. ... She
said to tell you to make sure you thank the Mr. and Mrs. Matthews before
you head home." Gary adds, "After that she said that she was getting
tired. The nurse kicked us of the room. Ted forgot to mention one
thing. ... This morning they moved her out of ICU into her own room."
The four of them moved toward the back of the house where the
picnic was. Ted and Gary had to repeat the same story for everyone. Even
Steve and Mark seemed to be interested. Grams/Virg announced that it
would be at least 3:00 before they ate, and suggested that they set up
the volleyball net and play until it was time to eat. Jean volunteered
to help Virg with the food. When the first teams seemed to be composed
entirely of couples, Betty who was acting ref said, "This won't do. I'll
pick the teams." Looking at each set of twosomes playing she simply
divided them in half, "OK, on my right Zack, Ted, Mark, Jenny, Bart, TK,
and Sheri, on my left Shelley, Gary, Steve, Gina, Will, Bill and Evan."
There was grumbling on both sides, but once the games started they
all had a great time. There were the usual problems of running into each
other once in a while, or when Mark slipped the on the grass and ended
diving head first at Bart's feet, which sent him reeling into Ted. It
was what they all needed, spending time playing with friends, joking and
laughing with them. Each time one of Betty's calls went against their
team, they would complain that she was playing favorites, it made no
difference that Shelley and TK were on opposite teams.
After about a 45 minutes, Bart's parents both gave up, claiming
they were to old for all this. Then they sat along the side lines each
rooting for their own teams. Another half an hour, and Betty called the
game over. Jenny, had just tied up the the game with spike that Gary had
no chance of returning. Her ruling was greeted with cat calls, "Come on
mom, we would have won." "We were just getting set to come back."
"Come
back, bullroar, you guys were goners."...
The hot sweaty teams headed for the house where they inhaled
three
pitchers of Iced tea, and two more of lemonade, along with 7 cokes.
Grams looked at them, and was happy to see the looks on their faces.
This is what friends should look like. They all stood or sat around the
end of the verandah, Ted laughing with Gary, Bill and TK both listening
to Steve and Mark talk about how their apartment was coming along.
Bill's arms loosely wrapped around TK's waist from behind. Zack and his
dad joking, Gina, Shelley, and Jenny whispering among themselves. Jean
took in the scene and thought to herself, this is what real Family
Values are about.
To be continued...
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