The Bus Bench

Edna Rollins is adopted at age six by her aunt Lilly who raises her in a sheltered environment creating a young lady that is socially naïve’ and unworldly. Lilly’s shunning of men exacerbates Edna’s beliefs, one of which is that only married girls have babies. Lilly’s declining health and refusal to seek medical care eventually brings about her demise which happens on Edna’s high school graduation night. Edna returns to find Lilly has passed which plunges her into a state of panic and utter confusion. She seeks the solace of her next door neighbor Loretta Hoffman whose long term marriage is in shambles but who helps Edna grasp the reality of her situation. Edna shares with Loretta that Lilly has left her a box, the contents of which she has yet to see. Betraying Lilly’s instructions that she only open the box in the presence of her best friend Maude, Edna opens the box in Loretta’s presence. The stunning contents are relics from one of Lilly’s escapades with a man who was a thief. Sometime later, Edna encounters Loretta’s husband Art as she exits the grocers. Art directs her to an area behind the stores where he terrorizes her and rapes her leaving her in a state of hysterics and disillusionment. The weeks following, finds her recovering, but nine months later she is dumbstruck when she gives birth to a baby boy. Her shrieks and cries for help elicit the response of Loretta next door who is fully aware of Edna’s naivety’. Edna rejects the baby completely, refusing to nurse or even hold the child. After some inquiries as to Edna’s pregnancy, Loretta learns that the child was fathered by her husband Art. Loretta leaves Edna for a short while to confront Art about his newfound fatherhood. Call it woman’s intuition or instinct but Loretta senses something terribly wrong as she rushes back to Edna’s and the baby. She finds that Edna is attempting to drown her newborn. Loretta takes control of the baby who is then remanded to the care of social services. Edna takes her own life two days later. The infant is adopted by childless couples who christens him Gerry and raise him in an idyllic setting in the farmland of central Ohio. His adopted father dies in a fall from the barn roof which brings a complete upheaval in Gerry and his mother’s lives. Gerry’s childish crush on a TV news woman Tammy Whitlock quickly becomes an overwhelming obsession as he matures. When the network moves her aside for a new face he is overwhelmed with grief. Her celebrity quickly fades as promotional billboards, placards, and posters throughout the city are scrapped except for a solitary and forgotten bus bench which bears her image. Fearful that the bench, which has become his shrine, will be discovered, he maneuvers it to an obscure place enabling him to meet and communicate with the love of his life. Since the death of his father Gerry’s personality undergoes a dramatic change laced with violence and indescribable anger which he demonstrates more than once whenever an inspecting transient comes near the bus bench. Learning that Tammy has married a wealthy industrialist and moved to California, he orchestrates a cross country journey to find her. The improbable characters he encounters on his journey ridicule his efforts serving only to plunge himself deeper into the quest to find her. An unforgettable chain of events ends in a face to face meeting. He finds her terminally ill which he blames on her husband. He formulates a swift and brutal “payback”, and then kidnaps her taking her back home to Ohio and his beloved bus bench.