600 Hours of Edward

by Craig Lancaster

  But yesterday, she was not nice. I will tell Dr. Buckley about it, and I will bet that she will agree with my assessment. After yesterday, I am no longer even sure that it was my fault that our dinner ended so quickly. Joy-Annette’s messages to me were erratic. First, she said that I was selfish when I burped. Then she said I wasn’t supportive. Then she said she can’t invest in something so emotional. Then she said maybe if I wrote back, we could try again. Then she called me an asshole.

  That hurt my feelings.

  Now I’m quite sure that I don’t know what Joy-Annette wants, and I wonder if it’s a woman thing or just a Joy-Annette thing. Dr. Buckley is a woman, and I don’t think she would treat someone this way. It must be a Joy-Annette thing.

  As I’m considering all of this, I find that my thoughts are drifting back to something that happened a long time ago.

  When I was at Billings West High School—class of 1987—I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have any friends, unless you count Mr. Withers, but he was a teacher. I kept to myself and did well in most of my classes, though I liked wood shop the best, partly because of Mr. Withers and partly because I was exceptional at it. “Exceptional” is Mr. Withers’s word. I love that word.

  One day during my junior year, a really pretty girl in my English class, Lisa Edgington, started talking to me. I didn’t really know what to say back. She asked me if I thought she was pretty, and I said that I did. That kind of embarrassed me. She told me that she thought I was cute, and that really embarrassed me.

  She told me that she wanted me to meet her after school, over near the football field. I said that I would.

  A few hours later, I was at the football field. She was there, too. She asked me if I wanted to kiss her. I felt blood rush to my face, and I asked her not to tease me. She said, “No, really, do you want to kiss me?” I said I did. And she let me. Then I heard laughing. A bunch of kids from school were under the bleachers, pointing at us.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Lisa Edgington said to them, and she ran off with them, laughing. They went to the parking lot and climbed into a car and left.

  The next day at school, a lot of people were pointing and laughing at me. When I passed by her locker, Lisa Edgington wouldn’t even look at me. In English class, she didn’t talk to me.

  The laughing went on for a week, at least. Lisa Edgington’s silence went on longer than that, until graduation, and then I never saw her again. One day, a boy asked me in wood shop, “Hey, Edward, are you going to hump Lisa Edgington?” Mr. Withers overheard it and pulled that boy into his office and yelled at him. That boy came back to his seat red faced, and he never said another word to me.

  Is Joy-Annette like Lisa Edgington, only grown up?

  I don’t know.

  – • –

  Joy-Annette has said good-bye, and I have written her my last letter of complaint and filed away the green office folder with her name on it, and yet she continues to affect me. I am not happy about this.

  Today, for example, the Dallas Cowboys are playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it is almost game time before I remember to pull on my authentic white Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey. I like the white jersey better than the blue one, but whatever jersey the Dallas Cowboys are wearing on a given Sunday is the one I choose.

  Tony Romo is still hurt by a broken pinkie finger, and I am dubious about the Dallas Cowboys’ chances without him, given what I have seen so far from his backup, Brad Johnson. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good team. The Dallas Cowboys are supposed to be a good team, but I just don’t know if that’s true unless Tony Romo is playing.

  – • –

  A few hours later, I have an odd sensation: The Cowboys won 13–9, but I have no joy about it. The Cowboys have won 298 times in the regular season since the first game I remember, that 1974 Thanksgiving game in which Clint Longley rescued the team after Roger Staubach got hurt, and I’ve been happy every single time. Today, I’m glad they won, but I’m not happy. I’m not sad, the way I would be if the Dallas Cowboys had added to their 210 regular-season losses since Thanksgiving 1974, but I’m definitely not happy.

  First, it was a terrible game. The Dallas Cowboys gained only 172 yards of offense, and I heard the announcer say that was the fewest yards Dallas had ever accumulated in a victory. Tony Romo accounts for way more than 172 yards a game all by himself.

  Second, Brad Johnson, again, did not look good. To his credit, he did not throw any interceptions, but he also seemed unable to pass the ball very far down the field. As it will be at least a couple of more weeks before Tony Romo is back, I cannot be confident that the Dallas Cowboys will be able to win like this again without him.

  It seems that the only reason the Dallas Cowboys won is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers apparently have just as many problems as the Cowboys do, and I also heard the announcer say this. Tampa Bay kept driving down deep into the Dallas Cowboys’ end of the field but came away with just three field goals. It’s hard to win that way, harder even than winning with only 172 yards of offense.

  – • –

  I skip lunch, putting me two meals behind my weekly plan. I find it difficult to care about this anymore.

  Here’s what I don’t get about Joy-Annette: What did she expect when she wrote that first note to me yesterday? I don’t know. Dr. Buckley and I have talked about my tendency to get defensive when I am challenged by someone, especially my father, and as I go and dig out my first letter in response to her, I see that I was defensive. But isn’t defense what is called for when someone is making accusations against you? Further, I did not send a response to Joy-Annette, so she did not know that I had become defensive. Her increasingly erratic notes to me just got angrier, until she called me an “asshole” and a “looser.” That was an uncalled-for personal attack.

  I will take this up with Dr. Buckley on Tuesday. I wish I didn’t have to wait.

  – • –

  That sensation that I felt after I woke up, I just remembered what it’s called: lethargy. I love the word “lethargy,” but I hate the feeling.

  That’s not true. Hate is an intense, burning, blinding dislike. I think it is reckless to use words in an imprecise way, the way Joy-Annette uses them. I don’t hate lethargy. I just would prefer to not experience it.

  I pull out my tattered copy of Roget’s Thesaurus. I’m curious if I might at least have the opportunity to expand my vocabulary in the wake of this regrettable interaction with Joy-Annette.

  Under “lethargy,” I find the word “torpor.” I look up that word, and I see it described as “a deficiency in mental and physical alertness and activity,” and I realize that this definition is exactly what I feel today. Just above “torpor” is the word “torpidness,” which is the state of being in torpor.

  I have two excellent new words and decide that I should be thankful for that, even if I am still flummoxed by Joy-Annette.

  – • –

  At 6:04 p.m., I hear a knock at the front door. A peep through the spyglass shows that it is Donna Middleton.

  I open the door. “

  Hi, Edward.”

  “Hi, Donna.”

  “Haven’t seen you outside much lately.”

  “Yeah. It’s torpor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A deficiency in mental and physical alertness and activity. I’m in a state of torpidness.”

  “I’ve never heard it described in quite that way.”

  “Yes.”

  Donna Middleton looks down, then back up at me. “Listen, Edward, I just got off work and have to go pick Kyle up at my folks’ house, but I wanted to ask a favor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember how I told you that Mike has a court appearance tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was wondering if you’d consider coming with me.”

  “To court?”

  “Yes.”

  Before I can answer, she’s talking again. “Look, I really feel ba
d asking you, but I don’t know where else to go. I’d like to keep my parents away from it—they mean well, but there’s just too much hassle. They worry about Kyle and they worry about me, and I can’t deal with all those questions and judgments right now. But I also don’t want to go alone. So even though it’s asking a lot, and you’d be well within your rights to say no, I’m asking: Will you go to court with me?”

  My mind flashes on the dream of Mike swinging a baseball bat at my head, but I beat back that thought. They won’t let Mike have a baseball bat in the courtroom. That would be against protocol.

  “I’ll go. I used to work there.”

  “At the courthouse?”

  “Yes. In the clerk of court’s office.”

  “That’s great. You’ll go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you so much, Edward. I appreciate this more than I can say. The hearing is at nine thirty in the morning. Why don’t you come over around nine and we’ll go?”

  “No, you come over here. I have to drive.”

  – • –

  Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, the sixth of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Bank Examiner Swindle,” and it’s one of my favorites.

  In “The Bank Examiner Swindle,” which originally aired on February 23, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called in to investigate a series of scams in which elderly people are approached by two men pretending to be bank examiners who say that they’re trying to catch thieving tellers. The fake examiners ask the old people to withdraw their money from the bank and give it to them, and they say that they will mark the bills, redeposit them, and then find out which tellers are lifting those bills. As you’ve probably surmised, the fake examiners don’t do that. They just take the money.

  Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon end up running a ruse. Officer Bill Gannon poses as the son of an elderly woman who is targeted by the phony bank examiners, and he gives the men the money. Sergeant Joe Friday then busts in from the kitchen with a gun and puts them under arrest.

  Sergeant Joe Friday always gets his man. He also would never be thrown off by the smooth talking of a con man. Not for the first time, I wish I were a lot more like Sergeant Joe Friday and a lot less like I really am.

  – • –

  After Dragnet, I prepare a new green office folder for my files.

  Dr. Neil Clark Warren:

  I have an issue to take up with you, sir. Your ubiquitous advertising of eHarmony fails to come clean on two points:

  First, you can’t find matches for everyone. You certainly could not for me, and thus I ended up having to pursue online dating through Montana Personal Connect.

  Second, you portray online dating as a wonderland in which happy couples come together as soul mates who have every little thing in common. You ascribe this to your twenty-nine levels of compatibility, but I must say, sir, that I ascribe it to your living in a fantasy world.

  I did not find a soul mate. On your site, I found nothing. On Montana Personal Connect, I found an erratic woman who was progressively hostile toward me, culminating in her calling me an “asshole” and a “looser.” Her poor spelling skills aside, I found those comments to be demeaning and hurtful.

  In short, my online dating experience was not enjoyable. Had I never seen your ads, I might not have been prompted to try online dating. I can safely say that had I not tried online dating, I would not be in the torpor that I’m currently experiencing.

  I ask you to reconsider your advertising campaign and choose an approach that is more honest about what online dating is really like. I would think that a clinical psychologist of thirty-five years, as you profess to be on your website, would be interested in honesty above all. I know that my own psychologist, Dr. Buckley, values truth and honesty. I trust her. You, I don’t trust.

  Regards,

  Edward Stanton

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Donna’s knock on the front door comes promptly at 9:00 a.m. I’m impressed by her punctuality. I’ve been up since 7:38 a.m., eating my breakfast of corn flakes, taking my eighty milligrams of fluoxetine, reading the Billings Herald-Gleaner, and canceling my membership to Montana Personal Connect, which I had neglected to do in the flurry of messages from Joy-Annette on Saturday. I had been skittish about logging on, for fear of finding yet another message from Joy-Annette, but there was none.

  I answer the door and see Donna Middleton standing there, looking more formal than I’ve ever seen her. She’s in a pair of brown slacks, a blue knit two-piece top, a long leather coat, and dress shoes (flats, I think they are called). Her dark-brown hair is swept back in a ponytail, and her face is made up. She looks very pretty.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hi, Edward. Are you ready to go?”

  “I am. My data is complete.”

  – • –

  On the short drive downtown, Donna Middleton is silent. I am not supposed to take my eyes off the road, but I can see that she is gripping both hands, making her knuckles look like small white rocks popping through her skin.

  “Are you nervous?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Determined.”

  We’re driving along Lewis Avenue, past bungalows and churches. Although this is one of Billings’s well-traveled secondary thoroughfares, it’s mostly quiet at this hour. Children have headed off to school. Those who work nine-to-five jobs are already at them. We see a few walkers and a few elderly drivers. Other than that, Lewis is ours.

  “What’s happening today, the arraignment?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “It should be a short appearance. Arraignments usually are.”

  “I hope so.”

  “A lot of times, victims don’t attend arraignments.” I don’t know if Donna Middleton is looking for a way out of this trip to court, but if she needs one, I want to provide it.

  “I’m going to be there,” she says, “every time he is.”

  – • –

  The Yellowstone County Courthouse is one of the distinctive buildings in the Billings skyline. To be fair to other skylines, Billings’s isn’t that impressive. Despite its prodigious growth over the past decade or so, Billings remains in many ways the small cow town that it started as in 1882.

  The courthouse is an eight-story granite building, and it sits on the southeast corner of Third Avenue N. and North Twenty-Seventh Street. Among downtown buildings, I would say that only the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the Wells Fargo building (which is next door to the courthouse), and the First Interstate Bank building rival the courthouse in terms of distinctiveness. When I worked at the courthouse, I was proud to come to work every day at so important a building.

  We park in the garage attached to the Wells Fargo building, then walk across Second Avenue N. to the courthouse.

  Donna tells me that the hearing will be in Department 1. That’s Judge Alan Robeson’s courtroom, I tell her.

  “Is that good?” she asks.

  “That’s very good. Judge Robeson is a wise, logical person.”

  “Good.”

  We ride the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Judge Robeson’s courtroom is (Room 506, technically).

  It’s 9:21 a.m. It won’t be long now.

  – • –

  For first court appearances, those who are charged with crimes generally don’t show up in person. It’s often done by video from the county jail. For arraignments, however, where formal charges are presented and bond is haggled out by the prosecutor and defense attorney, the accused often does show up.

  The district courts in Yellowstone County are austere places. (I love the word “austere.”) The furniture dates from the 1960s and is built for function, not style. The gallery, of which we’re a part, sits on five rows of benches that look like church pews. The rows are divided by an aisle down the middle that leads to the lectern in front of the judge. When we came in, Donna chose a spot in the front row of the gallery.

  There are two tables, one for
the defense and the other for the prosecutor. The judge sits on an elevated stand called a dais, flanked by the witness stand and a court reporter. The jury box today is full of inmates wearing the distinctive orange jumpsuit of the county jail. Their hands are shackled in front of them, connected to a waist chain. Their feet are shackled, too. Mike is one of them, and he stares at Donna Middleton in her seat and at me next to her. I look away and focus on the symbols behind Judge Robeson’s bench—the Montana and US flags and the state of Montana seal directly behind him. Donna, I hope, is also looking away.

  Criminal hearings are a cattle call of arraignments, changes of pleas, violations of parole, and the like. The judges work through the caseload deliberately but quickly, handling upward of twenty cases in a couple of hours, and sometimes faster.

  Mike’s case is the fourteenth of the seventeen that Judge Robeson is dealing with today. When the case comes up, Mike is led from the jury box by two armed guards. As he shuffles to the lectern, he fixes a gaze on Donna, and she reaches down and grabs my hand and squeezes. It hurts. I glance at her and see that she is returning Mike’s withering stare.

  The hearing is as I told Donna that it would be.

  First, the prosecution requests that the charges—violation of a restraining order and a felony charge of assault—be served. This is called “requesting leave to file.” Judge Robeson waves his hand, and the prosecutor steps up to Mike and his defender and hands them the charging document.

  The defense attorney, Sean Lambert, says, “We’ll waive a reading, Your Honor.”

  Judge Robeson peers down over the top of his glasses at Mike. “Do you understand the charges, Mr. Simpson?”

  “Yeah,” Mike says.

  “That’s ‘Yes, Your Honor,’” Judge Robeson corrects him.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And your plea to the first charge, violation of a protective order?”