600 Hours of Edward

by Craig Lancaster

  I remember when I was attending school at Billings West High School, during my junior-year English class, I had a teacher who would talk endlessly about symbolism in literature. She said that rain in a scene always portended (I love the word “portended”) a parting of ways. And yet I have years’ worth of data on the weather patterns here in Billings that suggest it’s not true. Rain is caused by cloud droplets that become too big for the clouds to hold. Water vapor below the clouds condenses into these droplets, which then fall from the sky. That has nothing to do with the parting of ways. The science of the matter is that it’s always raining somewhere on Earth, and while there may also always be parting of ways on Earth, that’s a coincidence, not science.

  This teacher also told us that a move east portended disaster. She justified this by quoting Horace Greeley, who famously said, “Go West, young man.” I think if she had just thought of all the people who have gone east to New York and hit it big, she might have realized the folly of what she was teaching us. It was Frank Sinatra who said that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. You take Horace Greeley. I’ll take Frank Sinatra. He was the chairman, after all.

  I take the last couple of big bites of corn flakes, pop the fluoxetine into my mouth, wash it down with orange juice, and head off to the shower. Today is important. Dr. Buckley awaits.

  – • –

  This trip to Dr. Buckley’s office will require some packing first.

  I printed out Joy-Annette’s increasingly belligerent e-mail messages as they came in, and they are stacked neatly on my office desk. I pull up my Word files on the computer and print out my letters of complaint back to Joy-Annette. I don’t trust myself to tell the whole story accurately, as it flusters me, and so I’ve decided to let Dr. Buckley read everything for herself. I look forward to hearing what she thinks.

  I fold the papers and put them into a briefcase. Then I open the briefcase and make sure I can find them easily. I then decide that I should segregate the papers, putting Joy-Annette’s notes in one compartment and my letters in another. I close the briefcase. Then I open it again and make sure that I know which compartment is which. I close the briefcase. Then I open it again and check one last time.

  I’m looking forward to seeing Dr. Buckley today.

  Of course, it’s only 8:32 a.m. Mike’s visage started my day far too early.

  I check the briefcase one more time.

  – • –

  An hour and twenty-three minutes later, I am in Dr. Buckley’s office. The past week’s patients have left me much to clean up. On every end table, the magazines are ridiculously out of order. I stack them again, chronologically within a given title and then alphabetically by title.

  I am unable to sit down. I’m fidgety. I used to feel this way a lot, especially before I started seeing Dr. Buckley and she helped figure out the proper dosage of my fluoxetine. I have no ready answer for why such jumpiness has returned today, but perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas.

  I look at my watch, and it’s 9:59:51.

  If I don’t start on time today, I will be very upset.

  9:59:54…9:59:55…9:59:56…

  Dr. Buckley’s door opens, and I barrel down the hallway, crashing into the distinguished-looking gentleman who is exiting her office.

  I look down at my watch.

  10:00:04…10:00:05…10:00:06…

  “Cocksucker,” I say, scolding myself for my tardiness.

  – • –

  “Edward, I need you to take it real slow now.”

  Dr. Buckley’s voice is low and soothing. She never loses her temper with me, even when I push her to exasperation, as I have today. After I ran into that man and then shouted a very bad word, I could hear her on the other side of the door, apologizing profusely to him and assuring him that I was not referring to him as a cocksucker. She didn’t actually say the word “cocksucker,” but it was obvious that was the word causing consternation.

  When Dr. Buckley comes back in, I start talking very fast before she even sits down. My brain is moving faster than my mouth, and I am making little sense, I am afraid.

  “Slow down, now,” Dr. Buckley says.

  “I went on that online date, and it was a complete disaster. I couldn’t…she was…I was worried…”

  “Breathe and slow down.”

  This is a technique that Dr. Buckley used often in the early days of my coming to see her, when we were meeting every couple of days to work through my problems. I was often frantic back then. After my fluoxetine dosage settled in at eighty milligrams and took effect in my body, we didn’t have to do this so much, and we were able to dial back our sessions to once a week. I can see in Dr. Buckley’s face that she is surprised that we’re in this mode again.

  “Are you breathing better?” she asks.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Are you ready to talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, then. Let’s take these one at a time.”

  – • –

  We start with Joy-Annette and the disastrous online date. I bring Dr. Buckley up to speed on all that happened since my last appointment, including the clothes-buying trip (“My husband has those slacks,” she says at one point. “They look good.”), the anxiety about sex, the Gewurztraminer-fueled burp, and the abrupt end to the date.

  I only allude to the flurry of e-mail and my own unsent responses. Rather than tell about them, I reach into the briefcase and hand her the printouts.

  Dr. Buckley reads quickly but also intently. At several points, I can see her brow furrow. At those junctures, I wonder what part of the correspondence she is reading, and I hope that it isn’t mine.

  “Edward, I think you’ve learned something about dating in general, but online dating in particular,” Dr. Buckley finally says.

  “What?”

  “It can be difficult to find the right person, no matter the circumstance. I’m not willing to say whether online dating is inferior or superior to dating the old-fashioned way, whatever that is, but it’s different in one important way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re missing a dimension of the person that you get when the first interaction is face-to-face. What I’m talking about here is a vibe. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so. A vibe is hard to quantify.”

  “Yes, it is. But that innate feeling you get about someone else is important. Online dating delays that. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, in and of itself. But it happens. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes. I didn’t get a good vibe from Joy-Annette. Did you in reading her notes?”

  “No, but I don’t dislike her. I feel sorry for her.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s clearly dealing with some issues that stretch beyond dating and beyond you, Edward. There’s unhappiness there.”

  I hadn’t considered that, and now I feel bad that I’ve been harboring such hostile thoughts toward Joy-Annette. I’m not being fair.

  “What have you taken from your online dating experience, Edward?”

  I think for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t think I want to do it again. There’s too much torpidity when it goes poorly.”

  “But what about if it goes well?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t experienced that. Are you saying that you think I should try it again?”

  Dr. Buckley shakes her head. “I’m not saying that. That’s your decision, Edward. I’m saying that you have made the decision to let people into your life—”

  “I don’t recall making that decision.”

  “Well, it wasn’t an occasion. But it happened just the same. Look at what we’re talking about.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “As I was saying, you have made the decision to let people into your life. Part of that involves being disappointed by them sometimes. Part of that involves being thrilled by them sometimes. It’s up to you to decide whether the risk is worth the reward.” />
  “I guess I’m thinking that it’s not.”

  “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Yes, but Donna Middleton said it was that I had to turn over a lot of rocks on the beach before I find a pearl.”

  “Donna Middleton is a very logical woman,” Dr. Buckley says.

  – • –

  Next, we talk about Donna Middleton and the fracas at the courthouse yesterday. There was a news brief on the second page of the Local & State section in today’s Billings Herald-Gleaner about it, and Dr. Buckley says that she saw it.

  “Partner and family member assault is a terrible thing,” she says. From my years in the clerk of court’s office, I know it by the initials used by people in jurisprudence—PFMA.

  “I think she’s very brave to confront him like that,” she says.

  “She is.”

  “Edward, have you spoken with your father about this?”

  “I don’t think he would be happy that I have become friends with Donna.”

  “He might not. But I think he might have some good advice.”

  “He’ll just yell at me.”

  “Perhaps you should give him more credit than that. We’ve talked many times about your father and how to interact with him. What, in this case, do you think the best approach would be?”

  “Deference.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “I should appeal to his protective and analytical instincts. If I defer to his wisdom about a situation, he’s more likely to share it with me.” I have repeated, verbatim, what Dr. Buckley has counseled me to do on many occasions with my father. I have been less successful in actually following through with him.

  “Word for word, Edward. Word for word.”

  – • –

  We finish our session with a brief discussion about goals for the coming week. This is a fairly regular aspect of my weekly session with Dr. Buckley. I say “fairly regular” because it is sometimes superseded (I love the word “superseded”) by some emergency on my part, but in an average week, as most of them have been up until lately, we finish with a goals session. I wonder if I shouldn’t be keeping track of when we set goals and when we don’t, then shake off that thought as Dr. Buckley starts in.

  “You’ve made real progress, I think,” Dr. Buckley says. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes, I guess. It has been a hard, frustrating week.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve taken some steps outside your comfort zone, away from full-time solitude and into some fellowship with others. How do you feel about that?”

  “Mixed emotions, I guess.”

  “Are they so mixed that you are unwilling to keep going?”

  “No.”

  “OK, then. Here’s your goal: What’s the next step? How will the next seven days be different for you from the past seven? Let’s find out, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Dr. Buckley is up and opening her office door. “Until next week, Edward.”

  I walk out the office door, down the hall, and out the door into the foyer of the medical arts building. I can see through the glass doors that front the parking lot that it’s raining hard now.

  – • –

  At the Albertsons on Thirteenth Street W. and Grand Avenue, I have my cart and I begin to make my weekly pattern: spaghetti and sauce in the soup-and-pasta aisle, ground beef in the meat department, corn flakes in the cereal aisle, milk in the dairy, Diet Dr Pepper in the soda aisle, DiGiorno pizza and Banquet frozen meals and ice cream in the freezer compartments. Under optimal conditions, with no other customers or pallets of yet-to-be-unloaded food blocking my way, I can get from the store to the self-checkout area in six minutes.

  After taking down the corn flakes and putting them in the cart, I stop and consider my haul: three packages of ground beef, three packages of spaghetti, three jars of Newman’s Own spaghetti sauce, and one box of corn flakes. These make up the basis of my weekly diet, and they are my favorite foods.

  In the soda aisle, I bypass the Diet Dr Pepper. I think this week that I would like a twelve-pack of Barq’s root beer, which I load into the cart.

  In the dairy case, I reach for the 2 percent half gallon of milk, not the skim as usual.

  In the frozen-food aisle, I bypass the Banquet meals entirely, and the pizza, too. Instead, I select a few Lean Cuisine microwavable dinners—sweet and sour chicken, enchiladas suiza, pepperoni pizza, and Swedish meatballs. I eschew (I love the word “eschew”) Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream for a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet. I saw myself in the mirror before I went on my date with Joy-Annette, and I think I could stand to take in fewer calories.

  I then backtrack to the meat department and select what appears to be a very fine New York steak. In produce, which I never visit, I pick out a Caesar salad in a bag.

  The whole exercise exhilarates me. I don’t even know how to cook a steak, but surely there is a website that can tell me.

  I roll my cart toward the front of the store, to one of two open checkout stands, both jammed with customers. My shopping spree took eighteen minutes. It’s OK, I think. Today, I am happy, and I can wait a few minutes more to talk to an actual person.

  – • –

  I’m nervous on the drive home. The rain is coming down even harder than when I went into Albertsons, and the thump of fat raindrops against the windows reminds me of last week, when that car hit me as I was turning left onto Twenty-Fourth Street W. From Albertsons to home is all right turns, thank goodness, but you never know with other drivers.

  I’m relieved when I pull into the driveway without incident. As the garage is not attached to the house, I’m facing a small fight through the rain with the groceries, regardless of whether I leave the car exposed or pull it into the garage. I opt for the former, then scramble out of the car, dash around to the back, unlock the trunk, and start wrestling with the plastic bags.

  I can nearly scoop them all up, but the bulkiness of the box of Barq’s root beer is too much for me. I stand there in the rain for a minute or two, trying to find the grip that will allow me to move all of the bags toward the front door.

  Finally, I get it. I’m holding on to the carrying latch on the box of root beer with just three fingers, and I begin shuffling toward the door. Halfway across the front yard, the root beer box rips apart and slips from my grasp, landing with a metallic thud. A few cans roll toward the sidewalk, propelled along by the slight crown of the yard. One can has blown apart from the fall and is spraying warm, carbonated root beer.

  “Holy shit!” I say, and drop the bags of groceries.

  “Edward, let me give you a hand.” It’s Donna, splashing toward me from across the street in a yellow raincoat.

  “Thanks.”

  I collect the groceries again, while she chases down the cans of root beer. I waddle to the door in a half-run, and she’s behind me with an armful of soda cans. I set one bag down and retrieve the keys from my pocket, then unlock the door, gather up the bag, and hustle inside. Donna is right behind me. Tracking rain and mud through the house, we herd the groceries into the dining room and set them on the table.

  “Whew,” Donna says. “I think that one can’s a goner, Edward. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s OK.”

  I start pulling groceries from the bags and organizing them to be put away.

  “Do you need help?” Donna asks.

  “No, I can do this.”

  She looks back into the tramped-through living room. “Oh, Edward, we made a big mess in there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a vacuum cleaner and some cleaning supplies?”

  “Yes, in the hall closet.”

  “OK,” Donna says. “You put away the groceries, and I’ll clean the floor.”

  – • –

  By
12:45, we’re finished—the groceries put away, the living room carpet looking as if nobody had ever walked on it, let alone tracked mud and water across it—and we’re enjoying some of what Donna has dubbed The Root Beer That Tried to Get Away. She’s having hers in a glass, with ice. I’m drinking from the can, as I prefer my soda at room temperature.

  At 12:47, there is a knock on the door.

  I set my can of root beer down on the coffee table. I have no coasters, which started as a rebellion against my parents but now is just one of those idiosyncrasies that Dr. Buckley occasionally counsels me about; I can imagine her now, saying, “How, exactly, does not having coasters figure into your image of yourself, Edward?”

  At the door, I look through the peephole. I can see the distinctive blue outfit of the US Postal Service. He’s late today. It must be because of the rain. I open the door.

  “Edward Stanton?” he asks. He has been coming to this house for as long as I have lived here.

  “Yes.”

  “Registered letter. I need a signature.”

  I sign where he has indicated, and he hands me a white business envelope.

  The sender: Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, Attorneys at Law.

  “Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Donna asks.

  “A letter from my father’s lawyer.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. It can’t be good.”

  I open the letter, peeling away a corner of the envelope, and then sliding my right index finger through the top of the envelope like a crude blade.

  October 27, 2008

  Mr. Edward Stanton:

  Your benefactor and I would like to talk with you about recent events and their possible bearing on your benefactor’s continued support of you. Please extend us the courtesy of meeting at 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, October 29, at the law offices of Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, 2600 First Avenue N., Suite 303.

  We look forward to meeting with you.

  Regards,

  Jay L. Lamb