600 Hours of Edward

by Craig Lancaster

  The young man declares that his father gave his life for the medal. And Sergeant Joe Friday says that the young man will have to give up a little of his own life for using it. Sergeant Joe Friday seems to think that the young man’s father would not be proud. I’m glad my father was proud of me.

  – • –

  Enough of my letters are turning out to not be complaints that I ought to rethink my description of them. I now have a large collection of complaint letters and a smaller collection of letters of regret, letters of pleading, and now, tonight, a letter of awe and thanks. I prepare a new green office folder for this one.

  Michael Stipe:

  One of your songs made me cry today. I don’t like to cry, but I seem to be doing a lot of it lately, and to be honest, I think I would feel worse if I didn’t cry. Also, to be fair, it wasn’t just your song that made me cry. My father’s letter made me cry, too.

  I don’t know how it is that you write songs that seem to sum up how I’m feeling. It’s not because you know me; you don’t. But you have a talent for it, and I want you to know that I’ve noticed.

  “Everybody Hurts” is the perfect song to describe how I am feeling these days. I do feel like I am alone sometimes. But as you rightly point out, I am not alone. I have my mother. And I have a memory of my father that is a happy one.

  Thank you, Michael Stipe, for writing such perfect songs.

  I am, as ever, your fan,

  Edward Stanton

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4

  This morning, I sit calmly in Dr. Buckley’s waiting room, the soft sounds of string music washing over me. I have rearranged Dr. Buckley’s magazines; it wasn’t so hard. I have hope—that word again—that perhaps Dr. Buckley’s other patients are starting to care a bit more about maintaining order around here.

  I awoke again at 7:38 a.m., the 227th time this year (because it’s a leap year). For one of the few times in recent weeks, I slept soundly and dreamlessly. Well, that’s not true: Nobody sleeps dreamlessly. But I don’t remember any dreams, and that’s nearly the same thing.

  Today is the fifth full day without my father, and I don’t feel quite so badly about that as I did yesterday or the day before. I wish he were here, of course, especially now that I know he isn’t ashamed of me. But I also feel like it’s all going to be OK. I can’t explain this feeling. It is not based in fact, but rather in emotion. I prefer facts, but I don’t mind this emotion. Perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas about all of this. I find emotions difficult to explain.

  Perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas about Donna Middleton, too, because I have none. I wish I did.

  I’ll know soon enough. Dr. Buckley just ushered a man out of her office—the one I barreled into last week—and is signaling me to come in.

  The man scowls at me as we cross paths.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  – • –

  “Edward,” Dr. Buckley says, taking her seat. “How are you doing today?”

  “I’m doing well.”

  “That’s good. Again, I’m so sorry about your father. How is your mother?”

  “I think she’s going to be OK.”

  “And you?”

  “I think I’m going to be OK, too. I feel…Well, it’s hard to explain.”

  “Give it a try.”

  “My father wrote me a letter. His lawyer gave it to me yesterday.”

  “Oh?”

  “But it’s not like the other letters I’ve gotten from the lawyer. My father told me in this letter that he’s proud of me and that he loves me. He apologized to me. I…Dr. Buckley, would you like to read the letter?”

  “If you feel comfortable with that, Edward, I would love to.”

  I lean forward in my chair and pull the folded letter out of my back pocket, then hand it to her.

  Dr. Buckley gingerly unfolds the letter and starts reading, and I can’t be sure, but it looks like her eyes are getting teary.

  After she stops reading, she looks for a while at the folded-up letter she still holds.

  “Edward,” she finally says, “this is an extraordinary letter.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have patients who have waited all their lives to hear something like this from a parent, or a spouse, or a child.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should put this somewhere special. Don’t keep it folded up in your pocket.”

  “Yes.”

  She hands the letter back to me, and I hold it carefully.

  “If I may, I think I can help you understand this feeling of peace you describe, Edward.”

  “OK.”

  “In the time we’ve been doing these sessions, what have been the constants in your life?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The years change, the seasons change, the fashions change. What has remained the same?”

  “I watch Dragnet every night.”

  “Yes, you do, and strangely enough, I think that figures in. But what else?”

  “I take my fluoxetine.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  “I complain about my father.”

  “Yes. But it’s not just complaint. You’ve yearned for your father’s approval. You’ve wanted a better relationship with him.”

  “Yes. But he’s dead now. I can’t have a better relationship with him now.”

  “I disagree. Your father has given you a great gift with this letter. It allows you to have the relationship with him in death that you didn’t have when he was still alive.”

  “How do you have a relationship in death?”

  “It’s not a relationship in the way you’re thinking of. You don’t get to have coffee or share a conversation. But it’s in the way you feel about him—that you can have happy memories instead of sad ones. When someone asks you about your father, you can talk about what a warm, good man he was, not how he made you feel at times. That’s what he has given you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “Think of it this way: When I ask what you’re thinking about your father, what do you say?”

  “I miss him.”

  “Why do you miss him?”

  “Because I love him, and because I know he cared about me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he told me.”

  “Exactly. That’s the gift.”

  Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman. She knows how to look at things in just the right way.

  “I get it,” I say. “Now, tell me about how Dragnet figures in.”

  – • –

  Dr. Buckley is right: Dragnet does figure in.

  She asks me when I started watching Dragnet. It was 1994. I was changing channels and came across it on the TV Land network. I was immediately struck by Sergeant Joe Friday. Even though he is fictitious, he is the only person I’ve ever known who cares about facts as much as I do. Sergeant Joe Friday isn’t interested in anything except the facts. That’s the way I am.

  But Dr. Buckley explains that it’s more than that. As my relationship with my father deteriorated, culminating with the “Garth Brooks incident,” my relationship with the fictitious Sergeant Joe Friday intensified. I began to see in him something virtuous, a quality I no longer saw in my father. That’s what Dr. Buckley says.

  “Sergeant Friday perhaps became your father figure,” Dr. Buckley says.

  That seems strange to me.

  “But Sergeant Joe Friday never married,” I say. “He didn’t have any children.”

  “He’s also not real,” Dr. Buckley says. “That’s why he’s a symbol. He’s not the real thing. Your father was.”

  “Are you saying I spend too much time with Dragnet?” It seems impossible to me that anyone could, but if Dr. Buckley says so, I might have to consider it. Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.

  “No, not at all,” she says. “Believe me, there are far worse ways you could spend a half hour a day. Watch Dragnet all you like. But you have a fath
er. Maybe you could just let Sergeant Joe Friday catch the bad guys. That’s his job.”

  Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.

  – • –

  Finally, we talk about Donna Middleton. I tell Dr. Buckley about the memorandum of understanding that my father made me sign, about how I pushed Donna away when she tried to talk to me about my father’s death, about the episode out on my front lawn Sunday when I yelled at Donna and Kyle.

  “You’ve not told her about the document you signed?” Dr. Buckley asks.

  “No.”

  “Can you understand, then, how she might be confused about your actions toward her?”

  “Yes.”

  I then tell Dr. Buckley that my mother fixed it with Jay L. Lamb where the memorandum of understanding is no longer in force and that my mother is proud of me for having a friend.

  “But I don’t know what to think,” I say. “I saw Donna getting into her car this morning, and I’m pretty sure she saw me, too. I waved at her, but she just stood there for a few seconds, then got in the car and drove away.”

  “You’re not sending her a very clear signal, Edward. First, you’re her friend and you go to court with her. Then you’re not her friend and you push her away. Then you yell at her little boy. Then you wave at her. What do you expect her to think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I want you to consider something. Your friend’s feelings are probably hurt, and given what she has been through in her life, she may be asking herself whether she can trust you.”

  “She can.”

  “Yes, but you can’t be the one who convinces her of that now, not after all of this. I think you need to give her some space. I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that she won’t be your friend. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yes,” I say. I am sad. “I don’t want to, but if Donna Middleton doesn’t want to be my friend, I will accept that.”

  “Good. We’ll talk about this more.”

  – • –

  “It’s been quite a week for you, Edward,” Dr. Buckley says. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Go back to the things I’ve always done. Find a new project.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m going to be frank with you here.”

  Dr. Buckley has said this a few times in the years that I have been talking with her. What she has to say usually stings, but later, I find out she was right.

  “OK.”

  “I don’t know what you’re waiting on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Edward, do you know how long life lasts?”

  “It depends.”

  “Yes, but let’s just say you live a nice long life by conventional standards. Do you know how long that lasts?”

  “I don’t know. I read somewhere once that men live about seventy-two years.”

  “That’s about right. Put another way, a full, long life is about 650,000 hours. What do you think when you hear that number?”

  “Can I borrow a calculator?”

  Dr. Buckley stands up and goes to her desk, and then she brings a pocket calculator back to me.

  I check her math: 24 hours a day x 365 days a year x 72 years = 630,270.

  “It’s 630,270 hours,” I say.

  “So even fewer than 650,000.”

  I punch up the numbers again, just to double-check my math. Of course, there will be some leap years in there, so it’s not exactly 630,270 hours, but it’s close enough. It’s hard to know how many leap years there are unless you know the first year, and I don’t. This is a hypothetical situation.

  “How long did your father live?” she asks.

  I punch up the rough numbers: 24 x 365 x 64 = 560,640.

  I tell her the answer.

  “And how long have you lived already?”

  That’s easy. I know that, as of today, I am thirty-nine years and 300 days old.

  I punch up the numbers: 24 x 365 x 39 = 341,640 + (24 x 300) = 348,840.

  Holy shit!

  I tell Dr. Buckley the answer.

  “So I ask you again: What are you waiting for?”

  – • –

  Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, which I start at just after seven—7:04—is the fifteenth episode of the first season, and it’s called “The Big Gun.” It’s one of my favorites.

  In this episode, which originally aired on April 27, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate the senseless shooting of a beautiful young Japanese woman. They find out that her husband had been killed in Vietnam several months earlier and that she has a young daughter, Miko, who apparently is somewhere in Japanese Town with her grandmother.

  The shooting gets to Sergeant Joe Friday in a personal way, something that doesn’t happen often. Maybe he’s angry at all of the gun violence in Los Angeles. Maybe he’s shocked that anyone could murder such a pretty, petite woman. Sergeant Joe Friday just wants the facts, but he’s also human.

  Eventually, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon zero in on a creepy man named Ben Roy Yoder, who lives with his highly religious aunt. When the police come to serve a search warrant at her house, the aunt castigates them, saying that they would go rooting around in a holy temple.

  And Sergeant Joe Friday says that he would if he thought he would find a murder gun there. That’s very logical.

  I’m watching Dragnet almost three hours early and might even watch another episode, if I feel like it. I’m also munching on thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn’t go to the grocery store today. I decided I didn’t have to. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. Or maybe not.

  I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. You live only once.

  – • –

  Tonight’s letter continues a recent theme. It’s not a complaint.

  I have written letters of complaint to Dr. Buckley before, especially early in our working together, when what she said to me didn’t make much sense and before my dosage of fluoxetine balanced out and calmed me down a little bit. There were times that I wrote very angry letters to Dr. Buckley—seventeen such times, it turns out, as I retrieve the file with her name.

  I am glad she never saw them. I wouldn’t want Dr. Buckley’s feelings to be hurt.

  Dr. Buckley:

  I want to thank you for my session today. I think it is one of the best ones we have ever had. You helped me to see things much more clearly where my father and Donna Middleton are concerned. You are a very wise and logical woman.

  I understand what you said about Donna, and I will give her the space she needs. I do hope you’re wrong, though. I would be very sad if Donna Middleton were no longer my friend.

  I am looking forward to talking again next week. Thank you for all you have done to help me.

  I am, your patient,

  Edward Stanton

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5

  I have been thinking that perhaps I do have some rituals that aren’t worth the time I invest in them. I don’t think I could give up my tracking of the weather—you can learn a lot about the tendencies of a place by its weather patterns, and I take some enjoyment in seeing how often the forecasts are wrong. But perhaps I could stop counting the number of days that I have been without my father, especially considering that it’s a recent addition to my data sheets. Plus, if I look at it the way Dr. Buckley suggested, I am not really without him. He is with me, in my thoughts and my memories. This is outside the boundaries of the strictly factual world I prefer to live in, but I think I would like to see if I can make it work.

  I am thinking of these things at 8:17 a.m., thirty-nine minutes after I awoke. If you’re challenged by math, that would be at 7:38 a.m., the 228th time out of 310 days this year (because it’s a leap year) that I have gotten up at that time. It is also the third consecutive day that I have emerged from sleep at this most common of waking times, and I take that to mean that I am getting back to my normal
patterns. I am relieved by this. I have been discombobulated for too long. (I love the word “discombobulated.”)

  A few minutes ago, I peeked through the front-window curtains and watched Donna Middleton load Kyle and his backpack into the car—for the ride to school, I presume. It was hard to stifle the urge to go outside and see if I could get Donna’s attention in the hope that she would talk to me, but I remembered what Dr. Buckley said. Donna Middleton needs time and space. And though I have only 280,000 or so hours of life remaining—assuming that I live a life of average length, and I don’t like assumptions—I am willing to spend some of them letting Donna Middleton decide what to do.

  Now I am sitting at the dining room table for another of my nonnegotiable rituals: I am eating my corn flakes and reading this morning’s edition of the Billings Herald-Gleaner. I see by the big headline on the front page of the newspaper that Barack Obama won. The headline says, in all capital letters, “OBAMA’S TIME.” I am not impressed by that headline; it sounds like a beer commercial. I have half a mind to write a letter of complaint to the newspaper editor, but then I think again and realize that another of my rituals has run its course. I think I am going to see if I can get out of the unsent-letter-of-complaint business and try just dealing with the frustrations as they come. If they require complaint, I’ll complain. If I can let them go, I will try to let them go, even though I know that will be difficult. A bad headline in the Billings Herald-Gleaner, while irritating, is the sort of thing I need to try to let go.

  The newspaper also has a story about my father’s now-empty seat on the county commission. He died so close to the election that there wasn’t time to line up candidates for the job and put them on the ballot, so the county leaders have decided to have a special election in January to fill the spot. The Billings mayor, Kevin Hammel, says he is going to run for the position. As he has just been roundly beaten for the position of state schools superintendent—another story in this morning’s Herald-Gleaner—he should have the time. I don’t like his chances of winning, although that is merely an informed opinion and not a fact. I prefer facts.