Edward Adrift

by Craig Lancaster

  “She sounds like a wonderful friend,” Sheila Renfro says, and she is correct about that. “I wish I had a friend like that here.”

  “Donna Middleton has been very good to me. I mean, Donna Hays. I always forget to use her married name.”

  “I don’t think she liked me.”

  I was hurt when I was in the hospital, so I don’t remember all of Sheila Renfro’s interactions with Donna.

  “It was a tense situation,” I say, and Sheila Renfro nods.

  “Did you ever want to kiss Donna?” she asks.

  I consider this for a moment. It’s true that I developed strong feelings for Donna as we were becoming friends, but I don’t think those feelings were romantic. At the time, I was much more interested in Joy Annette, my blind date, and that turned out to be a disaster.

  “No,” I say. “She was just my friend.”

  “Would you like to kiss me?” Sheila Renfro asks.

  I look down at my cup. I don’t like making eye contact with people when I’m uncomfortable, or at all.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “That’s not how you talk confidently to a girl.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be good at it. Also, mouths are gross.”

  “I could teach you. And we could brush our teeth first.”

  “Can we also floss and use mouthwash?”

  Sheila Renfro laughs. “Yes.”

  “Because mouths are gross.”

  “I know, Edward.”

  Sheila Renfro gives me my own new toothbrush and a tiny tube of Crest brand toothpaste, along with a tiny bottle of Oral-B brand mouthwash and Johnson & Johnson brand dental floss. She says she keeps these small items on hand for lodgers who forget to bring their own supplies.

  We stand together at the mirror in Sheila Renfro’s bathroom and we floss, brush, and swig mouthwash. In the reflection in the mirror, it looks like we choreographed it. I have to give Sheila Renfro credit. She is a very competent steward of her dental health. She brushes with at least one hundred strokes, just like I do. Some people rush through things like brushing their teeth, but they shouldn’t. It’s important to take the time to do the most important things the proper way.

  We sit facing each other at an angle on Sheila Renfro’s couch.

  “I’m nervous,” I say.

  She puts her hands on my thighs and leans in.

  “It’s going to be all right. Now, stop leaning away from me, or this won’t work.”

  I return to an upright sitting position. Sheila Renfro leans in again. Her breath smells good.

  Her eyes are closed when her lips touch mine. My eyes are open, which is how I know hers are closed. She moves her head in small, tight circles, and I try to move mine in the same direction along with her. Her lips feel warm against mine.

  It’s not that I don’t enjoy what we’re doing. I do. It’s that I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to do what I’ve seen in movies, but it feels weird.

  Sheila Renfro, her mouth now removed from mine but still very close, gives me instructions.

  “Put your hands on my hips,” she says.

  I do that, and she slides her hands farther up my thighs as she leans in again. This time I lean toward her, even though my ribs ache a little bit, and we kiss again.

  I can feel her tongue trying to get between my lips. I pull back and look at her.

  “Open your mouth,” she says. “Move your hands up.”

  Both of these things sound inadvisable to me—mouths, even freshly brushed mouths, are gross—but I do as I’m told.

  Sheila Renfro’s tongue goes into my mouth, and it’s the strangest thing, because I expect to be grossed out, but I’m not. I like it. She uses her tongue to touch mine, and then she pulls back again.

  “Use your tongue, Edward.”

  Again I do as I’m told, and my tongue and hers flop around inside our mouths. I move my hands from her hips and up her side. Through her plaid work shirt, I can feel her ribs. As I do this, her hands again move up my thigh, almost to where my legs meet my tallywhacker.

  Then she touches my hard tallywhacker through my pants. Holy shit!

  “Do you want to go to the bedroom?” she asks.

  “I want to keep kissing,” I say.

  She smiles at me, the biggest smile I’ve seen yet from her, and I realize that I’m smiling big, too. She leans into me and I meet her with my mouth open.

  This is so great.

  After we’re done kissing, Sheila Renfro sits close to me and rests her left hand on my right knee.

  “When I put my hand on your knee,” she says, “you should put your arm around me and make me feel safe.”

  I lean to my left, and I feel the dull ache in my ribs. I lift my right arm and clip her under the chin.

  “Ouch.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

  “When are you going to call me just Sheila?”

  She holds her jaw between her thumb and first two fingers and moves it back and forth.

  “What about S-Money? You liked that.”

  “That was just for fun. I don’t like that one anymore, and it’s not warm and sexy to hear my full name.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

  “Edward, put your arm around me.”

  I set my arm where her back meets her neck.

  “Like this?”

  “Don’t hold it so stiff. Wrap me up and pull me in.”

  I do as she describes. It feels weird.

  “Like this?”

  She nestles her head into my shoulder.

  “Perfect.”

  Her hair smells like strawberries.

  “What do you know about sex, Edward?”

  I did not expect this question. Expectations are just a way to be disappointed with what you get anyway.

  “Just what I read,” I say.

  “Have you ever masturbated?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re awfully honest about it.”

  “I read ‘Dear Abby’ every day. ‘Dear Abby’ says that half of men practice self-satisfaction and the other half lie when they say don’t. I figure with those odds, why lie?”

  “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  This question is one I expected, given the direction of things.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You keep saying that. Why?”

  “It makes me nervous.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I didn’t say I was afraid. I said I was nervous. But, yes, I’m afraid, too.”

  “Why?”

  “What if I’m not good at it? What if I can’t do it? What if I have sex with you and I think it’s great, and then I have to go home? What if I miss it when I’m gone?”

  I hate what-if questions, because they almost never have answers.

  Sheila Renfro sits up, removing her head from my shoulder. She makes a half-turn on the couch and faces me.

  “You don’t have to go home. My daddy left a full shed of tools here when he died. You could have them. You could stay here. You could help me run this motel.”

  “I live in Billings, Montana,” I say. “Not here.”

  “Well, I live here,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you like kissing me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I liked kissing you, too. We could kiss every day if you were here. We could have lunch and work on the motel and go have a beer at the tavern—”

  “It’s better that I don’t drink alcohol with my type two diabetes.”

  “The alcohol isn’t the point. We could be together. That’s what I mean. Don’t you want that?”

  “I live in Billings, Montana,” I say again.

  At that, Sheila Renfro stands up and walks away. I call after her, but she doesn’t turn around. She goes into her bedroom and closes the door.

  I stay away from Sheila R
enfro for the rest of the afternoon and stick to my room. I sat in her living room for sixty-eight minutes after she closed herself in her bedroom, but she never came out. So I left.

  I wish I could explain myself to Sheila Renfro. She is asking me to take a leap of faith, and I have a lifetime’s worth of experience that suggests a keen attention to the facts is the more advisable course. My house is in Billings, Montana. My job was there, and while Jay L. Lamb seems to believe that I can make it through the remainder of my days without working, I know I’ll need something else to do. Returning to the Billings Herald-Gleaner is not an option. But it’s a big city, and I will find something.

  I know where all the right turns are in Billings. My memories are there. My routines are there waiting for me to reestablish them.

  When I embarked on this trip, I thought that perhaps the road would hold some answers for me, but it doesn’t. It’s just a bunch of concrete and asphalt connecting one town to another. Seven hundred and twenty miles of it stand between me and home. Tomorrow, I think, it will be time for me to head that way. I hope I can make amends with Sheila Renfro before I do.

  TECHNICALLY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2011

  It’s 3:18 and I’m awake. Again. This keeps happening to me. There was a time, one that seems long ago, when my hours were heavily regimented and I went to sleep at the same time every night, slept through until morning, and then woke up, usually at the same time. Those days are in my past, and if my present circumstances are any clue, they’re not likely to return. This, however, is conjecture, and conjecture is not for me. I prefer facts.

  I think this bed has something to do with it, too. As Sheila Renfro and I came back from Denver, I told her that the bed in room number four, where I’m staying, was too hard. She switched it out with the mattress from room number one, which she said was older and fluffier. She was correct about that. It’s too fluffy. I would rather have the first mattress back.

  But if I were forced to make a determination about why I’m distracted in these wee hours, I would have to say that it’s because of Sheila Renfro, who is asleep next to me on this bed and has her right arm flopped across my lap.

  How this came to be is an odd story.

  Given our protracted (I love the word “protracted”) silence, I was prepared to skip dinner at Sheila Renfro’s cottage and instead walk into Cheyenne Wells and find a restaurant. It seemed prudent to prepare for such an eventuality. The last I’d seen of Sheila Renfro, she had walked away from me and disregarded my pleas for her to stop and talk.

  As it turned out, she intercepted me in the lobby as I headed for dinner and said, “Edward, come on in and have some grilled cheese sandwiches with me. I’d like to talk with you.”

  I’ll concede that I was wary of talking with Sheila Renfro, but I do love grilled cheese sandwiches. It seemed that the risk-reward gamble of getting bawled out versus having something good to eat was worth taking.

  Sheila Renfro had no intention of bawling me out. Her voice was really quiet—not at all excited like it was when we were kissing and touching on her couch. She asked me when I wanted to go to Denver to pick up my new car, and I told her tomorrow—now today—if she didn’t mind. She said that would be fine, that she needed to get some bulk supplies in Denver anyway.

  I decided that I should try to explain to her what I was feeling.

  “It isn’t that I don’t like you,” I began, and she cut me off.

  “I know, Edward. You don’t have to tell me. I thought you were the special man who would understand my specialness. But you’re not. It’s not your fault.”

  Those words hurt me more than I can describe, because I’m not good at describing anything. I think I do understand her specialness. It’s just that I don’t see where I fit here. I want to tell her these things, but I don’t. I hear Dr. Buckley’s voice in my head again, telling me that when two people see the same set of facts but disagree in their interpretation of them, one of the most destructive actions one can take is to attempt to convince someone of his or her errant view. Some facts have no room for interpretation, she once told me. The freezing point of water. The sum of two numbers. But when it comes to the human heart, variables always exist. I think Dr. Buckley was trying to tell me that a fact-loving brain can carry me only so far and that empathy would have to do the rest.

  I did not contradict Sheila Renfro. I ate my grilled cheese. Sheila Renfro ate hers.

  That’s when my mother called my bitchin’ iPhone. I asked Sheila Renfro if I could answer there in her kitchen, and she said I could.

  “Hello, Mother. I was going to call you in about an hour.”

  “I have a concert tonight, dear. I didn’t want to miss you. How are things in Cheyenne Wells?”

  “Great.”

  “Are they really?”

  My mother sounded skeptical, and she was not incorrect in her feeling. At that moment, things weren’t so great, but I thought it would only create more friction with my mother if I told her how difficult the situation with Sheila Renfro had become. I focused on something positive instead.

  “Yes, they really are. Today, Sheila Renfro and I practiced kissing—”

  “You practiced what?” my mother asked in a loud voice.

  Sheila Renfro stood up like she had a rocket in her badonkadonk, which is of course absurd, and she slapped my bitchin’ iPhone and knocked it from my ear.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  “What are you doing?” Sheila Renfro said. “That’s between us. Nobody else.”

  “You hurt my bitchin’ iPhone and my ear! What the fucking fuck, Sheila Renfro?”

  Sheila Renfro began to cry. “Don’t cuss around me, Edward! Just get out of here. Go! I don’t want to see you until tomorrow morning.”

  Sheila Renfro ended up back in her bedroom. Again. And I ended up back here in room number four. Again. And my ear still kind of hurts.

  At 8:57 p.m., I heard a loud thump, and then there were all these voices—all men, all loud—coming from the hallway.

  I pushed myself off the bed, walked to the door and opened it.

  Next door, outside room number six, stood a uniformed man in a cowboy hat. He carried a rifle, and he heard me open my door.

  He headed toward me.

  “Sir, get back in your room, please.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Back in your room, sir.”

  I closed the door fast.

  The loud voices continued for some time, an imprecise measure, but I was so spooked that I forgot to look at my watch. After that, it was a continual clomp of boots walking past my door in both directions. I pulled back the curtains that covered the exterior window of my room and saw the sheriff’s squad car. At 9:46, two uniformed officers walked out with the young man and young woman I’d checked into the motel earlier that day. The officers put them into different cars and then drove away. Other people, not in uniform, emerged in the parking lot carrying banker’s boxes and guns. Three more cars left the parking lot.

  Someone knocked on my door.

  I closed the curtain and made my way back across the room. I opened the door, and Sheila Renfro stood there in her nightgown.

  “I knew there was something about those two,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  She walked past me into the room. I closed the door.

  Sheila Renfro sat at the foot of my bed and invited me to sit down with her.

  “They were selling crank.”

  “What?”

  “Meth.”

  “Meth is bad. And illegal.”

  “Very, very bad. And totally illegal.”

  “Totally illegal” is redundant; something is illegal or it’s not, subject of course to the vagaries (I love the word “vagaries”) of the local ordinances. Meth is illegal everywhere.

  Sheila Renfro put her hand on her chest and fluttered it.

  “That’s a lot of excitement,” she said.

  I was flummoxed by that. I felt only fear
, especially when the deputy sheriff was walking toward me with his gun.

  “Edward, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to take you to Denver in the morning. I mean, I know you want to go, but the cops are going to be in and out of here tomorrow, and I really need to stay.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “I can ask around town, see if anybody’s going to Denver tomorrow. Maybe we can find you a ride.”

  “No, I want to ride with you. I can wait.”

  Sheila Renfro reached for my hand, and I let her have it.

  “I was hoping you would,” she said. “I know you have to go home eventually. But it would be nice to have a little more time.”

  “Yes.”

  Sheila Renfro looked down at the floor. Her left foot was thumping up and down.

  “Can I ask a favor?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I stay here with you tonight?”

  “I—”

  “No kissing or funny business,” she said. “I just don’t want to be alone.”

  Her eyes, normally fixed and unblinking, were looking around the room with uncertainty. She looked scared, not excited, and that made sense to me.

  “OK, Sheila Renfro.”

  She had no trouble falling asleep. We watched the late news, and then we subdivided the blankets so she would have hers and I would have mine. By 11:27 p.m., she was lightly snoring, a tendency I did not notice when she slept next to me at St. Joseph Hospital. I suppose I was preoccupied with my own problems then.

  At 12:14 a.m., she rolled toward me and set her arm across my lap, which was in her path because I continue to sleep—or try to, anyway—in a sitting position. She has violated our agreement to segregate (I love the word “segregate”) the bed, but I am not going to call a penalty. I’m going to let her sleep. One of us should.

  I keep looking down at her resting head. In my mind, I draw patterns by connecting the small freckles on her nose. I think about the R.E.M. song where Michael Stipe sings about secretly counting his lover’s eyelashes, and I wonder where Michael Stipe must have been sitting when he did that. I cannot count Sheila Renfro’s eyelashes from here.