Edward Adrift

by Craig Lancaster

  The house is as I left it eleven days ago. And yet, it feels foreign to me. That doesn’t make sense, but then a lot of what I’m feeling lately doesn’t seem logical. I’m going to have to hang on until things sort out.

  I’ll have to go to the post office later today and retrieve my mail. I’ll call the Billings Herald-Gleaner, too, and get my paper going again. I’ve been thinking about it during the entire drive from Cheyenne Wells, and figuring out how my life works here—what Scott Shamwell calls “sorting out the shithouse”—is going to take discipline. Throughout this shitburger of a year, I’ve been letting routine get away from me. Routine, I’ve decided, is my way back to happiness, if happiness is anything I can aspire to. At this point, I’d take normalcy, whatever that is.

  My ribs ache. The constant motion and the getting out of and into the car have sapped me physically.

  I need to make a list of things to do when I wake up, so I can begin to round my life back into shape. A list represents discipline, and discipline is what I need.

  EDWARD’S TO-DO LIST

  Go to the post office and get my mail, and reinstate delivery.

  Call the Billings Herald-Gleaner and restart home delivery of the paper.

  Go to the grocery store. Think lean meats, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables.

  Go to Rimrock Mall and get something for Mother for Christmas.

  Before going to Rimrock Mall, see if a good item can be found online and delivered before Christmas. Rimrock Mall four days before Christmas? What was I thinking?

  Arrange to see Dr. Rex Helton and Dr. Bryan Thomsen. A good life means good health. I need to get on top of this.

  Stop writing this list.

  Stop now.

  Dammit.

  Go to sleep.

  Shit.

  STOP IT!

  I break another pen in half to keep from writing another item. It’s 12:49 a.m. I’m tired.

  Since we left Casper, I’ve been thinking about my mother and my father and their life together—the way it was before I came along and the way it was after. I was surprised to learn that they had lived in Wyoming when they first got married, and after that, I was happy to have heard the story. My mother doesn’t talk much about my father anymore, and I struggle with that, because I think about him more than I ever have and would like to talk with her about him. I don’t measure such things as the amount of time spent thinking about my father, of course, and that’s not really my point. My point is that my father is often on my mind.

  When we drove into Montana, I reminded my mother about my father’s crashing into a deer, and she scoffed.

  “That was up by Little Bighorn,” she said. “He was drunk, you know.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, he was drunk. The whole thing scared me to death. That deer, he bounced off the front of the car and into the windshield, and I swear, I thought he was going to come through and land in the backseat. Your father there, prattling on, not paying attention. We’re lucky we weren’t killed. That’s when I told him, ‘Ted, never again. I’m never riding with you again when you’ve been drinking.’”

  I could tell from the look on my mother’s face that she wasn’t sure whether she had anything left to say.

  “I miss him,” I said.

  “He was one of a kind, that’s for sure.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  My mother drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. After that, she licked her lips a couple of times.

  “No. I’m sorry, Edward, but no, I don’t.”

  I didn’t even know what to say or think about that.

  OFFICIALLY WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011

  From the logbook of Edward Stanton:

  Time I woke up today: 8:48 a.m. My face was in a puddle of my own drool.

  High temperature for Tuesday, December 20, 2011, Day 354: 42, according to the Billings Herald-Gleaner website. I don’t have a paper yet. That’s a 7-degree improvement from the high a day before. These are just highly unusual December temperatures.

  Low temperature for Tuesday, December 20, 2011: 28, a 10-degree improvement. Remarkable.

  Precipitation for Tuesday, December 20, 2011: 0.00 inches

  Precipitation for 2011: 19.48 inches

  New entries:

  Exercise for Tuesday, December 20, 2011: I took an even longer walk with Sheila Renfro, before my mother showed up and short-circuited my stay in Cheyenne Wells.

  I told my mother yesterday that I wasn’t mad at her. That was a lie. I’m pissed off.

  Also, I wonder if Sheila Renfro will walk without me. I hope so. I’m going to try to walk here, without Sheila Renfro.

  Miles driven Tuesday, December 20, 2011: I refuse to recognize any miles driven by my mother or by me yesterday. I shouldn’t have been in that car.

  Total miles driven: Holding steady at 1,844.9, because of the technicality I just outlined.

  Gas usage Tuesday, December 20, 2011: I also refuse to recognize any gas I put in my new Cadillac DTS, although I will be unable to persuade my bank to disregard the money I spent on it. That sucks.

  Addendum: OK, I still intend to embark on my new program to get my life into shape. That’s just good common sense. But I’m pissed off that I’m here right now, and I’m pissed off at my mother for butting into my business the way she did. Sovereignty. That’s a word. I love that word. It means that I have the right to make the decisions that affect the course of my life. My mother infringed (I also love the word “infringed”) on my sovereignty by doing what she did. What’s more, she doesn’t even recognize that she did anything wrong. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal! That makes things even worse.

  Something else that pisses me off is the way my mother talked about my father, saying she doesn’t miss him. How can she not? He was her husband. This is difficult for me, because I believe that a person has a right to feel the way he or she wants to, but my mother is acting irrationally on several levels.

  I am so pissed off at my mother right now. I want to call her and tell her off, and maybe I will, but even as I wig out, I can hear Dr. Buckley talking in my head about this. She told me once that it’s never a bad move to wait until anger passes before having a confrontation. She said that doesn’t mean you overlook a transgression, but rather that you allow yourself to be in the proper frame of mind to achieve the best possible solution from a necessary confrontation. If I call my mother right now, I am going to yell at her and probably make her cry (I’ve done it before). That might make me feel good for a little while, but it won’t solve the problem between us. I will wait for my anger to recede. In fact, I think I will call Dr. Bryan Thomsen and see if he can fit me into his schedule today. It’s not ideal, as today is Wednesday and not Tuesday, but my need for the help outweighs my need to stick to my schedule.

  Can Dr. Bryan Thomsen help me? I have my doubts. But doubt is in the realm of conjecture. I need facts. I need them as badly as I ever have.

  Also, I don’t think I should keep referring to Sheila Renfro in these notes. It didn’t happen ideally, but I’m gone from there. It’s over. It’s just too painful to think about her.

  (Who am I kidding? I can’t not think about her. But I can try not to write about her, which makes the thinking much more intense and painful.)

  My morning is being dominated by phone calls. That’s not how I’d prefer to spend my morning, but life doesn’t always unfold for us the way we would like. Obviously.

  It starts with good news: Dr. Bryan Thomsen can see me at 1:00 p.m. today, which is three hours and twenty-two minutes from right now. He says he’s eager to hear about my trip, and, as it turns out, I have plenty to tell him.

  I am in no mood for inefficiency today, and I make this clear to Dr. Bryan Thomsen. “Will you be ready promptly at one p.m.?” I ask him.

  “Yes, indeed. One p.m. I’ve written it on my schedule right here.”

  “I know you’ve written it down. You always write i
t down. What I’m asking is if you’re going to be ready at the appointed time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you’ve missed it before.”

  “I have? I guess I don’t recall that.”

  “Seven times,” I say. “I am supposed to see you at ten a.m., and yet we started our session on those seven occasions at 10:01 twice, 10:03, 10:04 three times and, perhaps most egregiously, 10:11.” (I love the word “egregiously.”)

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry about that, Edward. You’re clearly on a mission today.”

  “I’m just trying to sort out the shithouse, Dr. Bryan Thomsen.”

  “I will be ready at one p.m. I give you my solemn word. I’m looking forward to talking about this issue—”

  “Maybe next time. I’m controlling the agenda today. See you at one p.m.”

  I hang up.

  I’ve just crossed Dr. Bryan Thomsen off my to-do list when the phone rings.

  I pick it up. “Yes.”

  “Is that any way to answer the phone?”

  It’s my mother. I wonder if she’s calling to take another chunk of my sovereignty.

  “It’s the way I’m doing it today, Mother. What do you want?”

  “Be nice.”

  “I’m busy, Mother. What do you want?”

  “I just talked to Jay, and he thinks he has a lead on a job for you. Can you swing by his office this afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “It will only take a few minutes.”

  “No. I’m busy. Tell him I’ll come by tomorrow.”

  “He’s really sticking his neck out for you.”

  “Tell him I appreciate it. Tell him I will come by tomorrow.”

  “Why are you being so huffy?”

  “I told you. I’m busy. Is there anything else?”

  “Well, then, perhaps you’re too busy to come by for lunch.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good-bye, then.”

  “Good-bye, Mother.”

  I return to my list. Time is wasting.

  By 11:48 a.m., my list is whittled to a single item: go get my mail from the post office. I can do that one after my appointment with Dr. Bryan Thomsen.

  Gifts for my mother and Kyle will be here in two days. Kyle’s gift was easy—it’s a Tim Tebow jersey, which I promised him. My mother’s gift is something that seems pedestrian (I love the word “pedestrian”), but I read several online gift guides, and apparently this thing is the hot gift for this year—it’s a single-cup coffee brewer called a Keurig. It seems to be an ingenious product. You put something called a K-Cup—this can be virtually any flavor of coffee or tea—into this compartment, close it, and hit a button on the machine. Sharp needles puncture the K-Cup, and hot water is sent coursing through it and into your cup.

  I hope my mother likes it. Just in case, I’ll keep the receipt and tell her how she can ship it back if it doesn’t meet with her approval. Some people take gift-giving personally and become despondent if a gift isn’t enjoyed. I’ve never been that way. It’s just a silly inanimate object. Why should I let it bother me, when so many other things make me legitimately upset?

  I’ll be seeing Dr. Rex Helton tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. I got lucky there; the appointment desk said someone else canceled on him—a common occurrence around the holidays, according to the woman who answered my call—and I was able to slip into the open spot. Otherwise, I’d have had to wait a couple of weeks, the appointment clerk said.

  I can’t imagine that I’ve lost much weight, as infrequent as my exercise has been, but I do want to fill him in on my injuries from the car wreck, as he is my primary care physician. I also want to tell him that he shouldn’t soft-peddle the significant effects of diabetic medicine on a patient’s urinary rate. Yes, Dr. Rex Helton told me that I would pee a lot, but he should know as well as anyone that “a lot” is an imprecise measurement that leaves far too much room for individual interpretation. He needs to give people the facts.

  Now I’ve just come in from the grocery store with a few days’ rations. I bought two packages of chicken breasts for grilling, a pork loin that I can roast in my oven, a bag of carrots, two heads of iceberg lettuce, four cans of green beans, and a big tub of oatmeal for my regular morning dose.

  In just a few hours of being awake, I’ve made positive steps toward a healthy mind and a healthy body. So far, my plan to reset my life is playing out the way I want. To celebrate, I treat myself to a Lean Cuisine lasagna.

  Dr. Bryan Thomsen deserves credit, and I’m giving it to him.

  At 12:59:45, he opens his door and beckons me to join him in his office. I walk down the hallway, stopping to shake hands with him, and then I settle into my regular chair. I look down at my watch, and it says 1:00:00.

  This day just keeps getting better.

  The first thing I do is give Dr. Bryan Thomsen a rundown on what happened on my trip. I know we have only an hour and a half—he was nice enough to block out a little extra time for me—so I try to tell my story in a straight line and without embellishments. This is harder than it seems. I make sure I bring in the major points: Kyle’s insolence, our adventure together in the car, meeting Sheila Renfro, Kyle’s revelation to me about how he’d been hurt by the bullies in his school, the car accident, the return to Cheyenne Wells, kissing Sheila Renfro (I leave out the part where she touched my boner; that’s none of Dr. Bryan Thomsen’s business), deciding to leave Sheila Renfro, my mother’s unexpected appearance.

  It’s this last point that I wish to address in depth, and I put it to Dr. Bryan Thomsen.

  “Did my mother take my sovereignty?”

  Dr. Bryan Thomsen considers this for a while.

  “You want my opinion?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I would say it’s a qualified yes. Yes, your mother overstepped. But she overstepped in the service of protecting you. I think you need to account for that in your decision about how severely to confront her.”

  “But you’re saying I should confront her?”

  “Edward, yes. It’s obvious how much this bothers you. She needs to know that. The question, for you, becomes what you want the message to be. Do you want her to be punished or do you want her to be informed?”

  “Informed.”

  I’m angry at my mother—as angry at her as I can ever remember being—but I do not want her to be hurt.

  “Let that answer guide you. That’s my advice.”

  Dr. Bryan Thomsen is making a good deal of sense.

  “Edward, I’d like to ask you something.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would like for you to tell me about your thought processes when bad things happened on this trip. You’ve had a remarkable stretch in a short amount of time, and it’s covered quite a lot of the human spectrum.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’ve dealt with a child’s hostility, violence, the emergence of secrets, romance. How did you cope with all of that? You certainly could have called me, but you didn’t. How did you get through it?”

  I look down at the floor and rotate my ankles back and forth.

  “You might not like the answer.”

  “Try me.”

  I sit up straight. My ribs still hurt.

  “Sometimes I asked myself what Dr. Buckley would say if she were there with me,” I say. “Sometimes, I didn’t have to ask myself. It was like Dr. Buckley’s voice was right there with me, helping me see my path out of the situation. Dr. Buckley liked to talk to me about pathways.”

  “Why did you think I wouldn’t like that answer?”

  “Because I miss Dr. Buckley. I wish she were still my counselor. I think you’re a nice man, Dr. Bryan Thomsen, but you haven’t put in the work with me that she did. You don’t know me like she did. It’s been hard dealing with you since she’s been gone, and I wish I didn’t have to.”

  He leans forward in his chair, cupping his hands together, and I’m afraid he’s going to yell at me.

&nb
sp; “I’m going to tell you a secret, Edward. That doesn’t bother me at all.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No. Do you want to know why?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it means Dr. Buckley and you were successful in your work together. This might surprise you, Edward, but I’ve read your notes dating to the first time you came here, in 2000. I’ve read every word. And the entire time, Dr. Buckley was imparting life skills to you. She was helping you find a way within yourself to live well and to live safely in a world that doesn’t always move the way you move. What you did out on the road simply proves that her approach worked. She didn’t try to change you. Instead, she helped you find the best way to live that works for you.”

  I’m listening to what Dr. Bryan Thomsen is saying, and I’m regretting ever saying anything bad about him. All this time, I thought that he didn’t know me or care to know me, and it turns out that the opposite was true.

  “So here is what I propose,” Dr. Bryan Thomsen says. “I propose that we go forward with you not expecting me to be Dr. Buckley, because I’m not and will never be, and I will go forward respecting what you need. If you want to keep coming every week, great. I will see you then. If you want to check in a few times a year, fine. If you want to move to Spain and do this on Skype, we can make that happen.”

  “I’m not moving to Spain,” I say.

  “Wherever,” he says. “The point is, it’s your life to live, and you have the skills to live it in the way you choose. When you talk to your mother, Edward, that’s what I suggest you tell her.”

  I’m pretty smart sometimes.

  Because my bills are paid by my lawyer, Jay L. Lamb, and because I don’t sign up for things that cause me to be put on mailing lists, I have only two pieces of mail waiting for me at the post office.

  The first, postmarked December 14, is from the human resources department at the Billings Herald-Gleaner. I’m both flummoxed and excited. Although Mr. Withers called me personally and said there would be no returning to my job, this letter at least holds out the possibility that someone at the Herald-Gleaner has considered my request. There is only one way to find out, as they say, and that’s to open the letter. (And “they,” whoever they are, are wrong when they say that. For example, I could just call the Herald-Gleaner directly and ask someone in human resources to tell me my status. I’ll grant you that’s not an efficient way of finding out, as this letter is here in my hand, but at least it’s plausible. That means there is more than one way of finding out.)