Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

I ring the buzzer on my mother’s condo once, and then once more.

Finally, her groggy voice answers: “Yes?”

“Let me in, Mother.”

Telling my mother that she has violated my sovereignty is not the ordeal I thought it would be. She listens to me intently, her eyes following me as I pace the living room of her condo. I do not like looking people in the eye when I speak to them, especially when the topic is something like this, but I make myself finish.

“I’m not a child, Mother. I’m not incapable of making my own decisions. And you need to stop treating me as if I am.”

Her eyes are clear and unblinking. “You’re right.”

“I am?”

“Yes, of course you are. I thought I needed to protect you—”

“I wasn’t in danger. And I’m forty-two years old. I can protect myself. I’m developmentally disabled. I’m not stupid.”

“I know. You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

I had prepared to say more on this topic, but now it seems like piling on, so I don’t.

“I was wrong about something, though, Mother.”

“What?”

“I was wrong about Jay L. Lamb.”

“No, you weren’t. You deserved to know before this. I just—”

“Do you love him?” I ask.

She looks at me as if she didn’t expect the question, which is OK. I didn’t expect to ask it, not like that.

“Yes. Very much,” she says. “It surprised me. I didn’t think I had it in me to love again. But…yes. I love him.”

I surprise myself with what I say next.

“I’m glad.”

I surprise myself further by realizing that I really am glad. I wouldn’t have chosen Jay L. Lamb for my mother. I have to be honest about this. But I don’t get to choose. If I did, I would want my father back. There are so many things I’ve learned. I would like to tell him about them. I would like to be his friend. I’m good at it now.

We talk about one more thing before I leave, and that is my father. I tell her how he’s been in my dreams, and as she listens, she keeps curling the knuckle of her index finger into the corner of her eye.

“It upset me that you said you don’t miss him,” I tell her. “I miss him all the time. I wish he hadn’t left us.”

My mother invites me to sit down next to her on the couch. I do.

“I was tired,” she says. “It was hard to be married to Ted Stanton. It wasn’t just the drinking, which was bad and getting worse, or what he did to you, although it will take me a long time to forgive him for that.”

“I forgive him.”

“You’re a good boy. But, listen, Edward, it was all-encompassing. Being married to your father was like being married to this city, and to every thought he had or word he said. Since he’s been gone, I’ve done what I want to do. Do you understand? I make the rules now. I choose what gets my time and attention. I never did that before.”

I understand. I should. It was my most common complaint about him when he was alive. How does the saying go? It was his world, and we were just living in it? Something like that.

“Did you love him?” I ask.

“Of course I did.”

“I did, too.”

“And he loved us,” she said. “He’d be proud of you now, seeing you do the things you want to do.”

There’s nothing I can say about that except that hearing it makes me happy and sad all at the same time. That’s peculiar.

At 6:18 a.m., I walk out to a spot where I can see the city lights below me. I’ve been driving for two hours, and my muscles are stiff. The first hint of sunlight peeks in from the east. The smell of pine and grass, even in late December, teases my nose. My left hand, cold and not yet limber, holds my bitchin’ iPhone.

I dial the number. Traffic below me slowly rises from the trickle I watched from the parking lot as I ate my breakfast sandwich. Big rigs move east and west across the highway below me.

The call connects.

“The Derrick Motel. How can I help you?”

“Hello, Sheila.”

There is a pause and then a tiny gasp.

“Edward?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t call me Sheila Renfro.”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

I look at the city, gleaming in the first light.

“Sheridan, Wyoming.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Wondering if you have a vacancy.”

“You’re coming here?”

“Yes.”

“But your mother—”

“My mother says she is looking forward to seeing you in the spring when we go to Texas to see her and her new boyfriend.”

“You want me to go to Texas with you in the spring?”

“Yes. We can close up the motel for a few days for that trip.”

“That means—”

“Yes.”

Sheila screams. She says “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” And then she says, “Edward Stanton, you are the special man I’ve been waiting for. You are.”

“I know I am. You were wrong when you said I wasn’t.”

“Edward, I am so happy to be wrong about that.”

“I’ll be there in nine hours,” I say, and the words are hard to form because I’m grinning so widely. “Nine hours depending on the vagaries of traffic and gas stops.” I think my face is going to break.

“I’m so happy,” she says.

I begin walking back to the car, which sits alone in the rest area parking lot.

Sheila talks excitedly into my ear.

“Now, Edward,” she says, “from now on, when I put my hand on your knee, I want you to put your arm around me. That’s how you make a girl feel good.”

“I will,” I say. “And I want cable or satellite television at the motel.”

“OK, but you have to kiss me sometimes, especially when I don’t expect it.”

“I will.”

“And please don’t always tell me about how mouths are gross, OK? Because I know that and will try to keep mine clean.”

“Yes, dear.”

She gasps again.

“You called me dear!”

“I thought I’d try it out. Do you like it?”

“I like it. I like it very much, Edward.”

And that’s how it goes for the next four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Sheila instructs me on how to love her and make her happy, and I circle the parking lot and wait for her to finish so I can get there, only I don’t want her to ever hang up, but I know that she must if I am to reach her in approximately nine hours.

She asks me why I changed my mind, and I say, “Because I asserted my sovereignty.”

She laughs and says, “I don’t know what that means, exactly, but promise me that you’ll call every time you stop.”

“I promise.”

“I don’t want to hang up.”

“I know. But we have to.”

“Hurry here to me.”

“I will.”

“I’ll see you soon, Edward.”

“Yes, you will, dear.”

She giggles and then she hangs up, and I leave the parking lot and head for the interstate. I know exactly where I am going. As I guide the car onto the ramp and hit cruising speed, Michael Stipe is telling me that she is beautiful and she is the everything.

I know she is.

So many to thank, so little space.

The “beta” readers: Jim Thomsen, Celeste Cornish, Jessica Park, Jill Rupert, Amy Pizarro, and R. J. Keller. Your earnest and eagerly offered feedback made this an immeasurably better book. I am indebted.

Elizabeth Holleran, you’re funny as hell and you provided one key line of dialogue I could have never conjured on my own. You know the one. Thank you.

Alex Carr, Jessica Poore, and the team at Amazon Publishing: Thank you for believing in Edward and giving him a home. It’s good to be with you again. And Charlotte Herscher, my developmental editor, you made this book so much better than it would have been otherwise. Thank you.