Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

Some women have funny ways of saying what they want.

I shut off the TV and videocassette recorder, and then I go to the front window to close the curtain. Another day is almost over. It’s one of the most exhausting I can remember, although I do not keep data on my level of exhaustion each day. In any case, I am happy that it is through.

Across the street, under the streetlight, I can see Donna Middleton standing behind her car. She is talking to a man. Her arms are moving rapidly. He is leaning in toward her. It looks like he is yelling.

I step over to the front door and crack it open. I can hear them.

“You’re supposed to stay away from me, Mike.”

Mike. Holy shit!

“I just want to talk,” he yells at her.

“No!”

“Yes, goddamn it!”

This is bad. Up and down my block, lights are coming on.

“I never want to talk to you again.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Because you’re a fucking cunt, that’s why.”

This is really bad. I go over to the telephone and dial.

“Nine-one-one emergency.”

“A man and a woman are arguing on my street. I think she has a restraining order against him.”

“What’s the address?”

“Six Twenty-Eight Clark Avenue.”

“Do you know the woman’s name?”

“Donna Middleton.”

“Do you know the man’s name?”

“Mike. That’s all I know.”

“Can you see what’s happening now?”

I go back to the front window. “They’re yelling.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Edward Stanton.”

“And where do you live, sir?”

“Six Thirty-Nine Clark Avenue.”

“Can you still see them, sir?”

“Yes.”

“What are they doing?”

“Still yelling.”

It happens so fast that I gasp in shock. Mike strikes Donna Middleton across the cheek with the back of his right hand. Her body jumps at the blow and lands against her car, and then she falls to the ground.

“He just hit her!”

“OK, sir. Stay calm. Officers are on the way.”

Donna Middleton is on her hands and knees, and she’s trying to scramble away. Mike grabs her and flings her backward to the concrete of the driveway, where she lands on her back, and then he pounces down upon her and wraps his hands around her neck.

“He’s choking her.”

“Sir, officers are almost there. Stay with me.”

“I have to help her.”

“Sir, stay right here on the phone.”

As if out of nowhere, three police cars converge on Donna Middleton’s house. The officers emerge from the cars, guns drawn. I can hear them yelling at Mike.

“Hands off her. Stand up. Hands behind your head.”

After Mike lets go and climbs to his feet, two of the police officers take him hard to the ground and cuff him, while the other attends to Donna Middleton. An ambulance rolls up. My neighborhood is lit up with red-and-blue strobes. I can see my neighbors standing on their front porches, talking and gawking.

After Mike is wrestled into a police car and taken away, one of the officers who tackled him crosses the street and walks up to my house. I meet him at the door. I have seen this police officer before.

“Is she OK?” I ask.

“She’s shaken. She’ll have some bruises. But she’ll be OK.”

“She has a restraining order against that man, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Why was he here, then?”

“Well, it’s a court order. It’s not a jail cell. He’ll be in one of those soon enough.”

“It’s terrible.”

“Yes, it is. It could have been a lot worse, Mr. Stanton. Thanks for calling it in.”

“You’re not going to call my father, are you?”

The officer chuckles. “No. You did the right thing.”

Mike:

You are scum. You are subhuman. You are a horrible, horrible man.

You have no right to go where you are not wanted, to defy a legal restraining order against you. You have no right to be at Donna Middleton’s house. You have no right to yell at her, to hit her, to choke her.

I can only hope that the full weight of the law puts you somewhere you can’t hurt her again.

I put the letter in a new green office folder, labeled “Mike,” and file it away. I want to throw up.

As appointed, I go to bed at midnight. I can’t fall asleep, and I think I have to prepare myself for an unusual waking time in the morning, if I go to sleep at all. My data will be complete, but it will be erratic.

At 1:47 a.m.—I know because I am not asleep and I check the clock—I hear a rap on the front door. I crawl out of bed and go to the door, where I look through the peephole.

It’s Donna Middleton through the fish-eye lens. She has a purplish welt under her right eye. Her face is streaked and stained with makeup. She has been crying.

I open the door.

“Hello, Mr. Stanton.”

“Hello, Ms. Middleton. Are you OK?”

“Physically, I’ll be fine in a few days, they say. But I’m not OK.”

“I understand.”

She looks down. “I want to thank you for calling the cops.”

“Yes.”

“And I want to apologize to you for my reaction this morning—God, this morning. It seems like a long time ago.” She is weeping.

“Yes.”

“I’m having a hard time figuring you out, Mr. Stanton.”

“Edward.”

“Edward,” she repeats.

“I know.” I am not sure what to say to her.

“Are you a friend to us, Edward?”

“Yes.”

“OK, then. Thank you again. I was…” She is crying again. “I was sure I was going to die.”

“That was not going to happen.”

She tries to smile but just cries some more. She rubs her face and sniffles. “OK, then. It’s late. I probably woke you up. Good night, Edward.”

“Good night.”

I watch as she turns around and cuts diagonally across the street, from my front yard to hers. She walks up the steps of her porch, opens the front door, and disappears inside.

It’s 2:00 a.m. I always go to sleep at midnight sharp, but today has been extraordinary, and here I am, awake. I’ve never seen my neighborhood at this time. It’s quiet and beautiful. I can’t hear anything except the beating of my heart.

I am not surprised to see the man in front of me. It is Mike. Though he is at least seven inches shorter than me, no more than five foot nine, he weighs at least as much as I do, and unlike me, Mike is all muscle. His angular face seethes. He is holding a baseball bat, and he waggles it menacingly. That bat, I am sure, is intended for me.

I am surprised that Mike is not in jail. The cops in this town are terrible.

I am not surprised that he is advancing on me.

I am surprised that I am not running—indeed, that I am standing still.

I am not surprised that Mike has pulled the bat back for a mighty swing and that it is aimed directly at my head…

I am surprised that I’m awake. I am even more surprised that it’s 4:12 a.m.

It seems that there is little I can rely on anymore.

I try closing my eyes, now that I know I am safe.

But it is useless. I grab my pen and notebook and scribble down the time, and my data is complete.

As I pad through the living room toward the earliest bowl of corn flakes of my life, I stop at the front window and pull back the curtain. Life outside on Clark Avenue looks much as it did just a few hours ago. Only the streetlights pierce the dark. No one appears to be out and about, not at this hour. I tilt my head to the right and find Donna Middleton’s house. I wonder if she’s having trouble sleeping. I wonder if she is scared. I wouldn’t say she was scared when I talked to her earlier—shaken, yes, but there was firmness in her voice and what I would call resolve in her eyes. There is no empirical way to prove these things, of course, but that was the sense I got. I prefer facts, but sometimes sense is all you have to go on.