Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

My usual Tuesday series of right turns delivers me into the Albertsons parking lot. On a Tuesday morning, when most of the rest of Billings is at work, my shopping goes easily: ground beef, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, Banquet meals, DiGiorno pizza (supreme this week), twelve-pack of Diet Dr Pepper, corn flakes, milk, and ice cream.

The self-checkout stand is a breeze, and soon I’m back in the 1997 Toyota Camry, right-turning my way home.

At Grand Avenue and Eighth Street W., two blocks from where I’ll turn off Grand for the final run home, Billings drops away into a bowl that leads downtown. This is my favorite view of the city, better even than the one from atop the Rimrocks. I can see the First Interstate Bank building cast against a backdrop of the canyon, called Sacrifice Cliff, which borders the Yellowstone River.

It’s really pretty.

Back at home, I square away the groceries, and then I opt for an early lunch of Banquet Swedish meatballs. I don’t want to eat too much, as I will be dining at my parents’ house tonight, which I do monthly. I also don’t want to eat too little, as I may be making an early exit. I can never tell at my parents’ house.

It is often a torturous evening. My mother treats me like a child, and my father treats me like just another constituent, except when he’s treating me like a failure and a disappointment. Given the events of the past week, it’s not hard for me to imagine which version of him I will get tonight. Still, I won’t know until I’m there. I remember what Dr. Buckley has said, again and again and again, when it comes to my father: Do what I can to control my own behavior and hope for the best from his. Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.

At Montana Personal Connect, I see what has become a familiar sight:

Inbox (1).

I click the link.

Dear Edward,

Your SOOOO funny again. I think I can forgive you for not liking Garth Brooks.

Would you like to do something Friday night? Maybe we could meet in downtown Billings at that new wine bar on Broadway. Ive heard good things about it.

8 all right? I know I must seem pushy but I guess since its my idea, Id just throw it out there.

Let me know…

I write back:

Joy:

I would very much enjoy meeting you at the new wine bar Friday night. Can we please make it seven? That will give me time to get back home for Dragnet.

My parents’ house sits atop the Billings Rimrocks, giving them a view of the bustling city of 100,000 below. It is a huge home for just two people: 6,200 square feet, with stone floors, a kitchen with side-by-side Sub-Zero freezers, an indoor lap pool and sauna, and gardens for my mother to spend her days tending. On the south side of the house, the side that faces town, there are huge windows. I have heard my father, when leading visitors through the house, say that the windows allow him to always see “the city I love.” At this altitude, I think it’s more likely that the windows allow him to see his minions without their seeing him. This is a mean thing to think, and it’s not so much conjecture as an informed opinion, but perhaps it would be better for me to wait for the facts.

I always feel foreboding when I drive to my parents’ house, and it’s not just because of my parents. When I make the drive up the Rimrocks along Twenty-Seventh Street, then turn west at the airport and ride two more miles to their turnoff, I have to make many left turns to get there, and those left turns—I prefer right turns—lead me out of my world and into theirs. Theirs is not the house I grew up in. When I was a young man, which I will concede was a long time ago, we lived in a nice three-bedroom house in West Billings. During the latter part of the 1990s, when I was still living there with my parents, my father made some fortuitous (I love the word “fortuitous”) investments in technology, and then he got out of them before taking on the losses that other tech investors saw in early 2001.

Once I was out of the house and put into the place on Clark Avenue—because of the “Garth Brooks incident”—my father and mother sold that house and moved up here. It is their place. It is not mine.

At the wrought-iron gate, I press the call button. After a few moments, I hear my mother’s voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s Edward.”

“Come on in, dear.”

The gate opens. I feel like I want to throw up.

“So there’s the hospital hero,” my father bellows as I step into the foyer, with the last of the late-afternoon light hitting me from the skylight above.

“Hello, Father.”

He sidles up to me but offers neither a handshake nor a hug. He is dressed in a pink-and-white golf shirt, impeccably pressed slacks, and penny loafers—no socks. My father has been rocking this look for thirty years. (I love the phrase “rocking this applicable noun.”) From the smell wafting toward me, I am guessing that he’s on his second scotch and soda. Maybe his third. I don’t like to guess. I prefer… Well, never mind. It doesn’t matter.

“How have you been, Edward?”

“Fine.”

“Fine, eh?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t seem too fine when I saw you last.”

“It’s OK now.”

“I heard what happened.”

“What?”

“You called the cops and got that boyfriend of hers busted.”

“Did the police call you?”

“No, Edward. But I’m a goddamned county commissioner. I know things.”

“Yes.”

“Scumbag.”

“What?”

“That guy. He’s a scumbag.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Well, you did good on that. I have to give it to you, Edward.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Come on in, then.”

My mother is in the kitchen, scurrying from island to stove to refrigerator and back to island as she prepares dinner.

“There’s my boy,” she says as I come into her view, and she dashes over to squeeze my cheeks and coo at me. I hate this part.

“We’re having your favorite: pork loin, grilled asparagus, rosemary potatoes.”

“My favorite is spaghetti.”

“But you like this, too.”

“I guess.”

“That’s good.” She’s now away from me and back to her cooking. My mother is the sort of woman who is dressed to the nines at all times, even when cooking dinner. She has been this way for as long as I’ve known her, which is all of my life. When I was a child, I was not permitted to see her until she had showered and put on her makeup and fixed her hair. She was a lovely woman then—tall and lithe, dirty-blonde hair, everything in its place. You can still see that beauty in her, though at sixty-three she is fighting a losing battle against the hair, which is rapidly graying, and the waistline, which is expanding. Her clothes and nails and shoes, as ever, are flawless.

My father is in the dining room, staring out a window into the approaching dark.

“Cocksuckers,” he says to no one.

“Ted,” my mother scolds him.

“Ah, shit, Maureen, I’m sorry.”

When my father drinks, as he is doing now, his incidence of curse words—the “shits” and “fucks” and, yes, even the “cocksuckers”—increases exponentially. It can be amusing to watch, if you’re not the target of them.

“It’s just this goddamned economic development thing. Those assholes are killing me on this.”

I have been reading about this in the Billings Herald-Gleaner. The county’s economic development council, on which my father and the two other county commissioners sit, has been trying to hire a new director. My father put forward the name of a friend of his, someone who worked with him in the oil business years ago. The man came up to Billings for an interview and did quite well—so well that he appeared to be a lock for the job. While in town, though, he was cited for drunk driving, and now the council is cutting him loose as a candidate. My father is his lone backer, and he and the other commissioners have been sniping at one another through the newspaper and television news programs.