Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

If there is any upside to your horrible outburst today, it is that Judge Alan Robeson saw with his own eyes what a horrible person you truly are and denied you bail accordingly. While I cannot know how long you will remain behind bars—I can only guess, and I prefer facts—I do know that Donna Middleton is going on with her life without you and your controlling, deceitful, harmful ways.

She is much the better for it. While that will no doubt make you angry, it makes her family—and especially her boy—happy. And I am happy for them.

I print out the letter and place it in the green office folder I prepared days ago, taking the time to alter the tab so that it reads “Mike Simpson” and not just “Mike.”

I hope it’s the last time that I ever have to take it out of the filing cabinet.

I am in a room that is empty save for a table and three cardboard boxes—one red, one blue, one yellow.

I walk over to the table and lift the lid on the red box, and Mike Simpson’s head pops up.

“What if I don’t go to jail, Edward?” Mike Simpson’s head says to me. “What then?”

And now I am in another room, also empty, save for three doors on the wall across from me. They are marked with a 1, a 2, and a 3.

I walk over and open door number 1. Mike Simpson is standing behind it.

“What then, Edward?”

And now I am in yet another room, this one filled with people of different sizes and shapes, yet all of them with Mike Simpson’s anvil-like head, all of which whip around to look at me.

“What then, Edward?” they say in unison. “I will kill you, that’s what then. You’re dead.”

And now I am awake, my heart thumping loudly against my sternum. It’s 6:45 a.m. I don’t dare return to sleep for fear of seeing that face again. I reach for my notebook and record the time, and my data is complete.

The rain, it says here in the Billings Herald-Gleaner , will linger through the week, a prospect that is neither here nor there to me. I am interested in the facts of the situation, and the only facts about the weather that today’s Herald-Gleaner can provide are yesterday’s high and low temperatures and precipitation. I record them in my notebook, and my data is complete.

I remember when I was attending school at Billings West High School, during my junior-year English class, I had a teacher who would talk endlessly about symbolism in literature. She said that rain in a scene always portended (I love the word “portended”) a parting of ways. And yet I have years’ worth of data on the weather patterns here in Billings that suggest it’s not true. Rain is caused by cloud droplets that become too big for the clouds to hold. Water vapor below the clouds condenses into these droplets, which then fall from the sky. That has nothing to do with the parting of ways. The science of the matter is that it’s always raining somewhere on Earth, and while there may also always be parting of ways on Earth, that’s a coincidence, not science.

This teacher also told us that a move east portended disaster. She justified this by quoting Horace Greeley, who famously said, “Go West, young man.” I think if she had just thought of all the people who have gone east to New York and hit it big, she might have realized the folly of what she was teaching us. It was Frank Sinatra who said that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. You take Horace Greeley. I’ll take Frank Sinatra. He was the chairman, after all.

I take the last couple of big bites of corn flakes, pop the fluoxetine into my mouth, wash it down with orange juice, and head off to the shower. Today is important. Dr. Buckley awaits.

This trip to Dr. Buckley’s office will require some packing first.

I printed out Joy-Annette’s increasingly belligerent e-mail messages as they came in, and they are stacked neatly on my office desk. I pull up my Word files on the computer and print out my letters of complaint back to Joy-Annette. I don’t trust myself to tell the whole story accurately, as it flusters me, and so I’ve decided to let Dr. Buckley read everything for herself. I look forward to hearing what she thinks.

I fold the papers and put them into a briefcase. Then I open the briefcase and make sure I can find them easily. I then decide that I should segregate the papers, putting Joy-Annette’s notes in one compartment and my letters in another. I close the briefcase. Then I open it again and make sure that I know which compartment is which. I close the briefcase. Then I open it again and check one last time.

I’m looking forward to seeing Dr. Buckley today.

Of course, it’s only 8:32 a.m. Mike’s visage started my day far too early.

I check the briefcase one more time.

An hour and twenty-three minutes later, I am in Dr. Buckley’s office. The past week’s patients have left me much to clean up. On every end table, the magazines are ridiculously out of order. I stack them again, chronologically within a given title and then alphabetically by title.

I am unable to sit down. I’m fidgety. I used to feel this way a lot, especially before I started seeing Dr. Buckley and she helped figure out the proper dosage of my fluoxetine. I have no ready answer for why such jumpiness has returned today, but perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas.

I look at my watch, and it’s 9:59:51.

If I don’t start on time today, I will be very upset.

9:59:54…9:59:55…9:59:56…

Dr. Buckley’s door opens, and I barrel down the hallway, crashing into the distinguished-looking gentleman who is exiting her office.

I look down at my watch.

10:00:04…10:00:05…10:00:06…

“Cocksucker,” I say, scolding myself for my tardiness.

“Edward, I need you to take it real slow now.”

Dr. Buckley’s voice is low and soothing. She never loses her temper with me, even when I push her to exasperation, as I have today. After I ran into that man and then shouted a very bad word, I could hear her on the other side of the door, apologizing profusely to him and assuring him that I was not referring to him as a cocksucker. She didn’t actually say the word “cocksucker,” but it was obvious that was the word causing consternation.

When Dr. Buckley comes back in, I start talking very fast before she even sits down. My brain is moving faster than my mouth, and I am making little sense, I am afraid.

“Slow down, now,” Dr. Buckley says.

“I went on that online date, and it was a complete disaster. I couldn’t…she was…I was worried…”

“Breathe and slow down.”

This is a technique that Dr. Buckley used often in the early days of my coming to see her, when we were meeting every couple of days to work through my problems. I was often frantic back then. After my fluoxetine dosage settled in at eighty milligrams and took effect in my body, we didn’t have to do this so much, and we were able to dial back our sessions to once a week. I can see in Dr. Buckley’s face that she is surprised that we’re in this mode again.

“Are you breathing better?” she asks.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Are you ready to talk?”

“Yes.”

“OK, then. Let’s take these one at a time.”

We start with Joy-Annette and the disastrous online date. I bring Dr. Buckley up to speed on all that happened since my last appointment, including the clothes-buying trip (“My husband has those slacks,” she says at one point. “They look good.”), the anxiety about sex, the Gewurztraminer-fueled burp, and the abrupt end to the date.