Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

I only allude to the flurry of e-mail and my own unsent responses. Rather than tell about them, I reach into the briefcase and hand her the printouts.

Dr. Buckley reads quickly but also intently. At several points, I can see her brow furrow. At those junctures, I wonder what part of the correspondence she is reading, and I hope that it isn’t mine.

“Edward, I think you’ve learned something about dating in general, but online dating in particular,” Dr. Buckley finally says.

“What?”

“It can be difficult to find the right person, no matter the circumstance. I’m not willing to say whether online dating is inferior or superior to dating the old-fashioned way, whatever that is, but it’s different in one important way.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re missing a dimension of the person that you get when the first interaction is face-to-face. What I’m talking about here is a vibe. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so. A vibe is hard to quantify.”

“Yes, it is. But that innate feeling you get about someone else is important. Online dating delays that. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, in and of itself. But it happens. Do you follow me?”

“Yes. I didn’t get a good vibe from Joy-Annette. Did you in reading her notes?”

“No, but I don’t dislike her. I feel sorry for her.”

“Why?”

“She’s clearly dealing with some issues that stretch beyond dating and beyond you, Edward. There’s unhappiness there.”

I hadn’t considered that, and now I feel bad that I’ve been harboring such hostile thoughts toward Joy-Annette. I’m not being fair.

“What have you taken from your online dating experience, Edward?”

I think for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t think I want to do it again. There’s too much torpidity when it goes poorly.”

“But what about if it goes well?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t experienced that. Are you saying that you think I should try it again?”

Dr. Buckley shakes her head. “I’m not saying that. That’s your decision, Edward. I’m saying that you have made the decision to let people into your life—”

“I don’t recall making that decision.”

“Well, it wasn’t an occasion. But it happened just the same. Look at what we’re talking about.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“As I was saying, you have made the decision to let people into your life. Part of that involves being disappointed by them sometimes. Part of that involves being thrilled by them sometimes. It’s up to you to decide whether the risk is worth the reward.”

“I guess I’m thinking that it’s not.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince’?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, but Donna Middleton said it was that I had to turn over a lot of rocks on the beach before I find a pearl.”

“Donna Middleton is a very logical woman,” Dr. Buckley says.

Next, we talk about Donna Middleton and the fracas at the courthouse yesterday. There was a news brief on the second page of the Local & State section in today’s Billings Herald-Gleaner about it, and Dr. Buckley says that she saw it.

“Partner and family member assault is a terrible thing,” she says. From my years in the clerk of court’s office, I know it by the initials used by people in jurisprudence—PFMA.

“I think she’s very brave to confront him like that,” she says.

“She is.”

“Edward, have you spoken with your father about this?”

“I don’t think he would be happy that I have become friends with Donna.”

“He might not. But I think he might have some good advice.”

“He’ll just yell at me.”

“Perhaps you should give him more credit than that. We’ve talked many times about your father and how to interact with him. What, in this case, do you think the best approach would be?”

“Deference.”

“Why do you say so?”

“I should appeal to his protective and analytical instincts. If I defer to his wisdom about a situation, he’s more likely to share it with me.” I have repeated, verbatim, what Dr. Buckley has counseled me to do on many occasions with my father. I have been less successful in actually following through with him.

“Word for word, Edward. Word for word.”

We finish our session with a brief discussion about goals for the coming week. This is a fairly regular aspect of my weekly session with Dr. Buckley. I say “fairly regular” because it is sometimes superseded (I love the word “superseded”) by some emergency on my part, but in an average week, as most of them have been up until lately, we finish with a goals session. I wonder if I shouldn’t be keeping track of when we set goals and when we don’t, then shake off that thought as Dr. Buckley starts in.

“You’ve made real progress, I think,” Dr. Buckley says. “Do you think so?”

“Yes, I guess. It has been a hard, frustrating week.”

“But you’re still here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve taken some steps outside your comfort zone, away from full-time solitude and into some fellowship with others. How do you feel about that?”

“Mixed emotions, I guess.”

“Are they so mixed that you are unwilling to keep going?”

“No.”

“OK, then. Here’s your goal: What’s the next step? How will the next seven days be different for you from the past seven? Let’s find out, OK?”

“OK.”

Dr. Buckley is up and opening her office door. “Until next week, Edward.”

I walk out the office door, down the hall, and out the door into the foyer of the medical arts building. I can see through the glass doors that front the parking lot that it’s raining hard now.

At the Albertsons on Thirteenth Street W. and Grand Avenue, I have my cart and I begin to make my weekly pattern: spaghetti and sauce in the soup-and-pasta aisle, ground beef in the meat department, corn flakes in the cereal aisle, milk in the dairy, Diet Dr Pepper in the soda aisle, DiGiorno pizza and Banquet frozen meals and ice cream in the freezer compartments. Under optimal conditions, with no other customers or pallets of yet-to-be-unloaded food blocking my way, I can get from the store to the self-checkout area in six minutes.

After taking down the corn flakes and putting them in the cart, I stop and consider my haul: three packages of ground beef, three packages of spaghetti, three jars of Newman’s Own spaghetti sauce, and one box of corn flakes. These make up the basis of my weekly diet, and they are my favorite foods.

In the soda aisle, I bypass the Diet Dr Pepper. I think this week that I would like a twelve-pack of Barq’s root beer, which I load into the cart.

In the dairy case, I reach for the 2 percent half gallon of milk, not the skim as usual.

In the frozen-food aisle, I bypass the Banquet meals entirely, and the pizza, too. Instead, I select a few Lean Cuisine microwavable dinners—sweet and sour chicken, enchiladas suiza , pepperoni pizza, and Swedish meatballs. I eschew (I love the word “eschew”) Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream for a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet. I saw myself in the mirror before I went on my date with Joy-Annette, and I think I could stand to take in fewer calories.

I then backtrack to the meat department and select what appears to be a very fine New York steak. In produce, which I never visit, I pick out a Caesar salad in a bag.

The whole exercise exhilarates me. I don’t even know how to cook a steak, but surely there is a website that can tell me.

I roll my cart toward the front of the store, to one of two open checkout stands, both jammed with customers. My shopping spree took eighteen minutes. It’s OK, I think. Today, I am happy, and I can wait a few minutes more to talk to an actual person.