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.
– • –
I’m nervous on the drive home. The rain is coming down even harder than when I went into Albertsons, and the thump of fat raindrops against the windows reminds me of last week, when that car hit me as I was turning left onto Twenty-Fourth Street W.
From Albertsons to home is all right turns, thank goodness, but you never know with other drivers.
I’m relieved when I pull into the driveway without incident. As the garage is not attached to the house, I’m facing a small fight through the rain with the groceries, regardless of whether I leave the car exposed or pull it into the garage. I opt for the former, then scramble out of the car, dash around to the back, unlock the trunk, and start wrestling with the plastic bags.
I can nearly scoop them all up, but the bulkiness of the box of Barq’s root beer is too much for me. I stand there in the rain for a minute or two, trying to find the grip that will allow me to move all of the bags toward the front door.
Finally, I get it. I’m holding on to the carrying latch on the box of root beer with just three fingers, and I begin shuffling toward the door. Halfway across the front yard, the root beer box rips apart and slips from my grasp, landing with a metallic thud. A few cans roll toward the sidewalk, propelled along by the slight crown of the yard. One can has blown apart from the fall and is spraying warm, carbonated root beer.
“Holy shit!” I say, and drop the bags of groceries.
“Edward, let me give you a hand.” It’s Donna, splashing toward me from across the street in a yellow raincoat.
“Thanks.”
I collect the groceries again, while she chases down the cans of root beer. I waddle to the door in a half-run, and she’s behind me with an armful of soda cans. I set one bag down and retrieve the keys from my pocket, then unlock the door, gather up the bag, and hustle inside. Donna is right behind me. Tracking rain and mud through the house, we herd the groceries into the dining room and set them on the table.
“Whew,” Donna says. “I think that one can’s a goner, Edward. Sorry about that.”
“It’s OK.”
I start pulling groceries from the bags and organizing them to be put away.
“Do you need help?” Donna asks.
“No, I can do this.”
She looks back into the tramped-through living room. “Oh, Edward, we made a big mess in there.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a vacuum cleaner and some cleaning supplies?”
“Yes, in the hall closet.”
“OK,” Donna says. “You put away the groceries, and I’ll clean the floor.”
– • –
By 12:45, we’re finished—the groceries put away, the living room carpet looking as if nobody had ever walked on it, let alone tracked mud and water across it—and we’re enjoying some of what Donna has dubbed The Root Beer That Tried to Get Away. She’s having hers in a glass, with ice. I’m drinking from the can, as I prefer my soda at room temperature.
At 12:47, there is a knock on the door.
I set my can of root beer down on the coffee table. I have no coasters, which started as a rebellion against my parents but now is just one of those idiosyncrasies that Dr. Buckley occasionally counsels me about; I can imagine her now, saying, “How, exactly, does not having coasters figure into your image of yourself, Edward?”
At the door, I look through the peephole. I can see the distinctive blue outfit of the US Postal Service. He’s late today. It must be because of the rain. I open the door.
“Edward Stanton?” he asks. He has been coming to this house for as long as I have lived here.
“Yes.”
“Registered letter. I need a signature.”
I sign where he has indicated, and he hands me a white business envelope.
The sender: Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, Attorneys at Law.
“Oh no.”
“What is it?” Donna asks.
“A letter from my father’s lawyer.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. It can’t be good.”
I open the letter, peeling away a corner of the envelope, and then sliding my right index finger through the top of the envelope like a crude blade.
October 27, 2008
Mr. Edward Stanton:
Your benefactor and I would like to talk with you about recent events and their possible bearing on your benefactor’s continued support of you. Please extend us the courtesy of meeting at 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, October 29, at the law offices of Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, 2600 First Avenue N., Suite 303.
We look forward to meeting with you.
Regards,
Jay L. Lamb
“It’s not good,” I say.
“Can I see it?”
I hand the letter to Donna, who reads it quickly.
“This is so weird,” she says. “Your father uses a lawyer to talk with you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why does the lawyer refer to him as your benefactor?”
“I guess it’s a lawyerly way of putting things.”
“Why can’t your father just call you up or come by?”
I shrug. That would be nice. That also would never happen. I shouldn’t say that, I guess. I don’t know what will ever happen, as those things haven’t happened yet, and until then, it’s all conjecture. I prefer facts. The fact is, my father has never just dropped by.
“What’s it about?”
“I don’t know. It could be anything.”
“He seemed like a nice man when…well, that day at the clinic.”
“He is when he wants to be.”
“Are you going to go?”
I shrug. “I have to.”
– • –
Donna is preparing to leave. She puts her raincoat back on—the pelting continues outside—and turns and faces me.
“Are you OK, Edward?”
“Yes.”
“I enjoyed hanging out with you.”
“Me, too.”
She smiles at me.
“Edward, can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be all right if I kissed you on the cheek?”
I’ve never been asked this before.
“OK,” I say.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and tiptoes up to me, gently placing her lips against my left cheek. She smells good. I close my eyes.
After she finishes, she releases me.
“Thank you, Edward.”
She opens the door, steps through, and closes it behind her.
– • –
Tonight, at 10:00, I settle into the couch and watch
Dragnet
. The episode, the eighth of the first season of color episodes, originally aired on March 9, 1967, and it is one of my favorites. It is called “The Candy Store Robberies.”
In this one, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate a string of armed robberies at a chain of downtown candy stores in Los Angeles. For a while, the robberies seem to follow a pattern, but then the robber or robbers—Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon aren’t sure about the number—hit a store that he or they have robbed before. Rolling stakeouts finally break open the case, and two transient men are arrested. It turns out that one of them found a gun, and they have both been using it, hitting the candy stores when they need some cash for liquor. They are actually gentle men, the gun notwithstanding (I love the word “notwithstanding”), and they have become friends because neither can read.
Their crimes are serious, but Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon have empathy for the men just the same. I think this
episode is just as much about friendship as it is about the unraveling of a crime.
Friendship, I’m finding out, is a good thing.
– • –
The sixth green office folder holding letters of complaint to my father gathers another one.
Dear Father,
I was most disappointed to receive the registered letter from your attorney, Jay L. Lamb, today. It was a dark moment in what had been, for me, a day of breakthroughs and greater understanding.
I am left to wonder if you and I will ever have a similar breakthrough. I am inclined to defer to your wisdom on so many things. I wonder if you will ever talk to me yourself or come over and have a Barq’s root beer with me, instead of having your lawyer write to me.
But wondering is not much different from conjecture. Neither one deals in facts.
So here is a fact: I will continue to hope that we might do better.
As ever, I am your son,
Edward
I awake with a start at 7:40 a.m. I’m propped up in bed, my forearms flat against the mattress, my elbows holding me up. I can remember only the faintest outline of a dream: My father, ahead of me, walking along a road I don’t recognize. He keeps the same, steady pace, occasionally looking back and waving me to come along. I walk as fast as I can and never catch up to him.
I find the dream both comforting and threatening. I cannot reconcile these two things in my mind, and as my alertness grows, my grasp on the dream loosens.
It’s no use.
I record my awakening time, the thirty-first time in 303 days this year (because it’s a leap year) that I’ve been up at 7:40 a.m. My data is complete. And, as is made plain by the clock, my morning meeting will be upon me soon.
– • –
I shower quickly, not savoring the hot water as I generally do. It’s cold today; I could feel that when I threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. How cold, I do not know and won’t know until tomorrow. The
Billings Herald-Gleaner
awaits on the stoop.
I step out of the shower and dry off quickly, then slip into my terry cloth robe. I’ll have to eat a quick bowl of corn flakes. I can’t say that I’m particularly hungry, as my appetite is being affected by the fact that I have to be at my father’s lawyer’s office. I also cannot imagine facing that on an empty stomach.
At the front door, I stop and sweep the newspaper off the porch. I am in a hurry this morning, but I can complete my data. I see that the forecast calls for snow flurries today. It seems that the TV weatherman, Kent Shaw, whose smiling face is on the weather page every day, and I have a similar sense of things. The difference is that he states his forecast as if it’s fact. I know better. I shall wait for tomorrow for the facts.
I eat spoonfuls of cereal as I thumb through the newspaper. The
Billings Herald-Gleaner
is the only newspaper I have read consistently in my life, and I like it, although there are some things that bother me about it. I don’t start at the front of the newspaper and look at every page in succession; I would be surprised if many people do, but I can’t really know without taking a scientific survey of the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
’s readers, and I just don’t have time for that.
First, I go to the weather page (I have already been there today and recorded yesterday’s high and low temperatures and precipitation, and my data is complete). Then I skip over to Dear Abby (the headline today: “Husband Should Ditch Secretary”), and this is one of the things that bothers me about the newspaper: The page with Dear Abby is in different places on different days. Sometimes, it’s with the front section. Sometimes, it’s with the Local & State section. And sometimes, it is with the Sports section. Every day, I have to check the index on the front page of the newspaper to find out where it is. And that brings up another thing I dislike about the
Herald-Gleaner
: The index
always says something like “4C” or “8A.” The letters mean nothing to me. I want the
Herald-Gleaner
to tell me what section to turn to, whether it’s Local & State or Sports or the front section. I am flummoxed by the
Herald-Gleaner
’s fixation on alphabetizing.
Finally, I turn to the Opinion page. This is my recreational reading, as my father often turns up on the Opinion page—sometimes because a letter writer mentions him, for good or for bad, and sometimes because the
Herald-Gleaner
editorial board mentions him, and that’s almost always for bad. My father refers to the
Herald-Gleaner
editorial board as “that full-of-shit, left-wing league of loons.” My father has a creative way of putting words together sometimes. The
Herald-Gleaner
editorial board, so far as I can tell, has never called my father anything that mean, although I could only guess at what its members say privately about him, and I don’t like guessing. I prefer facts. And it is a fact that the
Herald-Gleaner
editorial board is generally not supportive of my father as a county commissioner. It routinely criticizes his positions and has, in every election, endorsed his opponent. Today, as it turns out, a small editorial, with the headline “Stanton Misses Again,” takes him to task.
The Big Sky Economic Development Authority has yet to select a new executive director, but it made a smart move by moving on from candidate Dave Akers after his drunk-driving arrest while in Billings for his interview with the group. We can only hope that Akers’s most ardent supporter, Yellowstone County commissioner Ted Stanton, realizes the wisdom in moving on and ceases his incessant criticism of fellow board members.
The
Herald-Gleaner
has been up front about the ways in which we consider Commissioner Stanton’s stewardship of
the county to be lacking, but we would be remiss if we didn’t also acknowledge his keen political gifts and the value of his experience in business and finance. The county’s residents are often well served by that expertise. Nobody is served by his banging the drum—and berating his peers—on behalf of a man who will not get the job to which he aspires.
– • –
The waiting area outside Jay L. Lamb’s office is pristine. Unlike Dr. Buckley’s waiting room, which is often in various stages of dishevelment and has such magazines as
People
and
Sports Illustrated
, Jay L. Lamb’s is polished and almost antiseptic. The furniture is modern—steel and glass and hard plastic. I find it uncomfortable and unwelcoming. The magazine titles are not the breezy reads favored by Dr. Buckley; they are such things as
Kiplinger’s
and
Inc.
and
Portfolio.
It seems that the biggest story in each has something to do with investing.