“Mr. Lamb says you can go in now,” says the receptionist, who is perfectly made up, perfectly coiffed, and has perfectly angular facial features. She is a good match with the furniture.
I stand up and check my watch. It’s 9:03 a.m. I walk through the office door to the immediate left of her desk. As I push it open, I draw in a big breath.
– • –
“Sit down, Mr. Stanton,” Jay L. Lamb says.
I hesitate for a moment, as Mr. Stanton is standing just off Jay L. Lamb’s right shoulder. Jay L. Lamb is sitting behind an expansive glass-topped desk. Then I realize that he is talking to me.
I sit. The chairs in here are just as uncomfortable as the ones outside.
“Hello, Edward.”
“Hello, Father.”
Jay L. Lamb clears his throat as if to speak, but my father cuts him off.
“What were you doing at the courthouse Monday?”
“How did you know I was there?”
“Cut the shit, Edward. We’ve been over this before. I know things.”
Yes, but that doesn’t make sense. My father’s job, aside from being at the courthouse, has nothing to do with court cases. We didn’t cross paths when I was there. Lloyd Graeve isn’t a friend of my father’s, so far as I know.
Wait. Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, Attorneys at Law. Sean Lambert. Mike Simpson’s defense attorney. That has to be it.
“I was there with a friend.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“My neighbor.”
“What is your neighbor’s name?”
“Donna Middleton.”
“You were at the county courthouse with Donna Middleton, the woman who not two weeks ago asked me to have you stay away from her and her little boy?”
Now Jay L. Lamb speaks. “On October twenty-first, you were sent a letter warning you about the outburst at Billings Clinic. Your father, in mitigating that situation for you, told you to leave that family alone.”
“What do you mean by ‘leave alone’?” I ask.
“You know goddamned well what he means,” my father says.
“She is my friend. Circumstances changed after that day at Billings Clinic.”
“I am not interested in what has changed, Edward. I am interested in knowing why it is that you continually defy me, continually land in situations that you must be rescued from, and continually make this situation more difficult than it has to be.”
“What do you mean by ‘this situation’?”
“Smarting off is not going to help you here, Edward.”
“I’m not smarting off. I’m asking you a question. What is the situation?”
“You know damned well what it is.”
“I know that you can’t talk to me about anything without your lawyer,” I say, waving my hand dismissively at Jay L. Lamb.
“That’s not what this is about.”
“How can it not be about that? Where are we, Father? We’re in your lawyer’s office.”
“There are legal aspects of our arrangement, Edward, and that’s the reason for the lawyer.”
“But whether or not I am friends with Donna Middleton is not part of our arrangement. You’re just bossing me around because you can.”
“I’m trying to protect you, goddamn it.”
“You’re trying to protect you is what it seems like to me.”
– • –
It goes on like that for a while, until my father and I begin to run out of angry words. At 9:22, Jay L. Lamb starts talking.
“Mr. Stanton,” he says, again addressing me. “I have drawn up a memorandum of understanding. Our wish is that you sign it and your father signs it, and it will constitute the basis of your
father’s continuing support of you. You should understand that any breach of this memorandum of understanding could be viewed as a sufficient reason to withdraw that financial support.”
I ask to see the memorandum. Among the codicils (I love the word “codicil,” although not so much today):
I am to not have contact with Donna Middleton or her son except as is “reasonably neighborly.” (“Giving a wave from your driveway is OK,” Jay L. Lamb says. “Traveling together, eating together, any sort of extended social interaction is not.”)
I am to live within my monthly budget of $1,200, not counting household utility costs and property taxes. Any overage is to be paid by me to my father.
I am to clear with my father all household improvements or alterations before embarking on them. (“You’re not going to paint that garage every damned year,” my father says. “Shows what you know,” I reply. “I paint it every other year.”)
So long as I adhere to these rules, Jay L. Lamb says, I am permitted to live in the house on Clark Avenue “until the end of my natural life.”
“Can I ask something?” I say.
“Go ahead,” Jay L. Lamb replies.
“This part about living within my budget, does it mean from this day forward?”
My father’s eyes zero in on me. “Is there something I need to know?”
“There are some bills coming.”
“What kind of bills?”
“I bought some clothes. About five hundred dollars’ worth. I am wearing some of them today.” I have on the tan slacks and lavender shirt that I bought at Dillard’s, plus the shoes and the belt.
My father says nothing.
“And two hundred and twenty-one dollars and ninety-five cents from Home Depot.”
“You bought two hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of paint?”
“The paint was another purchase.”
“What the hell was the two-twenty for?”
“A project.”
“What kind of project?”
“A big tricycle.”
“What?”
“Like a Green Machine. Do you remember mine?”
“No. What the hell is this about?”
“I made it for Donna’s son.”
“You what?” My father has come around the desk to face me.
“It’s already done. He has it. No bringing it back now.” I am trying not to smile as my father grows angrier by the second.
“This, Edward, is why you’re signing this goddamned document.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Also, someone hit the car.”
“When?”
“Last week, outside Rimrock Mall.”
“Did you get insurance information from them?”
“He or she drove off.”
“Well, Jesus Christ. How bad is it?”
“It’s hard to tell that anything happened.”
“Forget it, then. No way I’m paying a five-hundred-dollar deductible and seeing my rates jacked up. Now then, is that it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then sign the document.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You can start looking for somewhere else to live and a way to pay your bills, starting today,” my father says. “Because the gravy train will be gone.”
“Yes, Father, you’re all heart,” I say. “Anyone can see that.”
It’s like a flash of lightning my father is so quick as he backhands me across the bridge of the nose. I haven’t even comprehended what has happened when I feel the sharp sting spread across my face. My eyes are watering, and the tinny taste of blood seeps into my mouth from my sinuses.
“Jesus Christ, Ted,” Jay L. Lamb shouts, jumping up and grabbing my father by the shoulders. My father slumps backward and sits down on Jay L. Lamb’s glass desk.
I rub the back of my right hand across my eyes to clear away the tears that filled my eyes from the force of the blow. Then I dab under my nostrils and see little spots of blood.
“I strongly suggest that you sign and leave. We’re not going to have this here,” Jay L. Lamb says to me.
“You’re paid to give advice to him, not me,” I say. “Give me a pen.”
– • –
Before I leave Jay L. Lamb’s office, I say one last thing.
“I saw your good review in today’s
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, Father.”
He fixes me with a haggard stare. “Go home, Edward. We’ve had enough bullshit for one day.”
– • –
On the drive home, I see that wispy flakes of snow have started to fall, dissolving as they hit the ground.
I cannot believe what has happened. My father has always yelled at me and ridiculed me. He has never hit me, not until today. My father has broken my heart.
I hate him. Hate is not a word to be used lightly. I consider this, and then I stick with it. I hate my father.
– • –
I can see Donna Middleton in her front yard when I pull up into the driveway at home. I step out of the car, and she gives a big wave and shouts, “How are you?”
I don’t look at her. I give a half wave back, walk briskly to the front door, open it, and go in.
– • –
By 10:00 p.m., I am exhausted. I have spent the day since I arrived back home alternately sleeping and stomping angrily around the house and, at times, crying. I am not ashamed. Crying does not make me a baby. Crying comes from many sources and has many causes: anger, frustration, sadness, lack of sleep. I think I am suffering from all four, and I think that is why I have been crying.
It’s time for
Dragnet
, and although I don’t have much energy for it, I’ve already skipped one episode of the first season, and to miss another would put me horribly off track. I cue up the tape and press play.
Tonight’s episode, the ninth of the first season of the color episodes, is called “The Fur Burglary.” It originally aired on March 16, 1967, and it is one of my favorites.
In it, a furrier by the name of Emile Hartman (played by Henry Corden, who appeared in two episodes of
Dragnet
and nearly every popular TV show of the ’60s and ’70s) has been wiped out by burglars. Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called in to investigate, and they soon determine that they will have to pose as buyers in hopes that the burglars will attempt to sell the furs. Emile Hartman teaches Officer Bill Gannon how to be a connoisseur of fine fur, giving him a vocabulary that includes such terms as “gamey” and “split skins.”
Eventually, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon arrest the men responsible and get the furs back to Emile Hartman, saving his business.
I suppose when something is taken from you, it can be a lucky break to have men like Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon to get it back.
There are not enough men like those two to go around.
– • –
As you may have guessed, I already have a green office folder for the man who does my father’s bidding, Jay L. Lamb. I should write to my father, but I just don’t know what I could say to a man I suddenly do not know.
Mr. Lamb:
I must again voice my objections to your interference in affairs that should be handled within my family. I realize that you serve at my father’s whims, but I am left to wonder if $350 an hour is really worth intruding where you do not belong and are not welcome. For me, the answer is clearly
no, and after the events of today, I would think that any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion. You will have to make peace with that question yourself.
At any rate, I very much resent your attempts to provide me with legal counsel. Should I require the assistance of an attorney, you can be sure that I will choose someone who is not a toady for a frustrated, spiteful, violent man.
In other words, I will not choose you.
While I would like to be able to say that this letter concludes our interaction, I know that this is not up to me, but rather to my father. I am hopeful that we will not have any more such episodes, but hope is not a reliable emotion. I shall wait for the facts to emerge.
In the meantime, I bid you good day, until I can bid you good riddance.
Regards,
Edward Stanton
My waking hours on the 303rd day of the year (because it is a leap year) begin with a 7:14 a.m. phone call.
“Hello?”
“Edward?” It is my mother. My mother never calls me at this hour.
“Mother?”
“Edward,” she says, and I can hear a wobble in her voice, “you need to come to St. V’s. Something has happened to your father.”
“What?”
“Just come, Edward. St. V’s emergency room.” She hangs up.
My data will have to wait.
– • –
St. V’s is what people in Billings call St. Vincent Healthcare. There are two main hospitals in Billings, St. V’s and Billings Clinic. They sit side by side in the hospital district downtown. Billings, because it is the largest city in a 500-mile radius, is where many of the people in Montana and northern Wyoming come for hospital services. If you have an extremely serious medical condition, you might have to go to Denver or Salt Lake City or Seattle, but the
Billings hospitals can handle most anything else. My father is at St. V’s, so maybe he doesn’t have an extremely serious medical condition. He is also in the emergency room, so maybe he does. I try not to think of this on the drive over, because it’s just conjecture. I prefer facts.
I’ve moved quickly. After my mother hung up the phone, I pulled on a pair of blue jeans. I can wear my 1999 R.E.M.
Up
tour T-shirt to the hospital. At 7:29, I pull into the St. V’s parking lot and cross the street to the emergency department. I am not wearing a coat. It’s cold.
My mother is sitting in the waiting room. So is Jay L. Lamb. I hadn’t imagined that I would see him again so soon.
“Edward, come sit down,” my mother says when she sees me. She is calm in a way that I find eerie, but I can see that she has been crying. Her makeup is splotchy from her tears.
I sit next to my mother.
Jay L. Lamb nods to acknowledge me, but I do not return it.
“Edward, your father collapsed this morning,” my mother says.
“I don’t understand.”
“He was going to hit golf balls and he collapsed.”
“He was playing golf? In these temperatures?”
“Edward, that’s not important. He collapsed. Someone saw him. They got help to him. He’s…” My mother is crying again.
“He’s inside,” Jay L. Lamb says. “They’re doing what they can.”
He wraps an arm around my mother’s shoulders, and she leans into his chest, sobbing.
I clasp my hands in front of me, lean forward, and stare at the floor. And I wait.
– • –
It is not a long wait in terms of time, but it seems endless. It occurs to me again that time can be an illusion, even though it is also a fact. My mother continues to sob, and Jay L. Lamb continues to comfort her. “He has a good team in there,” he says. She cries some more. I keep my eyes on the floor.