600 Hours of Edward (3 page)

I like right turns much better than I like left turns.

At Albertsons, I buy the same things every week: three packages of spaghetti, three pounds of ground beef (the kind with only 4 percent fat), three bottles of Newman’s Own roasted garlic spaghetti sauce, a twelve-pack of Diet Dr Pepper, a big box of corn flakes, a half gallon of milk, a quart of Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream, five assorted frozen Banquet dinners, and one DiGiorno pizza (usually spicy chicken).

I can get three meals out of each box of spaghetti; spaghetti is my favorite food. I mix the spaghetti with a package of ground beef and one of the bottles of spaghetti sauce. That’s nine meals total. The five Banquet dinners bring the total to fourteen meals. I can get seven bowls of cereal from the corn flakes, so that’s twenty-one meals, or three a day for the seven days of the week. The ice cream and the DiGiorno pizza are treats.

Ever since the Albertsons on Grand put in self-checkout stands, I have been a happier shopper. Before, I sometimes had to wait behind several people in line, and that threatened to affect the projects I had at home and, conceivably, although it never happened, could have caused me to miss the 10:00 p.m. start of my
Dragnet
episode. I’m no longer permitted to go to the Albertsons on Sixth Street W. and Central Avenue, which is actually closer to the house that my father bought for me.

It was a dumb situation: I was in the checkout line behind an old woman, and she and the checker were talking a lot, and the line was moving slowly. I asked if they could quit talking so I could leave faster, and the checker shot me a mean glance and then kept talking. So then I said, “Please, hurry up because I have
to leave soon.” The man behind me didn’t like this and pushed me, and I ran into the old lady and knocked her down.

The store manager called the police, and my father had to come to the store and tell the police that he would make sure it never happened again, even though I told them that it was not my fault and that I wouldn’t have run into the woman if I had not been pushed. Nobody believed me.

You can probably guess that the whole thing ended up involving a letter from my father’s lawyer, who ordered me not to go back to that Albertsons ever again.

But now that the Albertsons on Grand Avenue and Thirteenth Street W. has self-checkout stands, I think it’s a moot point. I don’t have to talk to anyone to pay for my groceries now.

– • –

After I get home and unload and put away the groceries, I notice that the mailman has already been to the house. Ideally, I would like to add to my data sheets the time that the mail is delivered each day, but my projects and appointments sometimes take me away from the house, and so I don’t always see the mailman when he comes by. I might be able to rig up a video camera that would record his visit even when I’m not home, but Dr. Buckley says that is the sort of impulse that I need to work on controlling.

I don’t receive much mail. My bills go directly to my father, and he pays them. My name is not on this house or on my car, and so even junk mail is scarce. That’s how the junk mail people find out who you are and where you live. They go snooping around in public records, like home and car titles, and then they write to you. Also, if you apply for credit cards, you are sure to get all sorts of junk mail. The only credit card I have is for my expenses, and
the bill goes to my father. If this card has resulted in junk mail, I can only assume that my father is receiving it. I don’t like to assume. I prefer facts.

Today, there is one letter in the mailbox. It is from my father, in an envelope from his office. I am relieved that I am not hearing from my father’s lawyer, but hearing from my father isn’t necessarily better. I will have to open the letter to find out.

Edward:

I have received your credit card bill from last month. Everything looks to be in order, but I am confused by one charge: $49.95 for eHarmony.

Call me so we can address this.

Ted Stanton

I had a suspicion that this was going to happen. Now it is a fact.

I go inside the house, pick up the phone, and dial the number at my father’s office.

“Yellowstone County Commissioners.”

“It’s Edward Stanton. Let me talk to my father.”

“One moment, please.”

I listen to the orchestral version of a pop song—Muzak, it is called. Paul McCartney’s “My Love.”

“Ted Stanton.”

“Father.”

“Edward, thank you for calling. How are you?”

“I am fine, Father.”

“Can you tell me about this forty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents?”

“I signed up for eHarmony.”

“What is that?”

“It’s an online dating service.”

“You’re dating?”

“I am looking at online personal advertisements.”

“Does Dr. Buckley know about this?”

“My treatment with Dr. Buckley is between me and Dr. Buckley.”

“Online dating, eh?”

“Yes.”

My father’s voice softens. “Well. This could be interesting, Edward. This could be something good for you.”

“You’re going to pay the bill?”

“Sure. Yes. Why not?”

“It’s the only one you will get. I canceled the membership.”

“Oh.”

“Good-bye, Father.”

– • –

I guess I should tell you about eHarmony. I spend a lot of time on the computer looking at websites on the Internet. I used to keep track of how many hours and minutes I spent on the Internet, but I don’t do that anymore. It was easy when you had to pay for the time on the Internet, because you could just write down the time when you got the bill. Now the Internet is hooked up through my cable television, and I can spend as much time as I want on it for one price, which my father pays. It bothers me sometimes that I don’t keep track of the time I spend on the Internet, but I’ve
learned to “let that go,” as Dr. Buckley says. Dr. Buckley was very happy for me when I stopped tracking my Internet time. I’m not sure why she cared.

Lately, I have been spending most of my online time at Internet dating sites. On the television commercials, everyone who is finding dates online seems so happy, and all of them have found a “soul mate,” whatever that is. I doubt that they have any scientific proof that they have found their soul mate—for all they know, someone even more special is out there dating someone else—but I cannot argue with how happy they all are. I am envious.

I have not gone on an Internet date. I think I would like to go on an Internet date, but so far I haven’t met anyone who keeps track of weather data, and I think it is important that whomever I date on the Internet have something in common with me.

I have not told Dr. Buckley about the Internet dating yet, as there is nothing to tell. I wouldn’t have told my father, either, but he got the bill and asked me about it, so I had no choice.

I now use Montana Personal Connect. I tried eHarmony, because I liked the white hair and glasses of that guy on the commercials, and his manner was gentle, but eHarmony told me that its system and its twenty-nine levels of compatibility couldn’t find anyone for me.

That hurt my feelings.

– • –

At 10:00 p.m. sharp, I watch episode number ninety-two of
Dragnet
, which originally aired on March 5, 1970.

The episode, the twentieth of the fourth and final season, is called “Missing Persons: The Body,” and it is one of my favorites.

In this episode, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon have only two clues to identify a woman who was found dead under the Venice Pier in Los Angeles: a wadded piece of paper and a ring. But because of their doggedness, they eventually find out who she was and crack the case. Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are good cops.

When I started to learn my way around the Internet, I found that the actors who appeared on
Dragnet
were, in many cases, not difficult to track down. Most of them were not big stars, and some even have listed phone numbers and addresses. That’s not the case with the main actors in this episode, Anthony Eisley, Virginia Gregg, and Luana Patten; they are all dead. A lot of other people who were in the ensemble are dead, too, but some are alive. I exchanged some mail with an actor named Clark Howat, who appeared in twenty-one episodes of
Dragnet
. He was very nice. He told me how the star and creator of the show, Jack Webb, who plays Sergeant Joe Friday, didn’t want his actors to act because the series had such a small budget and could not afford more than one take on each scene. Instead, Jack Webb had them read their lines off teleprompters. Mr. Howat said it was hard to get used to, as actors’ training is to be more natural. But, he said, Jack Webb’s methods worked. I wrote back to Mr. Howat five or six times, and even invited him to have a cup of coffee with me if he ever came through Billings, but he never wrote back. It’s just as well. I don’t like coffee, and I think it would be difficult to sit at a table with a stranger and talk, even if he was in
Dragnet
twenty-one times.

– • –

I am flummoxed by my letter of complaint tonight. (I love the word “flummoxed.” I heard a man use it once, and I immediately
incorporated it into my lexicon. I also love the word “lexicon.” I had to look it up first, though. I used to write down the words and definitions I looked up, but I stopped doing that because the words are right there in the dictionary, and I can look at the dictionary anytime I want. It’s harder to keep a record of daily temperatures, because you would have to store a lot of old newspapers in the house, and so I decided it’s best that I focus on that and not the words. That way, I ensure that my data is complete.)

I would like to complain to my father for his rudeness about my credit card bill, but I don’t like to complain to the same person two times in a row. It’s bothersome enough that the complaints themselves don’t follow any particular pattern; I don’t need the added aggravation of bunching up my complaints about one person, not even my father.

I think I will complain to Matthew Sweet. This will require that I start a new green office folder.

Mr. Sweet:

It pains me to have to write this letter to you, as I am very much a fan of your music. However, two things are bothering me.

First, I can’t listen to your music when I am waiting to see my therapist, Dr. Buckley. She prefers quiet, more reflective music, and while it would be unfair to say that you’re not reflective, I don’t think “Sick of Myself” is emblematic of the sort of healing and self-respect that Dr. Buckley strives for in her practice. Perhaps you could consider something more upbeat, should you, yourself, someday feel a little more optimistic about things.

Second, as I’m sure you’re aware, the middle songs on your album
Blue Sky on Mars
are substandard. From “Hollow,” the fourth song, to “Heaven and Earth,” the eighth, you appear to have accepted half-baked songs. You cheapened your talent and swindled your fans by not insisting on a higher level of performance.

I will say, however, that you acquitted yourself nicely on your next album,
In Reverse
.

As ever, I remain your fan,

Edward Stanton

When my eyes open, I’m lying on my back. The clock says 7:38 a.m. This is a relief to me, after the waking-time debacle from yesterday. That’s 222 days out of 289 this year (because it’s a leap year) that I’ve stirred at 7:38. There is something in my physiology that favors this time. I do not know what it is. I am not a physiologist.

I reach for my notebook and my pen, flip over to today’s page, and record my wake-up time, and my data is complete.

– • –

Today, I am going to paint the garage. I have been in this house that my father bought for eight years (eight years and eighty-eight days). I paint the house and the garage in alternating years. I would prefer to paint them on the same date each year, but weather is too much of a variable.

Technically speaking, I do not need to paint this often. A good paint job, the only kind that is acceptable, can last ten years or more, even in a climate as erratic as Montana’s. Dr. Buckley tells me that I will feel better if I remain as busy as possible, and I have found that physical busywork is more beneficial than mental
busywork. For example, I like putting together plastic models of trains and automobiles and such, but often, I will start thinking not of the glue or the paint involved in the model but about something someone has done to irritate me—that someone often being my father—and I end up writing letters of complaint that I am tempted to mail, and this interferes with my project. Dr. Buckley does not want me to mail my letters of complaint. I also like painting the house and the garage, and my mind does not go to other things when I’m doing so because the work is more physically demanding. That’s why, today, I’m going to paint the garage.

But I can’t paint every day. For one thing, paint needs time to dry. For another, Montana’s weather is such that there is precipitation—that’s rain or snow—every single month of the year. Even if paint somehow magically dried (and there is no such thing as magic) two seconds after you applied it, you would still have to deal with rain and snow. Someday, scientists might make super fast–drying paint. Controlling the weather would be much harder, even for scientists.

There is also a third reason, which I don’t want to talk about for very long, as it will make me angry. The third reason is my father. There is no way that my father would buy enough paint for me to paint the house and garage every single day, even if I could. I have to fight with him just to paint every year, and I know he will be mad when he sees that I’ve bought nine gallons of paint for a tiny one-car garage. It wasn’t my fault, though. Home Depot had too many choices, and the paint man was not helpful. I need to write him a letter.

– • –

After eating a bowl of corn flakes and taking my eighty milligrams of fluoxetine—and after changing into my painting T-shirt and jeans, which are very ratty and thus are kept deep down in my bottom drawer so I don’t have to see them except when they’re needed—I log on to Montana Personal Connect. eHarmony and its twenty-nine levels of compatibility found no one for me, but there are no levels of compatibility on Montana Personal Connect. You just write a profile and post it and wait to see what happens.