600 Hours of Edward

challenge my tendency to not want to talk to or meet people. I wonder what she would think of this.
    She might tell me that Joy was very nice to have responded to my profile and that I ought to be equally nice in return.
    She would probably tell me to be more forgiving about the atrocious grammar.
    Maybe I should write back.
    Maybe I should paint the garage first and figure out what I want to say.
    – • –
    After eating a bowl of corn flakes and recording yesterday’s weather data—high of fifty-seven, low of thirty-four on the 291st day of the year (because it’s a leap year), and now my data is complete—I drag the Behr mochachino paint, the mixing pans, and the paintbrushes into the driveway. I have extra brushes for Kyle, in case he decides to show up after school.
    I am feeling apprehensive about the painting. The ten-day forecast looked good, so I am reasonably confident that I can get the mocha chino applied and even the bronze green before Billings gets a blast of snow or rain. I don’t know this for a fact, of course. That’s the problem with forecasts. They are notoriously off base.
    So it’s not the painting, per se, that makes me hesitant. I don’t quite know what it is. I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t dumb of me to buy three kinds of paint, all of which I will have to see onthe garage before I am satisfied. I know this about myself, and I’m now regretful that I couldn’t have chosen just one color and been done with it. Even though I want to blame the unhelpful paint man, I cannot. It’s my fault for being so compulsive.
    But what’s done is done. I cannot reverse it now.
    I wonder if Joy will think I’m weird for painting the garage three times. Maybe I can wait before telling her. Maybe I’ll put it off to sometime between our first meeting and our discussion about the kids.
    – • –
    I am in nearly the same spot on the garage and at nearly the same time as before when Kyle shows up. I prefer to be more precise than “nearly,” but I did not write down the time of Kyle’s last visit, as I did not expect that it would be the sort of regular occurrence that would require data keeping on my part. Here, again, is the problem with assumptions. They are sometimes wrong. I prefer facts.
    This time, I don’t almost hit my head on the eave when he speaks, because I hear him coming. I also expected that he might show up, and I am right. Sometimes, expectations aren’t so problematic.
    “Can I help?” he asks.
    Again, I back down the ladder and face him.
    “Yes. I have paintbrushes for you.”
    Kyle goes over to the lined-up brushes, chooses one, dips it into the mixing pan, and starts sloshing the Behr mochachino on the garage door.
    “You should use a steady stroke in the same direction.”
    “Like this?” He is holding the paintbrush rigidly and moving it up and down quickly.
    “Relax your wrist and slow down a little bit, and paint in one direction.”
    “Like this?” He has done as I asked.
    “That’s better.”
    “Why are you painting the garage again?” he asks.
    “It’s part of my plan.”
    “Like a secret plan?”
    “Something like that, yes.”
    “And I’m like your partner.”
    “Yes. On this garage plan, you are my partner.”
    Kyle giggles.
    I let him paint.
    “Hey, Edward.”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m nine years old and two hundred and fifty-one days today.”
    “Yes.”
    – • –
    Boys who are nine years old and 251 days talk…a lot. I am leaning against the hood of my 1997 Toyota Camry, drinking a can of Diet Dr Pepper while I watch Kyle paint. His Diet Dr Pepper is sitting in the driveway, unopened.
    Kyle talks about his school. He doesn’t like his teacher. He likes math. And he likes a girl. I ask him if she knows that he likes her. He says no. I ask if he’s going to tell her, and he giggles again.
    Kyle talks about his house, the one he and his mother moved into on September 12. He has a PlayStation 2 but wishes he had a Wii, because those “totally rule.” He asks if I want to come oversometime and play PlayStation 2, and I pretend that I didn’t hear him, and he goes back to painting.
    He talks about his mother. She is a nurse at Billings Clinic, and she works Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in the emergency room. She is thirty-four years old, he offers. She has lived with many men—I count a Donald and a Troy and a Mike in his anecdotes. He tells me that the reason they moved into this house is that Mike hit her, and she