600 Hours of Edward

off base.
    Today’s forecasted low: thirty-three. Again, we shall see.
    Dreams: Not one that I can remember, for the first time in days.
    My data: complete.
    And, yes, I made a
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
reference. I am pretty funny sometimes, as I keep telling you.
    – • –
    I arrive at Dr. Buckley’s office nineteen minutes and twenty-two seconds early. I am filled with anticipation to see her, which is anodd sensation for me. It’s not that I don’t like coming to see Dr. Buckley; on the contrary, I sometimes feel as though without her I would not push through. But it has been a long time since I had this many things I wished to discuss with her. Perhaps I never have. I don’t keep track of that.
    – • –
    I scan the end tables filled with magazines, which are predictably scattered every which way by patients who are not courteous enough to put things back the way they found them. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care—and I don’t lie, except for that one time to Donna Middleton about the cost of the Blue Blaster—but I also find myself unwilling to sort through them. If I had concentration today, it would be focused squarely on my impending discussion with Dr. Buckley, but focus is beyond my reach. I sit and I stare straight ahead and I wait.
    After a few moments, I look down to see where the
thump-thump-thump
sound is coming from, and it is coming from me, as my heel fires up and down like a piston, making a metronome sound on Dr. Buckley’s carpeted floor.
    – • –
    At 9:57, Dr. Buckley guides a client out through the waiting room—she (the client) looks to be a fifty-something woman, lumpy and matronly, and she has been crying. My eyes dart away, out of an unwillingness to make eye contact with a stranger and out of deference to her pain. Soon, she is gone.
    I look up and Dr. Buckley is giving me a “let’s go” look.
    I look at my watch.
    9:57:08…9:57:09…9:57:10…
    I stand up. I may need the extra two-plus minutes.
    – • –
    “How was your week, Edward?” Dr. Buckley asks.
    “You won’t believe it.”
    I’ve started where I never start, and Dr. Buckley sits up, attentive. “Try me.”
    “I have been having dreams that I remember vividly, and that never happens.”
    “Go on.”
    “I have started online dating.”
    “You have?”
    “Yes, through Montana Personal Connect. I may be having a date soon.”
    “Well, that is something new.”
    “Yes. And I’ve become friends with a nine-year-old boy and his mother. At least, I think we’re friends. I’m sure the boy and I are friends. With the mother, it’s harder to say.”
    “Anything else?”
    “I had another fight with my father.”
    “Well, Edward, that’s not anything new, is it?”
    “No, I guess it isn’t.”
    “OK,” she says. “Let’s take these things one at a time. Let’s start with the boy and his mother.”
    – • –
    I tell Dr. Buckley everything: how Kyle came over and helped me paint the garage twice, the dream about losing my grip on him,the misunderstanding at the Billings Clinic emergency room, Mike’s assault of Donna later that night, the chat on the doorstep early in the morning, the Blue Blaster, and Donna’s tepid (I love the word “tepid”) response to it.
    She asks me to tell her more about the dreams, so I give her the rundown on the rest of them: the one with the naked woman I don’t know, the one with Joy and the giant plasma screen, the one where Mike is coming after me with a baseball bat. I tell Dr. Buckley that I’m embarrassed to talk about the dreams where I am naked, but she says that it is all right, that I should go ahead and tell her.
    “Edward, there is much we still don’t know about dreams and the biological purpose they fill, but I think we can make some reasonable assumptions about yours.”
    “I don’t like assumptions. I prefer facts.”
    “I know you do, but let’s just go with this, OK?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve had a big week. People have become part of your life and your consciousness in a way that they never really have before. Would you agree with that?”
    “Yes.”
    “I think your dreams are probably rooted in that. You have made room for these people in your life, even in small ways. You take the time to correspond with the woman in Broadview, Joy. You have let Kyle help you paint, and you even made him a cool bicycle.”
    “Tricycle. Three wheels.”
    “OK, tricycle. The point is, they are in your sphere now. And