600 Hours of Edward

Wednesday. My date is Friday. Were I to wait a day to buy the clothes, I would not have time to return them if something were to go wrong, like a button falling off or a shoe not fitting or something else that I cannot anticipate. Logic demands that I try clothes on today, buy them today, try them on again tomorrow, and then hope for the best on Friday. I cannot do more than that.
    And so it is that I will drive to Rimrock Mall, in the wind and the rain, and then deal with the crowds at the mall. These are not things I enjoy. Worse still, I have to make many left turns to get to Rimrock Mall. Given where this house is and where the mall is, I have no alternative.
    – • –
    Here are a few things you should know about Rimrock Mall so you’ll understand why I am dreading today’s visit there.
    Rimrock Mall is the biggest mall in Montana. Because Billings is such a geographic oddity—at 100,000-plus people, it is the largest city in a 500-mile radius—it isn’t just Billings people who come to the mall. I read somewhere, maybe in the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, that half of Northern Wyoming does its monthly shopping in Billings, and it stands to reason that a good number of those people end up at Rimrock Mall.
    If you walk through the Rimrock Mall parking lot on a weekend—I would rather not, but I am setting up a hypothetical statement—you will see license plates from all over Montana and Wyoming and even other places. Montana makes it easy to pick out where license plates are from: The first number is the county code, and the counties are numbered by the population size of the counties when the system went into effect. Yellowstone County plates have the number three on them, because it was the third-largest county, population-wise, back when the system started. It should be number one now, but that would make the people in Butte-Silver Bow County angry, so it stays at number three.
    Anyway, when I am driving in Billings and someone in front of me makes a wrong or erratic turn, I get angry if I see a three on his license plate, as he is from here and should know better. If I see a twenty-seven—that’s Richland County, an agrarian (I love the word “agrarian”) outpost in far Eastern Montana—I don’t get so mad. That’s someone who perhaps doesn’t spend much time in Billings, and I have to be a good person and remember that Billings can be confusing to outsiders.
    I am dreading today’s visit to Rimrock Mall.
    – • –
    At 9:00 a.m., I am sweeping the kitchen floor. The big department stores in Rimrock Mall won’t be open for another hour, and I’d just as soon spend part of the day on housework and let everybody get to work before I venture out in the rain.
    I’m bent over, straining to get the broom under the cabinets, when the phone rings. It startles me every time, because no call is ever expected. I have the phone for emergencies and so my parents can reach me. I have a pretty good idea which one this is, although I won’t know for sure until I pick up the phone.
    “Hello?”
    “Edward.” It’s my father.
    “Yes.”
    “Quite a stunt you pulled, calling me like that last night and yelling at me.”
    “Quite a stunt you pulled, Father.”
    He sighs heavily into the phone. “You may be right about that, Edward.” And then, in an instant, he’s no longer making a concession to me. “Of course, you forced my hand with that business at the hospital.”
    “That’s over. It’s a nonissue.”
    “You’re sure about that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Have you had any dealings with that woman or her boy?”
    I do not like deception or equivocation, but clearly this is a question that demands the sort of answer former President Bill Clinton might offer.
    “I don’t see them.”
    “That’s good. You understand my concern here, right?”
    “No.”
    “You’re a hard case, Edward.”
    “I am what you made me, Father.”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “I don’t think you can talk about fair.”
    My father now sounds exasperated. “You know what the funny part is, Edward? I called to apologize.”
    “I can think of something funnier.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You never managed to do it.”
    My father has hung up on me.
    My heart is beating fast.
    I’ve never stood up to him before, not like this.
    I’ve either won a round or ensured that Father’s lawyer is going to accumulate more billable hours.
    – • –
    The only bright spot of being at Rimrock Mall is that I know exactly where