600 Hours of Edward

love the word “superseded”) by some emergency on my part, but in an average week, as most of them have been up until lately, we finish with a goals session. I wonder if I shouldn’t be keeping track of when we set goals and when we don’t, then shake off that thought as Dr. Buckley starts in.
    “You’ve made real progress, I think,” Dr. Buckley says. “Do you think so?”
    “Yes, I guess. It has been a hard, frustrating week.”
    “But you’re still here.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’ve taken some steps outside your comfort zone, away from full-time solitude and into some fellowship with others. How do you feel about that?”
    “Mixed emotions, I guess.”
    “Are they so mixed that you are unwilling to keep going?”
    “No.”
    “OK, then. Here’s your goal: What’s the next step? How will the next seven days be different for you from the past seven? Let’s find out, OK?”
    “OK.”
    Dr. Buckley is up and opening her office door. “Until next week, Edward.”
    I walk out the office door, down the hall, and out the door into the foyer of the medical arts building. I can see through the glass doors that front the parking lot that it’s raining hard now.
    – • –
    At the Albertsons on Thirteenth Street W. and Grand Avenue, I have my cart and I begin to make my weekly pattern: spaghetti and sauce in the soup-and-pasta aisle, ground beef in the meat department, corn flakes in the cereal aisle, milk in the dairy, Diet Dr Pepper in the soda aisle, DiGiorno pizza and Banquet frozen meals and ice cream in the freezer compartments. Under optimal conditions, with no other customers or pallets of yet-to-be-unloaded food blocking my way, I can get from the store to the self-checkout area in six minutes.
    After taking down the corn flakes and putting them in the cart, I stop and consider my haul: three packages of ground beef, three packages of spaghetti, three jars of Newman’s Own spaghetti sauce, and one box of corn flakes. These make up the basis of my weekly diet, and they are my favorite foods.
    In the soda aisle, I bypass the Diet Dr Pepper. I think this week that I would like a twelve-pack of Barq’s root beer, which I load into the cart.
    In the dairy case, I reach for the 2 percent half gallon of milk, not the skim as usual.
    In the frozen-food aisle, I bypass the Banquet meals entirely, and the pizza, too. Instead, I select a few Lean Cuisine microwavable dinners—sweet and sour chicken, enchiladas
suiza
, pepperoni pizza, and Swedish meatballs. I eschew (I love the word “eschew”) Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream for a pint of Häagen-Dazs chocolate sorbet. I saw myself in the mirror before I went on my date with Joy-Annette, and I think I could stand to take in fewer calories.
    I then backtrack to the meat department and select what appears to be a very fine New York steak. In produce, which I never visit, I pick out a Caesar salad in a bag.
    The whole exercise exhilarates me. I don’t even know how to cook a steak, but surely there is a website that can tell me.
    I roll my cart toward the front of the store, to one of two open checkout stands, both jammed with customers. My shopping spree took eighteen minutes. It’s OK, I think. Today, I am happy, and I can wait a few minutes more to talk to an actual person.
    – • –
    I’m nervous on the drive home. The rain is coming down even harder than when I went into Albertsons, and the thump of fat raindrops against the windows reminds me of last week, when that car hit me as I was turning left onto Twenty-Fourth Street W.From Albertsons to home is all right turns, thank goodness, but you never know with other drivers.
    I’m relieved when I pull into the driveway without incident. As the garage is not attached to the house, I’m facing a small fight through the rain with the groceries, regardless of whether I leave the car exposed or pull it into the garage. I opt for the former, then scramble out of the car, dash around to the back, unlock the trunk, and start wrestling with the plastic bags.
    I can nearly scoop them all up, but the bulkiness of the box of Barq’s root beer is too much for me. I stand there in the rain for a minute or two, trying to find the grip that will allow me to move all of the bags toward the front door.
    Finally, I get it. I’m holding on to the carrying latch on the box of root beer with just three fingers, and I begin shuffling toward the door. Halfway across the front yard, the root beer box rips apart