600 Hours of Edward

learned from Dr. Buckley.
    “If it weren’t for Jay, I don’t know how I’d make it through this.”
    (I would like to try it without Jay.)
    “Such happy memories.” She is reaching out and lightly touching a face mask that is on the wall, one of the mementos of a trip to Africa.
    (I wasn’t there.)
    “He wasn’t from here, but he lived for this place.”
    (Some thought that he made sure this place lived for him.)
    “Edward,” she says, turning to me. “What is your favorite memory of your father?”
    This is an easy question.
    “Thanksgiving 1974. We drove down to Midland, then had Thanksgiving dinner with Grandpa Sid and Grandma Mabel. We watched the Cowboys win.”
    “I wasn’t there, was I?”
    “No.”
    Mother suddenly looks hurt and angry. “That’s your favorite memory, one that doesn’t include me, one when our marriage was coming apart?”
    I realize that I have stepped in it.
    “You asked me about my memory of him. Not of you and him.”
    “Edward, your father was cheating on me. Did you know that? He was cheating on me with one of the women in his office, and I told him that I was leaving and that he should think about our future together. And this—
this
—is your memory.” My mother is definitely angry.
    “I did not know that. It doesn’t affect what I remember.”
    “Oh, really? What’s so special about Thanksgiving and football?”
    Now I’m angry.
    “Football is all I had with him. It’s the only way he could stand to be in a room with me, is if we were watching football.”
    “That’s not true. That is a horrible thing to say about your father.”
    “It is! It is true.”
    “I don’t know why,” my mother says, her voice cracking and tears welling in her eyes, “you can’t remember something that isn’t so painful for me, something from later on, when he was such a good man who didn’t fool around anymore. Why can’t you remember all of the good things he did here, the things he accomplished, the honors he was given?”
    “Because I was never a part of that. Who among your friends now knows me? No one. How many of those awards dinners did I go to? Not a single one. What do I have to remember about all of that?”
    “Edward! You talk as if we’re ashamed of you.”
    “You are, aren’t you?”
    “No.” She is indignant.
    “Who did you hide away in a house on Clark Avenue? Who is invited here only once a month for a dinner that no one really wants to have anyway? Who gets letters from a lawyer when Father wishes to speak to me?”
    It angers me all the more that my mother would pretend that these things haven’t happened.
    “What are you talking about? I always gave you love, always,” she says. “You’re mad.”
    “No, Mother, I’m developmentally disabled. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.”
    I stand up from the couch and stalk toward the front door, and then I turn back.
    “You sit around here and pretend that father was a god all you want, Mother. I will not.”
    I open the door, step through, and then slam it behind me.
    I stop on the front step to catch my breath. I can hear my mother crying on the other side of the door.
    – • –
    Donna Middleton is sitting on the front step of the house on Clark. I pull into the driveway, set the brake, turn off the ignition, and climb out.
    “Edward, I heard the news about your father. I am so, so sorry.” She is walking across the lawn toward me, and when shereaches me, she presses her hands against my cheeks. Her hands are warm.
    “I can’t talk to you,” I say.
    “It’s hard, I know your family is going through a terrible time, but I just—”
    I grasp her hands and pull them away from me. “I cannot talk to you.”
    I push past her to the front door and disappear inside the house. My father’s house. My father is dead. I don’t know whose house this is.
    – • –
    At 2:01 p.m., the phone rings.
    “Hello?”
    “Edward, this is Ruth Buckley.”
    “Yes.”
    “I read the news about your father today. I’m so sorry.”
    “Yes.”
    “How are you doing?”
    “OK, I guess.”
    “Would you like me to set aside some time for you today? If you need it, I can do it.”
    “I think I will be OK.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Edward, death can be a very a difficult thing to handle. If you need to talk, at any time, you call me. Do you have all of my numbers?”
    “Yes.”
    “Edward, are you certain that you’re handling this?”
    “Yes. I know the stages of