Edward Adrift

“What’s going on?” I shrug my shoulders, and it hurts. I won’t do that again.
    “Well, who is she?”
    “She owns the motel I stayed in while I was in Cheyenne Wells.”
    “Is she there now?”
    “Yes.”
    “I want to talk to her.”
    I hand the phone to Sheila Renfro, who shakes her head. I purse my lips and push the phone toward her with insistency. Finally she takes it, and soon I’m left to bemoan (I love the word “bemoan”) the fact that I can hear only one side of their brief conversation. That must have been frustrating for Sheila Renfro when I was the one on the phone.
    The side of the conversation I hear goes like this:
    “Hello, Mrs. Stanton.”
    (Pause.)
    “I’m thirty-six.”
    (Pause.)
    “It was my mother and father’s motel. Now it’s mine. They’re in the ground.”
    (Pause.)
    “I don’t think that’s any of your business, with all due respect.”
    (Pause.)
    “He wants to come.”
    (Pause.)
    “But—”
    (Pause.)
    “Tell him, not me.”
    (Pause.)
    She hands the phone back to me.
    “Yes, Mother?”
    “I don’t like this, Edward. I think you should go home before you get into any more trouble.”
    “Trouble? I’m not in trouble. Did Jay L. Lamb say something?”
    “No, no, that’s not what I meant. You’re not in trouble, trouble. It’s just that you’ve been through a lot. It’s time to go back home. That’s all I’m saying.”
    “Why?”
    “I think people are taking advantage of you.”
    “Which people?”
    “That woman, for one.”
    “But she’s my friend.”
    “I know you think she is, and maybe she is, but given what you’ve been through, I think it’s best that you just go back to where you live and she goes back to where she lives. I don’t trust her.”
    “I do.”
    “I think you should go home.”
    My mother flummoxes me. I’ve never seen her act this way.
    “I’m going to Cheyenne Wells, Mother. It’s just for a few days. Then Sheila Renfro will bring me back to Denver, I’ll pick up the car, and I’ll go home.”
    My mother sighs into the phone. She’s not happy.
    “I think you’re making a mistake.”
    “I think we should see what the facts bear out.”
    “Fine. But I want you to call me every day, OK?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good-bye, Son. Be careful.”
    “Good-bye, Mother. I will.”
    I hang up and I look at Sheila Renfro, who is biting at her bottom lip.
    “You don’t have to come,” she says.
    “I want to.”
    “It’s going to cause trouble for you with your mom.”
    “I’m forty-two years old. I can do what I want.”
    Sheila Renfro smiles just a bit at this, the kind of hidden smile she would give me back at the motel in Cheyenne Wells.
    “She’s bossy,” she says.

    I pee four more times throughout the afternoon. Twice I’m sitting in Sheila Renfro’s chair while she sits on the end of my bed, and those instances make it easier for me to stand, although I still need help getting to my feet. I’ve learned to anticipate the pain from my broken ribs, and at the moment I’m being pulled up I blow out my breath as hard as I can, which seems to help with the discomfort. It doesn’t cause all of the pain to go away, of course. Only when the ribs are fully healed will that happen. Dr. Banning, who comes and sees me one more time before dinner, assures me that will happen within the next few weeks.
    After dinner—grilled chicken breast, rice, and cauliflower, which I despise and thus do not eat—Sheila and I watch another episode of
Adam-12
on my bitchin’ iPhone. This one is called “Log 172: Boy, the Things You Do for the Job.” It’s the twenty-fourthepisode of the first season, and it originally aired on March 22, 1969.
    Sheila Renfro again puts her head next to mine as we watch on the tiny screen. In this episode, Officer Pete Malloy and Officer Jim Reed pull over a blonde who is driving recklessly in a foreign sports car. Officer Pete Malloy tells her that in addition to her considerable driving violations, she also has an expired driver’s license. This kind of flagrant disregard for the law flummoxes me, even on a TV show. As Officer Pete Malloy is writing the ticket, the blonde puts on her feminine wiles (I love the word “wiles”) and suggests that they have a date instead. Officer Pete Malloy, being a good, upstanding cop, declines her offer.
    Sheila Renfro sits up and looks at me and says, “I bet your mom thinks all women act like that.”
    I start to say something, but Sheila Renfro waves me