Edward Adrift

mother to see me like this.

    We eat dinner at Hathaway’s restaurant in the Little America Hotel near Cheyenne, Wyoming. I’ve slept most of the way—a fitful, in-and-out sleep during which I lurch awake and take in the passing landscape before drifting off again. Now I pick at my roasted chicken and I try to bring myself out of my stupor.
    “You’re not mad at me, are you?” my mother asks.
    I learned from Dr. Buckley that this is a passive-aggressive question. My mother knows that I should be and am angry with her. She knows she overstepped her boundaries. Now she’s asking me to tell her it was OK.
    “You shouldn’t have done what you did,” I say.
    “You needed my help.”
    Now my mother is bargaining.
    “No, I didn’t. I had the situation under control.”
    “I still say it doesn’t really matter because you were going home anyway and now we get to spend some time together.”
    My mother is still bargaining.
    I don’t say anything.
    “What’s wrong? It seems like there’s something you’re not telling me,” she says.
    I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands.
    “I don’t have a job anymore. My best friends are gone. I have type two diabetes—”
    “You have diabetes?”
    “Yes, I told you that.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “I didn’t?”
    “No. When did you find out?”
    “Dr. Rex Helton told me on December eighth.”
    “What are you doing about it?”
    “I’m eating roasted chicken and vegetables,” I say, passing my hand over my plate.
    “How can I know what’s going on in your life if you don’t tell me, Edward?”
    “How can you pretend to know if you don’t ask?”
    This is probably the most acidic (I love the word “acidic”) thing I have ever said to my mother, and instantly I wish I hadn’t.
    Her mouth puckers up like a chicken’s asshole.
    “Let’s just eat,” she says.

    My mother asks me to drive for a while. She says it’s been a long day, what with the early flight from Dallas/Fort Worth, the drive down to Cheyenne Wells from Denver, and now the drive back across Colorado to Wyoming, the entirety of which still stands between us and Billings. She says all of this as if she had no choice in the matter, which tells me that my mother still thinks she didthe right thing. This flummoxes me. It’s not like her to be so obtuse (I love the word “obtuse”).
    The full night is upon us now, and only Michael Stipe’s voice is fighting against the silence as he sings about the imitation of life. I’ve turned the volume down to where only someone who knows the songs as well as I do can make out the words.
    “Losing your job really threw you for a loop, didn’t it?” my mother says.
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sure it was nothing personal. Mr. Withers always liked you.”
    “It’s not the insult. It’s the timing.”
    “Edward,” she says, “you are so fortunate. You don’t have to work if you don’t want to.”
    I laugh. It’s not a ha-ha-funny laugh. It’s bitter and hard.
    “Jay L. Lamb said the same thing,” I say.
    My mother sits up.
    “I’m going to call Jay in the morning. I bet he can help you find a job. Would that be all right?”
    I consider this. When it comes to talking to Jay L. Lamb, I’m always in favor of someone else doing it. And I do need a job. Somehow, I have to start rebuilding a life in Billings, Montana, which seems odd to say since it’s the only life I’ve ever known. I might as well start the rebuilding project with a new job.
    It can only get better from there.

    I stop for gas in Casper, Wyoming, and fill the tank with 15.464 gallons of unleaded at $3.0399 per gallon, for a total of $47.01.My mother asks me if I’m getting weary. It’s 8:31 p.m. now, and I probably could use a break from driving.
    As we get back on the road my mother says, “I want to show you something.”
    Instead of heading back to the interstate, she drives in the other direction, through Casper, and soon I am unsure where we are. We pass a building emblazoned with TOWN OF MILLS , and we ride on from there. About a mile up the road, my mother turns left into a patch of 1950s-era ranch-style homes.
    “Where are we?” I say.
    “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
    She takes a left turn (bad), then a right turn (good), then another left (bad). She rolls the Cadillac up to a small box of a home.
    “Your father and I used to live in that house,” she says.
    I have never heard about this.
    “When?”
    “Right after we got out of school. He