Edward Adrift

went to work for the oil company, and they put us here in Casper. God, I hated it. I’d grown up in Texas—your father had, too, of course, but at least he had something to do here. The wind blew all the time. We’d get buried in drifts of snow in winter, way worse than anything we ever saw in Billings. Anyway, that was our first house together.”
    I stare at the structure. It looks too small, even for just two people. However, I have to concede that whoever lives here now takes pride in it. The yard is neat and tended. The chain link fence doesn’t sag. It’s small, but it’s nice.
    “Was it red like this?” I ask.
    “No, it was white. The red looks better. It also had a garage, but it looks like they’ve turned that into a room. Good idea. It wasa tiny, tiny place. Your father and I had to turn our backs to the wall to pass each other in the hallway.”
    “How long were you here?”
    “Fourteen months. I counted every day.” My mother laughs. “Getting to go to Billings was like paradise. We built a good life there, too. You came along.”
    “It’s weird to think of any place other than Billings being home to you and Father.”
    My mother puts the car back in drive and leaves her past behind. I’m still struck by the fact that there’s something I could learn about my parents this late in my life.
    “I’ll tell you something, Edward. It’s becoming weird for me to think of Billings as home. I’m a little nervous about seeing it again.”
    “Why?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting ingrained in Texas. It’s like I rediscovered where home is. Now that your father has been gone awhile, there’s not so much for me to do in Billings anymore.”

TECHNICALLY WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011
    We make it to Billings at 12:07 a.m. My mother drives through the quiet dark to her downtown condo and then turns the car over to me. She says she will call Jay L. Lamb first thing in the morning and let me know what he says. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and says good-bye. Four minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, I come home to 639 Clark Avenue.
    The house is as I left it eleven days ago. And yet, it feels foreign to me. That doesn’t make sense, but then a lot of what I’m feeling lately doesn’t seem logical. I’m going to have to hang on until things sort out.
    I’ll have to go to the post office later today and retrieve my mail. I’ll call the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
, too, and get my paper going again. I’ve been thinking about it during the entire drive from Cheyenne Wells, and figuring out how my life works here—what Scott Shamwell calls “sorting out the shithouse”—is going to take discipline. Throughout this shitburger of a year, I’ve been letting routine get away from me. Routine, I’ve decided, is my way back to happiness, if happiness is anything I can aspire to. At this point, I’d take normalcy, whatever that is.
    My ribs ache. The constant motion and the getting out of and into the car have sapped me physically.
    I need to make a list of things to do when I wake up, so I can begin to round my life back into shape. A list represents discipline, and discipline is what I need.
    EDWARD’S TO-DO LIST
    Go to the post office and get my mail, and reinstate delivery.
Call the Billings Herald-Gleaner and restart home delivery of the paper.
Go to the grocery store. Think lean meats, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables.
Go to Rimrock Mall and get something for Mother for Christmas.
Before going to Rimrock Mall, see if a good item can be found online and delivered before Christmas. Rimrock Mall four days before Christmas? What was I thinking?
Arrange to see Dr. Rex Helton and Dr. Bryan Thomsen. A good life means good health. I need to get on top of this.
Stop writing this list.
Stop now.
Dammit.
Go to sleep.
Shit.
STOP IT!
    I break another pen in half to keep from writing another item. It’s 12:49 a.m. I’m tired.
    Since we left Casper, I’ve been thinking about my mother and my father and their life together—the way it was before I came along and the way it was after. I was surprised to learn that they had lived in Wyoming when they first got married, and after that, I was happy to have heard the story. My mother doesn’t talk much about my father anymore, and I struggle with that, because I think about him more than I ever have and would like to talk with her about him. I don’t measure such things as the amount of time spent thinking about my father, of course, and