Edward Adrift

December 23, 2011, Day 357:
    Low temperature for Friday, December 23, 2011:
    Precipitation for Friday, December 23, 2011:
    Precipitation for 2011:
    New entries:
    Fuck new entries. (This still stands.)
    The phone starts ringing at 7:38 a.m. today. By 8:56, I’ve had fourteen calls. I remove the line from the back of the phone.
    At 9:04, my bitchin’ iPhone rings. Kyle has changed my ringtone to “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” and even in my sour mood, I have to concede that’s funny. The phone call is from my mother. I turn the ringtone to silent. She calls thirty-six more times by 2:00 p.m. Every time the bitchin’ iPhone lights up, I hear “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” playing in my head. It’s not funny anymore. I shut the phone completely off.
    Now I’m watching the Dallas Cowboys play against the Philadelphia Eagles. The New York Giants have already beaten the NewYork Jets, so no matter what happens in this game, the whole season comes down to January first, in New York against the Giants.
    It’s weird to be sitting in my living room in Billings, Montana, and watching a game that I was supposed to attend in person. It makes me think about how little things can change big things. If Kyle hadn’t stowed away in my car when I left Boise, I probably would have gone to Cheyenne Wells, spent a couple of days, driven home, and been aboard my scheduled flight to Texas. If I take Kyle out of the equation, I eliminate that awful moment when I found out what had happened to him, the frantic drive through the darkness to get him back with his family, the impact when I drove into the snowplow. If I take those things away, I take away Sheila Renfro finding my pills and my phone and chasing me down the highway. I take away her staying with me in the hospital and then bringing me back to Cheyenne Wells. I take away kissing on the couch, and holding her sleeping body in my arms after the drug raid at her motel. I take away my mother showing up the next day and bringing me back here. OK, that one I would like to take away, but I can’t without affecting everything else.
    If I take away all those things, I’m in Texas. I’m at my mother’s house in North Richland Hills, which would have been decked out for Christmas, the way her houses always are. I would be sipping eggnog with my mother and Aunt Corinne and meeting all the Texas ladies she always talks about.
    We would ride in her car to Cowboys Stadium, just the two of us, for this game. Maybe my mother would introduce me to Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ owner, because she knows him. I would have to restrain myself from telling him what I really think about his stewardship (I love the word “stewardship”) of the team.
    Now, I’m thinking maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t end up at Cowboys Stadium. The Philadelphia Eagles just drovequarterback Tony Romo into the ground, and he has hurt his hand. The TV announcers are saying that they don’t expect to see him return, since the Cowboys have nothing to gain.
    On the other hand (not Tony Romo’s other hand; that’s a joke, because I’m pretty funny), maybe I would like to change everything. I can’t, of course. I’m speaking only hypothetically. I’m thinking now of the butterfly effect, which holds that one small change in a nonlinear system can cause massive changes in later situations. In other words, even if I could change something in my past—and, to be clear, I cannot—that single alteration would change many other things, perhaps in ways I didn’t like.
    I have to wonder what the difference would be. It seems to me that everything changes anyway and that God or the universe or whoever’s in charge doesn’t give a damn what I think about it.

    My mother knocks on my door at 6:11 p.m. I know it’s her because she says so.
    “Edward, I know you’re in there. Let me come in so we can talk.”
    I walk to the door and put my cheek against it.
    “Please leave me alone, Mother.”
    “It’s Christmas Eve. Let’s talk about this.”
    “Your present is in the alley in the garbage bin. You can go get it if you want. Other than that, I don’t want to talk to you, Mother.”
    “Edward!”
    “Please go away.”
    “Will you ever talk to me again?”
    “When I’m ready. It’s my sovereign right to choose when that is.”
    “I love you, Edward.”
    My mother is crying. I can hear it.
    “I know you do. I love you, too. Please go away.”
    I hear her climbing down the steps of my porch. I go to the