19: Revelation
Originally emailed on October 2, 1998
I drove the boys out to their father's on Friday evening. Sam met us at the door, grabbed the boys' duffel bags and tossed them into the entryway, then kissed me hello. The kiss was his way of silently saying, "Isn't our remaining affection for each other more important than the child support I haven't paid you?" I glowered at him. Out loud, he said to the boys, "About face, fellas. We're on a quest for pizza and must capture some wild soda pop and videotapes on the way. See ya, Louella."
"You'll bring them home on Sunday?" I asked.
"Sure will," he called over his shoulder as he opened his car door.
"Make them wear their seatbelts!" I yelled. He just waved his arm. He started the engine and began to pull out of the driveway even though I could see clearly that Mark, in the back seat, had not buckled up. "Seatbelts!" I yelled, and said a prayer. Well, I said, "Jesus Christ," which is sort of a prayer.
Michael appeared in the doorway, talking into a cordless phone. "No, pepperoni on the whole thing, and mushrooms, onions, and green peppers on half. No, the same half. Pickup." He hung up. "Come in for a minute, Lou. I have something for you," he said.
"Something for me? A present?" I asked.
"A present," he agreed, "but not necessarily pleasant." In the dining room, he picked a manila file folder off the table and handed it to me.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's a dossier on Ed."
"A dossier?" I said.
"That's spy talk. It means 'file.' It's information about Ed's past."
"Where'd you get it?" I asked without looking at it.
"I put one of the guys in collections on it." Michael works for a finance company that makes big loans to businesses.
"A collection agent?" I said incredulously.
"Well, more like a private investigator. Our collections department isn't like the collections department at, say, the electric company. They don't call people at dinnertime and say, 'We can't help but notice that you're in default on your six million dollar loan. We hope you realize that non-payment will affect your credit rating.' It's mostly lawyers in there. When a business defaults or goes into bankruptcy, our lawyers go into court to argue that they should have to file Chapter 11, which means they have to make repayment, instead of Chapter 7, which eliminates most debt, or they try to argue that we should be a high priority creditor and get our money before the other sixty guys who also want money from the business, or they argue that we should get a higher fraction on the dollar. The other thing that's going on is that the business is trying to hide its assets so they can make a good case for being relieved of debt, and we're trying to find their assets so we can make a good case for repayment. So we've got investigators in the department who work with the lawyers."
"Like Paul Drake working for Perry Mason," I said.
"Exactly," Michael said. "So I just asked one of the investigators to look into Ed, and told him it was off the books but could he put a little time into it. He said sure, he'd just bill it to various accounts in fifteen-minute increments but I should never mention to anyone that he'd told me so."
"Very thrillingly spy-like," I said dryly.
"Yeah," Michael said, putting on a tough TV-hoodlum look, "and me an him's in this tugetha now. If one uh us goes down, he takes da other wit' him. Actually," returning to his normal midwestern queen voice, "it's done all the time. People check out prospective lovers, husbands, and wives, that kind of thing." One hand waved airily.
"Have you had Sam checked out?"
"I don't want to know," he said, putting the back of his hand across his eyes.
"Maybe I feel that way about Ed," I said. "I asked you not to do anything like this."
"Well, so you did," Michael said. "But I notice that Ed has not called you in some time."
"Almost three weeks," I acknowledged.
"Well, maybe what's in that file will help you decide whether you want to approach him for a reconciliation."
"Maybe," I said, "but I thought things were pretty clear between us. I don't think he's going to call me unless he's willing to tell me himself whatever's in this file, and if he's not willing to tell me, it's not going to do me any good to know. Do you see what I mean? I don't just want to know, I want him to tell me."
"Well, honey," Michael said, "I just thought I was giving you a choice. You do whatever you want with that folder. And try not to be too mad at me."
"I'm not too mad," I said. "I know you mean well." I looked down at the folder. "What's in it?" I asked.
"I haven't looked. But I can tell you, when the investigator dropped it off to me, he said, 'There ain't nuttin on this guy. He's clean as a whistle. A real choirboy.'"
"He didn't!" I protested.
"Well, that's what he meant. His summary report is right on top, if you want to look at it. The rest is supporting documents." I opened the folder and read from a piece of paper on top:
"The applicant has no arrest record and no record of bad debt or loan defaults." "The applicant?" I asked.
"Usually if they're doing work for me they're looking into somebody who wants a loan," Michael explained. "Ah," I answered.
"Nor is there any evidence that the applicant has made any attempt to dissociate from his past."
Michael interjected, "Either he's a fine upstanding citizen, or he's a government witness in such deep cover that they concocted a thirty-year paper trail to support his new identity." I looked at him. "A little joke," he said weakly.
I read on. "The only question worth investigating further might be why he abandoned his former profession. The possibility that he resigned in exchange for silence about some crime such as embezzlement or child molestation seems unlikely but could be pursued. I was unable to follow this question up in the time available for this investigation."
"That's a pretty short report," I said.
"Well, they're longer if the applicant has a checkered past. Which Ed doesn't seem to," Michael said.
"At least, whatever he's hiding wasn't illegal," I mused.
"Or he didn't get caught at it," Michael added. We heard a car in the driveway.
"I'll take this home," I said. "I don't know yet whether I want to look at it."
"OK," Michael said. "Good luck, honey." He gave me a little hug. Sam and the boys came in and pressed me to have pizza with them. I ate a quick slice, then headed home.
At home, I discovered that my reluctance to look at the folder had completely dissipated. I sat at the kitchen table and opened it. I re-read the investigator's short report, then turned it over and lay it aside. The next item was a credit report. I saw that Ed had had a mortgage once, that he'd had many credit cards at various times, that he'd always made payments on time.
The next item was a transcript from the University of Wisconsin. Ed earned a B.A. there in 1979. Mostly B's. Major: English.
The next item was a blown-up photocopy of what must have been his high school senior picture. Penciled at the bottom was, "Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, 1975." It showed a very young Ed with hair to his shoulders. "They went all the way back to high school?" I said to myself incredulously.
I started to lay the picture aside to look at the next item, but stopped. I went to the phone and called Ed. "It's time we talked," I said.
Ed said, "I don't see the point, if we both still feel the same way we felt before."
"I don't know how I feel. But something new has come up. Can I come over?" I said.
He was quiet for a second. "OK," he said. "For a little while."
In his apartment, I handed him the file. He leafed through it, then dropped it onto the coffee table.
"You had me investigated?" he said.
"Michael did. He thought he was doing me a favor."
"Ah," Ed said. "Was he?"
"I don't know," I answered.
"Have you read it?" Ed asked.
"Just a few things. The summary. The first few things in the pile."
"Then you called me."
"Yes."
After another silent moment, Ed said, "Well, what did you learn?"
"I learned everything," I said.
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "No, Ed, you're not playing it right. Once I say I know everything, you're supposed to confess it all. It'sa trick I learned from the movies."
"I learned it from the movies, too, Ella," he said, and smiled at me for the first time. "But I do wonder what you found out."
"I found out you were raised in a town called Pleasant Prairie. You might have mentioned that before. I found out you had real bad hair in 1975. I can see why you'd want to hide that. And I found out you majored in English in college, but the transcript might have been faked. You'll have to prove it." I was trying to lighten the mood a little.
Ed decided to play along. "How can I prove it?" he asked.
"Recite something," I said.
Ed struck an orator's pose, one hand on his chest, the other outstretched. He gazed seriously into the middle distance. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre," he began, "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned."
"Oh, how lovely," I cried. "Yeets was always one of my favorite poets, especially the fluffy romantic stuff like that. Do you know the rest of it? It could be, like, our special poem of love."
Ed reached out and touched my arm with his fingertips. "I miss you," he said. He sat on the couch, opened the file, and started through it, studying each piece. "Here's the haircut," he said. "But it was the lapels and the fringed vest that elevated the crime above misdemeanor status. And, of course, if this were in color you'd see that the shirt is pumpkin orange. I don't mean to shock you."
"You're taking this all very lightly," I commented.
"Defense mechanism," Ed answered. "I sense that we are at a crossroads, Ella. Depending on what we do with the information in this file, depending on what conversation we decide to have now, I feel I am either going to see my worst fear realized, or my fondest hope. Do I lose you forever, or win you forever? Tonight is the night we find out."
I snorted. "I can think of a half-dozen other possibilities: you tell me all, I'm shocked, I leave you, I reconsider, I come back in a week and throw myself into your arms. We later break up because you don't like my dog."
"I love your dog!" Ed protested.
"It's hypothetical," I said. "Possibilities. Another option: You confess all, I tearfully forgive you, we step forward together into the brave new world, we later break up because my dog doesn't like you."
"Why do all your possibilities end with breaking up?" Ed asked.
"They don't," I said. "I'm just giving examples. I'm just saying that our whole lives are not going to be decided by what we do right now. I'm just trying to relieve the tension you say you're feeling."
"And you?" Ed asked.
"I feel relieved. After weeks and months of wondering, worrying, and not knowing, things are finally going to be resolved once and for all."
Ed laughed and grabbed me. "I love you so much!" he said into my hair. "Why can't that just be enough?"
I said, "Let's not have that argument again. What are we going to do with the folder?"
"Let me tell you how I'm feeling," Ed said. "I did this thing before I came to Michigan. I came to Michigan to put it behind me and start over. I didn't want to talk about this thing I did, because I was ashamed of it. But not talking about it has made it seem bigger than it is, and now I don't want to talk about it because after all this drama, it seems pretty piddly and I think you'll laugh at me."
"You could make up something worse," I suggested.
"You're very helpful," Ed replied.
"The other option is, you could just take a deep breath and spit it out. Then the worst part would be over, for both of us."
Ed considered. "I think," he said, "that when we first met I gave you the impression I had formerly worked in a lucrative career like stock brokering, but found it too stressful and went into elementary ed to slow down and simplify my life."
"Impression?" I said incredulously. "That's what you said."
"Well, it's not true," Ed said. "I was a minister."
I goggled. Ed said, "See what I mean? It's a little anti-climactic after the build up it's gotten."
I said, "But that can't be the whole story. Which is it, embezzlement or child molestation?"
"Neither," Ed said.
"Then what are you hiding?" I asked.
"That I was a minister."
I had some trouble taking this in. "The big thing that you've been so ashamed of that you wouldn't say a single word about your past is that you were the shepherd to a flock of poor lost sheep?"
"As I feared, you're laughing at me," Ed said. "But, no, there is more." He paused. "OK, here goes. Have you ever heard of a group called Exodus International?"
"Oh, Ed," I said. Exodus International is a ministry that helps gay men and lesbians go straight.
"I didn't work for them," Ed said, "but they did provide some funding for a center I worked at in Chicago. Among other things, we did spiritual counseling with gay men and lesbians. Especially youth. Helping them to overcome their sinful desires."
"Oh, Ed," I said. I held his hand. "Why did you leave that work?"
"An eighteen-year-old boy I was working with committed suicide when he wasn't able to overcome his attraction to his lover. In the note he left, he apologized especially for letting me down. I felt -- I immediately knew that what I had been trying to do for him was wrong, that I should have instead been supporting him in accepting himself."
"That's a quick turnaround," I said.
"It was that quick," Ed said. "I resigned immediately. I stayed with my sister for awhile, telling her I'd just gotten burnt out doing outreach work in the city, and eventually decided to change careers. I thought in elementary education I could do some positive work with kids, to make up for it a little. Not that anything could make up for it."
I said, "But why did you leave the ministry? Couldn't you have done some other kind of pastoral work?"
"I couldn't," Ed said. "It was all mixed up together for me, the church, my own faith, my role as a minister, my counseling work, and the death of this boy. All one thing. I had to leave the church completely. I never wanted anyone to know. And when you told me you were bisexual --and so many of your friends, your family, are gay men and lesbians -- I couldn't tell you. I thought you'd turn away from me immediately."
"Ed, do you know how many gay men and lesbians have been severely homophobic in their own past, before coming out? I know a guy, one of the leaders of a student group for gay men, who used to go out with friends in high school and jump gay men as they left the bar. You're not so unusual. Very often, part of coming out is forgiving ourselves for our own past crimes against others, and against ourselves. I wouldn't have stopped seeing you over this." I had a thought. "Unless you see luring a bisexual woman into a long-term relationship with a man as the continuation of your efforts to make straight people out of gay people."
"Don't even joke about it," Ed said. "There's nothing funny about this."
I apologized, and patted his hair. "So, what do we do with the dossier?" I asked. "Burn it?"
"Nah," Ed said. "They saved me eight bucks by getting a copy of my credit report, and four bucks for an official college transcript. That folder's a gold mine."
© Copyright 1997-2001 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
