I Am The Messenger

While Audrey helps Ed look for the Doorman, Jay and the dog return to the tree where Ed left them. A woman gives the boy the next playing card. Ed chases her, but she vanishes into the crowd. Jay refuses to hand over the ace of spades until Ed pays him $20.

Ed’s team wins the Annual Sledge Game, and Marv convinces Ed to attend the victory party. Ed feels guilty that his role as messenger comes between him and his best friend, but he also feels that he and Marv understand each other better now than they used to. The ace of spades has three names on it: Graham Greene, Morris West, and Sylvia Plath. Ed has a nightmare about an English teacher killing herself, which reminds him of a poem he read in high school, “Barren Woman” by Sylvia Plath. Realizing that the three names belong to authors, he decides to go to the library later that day. When Audrey visits Ed that morning, he feels sorry for himself because he thinks he’s “going around fixing people’s lives, even just for a moment or two,” and receiving “[n]othing” in return” (206). Ed tells himself to stop lying and making excuses. He kisses Audrey, but she reiterates that she only wants to be friends with him.

Ed goes to the library around noon on Sunday. A librarian mocks him for not knowing how to use the computerized catalog system, but Ed earns his respect by naming some authors he’s read that the librarian doesn’t recognize, such as Joyce and Dickens. Ed borrows 18 books by Greene, West, and Plath and wonders how he’ll find the clues he needs in time. He finds a note on his front door reassuring him that the task is simpler than he thinks. Ed takes the Doorman for a walk and realizes that he needs to find street names that match the authors’ titles, such as Bell Street for Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. He finds three matching streets and tells himself that he’ll “have to dig” for the exact addresses because “[t]his is spades” (214). In each of the three books, Ed finds a page marked with a drawing of a spade, and he uses the page numbers to complete the addresses. Then, he succumbs to exhaustion and sleeps.

On Tuesday night, Ed’s friends gather to play cards and discuss where they should celebrate Christmas. Marv’s savings recently reached $40,000, but he doesn’t want to spend money on a holiday gathering. Ed agrees to host on the condition that Marv will give the Doorman a kiss on Christmas. With this decided, Ed looks forward to Christmas “for the first time in many years” (217).

Ed visits 114 Glory Road and sees a Polynesian family. Lua and Marie Tatupu have five children. When Lua spots Ed, the messenger quickly invents a story about the house being his childhood home and visiting when he misses his late father. Lua invites him to stay for dinner, and Ed plays with the children afterward. Although the Tatupu family is rich in love, they’re struggling financially. The family’s Christmas lights are old and broken, and Ed realizes that this is how he’s meant to help. He buys a new set of lights and leaves them on their front porch. While new Christmas lights seem like a small thing, Ed understands that “big things are often just small things that are noticed” (221).

Later that night, the Tatupu family surprises Ed at his house and takes him to their home. He’s unaccustomed to the lively family being so quiet, and he worries that his gift may have offended them. His apprehension vanishes when one of the boys, Jessie, runs inside to turn on the new Christmas lights. The family gathers in the yard, admiring the beautiful glow. Ed cherishes their joy, especially Jessie’s, whose smile is “the biggest and the best. The most alive” (224). Lua tells Ed that Jessie was the one who insisted on having Ed present for turning on the lights.

As their children dance in the yard, Lua and Marie share a kiss. Ed thinks that people are sometimes beautiful in a way that goes beyond words and appearances.

Marie insists that Ed join her and Lua for a cup of coffee. They know that Ed gave them the lights, and they ask why he helped them when no one else has made them feel welcome in the year they’ve lived in the house. Not even Ed knows why his messages’ recipients are chosen, so he answers, “Don’t even try—I don’t understand it myself” (225). The Tatupuses give Ed “a small stone that has a pattern on it like a cross” (227), which is a good luck charm from one of Lua’s friends, and a hand-drawn Christmas card from the children. Lua asks Ed whether he really lived in their house, and he admits that he didn’t. Lua stops himself from asking more questions, and they shake hands and say their goodbyes.

The next address is 23 Clown Street, the location of Melusso’s Italian restaurant. Ed develops a ritual of sitting on a bench across from the restaurant and eating chips with the Doorman after work. One night, he returns from Clown Street to find Audrey waiting on his porch. Referring to the cards, she tells him, “I feel like you’re slipping away somehow. You’ve become different since all this started” (231). Ed ponders the irony of the changes he’s undergone. All along, he wanted to discard his old self “for this new person who’s full of purpose rather than incompetence” (232), but he hoped to grow closer to Audrey, not further away. Ed and Audrey drink and fall asleep on the couch together.

Ed awakens to knocking at his front door. The man who guided Ed to the river and ran off without paying his fare is there. He tells Ed to go to Melusso’s at eight o’clock the following night. When Ed asks who sent him, the man retorts that he doesn’t know, and that Ed might not be the only person receiving playing cards in his mail. After the man leaves, Audrey wakes up and asks Ed to tell her about the messages he’s delivered. She falls back asleep after Ed tells her about Milla, but he tells her sleeping form about all the others and feels happy before sleep claims him, too.

The next morning, Audrey thanks Ed for being the person who knows her the best and treats her the best. That evening, he goes to Melusso’s and sees his mother on a date. She’s wearing a nice dress and looks “like a woman” to Ed instead of the “foulmouthed Ma” he’s accustomed to (239). Ed thinks of his hard-working, long-suffering father and his happy childhood memories back when his father “was a hero and not a human” (240). However, Ed can’t blame his mother for wanting to be happy. Mortified, Ed realizes that his instinctive bitterness wasn’t on his father’s behalf but rather his own because his mother’s happy love life underscores his loneliness.

Ed’s mother is so captivated by the man she’s dating that Ed abandons his attempt at stealth. He goes to his mother’s house and waits on her front porch. Ed asks how her date went, and she brusquely replies that it was nice and that she has needs. She doesn’t invite Ed inside even though she would never treat her other children this way. Ed asks his mother why she hates him. She answers that it’s because he reminds her of his father and slams the door behind her. Even compared to Edgar Street and the beating from the Rose boys, the devastating words from his mother feel like Ed’s darkest hour. When Ed refuses to leave, his mother comes back outside. He demands to know why she treats him so much worse than his siblings when he’s the one who’s there for her. She retorts that he has as much potential as his siblings but that he wastes it by staying in their broken-down town. Ed realizes that his mother was already seeing the man from the restaurant before his father died. He asks if his father knew about the affair, but the only answer he receives is her tears.

Ed calls his mother at two o’clock in the morning. She tells him that she’s all right, and Ed hangs up when she launches into her usual verbal abuse. Ed called to tell her that he still loves her. Although he didn’t say those words, he supposes “maybe it’s better” that the call followed their typical pattern instead (246).

Thinking over his mother’s words, Ed realizes that she’s just as disappointed in herself as she is in him and that he doesn’t want to be a cab driver all his life. He attends Father O’Reilly’s Sunday service, and the priest assures him that there is a purpose to everything, including the difficulties Ed faces. The address on Bell Street is an old movie theater. The cinema is entirely deserted except for Bernie Price, an elderly man who bought the theater after he retired. Ed is his first customer in weeks. Ed must wake Bernie up to change the reels halfway through the film. To make amends, Bernie apologetically insists that Ed bring a date for a free showing. Bernie lets slip that he knew Ed would be coming, and Ed deduces that Daryl and Keith told him. After Ed leaves the theater, he visits Milla for the first time in weeks. She seems even lonelier and frailer than the last time he saw her. He invites her to spend Christmas Day with him, and she accepts. Ed hopes that Milla and the real Jimmy will find each other in the afterlife.

The next day, Audrey dresses up for the film showing, and she and Ed walk arm-in-arm to the Bell Street Theater. Audrey is delighted that Ed chose one of her favorite films, Cool Hand Luke. As the movie begins, Ed senses that he’s already delivered his message by reminding Bernie of the happy days in his youth when he went to the movies with girls. Ed invites Bernie to join them, and Audrey holds both of their hands. Ed sees a shadow in the projection room, but the figure disappears before they can catch him. The mysterious figure left behind a reel with Ed’s name on it. Ed asks Bernie why these things keep happening to him, and Bernie answers, “They do it because they can” (258). The old man says that this was all planned at least a year ago. As Ed and Audrey head back into the theater to watch the reel, he tells her, “It’s nearly over” (259).

The reel shows footage of Ed being beaten up by the Rose boys, leaving the library with his load of books, illuminating the house on Glory Road, and walking away from his mother’s front porch after all the painful words she hurled at him. Before the screen goes dark, the reel displays the following message: “Trying times for Ed Kennedy. Well done, Ed. Time to move on” (260).

An anxious, tearful Audrey tugs Ed back to his seat, and they watch the rest of Cool Hand Luke together. The “complete, desolate desperation” of the movie’s protagonist mirrors Ed’s emotions as he looks around the theater, expecting to find people watching him from the shadows (261). When Ed returns to his seat, he finds the ace of hearts waiting for him.