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part one: The First Message, 5♦, 6♦, 7♦, 8♦

Summary: 5♦ watching, waiting, raping  

Ed reads that the gunman gets a jail term of six months. The newspaper article carries a childhood picture of the robber and Ed feels the boy’s eyes looking at him. He decides to get started that evening by investigating the addresses delivered to him on the ace of diamonds. At 45 Edgar Street, he sees a big drunk man rape his wife repeatedly over the course of the night while their eight-year-old daughter cries on the porch. Afterward, the wife puts her daughter to bed and sits on the porch in despair. Ed knows that comforting her won’t fix the problem. 

Summary: 6♦ pieces  

Ed ponders what he should do about the rapist. He surveils every night for a month and often the man engages in the violence. Ed runs into the mother and daughter in the grocery store and exchanges a kind greeting with the little girl, increasing his sense of urgency. 

Summary: 7♦ harrison avenue  

Ed tables the Edgar Street problem, intimidated by the idea of a physical confrontation with the rapist. He decides to move on to the next address in the hopes it’s easier. At 13 Harrison Avenue, an elderly woman eats dinner alone. Ed suspects she is lonely when she speaks to her tea kettle but he watches for signs she is coping. He contemplates visiting her and seeks a sign that he’s on the right track. During the next game of Annoyance, Ed draws the ace of diamonds, confirming he should visit the woman. He dresses up, buys a cake to bring, and arrives at six o’clock. The old woman greets him warmly as “Jimmy,” and Ed plays along. He sees an identification card: she’s Milla Johnson, eighty-two years old. Ed realizes the message for Milla is that her loneliness can be eased.  

Summary: 8♦ being jimmy  

Ed and Bev argue about her returning a coffee table he went to some trouble to get for her. Ed is frustrated that she replaced it on Tommy’s advice. Ed visits Milla again as Jimmy. She asks him to read her favorite book and he guesses Wuthering Heights. In the book is a love note from Jimmy dated January 5, 1941. During the next visit, Milla shows Ed pictures of Jimmy, her husband, and tearfully reminisces about her love for him. 

A few nights later, Ed, Marv, Ritchie, and Audrey play cards on Ed’s porch. Ed gets a phone call from an unidentified voice who calls him Jimmy before hanging up. Later, while visiting his father’s grave, a security guard helps Ed find Jimmy Johnson’s grave. He died in 1942 at twenty-five years of age. Ed does the math and realizes Milla has been waiting sixty years for his return. 

Analysis of 5♦, 6♦, 7♦, 8♦ 

At Edgar Street, the savagery of the husband’s treatment of his wife appalls Ed, but he checks his initial reaction to intervene because he knows he has no chance of physically dominating a man of that size and brutality. The combination of power and alcohol activates the husband’s bestial character, and Ed knows that intervening, and failing, could mean even more trouble for the wife and child. Such covert domestic violence generally remains outside the reach of the law. Escape options limited by poverty and humiliation force the wife’s hopeless toleration of her husband’s drunken exploitation. Ed is especially motivated to do something by the involvement of a child whose witness of the violence moves her to despair. After much thought, Ed recognizes that the situation calls for a radical solution without recourse to legal remedies and he doesn’t feel capable of such a task yet. 

By going to the next address on the ace of diamonds, Ed hopes to bolster his confidence. Being a force for good doesn’t come naturally to Ed, and he has to overcome his inertia. His using the card game with his friends to receive a sign reflects his reluctance to talk to his friends about his new activism. The code of conduct they maintain discourages taking yourself so seriously, and one friend taking charge of their lives might upset the status quo. He prepares thoughtfully for his visit to 13 Harrison Street, wanting to be successful in his encounter. Milla’s welcoming reception confirms he planned wisely with his dress and his edible gift. Milla’s devotion to her dead husband stands in stark contrast to the violent marriage at Edgar Street. Milla Johnson at eighty-two years old still tends the flame of her love for a husband killed in the war sixty years earlier. She lives in the past and over time, her eroding cognition causes the line between past and present to blur. The persistence of her dead husband in her life evokes the ghostly love story in Wuthering Heights that Ed reads to Milla. 

Ed understands the comfort he can give Milla by pretending to be her departed husband. Milla’s appreciation of him as Jimmy contrasts with the contempt Ed’s mother has for him. Just as Ed begins to take satisfaction in his efforts, the mysterious phone call adds a new dimension to the ace of diamonds mission. The unidentified caller knows about Ed’s playacting as Jimmy, Milla’s dead husband. Ed finds this apparent surveillance of him unnerving. Someone holds him accountable for completing the tasks on the ace of diamonds. The weight of responsibility now has urgency. Expectations from others can make the difference between accomplishment and inaction. It’s not enough to visualize good things for others or hope for the best. Ed is coming to terms with the possibility of his choices having the potential to truly improve others’ lives.

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