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part three: Trying Times for Ed Kennedy, 4♠, 5♠, 6♠, 7♠  

Summary: 4♠ the benefits of lying  

The friends discuss the annual Christmas card game. Hosting rotates among the four friends, and it’s Marv’s turn this year. He refuses to host and Ed assumes the duty. As a penalty, Marv must bring Doorman a steak and give him a big kiss. Ed starts reconnaissance at 114 Glory Road. One evening the resident, Lua Tatupu, catches him hiding in the bushes and asks about his business. Ed lies that he used to live in the house. Lua invites him to stay for dinner and Ed bonds with Lua’s five children over piggyback rides. Ed determines his intervention as replacing their half-broken outdoor Christmas lights. He buys a new set and installs them on a Wednesday afternoon while the family isn’t at home.

Summary: 5♠ the power and the glory  

The five Tatupu kids come to Ed’s house to thank him by taking him to their home for an unveiling of the new lights he installed. They have waited to turn on the lights until he is with them. 

Summary: 6♠ a moment of beauty  

Ed observes a tender moment between Lua and his wife Marie Tatupu. Ed sees that beauty is part of who people are, not just their looks. 

Summary: 7♠ a moment of truth  

Ed confesses he lied about having once lived in the house when questioned by Lua. They want to know why they were chosen to receive a random act of kindness when their community has ignored them since they arrived. Ed tries to explain the inexplicable. The kids give him a homemade thank-you card. Lua gives him a good-luck piece, a small stone bearing the figure of a cross. 

Analysis of 4♠, 5♠, 6♠, 7♠ 

Marv’s refusal to honor the friends’ tradition of rotating host duties for the Christmas card game builds upon his known miserliness. Ed takes pleasure in levying poetic justice: Marv must show affection for Doorman, an animal that repulses him. The equivalence of financial outlay and spiritual generosity is a striking juxtaposition. While the group functions on acceptance, Ed is raising the bar on expectations. Just as he challenges Audrey to overcome her fears, Ed challenges Marv to be generous.

At 114 Glory Road, Ed is caught in the act of clandestine surveillance by Lua Tatupu, a man fiercely protective of his family. He must counter Lua’s suspicions convincingly. The fact that Lua accepts his pretext of nostalgia shows Ed has a deep longing for the kind of family life he sees in the Tatupus. He fantasizes about being in the house with his father. The love and acceptance the Tatupus share with him stands in stark contrast to his fractured household, with an alcoholic father and a bitter mother. The children want to share their joy with Ed, and they defer their excitement at turning on the lights until he can be with them. Their thoughtfulness moves Ed to tears, and he recognizes the moment as “the power and the glory.” The protagonist of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory is a so-called whisky priest, an alcoholic who also fathered a child. The redemption that Greene portrays evokes Ed’s struggle to restore his father’s image in his memory. 

The moment of beauty Ed finds in a shared kiss between Lua and Marie resonates with his longing for that kind of parenting, absent in his upbringing. The moment of truth Ed encounters has broad implications when Marie asks why he chose their family to touch with grace when they’ve been ignored by their new community ever since they arrived a year prior. Beyond just curiosity, they need to understand how they deserved Ed’s visit and what makes Ed different from all the rest of the town. Lua and Marie want a rational explanation, but Ed cannot tell them because he doesn’t understand the mechanism himself. His orders are a mystery, an allegory of the existence of mercy in the world. It’s not something that can be earned, predicted, or understood.

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