“Not only is he not dying,” James told me, “he’s never been sick, not once!” T. had been courting death and illness for decades in order to draw people close to him. All of us: W., Henry, James and I, and even M. had been scripted into his great tragic drama. As the layers unraveled, shocking details emerged. The emails James and I received from M. were actually from T., who had set up an email account in her name. He had also drained her 401K to purchase gifts for us and to finance his trips to New York City, where, rather than go to treatment, he hired male escorts to occupy his time. I have to say my reaction was one of elation; I had been suspicious of T. from day one. And, I had been frustrated with James for not trusting my intuition. When he looked at me and said, “You were right,” I could not have been more thrilled. I thought of a day when James was laughing on the phone with T. a week earlier. T. was supposedly being pushed around Central Park in a wheelchair by a nurse who was listening to hip hop on her iPod. He kept interrupting his conversation with James to yell instructions to her. Now, I realized that he was just walking around the park alone, shouting to himself and looking every bit the lunatic he was.
Lee Taylor has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School where she worked with Phillip Lopate. She is currently writing a novel and raising two children in Brooklyn, NY.
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