THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019 49
pounds heavier, they said, Oh, you’re
two guys, you should just work it out.
The incidents started to escalate. Ed
knocked out Michael’s teeth, broke his
ribs, broke his fingers. He smashed his
head against a wall so hard that Mi-
chael had to get his scalp stapled back
together. Sometimes Ed would be hor-
rified and rush Michael to the hospital.
Michael felt sorry for him—he won-
dered what awful thing had happened
to make him so violent—and he kept
hoping that Ed’s remorse was strong
enough that he wouldn’t do it again. But
he also started thinking, How do I get
out of this? After a bad battering, Ed
would take Michael’s wallet and a few
pieces of good jewelry that he loved and
hide them, to prevent him from leav-
ing. If Michael promised not to leave,
he would give them back.
One day, Ed beat him up so badly
that he broke his leg in several places.
At the hospital, the doctor told Michael,
“We’ve got to get you away.” But where
would he go? Shelters to Michael meant
places full of addicts and homeless peo-
ple; he couldn’t imagine going to one.
But his doctor kept pushing him. He
said, “He’s done so much to you already,
the only thing left is to kill you.” When
he said that, Michael thought, That’s
silly, he’s exaggerating. But the doctor
kept at it, and finally Michael thought,
Maybe he’s right.
He moved to a city across the state,
and got a job working for a friend of a
friend. He told the company accoun-
tant not to put his name on any docu-
ments, because Ed, who was clever with
databases, would find him, but the ac-
countant entered his Social Security
number into the system, and a few
months later Ed showed up at the office.
He begged Michael to come back, and
promised that he would get help and
everything would be different. This time,
love was no longer a factor—Michael
felt nothing for Ed anymore. But, if Ed
could find him in a nearby city, Michael
realized that, in order to be free of him,
he would have to move to a different
part of the country, and it was awful to
think about giving up his whole life: all
his friends, who had known him for de-
cades when he was happy with Tom;
his town, where they had lived. And,
since Ed’s name was on all his titles, he
would lose everything he owned as
well—his house, his car, his bank ac-
counts. He thought that maybe if he
went back he could salvage some of it.
He decided it was worth the risk—
he knew that Ed would likely be peni-
tent and sweet at first—so he went back,
but immediately started making plans
for a permanent escape. He withdrew
cash and hid it. He put money onto
gift cards and hid them, and bought a
burner phone that was difficult to trace.
He put his birth certificate, his Social
Security card, and some credit cards in
plastic bags and buried them under a
rock in the back yard. For six months,
Ed kept his promise, but then one eve-
ning they got back after a long car ride
and Ed kicked their dog. For some rea-
son, seeing the dog in pain was the mo-
ment that something clicked for Mi-
chael. He thought, The doctor’s right,
he really is going to kill me. He called
a friend and asked him to take the dog
to a shelter.
One morning soon afterward, Ed
was in a rage and Michael sensed that
he was about to attack. Luckily, just
then, the phone rang, and it was Ed’s
boss, so he had to take the call. In that
moment, Michael realized, This is the
moment: go, go, go. He ran out of thehouse, grabbed the plastic bags from
under the rock, ran to a friend’s house,
and called his doctor. The doctor checked
him into a mental hospital, because he
knew mental hospitals weren’t allowed
to give out information about their pa-
tients. His friends called and told him
that Ed was looking for him—they saw
him driving by their houses again and
again, circling the block.
Michael fled the state and ended up
in Boston. He had lost almost every-
thing, but at least he was alive. At one
point, he consulted a lawyer about get-
ting his house back, or prosecuting Ed
for assault, but the lawyer told him that
he would have to appear in court and
reveal where he was. The lawyer said he
could take out a restraining order against
Ed, but that was just a piece of paper,
and wouldn’t keep him safe. It wasn’t
worth it.
Through Transition House, he rented
a place that he could inhabit anony-
mously—the agency’s name was on the
rental contract, on the electricity bill, on
the cable bill. He hated Boston’s freez-
ing winters, but he liked his apartment.
He decorated it all in white, and kept
it spotless, vacuuming every day. He felt
safe there. “Our planes have been grounded. We’re not mad, just disappointed.”