Kenyon, of course, knew. But to him, that knowledge just gave him the means to exploit Greg in his sick way."
"So Hugh was also abused? But not you?"
"I have no idea why I was spared. Maybe because Mom and I were close when I was young, and I was a girl, and Mom wouldn't have put up with Anson hurting me. But she looked the other way when Anson beat Greg and Hugh. I think she saw it as the price the family was going to have to pay for financial security. Well, it was way, way too high a price. Hugh was so traumatized by his upbringing that he left Schenectady as soon as he turned eighteen, and he hasn't been in touch with any of us since then. Greg actually grew up to be a sane and functioning adult and one of the nicest people I've ever known. Of course he was so fucked up by the abuse from Anson that he must have thought at some level that for him intimacy could only be violent. It all just makes me so really, really mad."
"You know, of course, that Louderbush is now running for governor in the Democratic primary."
"Oh yes. I know that. Who doesn't? And it occurs to me that that's the reason you're here. Am I right, Donald?"
"You are. Kenyon Louderbush is not morally fit for the governorship. He's not fit for the State Assembly either, but if all the assemblymen unfit to serve suddenly vacated the Capitol, it would be a thinly populated institution."
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She gave me an I-should-have-seen-this-coming look. "So, which side are you digging up dirt for? McCloskey, I'll bet."
"Does that matter? What counts is that Louderbush is forced out of the race and never gets to be governor."
"You know, after Greg died I almost went to the police about Kenyon. I truly believed that Greg's death was legally a form of manslaughter. That Kenyon had somehow driven Greg to take his own life. But I was so upset over the whole depressing mess that I was just paralyzed for a while. I stayed out of school for two terrible weeks and barely got out of bed. The only reason I eventually got my act together was, I was terrified I'd be fired. And with all my student loans I just couldn't afford to lose my job here. Also, I missed my kids. So I came back to school and just concentrated on saving my teaching career. And time went by, and I got distracted by one thing or another, and I never did turn Kenyon in. But I felt I had to do something. So instead I wrote Kenyon a letter."
"What did you say in the letter?"
"I told him he was cruel and heartless and psychologically disturbed, and that I blamed him for Greg's death, and I knew that someday his bad karma would catch up with him and he would pay for all the suffering and pain he had caused."
"You sent this letter to Louderbush's office?"
"Yes, I did. I didn't care who saw it."
"Did he reply?"
She shook her head and laughed once. "Well, I think he did."
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"What do you mean?"
"It wasn't until about a month later that I received a plain envelope at my apartment mailbox with no return address.
Inside the envelope was a one-page letter that had been typed on a word processor and wasn't signed. The writer was careful not to reveal anything about his identity, but it was obviously from Kenyon. He said I didn't understand his relationship with Greg, and if I did I would not be so judgmental. He said he and Greg had loved and needed each other, and they had been planning to find a way to control their own worst impulses—that was the term he used—and make a life together. I thought, a life together? The man was delusional. He was married with children and was a family-values conservative in the Legislature. He might have convinced Greg that they had some kind of future, and he might even have believed it himself at some level. But I thought it was a sick joke."
"Did you tell him that?"
"No. I was thoroughly disgusted, and I just decided to move on. I have to say, I rarely thought of Kenyon until I saw that he was running for governor. That's when it all came flooding back—Greg and Kenyon and the violence and the suicide—and I was sick in my soul all over again. I thought, I can't let this go. I have to do something. So I called the Republicans and told them about Greg and about Kenyon."
"You called the Ostwind campaign? When was this?"
"Back in January, right after New Year's. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't take me seriously, but that's exactly what happened. A woman called me—Meg-something—and 90
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she said it wasn't right for the campaign to be prying into their opponents' personal lives. She asked me what proof I had of an abusive relationship. I said I believed what Greg had told me, but on top of that I only had the typed letter from Kenyon that wasn't signed and could have been written by anybody. When I told her this, she said I had better forget the whole thing. She said it was hearsay. That was her word: hearsay."
"Legally, that's true. But you weren't initiating a legal proceeding."
"No, I was trying to stop a total asshole from becoming governor of New York."
"That's exactly what I'm trying to do."
"It really upset me that the Ostwind people didn't get what I was saying. I mean, I'm a Republican and I want Merle Ostwind to win. I was trying to help, for fuck's sake."
"Yes, you were."
"Well, anyway, I guess this proves that you aren't working for the Ostwind campaign. You don't represent some belated attempt to take my information seriously."
"No, that's not what I'm doing here."
Now she looked even more troubled. "So I guess that means you are working for Shy McCloskey. You're trying to get the goods on Kenyon and hurt him politically."
"You could draw that conclusion, Jennifer. By a process of elimination."
She shook her head. "Oh crap. This puts me in a real bind.
Of course I want to stop Kenyon from getting elected. But I don't really know how helpful I can be to you, because I 91
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certainly don't want to see Shy McCloskey win the election.
He's way too liberal. McCloskey is in the pocket of the unions.
That includes the AFT, which protects lazy, ineffective teachers who should have been canned years ago but are still ruining children's lives because liberals like Shy McCloskey are too cowardly to face reality and are too beholden financially to the unions. Greg explained to me years ago how all that worked, and since then I've added to my knowledge of liberalism's failures with what I've seen with my own eyes."
This was not what I had tracked Jennifer Stiver down to hear her say. "But don't you think Greg would want Kenyon Louderbush stopped from being elected governor?"
She got teary-eyed again and sniffled. "Yes. Yes and no.
No and yes. I know Greg was very, very hurt by his masochistic relationship with Kenyon. But would he have wanted Kenyon to become governor of New York? In all honesty, I'd have to say I'm not really sure he wouldn't have."
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