She did not want to care about Luther Dunphy—whether the man lived or died. She did not want to be consumed by hatred for him, and for the many (hundreds? thousands?) of individuals who’d applauded the “assassination” (as it was called) among the right-to-life movement.
Yet, Voorhees and Dunphy were bound together, unavoidably.
Through history the assassin has attached himself, like a blood-gorged tic, to the individual he has killed. Of the many indignities provided by death, this is the most insulting.
Each time Dunphy had been scheduled to die, Naomi had begun an involuntary count. She had no need to mark the date on the calendar, for it was imprinted in her memory.
Like Darren, she’d become something of an amateur expert in lethal injection. She knew how increasingly difficult it was for penal authorities in the United States to purchase the lethal drugs, from European manufacturers; often it was the case that executions had to be postponed for this reason.
It was possible that Chillicothe had failed to secure the proper drugs in time for Dunphy’s execution. Or, something had gone wrong with the administration of the drugs. Or, the Ohio Judiciary had granted another reprieve.
For Naomi knew, if the drugs had been properly administered to the condemned man at the prescribed time that evening, the execution would have been over by 7:30 P.M.
That it was now 9:20 P.M. and Roberts had not called meant that something had gone terribly wrong.
Pointless to speculate. Yet Naomi was too restless to remain silent.
“The worst news is that it’s been stayed—again.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think—what?”
“I don’t think it has been stayed this time.”
“But—how do you know?”
“Because their final appeal was turned down.”
“But Dunphy’s lawyers will file other claims, or whatever they are called—they file these automatically, even if it’s the final appeal.”
“Well—I don’t think so.”
“But—how do you know?”
“I told you, Christ! I don’t know.”
“But you said—no.”
Quick as a match flaring up, their old childhood animosity. Naomi’s heart beat in opposition to her brother whose authority she must always undermine even as she wanted (badly) for Darren to like her.
Love was not an issue, as love was not a possibility. Naomi knew that Darren did not love her as (probably) Darren did not love anyone in the family except their father who had died.
Very likely, Darren didn’t love anyone at all. In a way, Naomi hoped this was so.
Desperately she had to keep him on the line. She dreaded his hanging up before the news came to him.
“Darren? What time is it there?”
“What time? You know it’s three hours earlier than you.”
“So you’ve been waiting since three P.M.”
It was an inane remark. It was a child’s remark, which Darren barely acknowledged.
Tell me of your life, then! Tell me something that is secret, that no one else knows like our hatred for Luther Dunphy and our wish for him to die.
But Darren was sounding distracted. (Was he speaking to someone there with him? Was someone speaking to him? She could imagine Darren pressing the palm of his hand over the receiver.)
More likely, Darren was online. As well as speaking with her on the phone he was cruising the Internet, searching out Luther Dunphy, execution, Chillicothe Ohio.
Naomi could not have dared this. She could not have typed the hateful name into her computer to bring hundreds, thousands of bright blue titles up like sewage.
Could not bear to read of Luther Dunphy online and could not bear to think what Darren might be seeing.
HE WILL NEVER DIE. It will go on forever. This is our Hell.
Each time it had been a shock to Naomi, a knife blade turning in her heart, when Dunphy’s execution had been postponed and rescheduled.
Their father had died on November 2, 1999. It was now March 4, 2006. These years, months, Gus Voorhees had been dead. It did not seem possible that a man once so vital, so energetic, so kind, loving—a man so valued—had been dead for so long. Yet, it was so. And these years and months his murderer Luther Dunphy had been alive.
It was not closure (which was an offensive term) they awaited but an end.
Her life could not begin. Not until an end was reached.
She could not love anyone. Always there was a kind of scrim through which she perceived another person. She was preoccupied, deceitful. What mattered most to her could not be shared with another, like a shameful medical condition or illness of which she dared not speak.
Though she had learned to go through the motions of “love”—“friendship”—to a degree. Shrewdly she’d created a personality inside which she could live as she might have stitched together a quilt of colorful mismatched cloth-squares, dazzling to the eye.
Or was it a kind of mask atop a puppet. She was somewhere inside, in hiding.
She could not be an intimate friend with anyone—female or male. She could scarcely bear to be touched and she felt something like panic to find herself in close quarters with another person.
She could not speak of it—the loss, and the anger at the loss. Not to anyone except Darren.
Twins conjoined by hate.