“I think they were anti-abortion people. Some of them were Catholics. I mean, Catholic priests and nuns. But there were others too—all kinds. They came in buses. There was an abortion clinic here, where the doctors were shot.”
The woman was speaking carefully now, aware of Naomi’s interest.
Naomi asked if she remembered how the trial had turned out.
“He was found guilty—I think. He was sentenced to death.”
Adding, “There was a lot of upset over that. It was thought to be a harsh sentence. People who knew Luther Dunphy and his family, worked with him or belonged to the same church. In the paper there were interviews with people who knew him and all of them saying what a good man he was, a good husband and father, how he’d done carpentry work for his church. One neighbor said how after a windstorm, when some shingles on her roof were blown off, Luther Dunphy replaced them for nothing—no charge . . .” Pausing as if unsure what this might mean.
Good man. Husband, father. Carpentry. No charge.
There was a ringing in her ears. She was not hearing this.
“Does the Dunphy family still live here?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman spoke sharply. A faint flush came into her face.
“Miss, are you a—reporter?”
“No.”
“Not a reporter? You ask questions like they did. There were lots of them here during the trial. TV people, with cameras, in the street . . .”
“I am not a reporter.”
Naomi noted: on three walls of the room were framed daguerreotypes depicting scenes on the Muskegee River, of another century. On the floor was a deep plush rug, that had been recently vacuumed. The small bathroom appeared to have been remodeled with shining fixtures and a bathtub that looked as if it were made out of white plastic.
A fleeting face in the bathroom mirror. Naomi felt a touch of panic—her mother had stayed here, in this room. She was certain of this.
In a conciliatory tone the desk clerk was describing features of the “historic” Muskegee Falls Inn of which she seemed to be proud. Its restaurant, its pub, its room service. When the breakfast room opened in the morning, how late the restaurant served. Naomi listened politely, while returning to the window. She saw that the afternoon was waning. The river was luminous as shaken foil and at this distance it appeared to be without motion.
“Well, miss! It’s a nice room, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Do you think you will be taking it?”—the question was awkwardly phrased.
“No.”
Naomi heard the other draw in her breath, sharply. But she had not meant to say no, she’d meant to say yes.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry. I meant to say yes.”
In the elevator descending to the lobby neither woman could think of a thing to say.
Downstairs at the front desk Naomi provided the clerk with her name and with a credit card. It was a relief to her, though also a disappointment, that the name Naomi Voorhees seemed to make no impression.
She was given her room card. She was given a key for the minibar. She was about to leave, to bring her car around to park at the rear of the hotel, when the big-haired woman said suddenly, as if she’d just thought of exciting news, “You know—there’s some relative of Luther Dunphy we’ve been hearing about. A female boxer—‘D.D. Dunphy.’”
Naomi was intrigued. Female boxer?
“One of the Dunphys. Luther’s daughter. I think she just won some championship. Not sure but think it was in Cleveland. We saw an interview with her by accident on TV. My niece says she went to school with her.”
“Do you mean Dawn Dunphy? She’s a boxer?”
“Well, one of them is. One of the daughters.”
Naomi was mildly incredulous. Dawn Dunphy, a boxer! And on TV.
Yet, it should not have surprised her. From photographs she recalled the graceless smirking Dawn Dunphy, the murderer’s daughter whom she’d particularly hated.
IN MUSKEGEE FALLS, her compass needles spun.
She was here, at the site. Here, where the death had occurred.
Therefore, she did not want to call anyone from Muskegee Falls. She did not want to acknowledge Muskegee Falls.
She did not want to utter the words—“Muskegee Falls.”
She no longer called Darren except if it was an absolutely necessary call, and there were fewer and fewer of these. For she was a fully adult woman now. She could not be burdening her brother with his younger ghost-sister.
She did call her mother Jenna, from time to time. And (unpredictably) Jenna called her. But she did not want Jenna to know that she’d resumed working on the archive, for the archive had seemed a very bad idea to Jenna.
Please do not put me in this “documentary.” Please do not quote me.
I can’t forbid you and I don’t want to censor you. But I beg you.
Of course, Jenna did want to censor her. She had no clear idea why.
“Isn’t my grief as legitimate as yours? Why is it not as legitimate?”—she could not demand of her mother.
Instead, she would call Madelena Kein. Though she was apprehensive of what she might hear in her grandmother’s voice that might be faint, weak. Not the warm and assured voice of Madelena Kein that had long been the woman’s public voice but the voice of a woman who has been made to feel her mortality.