She walked away, with a wave of her hand. She could see the relief in their faces. Several other women, who appeared to be mothers, were staring after Naomi too; she knew that they would excitedly discuss her as soon as she departed.
Journalist? Some newspaper? Taking pictures? Looking for the abortion clinic? Out-of-state? Pro-choice?
AT 56 FRONT STREET the Dunphys had lived in 1999. She had learned this fact.
Two-story clapboard house in a neighborhood of near-identical small houses and all of them dating back to—mid-twentieth century? The paint on the house was faded, weatherworn like something left out too long in the rain.
The windows were partly covered by blinds. Almost, you could imagine someone peering out one of the upstairs windows.
She saw: narrow driveway, single-car garage too crammed with things to accommodate any vehicle. Small front concrete stoop, small yard of burnt-out grass and dirt and at the curb a badly dented and stained metal trash can, empty.
Tricycle overturned in the yard. Dog’s red plastic water bowl, no water. Scattering of much-gnawed-at bones.
The neighborhood was quiet except for a barking dog. Children on bicycles calling to one another.
This is the house in which Luther Dunphy lived with his family in November 1999.
About four miles from the Broome County Women’s Center.
A middle-aged woman appeared in the driveway, in loose-fitting clothing. Flip-flops on her long-toed white feet. She was smiling in Naomi’s direction, unless she was scowling.
This was not a neighborhood in which strangers wandered into yards or stood at the end of driveways cameras in hand, staring.
Strangers live here now—of course.
Almost twelve years have passed.
“Excuse me? Are you looking for someone?”—the woman shaded her eyes, squinting at Naomi. Still she might have been perceived as friendly, curious.
“Oh, I’m sorry”—the intruder was trying for disarming frankness—“I don’t think they live here any longer. The Dunphys? I used to know their daughter . . .”
The woman had ceased smiling. Naomi saw her jaw tighten.
Naomi was holding the camera casually in her left hand. Unobtrusively recording what the camera saw but in such a way that the middle-aged woman staring at Naomi suspiciously could not have known.
“Yes, well. Nobody with that name lives here anymore.”
“The Dunphys? Do you know the name?”
Big-shouldered, hostile, the woman shrugged.
“Do you know—when did they move away?”
Again the woman shrugged. Her gesture signaled not I don’t know when they moved away but Why should I tell you if I know when they moved away.
“Do you happen to know where they moved?”
The woman shook her head, no.
“Are there any other Dunphys in Muskegee Falls? Anyone I could speak with?”
The woman shook her head, no.
A large ungainly straggly-haired dog came limping out to join the truculent woman. A Labrador-terrier mixture, with a stump of a tail. Sensing the woman’s unease the dog bared its yellow teeth and began to bark at the girl in the baseball cap as if knowing very well the significance of the small black object in her left hand.
Obviously it was fraudulent on Naomi’s part. No one would be seeking one of the Dunphy children without knowing about Luther Dunphy. To pretend otherwise was deceit. Yet Naomi felt she had no choice but to maintain the awkward deception even as the woman stared at her unsmiling and the straggly-haired dog beside her growled.
“I wasn’t a friend of Dawn Dunphy—I mean, we weren’t close. But I heard she’s become an athlete—a boxer . . .”
How strange, the name Dawn Dunphy on her lips! Naomi was sure she’d never spoken this name aloud in her life.
“Nobody living here with that name—‘Dunphy.’ Not for years.”
The woman spoke in a loud voice. Clearly, Naomi was dismissed.
Yet she was staring at the house. She could not tear her eyes from the house. For it was so ordinary a house. And she had known that beforehand. A house in which the murderer of her father had plotted her father’s murder, and in which he’d kept his weapons. In the cellar perhaps.
Had she been allowed access to the house by the scowling woman, had she been allowed to film the interior, even the cellar where (she speculated) the weapons might have been kept—to what purpose?
“I said, miss—there’s nobody living here, or anywhere around here, with that name. OK?”
“Yes! I’m sorry.” Naomi smiled, inanely. The camera felt unwieldy in her hand, redundant. “Very sorry . . .”
Awkwardly turning to walk to her car parked at the curb beside the badly dented trash can. Glancing back she saw the woman unmoving in the driveway, standing her ground with the snarling dog beside her, staring at Naomi as if she’d sighted the enemy.
She is living in the murderer’s house. There is some shame to this. Of course she does not want to be reminded.