A Book of American Martyrs(148)

Jenna spoke with infinite sadness. She did not sound relieved. She did not sound celebratory. She did not sound angry nor did she sound disappointed.

“You didn’t speak with Darren, then?”

“No. I didn’t speak with Darren.”

You mean, you didn’t call him back.

“D’you know where Darren is living now? In a place called Newhalem, Washington?”

“I think so, yes. I mean, he told me.”

Naomi felt a small mean stab of satisfaction. Darren was no closer to Jenna than she was.

“We’ve been waiting—so long. And he has been alive so long—I mean, he had been—Luther Dunphy. And now . . .”

Naomi’s voice trailed off into an awkward silence. She wasn’t sure in which direction these words were leading her.

Haltingly she said, “I guess there’s a kind of—‘aftershock.’ Like, after an earthquake . . .”

Why was she saying such things? She was fearful that Jenna would hang up the phone. She was fearful that, if Jenna hung up, she would hate Jenna with such passion, it would make her ill.

“I’ve been feeling kind of—excited, I guess. As soon as—it happened.”

She listened closely. Had Jenna replied? A very gentle murmur—yes. Yes?

She wondered if someone else was in the room with Jenna. She could not bear it, that Jenna might be glancing at another person, a stranger, even as she, Naomi, the daughter, was speaking so passionately to Jenna.

“I’d been sick for years waiting for that son of a bitch to die—and he would not die. I’d been feeling so anxious and so exhausted but as soon as Darren told me the news I’ve been feeling so alive. It’s as if this fierce blinding light has flowed into me—it’s so powerful, it’s almost visible at my fingertips—a kind of phosphorescence, like undersea life.”

What was she saying? She stared at her fingertips and indeed it almost seemed to her, she saw there a shimmering life.

Now that she’d begun, she could not stop. Remembering that as she’d groped with her foot onto the icy step, and missed the step, and fell, and struck her head, this conviction had swept through her; or maybe the conviction had preceded the fall, and had caused it.

“Usually it’s hidden within us—this life. We are so frightened of it, and ashamed of it, and people like us who are ‘secular’—we don’t have the vocabulary to speak of it. But this morning I woke up filled with this happiness and this conviction that it is life that courses through us and binds us to one another. It was after the execution I realized this—I slipped and fell on an icy step, and hit my head—I wasn’t found until the morning—”

“Naomi, what? What are you saying?”

“I had to get outside—to get fresh air. I had a kind of attack of something like happiness—I was out in the street and running—I slipped, and fell, and hit my head—and was taken to an emergency room . . .” She wondered if she should tell Jenna that it was the University Hospital ER. Jenna would think at once of Gus as a young physician.

“Are you all right, Naomi? Were you unconscious?” For the first time Jenna was sounding concerned.

“It was a minor accident. I wasn’t really injured. None of this is why I’m calling you. I am calling to tell you that I feel so certain now—so sure about myself. And about life. Our lives.”

“What do you mean, Naomi? I don’t understand.”

“It came to me—a conviction. But it’s almost impossible to explain. That Daddy is dead—and Luther Dunphy is dead—but you are my mother—I am your daughter—and we are alive. This is a great revelation to me after years of blindness and self-absorption. It’s a revelation like a boulder rolled away from the mouth of a cave.”

Naomi was speaking rapidly now. She could not have stopped if she had wished to stop.

“There has been this silence between us—it’s been so painful. When Daddy died we were wrong to accuse you—Darren and me—it was as if we’d thought you had driven Daddy away, to live in another place, and to leave us, and it was in that other place that Daddy was murdered, and it would not have happened as it had happened because of you. We were so angry, and bitter. We were—we felt—we hated you so . . . But now, Luther Dunphy’s death has changed everything.”

She could not believe she’d said what she’d said—we hated you so. The words had sprung from her like toads out of a gaping mouth. And now, they could not be recalled.

At the other end of the line there was silence.

“Mom? Are you still there? Hello?”

A near-inaudible murmur. Might’ve been yes.

Repentant, agitated Naomi heard herself say: “I’m sorry. You left us. Not once but many times—all the time—you left us. And then you left us for good, in Birmingham with Daddy’s parents. But I’m not calling to accuse you, Mom—Jenna. Really it’s the reverse—I am calling to not accuse you. I just wanted to say—I wanted to explain—it came to me like a vision—that we are alive . . . We are both alive even if Daddy is dead, and now Luther Dunphy is dead.” Naomi spoke excitedly, her teeth were chattering with sudden cold.

She was crying. It came upon her like a seizure, harsh helpless crying like grief.