3. Daily, Before Your Eyes, by Margaret-Love Denman, pp. 142-214

Chapters 7-12

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Tory's picture has made the front page of three newspapers. When she returns home, she goes to see Mother Gardiner in the nursing home, which has called her several times while she was away. Her mother-in-law has not been doing well: "In infants, we'd call it 'failure to thrive,'" the nursing-home owner tells Tory, and tries to console her with "you've been like a daughter to her." Tory is having none of this: "I was simply married to her son, Tory thinks; whether that made me co-conspirator, rival, or high-priced prostitute, I have never known."

The afternoon nurse is less consoling than the nursing-home owner. She tells Tory that her mother-in-law saw her on TV: "Kept saying over and over, 'I can't believe that's the Tory I knew.' Said it over and over." The visit does not go well, especially after Tory tells Mother Gardiner that she is going to be spending the next three weeks in Jackson and Parchman.

"Tory, you always were a silly fool. Giddy and emotional. I warned Paul when he told me he was going to marry you."

Tory feels the force of Mother Gardiner's words slapping her cheeks. "I'm sure you did. I only wish he had heeded your advice."

She calls Jane Fillmore and asks if her statement to the press that she thought the governor was leaning toward clemency had ruined Tracy's chances. Jane's hesitation in answering devastates Tory, but Jane assures her that "We've raised awareness, gotten her case publicized, and we stand a chance at a clemency hearing, if not a new trial." She encourages Tory to keep trying to find Raheem and the woman juror that Tory thought might have been coerced into voting against Tracy.

She tracks down the juror, Jeanette Calvert, but finds that she's an evangelical Christian who thinks Tracy  is a "whore" in need of salvation: "Seems to me it was the wages of sin, sooner for him [the murdered pimp] and later for her." But when she finds Raheem DeJanes, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, she gets a more sympathetic hearing. Raheem is unaware of what has happened to Tracy, and even that he fathered a child with her. His fury is directed at Tracy's grandmother: "She made Theresa's life hell. Theresa's mom was a slut, so she decided Theresa was too. Told her so every fucking chance she got." Tory tries to persuade Raheem to come to the clemency hearing, if they succeed in getting one, but he had enough of Mississippi when he was stationed there in the navy. Still, he takes Tory's phone number and says he'll call her if he decides to come.

In her studio, Tory works on a charcoal sketch of Tracy that she takes on her next visit to Parchman. But when she gets there she discovers that she has used up her allotted visits for June with her visits to Tracy in the infirmary. She can't even deliver the portrait to Tracy; it will have to be mailed to her. She calls Jane from the motel in Drew and learns some good news: a clemency hearing has been set for Thursday, July 12 -- five days before the execution date.

Tory spends the intervening time working in her garden, but one day she is overcome by the contrast between her life and Tracy's:  "Suddenly, the overwhelming grace that able to plan for the future consumes her. The possibility of another Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Lent, Easter, another season. Unexpected tears against the sunburn on her cheeks."

Jane has arranged for her to go back on the visitation list in July, and she can have up to six visits in the two-and-a-half weeks before the execution. This time, she is taken to Maximum Security, where she sees a heavily shackles Tracy through a Plexiglas window with holes drilled into it so they can speak. Tracy has received the portrait and thanks her for it. But her hostility breaks through again when Tory offers to do a favor for her:

"You think you got all the right answers. Breeze in and out of here when it suits you. When you need to get a little feel-good motherly buzz. Then you'll just drive on down and see ole Tracy. Is that it?"

"Of course not, Tracy. That's not it at all."

"Well, let me tell you, if you're waiting for me to be grateful, you got a long wait coming." Tracy's voice is flat, unemotional.

She's thought this all through, practiced it, Tory realizes. 

The conversation proceeds awkwardly until Tracy's practiced coldness finally dissipates and she admits that she's scared and doesn't want to die. The conflict between bravado and misery, between hope and despair in Tracy's character is well-handled, as are the persistent allusions to the room's ambiance, including the guard's body odor.

Raheem has written that he won't be coming to the clemency hearing, but he has sent a letter to be read. The case will be presented by Jane, with testimony by Henry Lee Addams and Tory. The governor doesn't show up, however. He is represented by Richard Allman, the aide. Harvey Ginn, the district attorney for the county where the murder took place is there, along with a woman who is the chair of the corrections board. Ginn opens with an account of the murder and the case for proceeding with the execution. Jane talks about the "shoddy defense in the first trial" and argues that Tracy "was not, and is not, a hardened criminal; she was a poor young woman, caught in the maze of a no-opportunity life." Henry Lee argues, "Commuting her sentence to life, even life without parole, will allow her the chance to atone in some way for her act."

Tory begins by asserting that the illness and death of Mary Vic caused Paul to be distracted from the case. "As a result, I think that inadequate counsel is something that must be considered in this case," an assertion that seems to shock Harvey Ginn, though the others remain unmoved. She brings up Tracy's assertion that she killed her pimp because she thought he was molesting her daughter, and that the child was never examined for evidence of the abuse.

Outside, she pulls back and lets Jane and Henry Lee handle the reporters, but Melinda seeks her out. "That bastard, Steadman, didn't show up," Tory tells Melinda, who asks if Tory will give her a statement about the hearing she can use. "I'll hold it until we hear the board's decision, but if it goes against her, I plan to blast Steadman to hell and back.... Keep that son-of-a-bitch from getting to the Senate." But Tory's thoughts are elsewhere: "How can that help Tracy? She'll be ... gone by then." Tory starts to cry, and Melinda pulls her into a hug that is caught by a photographer. "We may make the front page tomorrow, Tory," Melinda says.

Tory goes to Parchman to tell Tracy about the hearing, then returns to the motel where she gets a call from Jane telling her that clemency has been denied. The next morning, she hurries to the prison to give Tracy the news so she doesn't hear it on TV first. But the prison refuses to admit her so early and by the time she sees Tracy she has already heard. Jane is there to tell Tracy that the state Supreme Court will consider the appeal today, and then the appeal will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jane advises Tory to go home and rest before the ordeal on Monday and Tuesday, when she will need to be at Parchman full-time. Back home, she looks through the paintings she has done for the fall art show, including a landscape that she had planned as a Christmas gift for her mother-in-law.

Now, she sees it for the sentimental, tawdry thing that it is. One by one, she puts her work on the stand; one by one, they hold out some idealized view that promises and promises, then disappoints and fails her.

In the garden shed, Tory saws each painting in half with her pruning saw, breaks the stretchers into kindling, slits the canvas, and stuffs the remnants into the garbage can reserved for grass clippings.... Dragging the can to the curbside, she retrieves the day's mail, tosses it on the kitchen table, and puts the kettle on to boil, feeling finished somehow, finished with this house, this hobby of art.

In the mail, there is a letter from Jeanette Calvert attacking her for "trying to save that murdering whore from the electric chair" and urging her to "get her right with God. You better do the same thing for yourself." She reads it three times, and by the third reading she is laughing. "'Oh, if you only knew, Miss Calvert. I'm capable of all that she has done and more, I assure you. I just lacked her courage.' With her confession, Tory's laughter ceases, and she faces the clear, blazing light of truth."

The phone rings. It is the nursing home telling her that Mother Gardiner wants to see her this afternoon. Tory dresses and puts on her makeup carefully, "Dressing for the part she expected me to play: sweet little wife who overlooks all her son's indiscretions, Paul's little cheerleader." At the meeting, her mother-in-law charges her with being "disloyal to Paul." And she is particularly incensed by the photograph on the front page of the Jackson Daily News: "Your picture hugging a colored girl on the front of the Jackson paper!" Tory says, "That 'colored girl' is a fine journalist, Mother Gardiner," eliciting the reply, "Well, I'm always pleased when they make something of themselves."

Then Tory delivers her bombshell: "I plan to arrange Tracy's funeral, bury her next to Mary Vic, if none of her family comes to claim the body, and then go to Boston to find her little girl.... As I recall, one of the plots is designated for me. The one next to Mary Vic. You can have the one next to Paul. Tracy can have mine." Mother Gardiner rings for the nurse, and Tory leaves.

The final three chapters of the novel are superbly done, without sentimentality, and with the precise, evocative details that Denman has marshaled through the whole story. Their impact is lingering, and the case against capital punishment is delivered without being didactic or polemic. They don't need to be summarized or commented on here. Just read them.

2. Daily, Before Your Eyes, by Margaret-Love Denman, pp. 81-141

Chapters 4-6

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Shaken by her experience at Parchman, Tory wakes in tears and is unable to go back to sleep, so she studies the newspaper clippings in Tracy's file. In one, a deputy attorney general named Lee Stokes calls Tracy "a vicious killer, a menace to society." Another is by a reporter named Melinda Faye Maddox, a profile of Tracy in a series about death-row inmates, with a photograph of Tracy's daughter, Tiffany Jane, at fifteen months, and the information that she "now resides with her great-grandmother in Medford, Massachusetts."

Self-portrait by Walter Anderson

Tory goes into her studio and resumes work on a portrait she is painting of Paul that she plans to give to his mother. She recalls a trip to Biloxi when he was on the board of the Bar Journal. He was annoyed that unlike the other lawyers' wives she didn't socialize. Instead, she went to Ocean Springs to see the works of the artist Walter Anderson that were discovered by his wife "only after his death when she broke the door down. Another wife who found out about her husband's hidden life after he was gone. 

Reflection in a Pool, by Walter Anderson

She is working from a photograph of Paul, and she notices that in it he is wearing his wedding ring. "In reality he often left it at home, in the little silver cuff-link box on his dresser. He said it gave him a rash to wear it in warm weather." But her mind is focused on Tracy and not the painting, and the expression on his face "seems to mock her.... Tory feels shamed by his stare, reminded of all her failures of him, of the times she was less than a wife, less than a helpmeet." So she rubs out the work she has done that night. 

On May 10, Tory calls Jane Fillmore and finds that has just returned from Parchman where she is awaiting the execution of another prisoner. Tory is full of suggestions of ways to try to get a new hearing for Tracy, but Jane has already considered some of them. She points out that they tried to reopen the case because Paul had made some errors in not challenging the prosecution's mistakes during voir dire. Jane sounds willing to forgive him -- "Tory knows that lawyers stick together," because she had once argued with him when he was upset when a fellow lawyer was charged with jury tampering. He finally "all but shouted, 'leave the law practice to me. You just tend to your flowers and your do-gooding!'"

Tory suggests that they could argue that Tracy didn't have a jury of her peers because there was only one woman and no Roman Catholics on the jury. She also wonders if she could talk to the woman juror and see if she had been pressured by the men on the jury to convict. Jane seems to try to sound possible about her suggestions, but she admits that her mind is on the case of the man about to be executed. After she hangs up, Tory makes a list of things to do: see the governor, contact the reporter Melinda Maddox, and find the juror. She copies them all on her calendar, filling up all the weeks until July, and stares at the date of Tracy's execution, July 17. She remembers that Jane has told her that all executions in Mississippi take place at 12:01 a.m. on a Wednesday, so it wouldn't "spoil everybody's weekend." The midnight executions are designed to discourage demonstrators.

She goes to see Mother Gardiner, telling her that she won't finish the portrait of Paul in time for Mother's Day. But when she tells her mother-in-law that she's working on trying to keep Tracy from being executed, Mother Gardiner is outraged:

"Clemency! That's ridiculous. She was found guilty by a jury, Tory. It was a terrible blow to Paul. Why ever in the world would you want to reopen all this? Now? It could harm his memory for some." Mother Gardiner needs no handkerchief; there is no danger of weeping. She is all defense, Tory realizes. Then, a moment later, "You've been to Parchman? Tory! What has come over you? .... Really, you have so much to be thankful for, so many things you could do. Why choose something so, so ... distasteful?"

The blistering assault goes on, with statements that she and Paul had thought Tory was "playing the martyr" over Mary Vic's death, "that you almost enjoyed her illness." Tory goes home and throws out the self-help books that Mother Gardiner had given her and then erases what is left of the portrait. "With each steady stroke, she eradicates Paul."

Jane had asked her to call again before she made her second visit to Tracy, but when she does she finds that Jane has left for Parchman where the stay for the man on death row has not been granted. She also learns that Tracy is in the infirmary, which makes it easier for her to visit. Death row patients, she learns, are not usually moved to the infirmary unless there is something seriously wrong with them.

Before she leaves for Parchman, she returns to Paul's law office with a view to persuading his partners to "release some of her trust money to help Tracy, if she should need it." But when she tries to enter Paul's office she is told that a new paralegal has moved in and his things are in storage. She realizes that she is being kept from entering, so she goes in anyway to find Debbi McCaslin sitting behind a desk. The conversation is, of course, icy at least until Tory starts to take her leave:

"I knew all about you and Paul. It was no surprise. Don't feel that you were anything new." Again, her facility for lying surfaces, and Tory is amazed at the ease with which she delivers such a hurtful statement.

Debbi looks stricken, scalded. The flush rises, then fades quickly. "Mrs. Gardiner!"

"Yes -- Mrs. Gardiner, indeed," Tory says, and turns to leave.

It's a moment of slightly stagy melodrama, to be sure, but Denman adds one of her deft touches of atmosphere by having Tory notice the Muzak playing in the office: "Something from Guys and Dolls, she thinks. One that Adelaide sings. About a person could be getting a cold." The incongruous show tune adds an ironic undertone.

Tory listens patiently as Paul's partners explain the arrangement for her buyout, "as though she is a dim-witted child." And then she pulls an impromptu trick: "Just give me the papers. I will let my lawyer check them." She doesn't have a lawyer, and even "wonders where this comment came from." It unnerves Paul's partners, however, and they offer to fax the papers to this imaginary lawyer, trying to play the advantage of collegiality. But Tory insists that "it's no one you know, I'm sure," and twice says, "I found them on my own." She is rattled by the deception but pulls herself together and decides to leave early for Parchman and spend the night in a motel at Drew, the town closest to the prison.

When she registers at the Delta Queen Motel, she discovers that it's almost full of reporters there for the execution. And the next morning when she goes to the coffee shop for breakfast, it is so full that the only place available is at a table occupied by a young black woman who agrees to share it with her. The woman turns out to be Melinda Maddox. She tells Tory about the man to be executed: Tommy Ray Soniat, 32, killed his high school girlfriend and raped, sodomized and strangled a three-year-old girl and left her body in a dumpster. Tory tells Melinda that "If there is a case for capital punishment, I would think this might be it." But Melinda points out that "he's only asking for life without possibility of parole. This guy has never been evaluated by a psychiatrist. Never. The prison in Arizona paroled him without doing any kind of testing. Tommy Ray knows he's sick. Horribly abused as a child, minimal IQ, almost no education -- a real throwaway." Melinda thinks he needs psychological help and that the case for life without parole is strong, but the governor, who "has his eye on Washington, on the Senate," won't even consider it. Tory wonders, "Is there a way to balance those two victims against Tommy Ray's agonized past?"

She asks Melinda about Tracy. The reporter tells her that "the good ole boy network fucked her over but good. Incompetence in the lower court, a DA running on a strong law-and-order platform, her past a little shady, black-white couple. Another political football." When Tory reveals that it had been her husband's case, Melinda asks, "You trying to clear his memory, or reveal him for the son-of-a-bitch that you discovered him to be?" Tory stumbles through her reply, "trying to decide what sort of blame to lay on Paul." She asks for Melinda's help, and she agrees, but adds, "'I'd be doing it for her, not to help you clean up an old mess.' Tory feels stung, chastised, a schoolgirl again." She insists, "I'm not asking anything for me. I'm not the one at stake here." Melinda suggests that they meet again at dinnertime.

At the prison, "The acrid smell of cotton poison from the morning's crop-dusters weighs down the air around her. Her nose burns and her eyes water. That smell is enough to kill somebody." After the usual search, she is admitted to the infirmary and finds Tracy's cubicle with two armed guards outside. Tracy is groggy, but in the conversation she reveals that on the night of the murder she had come home to find her pimp, Dwayne, standing over her daughter, his pants down, with an erection. Tory is astonished, because there had been no mention in any of the "transcripts or notes of suspected child abuse."

Tracy dozes off again and when she awakes she asks if they will go ahead with the execution of Tommy Ray tonight. Tory says she shouldn't think about such things, but Tracy retorts, "What do you suggest I think about?" Tory accepts the rebuke and assures Tracy, "'I am committed to doing everything I can to keep you from being ...' 'Murdered by the state.' Tracy finishes the sentence for Tory."

The nurse comes in to give Tracy a bath, and Tracy angrily refuses: "You fucking almost killed me when you changed the bed this morning. Jerking around on me like I wasn't even human." When the nurse leaves, Tory offers to bath Tracy, and Tracy accepts.

At dinner, she finds Melinda sitting with a man in a priest's collar whom Melinda introduces as Henry Lee Addams, rector of the Church of Our Savior in Meadville -- a tiny hamlet in southern Mississippi. He has spent the day with Tommy Ray. He has been trying to appeal to the governor with no success. When he leaves, Tory tells Melinda about Tracy's suspicion that Dwayne had been molesting her daughter. "She had evidence, had seen things that made her believe that. But it was never introduced into the trial. I couldn't believe that." Melinda says Tracy told her the same thing, but "in order for that to have been introduced into evidence, she would have had to take the stand, and her defense didn't want to put her on." Nor was the child ever examined for signs of sexual abuse. "Getting an examination would have meant flying the grandmother and the baby down here, finding a doctor to do the examination. That adds up to too fucking much money."

Then Tory is recognized by Glenn Perry, the district attorney from Clayton City, who expresses his condolences on Paul's death and explains that he's there because the execution needs three DA's present. When he calls Tommy Ray "really an animal," Tory asks, "but are we really in the eye-for-an-eye stage, Glenn?" and refers to capital punishment as "barbarism." This causes him to fix "his politician's smile in place" and take his leave. Melinda say she tried to interview him but he "Wouldn't give me the time of day. Fucking bastard." Tory agrees. They arrange to meet again at breakfast.

Tory watches the coverage of the execution on the 10 o'clock news. "At midnight, Tory is certain that the lights dim." But in fact, there has been a reprieve at 11:51. The Supreme Court has ruled a stay because of a reversible error found in an earlier decision. Reading the newspaper, "Tory sighs, wonders if this could possibly be a trend. Maybe the court is trying to stem the tide of executions in the 'death belt.'" She decides to go to Jackson and see the governor. Melinda gives her her phone number, as well as the numbers for Henry Lee Addams.

Tory goes to see Tracy again, but finds her doubtful that the stay of execution in Tommy Ray's case will make any difference in her own. Tory tells her, "I am not about to give up without the damnedest fight you've ever seen," but Tracy only replies, "when push comes to shove, all you do-gooders fade away." Tory tells her that she's going to see the governor, and that she wants to get in touch with her family in case there's a clemency hearing where their presence might help. But Tracy is adamant about Tory not contacting her grandmother:

"No fucking way.... She threw me out of the house, disowned me -- said fornication was a venial sin, but with a nigger it was an abomination. She tried to have me excommunicated, for God's sake!"

"I'm not sure that excommunication is ever for God's sake," Tory says. "I'm no theologian, but I can't believe that he'd be in favor of that."

"Probably not," Tracy answers, smiles.

The two sit in the fading afternoon light; Tory reaches for Tracy's hand again, holds it as the day gives way to darkness.

Tory checks into a motel on the interstate in Jackson, then goes to see Jane Fillmore. Tommy Ray's case, she says, has kept her from doing any more work on Tracy's. Tory asks if she knows what illness put Tracy in the infirmary. "Jane shakes her head. 'Probably something left over from her days on the street, something she caught from a john. Maybe even AIDS. I don't know." She had tried to get a physician in to see her, but the first appointment available was August 6, nearly three weeks after the date of the execution. This irony "releases a strangled cry in Tory, something primitive, garbled," which causes the secretary outside to come in to see if everything is all right.

Tory pulls every string she can think of to get in to see the governor, and finally reaches the governor's aide and tells him, "my late husband, a class mate of Governor Steadman's in law school, was the public defender in the original trial of Tracy Magnarelli, a woman on death row." He finally agrees to a fifteen-minute meeting before the governor meets with a Japanese trade delegation. Tory studies an article on "power-dressing" in Glamour and shops for the necessary clothes and practices the "body language" lessons in the article. She has dinner with Melinda who gives her some advice, including playing on the governor's need to get the women's vote. Tory remembers voting for Hubert Humphrey even though Paul had been the state Republican chairman for Richard Nixon. (Denman keeps gradually widening the gulf between Tory and Paul.) And Melinda also reveals that she's going to leak word of Tory's appointment with the governor to her media friends. When Tory is surprised at this, Melinda says, "Well, you said you wanted me to get involved, put on a campaign for Tracy. This is how it begins. Besides, you are much more interesting than the Japanese delegation."

Gov. Lacy Steadman, "a tall, silver-haired man in his late fifties," keeps Tory waiting for five minutes into her allotted fifteen, but she carefully lays out her case, at the end of which he says,

"Have you thought about what your involvement here does to Paul's memory?" The governor's voice is quiet, not accusing.

"Well, I think I have. I think I've thought it all through. But this I do know. Paul is dead; his life is over. Tracy Magnarelli's is not. She did a terrible thing, but killing her is not the answer."

The governor's aide interrupts to tell him that it's time for the meeting with the Japanese delegation, but he puts him off. Then he tells her to have the CDRC send him the files. "I can't promise anything. But I will look into it. For Paul's sake, if nothing else."

Outside, Tory is barraged with questions from the press. She handles them carefully, but when she says of the governor, "I think he's definitely leaning toward clemency," she sees a frown cross Melinda's face. "Tory feels herself stumble now, wondering if she has ventured into treacherous waters."

She returns to Parchman, where Tracy has been fighting with the nurse, and tells her that since her fever's almost gone she will be returned to death row. When Tory advises her to cooperate with the nurse more, Tracy retorts: "I bet you always cooperated, didn't you, Tory? Never gave anybody any trouble.... What did cooperation ever get you, Tory? I bet the system screwed you just like it did me." Tory recognizes the truth in what Tracy has said: "She feels the cost of it seep into her bones: the compromises, the dwindling." She remembers a watercolor class that she gave up because Paul wanted her to socialize at a bar association meeting.

And then Tracy asks her, "Tory, do you miss sex?" Tory is embarrassed and evasive, but Tracy remembers what lovemaking was like with her boyfriend, Raheem, the father of her child. Tory only admits that sex "'Wasn't ever much a part of my marriage.' Tory feels apologetic, somehow, as if she has just discovered a character flaw." But the visit ends with them laughing so loud that the guards tell them, "Hey, keep it down in there."

The next morning, Tory's picture is on the front page of the Clarion-Ledger. She hurries to the infirmary to see Tracy again before she is moved back to death row. Tracy tells her, "They are fucking mad as hell about the article in the paper. I could hear them ranting and raving this morning. Called you a nosy, prying cunt." Then Tracy says, "Well, here is what I think of them," and raises her middle finger. "'I couldn't agree with you more,' Tory says, and lifting her own hand, imitates Tracy's gesture, feeling both self-conscious and daring at the same time."

Finally, as time runs out, Tory suggests that she try to find Raheem to be present if there's a clemency hearing.

"We need somebody there besides me and Jane Fillmore. Somebody who will make the board see you as a person, not a ..."

"Monster? Hooker? Nigger-lover?" Tracy finishes the line for Tory, using the words of the prosecution. Tory wills herself to look at Tracy, refuses to flinch in the face of such a harsh assessment.

"Yes," is Tory's only response.