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. 

1. Daily, Before Your Eyes, by Margaret-Love Denman, pp. 1-80

Chapters 1-3

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These won't be my usual blog entries, largely because I know the author. I also knows where she comes from: We both grew up there. So please excuse me if I indulge in some personal recollections, starting with the flashback that begins the novel.

Goldsmith's Department Store

Although the beginning of chapter 1 gives us a time and place -- Mississippi, Early Spring, 1989 -- Denman immediately gives us a flashback to the childhood of her protagonist, Tory Gardiner. Ten-year-old Tory, called Mary Victoria by her mother, is on her way to Memphis to shop: "At Lowenstein's and Goldsmith's." This is exactly what you did if you grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, when Denman and I did. You went with your parents to the two major department stores in downtown Memphis. (They're gone now: Like Gimbel's, Lowenstein's folded, and like Filene's and Marshall Field, Goldsmith's was absorbed into Macy's; it no longer has a downtown store.) From Oxford you went, as Denman observes, "slinging around the curves to Holly Springs, then to Byhalia, and finally into the city." So even though Tory Gardiner lives in a town called Clayton City, we can pretty much identify it as an Oxford-like town in northern Mississippi.

I remember those trips well: The curves we slung around on the way to Holly Springs were on the narrow state highway 7. At Holly Springs you turned northwest on US 78, now I-22, but back then just a somewhat better kept-up highway. Denman, like Mary Victoria, probably spent all her time shopping with her mother; my father and I would finish our part of the shopping and leave my mother in Goldsmith's to continue while we went next door to sit in the big leather chairs in the lobby of the now-vanished Gayoso Hotel. (You couldn't get away with that name today!) The lobby had murals of de Soto discovering the Mississippi River and La Salle founding the first settlement at Memphis. I also remember that my mother had a Charga-Plate from Goldsmith's: a metal precursor of the credit card about the size of a military dog-tag. And that there was a tunnel from the department store to its parking garage lined with merchandise that included "gourmet specialties," the most fascinating one being canned grasshoppers.

Okay, back to the novel. Mary Victoria -- who has one of those characteristically Southern double names, like, um, Margaret Love, whom we always called by both names partly because there was also a Margaret Rose in our class -- makes a decision that very day:

Her life would resemble her mother's, her friends' mothers, and all the women who played bridge in the afternoons, sipping coffee from translucent cups, eating small sandwiches that had no crusts, always leaving at least two bites on the plate. It would, in short, mean being a wife and perhaps a mother, loved, supported, and cared for by a good man. 

We know already that things won't turn out that way.

Natchez Trace Parkway

When the flashback ends and the main narrative begins, Tory is in New Orleans for an art exhibit. She gets a phone call from a hospital in Kosciusko, Mississippi. (Kosciusko, incidentally, is pronounced Kozzy-esko. It's where Oprah Winfrey was born -- a little central Mississippi town on the Natchez Trace Parkway northeast of Jackson.) Her husband, Paul, has been in an automobile accident. So Tory gets in her car and drives north.

Kosciusko Court House

Here and throughout the novel Denman does something wonderfully: She puts us in the moment, not by telling us what Tory is feeling but by showing us what she sees and does. She gives us particulars, even minutiae, of the things that happen around Tory as life goes on. It's the kind of immediacy, the kind of detailed reality that you find in writers like Anne Tyler or John Updike: the reader becomes the character because Denham has imagined not only what Tory is thinking or saying but also the ambiance that surrounds and often informs what she thinks or says.

To put it a little too succinctly, Tory is in a kind of denial at this point. She doesn't confront the possibilities that her husband might have been killed or seriously injured in the accident. And Denman's carefully detailed actuality gives us a sense of Tory floating toward the crisis. There is no panic, no hurry, only a kind of calm, even stoic acceptance of what she will find.

In the hospital there is the usual bureaucratic slowness as she inquires about her husband, though we begin to sense how unsettled Tory really is when she speaks to the nurse at the desk: "Tory's voice wavers a bit toward the last, sounds strange, unfamiliar to her -- impersonal like the air that settles around her." And when she learns that Paul is still in the operating room, the cracks in her composure begin to widen:

"Still in the OR?" Tory repeats. "Does that mean that they're operating on him here? In Kosciusko? Shouldn't we transfer him to Jackson or to New Orleans or something? I mean if he has to have something big done, maybe we should go ahead and call somebody in Jackson. I have several friends from college who are married to surgeons in Jackson. I know several people I could call." Tory fumbles in her purse, looking for her address book. To prove to the nurse that she knows people, other places where she can get help. 

And here we have a key to Tory: the sense of privilege, of knowing the right people, of expecting to be in the right place, the best possible hospital -- not one in some little podunk in the middle of Mississippi.

No need to go on with the summary. Paul dies, and Tory discovers he was not alone in the car. He was with Debbi McCaslin, his court reporter. They had gone to Jackson to take a deposition -- Paul is a successful lawyer. And in his wallet she will find a receipt from the hotel in Jackson: double occupancy. And the picture on his driver's license reminds her of an earlier loss: "Mary Vic looked like him, only a smaller, feminine version. She would have been a pretty young woman by now, twenty-three, maybe married with a child of her own, if things had turned out differently." We will learn that their daughter, Mary Vic, was born with spina bifida. But Denman lets us piece together these details all in due time.

After being informed of Paul's death and making the necessary arrangements, Tory returns to Clayton City where she visits the nursing home where Paul's mother lives and delivers the bad news. Then she faces up to returning to their home. Before she gives in to grief, she checks for something, a wonderfully imagined detail on Denman's part:

There, on top of his shoeshine kit, sits Paul's pillbox. Inside will be the pills that regulated his blood pressure, fought the indigestion that plagued him. Never, never did he leave it out that she might see it. Never would he admit to feeling less than vital, healthy, confident, to being less than able to handle any situation that came his way. And he had left it behind when he went to Jackson, careful that Debbi would not know. That she would only see the strong, self-confident man, sure, easy, and lucky. 

In this one detail we learn almost everything we need to know about the character of Paul Gardiner. And by implication we learn a lot about Tory.

St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford, Mississippi

The interment takes place "in the older section of St. Peter's." (Once again, Clayton City merges with Oxford, which also has a St. Peter's cemetery. There has earlier been a reference to Paul's mother's old home on North Lamar, which is the main street north of the Oxford courthouse.) "Tory realizes that the stretch of green Astroturf ... under the ten, under the wooden funeral-parlor chairs, under the feet of Paul's friends and associates, covers the grave of Mary Vic." Debbi appears in the crowd at the cemetery, "her arm still in a sling," but "disappears quickly." After the service, Mother Gardiner, who attends in a wheelchair, says the usual thing about "a beautiful service," but Tory replies,

"I suppose. You know, Paul used to joke about how St. Peter's would have been a great putting green."

"Tory!" Mother Gardiner says. "What a thing to say!"

"Well, he did." Tory feels her heels sink into the soft turf. "I guess Paul never figured that he'd ever be here." 

With that bit of humor, the tone of the novel begins to shift, and Tory begins to emerge into her own.

She meets with Paul's law partners about his will and the arrangements to buy out his part of the practice from her. But Tory puzzles them by not cratering to their plans instantly. She tells them she'll "have to think about it" and arranges to come in to the office and clean out his desk. Afterward, of course, she questions her own hesitation: "Tory wonders what she would do with one-third of a law practice. She has no training, no skill, nothing to offer the firm. Of course she'll sell. What else can she do?"

Back home, Tory begins purging the house of Paul, giving his clothes to the Church of the Redeemer Clothes Closet and, at the last minute, adding her wedding dress to the giveaways. She hears the clock in the courthouse chime -- "it hasn't kept good time since 'Whisky' Smith marched through, torched the square, and headed south to Vicksburg." Gen. A.J. Smith did do some damage to Oxford during the Civil War. But it is Mother Gardiner who challenges her:

"Tory?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I said, what are you going to do?"

"Do?"

"Yes, with your self, with your life?"

"Ma'am?"

"With your life, what are you going to do?" 

And she has to admit that she has no idea. After Mary Vic's death, Paul had refused the idea of having another child, lest it be handicapped. He also refused to take genetic testing or to consider adopting. Tory finally took up art. "She painted late into the nights, even with poor light, until her shoulders ached and her mind was numbed by the profusion of color, the swirl and movement on the canvas. Only then could she fall asleep, exhausted, atoned."

On Monday, in Paul's law office, she finds more evidence of his relationship with Debbi McCaslin, but the most significant thing she finds is a file folder for a case Paul had been drafted for: defense attorney for Theresa Marie Magnarelli, a prostitute accused of murdering her pimp. The file had been opened in 1976 and the last entry in it is a letter, dated March 29, 1989, from Tracy Magnarelli, as Theresa calls herself, now on death row at the state prison at Parchman. She asks for Paul's help, and mentions that she hasn't seen her little girl for thirteen years.

Tory slides the photograph [of Tracy in the file] out again, looks at Theresa Marie Magnarelli, feels her heart tighten for the writer of this desperate letter. Someone else who pinned her hopes on Paul. Someone else left comfortless, defenseless.

The mention of Tracy's daughter stirs Tory's realization that Paul had been working on the case, and achieving considerable celebrity for his role at the trial, while she was with their own daughter, dying in the hospital in Memphis. "Tory sat there as her daughter's life diminished and her husband's expanded, feeling trapped between the two." They had argued about her staying in Memphis, and he visited only when the doctors told them that Mary Vic would only live a few days more. When he talked with the doctors, "Paul's face reflected the gravity of their answers. Tory wondered if that, too, was practiced -- a performance entitled 'The Caring Father.'"

And once again, she is struck by how those few weeks in 1976 defined her life as much as they defined Theresa Marie Magnarelli's. Both of them lost their daughters that year; both had hoped that Paul could help. Both, trapped by their choices, later abandoned. 

She asks Paul's law partners if there is anything to be done for Tracy, but they discourage her. But she persists until they finally give her the name of a lawyer with the Capital Defense Resource Center in Jackson, Jane Fillmore. Tory calls Fillmore, who similarly discourages her. "Tory straightens the telephone cord, pulls hard against the coils, twines them around her fingers.... The black half-circles of the cord alternate around Tory's fingers. A silent black snake curling in and out." Again, another nice touch of immediacy and actuality. Fillmore tells her "the truth is, her case was really political. She's an obvious outsider. Topless dancer from Massachusetts, unwed mother, prostitute, Roman Catholic -- the child's father a black sailor -- none of which brought tears to a Mississippi juror's eye."

McCarty pottery

When Tory suggests that she might visit Tracy, Fillmore discourages her: "'Have you ever been to Parchman, Mrs. Gardiner?' 'No.' Tory thinks she drove by the gates once, when she was on the way to an art show, a McCarty exhibit in Marigold." (This is a touch that only Mississippians or ceramics enthusiasts will appreciate: Lee McCarty and his wife, Pup, were celebrated ceramists with a studio in the tiny Delta town of Merigold -- not Marigold, which is a common error but probably a typo. I have a couple of their pieces -- wedding gifts. Lee McCarty also taught briefly at the high school Denman and I attended.) Fillmore warns her, "It's no afternoon tea party," which is the kind of thing that gets people's backs up, as it does Tory's. She persists, and Fillmore agrees to meet with her in Jackson.

When they meet, Denman adds one of her tiny, vivifying details: "Tory notices that [Fillmore] is left-handed. Somehow she finds that comforting. Mary Vic was left-handed, like Tory's mother." In person, the two women get along somewhat better, and Fillmore confides a detail:

"You see, Mrs. Gardiner, some of Tracy's legal problems go back to the first trial. When your husband was defending her. There were some -- well, some errors, some issues that should have been raised that weren't. And I think Tracy blames him in some ways."

Tory's initial reaction is denial: "My husband practically became a celebrity by the way he handled that case." His mother has scrapbooks full of clippings about him. "Local DA, strong law-and-order man, came across in most of the stories as the bad guy -- Paul as the champion, the underdog, fighting impossible odds. David to the law's Goliath. How could Jane not know this? How could she think that Paul didn't do his best, didn't exhaust every possibility?"

Before she returns home, Tory stops for dinner at the restaurant that Paul and Debbi dined at before the accident. She orders iced tea: "I have to drive home." A week follows before Fillmore calls again to say that she's made contact with Tracy and she agrees to see Tory. They make arrangements for Tracy to call collect from the prison to set up the meeting. Tory drives down to Parchman on the appointed day.

The Delta stretches out before her, and Tory tries to find NPR, twisting the dial back and forth, hoping to find the reassuring voices of Nina Totenberg, Rene Montaigne, someone who speaks of efforts to discover a civilized and ordered world. All she can find is country music or fundamentalist preachers, both loud and disquieting.

At the prison she goes through the meticulous, unnerving process of being admitted. Tracy has been temporarily moved off of death row for the meeting, into the women's section, and when Tory is admitted to the room and Tracy is summoned, one of the inmates calls out, "Whooooo, Trace Chain, somebody here to see you. You didn't tell nobody that you had a fucking rich white bitch coming to see you. Gonna set you free, darlin', gonna set you free."

Tracy, "a small dark girl, frail-looking in this place, stands up." They go and sit on a bed. Tory asks if she remembers Paul.

"He the kinda good-looking guy, came around with the older guy from the court?" Tracy asks.

"Yes, that would have been Paul." Tory smiles, feels pleased in spite of herself.

"Sure, I remember him. Real stuck-up prick!"

Tory waits, feels her face redden. "Oh, well, yes, I guess. That would be my husband.  

They talk about Tracy's health: She has a raw, red spot on her leg but they won't let her go to the infirmary about it. She is resigned to the fact that she will be dead in a couple of months: Her execution is set for July. And when Tory jokes about getting old, Tracy says, "'that's something I won't be learning about.' Tory feels the words hit her like so many accusations, and she is ashamed that she takes her life so lightly." And when Tory says she will try to help, Tracy responds,

"I just don't want any false hope. I don't want to think I've got a chance and then you decide that it's not worth it. After I got my hopes up. That's what your husband did -- told me I had a chance, and then, when I didn't, he lost interest. Wouldn't even fucking answer my letters. Like he could just throw me away, like some piece of shit that he didn't want to think about." ... Tory is rocked by the wave of resentment that fills the space between them.

When she says that she still wants to visit Tracy, Tory begins to cry. "Tracy leans over to the dresser ... to a crocheted cover that resembles a top hat and pulls out a string of toilet paper." And she nods when Tory asks if she can come back.