The Curious Prayer Life Of Muriel Smith

by Raj, Carol;

  “Yes, you did. And I certainly do appreciate it. Even though you were the one who got me stuck there to begin with. But I can’t give you my hand now.”

  “Just tell me why not.”

  “Because I can’t let go of the tree branch.”

  “How’d you even get two feet off the ground? How in the world do you get yourself into such predicaments?”

  “Me? Predicaments? I never get myself into predicaments. I was perfectly happy yesterday sitting all by myself in Roxanne’s car. You’re the one who got me into this predicament.”

  “Not the climbing the tree predicament.”

  “Well, it follows from all the rest, doesn’t it?”

  Kevin walked two yards away, bent down, and laid something gently in some tufts of grass. Then he came back and took hold of Muriel’s waist.

  “You have a lot of nerve, young man. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m helping you down. You can’t give me your hand. How else can I steady you? Now just move your right leg and feel for the knot. You can do it.”

  “Are you sure I can do it?”

  “I’m sure. I’m right behind you.”

  Muriel stared at her left hand. She loosened its grip on the tree branch. She moved it an inch away. Yes, she was steady. “I can move this hand. See?”

  “Good, Mrs. B. That’s a start. Now grab a lower branch. Right there.”

  “I see. No problem. I knew all along I could manage.”

  “Now move your right hand. Grab the same branch. Don’t worry. It can support you. Now bring your left leg down. There’s a knot just below. No, a little farther to the left. You’re doing just fine. Now move your right foot again. You can do this. The next time you move your foot, you’ll feel solid ground.”

  Muriel wiggled her foot back and forth. “Is that the ground? Or just a very big knot?”

  “That’s the ground,” Kevin said. “Now look what I brought.” He bent in the grass, scooped something up with both hands, and walked back to Muriel, that silly lopsided smile on his face. He looked about five years old as he glanced at her for approval.

  Was this boy an evil carjacker? Or a basically good teen who made one incredibly bad decision? When she’d taught, it seemed easy to tell the good kids from the bad. This one she couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe even he didn’t know yet. Maybe he was still a work in progress. Maybe everyone was. Even her. Even Natalie.

  Kevin stretched his hands out to her. “Look. Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Four brown eggs nestled inside Kevin’s palms. They were beautiful. How could she have bought eggs all these years and never noticed their beauty? Eggs were miracles of engineering. They were all the proof anyone needed for the existence of a Creator. If eggs had to evolve, chickens would have died out long before they got the shape right. Maybe that’s why God never answered her prayers. Maybe he was too busy solving an engineering problem on some other planet.

  Muriel looked into Kevin’s face. “They are beautiful.”

  “And they’re breakfast, Muriel. Breakfast!”

  It was the first time Kevin called her by her given name. A chill came over her. She had never told him her first name. The euphoric moment spent admiring the eggs ended. Suspicion took over. She was spared the tragedies that would have happened on one of her television shows, but she had assumed she was a random target, just a vulnerable-looking, white-haired woman sitting alone in an unlocked car with the keys dangling conspicuously from the ignition.

  She tried to remember their conversation from the day before. Yes, he was surprised her name was not Roxanne, too, wasn’t he? Bits and pieces of the conversation came back to her. But that didn’t make any sense. Why in the world would anybody want to kidnap Roxanne?

  Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything? Like ‘Thank you, Kevin. Yes, I really am hungry. It was super nice of you to find some eggs and offer to share.’”

  “Oh. Sorry. Of course. Thank you, Kevin. It was nice of you. I am starving. I just wish you’d brought something with a little less cholesterol.”

  “Mrs. B! You sound just like my dad. No matter what I do, it’s never good enough.” Kevin’s voice went into falsetto. “Well, Kevin, I see you got a ‘B’ on your report card in this stupid foreign language I made you take even though you didn’t want to. Maybe you could be a little more responsible about doing your homework. Maybe you could be a little more responsible about studying for your tests. Maybe if you weren’t so irresponsible you’d get an ‘A.’” His voice returned to its normal register. “So, sorry, Mrs. B. The eggs didn’t come in a carton with cholesterol numbers printed on it. Want me to take them back to the hen house where I found them?”

  ”No. Of course not. I really do appreciate your bringing food. Uh…we’re not going to eat the eggs raw, are we?”

  Kevin made a face. “Ew, yuck. I had to eat a raw egg in fifth grade. Otherwise my best friend wasn’t going to let me into the club that met in his treehouse. It wasn’t worth it.”

  “What do you have in mind for cooking them?”

  “There was a lot of paraphernalia in your friend’s car. Did you hear that, Mrs. B? Paraphernalia. It’s like my word for the day. I’m sure we’ll find some cooking utensils in all that paraphernalia.” Kevin walked over to the pile of things he had pulled out of the trunk. “How about that old cookie sheet? Parts of it are a little rusted. But it’s metal. It’ll heat up nicely. And we can just put the eggs where there isn’t any rust.”

  “How are we going to heat the cookie sheet?”

  “I know how to build a fire. First some kindling, like dry leaves. Then some twigs, then some bigger branches. You kind of make a teepee. I did it at Boy Scout camp. All we need are some matches. You don’t happen to have any matches in your purse, do you?”

  “Sorry. No matches. You should have kidnapped a smoker if you wanted matches.”

  “Again with the kidnapping?”

  Now was as good a time as any to get to the truth. “Well, Kevin, you knew my first name, didn’t you? How could you possibly know my first name? I never told you.” Muriel didn’t blink as she watched his eyes. In fifteen years of teaching public high school she had learned when kids lied. She had even more practice with Natalie every time she missed curfew. Especially after she started dating Stan.

  “You mean Muriel?”

  “Yes, Muriel.” Muriel’s hand went to her hip. “It seems kind of suspicious that you would know my first name. I only told you my last name.”

  “You mean Muriel Smith from 521 East Chestnut Street?”

  Muriel gasped.

  Kevin laughed. “So your last name really is Smith. And here I thought you were lying. But don’t worry how I found out. When I got the eggs, there was a newspaper in the box by the road. I looked to see if we were in it.”

  “Did you bring it?” Oh, dear. If they were in the newspaper, then Natalie must know what happened. And Chloe! Oh, my. Worry and stress would not be good for her unborn child.

  “Did I bring what?”

  “The newspaper. Did you bring the newspaper?”

  “Well, of course I didn’t bring the newspaper. What do you think I am, a thief?”

  Muriel shook her head from side to side in disbelief. “Kevin. You carjacked me. You stole four eggs. Why in the world wouldn’t I think you’d steal a newspaper?”

  “You can’t count the four eggs. It’s not really stealing if you’re hungry.” Kevin picked up one egg and threw it against the trunk of an oak tree several feet away. The yellow yolk and colorless white slithered down the trunk. He threw the second egg and hit the exact same spot.

  Good aim. Questionable morality. But good aim.

  Kevin handed Muriel the other two eggs, making sure they were safely in the palms of her hands before he relinquished them. “Here, these two are yours. I wasn’t hungry anyway.” He stormed off into the woods.

  A teenage boy not hungry? Not likely.

  Kevi
n’s retreating footsteps sounded like an apatosaurus trampling through the brush. Natalie would have done the same thing. Though somehow, even with no civilization around, Natalie would have found a door to slam. And chances are she would have thrown all four eggs at the tree. If she’d saved two, they would definitely not have been Muriel’s. They would have been her own.

  Muriel remembered the year Natalie turned six. Howard wanted to surprise her with a birthday cake from the finest bakery in town. It was a masterpiece. Three layers of yellow butter cake with banana cream filling and a thick vanilla frosting that cascaded down the sides. The whole top was covered with a mountain of yellow candy roses perched in edible plumes of green leaves.

  “D-a-d-d-y!” Natalie clenched her tiny fists and stomped her little feet in a tornado of a tantrum. “I hate bananas! How could you forget?” Her tears cascaded down, two waterfalls of misery.

  “But look at the roses on top, sweetie. I know yellow is your favorite color.” Howard knelt down, holding his arms wide for a hug. It was a Daddy-daughter moment. The culminating scene of a tear-jerker movie.

  Natalie turned away, the folds of her yellow sundress twirling around her knees.

  Howard’s face had broadcasted dejection. How could his good deed have gone so wrong?

  “We can just not eat the filling, honey. We can scrape all the filling out. You won’t even taste banana. I’ll fix it. Don’t worry.” Muriel had reached an arm around her daughter, offering consolation.

  Natalie’s whole body shook as she’d shrugged off the gesture. She’d grabbed the sharp serrated knife she had been told never to touch and slashed the cake with the determination of a serial killer. Then she’d pressed down on the cake with the flat side of the blade. Fury distorted her tiny face, her lips pressed together, her eyes without a glint of tenderness. The eight-inch-tall culinary masterpiece was reduced in minutes to a pile of yellow garbage.

  “What kind of cake does she like?” Howard had mouthed.

  “Chocolate,” Muriel mouthed back. Muriel always made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on Natalie’s birthday.

  Howard rushed out of the house to the very same bakery and bought the cake he should have bought the first time, a looming monstrosity of brown icing with chocolate curls covering the top and chocolate sprinkles clinging to the sides.

  Natalie took one look at the replacement cake then shut herself in her room and refused to come out. Howard knocked, he apologized, he pleaded. Nothing could change her mind. There was no lighting of birthday candles that year, no singing the happy birthday song, no wishes made. The rejected cake sat untouched in the middle of the dining room table for four days until the ants found it, looking themselves like chocolate sprinkles with legs.

  Muriel scooped the cake up, ants and all, and placed it in the outside garbage can when no one was looking.

  “Do you remember that birthday when you didn’t even get me a cake?” Natalie brought that point up every birthday since. Thirty-nine long years of accusations.

  Muriel thought the complaints would die when Howard did. But so far, she had suffered ten bonus years. Why was everything always her fault?

  There was no point arguing with Natalie. Her past was one nobody else remembered exactly the same way.

  There was probably no point in arguing with Kevin either. Besides which, Kevin was nowhere to be seen.

  Muriel walked over to the pile of rubbish from Roxanne’s trunk. She laid the eggs gently down. How long did it take eggs to spoil? Should she wait for Kevin to come back? That seemed fair. After all, he was the one who’d found the eggs.

  But it wasn’t logical for her to go hungry when there were two perfectly good eggs waiting to be cooked. Her stomach was already growling at the thought. She’d get everything ready. If Kevin came back before the eggs were done, they’d have one egg each. Otherwise she’d eat them both herself.

  Muriel picked up the cookie sheet. Now she had to find something to start a fire with. She rummaged through the pile of junk. Rusted metal pots and pans. Vases with chipped rims. Coat hangers with advertising from a dry cleaning shop that went out of business more than ten years ago.

  No wonder Roxanne never wanted anybody to look in her trunk. Did Roxanne honestly think this pile of used items would come in handy someday?

  Muriel lifted up two Johnny Cash record albums to see what was under them. Their covers were torn and spotted from water damage. Why, Roxanne didn’t even like country music, and she couldn’t think they were suitable to take to that television antiques show.

  Aha! Matches! Just what Muriel was looking for. The sides of roughened strike material were worn almost smooth. She opened the box. There were four matches left. She’d better use each one carefully. “And how would you like your eggs this morning, ma’am?” The resonance of her own voice was a welcome change in the quiet of the woods.

  She could no longer hear the bird that was singing at daybreak. She did recognize a few of the new calls: the what-cheer of the cardinal and the bubbly melody of the robin. A whole CD of bird calls sat on top of Howard’s dresser. She picked it up once a week to dust under it, thinking every time that he might want to listen to it again. Week after week the thought gave her a moment of peace as she imagined his presence. Week after week, the thought that he was dead struck her anew with an intensity of sorrow, as if she had never fully realized it before.

  If she could remember the bird calls she was hearing now, she would try to find them on his CD when she got back home. And then she would put the CD in the basement. Or maybe donate it to charity. It was time to move on.

  She hadn’t imagined it would be so hard to live alone. She remembered her own mother’s daily litany of complaints after she’d become a widow. Muriel had only pretended to listen, murmuring occasional words of sympathy while she worked a crossword puzzle or organized a grocery list.

  Nobody could possibly understand until they went through it themselves. The split second of despair when no one came to the door to greet you. The senselessness of cooking a meal for one. The creaks the house made in the middle of the night. Howard would have proclaimed the creaks normal, and Muriel would have rolled over and gone obediently back to sleep. Now, ten years later, she lay awake, dwarfed in the queen-size bed, listening intently, her heart beating faster, her hand resting on the bedside phone extension.

  It was a good thing Natalie didn’t know how afraid her mother was. Natalie would be appalled. She would be equally appalled to hear Muriel talking to herself in the middle of the woods.

  “Well? How did you say you wanted your eggs, ma’am? Speak up. Don’t be shy. Sunny-side up? Or over easy? It’s your choice.”

  Muriel scrambled under the oak tree, gathering up dry leaves. Squat, pick, rise. Almost like an exercise class. Kevin said dry leaves would make good kindling. When he came back—if he came back—she would thank him for the tip. She placed the small pile of leaves in the middle of the clearing, well away from the trees, and covered them with a loosely arranged teepee of dried twigs.

  A couple of bigger sticks ought to go on top. Kevin had said that, too. She picked out sticks that seemed dry, broke them to be sure, and balanced them just so, crisscrossing them over the twigs. She sat back and admired her work. It looked like something two cowboys would sit around. She opened her mouth and fluttered her hand against it, filling the air with truncated whoops.

  Hide and seek. Tag. Cowboys and Indians. Those were the games she’d played with the neighborhood children when she was young. She was an expert at Indian whoops. Only the children who owned toy guns were allowed to be cowboys. Stretched out forefingers didn’t count. She hated always having to be an Indian. Her parents wouldn’t buy a toy gun for her. One more thing she had been angry at them about. What an ungrateful child she had been. How silly it all seemed now.

  She lit one of the matches and dropped it into the leaves. The pile came to life with a burst of heat and light. She balanced the old cookie sheet on the two larger
logs and broke the eggs onto it. The whites coagulated. The yolks, a darker orange than the store eggs she was used to, started to firm.

  “You are one good cook, Muriel. Why, thank you, my dear. Would you like salt and pepper with your eggs? Or maybe a side of hash browns smothered in catsup?” Her mouth started watering. She hadn’t eaten hash browns in years. Too oily. Or catsup. Too sugary. But this morning she could suck a whole bottle dry. Too bad she didn’t even have salt and pepper. No fat either. The cooked eggs clung tenaciously to the metal. Muriel waited until the pan cooled a bit, then scraped the charred bits of egg off with her fingers, licking each finger until every last delicious bite was gone.

  Burnt eggs and nothing to go with them or on them. If she had seen that description on a menu in the window of a restaurant, she would have hurried away. Strange. It was the best breakfast she had ever eaten.

  And it probably wasn’t anywhere near six o’clock.

  8

  Just yesterday Muriel had no choice in what she’d do next. Not when Roxanne said she was going to stop at the strip mall. Not when Kevin threatened to shoot her if she didn’t drive. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, she had too many choices. There wasn’t even any right and wrong involved. Oh, Lord, help. You know I’ve never been good at making decisions.

  She picked up the blanket Kevin had slept under and used it to smother the fire. Then she folded the blanket into smaller rectangles while she listened for footsteps. The only sounds were the steady calls of birds high up in the trees and the occasional scamper of a small animal in the nearby undergrowth.

  She was one-hundred-percent certain that the old man with the two dogs would return. She did not want to be here all alone when he came back. She would just grab her purse and go up to the road. Then she’d decide what to do. She peeked inside her purse. Thank goodness Natalie’s mirror was still there. She pulled the handle onto her left shoulder and started up the incline.

  Going up was hard. Her legs began to ache, and her heart began to beat too fast. She stopped several times to take deep breaths. When she finally got to the top of the hill, she looked up and down the road. There was no stop sign. No crossroads. No buildings. Just a broken yellow line in the middle stretching off to the horizon on either side.