The Problem with Murmur Lee

by Connie May Fowler

  I chewed on my lip for a few seconds, mulled over the very real option of lying to him, and then thought, Oh what the hell. “It wasn’t out of the goodness of my heart. I did it in order to stop hating my husband. And I think it worked. I mean, I’m still not above burning a dead bird with his name stuck in its beak, but I figured out something these past few months. He didn’t abandon Blossom and me because he hated us. Or because he didn’t care.”

  Z’s jaw tightened, and I feared he was grinding his teeth so hard that it might cause a brain aneurism. “Well, Murmur Lee, I’d sure like to know what the hell you’d call it.”

  “Quit grinding your teeth, Zachary.”

  He shot me a look that brimmed with the kind of annoyance you can only summon if you love someone.

  “Leaving was easier than sticking around. He couldn’t watch his child die. I don’t think he ever loved me. But he did adore Bloom. I will insist on that. I’ll argue until the whole world pukes that he loved his little girl. His leaving us is the one true sign I have of that.” I stared down into my beer, knowing that I had finally spoken the truth.

  Z reached toward me. He was about to put his arms around me, give me a big old hug, but he stopped short. Of course he did. He wore his fear the way women wear love. He breathed in deeply. I shook my beer to see if I had anything left other than backwash.

  “I would sure like some oysters,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  And maybe it was then, with my folk wisdom once again intact and my Catholic propensity for confession satiated, that I decided Zachary Klein was one of the finest men who ever walked the planet.

  Charleston Rowena Mudd

  Ghosts. This place is crawling with them. And I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill goblins à la Stephen King or Steven Spielberg or even Edgar Allan Poe.

  I’m talking about energy and memory. About the simple act of rounding a street corner and suddenly being twelve years old again, watching an ambulance blaze past, ignorant of the fact that it is ferrying your father to Flagler Memorial Hospital, where upon arrival he will be pronounced dead. About a pink spray of crepe myrtle plunging you back to a sun-dappled afternoon in your childhood when you and your mother lay on a chenille spread in the backyard, watching the sky, naming the clouds, the blossoms and afternoon light casting lacy shadows across your mother’s pretty face. About how Murmur’s clothes in the laundry hamper, her stubbed cigarettes in the clamshell ashtray, the scraps of handwoven cloth in the wicker basket, and the pair of sneakers crusted in sand by the front door all evoke her essence, her living warmth, her refusal to truly die. About how every time the phone rings—her phone—I jump and then have to fight the threat of tears because my brain hurls me back to the early-morning call from Dr. Z, who informed me in sonorous tones that my best friend had died in an accidental drowning. Yes, energy and memory—the knowledge that the past isn’t through with me—are driving my highbrow, Harvard-educated self half-mad.

  The land and seascapes are gorgeous here, but they, too, glow with ghostly auras. I find myself traveling to and fro around St. Augustine with blinders on, trying not to notice what has been torn down and what has been built in its place. Gee, there used to be a charming little beach cottage on that dune. Now a five-thousand-square-foot monstrosity looms over flora, fauna, water. And there, across from Fort Matanzas, my parents and I picnicked on the beach against a backdrop of undisturbed coastal plain, land that offered habitat to all manner of wildlife: bobcat, dune rattler, rabbit, meerkat, skink. The dunes and scrub are gone now, replaced by condos and tennis courts and swimming pools. Nowadays, the predominate wildlife chumming these shores are weekend drunks.

  I feel as if I’m being batted about in a world of strange gravity, a universe where flowers bloom underground and blood lies motionless in the vein. I left these windy shores to escape the South and the ghosts of my upbringing. But when physical reminders—tattered remnants or spanking new monoliths—tap at memory’s door, I am, by turns, grateful and distressed that I have returned home.

  But whose home is it? Whose space am I inhabiting? Whose life am I living? I occupy Murmur’s house. I sleep in her bed. I listen to her CDs. I pour through her photo albums. I drink her beer. I tend to the many details of her will. I watch the sunrise from her front porch and the sunset from her back. I use her towels and her sheets and her soaps. I haven’t even bought my own toilet paper yet. I exist in the shadows and frames Murmur left behind. Remember what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The heat and impact of the A-bombs were so intense, people evaporated. But their shadows—the outlines of their corporeal souls—remained behind, testaments to the tenuous thread that tethers us to life, on sidewalks and city streets and park pathways.

  Without any real sense of who I am—the labels by which I defined myself are all extinct; I’m not a scholar, or a student, or a theologian, or a southerner, or a northerner, or a bride—I find myself swallowed up in Murmur’s wake, in the ripples she left behind. Everywhere I look, I see the outline of her soul.

  Yes, Murmur may have left this earthly plain, but her influence lives on as a haunting of epic proportions. She floats and furls amid my scattered heart, enjoying—I think—a hearty laugh at my expense. She must have had quite a time writing that will of hers, leaving her junk heap of a workhorse truck to her lazy, no-good, child-abandoning ex-husband, her guidebooks to Father Diaz, and that dump of a bar to me.

  Salty’s. Let us just say that nothing like it exists in Cambridge. With the dissolution of my engagement, with no living relative to rely on, with no true friends, when I fell from the lofty snobbery of well-educated Boston, I landed with a splat. What am I going to do with a bar? Especially this bar. Salty’s is a tacky testimonial to Old Florida, pre-Disney Florida, the Florida of coffee-stained, nicotine-sticky, dashboard-faded, uncluttered road maps that led visitors to the underwater big-fish wonders of Marineland, the amazing gators at the Alligator Farm—which climbed slides and zoomed down them, to the delight of Yankees and schoolchildren alike (that has since been deemed cruel, and all they do these days is lie around in fetid water, waiting for a possum carcass to be tossed their way as they grow fatter and fatter—and farther south, into the Central Florida citrus hills, whose geometry and color needled even the most urban visitor to contemplate the beauty agriculture surprisingly inspired, and maybe the adventuresome traveler would gas up at the full-service station and press on even farther, venturing to the bottom of our world—a watery land many a Florida native had never seen—a place where mosquitoes and good fishing and Miccosukee Indians held at bay the now-ubiquitous pesticide-soaked golf courses.

  Structurally, Salty’s is a garage—a wide garage, to be sure—and on cold winter days, the sliding doors are kept closed in a futile attempt to beat back the nor’easter gales. Otherwise, the place is wide open, sandy, shady, and horribly hot if the wind has died.

  Situated on A1A, at the base of the Crescent Beach ramp, its clientele is an eclectic mixture of folks who rub shoulders only within the confines of this dilapidated but remarkably functional icehouse. On weekends, the place jostles with locals, old salts, surfers, families on vacation, and marine biologists from the Whitney Marine Laboratories just south of Iris Haven.

  Junk covers the walls and all of it is for sale. Rubber flip-flops, beach towels, beach balls, suntan lotion, sunscreen, aloe vera cream, Frisbees, batteries, postcards, cold drinks, chips, beef jerky, Styrofoam coolers, sun visors, baseball caps, University of Florida crap (UF Gator this, UF Gator that), big dill pickles. If you are going to the beach and can’t find what you’re looking for at Salty’s, you don’t need it.

  Furthermore, it is widely known that Salty’s serves the coldest domestic beer (not a single bottle of imported beer has ever crossed this bar’s threshold) within a twenty-mile radius. There is no wine on the menu, although the license allows for it. Rumor has it that Murmur feared wine would class up the joint. But being a good businesswoman and not wanting to ignore the
tastes of some of her female customers, she stocked wine coolers.

  The finest thing about Salty’s in my humble, worldly opinion is the food. The kitchen serves up the greasiest hamburgers this side of Eden, grilled hot dogs with sweet relish, and on special days—traditionally, only Murmur could call a day special—grouper sandwiches. On weekends, breakfast is served: bountiful omelettes with cheese grits and biscuits and strong chicory coffee. Every Sunday morning, the hungover scientists from the Whitney descend, chasing their coffee with Budweisers and Bloody Marys they prepare themselves.

  Let me, this very moment, drive home a point that should already be startlingly obvious: I had no earthly idea how to run a bar, nor any real interest in learning the ropes. Even though I had reentered the belly of the beast (I hadn’t seen a Rebel flag displayed on a pickup in five years, and, I can tell you, when that open Jeep zipped past, the Stars and Bars whipping in the breeze, I choked back both shame and anger), my intention was to remain intellectually stimulated, socially and politically aware, and sophisticated, with an earthy flair. How I would manage this feat of intelligent grace as a barkeep was beyond me. But I was fairly certain it would involve being rarely present.

  My plan was to throw the entire ordeal into the capable hands of Hazel Bing, Salty’s veteran bartender, a woman I knew through reputation only. Murmur raved night and day about her. Indeed, on several occasions she said that without Hazel, Salty’s would have most likely run to ruin years ago. Murmur described her as kind, gracious, generous, beautiful, funny, and smarter than a hungry rattlesnake. What could go wrong? With Hazel on my side, I’d be able to steer clear of the bar’s day-to-day drudgery. This would allow me the time I needed to wind my way through the stomped-on, broken-in-two organ I once called my heart—a necessary task if I were to recover some semblance of self-confidence and self-control. Once the task of rebuilding my heart and soul was accomplished, I would—if my conscience allowed it—sell Salty’s and begin anew. Perhaps I’d chuck theology and pursue brain surgery.

  By the time I had gathered the spine and nerve to think about my responsibilities vis-à-vis Salty’s, I had been home for three weeks. My biggest accomplishment was fulfilling Murmur’s wish that she be cremated and that her ashes be kept in a small stoneware crock her grandfather had thrown himself. The ashes were to remain there until the weather improved—when spring had sprung—at which time we were to conduct an ash-spreading memorial service in front of her house on the beach. In a letter dated one month and two days before her death, which she put on file with her attorney, Ms. Cate McGowan, she expressed these wishes and added the admonition that she didn’t want any variety of priest present. My, how far we both had journeyed from our Catholic roots. Still, I am, by turns, grateful for her guidance and needled by her prescience.

  My return home was an astonishingly low-profile affair. The first person I phoned was Edith. I informed her that I needed some time alone before I’d be ready to see anyone. She didn’t like it, but I think she understood. I hoped that she would put the word out to leave me alone, but evidently she skipped Dr. Z, who stopped by unexpectedly, offering his help with the cremation arrangements and cautioning me that most people who worked in funeral homes were necrophiliacs and that I would really have to put my foot down. Other than for the phone call informing me of Murmur’s death, I hadn’t spoken to Zach in any appreciable way in years. I had forgotten how weird he was. So when he told me to put my foot down with the necrophiliac morticians, I began to laugh insanely, but inside my gut was ripping apart. And, lastly, I steered clear of Salty’s for as long as I could possibly manage, because of who all and what all I might find there. Ghosts come in all shapes and sizes, including that of old boyfriends and the women who stole them from me. Besides, I hate to fail. But I couldn’t shake the post-traumatic stress–induced certainty that failure was the only card on my table.

  Unbeknownst to me, while I hid out in Murmur’s house and dutifully tried to meet the letter and intent of her will, Salty’s had remained open, not even closing for a day or two in the immediate aftermath of her death. I would learn later that since no one knew what would become of the place—the existence of Murmur’s will was a surprise to everyone—Hazel Bing and the regulars held a wake of sorts and voted to keep the place running until the law, the bank, the IRS, the ex, or whoever shut them down. They decided that was what Murmur would have wanted. They surely didn’t expect a stranger—namely, me—to walk in some sunny Monday and announce that she owned the joint.

  But a Monday morning it was, sunny, with a definite bite in the late-January air. Even though I had endured four Boston winters, the North Florida cold—so wet and breezy—still shocked me. I sat on Murmur’s plush couch, with its menagerie of pillows that gleamed like topaz squares against the agate cloth, nursing my second cup of coffee, telling myself that I must ditch the half-full Coca-Cola bottle she’d left sitting on the kitchen counter (mold) and the ashtray festering with stubbed-out Virginia Slims (stink). I had left them there—just the way Murmur had, just the way I’d found them when I first walked through her front door—in a desire to stop time, to memorialize, to honor. I looked at her mermaid mobile slowly spinning in a mist of cobwebs and then her kitchen sill with its collection of cobalt glass bottles that pinched and released rays of early light, and I said to the house, “Shit.”

  I walked over to the kitchen counter, poured the Coke down the sink, and tossed the bottle, the ashtray, and its contents into the trash. The illogical constellations of guilt and grief engulfed me.

  “Sorry, Murmur,” I whispered, realizing that those of us left to struggle and flounder in death’s wake really must make a conscious decision to move on or drown. And I wondered, Is that what Murmur did? Is that why she made a will and penned a letter to her attorney detailing her wishes? Did she know her time was up? Had she made a decision—watery and vague, but a decision nonetheless—that she’d best set her affairs in order? How does a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman come by that sort of precognition? Does the soul recognize that the light is about to be snuffed out? Does God, that Grand Jokester, ruffle through your dreams, seeding innuendos of death?

  I scanned her one-room wonder of a house, aching for her to walk through that door and say everyone had gotten it wrong. I wanted time to reverse itself, for it to shuffle to a stop and then step backward, backward, backward until it stumbled into New Year’s Eve and Murmur in her boat in the Iris Haven River.

  “Shit,” I repeated. Nearly a decade had passed since Blossom’s death and yet reminders of her life were still everywhere—photos on every wall, table, and bookcase, even a lock of blond hair tied with a blue ribbon hung from the archway leading to the kitchen. How in the world did Murmur stand it? I wondered as I swept through the room, placing each image of my goddaughter facedown.

  I passed Desdemona—that figurehead from a long-ago shipwreck that Murmur kept poised by her rocker, positioned in such a way that her wooden gaze forever looked out to sea—and paused. Using my shirttail, I wiped off a sprinkling of dust that had settled on the bridge of her nose. And with that, a thought: a good cleaning. That’s what Murmur’s house needed. Maybe it would be an exorcism of sorts. I’d scrub away the residue of the past, forcing both immovable and movable objects to shine. The floors would smell like lemon and the linens the sea. Everything—no matter its size or import—would get buffed, polished, washed, or otherwise affirmed. My instincts were like mushrooms casting spritely spores of renewal all about. It would be some kind of start. Of what variety, I was unsure, but that was one of the things my mother had taught me: “When in doubt, no matter what you’re wavering about, if you can’t kneel, then clean.” I would drink good bourbon and play John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie really loudly in Murmur’s honor. And I would clean and drink and maybe get drunk and cry.

  But first—without question—I would cast one more demon behind me. I would drive down to Salty’s and introduce myself and inquire as to Hazel B
ing’s whereabouts, and I would start to set Murmur’s business in order.

  As I changed clothes four times, unsure of how I should present myself upon laying claim to Salty’s, my mind tumbled through all the people I might run into. There was my old beau, blue-eyed Ulysses Finster, a commercial fisherman and one fine lover, who had dumped me for Beulah Masters. Beulah was from an old Minorcan family that took no prisoners. Once she set her sights on Ulysses, I knew it was over. And while losing him hurt my pride, I didn’t remain wounded for long, since I had plans that didn’t include anybody from around here. Then there was Rusty Smith, an old school chum who claimed to be an environmentalist but who had made millions selling North Florida coastal scrub to developers. Oh, and let’s not forget Helen McAlister, a queenly member of the St. John’s County Chamber of Commerce, a good old gal who called black people “niggers,” Italians “wops,” Cubans “spicks,” Jews “kikes,” gays “fags.” If there was a racial slur anywhere within a ten-mile radius, she’d be sure to use it. And all of these people were going to laugh behind my back, telling one another they’d all known I’d be back, that there was no way no how I’d be able to hack it up north. I decided upon the first pair of jeans I tried on—they were brand-new and still smelled like the store. I checked my teeth for any residue of the toast I’d eaten for breakfast. I told myself it didn’t matter what anybody said. I had come home for Murmur. Only Murmur. My return had nothing to do with not hacking it.

  As I drove the fifteen minutes from Iris Haven to Salty’s I amazed myself. Why, on God’s green earth, was I this nervous? I was nearly a Ph.D. I’d nearly completed my dissertation. I’d nearly graduated from one of the finest schools in the country. I’d nearly married a very smart man. My eventual matriculation was a distinct possibility. And Salty’s was just a bar. A silly little bar given to me by my best friend, either as a joke or a ploy to bring me home. As I rounded the bend at Devil’s Elbow, I squarely settled into my dilemma. Murmur’s ghost could haunt me until doomsday and I’d be all right. She could cloud my peripheral vision with the memory of her laughter and infect my blood cells with incurable grief. Still, I’d forge on. I wasn’t scared of Murmur; I just wanted her back. But those other skeletons—they inspired fear, dread, self-loathing. I could feel them like a hot breeze on the back of my neck, rattling around, rising up from my past, demanding my attention, my time, my guilt. What did they want? Absolution? Forgiveness? Loyalty? I hit the tattered outskirts of Crescent Beach, fearing I could never appease them.