The Problem with Murmur Lee

by Connie May Fowler

  I gritted my teeth. In my head I said, I’m sorry my parents died when I was not yet twenty. I love them. I’m sorry Murmur’s mom was a religious nutcase and her father acted distant. I love them. I’m sorry Murmur’s husband was a mean asshole. I don’t love him, but I sorta forgive him. I’m sorry I fell in love with a man who was already married, even though there was no way for me to know he was married. I love him. I’m sorry that Dr. Z has experienced so much pain—the loss of two great women. I love him. I’m sorry that Edith has never experienced romance. I’m sorry that she understands the responsibility of having snuffed out lives, that she knows anything at all about the Zen of murder. I love her. I’m sorry that Lucinda is fucked-up from top to bottom. I hope she can discover a way to be kinder to herself. I love her. I’m sorry that I have turned all of my disappointments in life into acts of self-loathing. I will try to begin to love myself. I’m sorry that Billy Joe Waddlesberg Speare is a narcissistic jerk. I’m sorry he ever met Murmur. I’m sorry that he is partially responsible for her death. I will try to love him, in the way of compassion. I am sorry for that little girl in the trailer, that she is lost and hurting and obviously in need of comfort. I do love her. I am sorry that Murmur is dead. I miss her. I am sorry that nothing I can do will bring her back. But I am grateful for having known her. She fed me. I love her.

  I finished this rosary of words and then I looked at Billy Speare and said with the conviction usually reserved for people of faith, “Listen to me. No one can absolve you. And there is no criminal justice brouhaha that will make up for your failings as a human being. So I’m not going to tell anybody what I know. But you have to do this. You have to send your daughter on home, because you are a lousy excuse for a caretaker and she doesn’t need to know about what has gone on between us today. That’s the first thing. Here’s the second. Listen to me, Billy Speare. This is important. Once she’s gone, you pack your shit and you get out. Never show your face here again. Never. Don’t let this place, this land and water that Murmur loved, be stained by your shadow. Not one more day. Don’t hurt us any more than you already have.”

  He stared at me. The demon Speare receded and the cowardly little boy returned. His lips trembled. His eyes shifted. He looked insane, him and that shaking face and that precarious white bandage.

  I leaned in close. I whispered, “I mean it, Speare. Hell hath no fury like a Harvard-educated redneck woman who’s just been jilted and who knows how to handle a knife and all the places to bury a body.”

  He looked over my head. I was scaring him to death. I could tell by the way his lips looked chalky. He stood up. I stood up. “Go on,” I said. “I’ll be back in the morning to make sure you’ve cleared out.”

  He opened his mouth to speak. I felt certain he was going to say he was sorry. I could not allow it.

  “Don’t you fucking dare.”

  He nodded. And he turned. And he made his way back into that trailer. He left his bottle behind. I emptied it on the ground and then tossed it. The thing went flying, end over end, zipping through the moss and landing with a low thud at the base of a palm.

  I heard a car pull up behind me. A horn honked. I spun around. A kid with sun-bleached hair yelled, “Hey, did you order a pizza?”

  “No. Try that trailer. I think they’re the only ones home.” The kid huffed, as if actually getting out of his Celica and walking ten feet required too much effort. I ambled by and got in my car. I was shaking, but I finally managed to get the key in the ignition. The boy pounded on Speare’s door, pizza box in hand. I didn’t wait to see who answered. I slid into reverse, and then I noticed the Murmur bird. It tried its wings three times—Caw! Caw! Caw!—and then ascended, snowy and clean, from its bough in the oaks and flew on silent wings, westward, over the river and beyond, to where the ancient oak hammock hugged the shore. I have no idea why, but I sat there and watched that bird grow smaller and smaller in the egg blue sky—the pizza boy watched, too—and once it was gone, I whispered, “Oh, my dear, dear Murmur Lee, God bless you.”

  Murmur Lee Harp

  At first light, the bird awoke. From its perch among the jade green leaves, it watched the world. Mist rose from the river. Clouds hung low, nearly touching the crown of the canopy. Dragonflies stitched the air and skimmers sliced the river’s rippling surface. Wind ruffled the bird’s white feathers. It felt good. The creature was, I believe, happy to be alive.

  Its cry tripped across the canopy and then the bird rose—as simple as smoke—into the fresh sky. It flew east, across the river, toward the ocean, and settled in a mossy oak grove it had favored the day before. When Billy Speare trundled out to his truck and sped away—towing his trailered boat behind him—the bird followed. It cruised the thermals whenever possible, but mainly it flew hard, keeping watch on Billy’s red truck and white boat, tracking them north on A1A, resting on an electric wire when Billy stopped at the Sunset Grill for breakfast. A half hour later, the bird followed him across Anastasia Island and the Bridge of Lions into town. It flew past the Castillo de San Marcos and Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum and the park where Charlee’s parents had taken her as a child to ride the carousel on Saturday mornings and then west and out of town. The bird did not stop shadowing Billy until the red truck eased onto I-95 and headed north. That was good enough.

  The bird spiraled once, twice, and then flew in the direction it had come from. It did not give in to hunger or thirst or fatigue. It did not stop flying until it arrived at an old house in need of a new roof on a street named Aviles. Parked in front of the house was a ’92 Dodge pickup with a FOR SALE sign taped to the windshield. The bird careened through a cross-hatching of maple branches and landed on a brick patio that was buckled, thanks to the root system of a nearby giant magnolia. A tall, gaunt man in rumpled gray pajamas shuffled out of the house and headed down the walkway to the street. His thinning hair was matted against his skull, leading me to believe he had not bathed in several days. A rough cough welled inside him. He paused, bent over, hacked. He straightened up and spit into the privet hedge. His veins crawled big and fat beneath pallid skin and his eyes were lightless. He unlatched the iron gate, reached into the newspaper box, and then, with his arms dangling at his sides, as if the short trip from the house to the street had been too trying, trudged back inside, coughing all the way.

  I had not seen Erik Nathanson in over five years. He was not a well man, nor any longer a handsome one. Cruelty had taken its toll.

  The bird continued on, beating its wings against the humid air, which had grown much warmer since first light. Despite its hollow bones and lithe body, the bird began to struggle on this journey south to Iris Haven. Its wing strokes became uneven and a sudden head wind threatened to knock it off course. On the outskirts of St. Augustine Beach, the bird floated to the earth and briefly sipped water that had collected in a pothole, thanks to a realty company’s ill-aimed sprinkler. But there was little time for rest, so again the bird rose up and cut a labored path through the sky.

  We flew against an unrelenting wind, and with each wing stroke, the sun grew stronger, hotter. Still, we did not stop. When we arrived at the inlet and Iris Haven, they were already gathered at the shore in front of my house. Charlee, Edith, Lucinda, Z, Hazel, Silas, Paul Hiers, Croley, and that young girl—tattooed all to hell and back—who was not, I knew, Billy Speare’s daughter. The bird circled high and wide, squawking a long, forlorn cry. No one noticed. Nor did they give so much as a glance in the bird’s direction when it landed nearly facedown in the soft wet sand. At the south end of the beach, a young couple lolled in the sun. Their dog barked and chased the incessant tide.

  My friends pulled themselves into a ragtag half circle. They listened, weeping, as Edith sang a mournful ballad in words none of us understood. But when Edith sang Piaf, the words didn’t matter. She spilled her pain and grief into every note. I listened with my soul wide open and I began to grieve—really grieve—for this world I’d lost. When Edith rang out the last piercing note,
Charlee went down the line with my favorite reed basket, which held cut flowers from my garden. Each person took a small floral bundle and then, one by one, offered a prayer or a wish or a loving thought and then tossed the flowers in the surf. Even the tattooed girl spoke. She said, “I didn’t know this Murmur Lee, but I wish I had. It sounds like she really rocked, and it totally sucks that she’s dead.”

  “Murmur Lee sat down in the back of Salty’s with me and talked about The Catcher in the Rye,” Croley said as he batted back tears. “I’ll never forget that conversation as long as I live.” And then he broke up and couldn’t go on. Silas slapped a ham-bone arm around his shoulders.

  As I listened to my friends say such sweet things, I wished I could join them in their tears. But fleshless spirits cannot cry. So all I could do was listen and watch and wish things were different.

  When they were done, Charlee pulled from her skirt pocket a small glass jar. She said, “Well, everybody, I think it’s time. We know that Murmur Lee loved this place—her family place—and that she loved each one of us. We’re not losing her by spreading her ashes. Maybe we are somehow getting closer to her. I don’t know. But I do believe she will remain with us, and not just in our memories. I mean, we’re talking about Murmur. With any luck, she’s going to haunt us the rest of our days. Zachary, will you read from the spell book while we spread the ashes?”

  “Certainly,” he said. She handed him my notebook, in which I jotted down all my cures, curses, and recipes. He opened it to a bookmarked page.

  “‘A Cure for the Blues,’ ” he read. Charlee unscrewed the lid—they had me and all my talismans in a jelly jar, for goodness sakes—held it at arm’s length, and slowly tapped the ashes.

  Z read in a firm, clear voice, his thick black hair on end in the wind: “‘Find a fern with new growth. Cut the young curled tendril with a knife that has been dipped in lemon water. Place the tendril against your heart. Tape it if you have to. And say these words: I am a gift to the universe. I am loved unconditionally by at least one person on this earth (say their name). No matter this current sorrow, my heart’s ease will be the knowledge that, just like the ancient ferns, I am always emerging, growing.’ ”

  As he read, the wind caught me—that old me—and there I went, my bones and tissues and ligaments and skin, blown to smithereens across the earth’s four corners.

  And then my friends gave me a wonderful gift. They sang “Amazing Grace.” In some ways, it was a have-to-sing tune. This was an ash-spreading service, after all. But still, the gesture moved me. Dr. Z held Charlee’s hand and got every word right. Lucinda slipped her arm around Silas’s waist and rested her head on his shoulder. Edith dabbed at her tears with a silk scarf, closed her eyes, threw back her head, and whispered the song. Hazel hung on to Silas and Paul Hiers as if she might faint. Croley and the girl looked at each other amid all that sadness, and I was fairly certain that before the next sunrise those two would have sex.

  When the song was finished, they hugged and cried some more and then made their way up to my house. As I watched them go, my sadness grew. I would miss the warmth of their living friendship. I would miss the soft press of lips on my cheek and the dewy promise of a lover’s breath against my neck. I would miss skin.

  Even after they were gone, I stayed focused on the house, knowing that my friends would mourn into the night. They would watch the sun stumble across the sky and the moon pull itself from the sea. They would stare at the breaking waves, hoping that their pain would soon grow small and manageable, like an origami bird they could carry in their pockets. But, too, there would be laughter. They would share old stories, mostly at my expense, and that’s when the pain would begin to sprout pretty little paper wings.

  The bird, the white one who had—at its own peril—carried me north and back again, remained on the beach all afternoon. We were alone except for the suntanned couple and their barking dog. In need of nourishment but too weak to fly, the bird stayed in the sand, fully aware that it was dying. In the salt wind and hot sun, its downy feathers became brittle and stiff. Its heart slowed as its breathing ran shallow. The world became blurred and dangerous, so the bird shut its eyes. Unlike me, it longed for death. I suddenly felt a great well of compassion. This creature deserved its rest. I didn’t care that in the past—in life—I had cursed the universe for not heeding my prayers. I tried again anyway: Please take this bird. Do not let it suffer one moment longer. I had barely mulled over the irony that I was praying for death, not life, when the sand began to shake and an awful uproar jangled the air. The dog was upon us. He tore into the bird, snapping its quilled feathers and puncturing the thin skin of its neck. The bird struggled. Even though it wanted to die, it still struggled. Its gut-sundered, panicked cry filled me and I was afraid. The dog ripped apart sinew and muscle and crushed the bird’s bones in its strong jaws. With one immense snapping blow, the dog cleaved open the bird’s chest and revealed to the hard sun its beating heart. When the bird’s breastbone snapped in two, I was released into the air. It was then that I knew my prayer had been answered and that the bird was dead. Still, the dog attacked. But I was free.

  The wind swept me into the dunes. I tumbled, end over end, through nettles and oats, eventually coming to rest betwixt the heart-shaped leaves of a railroad vine. That is where I stayed.

  As the evening grew long and still and the dew settled, another change took shape. I felt myself becoming root and stem, seed and soil. And that is when—finally! finally!—I knew where they were. Orchid Harp. Oster Harp. Iris Harp. Blossom Harp. Katrina Klein. They had become the beginnings of life long ago. And that is where I was headed: I would become a speck of energy pulsing inside the taproot of this vine. There was no choice. It’s what the world demanded: death and birth—the process of becoming—bonded forever in a single eternal heartbeat.

  I knew that come morning, my human consciousness would be no more. All the privileged gifts of humanity: no more. Voice, sorrow, guilt, grief, joy: no more. So I did the only thing a blithe spirit could: I hunkered down among the tender leaves and listened to the surf song. And I watched the moon slowly arc across the sky. And the constellations spill into the sea. And the shooting stars pierce the night’s infinite dome. I pushed with all my might, opening my spirit’s eye wider and wider, celebrating what would be my final truth: I loved this world.

  THE PROBLEM WITH MURMUR LEE

  by Connie May Fowler

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. On the frontispiece is a quote from John Berger: “There is never a single approach to something remembered.” What does that mean, in terms of this novel? Why do you think Connie May Fowler chose that quote? Discuss Fowler’s use of multiple narrators and multiple perspectives, and especially Murmur Lee as narrator after death.

  2. Aside from the first-person narration of the characters themselves, Fowler also intersperses written ephemera—diary entries, a shopping list, a note passed during childhood. What purpose do these scraps serve to the progression of the story and our understanding of Murmur Lee?

  3. Murmur Lee describes herself early in the book as “the lover to many men, a good friend to a well-chosen few, a daughter who’d been secretly wild but openly obedient, a mother who’d never stopped viciously mourning the loss of her only child, a woman who despite some tough breaks and lapses in judgment had made her own way in this world.” Is this an accurate description? Compare it to the “lessons I’ve learned since dying,” toward the end of the book. How has Murmur Lee’s perspective on herself changed?

  4. Birds appear over and over throughout the novel, from a swan feather on the first page to a seagull on the last. Why? What do the various bird images mean to you?

  5. Murmur Lee is a witch, and her status is presented very matter-of-factly throughout the book. Why do you think she began to practice witchcraft? Did it have anything to do with her religious upbringing? Do you believe in the power of spells?

  6. Discuss Murmur Lee’s experience with childh
ood religious visions. As she says in the chapter "Disgrace: Murmur Lee Harp Reveals the Apex of Her Sainthood": “How astounding to be the focus of my mother’s ecstatic passion, how bone-breaking delicious to be the object of her approval!” How much of Murmur Lee’s seizure do you attribute to medical causes and how much to the desire to please her mother? What effect did they have on her as an adult, aside from the obvious one?

  7. Charlee Mudd left the South behind, hoping to transform herself into a Northerner. Was she successful? In what ways did she fail? And what about the novel itself—would you consider it a “Southern” novel?

  8. The circumstances of Murmur Lee’s death are questioned and discussed throughout the novel, and the truth is revealed only at the end. Does that make this a mystery? How does the novel fit into the conventions of classic mystery writing, and how does it break them?

  9. According to Murmur Lee, her great-great-grandfather named their island Iris Haven after the Greek goddess of the rainbow, but without realizing that Iris also “had one hell of a job: She received the souls of dying women.” Murmur Lee asks early in the book, “Did his ignorant foray into the world of nomenclature curse this place? Is that why we keep dying out here, again and again, so young?” What do you think of Murmur Lee’s assessment of the situation? Is it possible for a name to curse a place like that?