Two Sisters: A Novel (32 page)

“Are you kidding me?” Joanie said, agog.

Admittedly, it was a lot to swallow.
Pia believed this?
Muriel thought. Behind them a father with a low side part in his hair and ironed slacks said to his young son, “Makes sense to me. If it was
erosion
, where did all that dirt go?”

Joanie dug her fingernails into Muriel’s sweatered forearm. As they walked deeper into the Bible, she periodically stopped and blinked, silenced for perhaps the first time in her life. God’s master plan emerged before their eyes and ears. Seems He created dinosaurs on day six, the same day Adam and Eve came into being. Clearly a full day on God’s calendar. Scientists who used carbon dating to determine the age of a fossil were only wasting their time, a voice-over said. Why bother? If a dinosaur wasn’t small enough to wedge itself onto Noah’s ark, it was killed in the massive flood about four thousand years ago. Therefore even the very oldest dinosaurs were the same age as the oldest humans. They romped through the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve—their big slobbery pets. Should you wonder why human bones were never found with dinosaur fossils, the voice-over loop had an explanation: “It simply means they weren’t buried together. In the same way humans aren’t now buried with crocodiles.”

“Oh my God,” Muriel said out loud, flabbergasted to see that this version of creation was stated as
fact
. Not “Prepare to hear our theory or a fairy tale” but “Prepare to
believe
.” She thought back to the one word Pia used to explain it all: faith.

“Never let anyone tell you that you came from an ape,” the man with the hatchet hair part said to his impressionable son. “You came from
God
.”

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Muriel said, tugging Joanie’s sleeve.

“Right behind you, sister.”

On fast-forward, they snaked through the biblical maze—past a replica of Noah’s ark, past more animatronic dinosaurs (who themselves couldn’t fit into the ark), past Corruption Valley and a display of a porn-obsessed teen who obviously let the evils of secular society into his hormone-ravaged life—and emerged just as the planetarium show was scheduled to start. A brief one, apparently, since the entire universe was formed the instant God decreed, “Let there be light.” Furious, Muriel sputtered, “Do they simply
ignore
the fact that God gave humanity a brain and common sense? Does no one care that our teens rank among the lowest in math and science?”

They couldn’t leave the Creation Museum fast enough. In the car, Muriel set the GPS for the quickest route back to the sanity of the interstate. On the way, through the idyllic landscape of northern Kentucky, all she could think about was her mother and her sister and their God and Father Camilo and sin and lying and secrets and the depressing truth that there were none so blind as those who would not, under any circumstances, allow themselves to
see
.

Chapter 31

M
EERS
, O
KLAHOMA, WAS
the town where they spent night two. Well,
near
it anyway. Meers itself was in the middle of nowhere. Muriel had selected it because she’d seen an
America’s Best
episode on the Food Network about a restaurant there that served one of the best burgers in the country. Seven inches around, no frills like onions or relish, made from cattle grazing a few feet out the back window. How could they resist? They didn’t.

“Seriously off the hook!” Muriel said, biting into the best burger she’d ever eaten. The only thing better was the homemade peach cobbler they had for dessert.

On the way to the car, stuffed and drowsy, Muriel tossed Joanie the keys. “You’re up,” she said, so tired she was nearly asleep on her feet. Joanie gripped the keys in her cushioned palm and said, “I guess this is as good a time as any to mention that I don’t have a driver’s license.”

Muriel blinked. “You
lost
it?”

“By definition, to lose something, you need to have something.”

A quote mark formed on Muriel’s forehead. The sun was setting on the vast field of vegetation on either side of the dusty country road. She still felt the bumpy tire suspension in her arms. “You never
had
a driver’s license?”

“Who needs to drive in New York?”

Her mouth hanging open, Muriel slowly asked, “You know how to drive a car, right?”

Joanie replied, “I hear it’s like riding a bike.”

Muriel couldn’t believe her ears. “It’s nothing like riding a bike!” Then she stopped. “Wait a minute. I’ve never once seen you ride a bike.”

“I hear it’s like driving a car.”

After a muted moment, both women burst into laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t drive before we left on our
road
trip?”

“I knew you wouldn’t want to drive the whole way by yourself.”

“Well,
yeah.”

“And if you knew I couldn’t drive, you wouldn’t want me to come. You would have flown. Which would have meant changing planes and standing in your socks in those interminable security lines and feeling as graceful as a caught lover sneaking out the bathroom window.

“In the waiting area—like you were a
magnet
—a harried young mom with her crusty-nosed kid and his phlegmy cough would sit next to you and ask, ‘Could you please watch little Johnny for
one second
while I run into the restroom?’ Before you had a chance to say no—not that you ever would—Johnny would sneeze in that all-out, open-your-face sort of way that kids do and you would want to barf because you’d be quite sure his snot should be quarantined by the EPA.”

Muriel laughed out loud. In a gentle voice Joanie said, “I know you so well, baby girl. You’d suck it up and wipe the toxic waste off that kid’s face even if it meant using all the Sani-Cloths in your carry-on bag. The wipes you had slated for the headrest on the plane and the latch releasing the food tray. You would have to sit upright the whole flight, certain that the previous passenger had head lice. A migraine would develop toward the end of the flight when the only air in that sealed metal tube was recirculated farts and exhalations from strangers. Several of whom you smelled firsthand when nachos were unwrapped on the tarmac. The only blessed relief you might—
might
—possibly have is if you missed your connecting flight and had time to run to the snack store to buy more Sani-Cloths for twenty dollars a pack.”

Circling around the front of the rental car, Joanie put the keys back in Muriel’s hand, then squeezed them lovingly.

“You’re welcome,” she said, kissing her best friend’s cheek. “Besides, we’re practically there, right? Just a quick drive tomorrow through Texas.”

T
EXAS MIGHT AS
well have been the entire United States. It felt so endless, they gave up seeing a border sign halfway through the state. And they were driving across the thin part! For miles, they saw not an animal, not a tree, not a house, not a country store. Simply flat brown nothingness interrupted by an occasional rusty ranch gate leading nowhere. Both women were stunned into silence. Instantly and permanently, they understood that Texas was like no other place on earth. The
moon
, perhaps, but nothing remotely resembling the blue planet on which they lived.

“That explains it,” Joanie said, finally, shaking her head. Muriel knew what she meant. A politician from Texas
had
to view the world differently. How could he or she not? For one thing, the state is so huge it would be impossible not to feel like the biggest badass on the block. And with so much open space, how could Texans develop any real sense that they shared the country—the world—with others?

“There
are
cities somewhere in this state,” Muriel offered. “Beautiful cities like Austin and Dallas.”

Joanie scoffed. “Every member of Congress—from Texas to Alaska—should be required to live at least one year in a small Lower East Side co-op conversion. If you can amicably deal with a neighbor who leaves wet laundry sitting in the only washing machine all day, another who stinks up the building with cigarette smoke (
moi
), one who freaks out if you change your doormat, another who considers a bake sale a viable way to raise money for tax increases, and still another who lets her dog bark incessantly day and night—not to mention a prissy spinster who wants to fine everyone for every little infraction—well, you can pass any bill and broker any peace.”

Muriel snuffled up a laugh as Joanie lit her third cigarette of the day. She inhaled luxuriantly and blew the smoke sideways out the open window, where, of course, it immediately blew back in. Into the billow she said, “That bitch sends me one more fine notice and she can smoke my
ass.”

As it had in the first long stretch through Pennsylvania, the second through Ohio, and the third from Kentucky to southern Oklahoma, a road trance overtook Muriel. Not sleepy, she nonetheless felt a deep calm descend on her, like hot fudge over warm pound cake. As soon as Joanie settled into sleep, she stared out the windshield and watched the gray asphalt disappear beneath the wheels of the rental car. The lines in the highway passed her peripheral vision in flashes of white. As always, her mind wandered to Pia and the surreal fact that she would never grow any older. One day Muriel would out-age her. Never would Pia meet the man who would take Emma’s breath away or the child who would become her child’s heart.

Tears rose in Muriel’s eyes as they always did when she thought about the ordinary life her sister would miss: Christmas dinners, Will’s New Year’s Eve cruise around the Statue of Liberty, the scent of the lawn as the mower passed below her bedroom window, Emma’s next birthday and all the birthdays to follow. The simplicity of connection. Was is possible therein lay the meaning of life?

T
HEY ARRIVED IN
the midst of a thunderstorm unlike anything Muriel had ever seen. The heavens exploded in a deafening kitchen fight. Pots banging, dishes crashing to the floor, glasses hurled against a wall. The two women ran into the lobby of the hotel, but Muriel stood just inside the door and watched the sky, mesmerized. Lightning cracked the gray-black darkness and shook the air. It looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. The rain fell so hard, the lightning illuminated shiny cellophane sheets. Thunder rattled the windows and rumbled through her entire body. It was terrifyingly beautiful. Muriel couldn’t turn away even if she’d wanted to.

As abruptly as it had begun, the tyrannical storm stopped. Spent, its tantrum subsided. Calm descended into a silence so complete it felt as though Muriel’s ears were filled with cotton. “Sign from God,” she said quietly to herself. They had come a long way, but they were exactly where they were meant to be. She smiled. “Tomorrow, the sun will shine.”

Chapter 32

S
ANTA
F
E
, N
EW
M
EXICO
, sparkled like a prom queen. In the distance, jagged mountain peaks encircled the town in a snow-topped tiara. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains—blood of Christ—were an aptly named reminder of the city’s violent past. Each evening at sunset, they flared a fiery red.

Muriel awoke early, though it looked like midnight in the hotel room. Before she’d dozed off the night before, Joanie had shut the blackout drapes. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, Muriel could see her friend’s hazy outline in the next bed. She had the face of a pixie. The covers pulled tightly under her chin, she smiled in her sleep, looking impish, as if she was dreaming about romping through a forest full of chocolate trees.

Soundlessly, Muriel lowered her bare feet to the nubby carpet and crept into the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror was the first jolt of the day. Three days of road food and cigarette smoke had taken its toll. Her skin was pasty, her stomach pushed against the fabric of her pajama T-shirt. Since the first day’s barbecued ribs hadn’t yet fully left her system, she could feel them clinging to the insides of her arteries in quivering custardy blobs. The Meers cobbler, she could tell, was already nestled into the soft pockets of flesh at the top of both thighs.