The Trojan War Museum

by Ayse Papatya Bucak

  Edie pulled out her camera.

  “Is that why you wanted to come here?” Michael asked as she took photos of each gravestone. “To put this in your game?”

  “It’s not a game,” Edie said. “It’s a simulation.”

  “Are you putting these people in your simulation?” Michael asked.

  Edie put her camera down and looked at him. “Do you think I shouldn’t?”

  “I think you shouldn’t,” Michael said.

  “Okay,” Edie replied. She wanted to ask what she’d done wrong, but she was too embarrassed to admit she didn’t know.

  THEY DIDN’T TALK for a long time after that. Edie checked his blog day after day, but he never posted a thing.

  “ARE YOU SCARED?” Edie asked her grandmother.

  Mrs. Coxe shook her head, paused, then said, “Sometimes. It’s like coming to the last pages of a great book. I want to read faster, but I don’t want it to end.”

  Edie was scared. But who wanted to admit that?

  “I’m glad I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Mrs. Coxe said. “I’m glad there’s still one mystery left—right up until the end.”

  “Something to look forward to,” Edie said, though immediately she regretted it.

  But Mrs. Coxe nodded. “Finally I’ll know something,” she said, and Edie smiled.

  “You want me to haunt you?” Mrs. Coxe asked, and Edie said, “Sure, if you want to.”

  IT WAS THEN THE DNA results came, and Edie sat her grandmother on the couch to explain again what she’d done. “This is your DNA,” she said as she handed the envelope to Mrs. Coxe for her to open, though when Mrs. Coxe struggled, Edie took it back again. That’s how things were then: Edie wanting her grandmother to be capable but then lacking the patience to let her grandmother complete any task. It wasn’t all good what Edie was learning about herself.

  “What do you think we are?” Edie asked as she pulled out the piece of paper.

  Mrs. Coxe shrugged.

  “This is your DNA,” Edie said again and then again. But Mrs. Coxe just shrugged.

  “Look at that,” Edie said, pointing toward a slice of the DNA pie chart.

  “Hmm,” Mrs. Coxe said.

  Edie didn’t know it yet, but whatever she was trying to do for Mrs. Coxe was too late. The grandmother she knew was already gone.

  Edie looked at the papers herself. Europe, Asia, Africa.

  She knew she was romanticizing. Still, she liked it.

  She reached for Mrs. Coxe’s hand, and Mrs. Coxe let her take it.

  Coffinman, August 25, 2015

  People often die at dawn, you know. Or at the changing of the tide. Morticians and midwives—woken in the night.

  Sometimes I get to bury someone who lived a long life in which they loved and were loved. The friends and family left behind grieve, and I do not underestimate their sadness and their loss, but I envy them the purity of their grief. No anger over the circumstances, no sense of injustice, no feeling that life is unfair. I hate when people say, “No regrets”—as if we should forget all our screwups. I have a million regrets, and I’m not even thirty. I’ve done people wrong (if it was you—sorry), of course I have. You have, too! And you should regret it! But regrets don’t have to ruin you.

  Regretting is not the same as grieving. Grief is accepting what you can’t change. Regret is accepting what you can.

  But why does change have to be so hard?

  Coffinman, August 26, 2015

  That was a tease. Stupid. What I’d change, what I want to change, will change, is how I take myself out of the world. I spend too much time alone. I choose to spend too much time alone. I sometimes think I am most myself alone—but it’s easy to be good and noble and true when nobody is bothering you. Who you really are is who you are when other people are bothering you.

  (joke) (kind of)

  The one thing I know, working the job that I do, is while it might be okay to breathe your last breath alone—maybe preferable—you don’t want to do your dying alone, and the people who do your dying with you, who don’t desert you, who, in fact, embrace you—those people are your people. Doesn’t matter what they look like or how much money they have or who they voted for, doesn’t matter what their favorite movie is or what they did to you when you were young . . . those are your people.

  MY NEW APPA-LATCH-IAN HOME, AUGUST 30, 2015

  I’ve been reading about the Melungeons—which I’m one of. Which means some of my ancestors were black—confirmed by DNA! Not to be flip—I am well aware that my ability to adopt a symbolic ethnicity without any consequence is an aspect of my white privilege. (that sounded pretty smart, right?) (it’s true though.)

  Anyway, the Melungeons had it rough, I gotta say. They were moonshining, horse-thieving, six-fingered, flying, dirty-kneed witches according to everyone who wasn’t one of them. And worst of all, down here at least—they were inhospitable. But wouldn’t you be if people were taking away your right to vote, stealing your land and kidnapping and sterilizing your women? Not surprising that Melungeons claimed to be Portuguese or Turkish when that made them white, which got all their rights back. Made sense back then. Not so much now. You’re black, people, accept it.

  What a world.

  But Obama, right? I mean, progress, right?

  “YOUR SISTER READ YOUR BLOG,” Edie’s mother told her.

  “Great!”

  “She’s listening to rap music now.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Silence.

  “Mom, is that a problem?”

  “No, it’s just weird.”

  “I mean, you’re not a racist, right, Mom?”

  “Of course not. You know that.”

  “And you wouldn’t mind if my boyfriend was black, right, Mom?”

  “Of course not. I’m a Democrat.”

  Edie laughed.

  “Is your boyfriend black?” her mother asked.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend, Mom. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t a racist.”

  “I’m from New York!” her mother said, and Edie laughed again.

  THEN EDIE FOUND TRIXIE’S BODY. Maybe. What was left of it, of something. And she didn’t know what to do, so she called Michael.

  “I think maybe my dog is dead,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, no hint of annoyance or surprise in his voice, no residual of their last meeting lingering in his tone. “But you shouldn’t give up hope. There’s so much she could survive on out here. You still might find her.”

  “No. I think I did find her. I think . . .” Edie swallowed hard. “I think a coyote got her. Or a bear.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In back of my grandma’s house. I think maybe Trixie tried to come back and . . . I’m sure it’s my fault, that bear . . . I think it’s my fault.”

  “Stay there,” Michael said. “Keep any animals away.”

  There was fur of the right color, bones of the right size, viscera of all kinds—the common dominator that could belong to anything, any body. But it made sense for Trixie to be there. Something had torn up the remains, eaten its share. It was an awful sight, and Michael spared Edie most of it. He gathered everything in his gloved hands, put it all in a biodegradable bag, and then dug a hole as deep as he could with a shovel Edie found in her grandmother’s leaning-over shed.

  It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for Edie, but afterward, she couldn’t stop crying, and finally Michael left her alone in her grandmother’s arms.

  “Child,” Mrs. Coxe kept saying, “oh child. What are we going to do with you?”

  THAT NIGHT EDIE texted Michael and asked if she could come over. And he said yes and she did, and she walked right into his arms and kissed him, and he put his hand up along her back, under her shirt, and God knows, a feeling went right up her.

  EDIE DIDN’T TALK to Michael for a long time after that. He texted and he called, and finally she said she wanted a little space because she’d
been hurt in the recent past, and her grandmother was dying, and her dog just died, and she didn’t know what she was doing really, was that okay, and all he did was write back: yes.

  SO WHY DID SHE do what she did?

  MY NEW APPA-LATCH-IAN HOME, SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

  I have discovered the best cure for a broken heart:

  the world.

  You lie on the ground and you let it all in.

  Also, sex doesn’t hurt.

  SHE SHOULD HAVE DELETED that last bit. Really she should have.

  The unexpected ex called her then. Of course he did. He wasn’t immune—he wanted to be missed and mourned and never gotten over. At least for a little longer.

  On the phone, Edie cried

  and cried

  and cried.

  How embarrassing.

  Also, her mother yelled at her. “Your Sister. Is Reading. Your Blog,” she said.

  “Cordelia knows about sex, Mom,” Edie said. But still, she understood.

  And, Michael. He mattered to her, and she was suggesting he didn’t, and she knew he was reading, and she knew she would hurt him. So, why did she?

  In truth, she didn’t understand her own feelings. Was it Michael she liked or some idea of him? Or, worse, some idea of herself?

  Coffinman, September 20, 2015

  I get a hard time for being single. You know, a dude with his own business, a not totally terrible-looking dude. A credit to my family and all the rest. At least so the grandmas tell me. But life is easier alone. Isn’t it?

  I have seen more than my share of grieving spouses.

  “IT WAS JUST A JOKE,” Edie texted him, but he didn’t text back, not even to say, “What was?”

  EDIE MEANT TO CALL HIM, she knew she had to call him, wanted to even. But she didn’t. And she didn’t. And she didn’t.

  Then, strangest of all, somehow completely unexpectedly, Mrs. Coxe died.

  When the moment came—how to explain it from the outside? The only perspective that matters is the one we can never have.

  Mrs. Coxe was dead. And what do the dead care about death?

  IT WAS EARLY, not even eight a.m., but Edie called her father, then her mother, then Michael. She had no idea what she said to him really, but seemingly within minutes he was there, in the living room, with dry ice.

  I hope I get a life, I hope I get a full life, Edie thought to herself. As if she hadn’t had one already. Ingrate, she thought to herself.

  “Do you want to keep her in the bed for now?” Michael asked. “Or bring her out front?”

  “I think it’s cooler in the bedroom,” Edie said. “Is it hot out here? It feels hot.” In her imagination, she had anticipated that she would be sad but calm, capable, able to execute the plan they had all spoken of without worry. But she felt panicked. Panicked and embarrassed by her panic. Death was a horror, a nightmare, she could not face it, she hated to face it. She had left Mrs. Coxe alone so fast she had to force herself back into the room, to make certain she was really dead.

  “Perhaps we should take a moment. Let’s sit for a moment, maybe in silence?” Michael suggested.

  Edie nodded, and she and Michael sat on the couch, each taking the other’s hand without even a thought, and Edie took a breath, so deep she knew he could hear it, but that seemed okay, Michael had become something to her, and maybe he had forgiven or never blamed her, or maybe he was just being nice because her grandmother died, but he was there, and she held his hand tight. Black white black white, their hands together. Of course she noticed. Noticing was okay. Wasn’t it? She held his hand tighter.

  In truth, Michael could forgive the living almost anything; it was something he’d learned from the dead.

  They decided to leave Mrs. Coxe in her bed, until Edie’s father could arrive that night and make what decisions he cared to. They packed her body in dry ice, and they arranged her clothes, and Michael tied her chin. And then, without even a pause, he kissed Mrs. Coxe on the cheek, and just like that, Edie’s heart opened wide.

  If her ex hadn’t broken up with her, she would have gone west; Edie wouldn’t have chosen her grandmother over him, she wouldn’t even have considered it.

  Good things born of bad. Edie could make a whole list if she had to. We all could, couldn’t we?

  She looked at her grandmother then. Her grandmother’s body. Tied and tidied, an empty look on her face, not so much peaceful as absent. It was easy to see—her grandmother was gone.

  A calm came down. Death was gone. Only the body remained.

  “Now she knows something,” Edie said, and Michael smiled.

  Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t.

  Edie and Michael would marry one day. They have to, don’t you think? Not for a long time, but eventually. It wouldn’t always be easy—for the little reasons and the big ones, so much would happen in the years to come, the world to come. Still, they made it. One day there were children then grandchildren then great-grandchildren, until another day, death.

  Edie would tell you it is life that needs looking after, not lives. The big picture.

  Michael would say the opposite. Life, he thinks, ignores too much. Lives, after all, are not the same.

  But either way—there through it all, forever and ever, in a virtual Appalachia, on a connected corridor, just outside the People’s Burial Ground, is a small hut containing one never-ending grandmother and a bicolored border collie with a rough double coat—company for each other and company for us—at least as long as the power lasts.

  THE TROJAN WAR MUSEUM

  The first Trojan War Museum was not much more than a field of remains. Dog-chewed, sun-bleached, and wind-blown bones, some buried, many burnt—but the Trojans prayed there, mourned their dead, told tales of their heroes, asked penance for their mistakes, pondered their ill fortune, poured their libations, killed their bulls, etceteraetceteraetcetera. There were not a lot of Trojans left; but, all the same, they hoped for a better future, and they believed in the gods, so they made sacrifices. Children, cattle, women, you name it.

  Enter Athena. Motherless daughter, virgin version, murderer of Hector and Ajax and Arachne, at least a little bit.

  The dead added to the dead, she said, what do they expect us to do?

  Whatever the Trojans may have expected or hoped for, the gods did nothing.

  The first Trojan War Museum was abandoned after a flood, a fire, an earthquake, not necessarily in that order.

  The dark came swirling down. The city disappeared. Again.

  SING TO ME NOW, you Muses, of armies bursting forth like flowers in a blaze of bronze.

  SOLDIER: I begged for sleep, and if not sleep, death. I was willing to settle for death. Then again, I’ve never felt more loved.

  He looked at his father, a veteran; his grandfather, a veteran; his uncle, a veteran; his sister, a veteran; and he saw his future foretold, no different than birds and snakes foretelling nine more years of war.

  Think: museums turn war to poetry. So to poets. So to war.

  You know, Athena forgot Odysseus was out there.

  O Muses.

  THE SECOND TROJAN WAR MUSEUM was built in approximately 951 B.C., upon the site of the first Trojan War Museum, after Apollo—boy-man beauty, sun-god, far-darter, Daphne-destroyer-and-lover-too—looked upon the empty plain dotted with the same old bones—more bleached, more burnt, more buried, more chewed—and declared it a ruin of a ruin and a dishonor.

  They are forgetting, he told Zeus. We must make them remember.

  Zeus—master of the house, lord of the lightning.

  You’re not wrong, Zeus said.

  A museum run by gods is unusual, of course.

  Ares argued for an authentic experience and so there was a room where one in ten visitors was killed and another in which vultures and maggots devoured the flesh of the rotting dead while dogs licked up their blood then turned upon each other.

  The second Trojan War Museum did not last long.

  The dark came swirling d
own. Again.

  SOLDIER: I HAD A MORE ORDINARY WAR. I feel lucky, really. Though sometimes, when I talk to other soldiers, I feel like it wasn’t a real war and so I’m not a real soldier.

  Think: would you rather be told how to use what you’ve got or be given what you want?

  Think: would you want Achilles’s choice or wouldn’t you?

  Think: glory?

  History: a place for tourists to visit.

  But what else could it be, really? The ever-present present?

  THE THIRD TROJAN WAR MUSEUM was built on Mount Olympus in the approximate year of 602 B.C., when Zeus—suddenly angry at the shifted tides of man’s attention—gathered to the cloud-white mountaintop those Trojan War mementos that were readily at hand. (He was never one to go out of his way.) Known first as Zeus’s Museum or Zeus’s Junk Drawer, the collection only evolved into what came to be known as the third Trojan War Museum under the guidance of the more circumspect Athena—gray-eyed woman-warrior of wisdom.

  The museum labels provided insight into Athena’s opinions. Achilles’s armor, for example, was identified as “Odysseus’s armor, won from Ajax after the death of its former owner, Achilles.” The last item listed, and the culmination of Athena’s display, was noted only as: Horse comma Wooden. (Historians joke that Zeus brought the horse to Olympus in twenty-two pieces and Athena put it together in twenty, just to show she could.)

  Visitors were naturally limited to those with access to Mount Olympus, and so there were none. Enter again Apollo, literally, into the belly of the great wooden beast. Night and day, day and night, Apollo lay inside, golden knees curled to golden chest, as if he did not consider himself alone but, rather, crowded in with the men who had last huddled there, plotting brutality for the sake of civility. Apollo was interrupted only once when Poseidon—splitter of the sea, cracker of the coast, brother to the boss—popped his head up and in, swiveled it round, looked upon his nephew, and withdrew without comment.