by Laura Tucker
I was impressed, and I said so.
“Ray Harryhausen says—” Richard started, stopping to scowl at Alex, who was making a face. Ray Harryhausen designed the monsters for Clash of the Titans, which Richard has seen twelve times.
Ignoring Alex, Richard continued. “Ray Harryhausen says that when you’re designing a monster, you have to think about the way a lion can look noble or terrifying or even cute, depending on what’s it doing.” He stopped to see if we were making fun of him, then continued. “He says if an audience can’t imagine your monster sleeping, then you haven’t made a real monster.”
“Then you have indeed made a real monster,” Apollo said, and Richard dropped his head with a shy smile. I was happy for him. His Khepri maquette was excellent work.
Alex’s bunny mummy, on the other hand, was a complete disaster.
I couldn’t do anything but stare at it. Nobody else said a word, either. I think we were too impressed by the sheer awfulness of it to speak.
The rabbit looked even more deranged than it had before Alex wrapped it in layers of saggy toilet paper, grey from his dirty hands. For some reason, it was wearing a bandit’s mask, so that it looked like Zorro, if Zorro had been terribly burned in a garbage can fire, then bandaged up in Scott brand single-ply.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Our silence made Alex aggressive. “See? It’s got a death mask,” he said, poking at its eye area. “Like King Tut.”
A traitorous bubble of laughter rose in my chest. I pushed it down.
Apollo opened his mouth, then closed it again. He believes in being diplomatic, but he doesn’t like to lie. Finally he said, “Your greatest talents, Alex, are in the realm of the physical. Perhaps next time you should research Egyptian movement. They were great martial artists, I believe.”
One of the bunny mummy’s nylon whiskers was sticking out, like it was smoking a cigarette. I put my hand in my jeans pocket to stop myself from tucking the whisker back in.
The big bubble of laughter down below sent a little exploratory giggle up to my throat to see if it was safe to come out yet.
I fought it down again, only barely this time.
Then the worst thing happened. Richard took the bunny reverently from Alex and held it up out in front of himself, nodding and turning slowly like he was an Egyptian priest. “Thank you, Alex,” he said in a solemn voice. “You have speeded this rabbit’s journey to the afterlife.”
Alex looked furious. The big bubble percolated up in my chest again, treacherous this time.
Then Alex shook his head and the corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. Even that little bit of encouragement was dangerous, and I bit my cheek hard, still not sure it was okay to laugh.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Apollo let rip a huge, snorting guffaw at the exact moment that I made eye contact with Richard.
After that, there was no turning back. I laughed until I cried, until my stomach hurt, until I wished I could stop so I could get a proper breath. Richard put his head down on the stainless table, shoulders shaking, strange animal sounds coming from underneath his hands. Every time I’d start to wind down, I’d look over at Apollo, bent over with his hands on his knees, tears streaming from his eyes, and I’d be right back where I started: gasping for breath and trying not to wet my pants.
The whistle of the kettle only made us crack up harder. Alex looked back and forth between the three of us and the mummified rabbit in amazed irritation, and when Apollo lay down, weeping with laughter and kicking his heels against the floor of the studio, Alex took the bunny and chucked it at him.
It didn’t seem to hurt a bit.
* * *
The smoking bunny mummy joined us for tea, of course.
Still wiping his eyes, Apollo pulled a carton of milk out of the little fridge where he and my dad keep some of the more delicate adhesives, putting it down next to the chipped white sugar bowl which was marked, like everything else in the studio, with little dabs and fingerprints of paint. He put out a sleeve of Pecan Sandies, too. Alex always searched, but he never could find Apollo’s secret cookie stash. I made sure to snake my hand in there to score three before the boys grabbed them all.
It had taken us all a while to calm down. My belly ached from laughing, and there was a clear, light feeling in my chest that hadn’t been there before.
When the pot was empty, Richard set his cup to the side and cleared his throat significantly.
“We’re trying to solve a mystery,” he said to Apollo.
Apollo said, “Of course. A young man will take on any challenge to win the heart of a beautiful maiden.” He winked at me, then at Alex.
Alex practically fell backward in panic.
“Wait, what? No, that’s not it at all.”
Richard, who has an easier time telling when Apollo is teasing, picked up the ball. “Is that your personal quest, Apollo? To find a beautiful maiden?”
“Well, sure,” he said, smiling. “Always. But surely you know that it is not the point to solve the mystery—to find the missing statue or the blueprints or even the beautiful maiden. The search for her sets the plot in motion, but finding her is never really the point.”
Alex looked exasperated. “If the point of the mystery isn’t to solve the mystery, then what is?”
Apollo looked into the chipped mug still wrapped in his mammoth hand. “The mystery, my friend, provides an opportunity for the hero to find out who he is.” He inclined his head in my direction apologetically. “Who she is.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Alex said peevishly, but I wasn’t sure.
“It’s a way for a hero to find out what’s really, truly important,” Apollo explained, in the dangerous tone that usually meant he was settling into a lecture. But I was wrong. Suddenly, he was wearing the same sad, handsome look on his face I’d seen when we were at Hwa Yuan. “Which might be something as simple as finding a way to be in the world without causing harm to yourself or other people.”
I looked at Alex and Richard, but they looked as confused as I felt. We weren’t getting anywhere. The mummified bunny, propped up against the paint-scarred sugar bowl, tilted dangerously to one side.
Maybe the stupid rabbit was Apollo’s True Lost Love.
Impatient with all of them, I got up to take my cup to the sink. This roundabout questioning was a dead end. If we couldn’t figure out how to get Apollo talking about his True Lost Love, then I might as well get back to work. The boys were done with their projects already, but I had a couple of hours left for sure.
On the way back over to my workspace, though, I practically tripped over a box sitting, ready to go, by the door. This was unusual. The studio might look like a mess, but it’s actually quite orderly; everything has a place, even if it’s paint-spotted. Apollo would never leave a client’s work out in the middle of the floor, and it wasn’t a supply delivery; those always went to the table by the far wall if they couldn’t be unpacked right away.
I knew I shouldn’t pry, but my curiosity got the better of me. Taking a quick look around to make sure Apollo was still sitting with the boys at the table, I eased a finger under one of the flaps.
There were jars in the box, twenty or thirty of them, each of them with a label written in Apollo’s spiked black handwriting.
Jars, filled with pigments. A box of colors.
The blood rushed in my ears. Still squatting, I looked quickly at the pantry in the corner. The bottom five shelves were bare.
He was packing up his colors. And if I knew anything, I knew this: If his colors were going, Apollo was going, too.
DRAW WHAT YOU SEE
I hardly even noticed when Richard and Alex said goodbye before heading home. I still had work to do, even if the upside-down feeling in my belly showed no signs of going away.
Apollo had put his
Walkman back on after he’d cleaned up the tea things, and was back at work on the triangle painting. I could hear trumpet leaking out from around his headphones.
I headed back to my workspace and leaned in to arrange the pieces I’d made.
I placed my desk against the wall of the clean white painted box and my bed under the window, exactly as they were upstairs. I’d made myself an open notebook, which I put on the floor, plus a box of Blackwings. Apollo always made sure I had a fresh box of pencils, but I figured he’d probably have better things to think about in the afterlife.
Not to mention that I couldn’t be sure he was going to stick around.
I’d also made a tiny toothbrush and a full tube of toothpaste, because I hate, hate, hate going to bed without brushing my teeth. If the Field of Reeds was going to be like real life except without anything to worry about, then I needed to bring a toothbrush, or that feeling would bug me for eternity.
I had the basics: an afterlife survival kit. But the model still didn’t feel done.
I unwrapped a new piece of modeling clay, working it between my fingers to soften it.
I’d seen an orange bike with a banana seat and streamers on the handlebars in a movie once; I could bring one of those. (Bikes probably didn’t get stolen in the Field of Reeds.) I could make a chest, spilling over with a million dollars in gold coins. I could make Alex a Pac-Man arcade game, like the one at Joe’s Pizza. Actually, if Alex was going to visit, I should probably make a whole stack of pizza boxes and a freezer filled with ice cream.
I pushed the clay into different shapes as the ideas came, but nothing worked—probably because I didn’t want to bring a bike, or a million gold coins, or a whole afterlife’s worth of pizza.
What I wanted to bring was my mom and dad.
I could picture exactly how I’d make my mom’s long red curls, my dad’s stubbly face and faded jeans, the three of us sprawled on the couch watching the Saturday night movie with our sock feet touching. But my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The figures I made, over and over again, turned out thick and misshapen—ugly little dolls. They didn’t look like my parents at all.
I closed my eyes in frustration and thought about what my dad would say if a drawing I was working on wasn’t working.
“Really look,” he’d say. “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.”
I tossed the ball of clay onto the stainless worktable, where it landed with a flat thunk. That was why I couldn’t make my parents watching TV with me like they wanted to be a family, forever and ever—because it wasn’t true.
Why would they want to be together in the afterlife, when they didn’t want to be together in real life? They weren’t happily watching TV on a Saturday night with me, feet up on the steamer trunk. My mother had gone to bed, and my dad was on the lam, a criminal.
I thought about the phone, fruitlessly ringing out into the vast space of the studio. I thought about my mom, unmoving in her bed upstairs. I saw the forgery expert’s business card, dropping to the stained concrete.
And then, for one horrible moment, I allowed myself to imagine what my life would be like if Apollo left me, too. The loneliness that crowded in was almost unbearable. The dizziness that had made me feel like I was going to fall through the wood floor rushed at me, so that the ground felt like it was falling away.
I opened my eyes and picked up the clay again.
I didn’t want my parents with me in the afterlife if they weren’t going to be happy. But I did want them with me.
On the bus ride back from the museum, Lady Day had told me that poorer Egyptians who couldn’t afford full-on models drew symbols on the walls of their tombs to represent the things they wanted to bring. They might paint a picture of a cow to represent meat, for instance, or a stringed instrument to guarantee that they’d have music in the afterlife.
I stretched my back again, rolling my neck and shoulders, and then I quickly shaped a little coffee cup with the outline of a Greek temple on it, like the one on the WILD TIMES poster. I rolled out another little tube of clay and made a can of Tab, the distinctive logo etched into the side. (This came out even better than I’d hoped.)
After those were done, I made a tiny replica of Apollo’s favorite teapot, the one with the hay-colored stripes and the straight, sloping sides. Then I lined the three symbols up on the model’s miniature desk.
I took my brush and tools over to the double sink to let the warm water run over them. I massaged the stuck bits of clay off with my fingers, watching as it turned to reddish-brown mud and ran down the drain. I wiped the wide stainless-steel table, then used the heavy broom to sweep a pile of discarded clay bits into the dustpan, leaning the handle against my shoulder to steady it. I cleaned until everything was orderly again and it was time to go.
At the door, I stopped to look back at Apollo, who was still working on the triangle painting and occasionally playing an invisible solo along with the music pumping out of the bright yellow Walkman clipped to his belt. When you’re on a roll, my dad says, it’s best to see it through.
He gave me a smile and a wave goodbye, and I waved back. All I could do was hope that I wasn’t saying goodbye to him forever.
LEAVE IT
School on Thursday was hard. I couldn’t concentrate on a thing anyone said.
The thought of Apollo leaving filled my brain, pushing out all the other thoughts. Where was he going? Why was he going away? Was it because my dad had deserted him?
Was it because of what my dad had done?
The third time Ms. Colantonio caught me spacing out, she sent me to the nurse’s office. I told the nurse that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, but she said I didn’t look right and put me on her cot to rest. I lay there and painted the pieces for my model in my mind while she did paperwork and gave out Band-Aids and checked a third grader for lice. It was pretty relaxing, actually, and I felt a little better by dismissal.
I rushed back to the studio after school, ready to paint. Apollo wasn’t there, but he’d left a note on the door saying it was okay for me to go in without him. I went downstairs and got the key from the nail in the wall by our front door. But before I could get back to work on my model, I knew I had to go in to see my mom.
I sat on the couch for a little bit to gather my courage. Every day, it had gotten harder to go in there and pretend that everything was okay. Sometimes I even thought it would be easier to let her door stay closed. But some part of me knew it wouldn’t, not really.
So I stood up, took a deep breath, and made myself open the door to her room.
The figure in the bed was faded, bleached out, like the cover of a book left on the windowsill too long.
“Mom,” I whispered, but she didn’t stir.
I sagged in the doorway. The room was a disaster. Litter covered the floor in drifts. There was a smell, too, of unclean sheets and full ashtrays and something else I couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Leaning there against the door jamb, a vision of Dr. Charles flashed into my head, the way she’d run her palms over the immaculate counter, checking for any last sneaky crumbs. “Kitchen closed,” she’d said with a smile at me before turning out the cozy light over the stove.
Maybe I couldn’t make my mom get up out of bed, but I could make it a little nicer for her to be in there.
Charged up with energy suddenly, I got a couple of deli bags from my dad’s stash under the kitchen sink. As quietly as I could, I emptied the big ashtrays by my mom’s bed. Ashes rose out of the bag in a grey cloud, covering my tongue with grit. When the first bag was full, I tied it tightly at the top and filled another one with Tab cans and empty cigarette packs and tissues, and then another. My mother didn’t move.
Once I could see parts of the floor again, I started to enjoy myself. Cleaning made me feel brisk and efficient and competent, like a nurse in the war movies I used to
watch with my dad, the kind of person who would go around saying things like “You’ll be right as rain in no time, Corporal.” I could almost see my crisp white uniform, feel the bounce of my clean curls under a tiny cap.
“A breath of fresh air, that one,” I imagined an old-timer with one leg saying appreciatively as I carried the dirty dishes and old coffee cups and glasses into the kitchen. Some of the dishes had been sitting there for so long that the gunk at the bottom had hardened like paint. I filled the bottom of the sink with hot soapy water so they could soak.
It felt so good to be doing something that I tried not to think about the way those movies always ended: with the brave, kind nurse coming in one morning to find an empty bed, sheets neatly folded where the corporal used to be.
When I went back into my mom’s room, the stale fug in the air hit me again. With a little grunt, I got the sticky window open a crack.
My mom woke up with a start.
“Leave it, for God’s sake,” she mumbled. “Just leave it.” She didn’t take her face out of the pillow to look at me.
I tried to sound upbeat. “It’s no trouble. I thought I’d tidy up a little.”
There was no answer from the bed.
I tried again, my cheerful voice cracking a little. “It’s gotten pretty stuffy in here.” And I leaned over to pick up a stained white T-shirt from where it was lying in a tangle under the bed.
“Leave it,” she hissed, raising up halfway on her elbows.
Rage distorted her face. She looked like she hated me.
For a minute it looked like she was going to hit me, and the shock of it pushed me back. Then I wished she would; it would have been worth it, to see her get up. But she dropped back onto the greasy pillow, her face in a crumple, and I looked away fast so I wouldn’t have to see her so scared.