Unfinished Muse

by R. L. Naquin

  After a few minutes, she inched forward a bit, then sat up, stretching her neck. I pressed my lips together hard to keep from laughing.

  Mom blinked at me through the thickest lenses I’d ever seen. Her eyes appeared to be three times the size of her head. “Wynter. When did you get here?”

  “A few minutes ago.” I stepped away from the wall I’d been leaning against. “Whatcha doin’?” I tried to keep my voice light and curious instead of loud and demanding.

  Everyone who met my mom thought she was adorable and eccentric. Try living with her for twenty-four years. Exhausting was a more fitting description after that long.

  Mom blinked her enormous eyes again and showed me the tweezers she held in her right hand. “I’m re-tufting the carpet. What else would I be doing?”

  What else, indeed.

  I squinted at the white shag carpet behind her and didn’t see any difference. “Looks great. You must’ve been working at it for a long time.”

  She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “I guess. What time is it?”

  I glanced at the clock over the fireplace. “Four thirty. I got out of work early.”

  “That’s nice. How are things at the bank? Did you get that promotion I told you to go for?” She pushed herself up from the floor, looking a little wobbly.

  I shook my head. “I left the bank months ago to work at that call center. Remember?”

  She stretched her arms in the air, then swung them side to side. “Okay. So how’s the call center going?”

  “I hated it and quit last week.” My stomach knotted at the look on her face. Here she was crawling around on the floor with binocular glasses and a pair of tweezers fluffing her carpet one tuft at a time. B. But I was the one who was the disappointment.

  She took her ridiculous glasses off and set them on a side table with the tweezers. “Oh, Wynter.” She sighed and perched on the edge of the sofa. “I didn’t change anything in your room. You can move back in anytime. But honestly, you’ve got to find something that makes you happy. Something you can stick to.”

  I held Phyllis close against my body and looked at my feet. “I found a new job already.”

  “Oh?” She didn’t look up at me while she busied herself with the very serious business of spreading her magazines across the coffee table in a perfect fan. “What are you doing now?”

  Should I tell her about my impossible new employer? What about the talking plant? Did she know about all that stuff? Surely she would have told me by now if she did.

  “I started training at an employment agency yesterday.”

  That made her look up, and I watched her face for any signs she knew what I was talking about.

  She frowned. “A temp agency isn’t a dependable source of income, Wynter. What if the work dries up? What if they have nothing for you?”

  “It’s not like that, Mom. It’s more like I’ll be working for the agency. It’s not temporary.”

  Mom gave me a long look, then shrugged. “You know best, I guess. I’ll keep your room waiting, just in case.”

  “Thanks.” My voice was quiet. She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, but she had. Hard to believe in yourself if even your mom expects you to fail.

  I set Phyllis on a table and sat in the stiff, pink satin chair in the opposite corner of the room from where Mom sat.

  She straightened the lace doily on the arm of the sofa. “Well, I hope you enjoy the new job. How’s Freddy?”

  I froze.

  I shouldn’t have come. Screw it. I’ll grab my talking plant and leave. Maybe Mom will forget I was ever here.

  In the end, I decided to ignore the question and pose one of my own, instead. “Mom, who’s my dad?”

  She tilted her head at me, a mild look on her face. “What an odd question, out of the blue like that. I’ve told you about him before.”

  Sure she had. And every damn time he was somebody different.

  “It was a security clearance question on my job application,” I said.

  “Oh.” She smiled and smoothed her yoga pants over her long, dancer legs. “Well, you know. He was a fireman named Vince. Vince Clothos. He died a hero, you know. Ran into a burning hospital and rescued twenty-three people—fourteen of them children—before finally succumbing to the flames.” She sighed for dramatic effect, a faraway look on her face. “He had beautiful eyes. Green. Like yours.”

  “Mom, my eyes are blue.”

  She didn’t alter her nostalgic expression. “Blue. Like yours.”

  Nope. Today was not the day I would get the true story of my conception. What I did know for sure, thanks to my new job, was that he was a Greek god—or at least a descendent. But had she known? She must have, raising me on Greek stories like she had. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  Could it?

  I moved to the couch and took one of her hands in mine. “Mom, was there anything…special about him?”

  She smiled. “Of course. He was very special.”

  “No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, did he have any special, uh, skills? Could he do anything you wouldn’t expect a person to be able to do?”

  She blushed all the way to her blonde roots. “Nothing I think we should talk about.”

  That was so not what I meant. I gave up. Maybe next time she’d slip up and give me something useful about my father. If he was only a descendent of a god and not the god himself, maybe he didn’t know anything about his lineage either. I sure hadn’t.

  I let go of her hand and tucked mine between my knees. “So. What made you decide to freshen up the carpet?”

  “Oh, it was about time, is all. They say you should really do it once every three years, at the very least.”

  What the hell kind of magazines is she reading? I glanced at the array of periodicals on the coffee table. Better Homes and Gardens probably advised a good steaming, but not the crazy operation she had going.

  Phyllis was silent through all of this. I picked her up and held her in my lap. She didn’t move, but her presence eased some of the tension I was feeling.

  Mom didn’t seem to think it was odd for me to be toting a houseplant around. Maybe she figured I was picking up some of her eccentricity.

  “Mom, do you believe in magic?”

  She gave me an odd look. “I believe in the magic of love. And the way my flowers bloom every spring. A baby’s laugh. Is that what you mean?”

  I scrunched my face in thought. “Not exactly. Like, magical creatures. The ability to fly. That sort of thing.”

  Her expression looked worried. “Are you feeling well, Wynter? You’re not coming down with something, are you? It’s too soon to call in sick at a new job.” She rose from the couch, hands fluttering. “Let me get you some Echinacea. I’ll juice you a pineapple and some ginger.”

  “No. Mom. I’m fine.” I tried to grab her as she brushed past me, but I missed. Shrugging, I got up and followed her into the kitchen. If Mom felt like I needed an immunity boost, she wasn’t going to stop until vitamin C leaked out my ears.

  I watched as she chopped the top and bottom off a pineapple, then cut away the skin and cored it before slicing it into spears. She rinsed a considerable chunk of ginger in the sink, as well as a pear, which she cut into quarters. Her hands worked in precise movements as she peeled a lime, then fed everything into a very loud juicer. Within a minute, she handed me a frothy glass of juice with so much fresh ginger in it, my mouth and throat burned when I took a sip.

  I grimaced and my voice was strained. “Thanks.”

  She rattled around in a cupboard, opening bottles and jars, then handed me a handful of pills. “Take these.”

  There was no use arguing. It wasn’t as if she was handing me a bunch of drugs. Mom was strictly a home-remedy girl. And with all the stress in my life, my immune system could probably have used the boost anyway. I tossed the pills to the back of my throat and sucked the spicy juice through a straw to help me swallow.

  They didn’t go down e
asily, but they went down. Having lived with Mom most of my life, I’d learned to swallow a lot of difficult things—supplements, cooked dishes I couldn’t identify, and raw, squiggly things best left unnamed.

  My stomach was like iron.

  We returned to the living room, and Mom had me sit on the couch while she returned to crawling around on the floor with crazy-thick glasses and a pair of tweezers. I watched her for a while, sipping my juice and wondering how I managed to grow up as normal as I did.

  I glanced at the silent philodendron I’d brought with me like a security blanket. Maybe I wasn’t so normal after all.

  I cleared my throat. “Mom. Do you remember when I got this plant?”

  She lifted her nose out of the carpet fibers and blinked at me with her magnified eyes. She flicked her strange gaze at Phyllis and back to me. “No.” She returned to tugging and twisting the thread she’d captured between her tweezers.

  “Sure you do. Some lady came out of nowhere and gave it to me at the farmers market a couple years back. Then she vanished into the crowd. I told you about it.”

  Mom shrugged and spoke into the floor. “Maybe you did. I don’t remember everything you tell me, Wynter.”

  No, that was true. Mom was more forgetful every year, it seemed. “Could you take a look at her—it—please? You’re better with plants than I am, and I’m worried she’s—it’s—not getting everything it needs. Does she need more sunlight? More water?”

  Mom made an annoyed sound and lifted her head. “It looks fine. Nice and green. Bushy. No dry tips. You’re doing fine.”

  I swallowed my irritation. “Could you just look?”

  Grunting, she picked herself up from the floor and moved to the table that held my currently silent plant. Mom didn’t remove her ridiculous glasses while she examined Phyllis in depth, touching leaves and prodding soil.

  She frowned. “Well, that’s odd.”

  My heart rate sped up. “What? What did you find?” I bit my lip, waiting for her to tell me my plant had a pulse or there were tiny feet and hands growing underneath the leaves. Something—anything—weird.

  “Is this the pot it came in two years ago?” She held it in the air and peered at the bottom.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You’ve had it for two years in this same pot, and it never occurred to you to give it more room? The root system is so cramped, it’s poking through the drainage holes on the bottom. You should be ashamed of yourself. I taught you better than that. I have no idea how this plant is even alive.”

  I felt terrible. I did know better, too. But for some reason, I’d never thought to transplant Phyllis. “Guess I got busy and didn’t think about it.”

  Mom scowled at me. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” She left the room, cradling Phyllis and murmuring to her. The back door opened and closed, letting me know Mom had gone out to her greenhouse.

  I sipped my drink, consumed with guilt and wondering why Phyllis hadn’t told me she needed more room.

  Ten minutes later, Mom came back in the house with Phyllis seated in a much larger, much gaudier pot. Mom’s fingers were dark with potting soil, and she smelled like fresh dirt and things that grow.

  She handed Phyllis to me. “I gave her some fertilizer, too. See those pale leaves coming in? She needed nutrients. Still, you’re doing a pretty good job.” She patted my arm and smiled. “Keep it up.”

  I pulled the plant close to my chest. “Thanks for sorting her out for me.” I kissed Mom’s cheek. “Guess I’d better go home, since I’ve got work in the morning.”

  Mom walked out the front door with me, then stopped. She squinted at me, her expression vague. “How are things at the bank? Did you get the promotion?”

  My heart sank. “No, Mom. I changed jobs. I’ll come back soon and tell you all about it.” I gave her a one-armed hug.

  She frowned. “That’s a shame. Your father was a banker. His name was John. John McClane. He’d have loved it if you’d followed in his footsteps.” She shrugged. “Well, drive, safely!”

  She turned and disappeared into the house.

  I frowned at the yard gnome frozen next to me. “Look after her for me, Frank.”

  Mom was getting worse.

  Chapter 5

  Physical assessment didn’t begin to touch what they put us through on Wednesday. We hiked the side of a mockup of the real Mount Olympus. We stood in a long line for the opportunity to push a foam boulder up a tall hill like the punishment of Sisyphus. We ran around a gym passing a flaming torch back and forth. So stupid. And the muscles in my ass were on fire after that boulder thing. It was heavier than it looked.

  At least they gave us gym clothes and access to showers. Sensible or not, my heels were not built for extreme sports.

  No matter how difficult it was, I kept my thoughts focused on the task, not on my aching muscles and pounding heart rate. Mrs. Moros was our testing instructor for the day, and I didn’t want her yelling at me for thinking about how much it hurt. As Moros said several time to other students who weren’t nearly as focused as I was trying to be, control your thoughts, control your life.

  I was learning something, at least.

  At lunch, my three new friends and I gathered in the cafeteria over tiny Styrofoam bowls of thin vegetable soup, shoe-leather roast beef drowning in lumpy gravy, mushy Brussels sprouts, and some sort of burned rice casserole.

  None of us shared a bite with poor Elmore this time. As nasty as the food was, I was starving from all the exertion, and apparently so was everyone else. Elmore had to go back for seconds.

  Jillian slumped in her chair. “I can’t go back in there. I can barely walk.”

  Hal stared at his empty plate, glassy-eyed. “I ate all of it. What the hell? I can’t eat like that. It’s bad for my blood pressure, all that sodium and cholesterol. I’ll have a heart attack if I have to run or climb one more step.” He groaned. “That’s it. They’re trying to kill me—weed out the weak and the old.” He used his napkin to mop the sweat from his bald head.

  Elmore slurped his soup. “I heard the next part is all upper body stuff.” He held up his arm. “I’m too skinny to lift, guys.”

  I listened to them complain while my feet throbbed and my ass ached in the uncomfortable booth. They sounded so defeated. I wasn’t too happy either, but I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, yet.

  “Come on, guys. This sucks ass. We all know it. But look around and out in the lobby. All those people survived it. We can, too. And if we try harder and complain less than most of the other people in our class, we’re bound to get the better jobs, right?”

  Jilly sat up a little straighter. “You think so?”

  I nodded. “I do. Hal’s right.”

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. “They are trying to kill us?”

  “No. I think they’re trying to weed out the weak people.” I narrowed my eyes at my tablemates. “And we’re not those people.”

  The second half of the day was no less strenuous than the first, but this time, Hal, Jilly, and Elmore formed a sort of pack with me, and we stayed ahead of everyone else. We were wolves, not sheep. We would not be culled.

  Elmore’s rumors had been correct. We did a lot of boat rowing the first hour, back and forth across a murky, dark river that had been hidden under the gymnasium floor. Hal did especially well and coached Jilly, Elmore, and me so we’d get the rhythm right.

  The hour after that, we paired up and took turns holding or winding an enormous, heavy ball of thread that we couldn’t allow to touch the floor or any part of our own bodies besides our hands. My arms quivered with the strain of holding it out for Hal to wind, and I dropped it twice.

  The final hour saw us all in harnesses, floating in midair. At first, it was fun, and I thought the test was passive. The minute I relaxed to enjoy it, I flipped upside down, dangling six feet from the floor.

  “Help!” I struggled to right myself, finally getting the momentum I needed to spin back around. It was a te
st of balance and core strength, and I had to focus to remain upright.

  All around me, others flipped over, asses in the air and faces toward the ground.

  Mrs. Moros strolled across the floor with a pointed stick, poking at bellies. “Up,” she shouted. “Pull yourself back up. What are you, a mortal? You have the blood of gods and heroes in you! You should all be able to do this!”

  Most of them figured it out—Elmore was already up, and Jilly was nearly there. Not everyone was close, though.

  Hal wasn’t far away from me, and he struggled, hands fisted and arms flailing, trying to swing around by sheer will.

  “Hal. Stop.” I waited until he relaxed and turned his head toward me. “Take a deep breath. Focus on your center. Breathe.”

  “I can’t do it, Wynter.” His face was bright pink from the blood rushing there.

  “You can, Hal. Come on. Relax.”

  “One more try, but I swear, I’m done.” He dropped his hands toward the floor and inhaled a few times.

  “Use your stomach muscles to guide you. You can do this. It’s more about balance than strength. Don’t force it. Focus it.”

  Jilly had been close already, and my words may have helped. She flipped upright, grinning. “Hey! That wasn’t so bad.”

  Elmore swung himself toward her and gave her a high five. “Nice going.”

  Hal strained for a moment, then relaxed. He drew himself up, as if sitting up in bed. “Oh.” His eyes grew wide. “I did it.” He relaxed too much and started for fall forward, but caught himself.

  Mrs. Moros stood beneath me with her stick, head tilted a little. I kept my mind blank. She made a gruff sound, then moved to poke a few more people.

  Some of the folks in our class never did get the hang of it. One woman, petite with dark skin and fantastic braids all over her head, was a natural. She made us all look like uncoordinated oafs. She did forward rolls and backward rolls. She swung herself to the wall and climbed to an overhead beam where she did a graceful pirouette and somersaulted off, allowing the harness to catch her.

  I found out later she’d been a dancer until she gave it up to run off with some guy who eventually dumped her.