WHO: Antigone and Melpomene WHEN: The afternoon following this WHERE: In front of a funeral home, and back at the muse's home WHAT: Antigone is still very very tired
Maxwell’s family was large, both in number, and in height. His brother, with the same blue eyes though a bushier beard, made her heart skip a beat as she saw him step out for a smoke in front of the funeral home. His mother, who Antigone had spoken to on the phone, had told her which home his body had been transferred to, and even though the voice on the phone was proof that Maxwell wasn’t alone, Antigone felt drawn to drive there anyway.
Or – to let Romeo drive her. They hadn’t gone in to pick up Antigone’s car yet. Antigone prioritised abandoned boys before abandoned vehicles.
Maxwell was not abandoned, though. Outside the funeral home his brother was joined by a blond woman with a baby on her front, then another with the same dark hair as he. After that, his parents, and an older woman with her arm around the shoulders of his father. His mother was already on the phone again; Antigone recognised the organisational head of the family when she saw one.
“Are you going to talk to them?” Melpomene asked, as Antigone watched the family gather on the sidewalk. Slowly, Antigone shook her head.
“This is… their time,” she said slowly, her eyes still on the family. “I just needed to know he had someone… and he does. He isn’t mine. They’ve got him. Look at them… they’ve got him.”
Maxwell’s brother had dissolved into tears, and both of the younger women had wrapped him up in their arms. Antigone sighed so deep it was vocal, and pulled her attention away. She was a moment away from dissolving, herself.
If she’s been in the car alone, Antigone felt like she would have crumbled. Even so, it was a very near thing when Melpomene reached across the car and squeezed her hand. For a second Antigone gripped back like it was her own heart she was clutching, as if she could squeeze hard enough she would wring out all the pain. Only for a second, though, before she pulled her hand back.
She’d never known how to lean on other people in her grief, and she didn’t know how to begin to learn.
“Let’s go,” she said, with another look back over Maxwell’s family. “They’ve got him.”
~
Back at the apartment, Antigone started unpacking her things. She didn’t have a lot, a sports bag full of clothes and Richard’s photographs were the bulk of it. There’d been a moment, after Melpomene dropped her off as close to her car as she could get, when Antigone had seriously considered taking to the car with a can of petrol and a lighter. Burn everything and begin again.
Yet here she was hanging a faded black hoodie onto a coat hanger that looked more expensive than it did. Well. No sense destroying good clothes.
She plugged in her phone and let the poor thing start to recharge, contemplating sitting on the bed, watching the battery slowly climb it way back to life and waiting for any incoming messages (even though Antigone already knew that there would be no messages, and she did not have the heart to reply to any, even if there were). Instead, she pulled two bottles of Richard’s wine from her bag and emerged from her room.
On her left a tall window looked out across the street, and directly in front of her, across the smooth wooden floor, were the doors to the triangular balcony they’d had coffee on this morning. To her right the apartment opened up, a marble topped kitchen island stood between her and a circle of squashy grey chairs, and beyond them rose another tall, wide window, looking over another street. On the far side of the living room was a short hallway that split two ways, one leading to the front door, one, presumably, to Romeo’s room.
Antigone set the bottles down on the marble, and took a slow walk around the apartment. Her fingers ran smoothly over the bookcase, reading a few of the titles; most were books she hadn’t heard of, aside from the complete works of Shakespeare. On top of the bookshelf was a large potted plant, its leaves hanging down the side like a green and purple leafy waterfall. Antigone reached out and touched that too, rubbing a leaf between her fingers as she caught sight of the muse, coming in from the balcony. “I’ve never had much luck with plants,” Antigone said, for something to say. “How do you do it? Not a dead leaf in sight.”
Melpomene smiled, with a small shrug in lieu of the explanation that house plants, around her, bloomed brightly, grew brilliantly, and died suddenly. “Green thumbs, I guess.”
Antigone was at a loss about what to do next. When her phone had more charge, she could look up her father. There was still the issue that she felt like a bomb about to go off – although currently she felt more like lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for herself.
“Do you want some wine?” she offered.
“I would love some wine,” Melpomene said, reaching across the kitchen island to inspect the bottle.
“Belonged to my brother,” Antigone said. “He died a week ago today.”
Melpomene looked up at her; Antigone was looking at the bottle in her hands, not at Melpomene’s face. This might be for the best; it wasn’t sympathy she would have seen, in her eyes. Something more like a hunger, not for the pain itself, but for the story. “How did he die?”
“Pneumonia, in the end. He was old.”
“That’s still hard.” Though the look in her eye had changed from something like hunger to something more like disappointment, Melpomene still meant what she said. Death was hard, however it came. That was the whole point.
“World gets everyone in the end,” Antigone said, with a harsh, sharp little shrug. “Even us. Human memory can’t last forever, right?”
“Stories can,” said the muse.
Add that to the list of things Antigone was too exhausted to think about. “Where are your wine glasses?” she asked, instead, and Melpomene pointed her toward the right cupboard before opening the bottle.
The dark wine pooled in the bottom of their glasses. Melpomene swirled hers into a tempest before breathing it in deep, but Antigone just swallowed it down. “Antigone,” Melpomene said, and Antigone raised her eyes over her half empty cup to look at her. “What are you going to do now?”
And that was another one for the list. “I don’t know,” Antigone answered, honestly, after a short internal debate about answering at all. “There’s so much I should be doing.” She should start work again. Connect with her family again. Step back out into the world so someone else could die in her arms again.
But right now, she felt caught in the space between. After one death but before the next. She knew that all it would take to bring herself out of this slump was to choose a new crusade and her life would have meaning again, no matter how painful that meaning might be, but gods…
“I just want to rest,” she said, slumping down on the kitchen island, her forehead pressed against the cool stone.
She heard Melpomene shift, and a moment later felt a soft hand stroking her hair. “You can rest here,” she said. “For as long as you need.”