Athena Mulrose never really liked her name. This wasn’t her own fault, nor did she want to fully blame her dearly departed mother, but she just could not stand it. And now, standing in the middle of the empty gallery hall in The Met’s “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World” exhibit, staring up at her colossal marbled namesake, she didn’t feel anything close to appreciation. Nothing close to love. She felt a little amazed, she guessed, and a bit awed and aesthetically tickled to be in the same room as this statute. She was also still slightly dumbfounded at the notion that someone real, living and breathing, had chipped away and carved at this huge hunk of stone until they created a behemoth of a statue of this woman.
“Sculptor unknown,” the little plaque affixed to the base of its marble platform read. “Scholarship suggests Pheidias as the most likely inspiration.”
Whoever that was. Athena sniffed, and then took a step back, gaining enough space to crane her neck to fully take in the statue’s stature. Marbled Athena was missing both arms, part of the left side of her neck, and folds of a toga draped carefully down her legs. Real Athena, in comparison, stole a glance at her scuffed Mary Janes in the square of warm sunlight falling across the exhibition hall. Not quite living up to her namesake in the fashion department, though she didn’t care what anyone else thought about her choice of footwear. It was a struggle enough these days to properly get dressed and leave the house. If she had to wear a bright green sweater that made her head swim on particularly early Sunday mornings, so be it. She’d only caught two different kids toddling after their parents steal glances at the itchy wool with saturation that rivaled a highlighter. That was a win in her book.
She’d been wandering the museum for hours, ambling in and out of displays of old Greek helms and decapitated heads of Zeus. The outside light was fading quickly to the deep orange of afternoon light, and the polished floors squeaked under her worn soles. She hadn’t meant to spend her entire Thursday at the museum. Really. She just sort of ended up here. After she pulled herself out of bed, spent close to thirty minutes deliberating on if she really had the strength to put on a real face for the world and play her dutiful little part in this societal charade of life, and downed an espresso in its tiny white china cup over her kitchen sink, she caught a glimpse of her hurried movements in the mirror hanging over her apartment’s entryway. Caught the same dark brown eyes glancing at her in the reflection of the elevator as it chugged down seven floors to the dusty, wood-paneled foyer of her building.
Caught little bits of mannerisms and parts of speech that reminded her of her mother.
Athena shook her head rather forcefully to interrupt that dangerous train of thought, blinking a few times to clear the blurry splotches of her vision. Searching the manicured, glossy exhibition hall for some low, uncomfortable plush bench, she spotted one on the left wall, nestled snugly between two tall, dark brown pots. She couldn’t tell if they were part of the museum, and at this moment, she didn’t quite care. It was getting hot in here, she thought, hurriedly sitting down on the upholstered bench, and she was tired. The disturbance in the air ruffled the thick green leaves of the pot to her right. Not art, then. Best to find some water, or have a small snack. She began digging around in the black crossbody purse now laying across her lap, exhaling through her nose in attempts to dissuade the small, piercing pinprick of a headache at the base of her skull. It was too quiet in here, too empty, too liminal to be the only person in the southwest section of the left wing of The Met surrounded by pale, lifeless copies of myths that were long dead– if they even existed at one point, she thought sourly. She winced again at the quick lance of tension on her neck.
This is how it started. Don’t you remember?
Ice slid down her spine at the thought, and a clock ticked somewhere far above her. This is how it had started with her mother. A few headaches that refused to leave, a chronic migraine diagnosis, spotty vision. The whole gauntlet. Dread flooded through her, and she tried to ignore the two nearly-identical copies of Zeus’ faces staring haughtily down their strong noses at her perch. She yanked out a half-open snack pack of Cheez-Its and stuffed a few orange crackers in her mouth. After counting the number of headless statues of Hercules, Poseidon, and Perseus–two of each, almost exactly–she turned her (thankfully) black spotless vision appraisingly at Marble Athena again.
It was a pretty name, she conceded, noting the chipped bits of marble near the statue’s shoulder, right where her arms would have been. Both of them seemed to have been unceremoniously ripped out or, rather, chopped off. Maybe broken in shipment from one sanctuary to another, museum to museum. Never finding a home, just floating aimlessly between locations– as much as a statue could float. She grabbed a few more Cheez-Its. She wondered how the statue came to The Met, how Pericles–Phidias, or whatever the complicated name was on the plaque reflecting light up towards the domed ceiling–crafted this work of art and shipped it out into the world. How he just let a thing he loved go away.
Though her Greek mythology knowledge was spotty, Athena had spent enough time learning up on the lore about her name to better defend herself against the quicker boys in her classes at school to know that statues of Athena were usually revered. They were dedicated to the goddess in Athens, or had someone come from Athens to consecrate the piece of artwork and offer some kind of offering to the goddess herself. That was always the coolest part, she thought, staring at the jagged bits of rock protruding from the statue’s shoulders. Everyone, it seemed, loved her. From how she swept the competition of having Athens named after her by creating the olive tree to symbolize peace and prosperity in the face of, arguably, one of the most powerful gods to the hordes of battles and skirmishes with generals that called upon her for help, she was admired. Wanted. Respected.
That’d be nice to have, Athena thought dourly. The shifting rays of sun streaming from the arched windows above her seemed to cast the statue’s profile in a shimmering coat. She seemed to just glow from within, gray and black veins in the marble standing out against the white rock. Athena doubted she looked like she glowed from within, with the dark eye bags that had refused to leave since the funeral last week and the mess of curls pulled back from her face. She fiddled with the empty Cheez-Its wrapper, smoothing it and folding it into smaller and smaller squares until it refused to bend any further. Across the room over an archway leading into yet another wing full of mud-colored pottery, the red banner highlighting the traveling exhibition shifted gently in the hall’s phantom breeze.
The name was fit for a goddess, at the very least, with the soft “th” flowing into the forceful “uh” syllable at the end. It commanded the voice of the speaker, forcing them to pay invisible respects as the letters spilled past their lips. She could see why she was so revered by Grecians, why people built cities and companies and intramural soccer leagues that never amount past the semifinal round in her name.
For her, all it ever seemed to do was force her peers to stifle a laugh or and her teachers to pause for a bewildered moment when they called roll in middle school. When the Mythology unit inevitably rolled around in her senior year English literature class and someone had to read passages from the Odyssey out loud, it forced her teacher to become unreasonably excited and shoot “subtle” looks in her direction to volunteer. When she failed her first chemistry test sophomore year of high school–and freshman year of university–all she felt was a quick, sharp flash of rage towards this stupid name. The stupid name, with all the stupid pressure to be smart, with all the stupid connotations of being a strategic chess genius when, in all honesty, she thought chess was just a really stupid game.
Nothing good came out of this name, she thought resolutely, straining to hear any sort of justification spill forth from the great statue kitty-corner to her. She was met with the dull buzz of the air conditioner unit hidden behind some display stands. At least, nothing that she considered to be good enough to warrant naming your child after the “virgin nerd goddess,” as an ex-boyfriend once commented in the midst of an argument.
Taking in the statue’s backlit station, square windows casting honeyed lights over the various other architectural phenomena scattered artfully throughout the room in a way that’d make any antiquity graduate student shed a tear, Athena paused. It was a nice feeling, right here, to feel slightly dwarfed by the artistic marvels around her. Put her and her problems into perspective. Nibbling on her lip, she stared harder at the statue of the goddess of warriors. Tucked an errant curl behind her ear. Blinked a few times to stave off the tension headache, took quick stock of the other similarly heroic statues around her, and went back to examining Marbled Athena with the precision rivaling a mortician conducting an autopsy.
A cheery thought, and definitely an experience she had never witnessed before. Definitely not in the past week. Definitely not a situation where the cold, blue lips of her mother’s mouth drawn in a straight line would appear whenever she closed her eyes.
Athena swallowed. Took another look at the thing above her. As the minutes ticked by, she began to hope that the answer would just simply reveal itself. The blank, hollow eyes, empty sockets from where iridescently stones would have been all those centuries ago, didn’t so much as blink.
Just one answer. Just some viable, logical response was all she wanted. She knew some people wanted and wished for fame, some for riches. More than anything, Athena just wanted to know why. Why she had been cursed to carry this generational and mythical legacy from a woman she didn’t even really think was real. It’d just make everything make sense. Would give her a snappy response in the awkward icebreakers at her barista job, would give her a deeper connection to her name for which she felt a sort of vague distaste.
The thin hum of silence remained, the statue stood tall. Athena chewed her lip, ready to abandon ship and leave, but a low shuffle of shoes and drag of wheels approached. Turning her head, she spotted a member of what must have been the janitorial or cleaning staff. Bright yellow bucket on wheels, chipped wooden mop, faux-denim utilitarian jumpsuit. As she watched him wheel closer to the Athena statue, he paused for a moment. The sewn-on name tag patch read “Robbie” in cursive stitches.
“Athena, huh? Now that was a powerful lady.”
Athena cut him sideways glance, thin gray mustache bobbing as he spoke. He looked thoughtful for a minute, taking in her crouched perch in this empty hall of monuments to the greats. Robbie offered her a faint smile before turning back to the statue, seemingly still mulling something over.
“Want to know something that never sat right with me, after all these years of cleaning these floors and walking past this serious lady?”
Not really, Athena thought, but any distraction was better than no distraction. She blinked.
“She never laughs at my jokes–and here I thought she was the smartest god.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of Marble Athena, eyes crinkling in the corner. Real Athena watched him curiously, twisting one corner of her mouth together. He let out a little cough and scratched the back of his neck.
“Besides that, no one really knows who her mother is–it’s not confirmed or anything, I think?” he added, seeing Athena’s drawn eyebrows. “Some little plaques say that she just sprang from Zeus’ forehead, fully formed. Just–bam!”
He clapped his hands together for effect.
“Just like that. I can’t really believe it myself.”
Athena’s pulse jumped.
“Growing up without knowing your mother–now that’s a sad experience, I reckon. Mine was a lovely little lady. A real firecracker. Athena needs a mother, I think. Jumping out from a thought from her father is no way to live a life.”
Great. Mothers. The one topic she came here to try to forget about. She scratched the tip of her nose and nodded absentmindedly at Robbie’s words. It followed her everywhere, from when she was pouring a glass of water in the morning to when she brushed her teeth in the stark bathroom light.
“You need to have a heart. She probably has plenty of brains, Zeus being the king of all the gods and all that. She needs a heart.”
He tapped the wooden handle of his mop onto the smooth space on the statue’s chest where her heart would have been underneath all those layers of hard marble. The taps reverberated through the hall, up to the gold-patterned domed ceiling and bouncing off Hephaestus’ disconnected arm and chin-less face a few paces behind the statue. “She needs a heart.”
He repeated that thought a little softer now, gazing up at the statue as Athena had done when she first came here this morning. As Athena had done whenever her mother took her to this wing when she was younger, pointing up at the statue’s hardened gaze, showing Athena how powerful she was.
“She’s a great warrior, just like you,” she’d say, squeezing Athena’s hand. After spending the appropriate amount of time admiring her statue, they’d drift around the rest of the wings, taking turns telling each other the stories from the myths and legends in front of them.
Athena didn’t even realize she was crying until a tear had tracked down her cheek, janitor offering her a nod as he whistled a merry little tune and moved on to the pottery wing. Looking up at the statue and placing a hand over her own heart, she stood and walked to face the statue. She reached her other hand out and laid it over Marble Athena’s marble heart. It was almost slick to the touch, and cold. Frighteningly cold.
As cold as the last time she held her mother’s hand.
The statue refused to duck her head or make any sort of acknowledgement of her presence. Athena tasted something salty again.
The last sliver of sunlight fell off Marble Athena’s face as a cloud rolled past the sun in the late-dusk light, casting the rest of the profile of her face in dark shadows. With one last press of her hand, she pulled it back, wiped the tears from under her eyes, and retraced her steps through the maze of the museum to the winding stairs down towards the gift shop.
Tucked between the baubles, snow globes, and miniature Minotaur bobble heads and tiny Van Gogh magnets, there was a small replica statue of the very statue. Athena paused. Carefully picking one up, she ran a finger over the jagged mimicry of the statue’s empty arms. Grasping it in her hand, she walked and handed it to the pimply cashier, accepted it and its little white gift bag, and headed out into the fading sunlight. Picking the statute out of the bag and tossing the receipt into the nearest trash can she could find, she cupped it in her hand. Cars and taxis whizzed by a few feet away from her, and a cold wind pushed strands of hair around her face. A few leaves stirred in a circle in front of her before being swept away in a gust.
Her palm almost covered the statue, dwarfing the goddess of wisdom and bravery, smarts and crafts. She placed her thumb over its chest, feeling the hammering of her own pulse in the pad of her thumb. Athena could almost imagine it was coming from the statue.
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 