A Fugitive Truth (7 page)

Evert Whitlow nodded and tented his fingers thoughtfully. I got the sense that this was just a theoretical argument to him, whereas it felt so much more like religion to me. “You know, I heard that there was a superb basilica where Pope Julius wanted to place the Sistine Chapel. If people like you had your way, we wouldn’t have the Sistine Chapel today.”

“Well, when you think about it, the Sistine Chapel isn’t that great, architecturally speaking,” I responded. “Where the real interest is, why everyone waits in line to see it, is the Michelangelo frescoes. If you take away the name, just for the sake of argument, what they’re interested in is…the surface treatment. A Michelangelo, yes, but otherwise a surface treatment on a fairly ugly building. We have other, better Michelangelos; who’s to say what masterpieces we lost with the basilica?”

The director slapped his leg, enjoying the debate. “You’re calling the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel a more surface treatment? Dr. Fielding, you’re something else!”

“I am exaggerating a little,” I admitted. “My point is that newer is not always better, and that issues of preservation—whether they are for architecture, archaeology, or libraries—are never straightforward, as business truisms sometimes seem to be.”

“Well, we’re not treating this issue as an uncomplicated one,” he tried to reassure me. “And the staff—the library staff, that is—is doing its best to keep us alerted to all the potential problems. Don’t worry, trust me. They’re on your side, so nothing drastic is going to happen.”

“Well, let me know if I can lend you any of my expertise. I’d be delighted to advise you, in whatever capacity an interested professional could.” I couldn’t really face continuing this conversation any further with the knots in my stomach, so I changed the topic. “I understand that you know Ron Belcher.” As soon as I said it, I realized my tummy would have preferred a discussion of the weather.

But rather than the instant recognition I’d expected based on the Dean’s remarks, Whitlow’s face was blank. He shook his head vaguely, not placing the name.

“He said he went to prep school with you,” I added. “Now he’s one of the deans at Caldwell College. Where I teach.”

Recognition finally filled Whitlow’s face. “Good lord—Ron Belcher? That little guy back in—? Well, it’s been some time. Yessir, that’s going back more years than I care to admit to. How is Ron?”

“Very well, thanks.” There wasn’t a whole lot I could add to that, but Whitlow didn’t seem to be too interested anyway, his polite inquiry a mere formality, if he in fact truly remembered Belcher in the first place.

“Well, it’s nice to hear from old friends,” he said simply, and that was that. So much for the much vaunted friendship that Belcher claimed. The schmuck.

The director rose from his chair and wiped his mouth: The meeting was over. “I’m glad we had this chance to chat. I’ll let you get back to your work, and look forward to hearing your presentation on your work later in the month.”

“Oh, right.” I remembered that one of the obligations of accepting the fellowship was to give a talk on the research conducted there. “Well then, thanks very much for lunch.”

Whitlow shook hands again, cordially, and then we were both able to get back to the essentials of our respective jobs, worlds and philosophies apart.

But after lunch, a switch seemed to have been shut off, and I couldn’t get back into the effortless work patterns I had enjoyed for the past couple of days. I couldn’t concentrate properly and couldn’t figure out why, other than recognizing that I felt out of the mainstream, isolated and somehow bereft. Maybe my eyes were tired, perhaps the euphoria of starting a new project had worn off a little, but even Madam Chandler seemed to have lost her vitality in the face of a sweltering summer in Massachusetts. Her handwriting was more cramped than it had been, and more than ever, it was more frequently punctuated with the long strings of numbers. Whatever was troubling her—the entries were terse and made references to situations that I didn’t yet fully understand—seemed to have infected me as well. I finally left early and decided that I would go for a run, but when I got up to my room, I was so dispirited, I flopped down on the bed for a nap.

When I awoke in what must have been hours later, it was dark and freezing; March had been reclaimed by a wintry low. Outside my lofty window, the deciduous trees were still barren, and I knew without seeing that the bare ground was brown and raw, carefully raked but badly scarred by the winter. The bluish-black shadows seemed made to order for the haughty isolation of the place.

Oh, come on, Emma, I chided myself, one more minute and you’ll be finding yourself in Mr. Squeer’s academy, or turning into one of Jane Eyre’s unfortunate schoolmates. You’ve been lonely and depressed before, it will go away in the morning. Call home, see what Brian’s doing. It’s not like you’re trapped on the moors or anything, so stop feeling sorry for yourself.

I realized then that I
was
feeling sorry for myself, wondering of what value all my work was if somewhere down the road, polite, efficient types like Whitlow would clear it all away for what was judged to be more important. Was it worth my trying to resurrect Madam Chandler’s life if the remnants of it might be scattered to who knew where, simply because she was not well known or because she’d not written a famous book? And what point was archaeology anyway? It didn’t solve any of the world’s problems. Wasn’t it rather self-involved of me to make up these little questions and answer them for myself and a tiny little audience?

Old, familiar questions reemerged to haunt me, the same ones that arose when I was a teenager working in the field, deciding if I would follow in my irascible grandfather Oscar’s footsteps and become an archaeologist.

When I’d raised these philosophical quandaries with Oscar, at first he’d just grunted. “I’d be a shitty dentist. The world doesn’t need any more shitty dentists, but it sure as hell could use a few more really first-rate archaeologists.” When he saw that his answer wasn’t helping me, he’d put down his trowel, stopped working, and spoke very seriously. It was, and remained, one of the most important moments of my life.

“Human beings are funny,” he’d said. “Oftentimes they treat the past like an eccentric old relative, something to drag out for special occasions and ignore until the next time they need an example of why things are better now than they were in the bad old days—or vice versa. We modern Americans are the worst like that. But humans need to see where they’ve come from. They use the past to make sense of how they live, they need the past to tell them how to move ahead, to give them positive and negative examples. It makes them feel a part of things too. And maybe, with any luck, if we use these big brains we’re so proud of, we’ll figure out how to make fewer of the mistakes we seem to always be making if we pay as much attention to the past as we do to the future.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then picked up a measuring tape. “Now, stop fidgeting and straighten out that wall before you dig any deeper.”

That memory made me smile. Shaking myself free of my funk, I turned on a light, flipped on my portable radio, and turned up the heat in my room. As I looked around the room, my glance landed on the picture of Brian that usually sat on my bookcase at work and was now on the bureau here. It wasn’t the best picture I ever took. It’s from a birthday party and it’s not horrible; I mean, you can tell he’s a guy, that he’s got cowlicks that resist any sort of tampering. It’s not great as a formal portrait, that’s all. But the reason I take it with me whenever I leave home is that I’d caught him in mid-laugh, and it reflects a true image of his soul: I love him for his humor, his curiosity, persistence, and optimism, and somehow that all showed up on the print.

The photo was one more thing to cheer me; I wasn’t going to cave in to my doubts.

I also reminded myself of why I had finally decided that my work was important. History tends to be about grand events or trends that are dissociated from the common person. Historical archaeology is about everyday things, it’s finding out about people who didn’t always have a voice or fair representation by those who kept the public records, it’s about filling in the blanks. By teaching what archaeology teaches about the past, I was letting my audiences know how people like them made the great things possible. On the good days, I felt like I was a preacher, teaching empowerment, hope, and ownership. On the bad days, like today, I felt like an empty vessel. It was so much a matter of faith, and sometimes faith has to be jump-started by self-discipline. Resolutely, I picked up the last unopened box and began to unpack it.

When I opened it, I was surprised to see two packages, one very small and the other about a foot long wrapped in tissue paper and nestled between my
Chicago Manual of Style
and Grandpa Oscar’s much-worn Riverside edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. A brief susurrus and I found that the smaller box contained a small silver bracelet with dense square links, a style that was popular during the Art Deco period. I will reveal under no circumstances what the card that accompanied the gift said; suffice it to say that I was troubled with no further worries about petty tyrants like Belcher and Constantino, or the well-intentioned predations of bureaucrats like Whitlow in the face of the accompanying note. I went into the hall to call Brian, but as he wasn’t in, I left no other message on the machine apart from telling him I found his surprise. I didn’t want to melt the answering machine.

When I tore the wrapping from the other, larger package, I found a box marked on the outside in chaste letters: “
THE MACALLAN
, Aged 18 Years.” The note that accompanied it was in our friend Kam’s handwriting. Kam was Brian’s friend and boss, and he’d married Marty, my old college roommate, more than a year ago. They were expecting their first child shortly. The note read

I noticed that “facilitator” had not been his first choice of words. If dear Kam weren’t trying to come off as an older brother instead of a flirt, he would have left “lubricant.”

Beneath that was one of Marty’s hastily scribbled notes, familiar from our college days together:

So, Marty still wasn’t telling us what the name of the baby would be. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of a mother she’d make, or what the baby would be like, as far as that went. As a matter of fact, I recalled with a frown, it seemed as though all of my friends were considering these issues. I’d just had an e-mail from my friend Jane in England, who told me in her matter-of-fact way that her work on the abbey was moving along splendidly, and by the way, she was due with twins in the early fall: Trust her to fit in one last field season beforehand. A longer e-mail from her husband, Greg, filled in some of the blanks: Jane seemed untroubled by morning sickness and showed no sign of any nesting instinct and was quite her old self, though she was smiling more often now. Before I could embrace the thought that Jane might have mellowed a bit, he followed that news with, “The students and I still feel the lash and are very interested to see what changes the ‘bliss’ will eventually bring. I suspect the babies will not be as susceptible to Jane’s efficiency as the rest of us.”

There must be something in the water, I thought, and then caught myself. No, it’s not the water. It’s how old we all are, it’s the time when people decide these things. Well, I certainly haven’t time for that, I thought, but then again brought myself up short. If Jane Compton, workaholic extraordinaire and, once upon a time, girl rocketing up the academic ladder could imagine—nay, was actually having—children, then it was entirely possible that I should put this topic on my list of things to consider before I got too much older.

That thought was more than enough for the moment; I slammed the lid on that particular piece of Tupperware and shoved it to the back of the refrigerator of my mind to deal with later. Armed with my two talismans, my whiskey and bracelet, I went down to reestablish my place in Shrewsbury and the rest of the world.

No one was about—a notice on the little bulletin board in the front foyer suggested that the others were probably attending a lecture at Amherst. Fine, I decided, I would just commandeer the house library for myself.

That room was every fantasy a serious reader could have imagined. The walls were covered with built-in bookcases that reached the twelve-foot ceiling; a bank of French windows was opposite the sliding doors I had come through. The plaster design on the ceiling was nearly as complex as the pattern on the oriental rugs that broke the room into discrete areas. An enormous stone fireplace dominated the center of another wall, with matching bookcases on either side. In one corner was an escritoire filled with Shrewsbury stationery, while the other furniture consisted of two plump leather couches and a couple of wingback chairs, closest to the fireplace.

Now, I pondered, if I were a crystal sherry set, where would I be kept? Familiarity with P. G. Wodehouse rather than an in-depth acquaintance with life in grand houses led me in the right direction—the cupboard to the right held a dozen short glasses, several long-banished ashtrays, and a box of matches.

The wood box was not at all dusty and the kindling was free from cobwebs: Someone intended this to be a working fireplace. Emboldened by the bottle and the thought of a fire to add a little emotional warmth to the room, and armed with the matches and the posted instructions, I opened the flue, checked for a draft, and stacked up a reasonably cozy pile of papers, kindling, and logs. It caught almost immediately. I took a glass and my bottle and dragged one of the chairs closer to the hearth.