by Ann Birch
4.
ROBERTA SITS IN THE BATHTUB looking at her notes for the evening. It is one of her “Big Days,” as she calls those times when she has major public performances. The hot water and lavender bath oil soothe her. There is a knock on the door, and James comes in with a glass of white wine on a sterling silver butler’s tray. He has a snowy white towel draped over his left arm, the arm that is now free from the troublesome cast.
He sets the glass on a corner of the tub near her left foot. “Anything else for Madam?” he says, bowing
“No thank you, Jeeves. But why do you put my drink way down there?”
“So madam must sit up in order to reach it. That way, madam will not fall asleep and drown.” He shifts the towel to his other arm. “The Hermès scarf has been ironed, Madam, and the red dress brushed and laid out upon the bed. May I make a suggestion?”
“I’m listening.”
“Madam’s present undress is so much more attractive.” He gets down on his knees beside the tub, pulls her left foot out of the water and kisses her toes. While she enjoys this, she cannot help noticing how his dry scaly hands scrape against her skin.
“Don’t knock over my wineglass, you idiot,” she says, laughing. “How much longer do I have?”
“About thirty-five minutes to finish in the tub, put your dress on — if you must — and then eat your supper. I have it ready.”
“Better get some of my cream on those hands,” she says. But he’s out the bathroom door, heading for the stairs. Perhaps he didn’t hear her.
When she goes into the dining room, she finds he has prepared her favourite comfort food: macaroni and cheese, warm gingerbread and applesauce. It’s all served up on pretty Royal Garden plates with one of her mother’s hand-embroidered napkins next to her fork.
“We’ve got the car ready for you, Ma, whenever you’re ready,” Ed says coming through the front door with Charlie. “I’ll be chauffeur, and Charlie will sit in the front with me. You and Dad can sit in state in the back.” Ed is handsome in a new three-button Italian suit with a gold silk tie that sets off his auburn hair. He is the one people always say is the spitting image of James.
“You guys look great,” James says. “I’m used to seeing you in a suit, Ed, but Charlie –– my God –– I didn’t know you had a suit. I’m impressed.”
“Come on, Dad, get real. You’ve seen it before. It’s been to two funerals, six weddings, and four graduations.” He pats the lapels. “But this is its first book launch.” He smiles at them, and for a moment, his blue eyes and wavy ash-blond hair remind Roberta of her father. She likes to think that her father would have approved of her sons, even Charlie’s long hair, which he has slicked back into a ponytail.
Ed parks the car in the “Reserved” space in the tiny Trinity parking lot. Roberta looks at the dashboard. She has half an hour to check out the mike, make sure her books are laid out on an accessible table, go to the toilet near her office, and fix her hair. “Lots of time,” Ed says, watching her. “But not space enough to have a spaz.”
“We’ll check out the food while you do what you have to,” Charlie says.
“He means, inspect the waitresses, and I’d be happy to help him do that.”
“Servers, they’re called now, bro. Just to update you.”
“And I’ll be in my office,” James says. “Call for me at the end of the evening. Good luck, Roberta.”
“What’s up, Dad?” Ed asks. “Come on, Trinity expects every man to do his duty.”
“Yeah,” Charlie adds. “Think Sydney Carton: ‘It is a far far better thing I do—’”
“Sorry, gang,” James says. “Got work to do.”
“I wish you’d come.” Roberta touches his sleeve. “But I know you’re not really interested in the schmoozing. Thanks for my favourite food and the glass of wine. I needed that.”
“Impressive spot, this,” Charlie says when she joins the boys in Strachan Hall. “Didn’t you used to eat here, Ed?”
“Yeah, we had to wear our academic gowns for meals. And there was a head table. I think we had an unwarranted sense of superiority over the great unwashed at the other colleges.”
Roberta remembers her first dinner in the room. She’d been seventeen. For a kid from the boondocks of Summerton, it had all been intimidating. The heavy oak tables. The portraits of long-dead provosts staring down from above the wainscoting. The frosh dinner of corn on the cob, spareribs, and blueberry pie. She’d been unable to enjoy the food, worried about the grease on her chin and the kernels stuck in her blue-stained teeth. Now, she’d eat it all with gusto, swipe at her chin with a napkin, and pick out the corn with her fingers whenever people were looking elsewhere. There are bonuses to being middle-aged.
“I imagine the whole place looks a bit like Oxford, Mom?”
“Imitation Oxford. It was built in nineteen twenty-five, I think. But I do like the mullioned windows and all the dark wood. I even like that oil of Bishop Strachan looking down on us like a deity. Over the top, I know, with those silk robes and billowing linen sleeves, but he seems to be delivering a message to us earthlings: ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, but remember that education is important.’”
She sees a large woman –– one of the College’s donors –– bearing down on them.
“The deluge cometh,” Ed says. “We’ll get you a glass of wine, Ma, to show the Bishop that we’re listening to his first bit of advice.”
“My dear, so wonderful, so prestigious an honour.” A huge bosom presses against Roberta, and she sucks in a fug of cleaning fluid and lily-of-the-valley perfume. But she manages to return a kiss on one side of the woman’s fleshy jowls. And Charlie comes with a glass of wine, just in time to create a diversion. “What a handsome young man,” the woman says as she moves away.
“You’re too young, boys, to remember the good-old-days when a handshake was the accepted mode of congratulation.”
“All those years ago,” Charlie says. “But I can’t say I like all this kissy-kissy stuff myself. And now here comes Rudolph Red Nose. Fortify yourself, Mom. Take one of these shrimps off my plate and stick the pick into him.”
Another embrace. And another. And another. Roberta is conscious of the boys watching her. Ed says, sotto voce, “It’s probably a good thing Dad’s not here. He’d have been jealous to see you in that clinch with Old Baldy.”
Charlie looks over at the buffet table. “Hey,” he whispers into her ear. “See that moron at the end of the table? He just took a bite from his carrot stick, and now he’s dipping it in the guacamole. Gross. The first thing they tell us at George Brown, ‘No double dipping.’ Too bad the Board of Health can’t put a red sticker on his forehead.”
“Isn’t that Mrs. Schubert’s son, Ma? You can’t miss that black hair with the white stripe. Like a skunk.”
John Schubert walks over to them, a copy of her book under his arm. “May I speak to you for a few minutes, Roberta, dear? Get some info from you for my piece in The Gazette? You’ll excuse us, boys?”
Roberta and Schubert move to a quieter corner of the hall. He stands close to her, so close that his cologne overwhelms her: earthy, like a patch of uprooted fungi, truffles maybe, though she’s never really smelled a truffle. “You look marvellous, Roberta. You do minimalist so well. So many women your age overdress. Look at that one over there. Sequins and lace and that ghastly droopy hemline that draws attention to her nasty fat legs.”
“I thought you were The Gazette’s book editor, John, not their fashion guru.”
“What makes you so rude about a genuine compliment?” he asks. Roberta can hear the anger in his voice.
“Sorry.” It’s not a good time to antagonize him, especially when she remembers her snipe at him from last week. She will need him on side for a good review. Good reviews often translate into good sales. After her prolonged stay in Crete working on the translati
on, it would be nice to recoup some of her expenses.
Schubert pulls out a gold-clipped fountain pen and a small notebook from his back pocket. “Now set me straight, please. You translated some ancient papyrus rolls found in a cave in Crete?”
“Parchment, fortunately. We think the stories were probably copied from papyrus scrolls, and a good thing, too, because papyrus is so fragile and—”
“And it was a little boy who found them? He was foraging for firewood?”
“That’s right.”
“A Greek professor friend of yours then gave you access to them?”
“Dr. Paniota Andriopoulos, Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Crete. I’d like to be sure she gets credit for giving me the chance to translate the manuscripts for an English audience. I’ll spell her name for you, if you like.”
“Yes, well, we must remember, dear Roberta, that the readers of The Gazette have an average educational level of Grade Nine. We don’t expect them to absorb too many details. But you might tell me why she gave you this honour.”
“I don’t honestly know. Every Greek and Roman scholar in the world must have lusted after the chance to do the translations. I’d like to think my erudition was the deciding factor in the selection, but I’m sure everyone suspects it was my friendship with Paniota that gave me the edge.”
“You claim that these ancient manuscripts were actually written by a woman?” He puts on his reading glasses.
“Not claim. The person who long ago copied the papyrus onto parchment made clear that the original stories were signed by a woman. Perhaps your Grade Nine readers won’t be interested in her name, but it’s Euripida. She identified herself as a cousin of Euripides.”
Why did he bother putting on his glasses? He’s not writing anything down.
“And why is all this important, dear?”
“Because until this small boy pulled the narratives into the light of day, we’d always seen the ancient world through the eyes of men. The Greek myths we read in school were male constructs: Ovid’s or Homer’s or Sophocles’s view of how the universe unfolded.”
Schubert yawns. “Your point?”
Calm, calm, she tells herself. “I guess my point is that all the heroes of myth –– Jason, Perseus, and Theseus, to name only a few –– can now be seen from a female perspective. Of course, there were female writers in ancient times, but most of their writing did not survive the bonfires of early Christianity. The patriarchs of the church made sure of that. Take Sappho, for example. We have only a few of her simple, eloquent poems left, though her contemporaries tell us she was greater than Homer. Better those early Christians should have burned Pope Leo.” She stops. “Whoops, scratch that last bit, please, John.”
Finally, he makes a few entries in his book and then puts it away. “Thank you, dear. Most interesting. And now, I suppose you want to get back to your fans. Isn’t that the Provost heading to the mike?”
He turns away, giving Roberta a second to look over the pile of signed books on a table by the door where her publisher’s representative is sitting with a cash box and a credit card processor. The stack has dwindled in size. Three hundred books, of which about half remain. So far then, considering a royalty of ten percent minus her agent’s cut, she’s probably making … not much.
“Figuring out the take?” Ed asks, coming up behind her. “Maybe our copyright lawyer at Plumtree, Pogson, and Peabody could give you input on e-book rights. At eight hundred dollars an hour, unfortunately. On second thought, forget it.”
“I’ve been checking out the quadrangle,” Charlie says, “and it’s a nice evening. I may go out there and get away from the noise for a bit. Can you come, Mom?”
“Wait around, will you, until I say a few official words to the guests? I think Provost Witherspoon is about to introduce me.”
At the podium, the Provost leads a round of applause for “one of the university’s most noted scholars.” Then, mopping his forehead, he says, “Over now to Dr. Greaves who will tell you all about this amazing discovery.”
From the lectern, Roberta assesses her audience. Most of them, like her, have probably drunk two glasses of wine. So she will not tell them “all.” She will keep it short.
“I want you to know about the little boy––Hector by name––who was responsible for the whole endeavour,” she begins. “He found the manuscripts in a dark cave once dedicated to the goddess of childbirth. I’ll always think of him as a midwife who brought a lovely new creation into the world.” She tells about the unexpected pleasure of meeting Hector in Crete. And then, she speaks about how the parchment rolls got to the University of Crete and into the hands of Paniota Andriopoulos. Paniota’s generosity must be acknowledged, even if Schubert doesn’t give a damn. “Words cannot convey my gratitude for the trust she placed in me.”
There is polite applause, probably as much for the brevity of her remarks as for the content. But the Q&A period drags on far longer than her talk. A pudgy little woman with wild white hair, who has been waving at her for a while, finally gets her chance to speak.
“Penelope Peckham.” She blows out her cheeks and puffs into the mike.
“Good evening, Dr. Peckham. Let me just tell the audience that you’re from Columbia University, and that you wrote an article on my book for the last issue of The New York Times Book Review. I know you have some reservations about my translation. Let’s hear your views.” Best to take the wind out of her sails before she gets into the channel.
“I’ll put them succinctly. Greek women of the Classical period were chattels of their men. They were slaves, they were whores, they were wives. They were creatures confined to….” She drones on, in love with her parallel structure as she regurgitates the familiar creed of the old boys’ network. “They had neither education, nor access to writing materials, nor––”
“So you’re saying it’s unlikely that a woman could have written the manuscripts?”
Roberta lets Dr. Peckham drone on for another three minutes of denial about the authorship of the translation, all the while noticing her audience’s glances at the clock at the back of the Hall. Then it’s time to intervene.
“I don’t agree with you, of course, but I now have to wind up this part of the evening. My apologies. I want to give people a chance to get back to food, drink, and socializing.” There is a cheer from someone in the back ranks, and a wave of laughter ensues. Roberta and her sons move into the quadrangle. As they exit, she notices the Peckham woman holding court with Schubert. He is tapping his teeth with his pen, seemingly no more interested than he was in his interview with her.
It is a warm Indian summer evening and a harvest moon shines down on the low stone wall on which they sit, Roberta between her sons. Over the chatter drifting from the hall, they hear the sound of a choir rehearsing in the chapel.
“We’re proud of you, Mom,” Charlie says and puts his arm around her shoulder. “It’s going to be a winner.”
“You never know,” Roberta says. “Launches of a book are like a marriage.”
“I think you’re about to extend that metaphor, Ma,” Ed says. “Feel free. We’re listening.”
“Thanks for the encouragement, my boy.” She touches their knees with her hands and speaks softly into the night. “Launches and marriages are like the Titanic’s maiden voyage. No one is thinking about ‘the grey shape with the paleolithic face’ waiting in the shadows.”
“Got it,” Charlie says. “E. J. Pratt, right?”
“Right. They’re memorable words, and I’ve been thinking about them this evening.” She clears her throat and resumes. “The iceberg may drift into my path, who knows? There’s the possibility of malicious reviews — like Dr. Peckham’s — or poor sales and dwindling royalties. Over such a fate, I have no control.”
“Okay, Ma, got that part of it,” Ed says. “But you’ve forgotten
the marriage bit, haven’t you?”
“Well, it should be obvious. At the beginning of a marriage, the sky seems clear and the surface calm. But who knows whether the relationship will hit an iceberg? You’ve got to be a careful navigator.”
“Nothing to worry about with you and Dad, is there?” Charlie asks.
“No. I always try to keep my eye on the deep water that surrounds us.”
It is time then to pick up James. His office is not far from Strachan Hall, and Roberta hopes the noise of the reception has not put him off his work. His door is slightly ajar, and when they enter, he doesn’t hear them as they move up behind him. He’s at his computer, intent on whatever he’s doing, certainly not his scholarly article, for the screen is filled with bar graphs.
“What’s that you’re working on, Dad?” Ed asks.
James hits the exit tab, then swings around in his chair. “Oh, it’s you. Finished so soon? How did it go?”
They fill him in as they walk to the car. Then Charlie plays a CD of Stan Rogers for the half-hour ride home, and Roberta unwinds, her head on James’s shoulder. It is only later, as she switches off the night light and climbs into bed beside her husband that she thinks: Funny that James didn’t answer Ed’s question.
5.
IT’S TWO WEEKS SINCE ROBERTA’S LAUNCH, and she is in her workroom preparing the next day’s lecture for her Classics in Translation class. The phone rings. Damn, damn, why now when she has got to get this stuff off her mind and get down to marking essays she has put aside for too long? She looks down at the number.
“Hi, Mother. What’s up?”
Her mother’s voice seems tight as if she’s holding back tears. “Elsie Tindall’s husband died yesterday morning. He’d gone to the IGA to get some cans of mushroom soup so that she could make a tuna casserole, and he fell in a heap at the cashier’s counter.”
