I skimmed my hand over my newly chopped curls. I said “chopped,” because I had come out of the salon with piece-y, hacked ends. My hair had been flat-ironed and brushed within an inch of its life. The poor stylist… attempting to turn my hair into something it would never be. It had lasted until the moment the English rain touched me. I had thought shorter hair might distinguish me—somehow—from the undergrads I was teaching. This wasn’t my first time at the front of the class, but it was my first time teaching here, at Oxford University. And I might lecture all over the world but this was the place I’d dreamed of ending up.
I might doubt my fashion, my face, my hair, and my ability to hold a conversation about anything remotely personal, but I never doubted my ability to talk about my real passion.
“If you can’t be pretty, you can at least be smart.”That was Dad’s mantra. He’d stare at my beautiful, shallow mother while he said it. For the man who had started me on the path to academia, it was clear in those moments which of those two options he really preferred.
I glanced down at the stack of papers I held.“Heroes and Heartache. The Intersection of Greek Mythology and Ancient History.”
A droplet of water splattered onto the first page, smudging the ink.Great.Now it read, “Hos and Heartache.” It wasn’t like the students would even want a hard copy of the syllabus. I had everything online, all ready to go. But there was something about holding a thing in your hand. Like an old book, or a vinyl record. It was satisfying. I still made lists and crossed off my to-dos, something not even my doctoral advisor had done, and she was nearly as old as the period of history I studied.No.That was the bitterness talking.
I stared at the heavy oak door. I’d spent the night wide awake, or dreaming about all the things that could go wrong. Rather than continue tossing and turning, I got up, and went for a run in the rain and dark.
Even with that, I was still thirty minutes early, so now I had to wait for this class to dismiss so I could set up for mine.
Behind the door came the shuffle of people standing and shoving computers into bags. It was raining—no shock for September in England—but that meant shrugging into raincoats and getting out umbrellas.
Both of which I hadn’t remembered.
I still got butterflies for the first day of school, but I’d been so focused on my notes, I’d forgotten things like dressing appropriately for the weather. I glanced down at my gray trousers, the hem of which was wet because I’d stepped off the stone steps of my university-provided housing and directly into a puddle.
The door opened, spewing forth bleary-eyed undergrads. This was an eight am Intro to Ancient Greek History, and taught by Dr. St. John. I’d audited his lectures, and had seen the man put himself to sleep, so I pitied his students. It was bad form to enter a professor’s class while they might be answering questions or discussing topics with their students, so I remained in the hall, shivering until he called out, “Don’t lurk, Dr. Ophidia. I no longer have scores of rapt pupils vying for my attention.”
Feeling like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, instead of a twenty-five-year-old woman with a Ph.D., I did as he asked. He stood behind the wooden lectern with a small remote in his hand. He squinted at the mounted projector. “I can’t get this thing to turn off.”
He held it out to me, clearly done with the whole thing, and turned his back on me. “How many do you have registered?”
He meant students for my class. At the department cocktail party the other night, the amount of interest in the classes I was teaching turned out to be a sore subject among the faculty.
“Mostly female, no doubt. Scores of young women prepared to cry and swoon over the story of Helen of Troy.” I didn’t think I was mistaken at the hint of bitterness in his voice.
It wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. Academia was a cut-throat business, and tenured positions at universities were like pots of gold. Most people searched and hoped, but they never appeared. And here I was, twenty-five, American, and tenure-tracked at one of the premier colleges of Oxford University. I had ten published papers, had just returned from a paid summer lecture tour of colleges along the Eastern seaboard.
The discoveries I’d made in Turkey were currently displayed at the British Museum in London, along with a “Face Behind the Exhibit” feature. I’d received more accolades than Dr. St. John had in his forty years of teaching, but I worked for every bit of clout I had, and no one had helped me along the way.
“You’d have to ask the registrar, Dr. St. John. But given that we are sharing this classroom, I imagine our numbers are commensurate.” I turned my back on him to remove my computer.
Behind me, he harrumphed. “It was quite a triumph for our department, let alone St. Anne’s, to wrestle you away from Harvard. Most of the faculty believed you were loyal to Dr. Regan, since she sponsored the Turkey trip.”
He was searching for a sore spot and had found it. “I believe this was a topic the other night.” I did my best not to speak through clenched teeth, and managed not to say,“Perhaps you forgot.”I didn’t need to sink to his level.
Dimming the lights, I turned to observe the images I had chosen to accompany my lecture. Like always, the paintings, images of the Trojan War, took my breath away. I flipped through them, stopping at the shard of pottery that had made me famous.
Next to me, Dr. St. John sighed. “It is a beautiful piece, however it was acquired.”
I dropped the remote on the lectern. The sound echoed off the stone floors and walls.
Supported your trip.The phrase went on repeat in my head. I couldn’t rightly contradict it, but Diana Regan had never supported that trip. Not as an extension of my research and certainly not monetarily. The best thing I could say about my former advisor was that—at the time—she didn’t actively work against me. But afterward…
Diana had no problem badmouthing me from Boston to Budapest, and every seat of learning in between, but I wasn’t going to respond. Her behavior exposed her for exactly what she was, and my work spoke for itself.
“Did radiocarbon dating ever give a more precise age of the vessel?” Dr. St. John’s voice had gone from bitter to awed. I totally understood that. The sight of the shard, obsidian except for the gold thread outlining the figure of Hector, Prince of Troy, took my breath away each time I viewed it. The photograph didn’t do it justice. No matter how much I might zoom in, only seeing it in person could drive home how truly amazing the thing was. If I closed my eyes, I could see the expression on Hector’s face. The pain. The shock. The heartache. I could see the tiny figure of his son cradled in his arms.
“The dating corresponds to the earliest Homo sapien fossils found in the Omo River in Ethiopia. Around two hundred thousand years old,” I answered.
He shifted. “How many times has the dating been challenged? That’s impossible. The images aren’t even commensurate with the late Bronze Age vessels we’ve found in Greece. The expression on the man’s face…”
“Hector.” I didn’t know why I corrected him, but it felt important. Vital. “That is Hector.”
“So you posit.”