Ch. 5

Two Weeks Earlier

The doldrum of monotonous family preparations and various visits with academic peers held a certain analgesic appeal to Sarah. She enjoyed the blur of life during the holidays because, if anything, it kept her moving. Of the time she’d spent concerned with work, it was mostly reviewing dissertations and editing her own works on Racine’s Phedre in preparation for the coming semester. Of the riffs on the tragedians, she found the twisted tale of lust, secrecy, and miscommunication between Theseus’ lineage to be the most engaging and as such, delighted at the thought of posing its depth to her students. After all, it fit almost too perfectly in line with the remainder of their coursework.

The winter rain rapped a staccato pattering on her window as she curled up a little tighter in the Victorian armchair that dominated the corner of the loft that she’d commissioned when she and Dale had first moved in. It was her little home within a home, she liked the think; a place away from even her own thoughts where she could just read, write, and think about the world around her while looking over the winding, manicured topiary expanse that comprised their backyard. Gardening was more Dales purview although she did have a small corner reserved for her summer orchids. It was a passion project but then again, that went for most of what she surrounded herself with these days. Thoughts of Martins strange conspiracy had been relegated to the back of her mind as she continued gathering sources for the more immediate concerns in her life.

The calendar affixed to the wall read out a laundry list of academic acumen. Tomorrow would bring an interview about selections from her essays on Sappho’s remaining work and the voice of positive contemplations on sexuality and femininity very purposefully silenced throughout the western poetic and rhetorical tradition. Of the work she’d done on The Tenth Muse, this was her finest. Tuesday brought more work on her current project, a second book, this one on the next in a lineage of Greek Tragedians; Aeschylus. Wednesday was date night with Dale, though she wasn’t sure exactly what that entailed seeing as he was in the midst of what she labelled his hibernation period.

Travel season always brought a distance much deeper than a physical one between them and unfortunately it compounded over time. She found his work to be engaging and the material he published to be a ground-breaking necessity for the Archaeological Institute of America, but the long periods of research spent out and about took their toll.

It was certain that he wasn’t the same man she’d married, but Sarah justified that in her own mind by comparing their relationship to an exotic vintage of sorts. As with any dish or drink of that nature, time simply brought out the more sophisticated notes and nuance to their dynamic and despite the sterilized nature of their initial courtship, it offered her a sense of reprieve from the cold, calculating world that surrounded her. Without Dale, academia would consume Sarah and whether he knew it or not, his presence served as the crucial human element in the machine. She despised the composition of characters such as Elwin Ransom and Edward Casaubon because, in them, she saw her own propensity for the shrewd, closed off scholasticism they displayed in their respective fictional universes. The calendar was full, yes, but when she faced it candidly, the whole of her life was not.