Helen of Pasadena

by Lian Dolan

  “It’s never been proven that the necklace was definitively bogus.”

  “But I bet you’ll lay awake tonight thinking that it might be,” I said triumphantly, reaching for another mussel.

  “Helen, my work is not the slightest bit romantic. It’s based upon ground-penetrating radar surveys, 3-D laser scanning and electromagnetic soil analysis.”

  “So, Dr. Soil Analysis, how do you explain the tattoo of Achilles’s shield?” I pointed to his forearm, a celestial body peeking out from underneath his rolled sleeve. I launched into some Homer. “The earth, the heavens, the sea, the untiring sun, the moon at the full. That’s some heroic ink you have there.”

  Patrick raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Too much ouzo.”

  I carried on. “History is full of love affairs that altered the course of world events. You might not want to dismiss my theory out of hand. Let’s face it, you’d be out of a job if Paris hadn’t fallen so hard for Helen and kidnapped her and brought her to Troy.” I was feeling pretty smug about that comment. “There’d be no Troy at Troy. What would you be doing?”

  Just then the waiter appeared, to clear our plates and pour the last of the wine into our glasses. “Can I get you anything else? More wine?”

  Please God, no. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. And I was already over my limit.

  Patrick piped up, “I think we’ll have the chocolate soufflé for two and some strong coffee.” “Just to let you know, the soufflé will take about a half hour,” the waiter said, in a tone that suggested he was scheduled to get off his shift and would prefer if we canceled our order so he could surf.

  “Perfect. That gives me just about enough time to convince my assistant here that her feminist interpretation of poor Helen as a victim, kidnapped and dragged to Troy, is tired and tedious. She just got sick of her cranky, power-hungry husband and left with the young stud. So yes to coffee and yes to the soufflé.”

  And yes to spending the rest of the afternoon on this patio, debating esoteric subjects with Dr. Patrick O’Neill.

  It was well after 9 p.m. when we arrived at the Huntington after our five-hour lunch and the long drive back. We’d kept the top down on the dark drive home and didn’t say much. We were talked out in the best way. Patrick pulled in next to my car, alone in the vast parking lot.

  We both got out of the car, slightly stiff from the drive and the walk down the beach after lunch to work off the wine. I felt sandy and salty with a touch of sunburn, the same satisfied feeling as when I was a kid after a day on the Oregon coast. Beach-washed, my mom used to call it.

  Patrick looked and smelled the same. Beach-washed.

  I handed him his baseball cap, “Thank you. That was … just what I needed.”

  He took the cap and held my eyes for a second. Everything about that moment seemed slow and filled with possibilities. But I was paralyzed with the strangeness of the situation. It had been so long since I’d felt this kind of anticipation, this ache in my chest from wanting someone. But it seemed so soon, too soon. I couldn’t have made a good decision to save my life.

  What happened next was all up to him.

  He leaned in, the salt air clinging to his shirt and skin, and he brushed my cheeks with his lips. “You were right. I will be up all night,” he said softly, his mouth just inches from my ear. “Thinking about … those journals. And other things.”

  Then he moved his mouth toward mine and kissed me full. It was soft and strong at the same time. His rough hands moved from my face to my neck, down my shoulders to the small of my back. And stayed there while I returned the kiss.

  A first kiss. I’d forgotten that feeling.

  Patrick pushed me back gently against the car door, leaning his full weight into my body. I struggled to stay in the moment, enjoying the pressure of his lean legs against my own. His hands around my waist now. His lips, mine.

  But my mind was racing. Don’t think about everything else in your life. Stay here. With this man.

  But I faltered. I withdrew slightly and he noticed.

  He stepped back to gauge my reaction. My God, he was something. What was my problem?

  He was unflustered. That made one of us. He reached out and smoothed my hair. “Thank you for today, Helen.”

  No, really, thank you, I wanted to shout. You brought me back from the dead. But instead, I whispered, “You’re welcome.” Which made him laugh.

  The laugh got me. Okay, paralysis lifted. All systems go! Now I had the wherewithal to run my hands all over his chest and take him down in the parking lot. But he was already backing away, backing off for now.

  I let him go. I opened my car door and found my voice. “See you in the morning. I’ll be in a little late.”

  Patrick nodded. “Take your time, Helen. No rush.”

  Why didn’t I rush? Damn, I wanted that moment back.

  I hadn’t thought about having sex since Merritt’s death. I’d thought plenty about not having sex. As in, who would ever have sex with me, a 40-year-old mother with pragmatic panties and unreliable personal grooming habits, when there are so many younger women with Pilates abs and regular waxing appointments to have sex with?

  Or, please don’t make me start online dating. I don't want to sit through all those horrible coffee dates, like Candy does, just to meet someone who might someday touch me with something that does not have a battery.

  Those were the kind of sexy thoughts I’d been having for months. But actually wanting to have sex with someone? It hadn’t crossed my mind until tonight.

  And now, because I am me, I went right from a blissful, “I can’t believe he kissed me!” feeling to complete panic. Lying in bed, I became consumed with the logistics of me having sex with my boss. Where? How? Was that wise? Ethical? What if it was awful and we had to go back to working in the honeymoon suite after terrible sex?

  Oh my God, what if I was terrible at sex? Maybe that’s why Merritt…?

  Nope, not going there. Not. Going. There. I’d already spent weeks lying awake at night replaying the Merritt/Helen sex tapes in my mind. And truthfully, I thought I’d kept up my end of the bargain over the course of our marriage. Our attraction was immediate and exciting. I had no hangups in that department, and Merritt had a few, so I was an ideal partner. Sex was the glue in the early days of our relationship.

  But were we crazy like newlyweds after Aiden and the infertility treatments and my few extra pounds? No. My guess is that nobody I knew had that kind of married sex life. But I put out on a regular basis. Merritt never lodged any formal complaints about frequency. Even on days when we had nothing to say to each other, we usually had something we’d want to do to each other.

  So I surmised in my own late-night self-analysis that the affair with Shelly Sleazy was more about midlife than sex. He wanted younger, shinier and thinner, but not sexier. That’s what I’d been telling myself for months, and that’s what I was sticking with.

  If someone like Patrick found me attractive, obviously I was not unsexy in the empirical sense. Men like free-spiritedness, right? I still had that left over from my Oregon days, sort of. And every once in a while, I’d catch one of the dads at school looking down my shirt at my real, unadulterated breasts. That counted for something, right? So, damn, why did I hesitate with Patrick? Maybe I’m just not a hookup kinda girl.

  Sleep was a joke. I turned on the light and flipped open my laptop. I brought up the newly scanned pages from Volume XIV. Maybe Rudy and Sophia were getting lucky under the Trojan moon. That would take my mind off of Nubby Sweater.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Yes, they were having sex!” I announced triumphantly as I waltzed through the door of Scholars’ Cottage #7 in Work Outfit #6. An early morning consult with Tina resulted in what she called “a fresh new take on the safari look.” Tina’s photographic memory of other people’s wardrobes gave her the ability to style over the phone. (“You know that khaki jacket with all the pockets you used to wear after Aiden was born
? Do you still have that?”) I thought I looked pretty cute in my fitted DKNY khaki jacket circa 1997, A-line dark brown linen skirt and Out of Africa boots. My black belt, one Candy left at my house a year ago after too many margaritas, had a touch of zebra print. I even dug up a chunky wooden necklace that said “world traveler.” Or so I thought.

  I was feeling a sort of joie de vivre that I hadn’t felt in years, despite getting only five hours sleep. The journals were as juicy as I had predicted, and I couldn’t wait to share the news with Patrick, so for emphasis I added, “Totally doing it!”

  “Who is totally doing it?” responded a female voice, oozing with culture and an accent belonging to some remote, long-forgotten corner of the British Empire.

  I dropped my scones.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought, I mean, that was for Patrick. Dr. O’Neill. Dr. Patrick O’Neill,” I bumbled, thrown by every aspect of this woman. Her wild, dark hair pulled back in a printed scarf, her armful of silver bangles, her tanned, slim shoulders and big hoop earrings. Damn, if she wasn’t in a khaki jacket and a linen skirt, too. Her “fresh new take on the safari look” was much more authentic than mine. She was a knockout.

  And vaguely familiar, I realized, just as Patrick opened the door carrying a tray of coffees and more baked goods.

  “Helen, you’re here,” Patrick said, flashing an award-winning smile. “Great, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Helen Castor? I knew that was you under that flak jacket. Helen, It’s me. Annabeth!”

  Simultaneous light bulb and dagger through my heart!

  Dear God, this would be the perfect time for that big earthquake the folks at Caltech have been predicting to swallow up the Huntington and me. Especially me. Right now, so I don’t have to face questions from my college nemesis Annabeth Sturges. Of course, the silver bangles, the hair, that great skin. She hadn’t changed one damn bit, except to become even more beautiful and exotic.

  But what was with the accent? She didn’t have that in college. She was from Cottage Grove, Oregon, not Rhodesia!

  “Annabeth? I knew you looked familiar! Wow, Annabeth! Gosh.…”

  Annabeth Sturges was the one woman at Willamette who could make me feel stupid and inadequate in every way. She was two years behind me in school but light years ahead of me in sophistication, ability and life experience. Her parents had been missionaries and they'd traveled all over the world, spreading the Word and building schools. While her parents tended to their flock, Annabeth immersed herself in local languages, cultures, art history, mythology. She was a freaking sponge for information, the perfect archaeology student. I studied archaeology; she absorbed it. Her parents sent her to Willamette because of the religion tradition; Annabeth stayed because she had half the male population eating out of her hands. And probably other things.

  I was wildly jealous of her. She was wildly oblivious to my jealousy. She may have been my nemesis, but I was not hers.

  Now we were standing in the same room after nearly two decades. She looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones with a doctorate. Nothing like insecurity to take me right back to my college days. I met her genuine hug with trepidation.

  Patrick, handing out coffees to all, jumped in, “You two know each other. How?”

  Annabeth shot out of the gate with the first answer. Teacher's pet. “Helen and I went to college together. She was my hero, a couple of years ahead of me in the Classics department at Willamette. Professors loved Helen. So thorough. She studied so much harder than I did. Of course, after graduation she went on that fellowship at Corinth. Then grad school at Berkeley, right? And we kinda lost touch. And now here you are! In Patrick’s office. Stone me!”

  Faux Brit vocab to match the faux Brit accent. Brilliant.

  My turn. Patrick’s mouth was wide open as the hidden details of my academic resume came pouring out of such an unlikely source. I had nowhere to go to make this end well. “It sure has been a long time.”

  I knew Annabeth was dying for me to ask about her meteoric career. But I couldn’t find the good manners. After I got married, I tried to keep up with my former classmates in the very small world of classical archaeology. But, as my motivation for finishing my thesis diminished, so did my curiosity about others. I’d made a point not to google anyone from my former field; I didn’t want to know about their successes. It was too depressing. Annabeth was on the top of that Do Not Google list.

  So she tried again. “Are you working with Patrick?”

  “Helen’s my research assistant on this project. She was at the Huntington before I arrived,” Patrick answered in a tight voice. His expression was stunned. “You worked at Corinth with Guy Summers? What did you study at Berkeley?”

  Annabeth let out a giant guffaw, as if Patrick was quite the kidder. “Well, I don’t know, Dr. Oblivious, maybe archaeology! She is your R.A.! If you didn’t know that, how did she get the job? The same way I got mine with you at Troy?” Then she winked at Patrick and let out another randy laugh.

  The image of the two of them naked in a trench popped into my head.

  The barrage just kept coming. “Did you ever finish your thesis? I thought I heard that you didn’t. Didn’t you leave Berkeley to get married or something?”

  From her tone, I surmised that she truly did not know about my academic decline. I’d done a good job of staying undercover.

  “Yes, I got married and no, I never finished my thesis. Life, you know—life happens.” I couldn’t look at Patrick. I felt like the grad school version of Hester Prynne with a giant “F” on my chest. Time to change the subject. “How do the two of you know each other?”

  “Princeton, then Oxford for post-doc, then, of course, working at Troy with Patrick. Now I’m at UCSB teaching during the school year and in Greece during the summer,” Annabeth said, as if we all could have such a resume with a little effort. Did she pick up the accent at Oxford? Lame. “Patrick was my professor, then my advisor, then my colleague. We’ve been in touch ever since. Right, handsome?”

  “Yeah. Annabeth is the one I went to visit in Santa Barbara. Her research is groundbreaking, very important.”

  Yeah, I bet her research is amazing, I thought. Although, in fairness, Patrick seemed as uncomfortable as I was. This whole encounter couldn’t end soon enough for either of us.

  Annabeth appeared to be enjoying the moment immensely. Like she really had been wondering what happened to me. “Helen, next time I’m here, let’s catch up for real. We’ve got so much gossip to trade about everyone from school. Unfortunately, I’ve got to be off. I have an afternoon class, but I had some exciting news to share with Patrick in person, so I forced myself on him today. We had a lovely morning, didn’t we?”

  They must have had sex on the couch right here in the cottage. I thought I was going to be sick. “Let’s! Catching up sounds great.”

  “Patrick has my contact information. Thank you for everything, as usual, darling,” Annabeth said theatrically, wrapping her arms around Patrick’s elbow. “Walk me to my car. Then you must rush right back, because Helen has some exciting news about people having sex! Right, Helen?”

  When he returned, Patrick did not appear to be in the mood to discuss sex, either the possibility of us having sex or the certitude of Rudy and Sophia getting busy. Very, very busy, as I’d learned last night.

  His face was stern, like I was a naughty child who had disappointed him greatly.

  “So, small world, huh?” My attempt at humor did not please him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been at Berkeley? You worked at Corinth with one of my best friends, Guy Summers. You know Annabeth. You let me think for a month that you were, you were.…” He struggled for the right words. The right words were clearly a bored Pasadena housewife, but he couldn’t say that. So he said, “You were … new to all this. But you’re not. You have better credentials than most of my research assistants in Athens. No wonder you’ve accomplished twice as much in half the time. Why didn’t you tell
me?”

  His confusion seemed so genuine that a smart answer like “You never asked” seemed the wrong tack to take. So I did what I do best: I rambled. “I didn’t think it was that important. Please understand— Berkeley, Corinth, Annabeth—that is like another lifetime to me, Patrick. I left grad school for Merritt and Pasadena. Do you think I’m proud of that? I dropped out of a prestigious program to get married and have kids and be a docent, for God’s sake, when I wanted to be a professor. I wanted to be like you. To be like Annabeth. That’s not something you tell your new boss when he has this huge impressive resume and a Facebook fan site.”

  I saw his face soften with a glimmer of understanding, so I rambled on. “Patrick, I was a grad student fifteen years ago. Now I’m just a single mother who likes history. That’s who I am and that’s the person you thought you were hiring. And we both know that.”

  Recognition flashed on Patrick’s face. Then I saw it all clearly: I was his project as much as the Schliemann Journals. He wanted to free me from my domestic shackles by teaching me about Troy, by saturating my intellect. I wasn’t some easy mark, like the lovestruck shovel bums who populated his dig site every summer or the junior-year-abroad students at the American School in Athens. I was a whole new breed: the lonely widow! How epic! How Homeric! How positively Penelope! He was going to save me from my tragic self.

  Just like Merritt had saved me from my poor academic self by bringing me to Pasadena.

  Patrick crossed the room purposefully, gesticulating with his latte for emphasis. “Now I know how you identified my Achilles’s shield in Laguna. Quoting the Iliad to me. I thought that was pretty sharp. You let me go on and on about my work and my research. The lunches, the dinner, the endless conversations about Homer, the Greeks, Helen of Troy. All the background information that you must have already known. I feel like an idiot.”