by Jodi Picoult
After about fifteen minutes of silence, I offer an olive branch. “I didn’t know if I’d find you here in August.”
“And yet here you are,” Wyatt said.
I turn my attention to the road again, unsure of where to go from there.
“Alberto and Joe seem nice.”
I once read an article about the differences between how men and women converse—how men prefer side-by-side conversation, because face-to-face feels confrontational; how women prefer talking face-to-face to read all the nonverbal cues. The article suggested broaching difficult subjects with your husband in the car, instead of over the dinner table, for this reason.
The author of this article clearly had not ridden in a Land Rover with Wyatt.
He glances at me, his wrist balanced on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, are we doing small talk now?”
“I’m just trying to have a conversation.”
“You didn’t seem to be eager to have one earlier.”
“It’s hard for me—”
“Do you not think this is hard for me, too?” Wyatt interrupts. His words feel like knives being thrown, pinning me back against the seat.
I close my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Even without looking, I can feel him staring at me. The air feels heavier. And then, as if someone has broken the glass of a window during an inferno, I can suddenly breathe. Wyatt is once again facing the road, his features smooth. “The reason I’m here when it’s hotter than hell is because the semester ended in May,” he says, as if half our conversation hadn’t taken place. “Then there was Ramadan, and I’ve got to excavate this tomb before classes start back up again mid-September.”
There’s additional information he isn’t sharing—maybe it has to do with funding. Maybe he can’t get any more without the proof that he has found a new tomb with an intact coffin. “You’re lucky you didn’t go into academia,” he adds. “Although I imagine social work isn’t a lark, either.”
He says it gently; it’s a peace offering. “I’m not a social worker,” I say. “I’m an end-of-life doula.”
“A…what?”
“I take care of people who are terminal.”
“So your clients are dying to meet you,” Wyatt replies.
I laugh. “You could say that. It wasn’t as huge a transition of career as I figured it would be. In a way, I’ve been studying death since I was eighteen.”
He glances at me. “Likewise,” he says frankly.
“And you? Still focused on the Book of Two Ways?”
Wyatt nods. “The translation we used to use? It fell by the wayside in 2017 with a new publication. Turns out there are mostly two independent Books of Two Ways, and even when the spells overlap, there are big variations in the text.”
Now he is talking to me not like an enemy, not like a refugee, but like a colleague. I catch my breath, feeling something I haven’t in a long while: the popping in my brain that used to happen when I listened to a stellar lecture or when I cracked a puzzle in translation.
“So the old translation was wrong.”
“Well, it wasn’t right,” Wyatt answers. “Oh! And remember how you were always livid because the Pyramid Texts that were found in the coffins were never printed in the Coffin Text publications?”
“Livid is a strong word…”
“They finally were. Two thousand six. Did you see it?”
“In 2006 all I was reading was Goodnight Moon.” I laugh.
Wyatt looks at me. The spare air in the truck is suddenly gone. “That’s a children’s book, isn’t it? You have children?”
“Child,” I say softly. “A daughter.”
“Presumably, she has a father,” Wyatt replies, his gaze fixed on the road.
I swallow. “She does.”
I look down at my hands, folded in my lap. I twist my wedding band around my finger as silence settles between us.
“I did think about you, you know,” Wyatt murmurs. “I wondered how someone could disappear into thin air.”
There is so much I want to tell him, need to tell him. But the words jam in my throat, dammed behind fear: fear that he doesn’t have time to babysit a middle-aged woman who wonders what else her life might have been, fear that he will send me packing, or that he will laugh at me. Or—maybe worse—that he is indifferent. That he’ll treat me like an amateur—the way we did, as Yale grad students, when we met someone who had read a little about pyramids as a kid or was obsessed with Brendan Fraser in The Mummy—polite but dismissive.
And me? Had I thought of Wyatt? I would be lying if I said no. I didn’t pine for him; I loved Brian. But there would be times when I would be comfortably immersed in my daily life and he’d pop into my head. When we went to Greece for my thirtieth birthday, and on the cobbled streets, I watched children sort through broken potsherds. Putting on eyeliner and regarding the tilted wing in the mirror, and picturing Wyatt trying—and failing—to sketch the kohl-rimmed eyes of a nomarch’s wife on a sheet of Mylar.
“I thought of you when the FBI cracked the case about the severed mummy head in the MFA,” I tell him. “Remember how Dumphries didn’t know if it belonged to the male mummy or his wife?”
I had read the story in The Boston Globe—how doctors had done a CT scan of the mummy’s head and noticed that there were mutilations to the mouth and jaw area, all the parts that would have been involved while eating. Immediately, I had known why—the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, performed on the deceased so that they could eat and drink in the Netherworld. But they still didn’t know who the mummy was, definitively, and so the FBI was called in to extract DNA from a tooth.
“I think I read that, too. Wasn’t it—” Wyatt starts, as I begin to speak.
“Mr. Djehutynakht,” we say in unison. Then we both burst out laughing.
He looks so at home here, his skin tanned and hair curling where beads of sweat rise on his temples. I wonder what would have happened if our roles had been reversed: if I had stayed, and he had gotten the call that changed the rest of his life. If he’d be awkward in a three-piece suit, working in London in finance or government. Then I remember that he was destined to become a British peer, doing whatever peers do. I conjure up a new image of Wyatt, playing polo. Sitting behind a mountain of paperwork at a heavy mahogany desk older than my entire country. Smiling up at his wife, who is named Pippa or Araminta, and who learned to ride before she could walk.
“Are you a marquess now?” I blurt out.
“Ah. Actually,” Wyatt says, “yes.”
“I’m sorry.” I know that would mean his father had died.
“The title is utter rot. I’m here, or in New Haven, anyway. I don’t actually stand on the ceremony of it. Much to the dismay of my mother.” His lips twitch. “But since you didn’t bother to call me my lord when I was an earl, perhaps you should start now.”
“I’d rather swallow my tongue,” I say.
He grins. “I admit I’ve never heard of a death doula before.”
“It’s a different model of care. It’s…richer, if that makes sense. A doctor spends about seven minutes on average with a patient in traditional medical care. I become a part of the family, if that’s what the client wants. I’ll show up and sit vigil, but I also have the distance to ask the hard questions of the medical team and caregivers, and I don’t mind calling the DMV fifteen times if that’s what has to get done.” I hesitate, thinking through my responsibilities and trying to see them from the perspective of an outsider. “I guess I give people time at the moment they need it the most.”
“Is it depressing?”
“I mean, I cry sometimes.” I shrug. “The first time I cried in front of a client I beat myself up, but then that night her brother called to thank me. Seeing me cry made him realize that his sister wasn’t just a paycheck to me. So yeah, there’s sadness. But there are als
o moments of beauty.”
“Evidence?” Wyatt barks, and I bite back a smile—this is what Dumphries used to say to us, when we were in the field and made a hypothesis for which he wanted support.
“I had a trans client once, and just before she passed, her mother said, ‘I gave birth to a son, but I’m burying a daughter.’ And just like that, my client let go. It was almost like she needed to hear that before she died.”
“What have you learned?”
It’s such a professorial question I have to hide my grin. “Everyone’s surprised by death, which is kind of ridiculous, when you think about it. It’s not exactly a spoiler. But I think that what really shocked me is how many people can’t see the shape of the life they’ve lived until they get to the very end of it. You know?”
Wyatt nods. “Sure. It’s not until you start building your tomb that you realize you’re going to be the one inside it.”
“Life and death are just flip sides of the same coin,” I say, and I turn to find him staring at me. “What?”
“I was just thinking that maybe you never really stopped your studies after all.”
We pass by the giant El Minya sign, wedged incongruously into the rock cliffs like the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. As Wyatt tries to find a parking spot, I watch two men holding hands, walking down the street. It doesn’t mean what it does back home. Here, it’s just a sign of friendship. Legally, in Egypt you cannot be gay.
Wyatt finds a spot in front of a small shop selling ice cream. “Hungry?” he asks. “My treat.”
I am starving, in spite of the meal Harbi fed me. I walk up to the glass case, frost delicately etching the window. Strawberry, chocolate, orange blossom, coconut. I point to the Norio flavor—the Egyptian cookie knockoff of Oreo. Wyatt orders for me, the Arabic flowing easily off his tongue. The round hums and soft els make the words sound as if they are made of honey.
He hands me a cone, and suddenly I am back in my tiny bedroom at the Dig House, fifteen years ago. Wyatt had snuck inside when everyone else was asleep, brandishing a pack of Norios. “Where did these come from?” I asked, already tearing into the packaging.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” he said, and he kissed me. “Sweets for my sweet.”
I rolled my eyes, intent on separating the cookie from the cream. I looked up to find him biting into a cookie, intact.
“Who does that?” I asked, truly shocked. “You’re supposed to split them apart.”
“Says who? The cookie Gestapo?” He popped another cookie, whole, into his mouth.
“That’s pathological,” I said. “Downright sociopathic.”
“Yes, I eat my Norios like a caveman, and I also am sewing a skin suit made out of undergrads I’ve murdered.”
“I don’t know if I can love you anymore,” I told him.
He stilled, a smile spreading, morning chasing night. “You love me?” he asked.
Now, I blink to find him holding out a napkin. “You’re dripping.”
“Thanks,” I say, and wrap my cone.
“I miss real Oreos,” Wyatt opines, starting down the street. “And having ice in my drink. And baths. Damn, it’s British as hell, but I miss baths.”
I fall into place beside him. I miss this, I think.
* * *
—
THERE IS A sign on the door of the antiquities office stating that the director is temporarily indisposed—which can mean he is out touring sites, helping curate museum collections, or doing general cultural heritage work—but that he will return, inshallah. The note does not, however, give a return time.
“Now what?” I ask.
“We wait,” Wyatt says. He steps into the shade thrown by the lintel of the doorway and squats down, tucking himself out of the sun and leaning his back against the locked door. He gestures to the spot beside him.
I rub the back of my neck. “Wyatt, no. You have a thousand things to do. You can’t just spend an afternoon sitting here till God knows when. We don’t even know if this guy is coming back.” I force myself to exhale. It’s one thing to ask Wyatt to try to get me clearance. It’s another to waste his time. “You tried, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. But—”
“Dawn.” He extends a hand to me, shading his eyes with the other. I look down and have a crippling moment of déjà vu. “Stop talking.”
I reach for him, his fingers sliding around mine, dry and strong and so familiar that my chest squeezes. How can you go for over a decade without holding someone’s hand, and still have the feeling of it imprinted on you so firmly?
He tugs me down to a sitting position, shoulder to shoulder. “Firstly…” Wyatt winces. “Who says firstly? God, I sound like a complete wanker.” I smother a laugh, and he shakes his head. “I do have a thousand things to do. But I’ve been working around the clock and I’m the director and if I decide I need an afternoon’s break, so be it. Second”—he hesitates—“-ly: I don’t consider this a waste.” He traces a crack in the pavement with his thumb. “I owe you, Dawn. I would not have discovered this new tomb without you. So believe me when I say that if showing you my thanks means sitting on my arse for a few hours in downtown Minya, it is a small price to pay.”
I think about the citation he left me in his thesis. “I’m pretty confident you would have eventually found it whether or not you’d ever met me.”
“Wrong. It all started with that dipinto.”
I remember that afternoon. It had been so still that the world seemed to be in suspended animation, and we had been standing in a shaded hollow beneath a rock wall of the wadi where we did not have permission to be. I remember dusting the stone gently, and Wyatt running his finger beneath the hieratic, translating the bits of the inscription that he could read—including the mention of a tomb that had never been found at the Bersha site, in hundreds of years of excavation.
I remember Wyatt’s hand catching mine, squeezing so tight that it hurt, and me squeezing back just as hard.
“I looked for that tomb from 2003 till 2013,” Wyatt says. “And I found absolutely nothing. Dumphries let me do it, but I think it’s because he wanted me to realize I was on a fool’s errand. He had me nearly convinced that even if there was a Djehutynakht who was a distant early relative of Djehutyhotep II, there was enough damage to the rock inscription to cast doubt on whether his tomb was actually part of this necropolis, or somewhere else.”
The thing about archaeology is that it’s like baking a cake, one layer on top of another, with the most recent layer first and the oldest layer at the bottom. Your number one goal is to figure out what got put down when. You cannot be misled by someone who dug a hole into an older layer and pitched something into it. When you excavate, you aren’t finding brilliant, clear lost hieroglyphic text. You’re moving masses of mud. You’re finding broken pottery. You’re looking for the needle in a haystack of desert sand.
“It was 2013. I was standing at the top of Djehutyhotep II’s tomb, where we spent that last season. I was looking around, trying to figure out what the hell I had missed. And I thought about Howard Carter.”
“As one does,” I joked.
“Well, as one does when searching for ten years for something one can’t find.”
Carter had systematically looked for Tutankhamun’s New Kingdom tomb for a decade, to no avail. In 1922, his benefactor, Lord Carnarvon, said he was going to pull the plug on financing. Carter begged to check one last area—even saying he’d fund it on his own. Lord Carnarvon agreed to a final season, and Carter went to the tomb of Ramesses VI, which had been excavated a while back. He started to dig past the workmen’s huts associated with that tomb, on top of other debris, and found the steps to a second tomb buried beneath it.
“ ‘At last, wonderful discovery in the valley,’ ” Wyatt murmured, quoting the wire that Carter sent to Carnarvon when he fo
und the corridor sealed with the stamp of the necropolis—a jackal over bound enemies. He then had to cover the buried steps and wait for Carnarvon to arrive, so the benefactor could see the tomb being opened, the fruits of his investment.
I look at Wyatt, understanding what he is trying to tell me. “Wait,” I say. “Really? Djehutynakht’s tomb was right beneath us all that time?”
He nods. “I’d looked everywhere, except where I was literally standing. So I dug down two feet from the entrance of Djehutyhotep II’s tomb and found the top of a lintel. There was enough autobiographical inscription on it for me to see the glyphs for Djehutynakht. A couple of weeks later, I’d uncovered the entry—painted with faux red-and-green granite and a seal of a giant scarab on the door. By then I’d read enough inscriptions to know that this was Djehutynakht, the son of Teti. He’s five generations removed from Djehutyhotep II, and one or two generations older than the Djehutynakhts in the Boston MFA. And he’s been referenced in nine other restoration inscriptions he left behind at different tombs in Middle Egypt.”
My jaw drops. “So he’s truly the granddaddy of the necropolis?”
“Most likely. He’s probably from the First Intermediate period, Eleventh Dynasty. He may be the immediate predecessor of Ahanakht I, the first known nomarch to have a rock-cut tomb at Bersha.”
“Evidence?” I demand.
He laughs. “We don’t have anything substantive, but I’m not the only one who thinks it. Given the dates of their existence as nomarchs, it fits. And we know for a fact that Djehutynakht liked going around Middle Egypt to other necropolises to fix up other people’s tombs, so it’s entirely plausible that he would start this necropolis area for his own family.”
“It also would explain why his name was written on the dipinto, as a sacred place officials might have come to spend the night before a festival,” I say.
“And,” Wyatt adds, “if there’s a Book of Two Ways in that coffin in the burial shaft, it would give him the earliest known version.”
“Wait. You still haven’t gotten into the burial chamber? In all these years?”