Chapter Five
Erin spent the morning going over more of her translations. She was having no luck in translating individual symbols, or words, so she came at the project a new way, separating every letter that looked similar enough to have the same meaning, and writing them all together, with notes of what page they were from. She already knew what the most commonly used symbols were, so maybe if she could figure out which ones this person used the most, she could start figuring out their code.
She had copies of every original marble tablet, pages of her notes, large art quality papers with her renderings of each symbol, all taped up to her living room walls, spread across the table, covering the kitchen counters, and practically every other flat surface in the apartment by the time someone knocked on her door in the early afternoon.
She had been wearing shorts and a tank top, despite the cool autumn air outside, the amount of running around she had been doing had made her warm, but she figured that since the only people who visited her here besides her mother and Zack were salespeople, it didn't matter how she answered the door.
"Hello mom," Erin said, pulling the door open for the woman without a fight since she would come in whether Erin invited her in or not.
"Did a tornado go through here or something?" Her mother asked, looking disdainfully around the apartment.
"I'm working on a big project," Erin said shrugging, determined not to let her mothers comments get to her today. She had gotten a good start to the weekend, and she thought she might be close in figuring out who the person that carved the tablets had been.
"When are you not?" Her mother asked, then turned to look at Erin. "Why aren't you ready?"
"Ready for what?" Erin asked, confused now.
"I told you we would be having dinner this week. Did you forget already?" She asked, frowning.
"I didn't realize you had picked a day," Erin said, thinking back over the week. Her mother definitely hadn't mentioned anything about dinner being Saturday. "I just need a couple minutes to get dressed."
"I'll wait out in the car," her mother said, frowning at the papers spread over the floor that kept her from entering the apartment further than the hallway. Erin grinned to herself as she jumped over one of the photocopies and rushed to her bedroom to put on clothes appropriate for dinner. Her mother had been wearing her usual slightly fancy clothing, so Erin decided to go with her usual clothes too, jeans and a t-shirt.
"You could have dressed nicer," was the first thing her mother said when Erin got to the car.
"Are we going somewhere fancy?" Erin asked, knowing that if they were her mother would have worn her super fancy things.
"How you present yourself to the outside world should not be influenced by your location," the woman said, which Erin took as a definitive no. Erin resisted the urge to make a sarcastic comment, instead turning to look out the window. The two of them sat in silence until Erin's phone rang out loudly. She took the excuse to not start a conversation again and pulled it out of her pocket quickly, answering it without looking gat the caller ID.
"James," she said in way of greeting.
"Erin?"
"Oh, hey Zack," she said, sighing a little. "What's up?"
"I lost a bet and Hodgins is making me invite you to his house for dinner tonight," he said. Erin chuckled. She could just imagine how much the red headed man had been bothering Zack about her, especially is Zack had told him they had slept together.
"What did you tell him about earlier?" She asked, wording her question carefully so her mother would have no idea what she was talking about.
"That we are friends with benefits," Zack said. "He seemed surprised that I knew that phrase and now he is insisting on talking to you."
"Tell him I can't tonight," Erin said. "I'm having dinner with my mother."
"Oh," Zack said. "I thought you didn't get along with her."
"I don't," Erin said, sighing. "I'm making an effort though. I have to go. I'll see you at work on Monday."
"Okay," Zack said, then hung up without saying anything else. Erin put her phone back as they pulled up to the restaurant. It was an Italian place, not fancy by any means.
"With the amount of time you put into that museum, it's no surprise you haven't met a nice boy to settle down with yet," he mother said, glancing at Erin from the corner of her eye.
"If it's not a surprise then why do you keep bringing it up?" Erin asked, not able to resist just one snarky reply.
"Because I want whats best for you!" Her mother said as they walked into the restaurant. It wasn't the type of place where one made reservations, so they didn't need to wait to be seated. "I don't want you to be alone forever."
"There's more in life than getting married mom," Erin said, sighing as they sat. "Liz is getting married so you already have one child to prove how good your parenting skills have been. Why can't I just do what I want to do?"
"Because there is no value in digging up old rocks," she said, looking over the menu.
"I like old rocks," Erin said, frowning into the menu. She had meant to avoid this argument tonight.
"Nothing useful has ever come from those things you spend so much time staring at," her mother said, setting down the menu.
"All our modern medicine is based on Edwin Smith's notes from the 16th century BC," Erin said automatically. "Which was discovered in Egypt, written on papyrus, with the exact same symbols I've been deciphering all week…" Erin trailed off, coming to a sudden realization. She was so busy thinking that she didn't even hear her mothers response, nor the waitress asking for their orders, until her mother nudged her shoulder.
"I'll have the marinara pasta," Erin said absently. "Can I borrow your pen for a second, please?"
The waitress handed it over and Erin immediately unfolded her napkin and began writing her thoughts down so she would forget them. Most of what she wrote was in Hieratic, the names of different documents. It hadn't been until she had put both her current working, and the old medical texts in the same thought that she had realized why some of the symbols on her current work looked familiar. They were medical terms. Very uncommonly used in most old carvings and writings because the symbols were difficult to shape.
"Thank you," Erin said to the waitress, giving her pen back.
"That was rude," Erin's mother said, sitting straight in her chair. Erin was eager to get home now, to see if her new idea would help.
"Yeah, I'm a rude person," she said without thought.
If she was correct and these were medical texts… they would be the earliest ones discovered so far. She would have to make a requisition for the original tablets. That would be difficult to do without giving a reason, which she really wanted to keep to herself for now. If she told the Egyptian museum what she hoped to find with those tablets, they would never allow her to have them, they would want to keep that discovery within their own people, as they commonly did with important things. She might have some luck though, since the old tablet she needed had been discovered by American's on a privately funded dig, and they hadn't been found in a Pharaohs tomb, but rather an old palace.
Erin was drawn out of her thoughts when the waitress brought their food back. Her mother had been speaking while she thought, though Erin hadn't heard her. When the waitress left, her mother picked back up, talking about other possible careers for Erin that would be more worthwhile, and how it wasn't too late for Erin to find a new profession because at 24, she was still sort of young.
"We all thought that since you graduated high school so early you would be someone important by now, but you had to choose a useless field to study."
Erin ate her pasta quickly, not listening to her mother. If the tablets were in fact from the Early Dynastic Period, as she had guessed before, they would be one of the biggest discoveries in Egyptian history in the last hundred years.
"I understand that you're going through some sort of late teenage rebellion stage or something, but when is the last time you even talked to your father?"
But she didn't want to get ahead of herself with them. They could be nothing. She hadn't found the name Karanebti in any previously documented texts. Hopefully one of the other names throughout the texts could validate time period and maybe even family history.
"Erin, are you even listening to me?" Erin sighed.
"Yes mother," she said, setting her fork down with her meal half eaten.
"I asked when the last time you talked to your sister was?" Her mother asked, her eyes narrowing a little.
"She called me the morning after you stopped by to tell me about the engagement," Erin said. She didn't mention that her sister had said she was going to call Erin the night before, but their mother had rambled on for so long that she'd had to go to work before she had time to call. She also didn't mention that Liz had been a little upset that their mother still called Michael by the incorrect name even though they had been dating for two years. Erin had done her best to make her sister feel better, making the joke that their mother was just getting old and probably losing her memory.
"Good," her mother said, nodding. "Maybe when you see how happy she is with her life you will start taking more of my advice." Erin almost snorted at that. Liz hadn't taken her mothers advice at all either. She had joined the military half because she thought it would be a good idea, and half to get away from her mother.
"I doubt that going to her wedding is going to make me want to rush out and get married," Erin said, pushing her food around her plate. She had eaten more than enough, and now she was just waiting for her mother to be done so she could go home.
"I don't understand you," her mother said, setting her fork down with a loud clunk. Erin looked up, surprised. Usually her comments were ignored by her mother, she had very rarely gotten upset over them. "Is it too much to ask for you to enjoy your life like your father and I have? Like your sister is doing?"
"Mom, I do enjoy my life," Erin said, frowning. "I just don't enjoy the same things you do."
"We worked so hard to get ahead in life and to give you a good education, and you repay us by digging up rocks and looking at stupid little carvings," her mother said, returning to her usual habit of ignoring Erin's comments.
"I've payed for my own education for the last four years. If you want me to repay you for the first two years, I will, if only so you stop trying to say I owe you," Erin said, her voice growing cold. "I don't owe you anything. All you do is make my life miserable. I'm sorry that I didn't let you control my life and that I don't see the value in settling down and having kids right now, but I am happy with my work and my life and I'm not going to change any of that because you tell me to. Thanks for having dinner with me," Erin said, getting to her feet an leaving a twenty dollar bill on the table. "Please don't come around my apartment anymore, unless it's to apologize for making me feel worthless my entire life. Goodbye Jackie."
Calling her Jackie instead of mom was Erin's way of telling her that she didn't want to be considered family anymore. Her mother must have gotten the hint because she didn't follow Erin out of the restaurant. The restaurant they were at was only about two miles away from her apartment, which would have been fine, but it was starting to drizzle. The rain also would have been fine, but she had the napkin from the restaurant tucked into her pocket,
Over the past few years she had thought of hundreds of ways to tell her mother to shut up and leave her alone, most of them were much meaner than the speech she had just given.
It wasn't that Erin hated her mother, not at all, she just didn't want to listen to someone telling her she wasn't good enough or smart enough anymore. Some of what had made her speak out tonight was probably the stress of having her dissertation in only a few days, and some was excitement to leave and get home to work on her projects, but most of it was pent up frustration from years of her mothers nit picking.
Erin, now glad she had happened to accidentally grab her jacket with a hood, zipped the coat up, pulled the hood over her hair, and started walking in the direction of her apartment.
She had made it about halfway when the rain really started coming down, but she managed to stay mostly dry by sticking to the very edges of the buildings she was walking past. When she made it back to her apartment, she took off her shoes and coat in the hallway so she wouldn't track in mud, then she shed the rest of her wet clothing just inside the door, hanging it over her coat hangers so it didn't drip on the papers she had left on the floor.
Erin didn't bother putting dry clothes on. It was, as always, overly warm in her apartment, and she was more eager to find out if her ideas at the restaurant were good ones or not.
By the time the sun went down Erin's living room looked like someone had attempted to cover the entire floor with open books, papers, and random drawings. At some point she had gotten a little chilly and gone to put on a pair of sweats, but she had ended up rolling the legs of the pants up so that when she stepped over the books on the floor, the fabric wouldn't catch on any of the pages and lose her place.
The knock on her door hardly distracted her at all from her current book. The book contained pictures and sketches of different variations of the Hieratic language in its earliest forms, and though she had read it a hundred times before, she still found something new every time.
"It's open," she called, knowing that it was probably Zack since, even though he didn't drive, he pretty much the only person she talked to on a regular basis, besides her mother, and Jackie had been mad enough to last for at least a couple days. Hopefully a lot longer.
Erin was sitting cross legged on the top of her coffee table, books spread around her on the table and the floor, and various images propped up on the couch.
"Erin?" Yes, that voice was definitely Zack.
"I'm in the living room," she called back, not wanting to get up.
"What on earth have you been doing?" Zack asked, carefully making his way across the floor.
"Working," Erin said, shrugging as she set her book aside. "What are you doing here? How did you even get here?"
"I took a cab," Zack said, his hands tucked into his pockets as he stood. "You weren't answering your phone."
"Oh, yeah it's in my coat pocket, I forgot to grab it," she said, shrugging. "Me not answering my phone is cause for you to come over here?"
"Well, you said you had dinner with your mom, and I know that she upsets you, so I thought I would come and…" he trailed off shrugging.
"Cheer me up?" Erin suggested, smiling a little. "That's very thoughtful of you. I didn't know you could be thoughtful."
"I find that it upsets me to know that you are upset," he said, frowning. "I suppose that is because you are my friend." She smiled at his reasoning. It was nice to know that someone didn't want her to be upset. She had come to stand in front of him while he talked.
"So you aren't here because you thought that I might be in an emotional state which would then lead me to have sex with you?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No," he siad, frowning. "Is that something that I should have thought of?"
"No, you are too nice to take advantage of people like that," Erin said, smiling. "I'm glad you came over though. It's nice to have company sometimes. Are you staying the night?"
"I can if you want me to," he said. "I brought your dissertation back. It's very interesting." He reached into a messenger bag he wore over his shoulder and pulled out the binder.
"Good," she said, accepting it. "Thank you."
"What are you working on?" Zack asked, looking at the amount of books and papers she had piled around the room.
"I'm trying to decipher some old carvings, and it's a little more difficult than I am used to, but I think it's going to be a pretty important find, overall," she said, grinning. "If I'm right, this is one of the oldest documentations of medical procedures and anatomy. I haven't been able to translate it yet though, so I'm not sure. I think I finally have a place to start though. I thought of it at dinner."
"Is it polite to ask you about dinner or polite to ignore the subject?" Zack asked, frowning as he tried to remember what social protocol to follow. Erin gave him a thin smile.
"Dinner was not pleasant. I left early and walked home," she said, her voice a little angry. She was surprised when Zack hugged her instead of replying. She relaxed into him and hugged him back, smiling.
"Angela says that the proper way to comfort someone who is upset is with a hug," Zack explain, pulling back from her.
"Angela is very smart," Erin said, covering a yawn.
"It is very late, would you like to go to sleep?" Zack asked, and Erin glanced at the clock, frowning. It was almost midnight.
"When we first slept together you said you didn't like sleeping beside someone else," Erin pointed out, making her way through the books to the hallway.
"I had never done so before so that was an assumption," Zack said, following behind her. "Now that I have more experience with the situation I find myself enjoying sleeping beside you. It is pleasant to share your company."
Erin didn't reply to that because she wasn't sure what to say, so she just followed him to the bedroom with a soft smile.