LITMIR.BIZ

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      Gen bristled. “Yeah, women have it so easy, being invisible to each other! Or we might risk everything coming on to a colleague who turns out to be horrified by our very existence. Or some girl we teach could get angry about her grade and—”

      “Touché.” Fenton sighed and scratched something off in his notes. “Thank God you’ve got Carolyn. That must be a comfort.”

      She blurted out the barest facts of the breakup while they perched on uncomfortable, wrought iron chairs with tags that read, “Earnest/Spr 59”—props from an Oscar Wilde production that had drawn huge crowds.

      “I truly don’t know what to say.” Fenton rubbed the palm of her hand in a soothing way. “Except that I never much liked her.”

      Gen stiffened. “You barely knew her.”

      “That’s right, she never deigned to come to you, always making you travel to her. Selfish and self-centered, if you ask me.”

      “It was my choice,” Gen said. “Richmond was safer for us than a town where everybody knows everybody’s business.”

      “Still, I saw her maybe twice in what—five years?”

      “Six. Which gave you plenty of time to let me know what you really thought, friend.”

      “I couldn’t tell you the truth. You were so much in love.”

      Gen let go of the anger that had flared in her. Many times, she’d kept her opinions close to the vest with friends, too.

      “Love,” she said with a shrug. “That’s something I won’t be rushing back into.”

      Their heads swerved at the sound of light footsteps coming from the direction of the stage. Fenton dropped her hand, his eyes widening, and leapt to his feet. Gen was surprised to see one of her students emerge from the shadows, clutching what looked like a script.

      “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Page! Dr. Rider! Did I get the audition time wrong?”

      Fenton fished out his gold pocket watch. “I’d say so. We won’t start until at least four-thirty.”

      “Sorry. It’s my first time going out for school play.”

      “Well, you’re welcome to take a seat in the orchestra, Miss—”

      “Margaret Sutter. I think I’ll just come back later.” Margaret mumbled another apology and slunk out the way she had entered.

      Fenton clicked his tongue. Gen wasn’t sure what bothered her fastidious friend more, the girl’s earliness or the fact that she’d come backstage uninvited.

      “Margaret’s one of my advisees,” Gen said. “Always comes to office hours. She’s a good egg, but she can get underfoot.”

      Fenton’s face registered annoyance. “I don’t like them skulking around. Eavesdropping, even. What were we talking about when she showed up?”

      Gen raised her eyebrows. “I believe you were telling me how very much you disliked Carolyn.”

      His cheeks colored. “I’m sorry, hon, I shouldn’t have—”

      “I’m teasing, Fenton. Feel free to hate Carolyn as much as you want.” She cast a look at her wristwatch as she stood to leave. “Anyway, I don’t think the girl could have heard much. Maybe she saw you holding my hand and will tell everyone we’re a couple.”

      He expelled his relief with a burst of laughter. “Ah, yes, but a couple of what?”

      ✥ ✥ ✥

      Gen arrived home after a long day of teaching and didn’t bother to kick her shoes off before fixing a frosty gin and tonic. Talking and engaging for so many hours had both worn her out and energized her. She wouldn’t soon forget how her students’ eyes blinked double-time as they flipped the pages of her syllabi. She guessed some would drop the class before the next meeting, intimidated by the long reading and assignment list. Her ideal would be a tight group of history majors engaged with the material.

      When she was finally in her armchair, feet up, G&T in hand, she took the still-unread morning paper from her briefcase and read the story about Mark with its headline designed to titillate: “POLICE ROUND UP LOCAL HOMOSEXUALS.” The subhead implicated the college: “Arrested Men Include Baines Instructor.”

      Gen didn’t recognize any of the names except Mark’s. One man was picked up in the public restroom of Town Hall, unwittingly exposing himself to an undercover officer. Cops found two other men in a parked car in an alley behind a bar. But Mark’s arrest near Big Beau with a Negro named James Combs received the most attention as a “desecration of our historic monument,” according to the mayor.

      Gen realized she wanted nothing more than to tell Carolyn everything that had happened, both at school and in town. Sharing their days had been a routine, and Gen had the long-distance phone bills to prove it.

      Her eyes drifted to the telephone bench. She didn’t mean to, but she found herself calling the operator in Towson, Maryland. “Carolyn Weeden, please. I don’t know the street.” There were three Weedens in the town, but only one with the first initial C.

      Gen’s fingers brushed the receiver. She picked it up again, took a long breath, and dialed Carolyn’s number. Before the second ring, she hung up.

      She kept thinking about the number as she cracked an egg for dinner and finished her second drink, then picked at her scrambled egg while standing at the counter.

      After rinsing her plate, she dialed a second time.

      “Hello?” It wasn’t Carolyn’s voice, but it sounded familiar. “Is anyone there?”

      Gen dropped the receiver into the cradle with a thunk.

      She’d had her suspicions about how quickly Carolyn had gotten the job at Goucher College and why she’d accepted a three-year lecturer contract with no hope of tenure. The call seemed to confirm her worst fears. There was someone else, a woman whose voice Gen thought she recognized but hoped she didn’t. She flopped onto the seat of the telephone bench and wallowed in images from a shared past she had mistaken for happy.

      Gen had met Carolyn at the annual conference of the Southern Historical Association in 1954. By then, Gen had toiled as a lowly lecturer at Baines for ten years—hired during the war when male faculty were scarce—and had just been promoted to assistant professor. SHA included many Northern-trained scholars among its members, some of whom were friends from the graduate program at Ohio State, and it seemed like the right fit. The organization’s conference in Columbia, South Carolina, counted among its speakers some of the most progressive historians of the time. They weren’t much older than Gen, but their work left her starstruck.

      When Gen arrived, she had found the Hotel Columbia swarming with men. She gravitated quickly to the first woman she found—Carolyn, a lecturer at a women’s college in Richmond.

      “I’ve counted five skirts so far,” Carolyn had quipped. “You bring it up to six.” They moved together like conjoined twins, spending much of the weekend laughing over cocktails about the men who asked where their husbands taught.

      Carolyn had shared Gen’s passion for socially conscious history, but there was an undercurrent of something else running between them, too. No romance bloomed at the conference, but they exchanged plenty of deep, searching looks. Back in their respective towns, their letters and phone calls crescendoed with suggested passion: “When will I see you again? Has it really just been a few weeks?” and “I don’t think I can wait until next November to see those eyes!” Within days of receiving a note signed “Missing you so much it hurts—C,” Gen had crossed the state and climbed into Carolyn’s bed.

      Now the pain of Carolyn’s departure lodged in her chest, festering into resentment. She and Carolyn were supposed to be a team—for life. How could Carolyn betray her? And how would Gen ever find someone new, when meeting Carolyn

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