“Fancy meeting you here,” he whispered into the space between Gen and Ruby.
“Best to hear firsthand what the congressman has up his sleeve,” Gen said.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Dean Rolfe introduced the mayor, dapper and polished as always. If Fenton ever encountered him at a bar in Richmond, he wouldn’t be shocked. The mayor liked to gush about his lovely wife, the childhood sweetheart who grew up down the block from him in Springboro. The lady doth protest too much, was Fenton’s thinking.
According to coverage in the Springboro Gazette, the incumbent was engaged in a close mayoral race against the former county prosecutor. Both men had put forward anti-vice platforms, with the prosecutor arguing that his experience better positioned him to tackle the town’s recent problems. Fenton had listened to the challenger on the radio and found his tough-guy stance both convincing and terrifying. Coupled with the current police chief, a prosecutor-turned-mayor boded ill.
The mayor spoke briefly, reminding the audience about his determination to smoke out deviants but careful not to veer off into a full-blown campaign speech. He then introduced the eleven-term congressman, who also faced unexpected competition at the ballot box. In polls, he led his younger opponent by just two points, with a four-point margin of error.
Duke, whose white eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose, commanded the space with his baritone. “My office is working closely with your mayor and other local officials,” he announced. “Today, we launch a daring pilot program called ‘Know Your Neighbor.’”
That explained the baskets of paper a crew of young men proceeded to carry through the auditorium. Fenton took a sheet from the top and passed the basket down his row like a church collection.
“Just invested in a brand-new xerography machine for the office, so we decided to put it to good use,” Duke said with pride.
“Our tax dollars at work,” Fenton heard Ruby quip to Gen.
The sheet featured a drawing of a serious-looking man with a telephone receiver pressed to his ear. Below the picture a description set in large type couched the Know Your Neighbor initiative as a sort of block watch. Reading between the lines suggested something more nefarious—an effort to encourage citizens and coworkers to spy on each other and report potential “moral turpitude” to the police.
“So how does this work in Springboro and specifically for y’all at Baines College? I’ll tell you. No one knows each other better than colleagues, right? Why, I could tell you what my aide ordered for lunch. You had the chicken salad on a bun, am I right, Dan?”
A young man whose slender frame was swimming in a cheap gray suit halted in the aisle and saluted his boss on stage.
“See there? It looked mighty good, too, I should add.”
The joke brought snickers from the mayor and dean but no one else.
“We’re hoping to make everyone just a little bit more aware of what’s going on around us. If something smells fishy and you bring it to the attention of the authorities, then that takes away its power to stink up your fine school and the whole dang town, for that matter.” The congressman winked toward someone in a front row.
When Duke ended his remarks, a handful of faculty members raised their hands, including Ruby, but the dean popped out of his seat and explained that Congressman Duke didn’t have time to entertain questions. “You can address your questions to my office,” Rolfe said.
Before being whisked offstage, Duke said, “I apologize for having to run, but my campaign staff has me booked solid, most likely through the Second Coming.”
The tepid applause that followed reminded Fenton of an off-Broadway show he’d seen that bombed.
“Well, wasn’t that informative,” Ruby said when the faculty rose to exit. “I wanted to ask Mr. Duke if all this nonsense was just a hissy fit because he didn’t get to chair the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
“You wouldn’t have!” Fenton said.
“Someone should. He seems to have made a quick U-turn from hunting down Reds to sniffing out—” She glanced at the flier, “—moral turpitude. Good Lord.”
Ruby ripped her flier into perfect fourths and tossed the pieces into a trash bin at the back of the theater. With her secure position at the college, a respected husband, and three married sons, she could afford to be cavalier about the menace of Know Your Neighbor. For Fenton, the danger burned in his gut like wildfire.
Gen folded her own flier neatly and slid it into her purse. Fenton caught her eye and mouthed talk later before returning to his office.
✥ ✥ ✥
Fenton reread the letter from Dr. Bergler as the minutes ticked away on the clock in the waiting room. The good doctor had responded with admirable speed, referring him to a colleague in Richmond named Dr. Thorne. Bergler claimed Dr. Thorne had enjoyed “great success” with cases such as Fenton’s. “Even at your advanced age.” The words pricked at Fenton’s pride. He was mature, certainly, but thirty-four hardly qualified as “advanced.”
His hand trembled as he returned the letter to his satchel. The gay grapevine teemed with horror stories of forced hospitalizations, lobotomies, and chemical castration. Dr. Bergler’s response, however, had assured Fenton his treatment was merely a talking cure undertaken several times a week. It sounded harmless enough, and Fenton certainly had no trouble talking about himself. Given the new level of anxiety Congressman Duke had introduced with his “Sell Out Your Neighbor” initiative, as Gen called it, he hoped the doctor might offer strategies for avoiding suspicion.
When the door to the inner office finally opened, Dr. Thorne’s easy smile greeted him, radiating benevolence.
“Mr. Patterson? Please come in.” As with Bergler, Fenton had used the pseudonym Frederick Patterson, even though he trusted their sessions would be confidential. He was less sure if a doctor’s records could be impounded if he was ever arrested.
Dr. Thorne motioned Fenton to a scratchy-looking gray couch and settled into the fashionable Eames chair opposite him. The psychiatrist said nothing at first but continued smiling while Fenton’s eyes took in the diplomas and Rothko-like paintings on the walls, the Kleenex box on the coffee table, the thick medical tomes on the bookshelf. Fenton swiped his damp palms together and tried to get comfortable, but the couch’s stiff cushion reminded him of a mattress in a cheap motel.
“Let’s start with why you’re here, Mr. Patterson.”
The intimate history he’d shared in his letter to Dr. Bergler gushed out of him, but he added depth and perspective, including his police interrogation and Duke’s campus visit. He drew the Know Your Neighbor flier from his pocket and handed it to Dr. Thorne, who jotted notes into a leather-bound book.
“Is your stomach upset, Mr. Patterson?” Fenton glanced down; he hadn’t noticed that his hand had traveled to his gut, which churned like a cement mixer.
“I had a bleeding ulcer a few years ago. It might be back.”
“An ulcer.”
Dr. Thorne closed his notebook but kept a finger between the pages to mark his place. Fenton assumed he would now offer advice, something for the fifteen dollars he was paying him, but all he seemed to want to do was repeat what Fenton said and state the obvious.
“So, then,” Fenton said, “I’ve laid out the sordid details of what’s happening. I’m wondering what you’d suggest for someone in my pr-predicament.”
“You see your life as sordid.”
“Most everyone around me thinks it is,” Fenton snapped.
“What about you?”
The question made Fenton’s eyes well up unexpectedly. “Sometimes,” he admitted.
“You’ve come to the edge of a cliff,” the doctor said.
The statement made the tears spill out. He grabbed a handful of tissues and dabbed at his wet cheeks.
Dr. Thorne made another notation in his book. “Mr. Patterson, homosexuality is indeed the quickest means to an unhappy end. If you decide to work with me, our goal would be to stop you f
rom taking further steps toward your own oblivion.”
The words end and oblivion jumped out at him. Fenton knew men who’d been beaten to within an inch of their lives for just looking like fairies, but so far he’d been spared. His father took a strap to him when he was young, but didn’t all fathers? And suicide hadn’t crossed his mind since his early teen years.
“Happily, I sense something positive in you. You desperately want to find a way out of all the degradation, filth, and debauchery.”
The trio of condemnations landed like a pile of manure.
“You may have noticed we are just blocks from an area frequented by homosexuals.”
Fenton nodded haltingly, afraid to admit he knew the exact location of every bar and cruising place in Richmond.
“The choice was intentional. I’ve helped many men like yourself, but only those who commit to hard work. If you undertake this therapy, it will require the utmost fortitude. You may be tempted to leave here and go for a drink or find someone in an alley. However, to be cured, you will have to refrain from all homosexual encounters for as long as you are in treatment.”
Fenton balled the tissues in his hand into a tight wad.
“There will be no physical contact with men. No drinks in bars, no public toilet encounters, no kissing or hand-holding, no penetration, fellatio, mutual masturbation, massages, or stroking.”
A nervous laugh escaped him. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“This isn’t a joke, Mr. Patterson. Needless to say, self-pleasuring is also off limits. No magazines or movies that might trigger unnatural passions. No thoughts about men you’ve been with or desired.”
“Doctor, I don’t see how I can possibly stop my thoughts.”
“There is a proven scientific method for that. I use a small machine similar to a lie detector.”
Fenton’s throat constricted. “How much p-pain is involved?”
“Oh, none at all. It simply trains the mind. I’ve had wonderful results. Why, recently, a man about your age married a lovely young woman and impregnated her on their honeymoon!” The doctor smiled almost proudly, as if he had supervised their intercourse.
“Children—I don’t—”
“You needn’t worry about passing your tendencies along to your offspring. Homosexuality isn’t genetic. It results from absent fathers and mothers who wean their sons prematurely.”
“B-but my father wasn’t absent,” Fenton protested in a weak voice. If anything, his father had been omnipresent, a force to reckon with. Although dead twelve years, his cruelty lived on in Fenton’s memories.
“Perhaps not physically, but if we dig deep enough, we’ll see he withheld from you emotionally.”
He had no rejoinder for that or the doctor’s assertion about breastfeeding, and he would die of embarrassment asking his seventy-year-old mother when she weaned him.
“My recommendation would be three sessions,” the doctor said.
“That’s all?”
“A week.”
Fenton swallowed hard. “For how long?”
“At least a year, possibly more.”
Fenton reached toward the wallet in his breast pocket. “I don’t see how I could manage the fees and the gas. It’s a long drive from Springboro.”
The doctor shrugged and stood up, signaling the session’s end. “You have a choice to make. The wrong choice could have dire consequences.”
Dr. Thorne moved to his desk and quickly and efficiently wrote out a receipt. Fenton handed him three crisp fives, which the doctor tucked into a drawer.
“What do you say, Mr. Patterson? Would you like to mull it over and let me know?”
Chapter Thirteen
Ruby
Except for the female faculty gatherings, Ruby and Darrell rarely entertained. For election night, Darrell talked her into inviting folks to watch the Huntley-Brinkley coverage. It made sense to host, he said; they had the biggest house and the biggest television. Mostly, she thought he wanted to show off the TV, a new purchase.
“Zenith Space Command 400,” Darrell told guests who asked about the model. “The sound is incredible. Double speakers.” Until Darrell retired, neither of them had considered it important enough to own a TV, but now her husband treated the Zenith like their most prized possession.
For the election night party, they moved their kitchen and dining chairs into the family room to supplement the sofa and lounger. Ruby unfolded metal snack trays and scattered them around the room to discourage wet rings on her cherry tables. They stocked the bar and laid out an array of snacks—popcorn, potato chips, pretzel sticks, onion dip, and a chocolate sheet cake with buttercream frosting from the bakery that read: “And the winner is . . .” in swirls of red, white, and blue.
Darrell had suggested two competing cakes, one for his man, Nixon, and one for hers, but Ruby vetoed the idea. She and Darrell had had minor dustups during the debates, and Ruby didn’t want to foment discord among her guests. Aside from Gen, she didn’t know how any of her friends and colleagues voted and didn’t plan to ask.
Guests began trickling in around seven, with Gen leading the pack. Juliet May followed soon after. Juliet had not been on Ruby’s original guest list. She was still annoyed about the young woman’s refusal to heed her advice, but Gen said they were becoming good friends, so Juliet made the final cut.
“What happened to your car door, Gen?” Juliet asked, catching Ruby’s attention. “Looks like Willie Mays took a swat at it.”
“Nothing that exciting,” Gen said with a nervous laugh. “Just my bad driving.”
“I’ve driven with you. You’re an excellent driver,” Ruby objected.
Gen shrugged. “Distracted lately.”
Slowly, seats filled and all the available floor space was taken, too. Everyone—even the younger folks—chuckled at Chet Huntley’s opening remark: “I hereby speak for all those Americans who have adjusted to the immutable fact that, come what may tonight, we shall be older than the president of the United States.”
“Well, this old fossil couldn’t be more pleased,” Ruby said. “Here’s to a new generation taking charge.” The guests raised their glasses in the first toast of the evening.
Returns took their sweet time rolling in. Guests snacked and talked over NBC’s long-winded and prideful explanation of its RCA 501 computer. Reports from the two campaign headquarters landed with a thud, too.
“Now that’s a scintillating detail,” Darrell said as the reporter covering Nixon told of the candidate’s solo drive that afternoon into Mexico.
“Yes, but don’t you want to know what he was picking up in Tijuana?” Juliet asked with a crafty grin.
Around eight o’clock, the real excitement came not from the TV screen but from the late arrival of another guest, whom Darrell led into the family room.
“Who won?” Fenton asked, hoisting a bottle of Cold Duck.
A young woman entered a few steps behind Fenton, overdressed in a black cocktail dress and nubby wool bolero jacket. Ruby’s thoughts raced, trying to place her. Did she work on campus, or was she a student? She looked young enough to be.
Then Fenton introduced her around as his “friend,” Kathy. Ruby remembered her finally as a former student, a fairly recent Baines graduate—at least ten years Fenton’s junior, she reckoned.
As they refreshed their drinks in the dining room, Darrell whispered to Ruby and Gen, “I always thought Fenton was, you know—” He let his wrist hang limp, and Ruby smacked his hand down.
“Behave,” she said. “People . . . change.”
Gen mumbled, “Not unless they have to.”
Darrell shrugged and retreated back to the family room, while Ruby and Gen lingered at the bar as if hunting for more ingredients for their cocktails.
“Is this Kathy thing . . . new?” Ruby asked. It seemed like a legitimate question to ask Fenton’s best friend.
“Let’s say it’s new to me,” Gen said, her forehead creased with worry.
&
nbsp; Ruby surveyed Gen’s face. It had never occurred to her that Gen could harbor any deeper feelings than friendship for Fenton. But he was an attractive, single man—an oddity in Springboro.
“Sorry,” Ruby muttered, to say something. It came out hollow, like perfunctory condolences to a widow she barely knew.
Gen turned a puzzled look to her. “Oh, Lord!” she said. “It isn’t that. It’s just, he never said a word, and I’m in shock.”
Fenton appeared beside them and picked up two cocktail glasses from the selection Ruby had set out.
“Because your man won Connecticut?” he quipped.
Gen’s attention remained fixed on the bar. Ruby sipped her whiskey and soda, her eyes flitting between the two. She wasn’t sure if she should provide a buffer for a possible argument. When Gen continued to hang back, Ruby decided to leave with a breezy, “See you back at the tally board!”
As she withdrew, she heard Gen’s low, baffled voice: “What are you doing?” Fenton’s response was too muted to make out.
The party dragged on into the late hours. The NBC computer divined the winners of various states—Huntley and Brinkley called them “projections.” With the nail-biter returns, Ruby and Darrell ran low on drinks and snacks. Even the cake had only one ragged corner left, and Ruby wished she’d taken Darrell’s advice to buy two.
At eleven-thirty, the computer was predicting a slim Kennedy win, but the news anchors warned that final results would likely not come in until the following day. A groan rose from the guests, most of whom made excuses and took their leave.
“School night,” Juliet said. Gen left soon after, blowing kisses to Ruby and Darrell but merely waving to Fenton. What had passed between them after Ruby left the bar?
After midnight, the only guests left were Fenton and Kathy. Fenton looked settled in, but Kathy stifled yawns behind her hand. Darrell disappeared from the room for longer than it took to visit the bathroom, and after a while, Ruby heard sounds of water running in the kitchen sink.
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