“Your clock slow?” Gen asked as she brought her coffee mug to the counter for a refill.
“As a Sunday afternoon,” Trix said. “What time you got?”
“A minute to five.”
“I’d put my money on yours.”
Gen wandered to the back of the diner, where a man in overalls and a flannel shirt was still monopolizing the phone. She didn’t mean to pressure him, but he acknowledged her pacing with a wave, mouthing something that might have been be right out. Then he turned his attention back to the phone and took his time tying up his call.
“Apologies, ma’am.”
She should have said, “Sorry about your horse” or something else to acknowledge his private trouble, but she didn’t like to keep Ruby waiting, so she simply nodded at him and claimed the seat in the booth. Her heart set to beating so loudly in her ears that she nearly missed hearing Ruby accept the collect charges.
“First of all, there’s very good news,” Ruby said. “The committee voted unanimously to reinstate you. Roscoe delivered our recommendation to the Faculty Senate, and it went from there to the dean. It included that you are entitled to back pay.”
“Oh, Ruby, thank you, thank you! That’s wonderful! It’s been so hard, and I’ve been so worried. Roscoe seemed like a wild card.”
“Yes.”
Her friend dragged out the pause. Gen’s heart continued to pick up speed as she sensed Ruby withholding something.
“Should I come home?”
“Well, there’s this other . . . situation.”
Gen clutched the phone cord, her thoughts racing to Juliet. Ruby had admitted that she knew who the woman in the kitchen was and that she agreed that Juliet should remain anonymous.
“Has something happened with Juliet?”
“No, no, she’s fine.” Ruby paused, her choice of words almost too careful. “The dean honored the committee vote, but when it went to the provost, he—oh Gen, Ramsey overruled it.”
Gen struggled to take in Ruby’s news. After a long moment of silence, she managed to stammer, “I . . . I don’t understand. He can do that? I thought—”
“It’s not common,” Ruby went on. “It’s a faculty matter, and the Senate should have the final say. But he’s claiming—” She paused and Gen heard her fumbling with paper,“—‘extenuating circumstances that demand a thorough investigation by my office.’ That’s a quote from his response to the committee. He says a more serious charge has come to light.”
She knew the charge against her was “unprofessional conduct”; it was in her suspension notice. That one kiss. How could there be another charge, unless it was a lie?
As Ruby elaborated, white light flashed in front of Gen’s eyes. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t a fainter, never had been, but the phrase “solicitation of students” jumped out at her and made the blood leave her head.
After that, Gen registered Ruby’s news like individual words and phrases without any connection: “. . . the bike . . . Lee-Anne . . . Mrs. Blakeney . . . parents . . . back her up . . . withdraw daughters . . . campus . . .”
Gen cracked open the door of the phone booth for air, but that was all she remembered until Trix’s insistent, “Doc, wake up” cut through the haze and brought her back to the reality of the diner. Somehow she had slumped from the booth’s seat and landed on the hallway floor, her body curved into a comma. She could see the phone receiver dangling from its cord and hear Ruby’s faint voice radiating from it. Gen reached for it but couldn’t sit up.
“Take it easy,” Trix said. “Not so fast or you could go under again.” Then Gen heard the waitress explain to Ruby, “She blacked out for a second is all. Didn’t hit her head or nothing. She’s coming to. She’ll call you back,” and click the receiver into its cradle.
A small group of customers gathered behind Gen and Trix, and one man’s voice chimed in, “Bad news, huh?” The question brought Ruby’s news flooding back, and Gen felt lightheaded all over again.
“None of your beeswax,” Trix chided. “How about make yourself useful and help the lady stand up?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lee-Anne
Lee-Anne had watched Dr. Rider being escorted off campus by a security guard, but the news of what had happened to her didn’t surface for several days. The early gossip mill cranked out all sorts of wild theories, including that the professor was actually a professional NAACP agitator who had helped organize Negro boycotts and sit-ins.
“All across Virginia!” one girl claimed. “Maybe even all over the South.”
“When’s she got time for that, Lois?” Lee-Anne scoffed. “In between classes?”
More of the story dribbled out. A woman had spent the night at Dr. Rider’s house.
Yeah, so what? Lee-Anne thought. She’d stayed over with plenty of friends. When they were up late studying, Susanna sometimes slept in her single at Paxton. They didn’t even bother to lie head-to-feet, like girls were supposed to. It was a silly rule anyway, like girls could be tempted into something with each other, sleeping with their heads on the same pillow. Sometimes she and Susanna woke up with their feet touching or their arms entwined, but they jerked apart without mentioning it.
Then the rumors transformed the woman who’d spent the night at Dr. Rider’s into a student. Not a senior, but a younger student. In the morning, the girl rode away on a blue bike.
That tidbit made Lee-Anne’s mind shoot to the day on the trails when Margaret fell off her bike. Had it been blue? Everyone knew Margaret had a crush on Dr. Rider.
Still, lots of girls used bikes to get around the rambling campus. If you had a class in Waylon and then the next in the art studio or gymnasium, you needed to fly. Even one of the professors pedaled across the quad like lightning. What was the big deal?
Finally, the rumors zeroed in on the big story: Dr. Rider had kissed another woman. Or maybe she had kissed a student who owned a bike. In a window, in full view of everyone. Maybe, possibly, a bedroom window. With the curtains open.
Susanna—who should know, because her mother witnessed it—reported that it wasn’t a quick, sisterly kiss but an honest-to-God kiss kiss. Maybe even a French kiss. They might have been naked.
Lee-Anne had never thought about Dr. Rider kissing anyone, or not having clothes on, but now she could almost imagine her lips, her breasts, her down there, likely as raven black as her silky page boy. She shook her head to dispel the picture.
“Did you know she was a . . . lesbian?” Susanna asked. They were still on break but talked on their princess phones many afternoons.
“I heard a rumor,” Lee-Anne admitted but didn’t say from who. In fact, once Dr. Thoms had called Dr. Rider a dyke under his breath after Lee-Anne finished telling him about her class. “That dyke will be the ruin of this department,” he had muttered.
“Mama wants me to transfer to Agnes Scott,” Susanna said. “Like there aren’t lesbians in Georgia! And, well, you know, wherever girls get together. In fact, who knows Atlanta’s not teeming with lesbians?”
The repeated mention of lesbians—a word no one said too often—made Lee-Anne’s head swim with memories. Dr. Thoms had gotten angry at her one morning during office hours when she’d made a mistake and pushed his hand away. She didn’t want his fingers inside her again. “I’m just tired,” she’d explained.
“Is that it? Or is this school turning you into a lesbian?” Later, she wished she’d settled for his fingers, which would have been better than what he ended up doing to her.
The echo of that moment made Lee-Anne gasp into the phone.
“Oh, I upset you,” Susanna said, her voice punctuated with concern. “I’m not really going to transfer, Lee, don’t worry.”
Her best friend since ninth grade, Susanna was the only person Lee-Anne had told about Dr. Thoms. She couched what they did during office hours in innocuous terms—kind of like what girls did with boys in the back of movie theaters. Calling it “petting” instead of what it actually
was gave it a slightly romantic cast.
“Ooh,” Susanna had said. Her eyes widened, and her mouth twitched in a funny way. “With a married man!” Lee-Anne had sworn her to secrecy so Dr. Thoms didn’t get into trouble—and bring her along with him.
After the phone call, the L-word hung in the air of Lee-Anne’s bedroom like a bewildering fragrance.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gen
Gen had been at Ruby’s cabin for a month and had run out of clean clothes, so she simply stopped getting dressed. Her flannel nightgown and bathrobe suited her fine, especially on the days she didn’t bother to get out of bed. When the morning sun streaked through the curtains and spilled onto the sheets, she curled onto her side and smothered her face with the pillow. She staggered in and out of bad dream sequences, fantasies she’d never entertained—kissing a pretty, nameless student on the lips, fondling her breast—and woke up drenched in sweat, despite the chill in the cabin.
One morning she wondered what would happen if she tucked the sheet around her head so tightly she’d use up all the oxygen and pass out with no one to find her. Would her natural inclination be to fight her way out of the sheet?
Later, she padded into the cabin’s bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and stared at Darrell’s Gillette razor, twisting the bottom of the handle to expose the blade. On the shelf below it sat a prescription with Ruby’s name on it—glutethimide, Gen saw when she squinted at the bottle. She didn’t know Ruby had suffered from insomnia. Her own medicine cabinet at home contained nothing stronger than Sominex.
Gen replaced the razor and closed the cabinet. She leaned in to the mirror to inspect her haggard reflection—red circles around both eyes, cracked lips, a puckered welt on her left cheek where her pillow had creased her skin. She looked like Halloween. Scowling at her appearance, she ran water, scrubbed her face until it hurt, and plastered her unruly hair into submission. And then, instead of returning to bed, she headed to the kitchen to brew herself a pot of coffee. She needed to wake up.
A mouse had eaten a hole through the bottom of the sugar bag she’d left out, and a line of white granules trailed across the counter. She’d run out of eggs, her staple food. Then the refrigerator light blew with no replacement in sight. The buildup of mishaps led to the conclusion that she’d stayed at the cabin too long.
While she constructed a fire, she noticed her stomach trembling with hunger. Since she had heard the news about the new charges, she’d been neglecting to eat. Gen sat at the table with coffee and a piece of plain toast, which felt like all she could manage. One slice, dry as it was, tasted good, and she quickly made herself another, adding blueberry jam.
On the face of it, it had seemed like a smart idea to disappear from Springboro, but her withdrawal was making her morbid and self-pitying. Soon she’d be talking to herself all the time, a wild mountain woman whom mothers in Lewisburg would point to and warn their children about. That thought was the first thing that made her laugh out loud in weeks, but the laugh made her feel crazy, too.
Her temples ached with the effort of thinking. She couldn’t continue hiding here, but what did she have to go back to? A memory shot into mind of Fenton heading to Ruby’s car after his uncomfortable visit: “You know how to fight, hon. Don’t let them push you around.”
Now she pondered that vague advice as she finished her toast. Except for that one handshake with the provost, she didn’t know him, and she rarely had contact with Dean Rolfe. She blanked on Mrs. Carr’s given name—was it Iris? or maybe Irene?—and couldn’t dredge up a picture of Mrs. Blakeney. Yet, taken together, these four strangers seemed bent on ridding the college of her.
Gen washed and dried her plate and glass and arranged them on the shelves. Almost no food remained in the cupboard and the refrigerator. She realized she could throw out the perishables, collect the rest into a single brown bag, and, if she wanted, be on her way by early afternoon.
She packed her suitcases with her dirty clothes and carted them to the trunk of her car. When she popped the hatch, the Belk’s box of mementos greeted her from the spot where it had cowered for weeks.
Gen lifted off the box lid and combed through the morass. Envelopes bearing far-off dates, postmarks from a single place—Richmond. The return address changed when Carolyn changed residences. Gen rifled for the earliest ones, written in the tiny third-floor rooms Carolyn occupied at the time they met. She relocated to a more private apartment when Gen’s frequent visits drew too much attention from the landlady, who lived downstairs. Gen could still picture every detail of the first apartment, every eave, the dark, pitted floorboards, the squeaky iron bedstead where they’d first made love.
She stopped herself from reading the letters or releasing photos from the envelopes where they nestled with their negatives. Instead, she replaced the lid and ran a finger idly over the name Belk’s before arriving at her decision.
The pile made a nice addition to the logs still smoldering in the hearth. From her viewing spot on the sofa, Gen imagined her younger, more innocent self going up in flames.
✥ ✥ ✥
There was no “For Rent” sign on her front lawn, which Gen took as a good sign. She still had a home to go to, a bed to sleep in. Better yet, the cozy warmth of the living room as she opened the front door surprised her. Ruby, who held her spare set of keys, had laid her mail on the coffee table, cranked up the heat, and filled the refrigerator with rations. On the kitchen counter, a round chocolate cake made her smile, the words Eat Me scrolled in shimmering white frosting across the top.
On the telephone bench Gen spied a sealed envelope addressed Welcome Back, Gen in swirling penmanship she didn’t recognize. She thumbed through the dollars, fives, and bigger bills stuffed inside in neat ascending order. Added up, they must have totaled at least a hundred dollars—enough for three months’ rent.
The accompanying note read, Dear Gen—Some of us took up a collection. Consider this a gift, not a loan. More to come!
Frances had signed first, and her handwriting matched that on the envelope. Ruby, Vanessa, Juliet, Fenton, and others had added their names below hers. Juliet dotted her i with a minuscule heart, tender as a schoolgirl’s, and it broke Gen’s own heart open. Please call me, Juliet had printed in parentheses, the first note she’d ever written her.
Gen sank to the bench and gulped back tears. She badly wanted to obey, but if she called Juliet or even Ruby first thing, she’d dissolve in tears and be a wreck for the rest of the day.
Instead, she unpacked quickly and fortified herself with a ham sandwich from the provisions Ruby had brought. After, she settled in at the telephone with the list of white attorneys Frank Johnson had compiled for her. It seemed like years ago that she had coaxed him to relinquish “five minutes” of his time to address her problem, but it had only been a matter of weeks.
That morning, Frank had consulted his address book and jotted down names and numbers. “I don’t know if any of these gentlemen will be familiar with a situation like yours. I’ve put the most likely candidates first, so I’d start with them.”
Gen accepted the short list of names. “This is wonderful. Thank you. But . . . is there a woman you might recommend, too?”
Frank held her eyes for a long minute before paging to the back of his book, under the W’s, for another name to add.
“This lady’s more than capable and certainly dedicated to justice. She’s in Lexington, though.”
“That’s no problem,” Gen added quickly.
“She’s a fighter, and you could use that. Plus, she’s married to one of the name partners, so she’s got some clout with her firm. That said, she sometimes rubs people . . .” Frank pressed his lips together; he didn’t have to finish the sentence.
“I’m sure I do, too,” Gen replied. That bit of self-deprecation had made Frank’s mouth curl into a shy smile.
Now Gen surveyed Frank’s list and skipped immediately to the last name. Her finger spun the phone dial until a sec
retary in Lexington answered with the melodic, “Berry, Briscoe and Werner.” Frank Johnson’s name got her past the front desk with a couple of “please hold” interjections.
Ursula Werner had an accent that bespoke a Northern pedigree—the Seven Sisters, Yale Law. When she asked, “How is Frank?” Gen wasn’t sure if the connection was a benefit or a hindrance. Her perfunctory answer was met with polite interest, and she rested easier when Ursula didn’t continue probing.
At Ursula’s prompting, Gen peeled her story layer by layer. The process of relating the facts to a complete stranger humbled and humiliated her. She was almost unable to say kiss or solicitation, but she soldiered on with the aid of a few pointed questions.
When she finished, Gen heard a rapping noise from Ursula’s end, like the stutter of a pen on a desk.
“And the woman in question—I take it she’s not willing to clear you of the solicitation charge?”
Gen’s throat dried. “She says she is, but she’s more vulnerable than I am. I don’t want her to speak up. Besides, wouldn’t that actually undercut my defense? I haven’t admitted anything.”
“Still,” Ursula said, “we’re talking about the solicitation of students, some still teenagers—”
“Which didn’t happen.”
“You’d need solid proof. Without it, they could turn everything over to the authorities, who would make it a criminal charge. Your friend’s confession would knock that out.”
“Criminal” and “confession” hovered in the silence that followed. Gen knew Juliet would step forward at a moment’s notice; she had been itching to. But if Gen owned up to the kiss, she and Juliet would likely both be fired on the spot.
“I’d prefer to leave her out of this if we can,” she said.
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