She fished in the pocket of her windbreaker and produced a pristine roll of butter rum Life Savers. Over the weeks of rehearsal, they’d discovered a mutual love for the flavor.
“Here, keep the roll. I have a spare.”
Fenton wadded the tape into a neat ball and accepted the candy with a smile. “You’re a peach.”
Margaret regarded him like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. “Which scenes are we going over today, Mr. Page? Act Three is pretty loosey-goosey, if you ask me.”
“We aren’t rehearsing today.” He held up the ball of tape for her inspection. “I picked off all the spike tape. Took no time at all and made only this ball. Half a semester’s work down the drain. We’ve been shuttered, Margaret, as they say on the Great White Way.”
Fenton lobbed the ball of tape past her toward a trash can, and Margaret watched it sail by and miss.
“I don’t get it.”
“Happens all the time,” he said, although he couldn’t think of a single instance in his career when it had. “Things aren’t going as planned and the producers—” He made a slitting motion across his throat.
“But we all thought we were doing well,” Margaret protested. “You told us we were good, just the other day. We’ve got Act One down, you said.”
“My dear, I never flatter actors,” he said. “The minute you do, they start dropping lines and missing cues. I believe I said I was pleased you wouldn’t embarrass me opening night.”
“But now you’re saying it’s over? There’s no opening night? My family already bought tickets!”
The dejection on her face tugged at him, and it was time to stop joking. “There will be refunds. This is no reflection on you or any members of the cast, Margaret. When the others arrive, I’ll explain. This decision came from high up the ladder.”
As Fenton related Ramsey’s decision, the students’ disappointment unfolded, from shouts to tears. He kept a special eye on Andrew, whose chin drooped toward his chest. Fenton had already suspected that Andrew’s parents led the charge to quash the production, and the boy’s apparent shame seemed to confirm his hunch.
“I know this isn’t what we wanted to happen,” Fenton said, “but y’all will be top of my list for tryouts for Our Town in January. I do hope you’ll give that a whirl. It’s already approved by the provost, so that one will fly.”
Susanna performed her final stage-manager duties, staying to help him shelve props that wouldn’t be used until whenever the next Victorian-era play went up. “Want me to turn on the ghost light?” she asked as she threw on her cardigan to leave.
“No, I’ll do it. You go.”
He hauled the light from the wings, a tarnished brass floor lamp minus its shade, and plugged it in. No one had died in the Baines college theater that he knew of, so there were no ghosts waiting to perform when the house went dark. Still, the tug of history compelled Fenton to leave a single light glowing on stage each evening.
“Good night,” he said to no one in particular.
✥ ✥ ✥
On his walk home, Fenton tapped his inner pocket for the roll of Life Savers from Margaret and dropped several rings onto his tongue.
He knew he was odd to chew them, but they tasted better that way, like the topping of a butterscotch sundae. With the candy crunching in his mouth and the fall leaves crackling under his feet, Fenton slipped momentarily out of his troubles. He was not in jail, and he still had a job. His good fortune had held for another week. He was about to pop several more Life Savers when a bitter, metallic taste permeated his mouth.
In the morning, after a night of bourbon shots to quell the pain, he telephoned the dentist’s office and coaxed the receptionist to wedge him into the afternoon schedule.
“I teach Dr. Sutter’s daughter, Margaret,” he said. “She’s one of my favorite students.”
In the waiting room, anxiously anticipating the novocaine that would wipe out his pain, Fenton sighed at the dearth of reading material, back issues of Field & Stream and Time.
He chose the news magazine, thumbing ahead to the theater pages to read about Broadway plays, all of which he’d seen the previous summer. Skimming backward, his eye caught a headline in the medicine section: “The Strange World: A Psychoanalyst Interviews Thousands of Homosexuals.”
He glanced around the waiting room. Two people had entered after him, a grandfatherly man who appeared to be dozing off in his seat, and Kathy Yost, the provost’s secretary. She caught his eye and smiled, and Fenton nodded back. He shoved the magazine closer to his face, as if she could pierce the periodical cover with her x-ray vision and read the shocking headline.
Dr. Edmund Bergler, a psychoanalyst, had published a book about his years-long study of sexual deviance in men, with the astonishing title of 1,000 Homosexuals. He theorized that homosexuality stemmed not from desire for deviant sex but for self-punishment. One of his patients labeled homosexuality “misery concentrated” and “guilt heightened.” Some men, Bergler reported, had hundreds of sexual contacts, with few lasting more than a couple of weeks and the shortest only five minutes. “The homosexual unwittingly yearns for exposure,” Bergler told the reporter. “He’s drawn to the allure of danger.” Risky behaviors, like quick sex in public places, were common.
Fenton’s eyes rested on the word danger. His thoughts roamed to an encounter back in the summer. A friend in New York had invited him to the beach at Cherry Grove, introducing him to a thickly wooded area where men congregated for sex. Fenton had ventured into the copse and within moments had found a willing partner. The incident between them lasted five, maybe six, minutes while sounds of other men’s pleasure drifted around them. He saw his partner’s face only briefly, and they had exchanged smiles but not names.
Since Mark’s arrest, Fenton hadn’t frequented any of his usual haunts in Richmond. His contacts who knew him as “Fred” might have thought he died. In a way, a piece of him had.
Fenton continued to scan the article, which described a patient called “Mr. X,” a married man whose wife had found his not-so-hidden cache of pornographic photos of men. Eager both to save his marriage and to avoid imprisonment, the man sought out Dr. Bergler, who had cured him in eight months of psychiatric treatment. All that had been required, the doctor claimed, was “the will to change.”
Could it really be such a simple formula? The children’s librarian hadn’t worked out for him, although she had the amazing ability to hold her bourbon like a man. He had loved her repartee, her endless collection of amusing, off-color stories. But after two months of keeping company, she had tired of chaste dates and expected more. The night they planned for him to sleep over, he begged off over the phone, feigning an ulcer flareup. Although he said they’d reschedule, he never called her again.
The following week, he had returned to Richmond and his favorite bar. He’d met a lovely man whose left ring finger had a lighter band of skin where his wedding ring would normally be.
“If a man wants to persist in self-punishment, homosexuality is certainly the most efficient means to that unhappy end,” Dr. Bergler said at the end of the article.
When Fenton lowered the magazine from his face, he saw that Kathy was staring at him. “They called your name, Mr. Page,” she said.
He flashed a grin. “Must be my subconscious warning me, ‘Don’t go in there!’”
“You looked so engrossed. Must be some article.”
Fenton tucked the magazine under a tattered issue of Field & Stream. “I was reading about the spring season on Broadway,” he said, standing and buttoning his jacket. “Only it’s an old magazine, so I’d already seen everything.”
“You’re so cosmopolitan!”
Kathy was in her early twenties, a perky brunette who had graduated from Baines a few years back. After a production of The Little Foxes, she’d confided to Fenton that her dream was to live in New York. He wrote an effusive letter of recommendation for her to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but she decided to f
inish her education at Baines and, worse, to snap up a secretarial job after graduation.
Her choice of “cosmopolitan” played directly into his vanity, and Fenton gave her a low dramatic bow. “You are too kind,” he said. “And you really should call me Fenton.”
Kathy colored an attractive peachy-pink and wished him luck with the dentist.
That night, Fenton called directory assistance in Manhattan for Edmund Bergler’s address and number. He got all the way to the closing of his letter to the doctor before he balled it up and threw it in the trash. He’d be thirty-five on his next birthday, technically middle-aged, and it would take a miracle to change now.
Later, though, he lay awake thinking about the dark jail cell reeking of bleach that Mark had described in vivid detail. Fenton switched on the lamp, retrieved the sheet from the trash basket, and tried again.
Chapter Nine
Margaret
The Baines campus sprawled across hundreds of acres. From the quad of antebellum buildings at Baines’s heart, the campus fanned out in a leisurely way, to the gym, student union, and library, crisp new structures erected when Margaret was a toddler. Beyond those buildings lay a manicured lawn for impromptu games and sunning when the temperatures rose. Farther out still sat the stables where students boarded their horses, surrounded by winding trails.
Margaret didn’t own a horse, which was one of many reasons she didn’t fit in at Baines. Neither did her roommate, Polly, a biology major with a keen sense of humor. But Polly did own a bike, a Schwinn Varsity she’d inherited from her older brother, which she sometimes let Margaret take for a spin.
The bike offered Margaret freedom, even though straddling the bar took some getting used to. Margaret told Polly she took it to town on errands, but she actually rode it on the horse trails. Bikes and walkers weren’t forbidden on the trails, merely frowned on by the equestrians who considered them their private domain. Margaret purposely went at odd hours when she rarely spotted any living creature but a bunny or doe. Nowhere else outside of Westminster Presbyterian could she find such a serene place to think.
And her sophomore year at Baines required a lot of time to think about what she was doing wrong and why she didn’t fit in. Margaret’s efforts to make friends hadn’t panned out. Except for Polly and another girl who joined them for meals in the dining hall, Margaret stayed pretty much to herself. The history honors society—a small group that her favorite professor, Dr. Rider, presided over—was dominated by a few snobby girls, and Margaret rarely spoke. Who even knew why Lee-Anne Blakeney was majoring in history and not something genteel like music or art.
Then she’d lucked into the school play. How excited Margaret had been to get a speaking role, even though the boy’s part was hard to explain to her parents. They seemed relieved by the play’s cancellation. “Maybe it’s for the best, Margie,” her mother had said. The one positive thing to emerge from all the time spent in rehearsals was her kinship with Mr. Page. Without the play, Margaret would have to manufacture reasons to visit him at the theater. She already planned to try out for the spring show.
The morning after Mr. Page broke the news, Margaret borrowed Polly’s bike. She wanted to ride and ride and ride. The trail she chose was dry and smooth from a dearth of rain and amazingly clear of the usual horse shit; a stable hand must have come through to shovel it away. Margaret pedaled faster and faster, strands of hair blowing across her face. She even laughed aloud a few times because no one was around to gossip that she was odd or “funny,” the word some girls muttered about her. Margaret shook her head to dispel the image of Lee-Anne Blakeney, who riled and fascinated her at the same time.
As Margaret rounded a bend leading back toward the main campus, a rhythmic clip-clop of hooves reached her ears. She slowed and coasted toward the edge of the trail to get out of the way of whatever massive animal was heading toward her.
The sound of trotting came louder and faster, more like a gallop. Margaret applied her brakes too quickly, swearing as the Schwinn tipped over. She tried to hop off before the bike careened into an embankment, but her foot caught on the center bar of the boy’s bike, and she landed in the leaves with the bike half on top of her. She managed to pull herself out from under it, but placing weight on her right leg brought a mewl of pain.
The clip-clops halted. “You hurt?”
When she looked up, Lee-Anne was appraising her from a majestic roan. She was outfitted for her morning ride in a hip-length tweed jacket, black velvet cap with a strap secured under her chin, and knee-high boots.
The sight of someone as perfect as Lee-Anne made Margaret’s insides shrivel. Lee-Anne often giggled with Susanna while staring directly at Margaret. Maybe Lee-Anne sensed her crush or found her ridiculous for some other reason. Even Polly had witnessed Lee-Anne’s tittering in the dining hall and said, “What’s with her?”
Margaret brushed fragments of leaves off her jeans. She always wore clamdiggers for her rides, even when it was chilly, and the flesh on the bare spot above her ankle was scratched and torn. “I’m fine,” she replied. “Just getting used to the brakes.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing, really.”
“I could ride back and get help.”
Lee-Anne Blakeney offering to help her? When this was the longest exchange they’d ever had? Margaret worried it was a trick, that she’d accept and then wait and wait for help that never arrived.
“I’m fine, I said.”
“Well, a girl’s bike would be better.” Lee-Anne laid a slight emphasis on the word girl’s.
“You’re right about that. Thanks, Lee-Anne.”
Lee-Anne continued to assess her from on high, her face lit by a pool of morning light. “Is Dr. Rider your adviser?” she asked out of the blue.
Margaret hesitated before answering. Was this another trick? “Yeah. Why?”
Lee-Anne shrugged. “I was thinking of switching, that’s all.”
The statement made no sense to Margaret. Late in freshman year, Lee-Anne had boasted of snagging Dr. Thoms as her adviser, when he accepted only one sophomore.
“But I probably won’t,” Lee-Anne added. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Margaret raised her hand to shield her eyes. “Must be the sun.”
Lee-Anne’s gaze turned away from Margaret and down the path. “You know, these trails aren’t really for bikes.” She clicked her tongue, either at her horse or at Margaret, and cantered off.
Despite the tumble, Polly’s bike wasn’t hurt, not the slightest dent or scrape. Margaret walked it back to her dorm one step at a time. The throb in her leg slowly dulled, and by the time she reached her dorm she wasn’t hobbling. Her ego was more bruised than anything. Lee-Anne would likely spread the story about “funny” Margaret who couldn’t manage to navigate a three-speed bike.
Chapter Ten
Gen
The whine from the phone cut through Gen’s concentration. The latest copy of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review rested open in her lap as she devoured an article written by her grad school mentor, Muriel Whitbread. Female historians so rarely saw their names on anything but book reviews.
The intrusion persisted. No one she knew phoned her late at night, and as she glanced toward the gossip bench near the kitchen, her thoughts jumped to the hang-ups that had become more frequent. As a rule, those calls interrupted her at supper, but maybe her harasser had missed their own schedule. She found that if she waited it out, the anonymous caller gave up at about five rings.
Her phone continued to squeal, though, prompting Gen to abandon her comfy spot on the sofa. What if it was Fenton’s plea from jail to bring his bail check?
On the seventh ring, Gen took a deep breath and picked up the receiver, steeling herself for the outcome. The voice on the other end was so unexpected, it made the room too bright, the overhead light blinding her.
“I was just going to hang up. I was beginning to think you were out on the town.”
Gen held herself back from falling into the light repartee of their past, when she might have quipped: “In Springboro? There’s barely a town to go out on.” Instead, she said, “What do you want, Carolyn?”
“I guess I deserved that.” Gen heard the scrape of a match, the quiet inhale of a cigarette from Carolyn’s end. She waited, letting Carolyn exhale, conscious of making whatever it was she wanted to ask for harder.
“It’s that time of year, is all,” Carolyn said.
Gen lowered herself onto the bench cushion, her wobbly legs welcoming the support.
“You know—the Southern,” Carolyn continued. “You going?”
She and Carolyn hadn’t missed a Southern Historical Association convention since they met at the conference in Columbia. Every November it was their special time together, as cherished as a wedding anniversary. This year, Gen had almost decided she couldn’t face it alone, but she’d sent in her registration and reserved a hotel room in Atlanta just the same. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that Carolyn might go, too.
“Yeah,” she replied. “You?”
“Too far.” The answer filled Gen with relief.
A pause followed, with nothing but the sound of Carolyn’s smoking. “Is that it?” Gen asked finally.
“Please don’t get off yet,” Carolyn said. “I didn’t call to talk about the Southern.”
While she waited, Gen had wrapped the phone cord so tightly around her fingers it made indentations.
“Gennie, could I see you over the Thanksgiving break? Unless you’re going home, of course.”
Carolyn’s affectionate nickname for her made her throat dry. Gen badly wanted a sip of water, but the sink was too far from the bench. Her voice came out raspy and weak. “See me?”
“Maybe I could drive down.”
“Why would you do that?”
“We—I ended it badly,” Carolyn said after a long exhale.
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