Testimony

by Paula Martinac

  “I suppose we should be getting along, too,” Kathy said—one of the few comments she had made all evening. She had a low, breathy voice that surprised Ruby. “Could I help you clean up?”

  “Oh, no, we’re fine, dear.”

  Still, Fenton appeared hesitant to leave the sofa. To urge the two of them on, Ruby asked, “Would you like the last slice of cake to take with you?”

  Kathy rose from her seat, her hand skimming the narrow waistline of her skirt. “I couldn’t possibly, Dr. Woods, but thank you. And thanks for including me. I’m so honored. You know, I was too shy to tell you, but your nineteenth-century American lit class was one of my very favorites.”

  “Thank you, Kathy,” Ruby said. She might have added, Call me Ruby, but stopped short of doing so.

  Darrell was dipping glasses in a soapy dishpan when Ruby came into the kitchen.

  “Thanks for starting,” she said. “I can’t believe how late it is.”

  “Damn, I thought they’d never leave!”

  “Fenton acted like he wanted to spend the night.” Ruby put on an apron with a nervous laugh. “He reminded me of Pete on his first date. Remember how scared he was?”

  “Yeah, he could barely get it out when he asked me if he should kiss the girl at the door. I don’t remember her name, do you?”

  Ruby shook her head slowly, but her thoughts lingered on Fenton, not her youngest son.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gen

  Gen hadn’t been to Atlanta since her senior year in high school, but the city carried a distant bad memory as the site of her first heartbreak.

  That spring, she had set out on a bus from Charlotte to visit her best friend, Laurette Sparks, a freshman at Agnes Scott College. They’d been planning the rendezvous since Christmas. Laurette’s roommate would be out of town visiting family, and they could finally share a bed without fear of anyone’s mother popping in. Gen had already been accepted at Agnes Scott for the fall, so the weekend held the promise of what the next three years with Laurette would be.

  When she arrived at the dorm, Laurette hugged her coolly, as if they were just friends and nothing more. She pointed Gen toward her roommate’s bed. After a day of polite distancing that stung, Gen pressed for an explanation, and Laurette admitted she’d fallen in love with a girl in her composition class. “You’ll meet someone, too,” Laurette had assured her. “College is different.” Gen returned to Charlotte early, switched her admission to Queens College, and never saw Laurette again.

  This trip didn’t require her to go anywhere near Agnes Scott. For the long weekend of the Southern Historical Association conference, Gen would be ensconced at the Biltmore Hotel, whose porticoed entrance presided over West Peachtree Street like a dowager. Gen had never checked into a hotel alone. With all the male historians swarming the gilt lobby and no Carolyn as a buffer, she wondered if she should have chosen a guest house instead, as she had for that first conference in Columbia. Something about collecting her own room key, though, filled her with an electric charge of both excitement and terror.

  The man behind her in the hotel registration line looked familiar. She recalled sitting next to him at a panel the previous year, exchanging thoughts about one of the papers.

  “David, isn’t it? Good to see you again.” He smiled with a confused expression that said he was trying hard to place her without the aid of a name tag. “Gen Rider, Baines College?” she added.

  “Yes, of course. Is that devil Henry Thoms here, too?”

  The man glanced past her expectantly, but Gen explained that her colleague couldn’t make it. Thoms had stopped attending the Southern, complaining that the conference had become too political. The gathering in Memphis a few years back had featured both a fiery pro-integration speech by novelist William Faulkner and a mixed-race banquet that shocked and alienated segregationists like Thoms.

  The awkward exchange was an ill-omened start. The speakers and sessions should thrill her, but the idea of enduring the weekend on her own was daunting. She would force herself to socialize.

  Gen followed the bellhop onto the elevator and to her seventh-floor room, where she changed clothes and pored over the conference program. She ran her finger down the pages, locating a reception hosted by two women whose husbands were on the local planning committee. It rankled Gen that the female historians were sent off to a genteel tea with faculty wives in the solarium of someone’s house while at the same time the men engaged in meatier discussions in the hotel’s banquet hall. But, of course, she would attend the tea; all the female association members would be there, and none would dare venture into the men’s space.

  Gen continued searching the program for names she recognized until she saw that Muriel Whitbread was moderating a panel the next day. Muriel didn’t attend every year, and her presence in the program sent a wave of relief through Gen. A pioneer of Southern social history, Muriel had served as Gen’s dissertation adviser at Ohio State. More than that, she had championed Gen’s early career, helping her secure the position at Baines and later advocating for the publication of Gen’s first book review in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Whenever Gen and Muriel met up at the Southern, Carolyn joked that she felt superfluous: “Y’all are like a mutual admiration society.”

  At the women’s tea, Gen spotted Muriel’s distinctive froth of white hair. At just five feet tall, Muriel was dwarfed by a ring of faculty wives transfixed by her words. Although it was bad manners to butt in, Gen did so anyway, softly touching the sleeve of Muriel’s serge suit jacket. As she did, she caught the tail end of the conversation, a swapping of tips about travel to Miami Beach.

  “I will have to look up that hotel when we go in January,” the woman next to Muriel said. “We are always desperate for a charming place to stay.”

  “It will suit you, I’m sure,” Muriel said.

  Gen left her hand on Muriel’s sleeve until the older woman acknowledged its pressure and her face lit. She pecked Gen on the cheek, careful not to tip her teacup, and introduced her to the circle of women as “my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Rider.” When the talk shifted to research and teaching, the faculty wives wandered off to other conversations, leaving Gen and Muriel on their own.

  Muriel stunned Gen with the news that the spring semester would be her last at Ohio State. She wanted to travel more while she still could, she explained, visit far-flung friends and family, do research in New York City. Although Gen had known the professor for almost twenty years, her private life remained a mystery. Muriel didn’t have a husband or an apparent “friend.” Instead, she’d owned a series of cocker spaniels, often two or more at a time, whom she referred to as her babies. Still, the older woman never showed surprise that Gen and Carolyn were annual conference companions, that they always shared a room and negotiated the sessions like a matching set.

  It seemed odd, then, when Muriel didn’t inquire about Carolyn during their lengthy conversation. The three of them had enjoyed dinner or drinks at several conferences.

  Muriel asked if Gen was staying at the hotel, and that was how Carolyn’s absence—almost as palpable to Gen as Muriel’s presence—edged its way into the conversation. “Sadly, I’m by myself this year. Carolyn took a new job in Maryland. Goucher College.”

  Muriel nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  Gen made a concerted effort to remain unfazed by this news and act as if Carolyn confiding her move to Muriel was business as usual. Even though her heart had picked up a beat, she managed to say, “I didn’t know you and Carolyn were in touch.”

  Muriel took a delicate sip from her tea. “We talked about jobs here last year. She said her department had gotten uncomfortable, and she probably wouldn’t get tenure. She needed a letter of recommendation. You were off at a panel, and she suggested we have a drink.” She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “And you know I much prefer a martini to tea any day!”

  Gen remembered the occasion because it had struck her as odd. A panel on the Jackso
nian era should have drawn them both, but Carolyn had begged off, saying she had conference fatigue and urging Gen to go anyway. What she had actually done was to seek out a separate tête-à-tête with Gen’s former mentor.

  “She wrote over the summer to tell me she’d landed on her feet,” Muriel continued. Her eyes took on a look of concern. “My dear, did I say something wrong? You just lost all your lovely color.”

  Gen struggled to regain her composure and concoct a story at the same time. She didn’t have a teacup to occupy her hands so she squeezed them together behind her back. “Oh, it’s childish. I just remembered how jealous I was that Carolyn got so much more of your time last year. And I hadn’t seen you since Memphis.”

  “You and I must have dinner to make up for it. Unless your dance card is already full.”

  Gen forced a smile. “I’ll ring you in your room to set a time. But if you’ll excuse me now, I do have to be somewhere else.”

  After her series of lies, Gen dashed out. She knew Muriel would soon be surrounded by admirers and then swept away to other events.

  Back at the hotel, Gen intended to go straight to her room and put a washcloth on her now-throbbing head. Instead, she took a detour past the closed doors of the men’s gathering, where she listened to the dull hum from inside the hall. A distinguished older man emerged as she was standing there.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he said with fatherly concern. “Unless you fancy a lot of smoke and noise.”

  Gen smiled tightly. She could just see past the man into the ballroom as he held the door for her. Under the glistening chandeliers, a sea of gray and brown suits filled the space between the columns; voices rose in a chorus of baritones and basses. The sound made her lightheaded, and she thanked the man but hurried toward the elevator.

  In her room, she decided to skip the evening’s keynote address and order room service, although it was an extravagance Baines wouldn’t reimburse. She was disappointed with herself and suspected Muriel would be, too. Where was the Gen Rider who had learned to navigate academia in a men’s field, who had persisted until her department granted her a permanent spot?

  Under her embarrassment ran a current of renewed anger at Carolyn—for leaving her, yes, but more for mapping it all out and telling Muriel, and probably others, about the plan. And if Carolyn had fears of not getting tenure, why hadn’t she bothered to tell her lover?

  She could scan the conference program again for familiar names, attend panels of interest and introduce herself to scholars whose work she admired. She could seek out Muriel and pursue the dinner invitation. Anyone could force herself to make it through three days of an uncomfortable conference.

  The other option was to leave—the way she’d done all those years earlier when Laurette’s news toppled her confidence. Although she hated her cowardice, the very idea of escaping comforted Gen and lulled her to sleep. The next morning, she left a note for Muriel at the front desk, claiming a sudden cold, and slipped back to Springboro.

  On the long bus ride home, Gen made up her mind. A Thanksgiving meeting with Carolyn was off the table. Gen would drop her a note and let her know her final decision.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  Gen imagined that the anonymous gifts she received at the beginning of the semester had ended with Girls’ Dormitory. But soon after her return from Atlanta, she found a greeting card in her home mailbox without a return address or stamp. The card’s cover featured a picture of two cuddly kittens in a basket festooned with ribbons and forget-me-nots. The verse inside read, “Thinking of You—Three little words/Mean so much/When sent to keep/Good friends in touch.” Printed at the bottom was “xo—M,” and taped to the blank side of the card was a “gold” ring set with cracked green glass, possibly an old Cracker Jack charm.

  She traced the ring with her finger and contemplated the initial. Several of her students had first names beginning with M—Martha, Melanie, Millie, Monica, and others. Of these girls, only Margaret Sutter displayed a special fondness for her. Fenton said the girl had developed an attachment to him, too. “She’s a needy thing,” he had said, “but aren’t we all?”

  The ring and the “xo” didn’t jibe with the Margaret Gen knew, who mostly sought her out for advice about the Civil War class or her major. Maybe someone was playing a trick on both of them. Gen couldn’t decide whether to ignore it or dig deeper.

  She’d spoken once to Fenton since they exchanged terse words about his choice of date for Ruby and Darrell’s. He called when she was back from Atlanta, inviting her for coffee or a drink. “I miss you,” he said, though it had been little more than a week. She asked for a rain check. She couldn’t avoid him or his side of the story forever, and the situation with Margaret offered an opportunity to clear the air and make peace. The truth was, she missed him, too.

  Fenton gushed when he heard from her and extended an invitation for breakfast in his rooms. When she arrived, the smell of fresh paint hit her nostrils before the aroma of coffee. In the corner she noticed a closed gallon of paint with a brush set across the lid.

  “Sorry, I thought the stink would be gone by the time you got here. I cracked a window so we don’t pass out from the fumes.”

  “It’s so . . . white,” she remarked. One of his walls, which had once been a bold magenta, was now devoid of color.

  “Things were too pink,” he said quickly.

  Fenton’s double hot plate and pint-sized refrigerator didn’t permit much cooking, so the meal consisted of orange juice, coffee, toast, and plain crullers from the bakery. “Trying to keep my weight down,” he explained as to why he hadn’t selected his preferred breakfast of jelly donuts.

  Gen almost said, “For Kathy?” but kept the thought to herself.

  Fenton set his tiny bistro table with a lace-edged tablecloth and a vase of fall-colored blooms. “I hate carnations and mums, but they’re all you can get,” he explained.

  When they were settled with their food, Gen showed him the card and ring. She’d left the charm taped to the card, fearful that removing it would acknowledge it.

  “It doesn’t seem like Margaret,” Fenton said, rereading the card. “Well, maybe the kittens. I could see her giving you candy. She always brings me Life Savers. But the ring confounds me. I can’t imagine her being so forward. I think she’d die of embarrassment before actually signing this.”

  Gen’s thoughts skittered back to the candy kisses and Girl Scout cookies, which she had never mentioned to Fenton. She told him now about the three gifts, including the copy of Girls’ Dormitory, and how at Halloween, Margaret’s Girl Scout uniform had unsettled her.

  Fenton returned the card to its envelope. “These girls . . . They’re all bursting hormones, aren’t they? If it worries you, I’d talk to her.”

  “That will be an unpleasant conversation,” she said. His cavalier tone bothered her, for reasons she couldn’t put a finger on. “Have you noticed her being teased by other students?”

  “There was some snickering about her getting a male role in Charley’s Aunt, but that’s not unusual.” He paused, digging further back in his memory files. “One student told me she didn’t want to co-stage manage with her. I figured they were feuding over some boy.”

  “Which student was that?”

  “Your neighbors’ girl, Susanna Carr.”

  “Ah.”

  Gen wasn’t sure why she said “ah” as if everything had fallen into place. The gifts still puzzled her, and the idea of another student setting Margaret up over a boy stretched believability. Besides, Susanna didn’t strike Gen as a vindictive prankster. Gen had whittled away at the girl’s bigoted beliefs as the semester progressed, and Susanna had chosen to write her term paper on Andrew Johnson’s failures as president.

  “I suppose there’s no way around talking to Margaret.”

  Fenton refreshed their coffee cups. “Well, I myself prefer to dodge anything like that,” he said.

  They shifted to small talk. Gen itched to ask
him about Kathy, but every time she hinted at personal topics like Ruby’s party or what was going on with Mark’s case, Fenton veered away and peppered her with questions about something else, like her trip to Atlanta. After an hour, she’d done most of the talking, laying out how she’d learned from Muriel about Carolyn’s duplicity.

  “At least it’s over and done with,” he said. “Nothing muddying the waters now.”

  “I mailed a letter to her this morning, telling her not to come.”

  “Brava! A courageous move.” He placed a hand over his heart. “‘I never yet was valiant.’”

  Gen stared at him, unfamiliar with the quote. “King Lear,” he explained.

  “Well, I’m hardly valiant.”

  “It’s brave to take some sort measure of control when things are spinning,” he said. By the way his head drooped toward the table, she thought he had shifted gears to his own spinning life.

  “I’ve been worried about you, Fen,” she said after a pause. His head bobbed back up. “I’m sorry I lashed out at you at Ruby’s. It wasn’t compassionate. I don’t know what you’re going through right now.”

  “Neither do I.” He frowned. “I’m seeing a shrink in Richmond. Three times a week.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Wow.”

  “Wow indeed.”

  “How’s it going?” The question burst out as simplistic and uncaring, but Gen had never known anyone who had visited a psychiatrist except an aunt by marriage whom her mother pronounced “loony.”

  “It’s mostly talking,” Fenton said. “But sometimes he attaches this machine to my wrist and leg. He shows me slides.”

  “A machine?”

  “Oh, just a little one.” He spread his hands shoulder-width to approximate the size.

  “And what are the slides of?”