Gen shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Did you at least have some fun?” Ruby cocked her head. “I don’t see that tan you usually come back with.”
“No fun either, sad to say.” Gen shuffled some papers so she wouldn’t have to look directly at Ruby.
“Too bad. After your tenure triumph, you deserved a few months to recoup. You know what they say about all work and no play.”
Gen shifted the conversation deftly back to Ruby. “You’re one to talk. I bet you left Darrell on his own to fish while you finished one article and started another.”
Ruby’s sly smile suggested Gen had hit the mark. “Well, how about these two workhorses have a quick lunch after our twelve o’clocks and catch each other up?”
Gen hesitated. Catching up with Ruby brought complications. Her mentor had watched out for her, advised on her academic career, surrounded her with support. Still, for all Ruby knew, Gen was just a determined career woman who eschewed romantic relationships, and Carolyn was a similarly unmarried colleague whom Gen traveled with. Ruby never remarked on Gen’s frequent trips to Richmond, where Carolyn lived. “Research at the State Library,” Gen claimed, to explain them away. Ruby had no idea that the other tale Gen had spun, about a fiancé who died on Utah Beach, had been concocted to shut down speculation about her private life.
If Ruby started asking too many questions about why her summer had fizzled, Gen might cry outright and divulge things she didn’t mean to. All summer long, there’d been no one to spill her grief to. Most of her friends had been part of Carolyn’s circle. No matter how many fun evenings they’d shared with Gen over the years, the women had retreated to the shadows of her now-former life. The pain of it all still bubbled inside Gen like stew on a slow simmer.
So, as much as she craved company and conversation, Gen begged off from Ruby’s invitation, saying she was swamped. “How about early next week?” she suggested, knowing that the raincheck might slip from Ruby’s busy mind. “I’ll call you.”
Ruby gave Gen a skeptical sideways look. “That sounds fine. We’d probably just spend it talking about Mark, anyway.”
“Mark?”
Ruby’s face turned grave. “Patton. You didn’t hear? It was the lead story in the morning paper.”
“I skipped breakfast.” The Springboro Gazette was folded in her briefcase, to be perused at lunch.
Gen knew the college art gallery director casually, through Fenton. Mark had been at Baines a few years. She’d fallen into a conversation about modern art with him at a cocktail party at Fenton’s apartment—the place was so small they were squeezed in next to each other—but that was probably last fall. She suspected he and Fenton had had a “thing,” her friend’s word for love affairs, by the easy way they joked and touched each other’s arms.
“He was arrested in the park.” Ruby coughed discreetly. “With . . . another man. A Negro.”
“Oh! Poor Mark.”
“He’s been fired, of course.”
“A police car was at Timmons this morning,” Gen said. “Do you think that’s related?”
Ruby had been hovering in the doorway, but now she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her, resting her books on the corner of Gen’s desk. She took a dramatic breath. “It’s likely. Apparently, they raided his apartment and confiscated . . . personal material. They must have come to look in his office, too. There’s some sort of police investigation being launched.”
Gen’s stomach burned as if someone had struck a match in it.
“It’s all so sordid. Mark always seemed like a lovely man. A confirmed bachelor, for sure, but his private life should be his own, shouldn’t it? I would have never suspected something like this. I hope—”
Ruby let her sentence drop off, but Gen guessed she was hoping something about their mutual friend, Fenton. The administration tolerated its effete theater director because he knew how to style wigs and apply theatrical makeup, and was a student favorite. His productions drew audiences from Roanoke and Staunton, raising revenue for the college. But all that would mean nothing if he was caught in a public scandal.
Ruby picked up her books. “Well, I’m sorry to start the day on such a sour note. I hope the rest of it is cheerier for us both.”
✥ ✥ ✥
After her second class, Gen called Fenton in the theater, but he was skittish and said he couldn’t talk. First-day pandemonium, he claimed. He was the lone drama teacher at the college, who also cast and directed all the school plays, managing students from both Baines and its brother college, Davis and Lee. Gen waited until she was packed up to head home, then dropped in at the theater to gauge for herself how her friend was holding up under the weight of the news about Mark.
She tagged along behind him through the theater wings as he took inventory of props that might suit for the fall production of Charley’s Aunt. He’d lost some weight since she’d last seen him. Slender to begin with, now his jacket hung off him loosely, like a teenager who had borrowed his father’s clothes.
“Hon, you don’t want to be seen with me right now.” He glanced around, as if spies might be hiding in the scenery and props. “It’s not safe.”
The fear she had felt when Ruby told her about Mark resurfaced as a catch in her throat. “Are you and Mark . . . involved?”
Fenton continued to inspect the props, making notes on his check list, but she saw a flicker of pain in his hazel eyes. “No names, please.” After a pause, he continued, “It’s been over for a while.”
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate.
“Well, what say you come for barbecue on Saturday? We’ll try to forget what’s happening and have a gay old time.”
He winced at the word gay but allowed, “I did miss barbecue up north. Count me in.”
“You could bring me flowers,” she suggested. “Everybody will think we finally fell in love.”
“What they’ll think is you finally lost your mind. Given up all hope of finding a normal man.”
She lowered her voice. “Little do they know I only like abnormal men like you.”
He put down a china vase he’d been assessing and turned toward her with a pinched look. “Gen, you realize how serious this is.”
“I know.”
“They caught five men. They won’t stop there.” Fenton forced his trembling hand into his jacket pocket. “I had a nightmare about Mark last night. I told him so many times how risky his behavior was, parks and tearooms and such, but did he listen? And it turns out he was doing it with a Negro behind Big Beau, for God’s sake!”
She flinched at the dismissive mention of Mark’s Negro lover. She never took Fenton for a bigot, but he was so upset, this wasn’t the time to press the issue. The town’s venerable shrine to the Confederate dead featured the names of local soldiers engraved along its base, plus the battles they served in. It took its nickname from the bronze statue mounted on the pedestal of an officer on a prancing horse—almost as majestic as Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Before Gen was born, the Daughters of the Confederacy had raised the funds to honor Colonel Wylie Beauregard Thoms of the 10th Virginia Cavalry, who lost his life in the Battle of the Wilderness. Many of his descendants still lived in the Springboro area, including the History Department’s Henry Thoms.
“So you never—”
“No! I always play it safe.”
She wasn’t sure how “safe” it could be, frequenting bars in Richmond,