style="font-size:15px;"> Gen realized she wanted nothing more than to tell Carolyn everything that had happened, both at school and in town. Sharing their days had been a routine, and Gen had the long-distance phone bills to prove it.
Her eyes drifted to the telephone bench. She didn’t mean to, but she found herself calling the operator in Towson, Maryland. “Carolyn Weeden, please. I don’t know the street.” There were three Weedens in the town, but only one with the first initial C.
Gen’s fingers brushed the receiver. She picked it up again, took a long breath, and dialed Carolyn’s number. Before the second ring, she hung up.
She kept thinking about the number as she cracked an egg for dinner and finished her second drink, then picked at her scrambled egg while standing at the counter.
After rinsing her plate, she dialed a second time.
“Hello?” It wasn’t Carolyn’s voice, but it sounded familiar. “Is anyone there?”
Gen dropped the receiver into the cradle with a thunk.
She’d had her suspicions about how quickly Carolyn had gotten the job at Goucher College and why she’d accepted a three-year lecturer contract with no hope of tenure. The call seemed to confirm her worst fears. There was someone else, a woman whose voice Gen thought she recognized but hoped she didn’t. She flopped onto the seat of the telephone bench and wallowed in images from a shared past she had mistaken for happy.
Gen had met Carolyn at the annual conference of the Southern Historical Association in 1954. By then, Gen had toiled as a lowly lecturer at Baines for ten years—hired during the war when male faculty were scarce—and had just been promoted to assistant professor. SHA included many Northern-trained scholars among its members, some of whom were friends from the graduate program at Ohio State, and it seemed like the right fit. The organization’s conference in Columbia, South Carolina, counted among its speakers some of the most progressive historians of the time. They weren’t much older than Gen, but their work left her starstruck.
When Gen arrived, she had found the Hotel Columbia swarming with men. She gravitated quickly to the first woman she found—Carolyn, a lecturer at a women’s college in Richmond.
“I’ve counted five skirts so far,” Carolyn had quipped. “You bring it up to six.” They moved together like conjoined twins, spending much of the weekend laughing over cocktails about the men who asked where their husbands taught.
Carolyn had shared Gen’s passion for socially conscious history, but there was an undercurrent of something else running between them, too. No romance bloomed at the conference, but they exchanged plenty of deep, searching looks. Back in their respective towns, their letters and phone calls crescendoed with suggested passion: “When will I see you again? Has it really just been a few weeks?” and “I don’t think I can wait until next November to see those eyes!” Within days of receiving a note signed “Missing you so much it hurts—C,” Gen had crossed the state and climbed into Carolyn’s bed.
Now the pain of Carolyn’s departure lodged in her chest, festering into resentment. She and Carolyn were supposed to be a team—for life. How could Carolyn betray her? And how would Gen ever find someone new, when meeting Carolyn had been serendipity?
Her self-pity finally tired her, and she pulled herself up from the bench and dried her eyes. I am fine on my own, she thought. She didn’t need love right now. Instead, she could concentrate on building her friendships. She picked up the phone a third time, but this time she dialed Ruby to set a date for lunch.
Chapter Two
Gen
A handful of students lingered behind after Gen’s Civil War class, surrounding her desk. She was accustomed to this post-class “ring around the rosie,” as Ruby jokingly dubbed it. Students rarely showed up for her established office hours, choosing instead to pepper her with questions about assignments and readings as she packed up her own notes and books to vacate the classroom for the next professor.
Margaret Sutter hovered to the side of the room until the other girls had left. She said she had a thesis statement for her theme paper and wondered if Gen would take a look at it, even though office hours were over for the week.
“Your first paper’s not due till midterm, Margaret,” Gen said warily. “Wouldn’t you like to wait and see what all your options are?”
The girl bit her top lip. “I like to start my papers as soon as possible,” Margaret explained, “in case I run into problems. I have a lot on my plate this term.”
You’re an A student, Gen thought but didn’t say. She didn’t want to trivialize the girl’s earnest approach to her studies, which Gen recognized from her own college days.
With Margaret in tow, Gen moved into the hallway, where Lee-Anne Blakeney was whispering with Susanna Carr, who was also in the class. Given Lee-Anne’s reservations about studying slavery in such depth, Gen had hoped the girl would drop, but she appeared to be soldiering on. Lee-Anne caught Gen’s eye and chirped, “See you next time, professor!” but her eyes settled on Margaret and not her teacher.
Gen nodded to Lee-Anne while she continued talking to Margaret. “Walk me back to my office?”
Margaret’s face lit at the invitation, and they descended to the first floor in tandem.
What Gen’s office lacked in size, it made up for in coziness. She had installed an Oriental rug from her parents’ house and two lamps so she didn’t have to read by fluorescent light. With the help of the janitor, she’d covered every inch of the walls with framed photos of forest trails, waterfalls, and sandy beaches—all from trips she’d taken with Carolyn, all carefully curated so her lover never appeared in any of them.
From the corner of her eye, Gen noticed Margaret assessing the collection.
“I’ve probably said this before but your photos are beautiful,” Margaret commented as she sat waiting for Gen to organize her books and papers.
“Thanks. I took most of them.”
“Gosh, really? I’d love to know how to take pictures as good as these. You must have a terrific camera. I still have a stupid Brownie I got for my twelfth birthday.”
“I do have a very good camera.” The Leica counted among her prized possessions, an extravagant Christmas present from Carolyn their first full year together.
“How did you learn to use it?”
“A patient friend taught me.” Carolyn sprang to mind again, the unhurried way she’d guided Gen’s hands on the camera body. Gen rolled her shoulders to dispel the memory. “Now, Margaret, tell me about your idea.”
Margaret drew a typed sheet from a folder for Gen. “I get nervous sometimes when I have to talk, tongue-tied almost. So I wrote it down.”
“You do very well speaking in class, though.”
Margaret shrugged. “I have to force myself. Some of the girls here are, well, snobby and judgmental about all sorts of things, like when they think you’re talking too much or too loud.”
Gen had witnessed the behavior in her classes, occasional flashes of annoyance from girls who
