It’s still early enough in the morning that campus isn’t bustling with people yet. It’s an easy walk over to Abbott Hall, the history building. It’s situated in a corner of campus across from Whitmer Hall, the English building, with a grassy quad between them. Ben and I usually opt to sit in the quad for lunch instead of the staff break room inside. It’s a change of scenery and fresh air. Neither of us care for the water cooler gossip that some of the professors partake in. I swear, sometimes they’re worse than the students with childish antics and talking shit.
I put my back against the door of Abbott Hall to swing it open, juggling both coffees, but taking great care not to spill them or burn myself. When I walk into the main lobby, our department intern Rebecca is sorting and dispersing mail.
“Good Morning Miss Murphy! You’re here early. It saves me a trip to your office!” she says excitedly as she hands me a bundle of envelopes and magazines. Rebecca pushes her glasses back up her nose and nervously tucks her straight blonde hair back behind her ears.
“Rebecca, we go through this every morning. You can call me Ali. Drop the Miss Murphy business. You’re an intern, not a servant,” I remind her. I know some professors and historians in the building make her nervous, when they’re even acknowledging her at all. They send her on coffee runs and odd jobs not included in her internship program. Professor Black even sent her on a shopping trip to find a birthday present for his teenage daughter. She does it with a smile because she knows their letters of recommendation will carry a lot of weight in her future endeavors. I don’t use her beyond the occasional run to the library or making copies of exams for me.
I smile warmly at her as I hit the elevator button to the fourth floor. I pause as I step in. “Hey Rebecca, have a good day, alright?”
Rebecca shyly smiles. “You too, Ali.”
As I step off on the fourth floor, Ben is standing there, leaning up against the wall with his head buried in his phone. He glances up when he hears the doors open and looks at me, and then immediately down to two coffees in my hands, one outstretched toward him.
“Al, you’re an angel, truly,” he says gratefully as he takes his coffee from me and playfully taps his heart. Ben usually arrives on campus just minutes before me, but his morning routine never leaves him enough time for coffee, so I end up grabbing it for both of us.
“What would you ever do without me?” I smile brightly as I take a sip of my coffee.
“Fuck if I know,” he laughs as we walk down the hall together to our offices. “You catch the Bruins game last night?”
“Yeah, Ullmark was a beast, stood on his head most of the night.” I ramble on for a good five minutes about the Bruins game up in Buffalo.
“Are you going to the game tonight?”
“No, they’re in Toronto tonight.” I remind him of their road trip. “I don’t think they play at home again till Tuesday.” I really hope they win tonight. I fucking hate the Leafs.
At thirty-two, Ben is almost four years older than me. It's a fact he likes to point out often. He often acts like an older brother and tries to take care of me, which is not something I’m used to, especially considering he’s the one I think that needs to be taken care of. Ben is over six feet tall and muscular. It’s obvious he grew up on a beach and spent his childhood surfing. His blonde hair is swept to the side, letting his piercing blue eyes steal the show.
We met when we started here at Chisholm last fall. We both started on the same day. It was my first job as a historian and he had just transferred from a university out in California. Neither of us knew anyone, and being the two youngest members of the department, we felt a heavy weight of expectation and judgment from more senior staff. We spent the entire exhausting day painstakingly trying to prove ourselves to our colleagues and justify the positions we now held.
By the end of the day, we collapsed on opposite ends of the sofa in his office, passing a flask back and forth while exchanging stories of our lives. I told him about growing up as an only child in Boston and how it was just my dad and I for the longest time until he passed. He told me about growing up with three brothers in Newport Beach. I wondered to myself how the California boy with sun kissed skin and a jawline that even 90s Brad Pitt would envy would handle a harsh New England winter.
He told me he moved from California after a breakup with his longtime boyfriend, Ryan. We bonded over our mutual relationship issues. He’s at least been in one in the last few years. I close myself off from relationships. In my head, you can’t hurt me or leave me if I don’t let you get close enough.
After sharing way too much whiskey, we both joked that we now felt trauma bonded. We’ve been inseparable ever since. We do almost everything together, from shopping and dining to traveling.
As we sip our coffees, I listen to the recap of Ben’s date from last night. I live vicariously through his social life. Ben met Andrew on a dating app and they’ve gone out a couple times.
“Yeah, so we went to this new sushi place.” I crinkle my nose in disgust. Ben notices and smirks. “It was good! You need to give things a try, Ali.”
I roll my eyes. “When do I get to meet him?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.” Ben shakes his head. “Andrew was a nice guy, but I don’t see it going anywhere.”
And there he is, right on schedule. I like to joke that he’s “three-date Ben.” He always has a date, but nothing ever lasts past the third one. He’s had no one with any staying power since Ryan, and that was a while ago now. At least he’s getting out there. It’s more than I can say for myself. Although that’s not for lack of effort on Ben’s part, he’s tried setting me up with just about every straight male friend he has.
After tossing our empty coffees into the garbage near the elevator, we head down the hall toward our respective offices. I have a Titanic sized rabbit hole to jump down and he’s been knee deep in World War I weapons and tactics. I swear I’ll go crazy if I have to hear him droll on about the invention of mustard gas and its impact on modern warfare any longer.
My office is the smallest on the floor, which goes without question when being the lowest of seniority. But I actually quite like it. It’s like my personal cave, my little hideaway. It gets wicked cold in here sometimes, so I often have to kick the heater in the corner to wake it up. There’s two windows behind my desk that overlook the courtyard outside. The window ledges have a few framed photos displayed, one of Dad and me when I graduated college, one of us in the park when I was a child, and one of Ben and me at the Cape over the summer. Across from my desk is a sofa and table for when I need a change of scenery with my research or when a student is in my office. Teaching the large lecture courses means I typically have students who are taking the course as an easy elective. But I’m also one of the more approachable members of staff, so I signed up to be an advisor. I think my demeanor and age make it easier for students to accept guidance from me rather than an old man covered in tweed and elbow patches. The sofa is also where Ben likes to spread out, pretending that I’m his personal therapist. That seems like the blind leading the blind, if you ask me. Although I will say I’m much better at giving advice to others than handling my own business.
Above the sofa, I have one of my favorite possessions displayed. It’s a framed original copy of the Boston Suffragette Weekly, a women’s rights pamphlet that circulated in the years prior to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment. A group of women in Boston published poems and essays to stoke the flame of the movement for the right to vote. This issue, published in 1911, has cover art that I’ve always found quite beautiful. It shows a woman at the head of a table of men, her arms outstretched as if she is leading the discussion. Underneath her is the phrase:We just want a seat at the table.The author, Alice Carney, wrote a beautifully moving essay on the expectations put upon women and how they contradict the potential women have. Her words are often the most powerful and impassioned, and I look toward them when I need comfort or inspiration. It’s a reminder to myself anytime I feel small or unseen that I have a power within me to be brave, that my voice is louder than I realize.
My father gave me the pamphlet when I was a child. He told me he named me after Alice Carney because he wanted me to have similar ideals of self worth and bravery to grow up with. It hung in my childhood bedroom for years, before making its home in my office.
The most fascinating thing about Alice Carney is the fact that no one knows who she is. There is no census record of her existing in Boston during the time of publication. Most historians believe she was an alias used by one, or multiple, suffragettes to publish their strong, and at the time controversial, opinions. It’s become a focus of mine, a pet project essentially, to uncover who the real Alice Carney was. I don’t know if my motives are purely as a historian, or if some part of me thinks unmasking her will help me understand myself better, having been named after her.
Ben stands in the doorway of my office, leaning up against the door frame with his arms crossed, as I toss my bag onto the armchair and hang up my coat. His eyes scan the room, noticing the stack of books and articles strewn about the table. I think he’s deducing that my pet project of finding Alice Carney has slowly become my focus.
He tips his head toward all the paperwork. “Oh boy. Another Carney day, huh?” His voice sounds playful on the surface, but I sense a tone of concern underneath. He has chastised me before for being so focused on this project. He thinks it has caused me to develop tunnel vision.
