A Midsummer Party

“Please be in, please be in,” Kitty muttered to herself as she rang the doorbell, gripping her backpack. She had been brought up by her mother, ironically the most thoughtless person she knew, to believe it was extremely inconsiderate to show up anywhere without an invitation. The door opened and her grandmother Polly appeared, looking puzzled, then delighted.

“Kitty? What a lovely surprise. Come in, come in.”

Kitty fell into her arms, weeping.

“Gran, I’m sorry I didn’t call first, and I haven’t been in touch for ages, but I didn’t know where to go and…”

Kitty’s shoulders shook as her speech trailed off into incoherent sobs. Polly gently disentangled herself and picked up the backpack which Kitty had dropped on the doorstep.

“Come on, love,” she said, gently pushing Kitty towards the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

Kitty heard laughter and soft music in the background.

“You have company and here I am barging in.”

“Just old college roommates here for our annual midsummer party. Sit,” said Polly, serving her a mug of tea. “Wait, never mind.”

She dumped the tea and poured a glass of wine.

“Medicinal purposes. Drink that.”

Kitty mopped her eyes with a napkin and drank, shuddering. Her plump, freckled face was blotchy from crying. Polly gently smoothed Kitty’s bouncy red curls and patted her shoulder.

“First, does your mother know you’re here?”

Kitty shook her head.

“She’s off on a work trip again. Covering a fashion show in the south of France. She left me some frozen pizza and told me I could have friends from school over, just not to do anything she wouldn’t do. Very funny. She knows I don’t have friends from school. I have people who want to know me cos they see her online or on television.”

“Why didn’t you call me? You know you can always come here.”

Kitty flushed and stared into her glass.

“She’s never wanted me to come.”

“I guessed as much,” Polly said dryly.

She hastily passed a box of tissues as another flood of tears erupted.

“Polly, where’s the corkscrew? I need to open another bottle of wine. This one seems to have evaporated...who’s this?”

A robust Black lady in a colorful print caftan bustled into the kitchen, stopping in her tracks as she saw Kitty.

“Kitty, this is my friend Hortense,” said Polly.

“Hortense, what’s taking so long?”

A stocky gray-haired lady entered the kitchen behind Hortense, waving a wine glass. “Hello. You must be Polly’s granddaughter. Nice to meet you.”

“This is Louise,” said Polly.

“And I’m Thelma,” said a plump blonde, giggling. “Never mind. That movie’s way before your time. Our little joke. I’m Joyce.”

“Found it,” said Hortense, brandishing the corkscrew and a bottle of wine. She sat down at the kitchen table. “Polly, is something burning?”

“Oh, Lord,” said Polly, grabbing potholders. “My sausage rolls.”

A cloud of smoke rolled out as she opened the oven and the smoke detector began to shriek. Kitty jumped as a large tabby cat leapt off the chair where it had been snoozing and fled. Louise flapped a dish towel. Polly set the tray of sausage rolls on the counter and peered at them, coughing.

“We can scrape the burnt bits off. Hortense, pass me my wine. This is too much excitement.”

“There’s plenty of food,” said Joyce. “Chips, home-made hummus, devilled eggs, quiche. Let’s sit here to eat.”

Kitty suddenly realized that she was famished. The ladies hovered around like a brood of mother hens as she began to eat.

“Now, tell us what’s going on,” said Polly. “You don’t show up out of the blue for no reason.”

Kitty took a deep breath, scrolled on her phone and pushed it across the table. Polly picked it up gingerly and squinted at the screen.

“Instagram? Who are these people?” she said, looking at a picture of a handsome thirty-something man. He was beaming, his arm around the shoulder of an attractive young woman, one hand proprietorially on her pregnant belly.

“He’s my chemistry prof,” Kitty said, sniffling.

“What has he done?”

Polly’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched. Kitty startled. Her grandmother seemed to have morphed from a friendly Chihuahua into a pocket-sized Rottweiler with bared teeth.

“He offered to tutor me because I’m useless at chemistry. The first few times we met in the library with a couple of other students. Then he suggested we meet off campus in a coffee shop. He was really kind and easy to talk to.”

“I bet he was,” said Polly.

“What happened next?” said Hortense.

“Nothing. It never does with me and guys,” Kitty said bitterly. “I saw that picture before it could. He said that his wife doesn’t understand him, and their marriage was a sham. He didn’t say she was beautiful and going to have a baby.”

“Good grief, can’t these creeps come up with something original?” Louise said, groaning. “That line’s been around since we were young, or Noah built the ark.”

“Whichever came first,” said Joyce.

The ladies shrieked with laughter and even Kitty couldn’t help smiling.

“I can’t believe I fell for it,” she said. “He made me feel so special.”

“Look at me, child,” Hortense said, serious. “You are special. He knew you were vulnerable. College is hard at the best of times and you’re the child of somebody famous. Believe it or not, we old fossils have all had experiences like this. Why, Polly, do you remember that boy in…”

“Never mind,” Polly said, serving slices of cake. “Let’s not embarrass Kitty. The difference was that back in the day it was par for the course. There wasn’t any Me Too movement.”

Louise stared at the picture on the phone, drumming her fingers on the table.

“I know them from somewhere. It’ll come to me. Kitty wasn't the first and she won’t be the last student he grooms. He must be stopped before it goes any further.”

Kitty looked up in alarm.

“Please don’t make a fuss. Nothing happened and I don’t want people to know.”

She was slightly dizzy from the unaccustomed wine and wasn’t sure if she imagined an unspoken message in the glance which passed between the ladies.

“Kitty, don’t let this put you off college,” said Joyce. “Have you decided on a major?”

The conversation drifted to other topics, accompanied by much raucous laughter until Kitty began to yawn.

“Oh my, look at the time,” said Hortense. “This old lady needs to head for home.”

After hugging Kitty and Polly, the ladies departed.

“I like your friends,” Kitty said, as she and Polly put plates in the dishwasher. “I feel much better now, Gran.”

“Old ladies know how to have fun,” said Polly, smiling. “You remember where the spare room is. Sleep well now.”

Kitty did indeed sleep well. It was mid-morning by the time she surfaced and groggily made her way to the kitchen where Polly was listening to a podcast as she mixed up a batch of cookies.

“Hello, sleeping beauty. You must have needed that rest.”

The phone in the hallway rang.

“Help yourself to coffee and anything else,” Polly said as she went to answer it, wiping her hands on her apron.

Kitty sipped her coffee and scratched the head of the tabby cat who was back in his favorite chair. Polly was gone for a while. She returned, smiling with satisfaction, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“That was Louise. She remembered where she knew your chemistry teacher from. His parents have applied to join the country club that Louise and her husband belong to. Not really Louise’s scene, but her husband’s a business bigwig, so she goes along with it. His mother was showing off the same picture you saw and bragging about her coming grandchild. A word or two in the right ears will clip Mr. Chemistry’s wings.”

“What?” said Kitty, almost choking. “But I don’t want…”

“Don’t worry,” said Polly. “Your name won’t come into it. Hortense is a retired attorney. She checked in with a few old contacts in law enforcement. Turns out Mr. Chemistry left a previous teaching job under a cloud related to inappropriate contact with a student. Nothing proven, but it was made very clear to him that it was time to move on. Joyce is one of the trustees of the college. Those old boys hate the idea of any scandal.”

She popped the cookie tray into the oven.

“Better set the timer. I don’t want to burn these.”

Kitty took a deep breath.

“Gran, is there something you ladies weren’t telling me last night?”

Polly looked at her, her eyes twinkling.

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. When we were your age, there wasn’t any talk about consent or boundaries. There were nice girls or sluts. It was fair game for the guys to paw and make crass comments. Not all of course, but a lot. You were a spoilsport if you complained. There was one particularly obnoxious guy. He had followers because he played on the football team, and he had a rich daddy and a sports car. He pestered every girl, including all of us. This wasn’t long after desegregation and there weren’t many Black students on campus. Since he was also a racist, he was especially nasty to Hortense.”

The timer beeped. Polly took the cookie tray out of the oven and eyed them with satisfaction.

“That’s more like it. Where was I?”

“The horrible racist, sexist guy at your college.”

“Yes. The four of us studied together so we didn’t have to walk back from the library alone and risk running into frat boys like him. We were going back to our dorm one winter evening. It wasn’t late, but it was already dark. We heard a sound in the bushes and found this girl curled up on the ground, crying. Her face was bruised, and her clothes were all messed up. It was obvious what had happened. We got her to the infirmary. She was almost incoherent, but she accused him.”

“What happened? Was he caught?”

Polly stared into the distance, her expression grim.

“It was all swept under the rug. She had been drinking and his father made it clear that they’d drag her name through the mud. Not long after, she left.”

“That’s terrible!”

“The good old days weren’t always so good.”

“So, he got away with it?”

Polly looked sidelong at Kitty with a mischievous grin.

“Not so fast. Hortense, Louise, Joyce and I decided we’d do something about it. Joyce was a blonde bombshell in those days, just his type. She started to flatter him, and he fell for it like a ton of bricks. Long story short, she lured him up to our dorm for a party and we spiked his drink.”

“Gran! That’s terrible but also awesome,” said Kitty, shaking her head.

“It gets better. When he was out cold, we made him up like a drag queen, with a blonde wig and sparkly earrings. We put a sequinned top on him…it was hard to find one big enough… and dragged him out to the quad where we propped him up on a bench.”

“How did you four girls manage to drag a football player out there?” said Kitty skeptically.

“There were several guys that he’d had run ins with who were happy to help. The quad was the assembly point for fire drills. We pulled the fire alarm as a finale. He woke up to find the whole school gaping at him.”

Kitty, speechless with laughter, shook her head.

“No social media in those days, of course, but we did have cameras,” said Polly, proffering a plate of cookies. “I still have those pictures somewhere. He went into politics later. The four of us made a point of going to one of his meet and greets. I thought he was going to pass out on the spot, especially since his wife was there.”

“The moral of the story is that you should judge guys by what they do, not what they say. There are some decent ones out there, like your late grandfather. I’m sorry he died before you were born. You’d have liked him, and he’d be proud of you. Now let’s talk about what you really want to study.”

“I don’t know, Gran. That's the problem," Kitty said.

Polly suddenly slapped the table.

“I've had a great idea. The girls and I have been talking about going on a European trip. Want to come? A change of scenery is exactly what you need.”

“I’d love to,” said Kitty. “I hope I can keep up with you old dames!”

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