Phillip Milner: Her mother_s lover

Charisse knew that Debby was trying to embarrass her in front of the other girls.

"I just ignore cheap slander, wherever it comes from," Charisse said, looking pointedly at Debby, "and now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and play those records in my own room!"

But Debby grasped her by the arm as she made her way to the door. "Oh, I've got lots of other interesting scraps on your mother, Charisse. I used to be a fan of hers."

Turning to another girl called Sally, she said, "Get me the rest of my scrap books from the closet and we'll see who's slandering whom. Your mamma really must be quite a babe with the boys, and you don't even want to tell us anything about her technique of getting men. That's really all we want from you, some pointers on what makes Minna such a successful sexpot."

With this, she flung the scrap books the other girl handed her right at Charisse's feet. They opened to show pictures of her mother in various poses and escapades, including a certain nude bathing episode in the fountain of London's Trafalgar Square.

Charisse ignored the pictures and made to leave the room. She was actually on the verge of tears and couldn't understand what had brought on this attack on her and her mother. She had only tried to be friendly. Why was Debby so intent on torturing her and demeaning her in front of the others.

"Pick those books of mine off the floor, and read those stories real good. Maybe you'll thank me for giving you the best education you ever got at good old Greystone," Debby ordered.

Charisse couldn't believe that this was happening to her, or that the other girls would go along with this hazing.

"I don't think anybody would like it much if Miss Finchley heard what the girls in her class were trying to pull," she quavered with tears in her eyes.

"I don't think you would like it much if we really did a job on your whore of a mother and plastered this stuff all over the school," Debby answered. "Believe me, every girl here will make you sorry that you were ever born if you even think of squealing to the headmistress."

Charisse felt that Debby was dead serious and would really carry out her threats. Maybe the best thing would be to play along and then get out as quickly and as gracefully as possible.

"Okay," Debby said viciously, "now read us a few bedtime stories, and I do mean 'bedtime' stories about your old folks at home. And speak up, I'm hard of hearing."

Charisse flipped the pages of the scrap book unbelievingly. Finally she began to read in a whisper, "I need to have my men big – all over, says songbird Minna Mantell…"

She was interrupted with a high pitched squeal of laughter from one of the group, but continued reading with a kind of fascinated horror. "I believe love is where you find it, says Minna Mantell on Rome's famed Via Veneto. Could it be that the handsome young Italian accompanying her agreed with her back in her hotel room?" Charisse saw a picture of an oily, gigolo-type leading her mother's poodle, while her mother looked up at him in obvious admiration.

"You girls don't understand," Charisse said, "these things are just for publicity, just a press agent's idea. Why, my mother would never do anything of the kind!"

"Oh, no!" mocked Debby. "Not in a million years – but do read on, it's all so interesting, even if it is just a press agent's story. Some of them sound like a press agent's nightmare, if you ask me!"

Charisse bit her lip and said nothing. She realized that she was being persecuted, and just because she was her mother's daughter. Her mother had told her there would be days like this, but Charisse would never have believed her classmates could be so mean and hurtful.

Taking another scrapbook in her hands, Charisse saw her mother practically bare-chested in a see-through evening gown, obviously drunk, with a man who certainly wasn't her husband. She dimly remembered also seeing this man apparently coming from her mother's bedroom one night when he was a weekend guest, but her mother had just been amused by Charisse's questions at the time.

Almost hysterically, Charisse leafed through page after page of the scrapbooks. Why, these stories made her mother out to be the giddiest type of gadabout – a celebrity who gave sex so freely that she was notorious for it. And her father, according to these clippings, was a weak nincompoop who was always shooing handsome young strangers out of his steaming marriage bed. But no matter how he tried, her mother managed to keep the bed sheets hot. And all the stories about her parents were in the same vein. Her mother seemed the biggest tramp and her father the biggest dope in the entertainment world.

Rather sadly, she said, "I'd like to leave, I've seen all the scrapbooks."

She was so obviously hurt that none of the girls laughed or said anything, except Debby, who couldn't resist pitching one last dart into Charisse's sensitive skin.

"Hope you enjoyed our little get-together and liked my picture books. By the way," she added, "do you suppose you could get your mother and some of her boyfriends to autograph my scrap books? That would make them really interesting!"

Keeping back her tears, Charisse walked into her own room, holding her head proudly. As she closed the door behind her, she flung herself down on the bed and let the tears come. How could they rub her nose in the filthy offal of the gossip columns? How could girls be so cruel? Especially when she knew that none of it could be true. Even the most innocent action could be distorted as to make it seem evil by these gossip sheets. Her mother had assured her of that. But why had her mother always gone to such pains to get her to believe that there would be false gossip about her?

Having found that her mother was the soft spot in her armor, the girls in her section of the dorm became quite sadistic. There would be sly questions, like "What does your mother advise putting on a broken cherry?" flung at her in passing. But she realized that if she answered this sort of torture, there would be no end to it. So she just kept quiet and made believe she didn't hear a thing.

Debby, as usual, was the worst. Since she had the room right next to Charisse's, she developed the habit of barging right in. Somehow she almost always seemed to come in when Charisse was undressing and clad only in panties and bra. Once it was without the bra and Debby had looked fixedly at her voluptuous breasts and hadn't made any of her usual remarks about Charisse's mother.

"What a pair of titties!" she said in a rather surprised tone of voice. She left the room when Charisse hurriedly closed the bathroom door.

A new idea had been forming in Charisse's mind under the constant pressure of all the teasing she was taking from the others. She would just pack it in, leave Greystone Finishing School. She would go back to her mother, tell her what had happened and just look for a job. Maybe she could even become her mother's secretary. It would be fun traveling with her mother from one engagement to another. She could really see the world.

She made up her mind that she would take French leave from the school this coming weekend. She would say she was going into the meadow for nature study notes and they wouldn't even bother to look for her. By the time they missed her at bedcheck, she would have almost arrived at the penthouse in New York. Central Park would look good to her from the seventeenth story of the luxury apartment. Much better than Miss Finchley's school up in the farthest reaches of Westchester County.

She was nervous when she told the biology teacher she was going to spend the day in nature study, but when she was finally away from Greystone, she felt much better. She liked her bio teacher, and felt sorry if she would get into trouble over Charisse's disappearance.

It was a cloudy day, and a bone-chilling dampness made her hurry along to the railroad station. Some of the town's swingers, young men on the make, always used to watch in town for the girls from Greystone. Charisse knew that some of the girls had let themselves get picked up for beer drinking parties at a nearby bar and discotheque, but felt it was really none of her business. She herself had gotten more than one off-color invitation to join them, but now they no longer bothered her.