Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/206

 her when she only wanted to push him away. She hoped though to get used to him in time because Mother was happy she was spending so much time with Lyle.

A few weeks later he took her to call at the apartment of two girls kept by two boys with whom he played polo. She knew these men from Figente's parties and felt sorry for the girls who were trying so hard to be gay. Figente said those boys only married girls in their own set but would keep the girls afterwards. They had to marry for money, he said, because after their fathers died there wouldn't be much left as their fathers were playing around too. Lyle took her away the minute he saw she didn't like being there.

Then one day he said she had mentioned she never had been inside a Fifth Avenue house so he was going to show her his home. There was no one to let them in. The furniture was covered with white sheets and, noticing her surprise, Lyle said his mother was abroad.

He made love on the library sofa as she stared back at the family portraits staring at her. It was like being raped in public. She had the feeling it was something he had wanted to do since he was a young boy.

When she arrived home, Mae looked at her frightened. "What's wrong, darling, don't you feel well?"

"I feel just fine," Lucy said tonelessly. "I know you'll be disappointed but we're getting out of here. I hate this place. Let's go back to the Derby until we can find a place of our own. You see, you don't know Lyle as I do."

"Well," Mae said quietly, "I suppose I'd better begin packing."

Lucy watched her get out the suitcases with a guilty pang. Everyone, including Lyle, said they were more like sisters than mother and daughter, but if that was true, Mother was the younger sister, to be taken care of. How could you explain that Lyle for all his polished manners never thought of them as being anybody. It wasn't that he tried to make her feel he was upper-class. He couldn't have treated her better in that respect. It was just that beneath the nice manners he acted upper-class to anyone who worked for a living, even when he didn't mean to. I'll put it this way, Lucy told Lucy. Maybe I would have said yes when he asked me to marry him if he hadn't taken me to that apartment where his friends kept their girls, and then made love to me like that in his mother's empty house with all the paintings looking on. I guess it's my fault, moving into the apartment when I knew what had to happen, but I thought maybe I 194