Lily White Read Online Free Page A

“Come on, pretend I’m a lady buying a fur. ‘Excuse me, my good man,”’ she’d twitter, giving what was actually a pretty fair imitation of a Vanderbilt voice. “‘I’m looking for something smart in a mouton, fingertiplength.’” Eventually, Bella would start to guffaw at her own performance, doubling over with laughter; that’s when Leonard would make his break for freedom.
    In those days, young men did not get their own apartments, so Leonard was doubly grateful to Sylvia: for getting him out of his personal hell in Brooklyn and for giving him a judge and a natural blonde for in-laws. And of course, Sylvia was grateful to him, because at age twenty-two, she had no prospects. The loss of Selwyn Youdelman, a Brooklyn Law School graduate with offices in Kew Gardens, had devastated her parents a year earlier. That the loss was due to his choosing another girl over Sylvia made it more painful to the Bernsteins than if he had merelydied. Sylvia knew that they blamed her for his leaving, that she’d shown off her artistic nature too much, that she’d kept pushing him to go to operas and museums, while all a normal fellow wanted to do was go see
The Bells of St. Mary’s,
for God’s sake, or go for a malted. “I
didn’t
push him!” Sylvia explained tearfully.
    “Shhh!” her mother responded. “The Judge is in the bathroom.” Both women took a moment to compose themselves and whisper more quietly.
    “He asked me what did I want to do,” Sylvia tried to explain, “so I said I read how they had a Turner exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. He’s this English guy. And Selwyn was the one who said how he loves good pictures and never gets enough of them.”
    “That doesn’t mean he actually wants to go into the city on a weekday night! The man is an attorney!” Sour acid rose from Sylvia’s gut and burned the back of her throat. She wanted to throw up. But the Judge was in the bathroom, and even if he finished right away, it would have to air out or she’d never stop vomiting for the rest of her life. She rushed away from her mother, into the bedroom she shared with her brother, flung herself facedown on her bed, and wept—silently.
    Unfair! Unfair! She’d bring a date into the apartment, and right away he’d hook his finger over his tie to loosen it, as if he were suffocating. Well, why not? The place was gloomy, airless. The windows were never open, the blinds were always drawn tight, and there was barely enough light—just enough to see the dust sparkles dancing in the living room air. Even before her mother could breathe, “Shhh! The Judge,” the date would get that Lemmeoutta-here look, like he was inside Boris Karloff’s tomb.
    But Leonard actually liked her parents! She knew part of it was that they had wall-to-wall carpeting and his parents were, as he explained, working-class people. But even guys who’d been all hepped up because her father was a judge—like Selwyn—weresomehow repelled by the silence in that apartment, by the radio that hadn’t been turned on since FDR died. There was something about the Judge, she realized, that was … not right. And her mother, too, was … not right.
    Not right? Wacko was probably closer to the truth, but that would have been too revolutionary a notion for Sylvia. And while Leonard (had he been cross-examined under oath) might have admitted something was not quite right about the Bernsteins, the cryptlike quiet made him feel they were, at the very least, a classy family.
    In fact, the first time Sylvia let him put his hand under her skirt, he was thinking: I’m bringing Sleeping Beauty to life. He was thrilled with her. Sitting on her living room couch, her parents inside, sleeping, he wanted to whisper, “Your thighs are as soft as chinchilla.” But he stopped himself because he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he was low class, comparing her to a rodent, or worse, that he thought her thighs were furry, although they did