believed that wearing these concoctions might be the means for Lucy to meet nice people. Nice people who would do things for her in a still not to be too worried about future. Time enough to think about that when Lucy finished school. School was an institution at which attendance was required by authorities because—because that was how it was. Mae hardly remembered anything about her own elementary schooling, rarely wasting time about the past except to be thankful that Lucy and she did not have to live with her sister Mabel in the grey house on Twelfth Street in Congress, Nebraska, where she had been born. Old-maid Mabel whose grudgingly offered bounty she had determined never to accept. As for the future, she floundered helplessly in a daydream whose shining image was Lucy reposing on a downy apotheosis of adoration.
Lucy didn't care what girls said about her dresses or anything. She often had thought it would be fun to have a girl friend who, like herself, wore nice clothes and had boy friends. Then you could exchange bits of information. But the trouble was girls didn't know anything. It was from boys that you learned. So she had no feeling about what girls said except to be sorry for them because they didn't know how to act with boys. She noticed boys didn't like girls to talk about things that didn't have to do with petting and kissing. Kissing and going to school were almost the same. You learned about arithmetic the way you did about boys. If you did this or that, certain things happened. Sometimes she made Frank wait a few days before she let him kiss her.
"That's a beautiful dress." She leaned over Mae's shoulder. "I wonder if the actresses at the Empire ever have their pictures in Mode?"
"Well, I don't know—they aren't actresses exactly—they're dancers or singers."
Mae pondered the distinction. Actresses were really—women. She could not visualize Lucy a woman. Actresses were so—old. An actress had to cry and look ugly or, what was worse, be funny for people to laugh at. Dancing was lovely work for a girl, and could lead to many nice things. Toast of the Town.
Lucy flipped the pages of the magazine. A lot of things were in it she neither understood nor cared to.
"My goodness, they certainly have some crazy things in this magazine. Look at this crazy quilt. It says here it's a picture of a D-i-a-g-h-i-l-e-v Ballet. What's a ballet?"
