Seed on the Wind

She walked up to him, quite close, and stood there against him, her hands at her sides, smiling into his face.

“I’d love to be kissed by a Jew,” she said.

He caught his breath. “You’re playing with me.”

“I’d love to be kissed by a Jew,” she repeated.

“Any Jew presumably?”

“Please.”

“This is not... dear Lora...”

“Please.”

Then his arms were around her and his lips were on hers. She pressed tight against him so that her swelling breasts could feel his firmness, and he could feel them; her arms remained at her sides but her whole body was against him, not wanton, not aggressive, but lyrical and warm and ready. He kept her mouth a long while, and then buried his face on her shoulder and gasped for breath, his arms still holding her tight.

“Dear Lora... dear Lora...”

“Yes. Yes.”

She raised her hand to pat his head and smooth his hair. At the touch he trembled, then raised his head and sought her lips again, but she put her hand on his mouth and he kissed the palm, over and over.

“Beautiful... oh, beautiful...” he murmured.

“You must go now.”

“Let me stay. I can’t leave now. I wouldn’t know where to go. Let me stay and cook dinner — you can’t go out in this rain—”

“Albert is coming.”

“Don’t make me go, dear Lora. How does it concern him that I have kissed you? Let me stay.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I haven’t two babies, I have four,” she said.

When Albert arrived a little later he found Max in the kitchen furiously stirring a bowl of eggs and bread crumbs, and Lora seated across the table from him peeling potatoes.

That night Lora lay alone in bed, stretched comfortably under the warm blankets, looking through the open window at the street light glowing through the winter mist. Max had left early; at eleven Albert had got up from his chair, yawned, and announced that he was off for a party uptown. She was glad to be alone; after a last look at the children she got into bed at once but did not close her eyes. This is getting chronic, she thought, I’d better find out what it is I’m trying to do. She was committed to Max, that was sure. Why? His lips had felt soft and moist, not at all disagreeable, but certainly not exciting. His embrace was not as urgent as Albert’s once had been — but that was actually a relief, let that dead lion sleep. Yet she had been excited. He had felt good against her breasts; she had pressed them against him exultantly, until they hurt; she had wished savagely that they might hurt till she fainted of it. Fearing to alarm him then, she had drawn back, pushing the thought away, patting his head and smoothing his hair as a mother might have done.

Beautiful, oh, beautiful, he had said. He meant her face, of course, and her hair, he was always talking about her hair and wanting to touch it. Well, she was beautiful. There was nothing more beautiful than her full breasts, just before she gave them to the baby, when she sat before her mirror with her dress open nearly to her waist, with their great drooping curves, drooping with weary grace like the branches of a peach tree loaded with ripe heavy fruit. Max of course did not mean that; think of Steve! Strange that men could be so blind to the only beauty that mattered. Probably Max wouldn’t want a baby at all. Ha, wouldn’t he though! Beautiful, oh, beautiful, he had said. How would he be, how would he feel? Suave and polite. That was one time that apparently manners didn’t count, but in reality they did; politeness was just as pleasant then as any other time. My loins are two spent tigers drowsing in the sun, Albert had said that day, stretched six feet two on his back beside her, and she had smiled to herself, thinking of the new strength in her own loins to support the new life. That had been the last time with Albert, three months before Helen was born — to her great relief, for her indifference had almost become an active repugnance; and by the time it was over he had gone afield.

But, she thought impatiently, the question is what is it I’m trying to do? She couldn’t go on having babies forever; this would be three, and certainly that was enough. If she weren’t careful she’d be in a hole she couldn’t get out of; what if Max became indifferent, as Albert had; what indeed if like Steve he made no bones about it, simply put on his hat and went away? Left alone with three infants would be no joke. She was headed for disaster then. Bah, she thought, there are no disasters left. Disaster, my god, that’s funny. Disaster...

She shivered a little, turned on her side, pulled the covers tighter around her shoulders, and closed her eyes. By an old trick, born long ago of necessity, she suddenly was not there, she was far off in a sunny meadow of clover, running slim and youthful to greet a crowd of women, a great throng of them, all smiling and reassuring and beckoning as they approached through the clover blossoms from all sides, calling her name. They were her mothers...

She slept.