Seed on the Wind

Lora never learned the inside of that. Not long after the notice arrived there came a note from Anne inviting her to tea at an address in Brooklyn. She was minded not to take the trouble to go, but for once curiosity got the better of her; and there was Anne in a lovely yellow crepe gown, with a turquoise necklace and a permanent wave, smiling hostess in a large and luxurious living room to a group of chatty ladies none of whom Lora had ever seen before. She had no opportunity with Anne alone; and departed, furious, when it became apparent that there would be none. A month later Anne came to see her, but had little to tell about herself. She had known Ernest Seaver many years, she said, from childhood, in fact; they had been beaux at high school, upstate. He was one of those who get as a reward for heroic patience the cracked and empty shells from which bolder men have removed the kernels; or as Anne put it, “He used to say he’d wait, I’d take him some day; he’s really very sweet, Lo.” She had not rushed off to China, Lora gathered, but precisely where she had gone that summer day did not appear. Home probably, Oneida or Elmira or wherever it was. Steve was mentioned only once and then not by name; when Roy awoke and stirred in his crib Anne got up and went over to look at him and after a moment turned and said abruptly, in a voice so painfully tightened into casualness that Lora winced:

“You haven’t heard from him.”

Lora shook her head, too exasperated to speak, at a suffering so purposeless and so ineffectual. Killing yourself would be better than that, she thought.

As spring approached and it again became possible to spend whole mornings or afternoons outdoors with Roy without half freezing, she began to feel a touch of the restlessness that she remembered so well from that other life which seemed from this distance a dream. She shied violently from the comparison, but that did not remove the unrest. It was an annoyance, for it seemed to her to be clearly unreasonable. She had Roy, wasn’t that enough? He was so sturdy and healthy and smiling that people were constantly stopping to look at him, make faces at him, make noises with their tongue or lips. Surely she could ask nothing better than this. Well... yes. That would be all right, her work was pleasant enough, by no means burdensome, sufficiently well paid. Not too secure though. Fads in models change; that man with a white beard who had been in such demand a year ago was now going around begging. Oh, well, there would always be something to do...

That was it, then, to bring Roy up, feed him, clothe him, watch him grow — soon he would be talking, he was already a year and eight months. That would be fun. She would teach him to say, Steve Adams is a dirty bum. Not that it mattered about Steve, she was nursing no grudge, but it would be fun to hear Roy say it, not knowing who he was talking about. What should she tell him about his father? That didn’t matter, either, to her, but he would want to know who his father was; all children did, as if it made any difference. The war would do. Your father was shot in the war, my son, fighting for his country. Ha, thousands of children would be told that whose fathers would really, at that very moment... Enough of fathers, the less said about them the better. If she had a clever tongue like Albert...

Where was Albert this afternoon, by the way? She hadn’t seen him for three days. Had he deserted Venus? Not likely; obviously he still liked to be with her; he was so transparent. Probably he was busy finding a successor to Marie, who had recently married and gone to France on her honeymoon.

She would like to go to France — that was an idea! She had over three hundred dollars saved in the bank, more than enough. There were lots of artists there too, thousands of them, and it wouldn’t matter whether she spoke French or not. But Roy would make it difficult. What if something went wrong, that would be a fine fix, broke and without resource in a distant and foreign country, with a sick baby perhaps and unable even to understand what the doctor said. It was bad enough when you could understand them; no matter what they said you always felt they were entirely too intimate with death to be trustworthy. Like last summer when Roy had the colic and Doctor Berry called it some long name, rubbing his hands, as much as to say, ha, I know that fellow, we’ve had some great old times together.

No, France was out of it. Pretty much everything was out of it, except just this, just today and tomorrow and next week, with Roy not really a baby any more. She wouldn’t teach him to call her Mamma or Mother, he should call her Lora. Why? No particular reason; she liked it better. Her own mother’s name was Evelyn. It suited her all right, soft and mushy, plenty of tears but no... Oh well. That was done, none of that. Certainly Roy should call her Lora.